Twenty-four Discourses / On Some of the Important and Interesting Truths, Duties, and Institutions, of the Gospel, and the General Excellency of the Christian Religion; Calculated for the People of God of Every Communion, Particularly for the Benefit of Pious Families, and the Instruction of All in the Things Which Concern Their Salvation

by Nathan Perkins

FOOTNOTES

[1] When I use the words fanaticism and enthusiasm in this or any of these discourses—I do not mean to have implied in the most distant manner any censure or dislike of the warm and rational fervours of Piety, or deep and serious engagedness about the all important concerns of Religion. This is sometimes the implication. When it is; a real injury is done to the cause of God and truth.—On this point, I am much pleased with the following remark of Archbishop Secker, Vol. 1. Sermon x. page 228. “It is an extensively mischievous practice, when men join in loose harangues against enthusiasm and superstition, without putting in due cautions to distinguish them from the most rational feelings of love and marks of respect to our Maker, Redeemer, and sanctifier which Christianity hath enjoined.”