As for your Lordship’s cautions against lukewarmness, I am not much concerned in them. You do not seem to point at me in particular; unless it is, where your Lordship (page 10.) informs your people, “That a diligent attendance on the duties of the station wherein Providence has placed them, is, in the strictest sense, the serving of God.” None but those, who condemn me unheard, can justly charge me with affirming to the contrary.
However, I beg leave to observe, that your Lordship, (page 8.) calls that a very imperfect state of christianity, which is no state of christianity at all. St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians chapter xiii. verse 5, says, “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your ownselves.” And that they might have a certain rule, whereby to judge whether they were in the faith, truly so called, or not; he immediately adds, “Know ye not your ownselves, how that Christ Jesus is in you, except ye be reprobates?” So that, according to St. Paul’s rule, “He that finds, he has hitherto contented himself with a bare bodily attendance upon the public worship of God, and with following his daily employment on other days, and with abstaining from the more gross and notorious acts of sin, and from doing any hurt or injury to his neighbour, and has rested finally upon these, as the whole of what christianity requires of him;” is so far from being in a very imperfect state, as your Lordship is pleased to affirm, page 8. that he is in no state of christianity at all. No, my Lord, he is a reprobate, or, one who at present is out of a state of salvation, nor can he ever have any assurance that he is in a state of salvation, till he knows that Jesus Christ is in him, by the indwelling of his Holy Spirit. If I have mistaken your Lordship’s expression, I will freely beg your Lordship’s pardon.
Another thing, my Lord, to me seems darkly expressed, in page 18. (let not your Lordship be angry, for indeed I will endeavour to speak with all gentleness and humility): your Lordship’s words are these: “Nor need they any other evidence besides those good dispositions they find in their hearts, that the Holy Spirit of God co-operates with their honest endeavours to subdue sin and grow in goodness.” If by good dispositions, your Lordship only means good inclinations or desires, I deny that to be a sufficient evidence, that the Spirit of God co-operates with their honest endeavours to subdue sin and grow in goodness. For there is a great difference between good desires and good habits: many have one, who never attain the other. Many have good desires to subdue sin, and yet, resting in those good desires, sin has always had dominion over them. A person sick of a fever may desire to be in health, but that desire is not health itself. In like manner, many have good dispositions, or desires to be good, but that is not goodness itself. And consequently men need more evidence than good dispositions, to prove to themselves or others, “that the Holy Spirit of God co-operates with their honest endeavours to subdue sin.” If by good dispositions, your Lordship means good habits wrought in the heart by the Spirit of God, such as peace, love, joy, long-suffering, goodness, truth, &c. I then agree a man needs no other evidence: for these are the proper and genuine fruits of the Spirit itself.
Your Lordship immediately adds, “Nor that, persevering in their course, and praying to God for his assistance, and relying upon the merits of Christ for the pardon of all such sins, failings, and imperfections, as are more or less unavoidable in this mortal state.” I beg leave to ask your Lordship, whether this does not savour too much of the common divinity, That we are to do something for ourselves: or, in other words, that we have partly a righteousness of our own, and that Jesus Christ is to make up the deficiencies of that righteousness? What else can your Lordship mean, by saying, That we must rely on the merits of Christ for the pardon of “all such sins as are more or less unavoidable in this mortal state?” Did Jesus Christ come into the world, my Lord, only to save us from the guilt of such sins, as are more or less unavoidable in this mortal state? The scriptures every where affirm, that man hath no righteousness of his own, “That there is none righteous, no not one;—that all our righteousness is as filthy rags;” and that Jesus Christ died, not only to save us from the guilt of all such sins, failings, and infirmities, as are more or less unavoidable in this mortal state, but from all wilful sins, and also from that original corruption, which every man naturally engendered of the offspring of Adam, brings into the world with him. I hope I have not misunderstood, or overstrained your Lordship’s expression.
I come now to your Lordship’s caution against enthusiasm. For that, I suppose, your Lordship intended more particularly against me.
And here, my Lord, I beg leave to observe, That, in my opinion, your Lordship has by no means been clear enough in your definition of the word enthusiasm.
According to the fair rules of writing, was it not first incumbent on your Lordship to shew, that the word enthusiast had a good as well as a bad meaning: that it signifies no more than a person in God, and consequently every christian, in the proper sense of the word, is an enthusiast? For St. Peter writes, “That to us are given exceeding great and precious promises, that by these we might be partakers of the divine nature.”
And our church says, “If we receive the sacrament worthily, we are one with Christ, and Christ with us: we dwell in Christ, and Christ in us.” For which she has sufficient warrant from our Lord’s prayer, John xvii. 20, &c. “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, I in them, and they in me, that they may be made perfect in one: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me, may be in them, and I in them.”
But indeed your Lordship’s definition of enthusiasm, when examined, does not convey any ill idea at all. “Enthusiasm, is a strong persuasion on the mind, that they are guided in an extraordinary manner, by immediate impulses and impressions of the Spirit of God.” Had your Lordship said, a strong but groundless persuasion, that they are guided in an extraordinary manner, it would have been to your Lordship’s purpose. But to affirm, without any restriction, that a strong persuasion that we are guided in an extraordinary manner by immediate impulses, is enthusiasm in the worst sense of the word, when your Lordship yourself says, (page 54.) “There is no doubt, but God, when he pleases, can work upon the minds of men by extraordinary influences,” to me seems a little inconsistent.
Your Lordship proceeds thus: “And this is owing chiefly to the want of distinguishing aright between the ordinary and extraordinary operations of the Holy Spirit. The extraordinary operations were those, by which the apostles and others, who were entrusted with the first propagation of the gospel, were enabled to work miracles, and speak with tongues, in testimony, that their mission and doctrine were from God.”