3f - 3 f S THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY,! f Princeton, N. J. f t f 3<^^3 S'l^^e ^ - - ''^^>9 9<^^3 -"^^e *• BX 5255 .S36 1830 Scougal, Henry, 1650-1678. Works of the Rev. Henry Scougal WORKS REV. HENRY SCOUGAL, A. M. SOMETIME PROFESSOR OF DiyiNITY IN THE UNIVERSITy OF ABERDEEN. WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY, BY THE REV. RICHARD WATSON, AUTHOR OF " INSTITUTES OF THEOLOGY." GLASGOW: PRINTED FOR WILLIAM COLLINS; OLIVER & BOYD, WM. WHYTE & CO. AND WM. OLIPHANT, EDINBURGH W. F. WAKEMAN, AND WM. CURRY, JUN. & CO. DUBLIN ; WariTAKEB, TREACHER, & ARNOT ; HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO. SIMPKIN & MARSHALL ; BALDWIN & CRADOCK ; AND HURST, CHANCE, & CO. LONDON. MDCCCXXX. FlillLlSEEI WILLIAM: C OLLIN^ GiA S G 0 W. WORKS OP THE, /' / REV. HENRY SCOUGAL, A. M. SOMETIME PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN. WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY BY THE REV. RICHARD WATSON, AUTHOR OF " INSTITUTES OF THEOLOGY." GLASGOW: PRINTED FOR WILLIAM COLLINS; OLIVER & BOYD, WM. WHYTE & CO. AND WM. OLIPHANT, EDINBURGH W. F. WAKEMAN, AND WM. CURRY, JUN. & CO. DUBLIN ; WHITTAKER, TREACHER, & ARNOT ; HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO. SIMPKIN & MARSHALL ; BALDWIN & CRADOCK ; AND HUEST, CHANCE, & CO. LONDON. MDCCCXXX. Printed by W. Collins & Co. Glasgow. INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. The ground and reason of Religion is, the insufB- ciency of man ; search as we may, we shall find no principle so deeply laid in truth, so comprehensive and important in its bearings. We cannot sustain our natural life any more than we could give it ; we can- not, beyond a certain and very limited degree, con- trol the innumerable circumstances which surround us, and affect us for good and for evil ; we find nothing on earth which satisfies our desires ; a sense of guilt presses our conscience with a load which it cannot throw olf ; and we shall soon enter a new and unknown state of being, over the condition of which we have no control. What greater proofs can we have of our own nothingness ? Wherever any form of religion has existed, this principle has been at least tacitly acknowledged by men of all ages and of all countries. The office of all religious rites has been, to connect man in friendly relations with powers superior to himself; to avert their wrath, or to secure their favourable interposition. I n the ruder rites of barbarians, in the splendid cere- monial of civihzed nations, the reason and the end are vi the same — men have filled the earth with the monu- ments of their own confessed weakness ; and they have every where, and in every age, recognized this truth, that their help, their comfort, and their hope, rest not upon themselves, but upon some invisible agency more wise, more active, more powerful than the feeble be- ing who trembles before it. But " an idol," says St. Paul, " is nothing in the world." That one word opens to the contemplative mind one of the most affecting views of the deep dereliction of the countless myriads, who in all ages have " walked in the vain show" of pagan mytho- logies, and who, though always deceived, have still confided in them. Thus pressed by his weaknesses, his guilt, and his fears, the heathen flies for succour toafigmentof his own fancy, to that which is "nothing in the world," and has no existence among creatures in heaven or in earth. Even religion with him is il- lusive as a feverish dream, and when he calls upon his God, there is neither " voice nor sound" responsive to his prayers ; he spends life in pursuit of a phantom, and he dies in despair. But if " the gods of the heathen are vanity, the Lord made the heavens ;" the object of true religion is the true God; and the true religion is that which so leads us to God as to connect all the wants of man as a moral and accountable being, a creature at once mortal and immortal, with the sufficiency not only of a real but of an infinite existence. " I am GoD all- sufficient, walk before me and be thou perfect."* But what is that religion which is the true way to * Genesis xvii. old Translation. vn God ? and in what respects is that all-sufficiency of God imparted to those who in this way approach him ? These are most important inquiries. Pure and holy creatures are always represented in Scripture in immediate intercourse with God. Phi- losophy considers their intercourse as mediate only through the creatures ; and it would take no offence at their being represented as engaged in tracing the wonders of the planetary and sideral heavens; ex- ploring the elements of earth, and deducing general laws from wide and scrutinizing surveys of natural phenomena ; and whilst thus employed , as recognizuig and magnifying the wisdom and power of the Creator. Here