While, therefore, a conviction that there is indeed a religious SENTIMENT, or a divine and holy feeling, which impreffes the heart more forcibly than any argument, induces me to maintain fo important a truth; I muft, in the most anxious and importunate terms, exprefs my defire that none may teach, and none fubmit to be taught, a belief, at this period, in EXTRAORDINARY infpiration or grace given to any one man exclufively.

All fpiritual pride, all cruelty, all perfecution, are, in their nature, repugnant to the Spirit of grace and though they probably proceed from ftrong feelings, they are feelings arifing from paffion, fancy, and actual infanity. Whoever is

under their influence, muft have recourfe to the SPIRIT OF GRACE, that his feelings or fentiments may become all gentle, benevolent, peaceable, and humble. If his extravagancies ftill continue to carry him to injurious actions and diforderly behaviour, application must be made to the physician, or, in cafes of extremity, to the civil magistrate.

There can be nothing in the genuine SENTIMENT, or feelings, occafioned by the Spirit of God, which is not friendly to man, improving to his nature, and co-operating with all that found philofophy and benignant laws have ever done to advance the happiness of the human race, and ftrengthen the bands of society *.

Dr. Dr. John Tottie, canon of Christchurch, a most elegant scholar and found divine, addreffes the ftudents of the university of Oxford, on the fubject of the Spirit's influence, thus: in a fermon on "The "wind bloweth where it lifteth," &c.

"The fame kind of operation hath the Spirit of God. The infpiration of it flows like the foft and warm breezes of the air. It "refreshes the foul with peaceful and pleafing thoughts; it keeps "the confcience pure and undefiled, and preferves it from the pesti"lential contagion of fin. All this may be PERCEIVED and FELT.

"We fhall FEEL and confefs the enlivening presence of this "Holy Spirit, in the peace of confcience, in an unruled compofure

and

Ε

SECTION XXXVII.

Of Enthusiasm.

NTHUSIASM is commonly used and understood in a bad fenfe; but if its real meaning* be attended to, it may certainly admit of a very fine

one.

It means a confcioufnefs or persuasion that the Deity is actually prefent, by an immediate emanation or impulfe on the mind of the enthufiaft; the reality of which, in certain cafes, is the doctrine of the church and of the gofpel; a doctrine fufficiently confonant to reafon, and not neceffarily connected with felf-delufion, folly, madnefs, or fanaticism +.

and ferenity of mind, in having a delight in virtue, in the poffeffion "of all thofe Chriftian graces that purify and refine the foul, in the affurance of God's favour, and in hopes full of immortality. "Thefe effects the pious and good Chriftian, who is led by the Spi"rit, does MOST UNDOUBTEDLY FEEL.'

To this fermon before the university of Oxford, June 1ft, 1766, the fame excellent divine adds:

"No man can be a real Chriftian who has not an intimate union "with the DIVINE SPIRIT."

The whole of this fermon is well worth attention. It is to be found in the first volume of a large collection of fermons, intitled, "Family Lectures." He reprefents the fubject of feelings or religious fentiments in the true light. He fays, they confift in the comfort and refreshment which they give the foul. He juftly reprobates, as evidences of the Spirit, all feelings which are occafioned by the paffionate emotions of an overheated imagination or enthufialtic phrenzy.

* ΕΝ ΘΕΟΣ.

RELIGIOUS ENTHUSIASM is not blameable, when it is a strong perfuafion, a firm belief, of a continual operation, impreffion and influence from above; when it is a total refignation to, and dependence upon, the immediate inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit in the whole courfe of our lives; this is as fober and rational a belief, as to believe that we always live, and move, and have our being " in God."

LAW.

But

But because many have made pretenfions to the privilege of God's immediate presence in their hearts, whofe lives and conduct gave reafon to fufpect that they were not thus favoured, the word enthufiafm, which, in common language, expreffed their false pretenfions, has fallen into difgrace, and now often implies no more than the idea of a bigot or a devotee, weakly deluded by the fond vifions of a difordered imagination.

But let not enthusiasm of the better kind, a modeft confidence of being affifted, as the gofpel promifes, by the agency of the Holy Spirit, be involved in undeserved disgrace *. We are taught

that

"GRATIA IMMEDIATA, qualis ab orthodoxis docetur, nihil "babet commune cum enthusiasmo, fed diverfimodè ab eo differt.

"1. Entbufiafmus novas quærit Revelationes extra verbum ; fed "GRATIA IMMEDIATA nullas, quia verbum femper comitatur, nec "aliud agit, quàm ut illud menti imprimat.

"2. In entbufiafmo, objecta quæ menti imprimuntur non extrinfecùs "adveniunt, fed intus a Spiritu per arcanas infpirationes fuggeruntur. « Sed hic obječtum fupponitur femper extrinfecùs advenire et ex verbo ❝ peti.

