been carried off, within a pistol shot of our house, I dreaded her being the third, but the Lord hath heard prayer, and she is spared. Oh what is life! On what a slender thread hang everlasting things! My comfort however is, that this thread is as strong as the will of God, and the word of his grace which cannot be broken. That grace and peace, love and thankful joy may ever attend you, is the wish of your most obliged friends, J. and M. F.

When I had the pleasure of seeing you last, you seemed surprised to hear me say, that the Son of God for purposes worthy of his wisdom, manifests himself, sooner or later, to all his sincere followers, in a spiritual manner, which the world knows not of. The assertion appeared to you unscriptural, enthusiastical, and dangerous. What I then advanced to prove, that it was scriptural, rational, and of the greatest importance, made you desire, I would write to you on the mysterious subject. I declined it, as being unequal to the task; but having since considered, that a mistake here may endanger your soul or mine, I sit down to comply with your request: And the end I propose by it, is either to give you a fair opportunity of pointing out my error, if I am wrong; or to engage you, if I am right, to seek what I esteem the most invaluable of all blessings, -revelations of Christ to your own soul, productive of the experimental knowledge of him, and the present enjoyment of his salvation.

As an architect cannot build a palace, unless he be allowed a proper spot to erect it upon, so I shall not be able to establish the doctrine I maintain, unless you allow me the existence of the proper senses, to which our Lord manifests himself. The manifestation I contend for, being of a spiritual nature, must be made to spiritual senses; and that such senses exist, and are opened in, and exercised by regenerate souls, is what I design to prove in this letter, by the joint testimony of Scripture, our Church, and Reason.

I. The Scriptures inform us, that Adam lost the experimental knowledge of God by the fall. His foolish attempt to hide himself

from his Creator, whose eyes are in every place, evidences the total blindness of his understanding. The same veil of unbelief, which hid God from his mind, was drawn over his heart and all his spiritual senses. He died the death, the moral, spiritual death, in consequence of which the corruptible body sinks into the grave, and the unregenerate soul into hell.

In this deplorable state Adam begat his children. We, like him, are not only void of the life of God, but " alienated, from it, through the ignorance that is in us.' Hence it is, that though we are possessed of such an animal and rational life, as he retained after the commission of his sin, yet we are, by nature, utter strangers to the holiness and bliss he enjoyed in a state of innocence. Though we have, in common with beasts, bodily organs of sight, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling, adapted to outward objects; though we enjoy, in common with devils, the faculty of reasoning upon natural truths, and mathematical propositions, yet we do not understand supernatural and divine things. Notwithstanding all our speculations about them, we can neither see, nor taste them truly, unless "we are risen with Christ, and taught of God." We may, indeed, speak and write about them, as the blind may speak of colours, and the deaf dispute of sounds, but it is all guess-work, hearsay, and mere conjecture. The things of the Spirit of God cannot be discovered, but by spiritual, internal senses, which are, with regard to the spiritual world, what our bodily, external senses are with regard to the material world. They are the only medium, by which an intercourse between Christ and our souls can be opened and maintained.

The exercise of these senses is peculiar to those who are born of God. They belong to what the Apostles call "the new man, the inward man, the new creature, the hidden man of the heart." In believers, this hidden man is awakened and raised from the dead, by the power of Christ's resurrection. Christ is his life, the Spirit of God is his spirit, prayer or praise his breath, holiness his health, and love his element. We read of his hunger and thirst, food and drink, gar. ment and habitation, armour and conflicts, pain and pleasure, fainting and reviving, growing, walking, and working. All this supposes senses, and the more these senses are quickened by God, and exercised by the new-born soul, the clearer and stronger is his perception of divine things.

On the other hand, in unbelievers, the inward man is deaf, blind, naked, asleep, past feeling; yea, dead in trespasses and sins; and of course, as incapable of perceiving spiritual things, as a person in a deep sleep, or a dead man of discovering outward ob

4. If believers have not a spiritual faculty of TASTING divine things, what delusion must they be under, when they say, Christ's fruit is sweet to their taste; and cry out, "How sweet are thy words to my taste! they are sweeter than honey to my mouth!" But how justly can they speak thus, if they have tasted the heavenly gift, and the good word of God, and, as new born babes, desire the sincere milk of it?" Surely, if they "eat the flesh of the Son of God, drink his blood, and taste that the Lord is gracious," they have a right to testify, that "his love is better than wine;" and to invite those, thathunger and thirst after righteousness, to taste that the Lord is good," that they also may be satisfied with his goodness and mercy, as with marrow and fatness.

ours.