would be a fine intellect nobly employed ; here would be exhibited that species of sentiment, a mingled feeling of admiration, and gratified taste, which is in truth the only devotional religion which the philo- sophy of man allows. The doctrine of the Scriptures goes higher ; it represents these pure spirits, whether angels who never sinned, or saints glorified, as with God; in his presence gazing upon glories revealed not only from his works, but from disclosures and manifestations of himself ; rapt into ecstacy, inflamed with love, silent with awe, they " see him as he is," and become " like him;" they behold his glory, and are " changed into the same image." This kind of communion with God, " the foun- tain of life," having both an external and an internal manifestation, each proper to itself, man in his first estate enjoyed as well as the angels, though the one was less radiant, the other less intense in his case, as suited to a feebler, though yet untainted nature. The expulsion of the first olFenders from the visible viii manifestations of the divine glory in Paradise, was but the outward sign of the forfeiture of their higher interior communion with God. The effect of sin is to separate between God and man ; between his dependent spiritual nature, and the vital influence of the all-sufficient nature of God. " So he drove out the man;" and the wilderness of earth, "cursed" for his sake, and yielding thorns and briers, was a less painful contrast to the verdure and beauty of the garden of God, than that which was presented by a soul " naked, and sick, and void of God," once so near, now "afar oif." As mere philosophy cannot comprehend the true nature of the communion of an innocent intelligence with God, so it is insensible to the true character of that separation between God and the soul of man which has been effected by human offence. This is only fully discovered by the Spirit which " convinces of sin." To this moment, every man unrecovered by grace, is, in this affecting sense, " without God in the world." The illustrations of this sad truth, which experience and observation furnish, are too painfully convincing. Nor is it necessary to go to the sensualist, he who is emphatically "in the flesh," for confirmation of the fact; nor to the gay trifler, who places pleasure in the absence of all serious thought ; nor to the sordid spirit, absorbed in, and in- crusted with the cares of this life. This alienation from God is as conspicuous where the intellect and taste are awakened, as where they sleep ; in the man of reflection and genius, as in those prostrate spirits whose sole inquiry through every day's existence is, " What shall we eat, and wherewithal shall we be ix clothed ?" It is, alas ! no uncommon case to see a man at once wise and wicked, sentimental and un- devout, with a genius capable of seizing every form of beauty, and every character of grandeur, which both nature and morals present, and employing them to adorn and illustrate his own conceptions, and so that he shall be warmed by his subject into ardour, or melted into softness ; and yet, when the excitement is spent, he shall subside into his own native earthli- ness, and revel in the gross indulgences of a master- ful sensual appetite. It is not the mere employment of the thoughts on the works of God which leads to God. The spacious temple of this visible universe may be entered, scrutinized, and admired ; calcula- tion and measurement may be applied to its expan- sive dome, and its ever -burning lamps of celestial fire; the strength and proportions of its massive pillars may be displayed ; the appendages of use and orna- ment with which it is filled, arranged with systematiz- ing skill, and their discovered relations, uses, and wondrous workmanship, may give a lively interest to long and deep investigations ; whilst the majesty of its great Builder shall still wholly fail to prostrate the spirit in humility, and not a penitential sigh shall be sent upward to heaven from a heart bowed down un- der an overwhelming sense of the fact, that, against this Being of power and glory, infinite, innumerable sins have been committed by the worm that treads his awful courts. Even the doctrines of religion itself may occupy the studies of men ; they may spend days and nights in a critical and exact investigation of the written revelations made by God himself ; they may become champions of the orthodox faith^ and may A3 X contend for it with all the ardour and expertness of well-learned and earnest controvertists ; they may ob- scure the forms and ordinances which God has insti- tuted for the purpose of opening communion between them and himself, whilst yet the middle wall of an invisible but palpable partition, rises betwixt them and their Maker; and as to any effectual change in that moral habit which