Mr. Roscoe.—"No, he does not say that we can be saved without becoming virtuous. This is an accusation which cannot be substantiated; and to bring it forward is to bear false witness against another. He does not require virtue on our part as a prerequisite to recommend us to the favour of God; but he enforces it as expressive of our reverence for his authority, and of our gratitude to his sovereign goodness in redeeming us from the curse of a violated law. He does not substitute our very defective righteousness for the righteousness of Jesus Christ, which would be an entire abandonment of one of the most essential doctrines of the gospel; but he tells us that the grace of God that bringeth salvation, teaches us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world. Indeed, the evangelical minister requires, on the part of his adherents, a higher degree of virtue than his opponent, and he employs more powerful motives to enforce it. He requires the entire renovation of the soul, and such a conversion from all the evil habits and impure propensities of our nature, as shall constitute us new creatures in Christ Jesus. Do you enforce virtue from an appeal to the authority of God? so does your evangelical brother. Do you enforce it by a reference to its own loveliness, and its tendency to promote personal and relative happiness? so does he. But he goes a step further—he presses into the service of the pulpit the motives which arise from the redemption of the soul by the death of Christ; and if we look around us, we shall perceive that these exert a more powerful influence on the principles and conduct of men, than any other which ever has been or ever can be employed. Men who will resist authority may be subdued by clemency, and many whom a dread of punishment could not reclaim from evil, have been turned from the error of their ways after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward them hath appeared. And then, like the eunuch of the Scriptures, they have gone on their way rejoicing, ever ready to give to others a reason of the hope within them; saying, under the impulse of devout gratitude, rather than vainglorious ostentation, 'Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul.'"
Rev. Mr. Roscoe.—"We very well know that those who admire evangelical preaching are, generally speaking, more loquacious on the subject of religion, and more religiously disposed in their habits, than others; but this is one of the objections which we have against it. If we feel too little, they feel too much; and if we are not quite so religious in our habits as we ought to be, they go to the opposite extreme, and become enthusiasts. We keep within the boundary which reason and decorum mark out, but they cross it; and while we restrain our passions, and rarely discuss the awful subjects of religion in our social interviews, they yield to impulses and excitements, which they rashly ascribe to a mental intercourse with an invisible world, and thus they approach to the very verge of fanaticism."
Mr. Roscoe.—"But surely you do not object to a person who has felt the renewing power of the grace of God, ascribing the great change to its real cause, expressing at the same time his joyful gratitude to God for effecting it."
Rev. Mr. Roscoe.—"What I dislike and condemn is the strong effervescence of feeling which so often makes its appearance amongst the admirers of evangelical preaching, and which leads them to use terms of expression which are more nearly allied to rhapsody than sober truth and reality."
Mr. Roscoe.—"You know that, on all subjects, men speak as they feel; and therefore, when their passions are strongly excited by religious truth, they ought not to be condemned or censured if they do give utterance to some expressions which may appear rather extravagant to an apathetic mind; they speak naturally, that is, in character. Let me give you an example. Can a man of a refined taste, and who is very excitable, avoid being deeply interested by the sublime or beautiful in the natural, or by the pathetic or tragical in the moral world? No. It is impossible. He is affected before he is conscious of feeling, and often when he is incapable of assigning the cause of it. To argue that this liability to strong excitement is a proof of the imbecility of our mind, or of our tendency to fanatical illusions, is nothing less than a begging of the question—a species of artifice which cannot be tolerated. Our nature is liable to excitement, and we cannot avoid it. It is, upon the whole, considered a favourable symptom of a fine taste or a good disposition. We prefer it to stoicism, to apathy, and to a mental dulness, which neither harmonious sounds nor enchanting scenes can move. If, then, our passions are necessarily stirred within us, and sometimes powerfully stirred by external objects, by what law is it rendered improper for a man to be deeply affected by the momentous truths of revelation? Does the law of our nature forbid it? No. You yourself have confessed that the admirers of evangelical preaching are in general strongly, too strongly affected by what they believe. To strip your charges of the measured language in which they are brought, do you mean to say that they are too deeply affected by the awful descriptions which the sacred writers have given us of the miseries of the damned; or too strongly animated by the sublime anticipations of a blissful immortality; or too grateful to the Lord of glory for bearing their sins in his own body on the tree; and too intense in their desires after a more perfect conformity to the purity of the Divine nature? But is this possible?"
Rev. Mr. Roscoe.—"We certainly cannot love Almighty God too much, nor can we be too grateful to him for his mercies, temporal and spiritual; but when we are speaking to each other about our religious feelings, I think, as the apostle says, we should let our moderation be known."
Mr. Roscoe.—"But, to speak naturally, we should speak as we feel. I remember a poor woman of the name of Allen, who often used to perplex me when we conversed together on religious topics; she always left a vague impression on my mind that there was a something in religion which I had never discovered."
"I am fully convinced," said Mrs. John Roscoe, apologizing for obtruding her remarks, "that those who embrace evangelical sentiments are more religious in their conversation and habits than those who do not. But it is at the awful hour of death that the difference becomes the more apparent and striking. We had a servant, a member of a Dissenting chapel, who lived with us some years, but when she was taken ill she left us to go to her father, a poor pious man, with whom she resided for several months before she died. I often went to see her, and was standing by her side when she breathed her last. She was composed and even cheerful in prospect of death, but it was the cheerfulness of a spirit made happy by the consolations of religion, and which expected to be still happier in the celestial world.[15] I recollect asking her what made her so happy when death was so near, and her reply, though I did not then, and do not yet comprehend its full import, made such a strong impression, that I have never forgotten it—'His sweet promise, Come unto me, and I will give you rest. I do come to him; he has given me rest of soul; and he has provided a rest for me in heaven. And you, dear Madam, must come to him to be saved and made happy.'"
Mr. Roscoe.—"It is now about twelve months since I was travelling with an eminent physician. Our conversation happened to turn on the state of religion in the country, and on the evangelical and anti-evangelical clergy and laity of our own church; when he stated that, in the discharge of his professional duties, he was often called to witness the termination of human life—the retiring of the actors from the busy stage—the departure of intelligent beings from one world to another—and that he had uniformly found, that those who imbibe evangelical sentiments die much more like the Christians of the Bible than those who do not. He gave it as the result of long experience, that evangelical religion, though much despised, is greatly conducive to the happiness of man, especially in his last moments. This fact produced a deep impression on my mind, as he said it had done on his."
Rev. Mr. Roscoe.—"Yes; the imagination, when acted upon by evangelical opinions and impulses, very often holds a pretended intercourse with Heaven, and sees sights and hears sounds which are supernatural; but are we so far gone from the sober restraints of reason as to become the advocates of enthusiastic raptures?"