SUPPORTED BY AUTHORITIES.

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higher wisdom does not teach to reject it :—that it is a scheme of a philosophy, and not their religion which makes it offensive to them; for had they looked into the writings of the oldest and holiest men of the church, they would have found that this tenet was no new-fangled one of George Fox; but was part of the old faith of Christendom. Nay, that the belief of a conscience which was natural, and not the sign of something supernatural, would have been treated by the wise men of old, as only a subtle form of Pelagianism. For their minds, honest, yet quite as reflective as ours, thought in this way,-That in me which reproves sin-condemns sin-cannot be sin. There is something in every man not utterly hardened, which does reprove and condemn sin; if that something be natural, nature has a good principle in it. This belief is Pelagianism. But if these reproofs of sin do not arise from nature, they must arise from the connection between man, and a Being above man. To talk, indeed, of this truth as an invention of George Fox, betrays a lamentable ignorance of the history of the church and of the world. It is this feeling of a twofold life in man,— of a struggle upwards and a tendency downwards, a stretching after, a yet unseen and unmanifested friend of man, who seemed to be upholding him against the enemies who were continually striving to overwhelm him, against his own nature, against the world around him,

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THE HEATHEN-THE JEWS.

which has in every age given an interest to the philosophy, and even to the mythology, of the old world. And what, if it could be proved that traditions sent from the east-from the chosen people -gave birth to these feelings? They were actual feelings, still; not merely expressed in books, but agitating, tormenting, and cheering the hearts of living men.

And if the denial of Fox's opinion betray an ignorance of what those men in past ages have experienced, who were not taken under God's especial training; they shew a still greater igignorance of those seers and prophets, whom He raised up to be the teachers of His own peculiar people, respecting their condition and their relations to Him. For to what end was He training these holy men, by so many secret processes, and by such sore discipline; but to know Him as the secret Lord of their hearts,-to hold fellowship with Him by day and by night,-to recognise Him as the King of their nation, who directed all its plans according to justice and truth; to declare Him to their countrymen, as the Lord to whom they must submit their hearts, if they would not sink into slavery to their evil natures, and to the world around them;-the Lord, who by judgments and invitations was leading them away from the idols of sense, to seek Him and to find Him.

I say, he who does not perceive this, in the Jewish prophecies, is not alone wanting in spiri

THE PROPHETS WITNESSES FOR IT.

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tual discernment; he must despise and set at nought the letter of them. And surely, if these prophets were not mistaken, if they were not misled by their Great Teacher, the whole economy of the Jewish nation, the mysterious rite of circumcision, the law, the forms by which they were kept separate from other nations, were devised (not solely indeed, but mainly) for this end,—to guide the people out of sensible carnal worship, into that worship of the Lord of the spirit, who is spirit and who is truth. They who do not connect this notion with the belief of the oneness of God, and put forth the preservation of that truth, as the main purpose of the Jewish commonwealth, fall into great and hopeless cofusion; they fancy that the One Everlasting God, whom the Hebrews were taught to worship, was a God of Nature, was some presiding power over nature; such as a Chaldean, Magian, or a Greek Pantheist might have reverenced; and not the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob,—emphatically, the God of Man.

Will it be said,—But this Jewish people were the chosen of God; this revelation to them was a peculiar revelation. Fox was still wrong in speaking of this Word as dwelling with all men :' I ask, what was the promise made to the father of the Jewish people, but, "that in him, and in his seed should all the nations of the earth be blessed?" And when did the hope of the fulfilment of that promise dawn upon the Jew, but

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GRANDEUR OF Fox's PREACHING;

when the unseen Word began to reveal himself to his servants the prophets? Then, when they began to feel their own real connection with this Being, did they feel the possibility of all nations being brought into the covenant; then were they able, though dimly, to anticipate the manifestation of this great Lord of their nation, as the King who should reign over the Gentiles, and in whom the Gentiles should trust. They felt that their Lord was the Lord of Man; and that, as such, he would be revealed.

You see with what earnestness I maintain the truth of that doctrine of your founder, which he has of late, by members of your society and of other societies, been so denounced for upholding. You see that I do not wonder he should have asserted this truth with such passion and vehemence. You see, that I acknowledge it as that which is implied in all Christianity; and the utter loss of which, out of the minds of men, seems to me to involve the extinction of Christianity itself. You see that I base these conclusions,-not on the witness of my own heart, merely, answering to his heart; not on the evidence, merely, of Pagan records, shewing that men through many ages were straining after this idea, if haply they might feel after it and find it ;-but upon the revelation of GOD himself,-upon the evidence which the records of Scripture furnish, that it was by leading men into this truth, that He prepared them for the kingdom of his Son. And can I help

YET IT WAS NOT CHRISTIAN PREACHING. 21

feeling joy, and wonder, and thanksgiving, and new assurance that we are living under the dispensation of a Gospel addressed to the poor, when I see a truth, which the wisest and best men of the old world,-which the Athenian Plato, which the Alexandrian Philo, (though a Jew, and living almost on the borders of the Gospel kingdom,)were only toiling to find, proclaimed aloud by a poor, untaught English handicraftsman; to hear the fact announced by him to English peasants, with more confidence than either Isaiah or Jeremiah dare have assumed, in speaking to their own Israelites; that GOD, in very truth, is not far from every one of us; but that in Him we live, and move, and have our being.

But you observe how I have limited all my language upon this subject. I have said, that this great truth is the preparation for Christianity, that it is involved in Christianity, and that, though it may not be the first apprehended by every Christian, nay, may not be formally apprehended by him at all; yet lies at the root of all his spiritual life. But I have not admitted that it is Christianity itself. I will illustrate this distinction, in reference to what I consider the three great ideas of Christianity,-Justification of the conscience, the Atonement for mankind, and the Trinity.

I. Let us consider, what were the actual wants and anxieties of the men in the old world, who experienced the struggle between the light and darkness of which we have spoken. Must not