5. If we be not perfect stoics in religion, if we have one degree more of devotion, than the marble statues, which adorn our church es, we should have, I think, some FEELING of our unworthiness, some SENSE of God's Majesty. Christ's tender heart was pierced to atone for, and to remove the hardness of God promises to take from us the heart of stone, and to give us an heart of flesh, a broken and contrite heart, the sacrifice of which he will not despise. Good king Josiah was praised, because his heart was tender. The conversion of the three thousand, on the day of Pentecost, began by their being pricked in their heart. We are direct ed to feel after God, if haply we may find him. Our Lord himself is not ashamed to be touched, in heaven, with a feeling of our infirmities. And St. Paul intimates, that the highest degree of obduracy and apostacy, is to be past feeling, and to have our conscience seared as with a hot iron.

I hope, Sir, you will not attempt to set aside so many plain passages, by saying, they are unfit to support a doctrine, as containing en pty metaphors, which amount just to nothing. This would be pouring the greatest contempt on the perspicuity of the Oracles of God, the integrity of the Sacred Writers, and the wisdom of the Holy Ghost, who inspired them. As certainly as there is a spiritual life, there are senses calculated for the display and enjoyment of it: And these senses exist no more in metaphor, than the life, that exerts itself by them. Our Lord settled the point when he declared to Nicodemus,, that "no man can see the kingdom of God," the kingdom of grace here, and of glory here after,"except he be first born of God, born of the Spirit" just as no child can see this world, except he be first born of a woman, born of the flesh. Hence it appears, that a regenerate soul hath its spiritual senses opened, and made capable of discerning what belongs to the spiritual world, as a new-born infant hath his natural senses unlocked, and begins to see, hear, and taste,

what belongs to the material world, into which he enters.

II. These declarations of the Lord, his prophets, and Apostles, need no confirma tion. Nevertheless, to shew you, Sir, that I do not mistake their meaning, I shall add the testimony of our own excellent Church. As she strictly agrees with the Scripture, she makes also frequent mention of spiritual sen sations, and you know, Sir, that sensations necessarily suppose senses. She prays, that God would "give us a due sense of his inestimable love in the redemption of the world, by our Lord Jesus Christ."* She begs, that he would "make us know and feel there is no other name than that of Jesus, whereby we must be saved."+ She affirms, that, true penitents feel "the burden of their sins intolerable;"‡ that godly persons "feel in themselves the workings of Christ's Spirit ;" that "the Lord speaks presently to us in the Scriptures, to the great and endless comfort of all that have any feeling of God in them at all;" that "godly men felt, inwardly, the Holy Ghost inflaming their hearts with the fear and love of God, and that they are miserable wretches, who have no feeling of God within them at all:" And, that, "if we feel the heavy burden of our sins pressing our souls, and tormenting us with the fear of death, hell, and damnation, we must steadfastly behold Christ crucified, with the eyes of our heart."¶

Our Church further declares, that "true faith is not in the mouth and outward profession only, but liveth and stirreth in the heart, and if we feel and perceive such a faith in us, we must rejoice: ++ that, "cor rection though painful, bringeth with it a taste of God's goodness:"‡‡ that, "if after contrition, we feel our consciences at peace with God, through the remission of our sin, it is God, who worketh that great miracle in us ;" and she prays, that, as this know. ledge and feeling is not in ourselves, and as by ourselves, it is not possible to come by it, the Lord would give us grace to know these things, and feel them in our hearts." She begs, that God would assist us with his Holy Spirit, that we may hearken to the voice of the good Shepherd." She sets us upon asking continually, that the Lord would "lighten our darkness," and deliver us from the two heaviest plagues of Pharoah, "blindness and hardness of heart."¶¶ And, she affirms, that "if we will be profitable hear ers of the Scriptures, we must keep under our carnal senses, taken by the outward

Thanksgiving. † Office for the Sick. Communion 17th Article.

words, search the inward meaning, and give place to the Holy Ghost," whose peculiar office it is to open our spiritual senses, as he opened Lydia's heart.+.

