THE TENDENCY OF EVANGELICAL PREACHING.
I n his brother the Rev. Mr. Roscoe met with a more formidable antagonist than he expected; and though foiled in some previous encounters, yet he again resumed the debate.
Rev. Mr. Roscoe.—"I wonder how you can object to the strictures which the Rev. Mr. Cole made in his sermon last Sunday, on the censurable conduct of those clergymen who declaim against good works, and exalt a dogmatic belief in certain crude opinions as the only necessary condition on which sinners can obtain the forgiveness of Almighty God."
Mr. Roscoe.—"As I have not been in the habit of hearing many of the evangelical clergy preach, I certainly cannot say from my own personal knowledge how far the charge which you allege against them is just or unfounded. If they do declaim against good works, they are guilty of a serious dereliction of duty, and should not receive the sanction of any wise or good man. I agree with you, that this is not the age in which virtue, in any of her forms or requirements, should be made light of, especially by those who are professedly her ministers. For if they, who ought to stop up the passes to evil, turn their weapons of war against the bulwarks of practical righteousness, the common enemy will meet with an ally where he ought to find a foe, and the capital and its dependencies will soon be taken. But though I have not heard many of them preach, I have been in the habit of reading their published discourses, and it is my opinion that from the press they push the claims of practical righteousness to such an extreme, that I have often heard them censured for their excessive strictness; and it is fair to presume that they are not less urgent and severe when they are in the pulpit. But admitting, for the sake of the argument, that they do declaim against good works, we know that they practise them; and their hearers, with some few exceptions, will bear a comparison with the most virtuous members of society."
Rev. Mr. Roscoe.—"Then you admit that some of their hearers are not men of virtue—hence, does it not necessarily follow that their ministers preach a doctrine which leads to licentiousness?"
Mr. Roscoe.—"But this argument which you employ against the moral tendency of evangelical preaching is liable to two very formidable objections—it is fallacious, and it proves too much. It supposes that the conduct of a minority is the test by which the orthodoxy of the preacher is to be decided. But why fix on the minority as the test, when their relative number is a tacit proof that they are the exception to the general class of his hearers? If a few in a district are turbulent and factious, and disposed to rebellion, while the larger proportion of the people are peaceable and submissive, revering the authority of the laws, and cultivating the virtues of social life, would you recommend the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, as though the entire mass were in a state of revolt? Where would be the equity or the expediency of such a measure? Why impugn the character of all because a few are criminal, and why involve the innocent and the guilty in one indiscriminate visitation of punishment? And would not your argument apply with equal, if not with stronger force, to the anti-evangelical clergy? Have they no immoral hearers? Have they none who set at open defiance the laws of God and man? Have they no scoffers who visit their temples?—no infidels who commune at their altars? Can they say of all in their congregations, 'Ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God'?"
Rev. Mr. Roscoe.—"But, you know, we enforce virtue, and tell our hearers that their final salvation depends on their becoming virtuous. This, you will admit, is a more powerful motive than that which an evangelical preacher employs, who says that we may be saved without it."