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Considered as effects of this temptation, the opinions of Protestants seem, generally speaking, to admit of being grouped into two classes, of which

respective partisans would doubtless be surprised at being supposed to have any thing in common. On the one hand we see a very strong and general disposition to divest Scripture of its apparent meaning, when such as our natural faculties cannot apprehend and verify; and on the other to invest man with supernatural faculties for the purpose of verifying it: thus, in both cases, Revelation and Experience are brought into accordance, though by processes the direct reverse of one another, and by persons for the most part diametrically opposed in all their habits of thought and feeling.

This twofold genius of Rationalism' is no where more strikingly exemplified than in the interpretations put by opposite classes of religionists on the evangelical promises of the assistance of the Holy Spirit. On the one hand we find persons who have wrought themselves into a belief that prayers are perceptibly answered, conversions perceptibly wrought, a perceptible intercourse kept up between God and man; while others are unwilling to allow of any other efficacy either in prayer or the Sacraments or any other religious ordinance, except such as can be accounted for by their natural tendency.

1 [What the Author means by this word, and how it applies here, will be seen more distinctly from the next chapter.]

Thus in the works of a leading Dissenter recently dead, who from the estimation in which be is held may be supposed to represent a very large party, we find the following declaration: after producing and commenting on the Scriptures which speak of the witness of the Spirit, he proceeds,

"It might have been doubted that we have nisunderstood these Scriptures, and made them the basis of an article, which they do not fairly and naturally support, if the general testimony of all sincere converts to the Gospel of Christ had not illustrated the facts; and had not the experience of those converts been uniform in this particular, while in many cases, their habits of life, education, and natural temperament, were widely different.... Most of you know that I am no enthusiast,—that I have given no evidences of a strong imagination, that I am far from being the subject of sudden hopes or fears,— that it requires strong reasons and clear argumentation to convince me of the truth of any proposition, not previously known. Now, I do profess to have received, through God's eternal mercy, a clear evidence of my acceptance with God; and it was given me after a sore night of spiritual affliction; and precisely in that way in which the Scriptures, already quoted, promise this blessing. It has also been accompanied with power over sin; and it is now upwards of seven years since I received it, and I hold it, through the same mercy, as explicitly, and clearly, and as satisfactorily, as ever. No work of imagination could have ever produced or

increase them where they are awake.-I have therefore done my endeavour to adapt this part to the purposes of rational and social creatures, in such manner that in the use of it they may be acceptable to God'."

In these passages we have exhibited to us, in very unequivocal colours, a specimen of each branch of that twofold Rationalism, so unhappily prevalent among Protestants. On the one hand, we find a leader among those who are thought to take the most spiritual view of religion, avowing his belief that he himself, and as he is pleased to say, " all sincere converts to the Gospel of Christ," have a faculty within them, for recognising and experiencing the supernatural action of the Holy Spirit on the human heart; and, what is very remarkable, avowing likewise, that this belief was not founded on Scripture, (for the expressions of Scripture he owns to be equivocal,) but on his own experience and that of his friends.

On the other hand, we find a Prelate of the Church of England, whose opinions many still regard as a standard of rational piety, disavowing his belief in any efficacy of prayer, intercession, and the Sacraments, except such as is inseparable from the right performance of these services, and belongs to them through their natural tendency.

It may be hoped, indeed, that among the members of the Church of England, a large body at least still remains uninfected to this extent with the

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unhappy spirit of Protestantism; and who would regard either of the above classes of opinion with pity and disapprobation; the one as enthusiastic, the other as sceptical. But yet let not those who have escaped the extreme of either error, feel confident that they are altogether free from it: many intermediate stages there are between a downright refusal to walk by faith, in opposition to sight, and a calm and reasonable readiness to do so in all respects: many people may believe a little and yet be very far from believing enough.

A lower modification of Rationalism, in one or other of its shapes, is exhibited to us in the disposition now so prevalent, to set up Sermons as means of grace, to the disparagement of Sacraments'.

1 [The following passages occur in a rough draught of this chapter:] It is important to observe with respect to all the ordinances of religion among Protestants, that very good ground can be assigned for them, without admitting any thing that is contrary to experience, any immediate reference to inspired authority, and that it is only when particular constructions are put upon them and effects assigned to them, that such reference becomes necessary. Taken in themselves, they are plain, practical inferences from the broad facts and principles of revealed religion, and become at once intelligible, on the admission of these facts and principles. They imply no belief of any thing going on either within us or immediately around us, but what we know from reason and experience to be going on, and the only belief which they imply more than this, relates to matters about which, from the nature of things we can have no experience. Thus the setting apart of particular persons to teach religion, has been shown over and over again to be nothing more than mere observation of human nature suggests to us, and all the

It will, I believe, be admitted by every one, that to the attendance on Sermons, as such, no promises

offices which are assigned to them in Protestant countries admit of such explanation as to make them appear suggestions of common sense. Preaching....to which the place of first importance seems generally assigned, is evidently of this sort; if neither the Bible nor the practice of ancient Christians gave us one word of instruction on the subject, still the use and importance of it would be just as obvious as at present. A good sermon carries with it the proof of its own usefulness; no one need do more than attend seriously to it to know he is benefitted by it; nor do I know of any view that has ever been taken of preaching, which ascribes any other advantages to it than those which are thus made known. [See Hooker. E. P. v. 22. § 1; compare 67. § 12.] Whatever advantages are ascribed to this office, are ascribed to it by reason and experience, as well as by revelation.

The same remarks will, in a degree at least, [apply] to an ordinance, which indeed some Protestants have rejected as superstitious, but which the Church of England retains,Episcopal ordination; for which many good reasons can be assigned, without supposing it to convey to the person ordained any thing more than a legal qualification to minister the Word and Sacraments. It may be thought, however, and with some reason, that more than this seems implied in the English Ordination Service, when the Bishop laying on his hands on the persons to be ordained priests, pronounces over them the words which our Blessed Lord used in conveying the Holy Ghost to His Apostles. Yet I believe it is not universally acknowledged by members of the Church of England that this act of the Bishop, or these words, convey any real powers, unattainable by other means.

Nor again, is there any thing in the way in which [the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper] is commonly administered among Protestants, which implies necessarily that more is intended by it than [to remind themselves of Christ's death.] [As to] the

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