perhaps propriety or expediency required that he should before say only in private to his friends."*

In illustration of that part of the preceding letter which speaks of "effecting," or proposing to effect,. by a sort of "natural process," namely by means of "false affections springing from a baseless confidence," that change "which the scripture ascribes to the new-creating power of the Holy Spirit," I shall take the liberty of here copying from my father's edition of the Pilgrim's Progress, a pretty long note, to which I should be glad to draw attention.

"When believers, 'in the warmth of their affections,' feel the humbling, melting, endearing, and sanctifying effects of contemplating the glory of the cross, and the love of Christ in dying for sinners; and consider themselves as the special objects of that inexpressible compassion and kindness; they are apt to conclude that the belief of the propositions, that Christ loves them and died for them, and that God is reconciled to them, produces the change by its own influence; and would affect the most carnal hearts in the same manner, could men be persuaded to embrace it. For they vainly imagine that apprehensions of the severity of divine justice, and the dread of vengeance, are the sources of the enmity which sinners manifest against God.-Hence very lively and affectionate Christians have frequently been prone to sanction the unscriptural tenet, that the justifying act of faith consists in assuredly believing that Christ died for ME, in particular, and that God loves ME; and to consider this appropriation as preceding repentance, and every other gracious disposition; and as, in some sense, the cause of regeneration, winning the heart to love God, and to rejoice in him, and in obeying his commandments. From this doctrine others have inferred that, if all men, and even devils too, believed the love of God to them, and his purpose at length to make them happy, they would be won over from rebellion against him, which they persist in from a mistaken idea that he is their implacable enemy: and they make this one main argument in support of the salutary tendency of the final restitution scheme. But all these opinions arise from a false and flattering estimate of human nature; for the carnal mind hates the scriptural character of God, and the glory displayed in the cross, even more than that which shines forth in the fiery law. Indeed, if we take away the

*Life, p. 407.

+ "His real character, and not a mistaken notion of him." War. and Nat. of Faith.

offensive part of the gospel; the honour it puts upon the law and its awful sanctions, and the exhibition it makes of the divine justice and holiness; it will give the proud carnal heart but little umbrage: if we admit that men's aversion to God and religion arises from misapprehension, and not from desperate wickedness, many will endure the doctrine. A reconciliation, in which God assures the sinner that he has forgiven him, even before he has repented of his sins, will suit man's pride; and, if he has been previously frightened, a great flow of affections may follow: but the event will prove that they differ essentially from spiritual love of God, gratitude, holy joy, and genuine humiliation; which arise from a true perception of the glorious perfections of God, of the righteousness of his law and government, of the real nature of redemption, and of the odiousness and desert of sin. In short, all such schemes render regeneration needless; or substitute something else in its stead, which is effected by a natural process, and not by the newcreating power of the Holy Spirit.-But, when this divine agent has communicated life to the soul, and a capacity is produced of perceiving and relishing spiritual excellency, the enmity against God receives a mortal wound: from that season, the more his real character and glory are ⚫ known, the greater spiritual affection will be excited, and a proportionable transformation into the same holy image effected. Then the view of the cross, as the grand display of all the harmonious perfections of the Godhead, softens, humbles, and meliorates the heart: while the persuasion of an interest in these blessings, and an admiring sense of having received such inconceivable favors from this glorious and holy Lord God, will still further elevate the soul above all low pursuits, and constrain it to the most unreserved and self-denying obedience. But, while the heart remains unregenerate, the glory of God and the gospel will either be misunderstood, or hated in proportion as it is discovered.-Such views and affections, therefore, as have been described, spring from special grace; and are not produced by the natural efficacy of any sentiments, but by the immediate influences of the Holy Spirit; so that even true believers, though habitually persuaded of their interest in Christ, and of the love of God to them, are only at times thus filled with holy affections: nor will the same contemplations constantly excite similar exercises; but they often bestow much pains to get their minds affected by

them, in vain; while at other times a single glance of thought fills them with the most fervent emotions of holy love and joy."

Chapel Street, February 9, 1798.

"DEAR SIR,

......

