by what he deemed to be an unearthly voice; and when this "supportation," as he calls it, began to fail, on having recourse to prayer, the words, like an echo, returned upon him, "I have loved thee with an everlasting love." In such conflicts, to use his own language, "Peace would be in and out, sometimes twenty times a day; comfort now and trouble presently; peace now, and before I could go a furlong, as full of fears and guilt as ever heart could hold." And, finally, to close this melancholy history, after praying for a direct sign from heaven, and having, as he thought, received it, by the "breaking in upon his mind of a certain text of Scripture, he was then as though he had seen the Lord look down from heaven upon him, through the tiles." "And now remained only the hinder part of the tempest, for the thunder was gone past; only some drops did still remain." And when one day, in a field, he was thinking of the words, " Thy righteousness is in heaven,” "Methought withal," he says, "I saw with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God's right hand, . . . . . there I say as my righteousness." "Then his chains fell off in very deed;" and, though not wholly freed from subsequent doubts and difficulties, "he was loosed from his affliction, and his temptation fled away."

Such was the alleged supernatural illumination of JOHN BUNYAN. It is an authentic account, for, in all its leading facts and circumstances, it has been derived from himself, and is here given chiefly in his own words. We wish now to try the force of our argument by an application of it to his case. If, then, the mere conviction or persuasion of the mind, the mere belief of any fact, independently of all the usual sources of evidence, is to be received as sufficient proof of the reality of that fact, then we are bound to suppose that the mind of Bunyan was supernaturally illuminated; since no man was ever more thoroughly convinced of this than he, and there is no man, who, on account of entire probity, conscientiousness, sanity, and sound sense on all other subjects, is more worthy of credit.

But if, on the other hand, we are authorized to examine this case by those rules of evidence and those principles of investigation, which govern us in ascertaining the truth of all other alleged facts, we think there will be little need of resorting to this violent supposition of a miraculous agency in accounting for the peculiar state of Bunyan's mind. His temperament

was naturally extremely nervous and morbidly excitable. His conscience was so tremblingly alive that he was continually accusing himself of sins, of which, in a more healthy state of the intellect, he must have known he was guiltless. Veneration, reverence, and the allied sentiments, which connect the soul with the unseen, the future, and the eternal, were very early and fully developed; but, in consequence of his utter ignorance and his habitual sense of guilt, degenerated into superstition at once the most ridiculous and lamentable. The circumstances of his life all tended to inflame and exasperate these natural defects, while the reflective powers, by which alone they could have been neutralized and controlled, remained comparatively inert. He lived in an age," in which hypocrisy was regnant, and fanaticism rampant throughout the land;" and, finally, to stamp and seal the religious character of his mind, he became a convert to views of Christian faith, which were peculiarly adapted to fix and fill his sensitive, guilt-stricken, and highly imaginative mind. These views recognised as a distinctive principle of belief the doctrine of immediate revelations from heaven; and receiving this, as he did, with an undoubting faith, is it strange that he should seem to himself to realize what he thus believed to be true? He lost, at times, if indeed he ever possessed, as is obvious to every reader of his life, and as his most intelligent biographer asserts, and as he himself confessed, the power of distinguishing things real from things imagined, or things objectively from things subjectively true; and is it wonderful that he should think he perceived what had no existence but in his own vivid and creative fancy, and that the visions thus bodied forth should take the "form and pressure" of the images preëxisting in his own mind? We hold, then, that Bunyan, so far as these miraculous impressions and communications are concerned, is not to be believed. Sincere and self-convinced, without doubt he was; we call not his veracity in question, and we think he was peculiarly free from that unfortunate mixture, that spiritual amalgam of fraud, half-sincerity, self-deception, pride, hatred, and the kindred brood of malignant feelings, which ordinarily go to make up the vulgar fanatic; still we maintain that it is competent for us to go beyond the record of his "experiences," and look into the causes which produced them. And if we do, we shall find no reason, nor, as we think, the least authority, for believing that they were the results of any causes but those which were purely and strictly natural.

We intended in like manner to analyze the alleged spiritual illuminations of Newton, the well known friend of Cowper, and to him the most unfortunate of intimates; of Wesley; and of Whitefield. But we suppose it cannot be necessary, and our limits do not admit of such a detailed and minute examination as would be deemed fair and necessary by those who have any doubts on this subject. But there is one other example which has peculiar claims upon our notice, since it is that of a man eminently distinguished for powers of logical analysis and acuteness of reasoning; of high and unquestioned authority in these matters even to the present day; and one of the ablest advocates of the doctrine we impugn. We scarcely need add that we refer to JONATHAN EDWARDS.

