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any one may think it his duty to write. When I read, I wish to read to good purpose; and there are some books, which contradict on the very face of them what appear to me to be first principles. You surely will not say I am bound to read such books. If a man tells me he has a very elaborate argument to prove that two and two make five, I have something else to do than to attend to this argument. If I find the first mouthful of meat which I take from a fine-looking joint on my table is tainted, I need not eat through it to be convinced I ought to send it away."

I NEVER read any sermons so much like WHITFIELD'S manner of preaching as LATIMER's. You see a simple mind uttering all its feelings; and putting forth every thing as it comes, without any reference to books or men, with a natvete seldom equalled.

I ADMIRED WITSIUS'S "Economy of the Covenants," but not so much as many persons. There is too much system. I used to study commentators and systems; but I am come almost wholly, at length, to the Bible. Commentators are excellent in general, where there are but few difficulties; but they leave the harder knots still untied. I find in the Bible, the more I read, a grand peculiarity, that seems to say to all who attempt to systematize it-"I am not of your kind. I am not amenable to your methods of thinking. I am untractable in your hands. I stand alone. The great and wise shall never exhaust my treasures. By figures and parables I will come down to the feelings and understandings of the ignorant. Leave me as I am, but study me incessantly." CALVIN'S Institutes are, to be sure, great and admirable, and so are his

Commentaries; but after all, if we must have commentators-as we certainly must-POOLE is incomparable, and I had almost said abundant of himself.

YOUNG is, of all other men, one of the most striking examples of the disunion of piety from truth. If we read his most true, impassioned, and impressive estimate of the world and of religion, we shall think it impossible that he was uninfluenced by his subject. It is however, a melancholy fact, that he was hunting after preferment at eighty years old; and felt and spoke like a disappointed man. The truth was pictured on his mind in most vivid colors. He felt it, while he was writing. He felt himself on a retired spot; and he saw death, the mighty hunter, pursuing the unthinking world. He saw redemption-its necessity and its grandeur; and while he looked on it, he spoke as a man would speak whose mind and heart are deeply engaged. Notwithstanding all this, the view did not reach his heart. Had I preached in his pulpit with the fervor and interest that his "Night Thoughts" discover, he would have been terrified. He told a friend of mine, who went to him under religious fears, that he must GO MORE INTO THE WORLD!

ON THE SCRIPTURES.

Miscellaneous Remarks on the Scriptures. I AM an entire disciple of Butler. He calls his book "Analogy;" but the great subject, from beginning to end, is HUMAN IGNORANCE. Berkeley has done much to reduce man to a right view of his attainments in real knowledge; but he goes too far: he requires a demonstration of self-evident truths: he requires me to demonstrate that that table is before me. Beattie has well replied to this

error, in his "Immutability of Truth;" though it pleased Mr. Hume to call that book-"Philosophy for the Ladies."

Metaphysicians seem born to puzzle and confound mankind. I am surprised to hear men talk of their having demonstrated such and such points. Even Andrew Baxter, one of the best of these metaphysicians, though he reasons and speculates well, has not demonstrated to my mind one single point by his reasonings. They know nothing at all on the subject of moral and religious truth, beyond what God has revealed. I am so deeply convinced of this, that I can sit by and smile at the fancies of these men; and especially when they fancy they have found out DEMONSTRATIONS. Why there are demonstrators, who will carry the world before them; till another man rises, who demonstrates the very opposite, and then, of course, the world follows him!

We are mere mites creeping on the earth, and oftentimes conceited mites too. If any superior being will condescend to visit us and teach us, something may be known. "Has God spoken to man?" This is the most important question that can be asked. All ministers should examine this matter to the foundation. Many are culpably negligent herein. But, when this has been done, let there be no more questionings and surmises. My son is not, perhaps, convinced that I am entitled to be his teacher. Let us try. If he finds that he knows more than I do-well: if he finds that he knows nothing, and submits-I am not to renew this conviction in his mind every time he chooses to require me to do so.

If any honest and benevolent man felt scruples in his breast concerning Revelation, he would hide them there; and would not move wretched men from the only support, which they can have in this world. I am thoroughly convinced of the want of

real integrity and benevolence in all infidels. And I am as thoroughly convinced of the want of real belief of the Scriptures, in most of those who profess to believe them.

Metaphysicians can unsettle things, but they can erect nothing. They can pull down a church, but they cannot build a hovel. The Hutchinsonians have said the best things about the metaphysicians. I am no Hutchinsonian; yet I see that they have data, and that there is something worth proving in what they assert.

PRINCIPLE is to be distinguished from PREJUDICE. The man who should endeavor to weaken my belief of the truth of the Bible, and of the fair deduction from it of the leading doctrines of religion, under the notion of their being prejudices, should be regarded by me as an assassin. He stabs me in my dearest hopes: he robs me of my solid happiness; and he has no equivalent to offer. This species of evidence of the truth and value of Scripture is within the reach of all men. It is my strongest. It assures me as fully as a voice could from heaven, that my principles are not prejudices. I see in the Bible my heart and the world painted to the life; and I see just that provision made, which is competent to the highest ends and effects on this heart and this world.

THE Bible resembles an extensive and highly cultivated garden, where there is a vast variety and profusion of fruits and flowers: some of which are more essential or more splendid than others; but there is not a blade suffered to grow in it, which has not its use and beauty in the system. Salvation for sinners, is the grand truth presented every where, and in all points of light; but the pure in heart sees a thousand traits of the divine character,

'of himself, and of the world-some striking and bold, others cast as it were into the shade, and designed to be searched for and examined-some direct, others by way of intimation or inference.

HE, who reads the Scriptures only in the translation, is but meanly prepared as a public teacher. The habit of reading the Scriptures in the original throws a new light and sense over numberless passages. The original has, indeed, been obtruded so frequently, and sometimes so absurdly, on the hearers, that their confidence in the translation has been shaken. The judicious line of conduct herein, is— To think with the wise, and talk with the vulgar— to attain, as far as possible and by all means, the true sense and force of every passage; and, whereever that differs from the received translation, work it in imperceptibly, that the hearers may be instructed while they receive no prejudice against that form in which they enjoy the Scriptures.

No man will preach the Gospel so FREELY as the Scriptures preach it, unless he will submit to talk like an Antinomian, in the estimation of a great body of Christians; nor will any man preach it so PRACTICALLY as the Scriptures, unless he will submit to be called, by as large a body, an Arminian. Many think that they find a middle path: which is, in fact, neither one thing nor another; since it is not the incomprehensible, but grand plan of the Bible. It is somewhat of human contrivance. It savors of human poverty and littleness.

WERE the Scriptures required to supply a direct answer to every question which even a sincere inquirer might ask, it would be impracticable. They form, even now, a large volume. The method of

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