SECTION LIII.

On Indifference and Insensibility to Religion, arising from Hardness of Heart. No Progress can be made in CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY in such a State, as it is a State incompatible with the divine Influence.— The Doctrine of an actual Change, supernaturally produced, in the Heart, vindicated from the Charge of Enthusiasm.

THE fine feelings with which nature formed the heart of man in his primeval state, and with which perhaps every infant is born, are too often rendered obtuse by indiscriminate commerce with the world; and the heart of flesh, once tremblingly alive to the softest touch of sympathy, is metamorphosed to a heart of stone.* Deplorable change! for what is man when he ceases to feel? a reasoning vegetable, with this painful preeminence over the nettles and briars, that he has the power of being actively mischievous in the present state, and capable, when the sensibility shall be restored in another, of final and insufferable woe. To lapse into this condition, to become past feeling, to have a seared conscience, is, without doubt, the heaviest calamity of which human nature is susceptible. Perhaps he who is reduced to it is not conscious of it at the time; a circumstance which, contrary to what might be expected, ultimately aggravates his misfortune. It is characteristic of this state, that while it is alive to

* Ekλnpоkapoia.-There is a judicial hardness of heart thus described in the Scriptures:

"For the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and UNDERSTAND WITH THEIR HEART, and should be converted, and I should heal them." Acts, xxviii. 27. Isaiah, vi. 9.

the vanities and miseries of the world, it is dead to God and all the delicate sensations of unaffected virtue.

This condition of religious insensibility is not to be accounted for by causes merely physical or philosophical. The middle-aged fall into it as well as the old, the healthy as well as the diseased, men of the brightest talents no less than the dull and the stupid. But Christian Philosophy traces its origin, and pronounces it the consequence of an UNREGENERATE state, or the total defect of divine grace. He who lives in it has forsaken his God, the guide of his youth; and his God has forsaken him, and given him up to a reprobate mind, a heart of stone, at once cold and impenetrable. WHOM HE WILL, HE HARDENETH.*

Happily he, who in his displeasure inflicted the misfortune, can remove it. "A new heart," says God, "will I give you, a new Spirit will I put into you; and I will take away the stony+ heart out of

* Romans, ix. 18.

† Our most learned and pious poet Milton alludes to this passage. He was a firm believer in the doctrine of the Spirit's influence on the heart of man, as is evident from several passages, both of his prose and poetry. I quote the following fine lines from his Paradise Lost:

"Thus they in lowliest plight repentant stood
Praying; for from the Mercy Seat above
Prevenient grace descending had removed

The stony from their hearts, and made new flesh
Regenerate grow instead, that sighs now breathed
Unutterable, which the Spirit of prayer

Inspired and winged for Heaven."

Let us hear him in prose:

Book xi. 1. 1.

"It is a human frailty to err, and no man is infallible here on earth. But so long as all those profess to set the Word of God only before them for the rule of faith and obedience, and use all diligence and sincerity of heart by reading, by learning, by study,

your flesh; and I will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them."*

From this declaration mankind may conclude, (as many ever have been and still are experimentally convinced,) that God influences the human bosom by his actual interposition and the supernatural energy of his Holy Spirit. Christ himself says, Lo! I am with you, even unto the end of the world.” But how is he with us but by the Holy Ghost, whose ordinary operations are now as energetic as ever on the bosom of the true believer. Except a man be born again of this Spirit, we read in express language," he cannot see the kingdom of God." No words can be more explicit. They mean regeneration by Grace, or what else do they mean? They support, as on a rock, the doctrine of divine agency; and without this doctrine, all teaching and preaching isas salt that has lost its savour." This doctrine forms the solid basis of CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY. All morality, every precept and principle which leads to happiness present or future, stand upon it immovably. Other buildings are of hay and stubble; this is of gold and marble.