If I did not think the testimony of our blessed reformers, founded upon that of the sacred writers, of sufficient weight to turn the scale of your sentiments, I could throw in the declarations of many ancient divines. To instance in two or three only. St. Cyril, in the xiiith Book of his treasure, affirms, that, "men know Jesus is the Lord, by the Holy Ghost, no otherwise than they, who taste honey, know it is sweet, even by its proper quality." Dr. Smith of Queen's Coll. Cambridge, in his Select Discourses, observes after Plotinus, that "God is best discerned νοερα τη αφη by an intellectual touch of him.' We must, says he, see with our eyes, to use St. John's words; we must hear with our ears, and our hands must handle the word of life, εodi yap vxns alo@nois Tug for the soul hath its sense as well as the body." And Bishop Hopkins, in his treatise on the New Birth, accounts for the Papists denying the knowledge of salvation, by saying, "It is no wonder, that they who will not trust their natural senses in the doctrine of transubstantiation, should not trust their spiritual ones in the doctrine of assur

ance.

III. But instead of proving the point by multiplying quotations, let me intreat you, Sir, to weigh the following observations in the balance of Reason:

social life?

1. Do not all grant, there is such a thing as moral sense in the world, and that to be utterly void of it, is to be altogether unfit for If you had given a friend the greatest proof of your love, would not he be inexcusable, if he felt no gratitude, and had absolutely no sense of your kindness. Now, if moral sense and feeling are universally allowed, between man and man, in civil life, why should it appear incredible, or irrational, that there should be such a thing, between God and man, in the divine life?

2. To conclude. If material objects cannot be perceived by man in his present state, but through the medium of one or other of his bodily senses, by a parity of reason, spiritual objects cannot be discovered, but through one or other of the senses, which belong to the inward man. God being a Spirit, cannot be worshipped in truth, unless he be known in Spirit. You may as soon imagine, how a blind man, by reasoning on what he feels or tastes, can get true ideas of light and colours, as how one, who has no spiritual senses opened, can, by all his reasoning and guessing, attain an experimental knowledge of the invisible God.

Thus, from the joint testimony of SCRIP TURE, of our CHURCH, and of REASON, it ap. Hom. on certain Places of Scripture.

pears, that spiritual senses are a blessed reality. I have dwelt so long on the proof of their existence for two reasons. First, they are of infinite use in religion. Saving faith cannot subsist and act without them. If St. Paul's definition of that grace be just, if it be "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," it must be a principle of spiritual life, more or less, attended with the exercise of these senses; according to the poetic and evangelical lines of Dr. Young;

"My heart awake,

FEEL the great truths: To FEEL is to be fired,
And to believe, Lorenzo, is to FEEL.

Till professors see the necessity of believing, in this manner, they rest in a refined form of godliness. To the confidence of the Antinomians, they may, indeed, join the high profession of the foolish virgins. They may of the gospel with the zeal of Pharisees, and even crown their partial assent to the truths the regularity of moralists: but still they stop short of the new creation, the new birth, the life of God in the soul of man. Nay more, they stumble at some of the most important truths of Christianity, and think the discoveries, that sound believers have of Christ delusions, or, at least, extraordinary favours, and the spiritual world, are enthusiastical which they can very well do without. Thus, even while they allow the power of godliness to others, they rest satisfied without experiencing it in themselves.

Secondly, what I shall write will depend very much on the existence of spiritual senses; and if this letter convince you, that they are opened in every new-born soul, you will more easily believe Christ can and does manifest himself by that proper medium; and my letters on Divine Manifestations will meet with a less prejudiced reader.

may direct me to write with soberness and That Emmanuel, the light of the world, truth, and you to read with attention and candour, is the sincere prayer of, Sir, your's, &c.

SIR,*

SECOND LETTER.

Having proved, in my first letter, the existence of the spiritual senses, to which the Lord manifests himself, I shall now enter upon that subject, by letting you know, as far as my pen can do it, I. What is the nature of that manifestation, which makes the believer more than conqueror over sin and death.

1. Mistake me not, Sir, for the pleasure of calling me enthusiast. I do not insist, as you may imagine, upon a manifestation of the voice, body, or blood of our Lord, to our external senses. Pilate heard Christ's voice, the Jews saw his body, the soldiers handled

it, and some of them were literally sprinkled with his blood; but this answered no spiritual end: they knew not God manifest in the flesh.

