But how they are reconciled, regards not the present question. It is enough for our immediate purpose to be assured, that there is no contingency which may arise from the exercise of man's uncontroled power, that is not foreseen, provided against, and directed by that Great First Cause, which gave man the power he possesses, but, in giving him that power, provided fully for the free exercise of his own. If we exclude the doctrine of a special Providence from our belief, upon what shoals and quicksands of absurdity is our imagination driven, when it has abandoned that heavenly pilot who can alone direct us in safety through the storm. Shall we fly to chance; and what is that chance which is to direct the contingencies of this world? A name only and a shadow it has itself no real being; it is nothing, and can do nothing; a mere word expressing our ignorance of predestinating causes; and if an efficient agent, then we create another self-existing being besides the Almighty, which is a declaration as impious as it is absurd. RENNELL.

THE CREDULITY OF DEISTS.

THERE is only one position, that the Revelation is not true, is a fable, is a lie, which will deliver men of an unchristian character from an unchristian destiny. Those who hold that position may hope for forgiveness, and trust in mercy to what extent they please, for they are sailing in a sea of darkness. The Deist may construct a god after his own wishes, to quiet his fears or indulge

his passion, or license his affections; to palliate adultery, murder, every vice and crime, as the ancient heathens did; and may run the chance of that idol of imagination holding good in the end. But for a believer in revealed truth to do the same, is first to give his belief the lie, and then to launch into the same sea of trust which the Deist doth. These Deists are always shedding sneers upon the Christian, because he believes. The Christian doth believe what he hath upon good evidence adopted. But what doth the Deist do? He believes that for which he hath no evidence at all; he takes God upon the credit of his own crude fancy; he rests his faith upon an invention of his brain, an invention framed out of a thousand incoherent thoughts suggested by limited and erroneous knowledge, and distorted by a thousand likings and dislikings, in no two minds akin. This creature, more deformed than sin, and more changeable than Proteus, the credulous Deist believes to be the living and true God. And if the man will be mad and act upon his dreams, he can take the folly and the shame that will come of such fatuity. But for the Christian to do so, who believes in the God of revelation, is the highest pitch of crime added to an equal amount of folly, and is not once to be endured. Hath not God first written himself upon tables of stone, then upon the countenance of his everlasting Son, then given varieties of the same in the renewed lives of his saints? This believing, we would erase all, and write him with the imagination of the natural mind, which knoweth of him nothing at all! Which is to dash the

tables of stone in pieces, to trample under foot the divinity of Christ, to give the lie to all his disciples who have evidenced him since, to give the lie to our own avowed belief, and do a thou sand other inconsistent and wicked things which it is tedious to mention.

ON THE

PRACTICAL PRINCIPLE OF RELIGION. ALL the doctrines of the Gospel are practical principles. The word of God was not written, the Son of God was not incarnate, the Spirit of God was not given, only that Christians might obtain right views, and possess just notions. Religion is something more than mere correctness of intellect, justness of conception, and exactness of judgment. It is a life-giving principle; it must be infused into the habit, as well as govern in the understanding; it must regulate the will, as well as direct the creed. It must not only cast the opinions into a right frame, but the heart into a new mould. It is a transforming as well as a penetrating principle. It changes the tastes, gives activity to the inclinations, and, together with a new heart, produces a new life.

Christianity enjoins the same temper, the spirit, the same dispositions, on all its real professors. The act, the performance, must depend on circumstances which do not depend on us. The power of doing good is withheld from many, from whom, however, the reward will not be withheld. If the external act constituted the whole

value of Christian virtue, then must the author of all good be himself the author of injustice, by putting it out of the power of multitudes to fulfill his own commands. In principles, in temper, in fervent desires, in holy endeavours, consist the very essence of Christian duty.

Nor must we fondly attach ourselves to the practice of some particular virtue, or value ourselves exclusively on some favourite quality; nor must we wrap ourselves up in the performance of some individual actions, as if they formed the sum of Christian duty. But we must embrace the whole law of God in all its aspects, bearings, and relations. We must bring no fancies, no partialities, no prejudices, no exclusive choice or rejection into our religion; but take it as we find it, and obey it as we receive it, as it is exhibited in the Bible, without addition, curtailment, or adulteration:

Nor must we pronounce on a character by a single action really bad, or apparently good: if so, Peter's denial would render him the object of our execration, while we should have judged favourably of the prudent economy of Judas. The catastrophe of the latter, who does not know? while the other became a glorious martyr to that master whom, in a moment of infirmity, he had denied.

A piety altogether spiritual, disconnected with all outward circumstances; a religion of pure meditation and abstracted devotion, was not made for so compound, so imperfect a creature as man. There have, indeed, been a few sublime spirits, not " touched, but rapt," who, totally cut off

from the world, seem almost to have literally soared above the terrene region; who almost appear to have stolen the fire of the seraphim, and to have had no business on earth, but to keep alive the celestial flame. They would, however, have approximated more nearly to the example of their Divine Master, the great standard and only perfect model, had they combined a more diligent discharge of the active duties and beneficences of life with their high devotional attainments.

But while we are in little danger of imitating, let us not too harshly censure the pious error of these sublimated spirits. Their number is small; their example is not catching; their etherial fire is not likely, by spreading, to inflame the world. The world will take due care not to come in contact with it; while its distant light and warmth may cast, accidentally, not an unuseful ray on the cold hearted and the worldly.

But from this small number of refined but inoperative beings we do not intend to draw our notions of practical piety. God did not make a religion for these few exceptions to the general state of the world, but for the world at large; for beings active, busy, restless; whose activity he, by his word, diverts into its proper channels; whose busy spirit is there directed to the common good; whose restlessness, indicating the unsatisfactoriness of all they find on earth, he points to a higher destination. Were total seclusion and abstraction designed to have been the general state of the world, God would have given men other laws, other rules, other faculties, and other employments.