And with respect to the charge of blamable enthusiasm, which is constantly brought, and can

by prayer for the illumination of the Holy Spirit to understand the rule and obey it, they have done what man can do: God will assuredly pardon them."

* Ezekiel, xxxvi. 26, 27.

† It would be blamable enthusiasm to pretend to the gratiæ gratis datæ, as the schoolmen express it, that is, to the xapiopara, such as the gift of tongues, miracles, signs, wonders, and prophecy; but is not blamable enthusiasm to believe that, what the same schoolmen call gratiæ gratum facientes; that is, the Xapites, such as joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness,

not be too frequently repelled, let us hear Bishop Lavington, so great an enemy to methodism, that he wrote the severest book which ever appeared in opposition to it. But thus he speaks to his clergy, on a solemn occasion, when he was instructing them how to execute their pastoral office:

"My brethren," says he, "I beg you will rise up with me against MORAL PREACHING. We have long been attempting the reformation of the nation by discourses of this kind. With what success? None at all. On the contrary, we have dexterously preached the people into downright infidelity. We must change our voice. We must preach Christ, and him crucified. Nothing but the GOSPEL is, nothing will be found to be, the power of God unto salvation, besides. Let me therefore again and again request, may I not add, let me charge you, to preach JESUS, and salvation through his name. Preach the Lord who bought us; preach redemption through his blood; preach the saying of the great High Priest; HE WHO BELIEVETH SHALL BE SAVED ; preach repentance towards God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ."

Thus Bishop Lavington; a man who abhorred fanaticism. Who could ever suspect Archbishop Secker,* Bishop Hurd, Bishop Horne, Bishop Horsley, of

faith, meekness, temperance, are given or inspired by that Spirit which, in the language of the Liturgy, God sent to teach the hearts of his faithful people? If this is blamable enthusiasm, then the Liturgy and the New Testament abound in blamable enthusiasm, and Bishop Warburton and many other bishops should, as honest men, have resigned their mitres, and gone to their farms or merchandise for gain; and not have made a gain of (pretended) godliness.

* " The truth, I fear, is," says Archbishop Secker, "that many, if not most of us, have dwelt too little on these doctrines," (the doctrine of Grace and other peculiar doctrines of Christianity,)

irrational enthusiasm? Yet, in their discourses and charges, they all urge their clergy, not to preach mere moral doctrines, the philosophy of the heathens but the gospel; that is, the great doctrines of redemption, atonement, satisfaction by Christ, and the necessity and importance of divine grace. If, by the coming of Christ, God recommended only a moral system, merely republished the religion of nature, this would in fact have been no revelation. Indeed, a merely moral Christianity is Deism.

When Christianity is the national religion, and great revenues are allotted to its professional teachers, many may choose to join the crowd of Christians for the loaves and fishes; many may call themselves Christians who have nothing of Christianity but the name, and in their hearts despise even the name; but let all serious and sensible men remember, that if the Gospel is hid, it is hid to them that are lost, whose eyes the god of this world hath blinded; let them in time beware, lest that come upon them which is spoken by the Prophet: Behold, ye despisers,

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"in our sermons-by no means, in general, from disbelieving or slighting them."

Again, says the same discerning Primate: "We have, in fact, lost many of our people to sectaries, by not preaching in a manner sufficiently evangelical." SECKER'S CHARGES.

There never was a more discreet, rational, or judicious Archbishop than Secker. He could not favour fanaticism, for he was a man who guided his thoughts and actions by the strictest rules of right reason. He was a wise man, even according to this world's notion' of wisdom; and his natural constitution, as to devotional feelings,' was too cold to produce enthusiasm.

The faint praise, or rather the detraction from the character of Secker, in the Life of Warburton, published by Bishop Hurd, is ably and properly exposed in a pamphlet by Dr. Wintle. Gratitude is amiable, and much must be pardoned even to its excesses ; yet it must be blamed, when it proceeds to a violation of truth and justice, to vile sycophantism and servile adulation.