be depended on and glorified for every step of our progress, for the truth while we read it, for the understanding to understand it, for the heart to feel it, for the courage to maintain it, and for the intrepidity and constancy to bring it forth.

More than this I declare myself incompetent to see; and they may blame me for what they choose, but I can no more. I cannot find in my heart to blemish that glorious and potential Word, which first the ministry of angels, and then the ministry of Christ, and then the ministry of the Holy Spirit, brought from heaven's sanctuary of truth to this necessitous and beguiled earth. I cannot find to cast mist and mystery upon its intelligible face, hesitation and dimness over the eye which looks on it. Read, read, and be instructed in all the offices of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Read, read, that your souls may live, and the gross darkness which covers you may clear away, and your hearts may know their deceitfulness, and your feet find the path of life.

For the sake of those who find a difficulty in receiving this doctrine of the spiritual influence, we have set forth these explanations. We give them credit for rejecting the jejune and uninformed speculations, which, to make a place for the doctrine, must first put the eye and the soul out of the whole revelations of God, and make them without intelligence, persuasion, or purpose; that afterwards they may magnify the office of the Spirit, in all at once taking off this veil, and making them legible and intelligible. This doctrine is not according to fact, for the word of God is of all books that which has produced the strongest influence upon the institutions of men, and which, perhaps, is the last book to lose its natural influence upon individual men. It doth not convert all men, because all men do not know, do not believe, do not keep in memory, do not abide in its truths; but its truths are not passive truths, but of the sharpest and most active virtue. They can be resisted, doubtless, and they require fair play within the soul, and call for an energy of study and contemplation; but no man was ever yet brought out of darkness into light, but by some of these revelations taking hold upon his mind, and working by a natural influence upon all his feelings and all his actions.

This depreciation of the Word into an unintelligible legend, is not only against the fact of universal experience, but against the declarations of all Scripture, wherein the statutes, the commandments, the Word, the Son and the

Spirit of God, are exalted with a mutual honour, and not one depreciated with the design of exalting another. But if there is one thing in Scripture more exalted than another, it is the Word, and that most wisely, because from it is the knowledge of all the rest, and of God himself. For, lending a deaf ear to this most dangerous of all heresies, if we may use that cant term, we do give men credit; but if they thereupon would draw away from dependence upon God's Spirit, we hold them again, and pray them to consider, that because the Word is well fitted to enlighten the eyes of the blind and give understanding to the simple, its influence is nevertheless to be ascribed to the Spirit of God -in like manner as the fruits of the harvest, or the success of the mariner, and the general prosperity of life, are to be ascribed to the hand of God, though seemingly produced by no means but our own industry, skill, and carefulness. Nay more, though the Word has in it a constant virtue, and will have till the end of time, which virtue is only to be derived from it by a faithful perusal and persevering obedience; still, if we look not constantly to the Spirit of God for the increase, we shall never grow in religion, though in self-conceit and ingratitude we may grow-just in like manner as though the fertility reside in the elements of earth, water, air and heat, and may never be extracted from them but by study to discover and industry to practise; still, if the labourer look not to the providence of God for all his increase, he shall grow hard in his impiety and his ingratitude, but in devotion and godliness he shall not grow.

But while you read, and light begins to dawn, praise the Lord for his goodness, and be encouraged to go forward, and conceive no vain gloryings, but glory in the Spirit of the Lord; and when the voice of conscience awaketh from its long slumbers, give ear to its admonitions, and praise the Lord for his goodness. And when the sense of sin overwhelms you, still, in the overflowing floods, trust, in him. And when the Saviour, all-glorious in his sufficient righteousness, discloseth himself to your view, rejoice and be exceeding glad, and praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his loving-kindness unto the children of men. And when at length you come to walk after the Spirit, and to have the witness of the Spirit that you are the sons of God, and to feel your calling and election becoming sure, then give thanks to God, and wait for the revelation of his sons, and the inheritance of the saints in light.

OF JUDGMENT TO COME.

PART IX.

THE REVIEW OF THE WHOLE ARGUMENT, AND AN ENDEAVOUR TO BRING IT HOME TO THE SONS OF MEN.