The first traits, that present themselves to us in contemplating the character of President Edwards, are an exceeding susceptibility to religious impressions, and a great tenderness and scrupulosity of conscience. These discovered themselves in very early life, and marked his whole subsequent career. "I had," says he, "a variety of concerns and exercises about my soul from my childhood; but had two more remarkable seasons of awakening, before I met with that change by which I was brought to those new dispositions and that new sense of things, that I have since had. The first time when I was a boy, some years before I went to college, at a time of remarkable awakening in my father's congregation."* As he entered college when he was about twelve years of 66 his first age, season of awakening" must have been in his very boyhood, probably when he was seven or eight years of age. "I was then very much affected for many months, and concerned about the things of religion and my soul's salvation." "I was abundant in duties," prayed "five times a day in secret," and "spent much time in religious talk with other boys." "I built a booth in a swamp, in a very retired spot, for a place of prayer," and "besides had particular secret places of my own in the wood, where I used to retire by myself, and was from time to time much affected. My affections seemed to be lively, and easily moved, and I seemed to be in my element when engaged in

*"Life of President Edwards,” prefixed to the edition of his works to which we have referred above, Section III., entitled "Some Account of his Conversion, Experience, and Religious Exercises, written by Himself." This has been republished as a tract, by the American Tract Society, and is held in great repute by the large denomination of Christians to which Edwards professedly belonged.

religious duties." But he backslided from this, and became "at times very uneasy," when, towards the close of his college life, he tells us, "it pleased God to seize me with pleurisy, in which he brought me nigh to the grave, and shook me over the brink of hell ;" and he "was thus brought to seek salvation in a manner that he never was before." His "Resolutions," which were formed, probably, when he was about twenty years old, exhibit in a still greater degree, perhaps, than these extracts from the "Account of his Conversion written by Himself," the same proofs of exceeding openness to impression, mental conflicts, and scrupulousness on the subject of religion. The circumstances of his life and education are next to be adverted to; and they will be found, taken in connexion with these peculiarities of his mind, to come in aid of that state of his spiritual being, which he deemed to be supernatural. His father was a clergyman, and by profession a rigid Calvinist, in that sense of the term which it bore a century ago; and he himself was brought up and lived and moved and had his being amidst "the most straitest sect of this religion." He seems to have imbibed this system of faith in his earliest years, and to have been thoroughly imbued with its peculiarities. And, notwithstanding the assertion of his biographer that he did not "confine himself, in his religious inquiries, to authors of any particular sect or denomination," we think it is very apparent from his own account of his religious experience, that his mind was too much preoccupied with the faith of his childhood, to give to any other system a fair and thorough examination. This is to be inferred from the fact, that while he was continually exercised in strong inward strugglings in the application of his peculiar form of belief to his own spiritual state, he seems never to have questioned its divine origin, or to have doubted whether it were really taught in the Bible. And how he disposed of the difficulties with which his system of belief is encumbered, when they did present themselves to his mind, may be inferred from the following statement:

"From my childhood up," says he, "my mind had been full of objections against the doctrine of God's sovereignty, in choosing whom he would to eternal life, and rejecting whom he pleased; leaving them eternally to perish, and be everlastingly tormented in hell. It used to appear a horrible doctrine to me."

VOL. XVIII.

N. S. VOL. XIII. NO. I.

10

And how was a mind so astute, so discriminative, and so discursive, in a logical sense, as his, in regard to many other topics of inquiry, finally satisfied in respect to this apparently "horrible doctrine"? By research? by comparing Scripture with itself? by any new light from the inspired volume?-by argument?-by the discovery of any intermediate trains of thought, which before lay hidden? by any of the rational or ordinary means of resolving doubts of this kind? No, there appears to be nothing of all this. His own account of the process is the following: "But I remember the time very well, when I seemed to be convinced and fully satisfied, as to this sovereignty of God, and his justice in thus disposing of men, according to his sovereign pleasure. But never could give an account how, or by what means, I was thus convinced." And after more than intimating that he ascribed this change to the "extraordinary influence of the spirit of God," he goes on to observe," However, my mind rested in it ;" and "there has been a wonderful alteration in my mind with respect to the doctrine of God's sovereignty from that day to this." "The doctrine has very often peared exceeding pleasant, bright, and sweet." Thus, according to his own showing, he became reconciled to a view of the divine government, "to which his mind from his childhood up had been full of objections," without being able to "give an account how, or by what means" this change was wrought. We deem this a remarkable instance of the effect of early associations and influences in producing an implicit belief, and also of the power of this belief to reconcile the mind to objections and difficulties, which, in respect to any other subject, would have appeared insuperable.*

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Again, the mind of President Edwards, acute and penetrating as it was in metaphysical researches, was singularly dreamy and imaginative on the subject of religion. And this natural tendency was much aided by his physical constitution and habits of life. "He possessed," says the biographer above

* It may be worthy of remark, in showing the singular state of Edwards' mind in regard to the "sovereignty of God," that after declaring as above, (page 33d of his "Conversion," in the volume before quoted,) namely, that it "appeared as a horrible doctrine to me," he says, on page 41st of the same account, in apparent forgetfulness of what he had thus before stated, "God's sovereignty has ever appeared to me great part of his glory."