2. Nor do I understand such a knowledge of our Redeemer's doctrine, offices, promises, and performances, as the natural man can attain, by the force of his understanding and memory. All carnal professors, all foolish virgins, by conversing with true Christians, hearing gospel sermons, and reading evan. gelical books, attain to the historical, and doctrinal knowledge of Jesus Christ. Their understandings are informed; but, alas! their hearts remain unchanged. Acquainted with the letter, they continue ignorant of the Spirit. Boasting, perhaps, of the greatness of Christ's salvation, they remain altogether unsaved; and full of talk about what he hath done for them, they know nothing of "Christ in them, the hope of glory."

3. Much less do I mean such a representation of our Lord's person and sufferings, as the natural man can form to himself, by the force of a warm imagination. Many, by seeing a striking picture of Jesus bleeding on the cross, or hearing a pathetic discourse on his agony in the garden, are deeply affect ed and melted into tears. They raise in themselves, a lively idea of a great and good man unjustly tortured to death; their soft passions are wrought upon, and pity fills their heaving breasts. But, alas! they remain strangers to the revelation of the Son of God by the Holy Ghost. The murder of Julius Cæsar, pathetically described, would have the same effect upon them, as the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. A deep play would touch them as easily as a deep sermon, and much to the same purpose; for in either case, their impressions, and their tears are generally wiped away together.

4. Nor yet do I understand good desires, meltings of heart, victories over particular corruptions, a confidence that the Lord can and will save us, power to stay ourselves ou some promises, gleams of joy, rays of comfort, enlivening hopes, touches of love; no, not even foretastes of Christian liberty, and of the good word of God. These are rather the delightful drawings of the Father, than the powerful revelation of the Son. These, like the star, that led the wise men for a time, then disappeared, and appeared again, are helps and encouragements, to come to Christ, and not a divine union with him, by the revelation of himself.

I can more easily tell you, Sir, what this revelation is not, than what it is. The tongues of men and angels want proper words to express the sweetness and glory, with which the Son of God visits the soul that cannot rest without him. This blessing is not to be described, but enjoyed. It is to be "written, not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living

God, not on paper, or tables of stone, but in the fleshly tables of the heart." May the Lord himself explain the mystery, by giving you to eat of the hidden manna, and bestowing upon you the new name, which no man knows, save he that receives it! In the mean time, take a view of the following rough draft of this mercy; and, if it be agreeable, to the letter of the word, pray that it may be engraved on your heart, by the power of the Spirit.

The revelation of Christ, by which a car. nal professor becomes a holy and happy possessor of the faith, is a "supernatural, spiritual, experimental manifestation" of the "Spirit, power, and love," and sometimes of the "person of God manifest in the flesh," whereby he is known and enjoyed in a manner altogether new: as new as the knowledge of a man, who never tasted any thing but bread and water, would have of honey and wine, suppose, being dissatisfied with the best descriptions of those rich produc. tions of nature, he actually tasted them for himself.

This manifestation is, sooner or later, in a higher or lower degree, vouchsafed to every sincere seeker, through the medium of one or more of the spiritual senses opened in his soul, in a gradual or instantaneous manner, as it pleases God. No sooner is the veil of unbelief which covers the heart rent, through the agency of the Spirit, and the efforts of the soul struggling into a living belief of the word: no sooner, I say, is the door of faith opened, than Christ, who stood at the door and knocked, comes in, and discovers himself full of grace and truth. "Then the tabernacle of God is with man. His kingdom comes with power. Righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost" spread through the new-born soul; eternal life begins; hea. ven is open on earth; the conscious heir of glory cries, Abba, Father; and from blessed experience can witness, that he is come to "Mount Sion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an in numerable company of angels; to the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, which speaketh better things than the blood of Abel."

If this manifestation be duly improved, the effects of it are admirable. The believ er's heart, now set at liberty from the guilt and dominion of sin, and drawn by the love of Jesus, pants after greater conformity to his holy will, and mounts up to him in prayer and praise. His life is a course of cheerful, evangelical obedience, and his most common actions become good works, done to the glory of God. If he walk up to his privi