constitutes the alienation of man from God, they stand on the same level, and are undistinguished from the mass of an unthinking and openly ungodly world. If this be the true state of fallen man, where then is the true way to God ? Through whatever medium it lies, the gate which leads to it is a lowly penitence ; that alone breaks the first opening through a barrier impervious and insuperable by other means. To "turn to God," is the phrase by which the holy Scrip- tures designate the first step back to him which can be taken by a revolted creature ; and it is accompanied with " weeping and with supplication." Seeking God, is another of those descriptive expressions which so strongly mark the feelings and the movements of an awakened spirit ; the terms of which indicate not only something lost, but loss of the greatest good — of God himself, his image, his friendship, his felici- tating influence. If a true sense of this loss can never be commensurate with the vastness of the privation, it cannot be a superficial and evanescent feeling. The departure of a soul from God is so great an evil in itself, and implies so much positive misery as the involved consequence, that if the case be truly, although still inadequately, revealed to us by that Spirit whose ofiice it is to " convince of sin," the xi combination of a strong sense of want, of guilt and of danger, must pierce, pain, and oppress the heart, now truly described as " broken and contrite." The gauge and measure of this feeling is no where stated in that volume, which has revealed " repentance towards God" as the first indispensable term of salvation — that may vary in different persons, as it is connected with diflPerent temperaments, or the *' divers workings of the self-same Spirit ;" but he who takes his views of repentance from the Scrip- tures, can never confine it to a mere change of opin- ion, or resolve it wholly into a conviction of the judg- ment. In every view in which it is presented to us, it is assumed to affect the heart, and that deeply. It is "poverty of spirit;" it is "mourning;" it is " godly sorrow ;" it is the alarm which impels man to " fly from the wrath to come ;" it is a being " pricked in the heart ;" it is abasement before the Divine Majesty, manifested in the glory of its holiness — " Woe is me for I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips, and dwell among a people of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts ;" it confesses desert of extreme punishment, and it renounces every plea but that which rests upon pure mercy. " God be merciful to me a sinner," was the expression of an emotion so deep and powerful, that he who felt it was at once so aware of danger that he " smote upon his breast," and so conscious of the absence of all merit that " he stood afar off," The parable, or history just alluded to, conveys important instruction to us in another respect. It teaches us also, that the same feeling, in all its depth and force, is as necessary in the repentance of the xii seemingly virtuous, as in that of the openly wicked. The Pharisee who was rejected, just needed the humility, the penitence, the sorrow of the publican who was accepted ; and it was because he neither saw nor felt his sin and danger, nor sorrowfully confessed God's justice in connecting punishment with sin, nor pleaded an unmerited mercy, that he was sent empty away. All might be true which he affirmed of his external virtues ; but the virtues of unregenerate men are not virtues towards God ; and the hidden sins of the heart are as much in proof of its utter corruption, are as much violations of the holiness of the law of God, and are as strongly linked with the penalty of transgression, death, eternal death, as the visible sins of the life. Society is more injured by one class of offences ; but as to the dishonour done to God, and the significance of these rebellious act- ings of the creature, they are equal. So withers, under the reproving breath of the word of God, the most goodly show of merely human virtue ! It is most necessary for us also to know, that the repentance which is the first step in our return to God, is not mere emotion ; that it does not and can- not terminate in sorrows, sighs, and tears. It is it- self a work of the Holy Spirit in the heart, wrought with reference to an e7i(l beyond itself ; to which end it tends with a force proportionate to its own influ- ence. It is therefore an aspiration after safety, which cannot rest till safety is attained ; a struggle for liberty, which impels the spirit, conscious of its own inability to break its chain, to that almighty Deliverer which the gospel exhibits and proclaims ; it pleads for pardon, and refuses every comfort which arises not xiii from that attested and assured attainment; and it restlessly seeks that peace, which