means he may find an answer to all his other objections. What, says an undutiful child, you think, I suppose, every thing is right that my father does. No, you reply, your father is a man like other men, and has his faults; but it is not for you to expose them. He is your father, and you are commanded of God to honour and obey him in all his lawful commands. What, and am I bound to esteem him, and to feel attached to him, when he has all along been my enemy, doing every thing for my hurt. The answer is, such a supposition is as unnatural as it is undutiful. Have you not contracted this prejudice by associating with persons who have an end to answer, by supplanting him in your esteem? For me to esteem or be attached to him, would be the same thing as to be attached to what is wrong. Surely this objection can arise from nothing but perverseness. You know there is no necessity for this, and no one wishes it. You seem to forget that he is your father, and to think of him only as a bad man: but these thoughts arise from your listening to evil counsel, intended for sinister ends to lower him in your estimation. Well, I cannot help it. Such also might be the answer of the worst of beings.

A disaffected heart will lead men to talk of providence, so far as it favours their wishes, but renders them blind to it in every other view. Some have pleaded, that providence has favoured the arms of France, and they have subdued their enemies before them; it is folly therefore to resist them. But if it be true that providence has favoured the military power of France, it is no less true that the naval power of England has been equally favoured, and destined of providence to check the inordinate ambition of our rival and our enemy; and but for this, liberty would find no asylum upon earth. Yet were I a subject of the French government, I should think it my duty, while I experienced its protection, to cherish a sincere attachment, and to pray for its prosperity in all its lawful undertakings, whatever I might think of the private characters of those by whom the government is administered.

I should think it wrong to magnify the faults of such a government, even though I could do it with safety to myself, or to read only those accounts of it which came from a quarter where a systematic opposition was carrying on against it. How much more then ought I to be attached to a legitimate government, under whose protection the church of God, for more than a century, has had opportunity to live a quiet and peaceable life, in all godliness and honesty.

Surely you cannot account for my imbibing these sentiments, but by supposing that I have learned them from the scriptures. You know me too well, to impute to me a spirit that would cringe to any man. You know also that I have no temporal interest to serve, and no prejudices to gratify. If I have any political predilections, they are on the side of whigism. It is true, I have lately perceived some infidels amongst them giving into a persecuting spirit, against evangelical religion, and have denounced them in my letter to the chairman of the East India Company.* And I should not be surprised to find the greater part of them holding these principles when it comes to the trial: but if it be so, it would be a mortification to me as belonging to the whig interest. On this account, as well as others, I have said nothing against them as a political party, but have contented myself with attacking the principle.

It is a fact which few will doubt, that great numbers are attached to government because they are hired, both in church and state. It is no less a fact, that great numbers are disaffected because they are not hired. I accuse neither the one nor the other by the lump: but who can doubt, that the cause of disaffection in the thousands is, that they are not treated in all respects as their fellow subjects; and that in the present reign especially, the political party which has been used to favour dissenters, and the cause of religious liberty, has been kept out of

* Morris's Memoirs of Mr. Fuller, new edition, pp. 281, 282.

power. This party has even maintained a war, as all parties do, against their opponents. They have their newspapers, by which they give their own representations of every thing done by the other. They are not scrupu→ lous to state things as they are, but as they appear to their own prejudiced and violent minds. If any person forms his ideas according to these statements, he will soon become an inconsiderate partizan, laying aside not only the christian, but the man of sober sense, who views both these parties as aiming to supplant the other; and therefore, though he may hear what both advance, and may think it necessary on the whole that the one should watch the other, yet in forming his own judgment of men and things, will take neither of them for his guide.

PICTURE OF AN ANTINOMIAN.

UNDERSTANDING that a certain preacher, who was reported to be more than ordinarily evangelical, was to deliver a sermon in the town where I reside, and hearing some of my neighbours talk of going to hear " the gospel," I resolved to go too. I thought that I loved the gospel, and felt a concern for my neighbours' welfare: I wished therefore to observe, and form the best judgment I could of what it was to which they applied, with such an emphasis, that revered name.

I arrived, I believe unobserved, just after the naming of the text; and staid, though with some difficulty, till the discourse was ended. I pass over what relates to manner, and also much whimsical interpretation of scripture; and shall now confine my remarks to the substance and drift of the discourse.

There were a few good things delivered, which, as they are stated in the bible, are the support and joy of pious

minds. I thought I could see how these things might please the real christian, though, on account of the confused manner of their being introduced, not the judicious christian. Pious people enjoy the good things they hear; and being thus employed, they attend not to what is erroneous; or if they hear the words, let them go as points which they do not understand, but which they think the wiser preacher and hearers do.

I cannot give you the plan of the sermon, for the preacher appeared not to have had one. I recollect however, in the course of his harangue the following things. -"Some men will tell you, said he, that it is the duty of men to believe in Christ. These men say, that you must get Christ, get grace, and that of yourselves; convert yourselves, make yourselves new creatures, get the Holy Spirit yourselves, &c." Here he went on with an abundance of misrepresentation and slander, too foul to be repeated.

He asserted, with the highest tone of confidence I ever heard in any place, much less in a pulpit, his own saintship; loudly and repeatedly declaiming to this effect—“ I must go to glory-I cannot be lost-I am as safe as Christ-all devils, all sins cannot hurt me!" In short, he preached himself, not Christ Jesus the Lord. He was his own theme, I believe, throughout one half at least of his sermon. He went over what he called his experience, but seemed to shun the dark part of it; and the whole tended to proclaim what a wonderful man he was. Little of Christ could be seen: he himself stood before him: and when his name did occur, I was shocked at the dishonour which appeared to be cast upon him.

All accurate distinction of character, such as is constantly maintained in the scriptures, vanished before his vociferation. The audience was harangued in a way which left each one to suppose himself included among the blessed. This confusion of character was the ground on which he stood exclaiming, "I am saved-I am in Christ -I cannot be lost-sins and devils may surround me,

but though I fall and sin, I am safe-Christ cannot let me go-lusts and corruptions may overwhelm me in filth and pollution, as a sea rolling over my head: but all this does not, cannot affect the new man-the new nature is not touched or sullied by this: it cannot sin, because it is born of God-I stand amidst this overwhelming sea unhurt." All this the hearers were told in substance, and persuaded to adopt; and it was sin and unbelief not to do so!

The whole was interspersed with levity, low wit, and great irreverence. On the most solemn subjects of "hell, devils, and damnation," he raved like a billingsgate or blasphemer. On the adorable and amasing names of the ever blessed God, he rallied and sported with such lightness and rant as was truly shocking. This was especially the case in his repeating the words of the prophet Isaiah : Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light; let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God. The manner in which the sacred name was here used, was highly profane and impious.

On returning from the place, I was affected with the delusion by which some of my neighbours were borne away; crying up the preacher as an oracle, "a bold defender of the gospel." To me his words appear to answer with great exactness, to what is called by the apostle to Timothy, 'profane and vain babbling;' and which, from an accurate observation, Paul declared 'would encrease unto more ungodliness; and would eat as doth a canker,' or gangrene.

Need I ask, Can this be true religion? The effects which it produces, both on individuals and on societies, sufficiently ascertain its nature. It was and is affecting to me to think, what a state the world is in; so few making any profession of serious religion, and so few of those that do, who have their senses exercised to discern between good and evil. To think of christian congregations, who have heard the word of truth for a number of years,