A very brief improvement will conclude the discourse.——
Hence learn the duty of trying the spirits. Beloved, believe not every spirit: but try the spirits whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world. What friendly advice is this! How absolutely necessary! Try them. Try all who pretend to come with a new religion—a new faith—a new order, who profess to be immediately inspired of God. Such there have been in all ages. To the law and Testimony: here is your rule—a certain rule—an infallible rule—a rule which can never change. Be always armed against imposture. Again——Learn hence the danger of enthusiasm or impulses, visions and impressions on the mind of an extraordinary kind. We are all liable to be deceived by them. Many have been to their ruin. We may be. There is something strange something unaccountable in human nature that falls in with what claims to come from the God of all grace, as a special communication, or direction. No man can tell what fanaticism, or a heated imagination, or an erroneous conscience will do. We may all be given up to believe a lie—strong delusion may be sent upon us. We may be amazingly confident in error. Fanaticism may be called a kind of religious delirium. While then you are under advantages to form your religious sentiments, be anxious to do it, on the subject now discussed—and the Christian system in general.——May the good spirit of God lead us into the truth as it is in Jesus. Amen.
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.”
DISCOURSE XIX.
Sinless perfection unattainable in this Life.
1 JOHN i. 8.
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
The great foundation-principles of the Christian Religion are so plain in themselves, that it would be natural to conclude, that none who admit its reality, could be found who should be able either to controvert or deny them. For the principles of Christian doctrine, which are really necessary to salvation, are not only few in number, but most clearly revealed, and repeatedly urged. To these the Apostle refers when he says.—For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the Oracles of God. These first principles of the Oracles of God are the truths, which are obviously essential to the very existence of all Religion. There are, according to the Apostle, what may be termed with strict propriety the first principles of the Oracles of God. These may be easily comprehended by all, who pay any due attention to the important subject of Religion.—Every art indeed or science has, and must of necessity have what may be pertinently termed first principles, on which all the rest are built, and from which they flow. These must be clearly understood, before we can arrive at any considerable degree of excellence. No where is this more eminently the case, than in the science of Religion, the most valuable and interesting of all the subjects, to which mankind ever paid their attention, or which they were ever called, in duty, to examine. But on no subject, however, through the depravation of the moral powers of the soul, are they so liable to fall into pernicious errors. Such, it is conceived, is the notion that a sinless perfection is attainable in the present state of being.