a revelation of the personal interest which the soul has in Christ's atone- ment can only give. Such are the strong and ceaseless tendencies of an evangelical repentance, on which first effort towards salvation so many persons unhappily fall into errors soothing to a false peace, and therefore fatal. But still there is nothing in mere repentance to effect ac- tual reconciliation with God, and to place the alien- ated and disinherited child within the paternal arms and welcome roof of our heavenly Father. Nothing can be more obvious, than that under a righteous ad- ministration, such as that to which we are all subject, repentance, however deep, can be no reason of for- giveness ; since, were that the universal rule, it would amount to the abolition of all law by the forgiveness of offenders upon their sorrow for sin, a feeling which must be produced in all as soon as the danger of punishment is made manifest; and thus the righteous character of the Governor of the world could have no manifestation. The notion, too, of the meritorious efficacy of penitential emotions and exercises, indulged by too many, renders the atonement for sin made by Christ superfluous. It is this, however, according to the constant doctrine of the New Testament, which alone harmonizes the exercise of mercy with an ad- ministration which never departs from a strict rule of righteousness, and thus lays a solid foundation for our hope. It is this which " declares the righteous- ness of God for the remission of sins that are past, that he might be just^ and the justificr of him that believeth in Jesus." Our repentance, if real, not xiv only confesses the fact of innumerable offences, but bows to the justice of the very sentence it dreads ; it acknowledges that its sighs and tears, and the feel- ings from which they issue, can have no merit, be- cause death is still felt to be deserved ; and if no merit, that is, if there is nothing in this whole pro- cess of contrition, humiliation, and efforts at reforma- tion, which could uphold the claims of justice, and the authority of the divine law ; if, in respect of it, its sentence were relaxed ; then do the sterner attri- butes of God, and the righteous character which is stamped upon his administration, stand eternally op- |)osed to the remission of sin, merely on account of the repentance of the guilty. It ought therefore ever to be felt, that the efficacy of repentance con- sists, simply, in the revelations which it makes of our lost condition, the alarms which it excites as to our danger, and the manner in which it urges us, at the call and invitation of the divine mercy in the gospel, to fly to " the propitiation which God has set forth through faith in the blood" of Christ. From this propitiation all our hope arises ; but that which in- strumentally connects us personally with its available merit, so that its efficacy passes over to us, is the personal trust of a heart cut off from all other depen- dence, and cordially and fully accepting the free and unmerited grace, which, in God's method of justify- ing the ungodly, is exhibited to us. Then, and not till then, we regain the favour and image of God, by that joint act by which our sins are remitted, and our natures created anew; then we find " access" to God through Christ " the way to the Father;" and, " being justified by faith, we have peace with God, XV through our Lord Jesus Christ." Such is the way to God opened to us by the immeasurable mercies of our Redeemer, and by which the most alienated spirit, however dark, corrupt, and guilty, obtains re-admis- sion to the family of God ; and now, placed again in relations of friendship to God, finds that interior intercourse and communion opened with Him as God all-sufficient, from the loss of which its moral degradation and all its consequent miseries have resulted. If it be asked in what the great effect of that re- stored intercourse consists, it cannot be more power- fully or more scripturally described than by the sub- ject of the following excellent Treatise — it is the communication of life, — " The life of God in the soul of man." The whole process of awakening, and repentance, the fervour of prayer, and the actings of faith, are the results of the strong, yet still inci- pient operations of this principle; but when man is " justified by faith," that vital union is effected to- wards which all previous exercises have only tended, and the true believer is then, in the full sense, " in Christ," and his internal habit is to " live by him." That this " life" is a new and distinct principle infused into the soul, and there maintained and nur- tured by the Holy Spirit, is indeed as manifest as experience and observation both can make it. We have animal life, on which feeling, motion, and other functions of the body depend ; we have intellectual