rectified the will, and made all things ready for the reception of God's Spirit; knowledge will break in upon such a soul, like the sun shining in his full might, with such a victorious light, that nothing shall be able to resist it." (Sermon on John vii. 17. Vol. i. Ed. 1737.)

Page 13. That" no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost."

"He that goes about to speak of and to understand the mysterious Trinity, and does it by words and names of man's invention, or by such which signify contingently; if he reckons this mystery by the mythology of numbers, by the cabala of letters, by the distinctions of the school, and by the weak inventions of disputing people; if he only talks of essences and existencies, hypostases and personalities, distinctions without difference, and priority in co-equalities, and unity in pluralities, and of superior predicates of no larger extent than the inferior subjects; he may amuse himself, and find his understanding will be like St. Peter's upon the mount of Tabor at the transfiguration he may build three tabernacles in his head, and talk something, but he knows not what. But the good man that feels the power of the Father, and he to whom the Son is become wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption; he in whose heart the love of the Spirit of God is speed, to whom God hath communicated the Holy Ghost the Comforter; this man, though he understands nothing of that which is unintelligible, yet he only understands the mysteriousness of the Holy Trinity. No man can be convinced well and wisely of the article of the holy, blessed, and undivided Trinity, but he that feels the mightiness of the Father begetting him to a new life, the wisdom of the Son building him up in a most holy faith, and the love of the Spirit of God making him to become like unto

F

God." (Bishop Jeremy Taylor. Via Intelligentiæ: a Sermon on John vii. 17).

Page 13. Some proof of a ministerial character and authority.

For the nature and claims of the sacred office, it might be fully sufficient, without referring to the conclusive names of Taylor in his "Episcopacy asserted," Hall in his work similarly entitled, and Barrow in his full (as usual) and comprehensive Consecration Sermon; to recommend the truly pious and churchman-like series of Sermons by Bishop Beveridge, in his first Volume, Ed. 1709, entitled, "The true Nature of the Christian Church, the Office of its Ministers, and the Means of Grace administered by them, explained in Twelve Sermons."

As principles rather than persons are aimed at, we should not here in fairness omit the strong and decided protest of the celebrated Puritanical divine, Dr. John Owen, against enthusiastic impulses; together with his distinct and reiterated testimony to the necessity of a regular visible ministry, combining spiritual influences with human appointment.

For the former-"What some men intend by impulses, I know not. If it be especial aids, assistances, and inclinations unto duties, acknowledged to be such, and the duties of persons so assisted and inclined, and those peculiarly incumbent on them in their present circumstances; it requires no small caution that under an invidious name we reject not those supplies of grace which are promised unto us, and which we are bound to pray for. But if irrational impressions, or violent inclinations unto things or actions which are not acknowledged duties in themselves, evidenced by the word of truth, and so unto the persons so affected in their present condition and circumstances, are thus expressed;

as we utterly abandon them, so no pretence is given unto them from any thing which we believe concerning the Holy Spirit and his operations." (Preface to the Work on the Spirit).

For the latter-"Christ would have," says he, on Acts i. 4-8, "his Apostles look neither for assistance in their work, nor success unto it, but from the promised Spirit alone; and lets them know also, that by his aid they should be enabled to carry their testimony of him to the uttermost parts of the earth. And herein lay, and herein doth lie, the foundation of the ministry of the church, as also its continuance and efficacy. The kingdom of Christ is spiritual; and, in the animating principles of it, invisible. If we fix our minds only on outward order, we lose the use and power of the whole; it is not an outward visible ordination by men, though that be necessary by rule and precept, but Christ's communication of that Spirit, the everlasting promise whereof he received of the Father, that gives being, life, usefulness, and success to the ministry." (p. 156; see also p. 122, &c.; Owen's IINEYMATOAOTIA, fol. Ed. 1674).

Page 15. Reason without faith......nature without God. "At quidam contra hæc ignari materiai

Naturam non posse Deum sine numine rentur
...Tempora mutare annorum frugesque creare."
Lucretius, lib. ii. 167.

We are indebted to Dr. James, the late Bishop of Calcutta, so prematurely, to our apprehension, snatched away from the hopes of an affectionate family and an expectant church, for a very comprehensive and acute classification of the modern scepticism-we must, I fear, rather call it infidelity-after the model of the ancient, in his work entitled The Semi-sceptic." The work principally confines itself to foreign systems

of philosophy, and begins with expressing an assurance, which all good men would be most happy to find well founded, that "there exists little of positive infidelity in this country." It is too much to be apprehended, that if abroad it is "the destruction which wasteth at noonday;" the difference at home is this only, that it is here" the pestilence that walketh in darkness." Each individual will, no doubt, speak according to his own impression received from things or persons presented to his view. But if we were more in the habit, than perhaps we generally are, of tracing the various and strange phenomena of opinion and of practice around us to their true source, it may be we should oftener than we expected discover at bottom a lurking mind of misbelief, as well as "an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God."

Page 15. The highest of all intellects have for the most part been the humblest, and the first to acknowledge their sufficiency to be of God.

Some slight classification may be necessary in reference to the persons here described. Take, for instance, first, the highest and most sagacious of those intellects who have employed their reason in reasoning themselves out of religion and the fear of God; and these it will be found have often been the loudest, and even the most abject, in their laments and exclamations on the weakness and insufficiency of mere human powers. Lucretius, in the book quoted above, having discarded God for his guide, most appropriately exclaims upon that very reason which he had deified in his room :

"O miseras hominum mentes! O pectora coca!
Qualibus in tenebris vitæ, quantisque tenebris
Degitur hoc ævo quodcunque est! nonne videre
Nil aliud sibi naturam latrare, &c."

Lib. ii. 14, &c.

His more inexcusable counterpart in modern times, Mr. Hume, with Christianity before him, and with calmness and philosophy enough to have descried its real import and substantial grounds, on which indeed his sagacity could not help occasionally stumbling, yet, together with its rejection as a system, allows as largely as we could wish the poverty and weakness of the naked human intellect. Could dogmatical reasoners," he says, in his Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding, "become sensible of the strange infirmities of the human understanding, even in its most perfect state, and when most accurate and cautious in its determinations; such a reflection would inspire them with modesty and reserve.....The illiterate may reflect on the disposition of the learned to be still diffident in their determinations....and the learned....may benefit by a little Pyrrhonism, if it shew them their few advantages over their fellows, compared with the universal perplexity and confusion inherent in human nature.” (Essays, vol. ii. p. 169. 1812.)—It is important to add, after satirizing" priestly dogmas invented to tame and subdue the rebellious reason of mankind," his own admission, with admirable inconsistency and no less truth, of "our whimsical condition, who must, after all, act and reason and BELIEVE, though we are not able, by our most diligent inquiries, to satisfy ourselves concerning the foundation of those operations, or to remove the objections which may be raised against them.”— (Ibid. p. 168).

The well-known contemptuousness of Bolingbroke, exclaiming, through his organ Mr. Pope, on the "madness, pride, impiety" of man, all summed up in that complimentary designation of our whole species, "vile worm," needs no comment.-Vide Pope's Essay on Man, Ep. i.

* "A worm, a god!" Dr. Young.-See the whole passage in "The