THIS is no common argument in which we have been engaged, and that is no common conclusion which it hath had in view. It is no controversy with the opinions of an antagonist, whose undefended sides you might lay bare, and whose weapons you might turn against himself. You have no advantages from his unskilfulness or rashness, and you have no incitement from any personal interest in the struggle. For it is a question with all the doubts and objections of the hesitating mind. We stand to the post both of im pugning and defending the great thesis of Judgment to Come, a double capacity, which requires a double exercise of fairness and justice. We have both to excite the hesitations of the mind and to allay them again; so that our ingenuity is doubly tasked, and we feel often in a divided state. For it hath been our wish to deal wisely between the reason of man and the revelation of God, steering wide of the coarseness and cruelty with which dogmatical theologians ride over the head of every natural feeling and reasonable thought of doubting men-remembering the poverty of our own understanding, and attributing whatever we possess to the free and unmerited gift of God. To occupy this ground of mediating the matter in dispute between the reasoning power of man and the revelation of Almighty God, we may have given offence to both; to the one, for not having done its difficulties justice in the statement or the resolution; to the other, for having too daringly intermeddled and interfered with the secrecy and sacredness of its counsels. We are weak and feeble-minded like other men, and little acquainted with such high discourse, begirt also with mani

fold engagements, and invaded with the noise of this unresting place; and therefore we hope from the sympathy of our fellow mortals, forgiveness for any injustice we have shown them; and we shall seek from the secret ear of our God that forgiveness for which he is to be feared, and that redemption for which he is to be sought after.

In casting our eye back over the eight preceding parts of our Argument, to review it all, we discern some passages in which we have spoken with liberty of men who still live under their Maker's good providence and within the reach of his tender mercy. These we could easily expunge or now soften down, or make atonement for; but we will not, we cannot-For, our zeal towards God and the common good hath been stung almost into madness by the writings of reproachable men, who give the tone to the sentimental and the political world. Their poems, their criticisms and their blasphemous pamphlets, have been like gall and wormwood to my spirit, and I have longed to summon into the field some arm of strength which might evaporate their vile and filthy speculation into the limbo of vanity, from which it came. For which office, being satisfied that nothing less than omnipotent truth under leading of Almighty God will suffice, I am weary of the vain infliction of pains and penalties by the ruling powers, which doth but aggravate the evil, by awakening sympathy in the bosom of all who dread that power should ever intermeddle with the free circulation of thought. Seeing that Truth, which I revere, thus wounded both by friends and foes, I could not rest, but have spoken out my feelings wherever occasion offered, at the risk of offending the workers of evil, and those who by brute power endeavour to counterwork them. I have done so, I say; not that I am equal to the task, or have executed the task, but in the hope of summoning from the host of the Lord of Hosts some one (surely I cannot be mistaken that there are some such!) able and willing to take the field in the fair conflict of truth, and cast back into these blaspheming throats their vain bravadoes against the armies of the living God. One such spirit would do us more good than all the prosecutions and suppressions which all the law-authorities of the realm can carry into effect.-But I fear the worst; that the intrigues of policy and the weight of power will in this age totally expel from the two established churches all the vigour and virtue of mind from which such apologies can alone proceed. And sometimes I hope the best; that, through the Spirit of God working better under

standing upon those powerful men who at present outwit religion with their policies and strangle her with their power, the noble spirit which now lieth depressed in both, and especially in this establishment of England, will be extricated, and the Newtons and Scotts, who still watch in her corners, will yet have wide sees to administer and provinces to watch over. Which renovation, alas! long lingereth, and the enemy taketh advantage of its tardiness. But if it linger much longer, I hope, ere this realm, which is faint at both extremes, grows sick at the heart and threatens to lay down its heavenly spirit of religion, some of those men who in our senates do both know and seek the Lord, will lift up their voice, and make the calamity of England's and Scotland's wasted parishes and faded provinces to be heard in the ears of those whom God hath appointed to rule them in righteousness and in holiness.-Or do they mean to wait until we fall into the condition of prostrate Ireland? No, that can never be; for, long ere then, the generous spirit of the South and the indignant spirit of the North will have eased them of those who trouble their prosperity.

Thus again I am betrayed by my feelings into these digressions for which I meant only to explain the cogent reasons. But let them all pass, and bring what good or ill the Lord may please. And now to return to our review of what hath been said:

We seem to ourselves, allowing for these occasional digressions, to have kept with sufficient constancy to the matter of our discourse, and to have brought the subject to a good termination, arguing strictly according to the plan we chose and laid out at the beginning; and if we mistake not, we have kept generally within the sight and experience of common minds. All abstract discourse upon responsibility in general, and the freedom or necessity of the human will, we have avoided; not out of terror of that marlstroom in the ocean of thought, but because it is too nice a question to be handled by the way, and when it is taken up, should occcupy the whole diligence of the mind. But instead of such metaphysical discourse, we entered upon the inductive and experimental inquiry, How the nature of man accorded with a state of responsibility, and discovered that in no one of its relationships was it found devoid thereof, but acceded to it with a constant choice, as the very buckler of its social existence. Then we passed, to inquire what right God had to lay the human race under control, and what was the character of that responsibility under which he hath actu