life, of which reason, memory, imagination, and vari- ous affections are the results ; but we still want a principle from which shall result all the moral phe- nomena which we sum up in the word holiness. xiv only confesses the fact of innumerable offences, but bows to the justice of the very sentence it dreads ; it acknowledges that its sighs and tears, and the feel- ings from which they issue, can have no merit, be- cause death is still felt to be deserved ; and if no merit, that is, if there is nothing in this whole pro- cess of contrition, humiliation, and efforts at reforma- tion, which could uphold the claims of justice, and the authority of the divine law; if, in respect of it, its sentence were relaxed ; then do the sterner attri- butes of God, and the righteous character which is stamped upon his administration, stand eternally op- posed to the remission of sin, merely on account of the repentance of the guilty. It ouglit therefore ever to be felt, that the efficacy of repentance con- sists, simply, in the revelations which it makes of our lost condition, the alarms which it excites as to our danger, and the manner in which it urges us, at the call and invitation of the divine mercy in the gospel, to fly to " the propitiation which God has set forth through faith in the blood" of Christ. From this propitiation all our hope arises ; but that which in- strumentally connects us personally with its available merit, so that its efficacy passes over to us, is the persutial trust of a heart cut off from all other depen- dence, and cordially and fully accepting the free and unmerited grace, which, in God's method of justify- ing the ungodly, is exhibited to us. Then, and not till then, we regain the favour and image of God, by that joint act by which our sins are remitted, and our natures created anew; then we find " access" to God through Christ " the way to the Father;" and, " being justified by faith, we have peace with God, XV through our Lord Jesus Christ." Such is the way to God opened to us by the immeasurable mercies of our Redeemer, and by which the most alienated spirit, however dark, corrupt, and guilty, obtains re- admis- sion to the family of God ; and now, placed again in relations of friendship to God, finds that interior intercourse and communion opened with Him as God all-sufficient, from the loss of which its moral degradation and all its consequent miseries have resulted. If it be asked in what the great effect of that re- stored intercourse consists, it cannot be more power- fully or more scripturally described than by the sub- ject of the following excellent Treatise — it is the communication of life, — " The life of God in the soul of man." The whole process of awakening, and repentance, the fervour of prayer, and the actings of faith, are the results of the strong, yet still inci- pient operations of this principle; but when man is " justified by faith," that vital union is effected to- wards which all previous exercises have only tended, and the true believer is then, in the full sense, " in Christ," and his internal habit is to " live by him." That this " life" is a new and distinct principle infused into the soul, and there maintained and nur- tured by the Holy Spirit, is indeed as manifest as experience and observation both can make it. We have animal life, on which feeling, motion, and other functions of the body depend ; we have intellectual life, of which reason, memory, imagination, and vari- ous affections are the results; but we still want a principle from which shall result all the moral phe- nomena which we sum up in the word holiness. xvi This is not animal life — it is not intellectual life— since man may be a perfect animal and reasonable being, and yet exhibit a total destitution of holiness. He may live utterly regardless of the majesty of God, and uninfluenced by his mercy ; he may have no desires after his favour, do nothing in respect to his will, desire no intercourse with him, and yet lack no property which constitutes human nature. From whence then does that change arise, which gives him tastes the reverse of any he was ever before con- scious of? fears as to unseen objects, which, though known before, excited no alarm ? and strong desires after moral deliverance from the guilt and bondage of a state in which he was before content to live in peace ? How is it, that new trains of thought occupy his spirit, and a new language flows from his lips ? that he now courts a new society, " the saints and excel- lent of the earth, who exceed in virtue;" and that he " loves the brethren," whom before he ridiculed and despised with all the contemptuousness of that " car- nal mind which is enmity to God?" that prayer and thanksgiving to God, and the habitual actings of faith in the atonement of Christ, by whom he has access to