Do they begin to discover the deep corruption of their nature, the superficialness and weakness of their virtues, and to fear they have as yet scarce come up to the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees? He tells them “The great enemy of souls adapts his temptations to all sorts of tempers and dispositions.” Those who are disposed to be good and virtuous, if he cannot prevail with them to be vicious, commonly so called, he labours to make them over virtuous, that is vicious, tho’ not commonly so called; and so involves them in dangers and mischiefs.
Are they such as are desirous of reforming their own lives, by bringing all their actions to the standard of the gospel, and wholly intent upon their own advancement in merely practical piety?
To these he shews, that they are in the very paths that lead, and always did lead to fanatic madness.
Thus says he, “To what a height of fanatic madness in doctrines, as well as practice are some advanced, who set out at first with the appearance of more than ordinary sanctity in practice only?” And again, “I do say that in all ages enthusiasts have been righteous over-much; they began with the last mentioned, and ended with the other; and is it not so now?”
13. Further, are there others, who begin to feel the mystery of their redemption discovered in their own souls, so that they hunger and thirst after the manifestation of the divine life in them, desiring that Christ may be wholly formed and revealed in them, that they may put on Christ, be in him new creatures, led by his spirit, growing in him as branches in the vine, hearing the word of God written and spoken in their hearts, in his light seeing light, and tasting in the inward man the powers of the world to come?
* For such as these, the Doctor has this instruction: “That there is, says he, such a thing as the operation of the Holy Spirit upon our souls, tho’ we cannot distinguish it from the operations of our own minds, is not only granted, but insisted upon by all sincere and sober Christians. But what reason, what scripture, is there for this inward seeing, hearing, feeling?”
* According therefore to the Doctor’s divinity both reason and scripture require, that the true Christian be inwardly blind, inwardly deaf, and void of all inward feeling. For if neither scripture nor reason will allow of any inward senses, then they must both of them require an inward insensibility. But as scripture from Genesis to the Revelation, is full of proofs of these inward senses, I shall not now produce them: I shall here only observe that hardness of heart is a well known phrase of scripture, and every where signifies some degree of blindness, deafness, and loss of feeling. I suppose it will not be said that it signifies blindness, or loss of outward eyes and ears, or feeling: neither does it signify a want of human reason, or natural sagacity; for learned, polite, and ingenious men, are full as subject as others to this hardness of heart. Therefore the scripture is as open, as plain and express in declaring for inward senses, as it is in declaring against such a thing, as hardness of heart. Hardness of heart is that to the inward senses, which a deep, or as we call it, dead sleep, is to the outward. It keeps our inward eyes, and ears, and feeling all locked up.
14. A broken and a contrite heart unlocks our inward senses, and makes us see, and hear, and feel the things, which could no more be seen, heard or felt before, than a man in a deep sleep can hear, and see, and feel the things, that are said and done about him.
Water frozen into a rock of ice, is very different from the same water melted, warmed, and moving under the influence of the sun and the air.
Now this difference between water flowing, full of light and air, and the same water frozen into a dark, hard rock of ice, is but a small resemblance of the difference between a hardened heart, and the same heart become broken.