"I WAS very much pleased with the contents of your letter, and with your way of stating the meaning of the terms to which I had objected. Many of these expressions would be harmless enough, if men were more simple, teachable, and upright: but the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; and Satan is continually employing all the deceivableness of unrighteousness, in order to impose upon men with the semblance of truth. He is ever aiming to mix poison with our food; and, according to the prevailing sentiments of the more religious sort of persons, he accommodates his devices, making some damnable heresy palatable and unsuspected, by grafting it on, or infusing it into, the doctrine that most currently passes with apparently serious people: just as an artful destroyer of vermin mixes his poison with the very food of which they are severally most fond. Such plans of deception, such methods of keeping men asleep in sin, as succeed to the uttermost where the precious truths of the gospel are not known, are of little avail where those truths are generally known, and considered as essential to true religion. But shall the enemy, then, here give up his designs, and make no further attempts to deceive? Has he nothing in the human heart congenial to devices of another kind? If men can no longer be lulled asleep in carnal security, either without any religion, or by superstition, forms of worship, or pharisaical self-righteousness; does he give it up as a lost case? By no means. He has many ways of effecting his work of deception yet remaining. But, alas! numbers, both of teachers and writers, seem ignorant of his devices. As a friend of mine expresses it, "They barricado the front door, and keep guard there incessantly, but leave the back doors and windows unguarded and unclosed?' They have discovered that the human

* Scott's Works. vol. iii, p. 395-397: or his edit. of the Pilgrim's Progress, 12mo. p. 296, 297: English Edition.-See also observations upon the same subject, and on schemes of preaching" formed on this erroneous view, in Warrant and Nature of Faith, tii. sect. 3. Works vol. i. p. 474-477.

heart is prone to self-righteous pride, but seem not aware that it is equally prone to the love of sinful pleasures and worldly objects; and that the Pharisee and the Antinomian lodge more peaceably in the same dwelling, than we are apt to suppose.-The grand object of aversion to the carnal heart in the gospel is, the honor put upon the strict and holy law of God by the obedience and death of Christ; which shews the evil of sin so fully and unanswerably, that it proclaims the strictest moralist and formalist so deserving of condemnation, that he must have perished if Christ had not thus obeyed and died; and must still perish, unless, renouncing all other confidences, he avail himself of this provision, in the same manner with those very immoral wretches whom he so proudly disdains: nay that, if the vilest of these believers in Christ, he will certainly be saved, while the most amiable and respectable unbeliever will perish deservedly and without mercy. This forms the grand objection of the carnal mind to the gospel: but, when an unrenewed heart is driven by argument, and unanswerable scriptural testimonies, from the ground of direct opposition, it immediately lies open to Satan's attempts to substitute a form of knowledge, a dead faith, false affections, and a presumptuous hope, instead of its former confidence. The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be: and its enmity to the purity and spirituality of the precept is as strong, as its enmity to the indiscriminate sentence of final condemnation which it denounces. Nor can this enmity be reconciled: it must be crucified and destroyed. When, therefore, terror and conviction drive a man to disavow his former self-justifying pleas, and to allow that mercy alone can save him; his enmity to God and his law will make him seek deliverance from its commanding authority, as well as from its condemning sentence: and in this way, as well as in many others, Satan is transformed into an angel of light, and his ministers into ministers of righteousness: and, alas! many good men endorse bad bills.-Direct avowed antinomianism is too scandalous to be general: barefaced rascals do comparatively little mischief in the common state of society: but, by carrying certain parts of religion to an extreme, as if men could not use too strong words in stating and extolling them, or be disproportionately zealou for them; other parts, of equal importance, are run or kept out of sight. In this way a most subtile,

cious, and disgraceful bias to practical, and in some sense to doctrinal, antinomianism has become very general, by means of unscriptural terms, and methods of stating the doctrines of the gospel.-The head may be the principal part of a man; but it is not the whole man. The doctrine of justification is not the whole of Christianity; nor being justified the whole of salvation. This disproportionate way of teaching only balances parties, and rules by thus balancing them: whereas the scripture attacks equally all the corruptions of the carnal heart, and gives no quarter to any of them.

"I remain very sincerely,

"Your affectionate friend and servant,

"THOMAS SCOTT."

"DEAR SIR,

"Chapel Street, May 12, 1798.

"The account you give of yourself is very interesting, and suggests many important instructions. It confirms me in my sentiments respecting education, in which I am deemed singular. I am very averse to public schools: and I never sent any one of my children to school in my life, because I thought the danger to their morals and religious principles vastly more than compensated all the advantages to be derived. When parents are really pious, and can possibly do it, they had better give their children an education at home, defective as to learning, than run the risk of sending them to situations where their very advantages are unspeakably dangerous, and where the boldest sinner will commonly be the example, and give the tone to the manners of all the boys; and where they will be almost sure to corrupt one another, whatever pains a master may bestow.

"One might go through every stage of your history with similar observations.-The danger connected with the love and pride of science, with the choice of agreeable companions, agreeable, perhaps, because flatterers, or because they are congenial in disposition to our own predominant carnal propensities; with the removal of children from under the inspection of pious parents, when it can be avoided, &c.

"In many respects your account shews you to have been naturally very much like me in the turn and bias of your mind; and I was reminded of many past transactions by