God, have taken the place of those lifeless services of an occasional and merely external devo- tion in which he trusted ? Here are phenomena to be accounted for. Some strange thing has happened : he is not what he was ; he is become even the re- verse of all that before constituted character in its moral sense, and perhaps so suddenly, that nothing has surprised his immediate friends more than this visible, palpable, and, often, this lamented transfor- mation. He was gay, and he steals from the circles XVll of pleasure to mourn his sins before God. His eye was roving, and his manner listless in the sanctuary, now he hears and prays as feeling that eternal conse- quences hang upon the result; he was absorbed in the cares of this life, he now, for the first time, feels the weight of his soul's concerns, and the solemn question of salvation. Scoffers resolve all this into fanaticism ; and so far they conclude well, that it must be referred to some new principle, under the influence of which, by some strange means, the heart has been brought. It is not necessary to stay to show, that real fanaticism can no more produce such ef- fects than animal magnetism, and that whatever does produce them, is too high, too hallowed, to be injured by an opprobrious name. If we believe the Scrip- tures in truth, the case is there explicitly determined, and their decision is, that the new principle which has formed this new character is the communication of SPIRITUAL LIFE from God. " And you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins." " God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he hath loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ ; and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Of the resur- rection of the body, it is obvious that St. Paul does not here speak ; and he must therefore be understood to assert, that, in consequence of the resurrection and ascension of Christ, events which were followed by the effusion of the Holy Spirit, a quickening influ- ence is exerted upon the souls of men, previously dead in trespasses and sins, the effect of which is to pro- duce that spiritual mindedness which is so strongly xviii and beautifully expressed by our " sitting together with Christ in heavenly places." There the thoughts of a true believer are henceforward habitually placed ; there his whole trust and hope repose ; and to this new and spiritual class of objects his affections are now effectually allured. The manner of this mys- terious communication of a new principle so marked in its effects, is not explained to us. How the Holy Spirit takes our faculties into his own hands, and gives them this direction, and by planting new prin- ciples within us, such as the filial fear of God, and filial love to him, places upon them a new and power- ful, and even contrary bias, is a matter which would probably prove more curious than useful to us, did we even know it ; but that the influence by which the effect is produced is direct from the Holy Spirit, and that it must be permanent in order to maintain the effect, is so manifestly the doctrine of Christ and his apostles, that we must resort to the most unlicensed interpretations and unbridled paraphrases to make in- numerable texts give out a contrary sense. For how shall we understand the " union of the vine and the branches," if we do not admit, that it teaches the communication and the supply of the principle of life, growth, and fruitfulness ? How is it thatvjj^irist " manifests himself to his disciples as he ooes not unto the world," unless in the direct influences of his Spirit? For if this manifestation were but the un- veiling of the truth of his doctrine to them, it would render wholly unintelligible the promise which im- mediately follows, that " he and the Father would come to them, and make their abode with them." How, too, shall we understand the Spirit's office, on XIX the theory of indirect influence? Shall we confine it to the apostles, and confound ordinary with extraordi- nary operations ; and come to the conclusion, that the Holy Spirit, who was to abide '■^ for ever" with the church, has now left it, because " prophecies have ceased," " tongues have failed," and miraculous powers have been no longer vouchsafed? And if we, on the contrary, admit, that " the promise of the Fa- ther" is still shed upon them that believe, what does the misleading, and indeed the absurd doctrine of the iridirect influence of the Spirit mean, more than what might be expressed in better and more honest phrase, the influence of the vaord ? A notion which involves the proud and self-righteous conclusion, that whatever the word is to me more than it is to ano- ther, whether of direction, comfort, or sanctity, it becomes so solely, because I, by my own unaided efforts, give it its efiicacy ; and