3. Entbufiafmus fit per fubitos motus, qui ipfum difcurfum et "ratiocinationem antevertunt, et fæpe excludunt. Sed Spiritûs operatio "non excludit, fed fecum trahit ratiocinationem et gratum voluntatis confenfum.

"Deniquè, ne plura difcrimina jam perfequamur, enthusiasmus non infert cordis mutationem; et mentem afficit, IMMUTATA sæpe ma"nente VOLUNTATE; unde in IMPIOS etiam cadit, ut in Balaamo et "aliis vifum; fed OPERATIO GRATIÆ necessariò infert cordis muta❝tionem et fanctitatis ftudium.".

Immediate Grace, as the doctrine is taught by the orthodox, has nothing in common with enthusiasm, but differs from it in various refpects.

1. Enthufiafm feeks new revelations extrinfic to the written word; but immediate Grace feeks none that are new, because it always accompanies the word, and aims at nothing more than to imprefs the word more forcibly on the mind.

2. According to the tenets of enthusiasm, objects which are impreffed on the mind come not from any thing external, but are fuggefted within by the Spirit and by fecret infpiration. But bere (in the cafe of immediate Grace), the object is always fuppofed to come

from

that the Divinity refides in the pure heart. The belief of it is indeed enthufiafm, but it is enthufiafm of the noble, the virtuous, the neceffary kind. The ardour which it infpires is laudable. Like that of all other good things, the corruption and abuse of it is productive of great evil; but ftill it is not itself to be exploded.

There is, indeed, a cold philofophy, which feems to difcourage all the warm fentiments of affection, and will hardly allow them in any thing which concerns religion. It aims at reducing theology to a scholastic science, and would willingly defcant on the love of God, and the sublimest discoveries of the gospel, in the fame frigidity of temper as it would explain the metaphyfics of Ariftotle. But there is natural and laudable ardour in the mind of man, whenever it contemplates magnificent objects; and which is certainly to be expected, when that object is the Lord God omnipotent, and the human foul, a particle of Deity, afpiring at reunion with the Supreme Being, and meditating on immortality.

Is there not an ardour of enthusiasm, which admires and produces excellence in the arts of mu

from fomething external, and indeed to be fought from the written word.

3. Enthufiafm is caused by fudden emotions, which precede all reafoning of difcourfe, and fometimes exclude them entirely. But the operation of the Spirit does not exclude, but takes with it, reafoning and the ready confent of the will.

4. Lastly, not to purfue any farther diftinctions, enthusiasm does not produce a change in the beart, but affects the understanding, leaving the will unaltered; whence it happens that enthufiafm may exist in wicked men, as it appears to have done in the inftance of Balaam and others; but the operation of Grace neceffarily produces a change in the heart and a love of holiness. TURRETIN.

This author here speaks of enthusiasm in its vulgar fenfe-which is certainly a DISEASE; a mental FEVER, attended with delirium.

fic, painting, and poetry *? And fhall it be allowed in the humble province of imitative skill, and exploded in contemplating the GREAT ARCHETYPE of all; the fource of life, beauty, order, grandeur, and fublimity? Shall I hear a fymphony, or behold a picture, a ftatue, or a fine profpect, with rapture, and at the fame time confider God, who made both the object and the sense that perceives it, with the frigid indifference of fcholaftic philofophy? Shall I meditate on heaven, hell, death, and judgment, with all the coolness with which a lawyer draws a formal instrument, an arithmetician computes a fum, or a logician forms a fyllogifm in mood and figure?

Such coolness, on such subjects, arises not from fuperiority of wisdom, but from pride and affectation, from acquired callofity or natural infenfibility of temper. God has bestowed on man a liveliness of fancy, and a warmth of affection, as well as an accuracy and acutenefs of reafon and intellect; he has bestowed a HEART vibrating with the tender chords of love and pity, as well as a brain furnished with fibres adapted to fubtile difquifition.

The Scriptures afford many examples of a laudable and natural enthusiasm. My heart was hot within me, fays David; and the warm poetry of

* You need not go to a cloyfter, the cell of a monk, or to a "field preacher to fee enthufiafts; they are every where, at balls, at "mafquerades, at court, and at the exchange; they fit in all coffeeboufes, and cant in all affemblies."

What greater enthusiasts than infidels, who write voluminous works merely to difplay their abilities in destroying fystems which at the fame time they acknowledge to be beneficial.

Two thirds of the New Testament must appear to the mathematical divines, rank enthusiasm. Some of them, just from the schools of Cambridge, feem inclined to study theology with a pair of compaffes, a rule, and a line. What muft they fay when they come to fuch paffages as this," that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God?" Is not the being filled with God enthufiafm? Eph. iii. 19.