that, instead of being regenerated by a divine power using the word as the instrument, (which is the way in which St. Paul states the case,) I have regenerated myself by its instrumentality. Such glorious truths as, that Christ '* dwells in the hearts" of true believers " by faith:" that he is the vital " Head" which gives vigour to every member of his body mystical ; that by him '* we draw near to God ;" and that there is " a communion of the Holy Spirit," — cannot be so reduced and neutralized, so long as we apply the same prin- ciples of interpretation to the Bible, as by the com- mon consent of all are applied to all other writings. They shine there with an effulgence which nothing can darken, and they are, in their obvious meaning and import, a blessed part of the daily experience of XX all truly devout and spiritual persons, and have been so in all ages. So they have been understood from the very days of the apostles, and the church has never wanted witnesses, even in the worst ages, to confirm the truth of a conscious indwelling of God as the fountain of life in man, by their own experience. There is however no small danger, lest, whilst we admit the important truth, that Christ is so " the way to the Father," as that through faith in him we rise into a real and vital fellowship of spirit with God, we should hold it too generally, and with too much de- pendence upon the means by which that state is at- tained and confirmed. "We are prone to self-depen- dence, and are too often led to place some instrument between ourselves and God, under the influence of those plausibilities which this creaturely spirit is so ingenious to devise. Much of what is often said, for instance, on the adaptation of certain instruments and aids of piety to effect the purposes for which they are instituted, leads undesignedly, no doubt in many, to detach the soul from its simple and direct dependence upon God, and in that proportion to interrupt or weaken its intercourse with him, in whom are all our " springs," and from whose immediate communica- tions alone our spiritual supplies can be received. The very truth which is contained in the notion of the adaptation and fitness of that class of instruments which are commonly called " the means of grace," to elFect their ends, does itself become dangerous un- less clearly apprehended, and held under its proper limitations. There is in them an infinite and ador- able wisdom. The nature of the truths which the written word of God exhibits—the varied style and xxi dress in which they are arranged — and the examples which Uve and act before us in the sacred page, em- bodying them in real character, and showing their effects in real consequence, are all adapted to produce correspondent impressions upon our minds ; to rouse by greatness, to melt by tenderness, to constrain by conviction, to animate by action. The same word delivered to man by the living ministry, assumes to itself other adaptations. The living voice, the flow of feeling, the power of reasoning or eloquence, the solemnity of appeal from an ambassador of heaven, or tlie persuasive counsels of the anxious pastor, who watches over our souls as one who must give account, have all their fitness to produce effect, and appeal to something which God has planted in the very consti- tution of our nature receptive of the impression. There is a calm in the Sabbath which seems to hush the cares of life, and to prepare the spirit for the pro- per work of the hallowed day ; there is an impressive- ness in the solemn assemblies of God's house; and there is in the act of prayer itself, whether offered in private and public, an approach to the Divine Ma- jesty so direct, and so necessary a recognition of our own dependence, that to be wholly indifferent in such a service, would seem to require no small struggle with our own feelings and resolutions. All this, and even much more, must be admitted; but the conclusion to which some appear to have come, that the divinely appointed instruments of our religious improvement work the effect by some natural efficacy of their own, operating upon the constitution of our nature, is surely to be guarded against. This view has also been ex- tended to prayer, which is sometimes said to prepare xxii the heart for the divine blessing } not relatively, as offered in confession of our own wants, and as an act of trust in God through Christ; but morally, as either giving us a fitness to receive his grace, or as producing in us, by a reflex influence, those changes of principle and temper which it is the office of that grace to effect by its own direct agency. Even faith has thus also been converted into a moral instrument ; and those moral effects have been attributed to a firm and indubitable intellectual assent to truth, which are only derivable from Christ alone, who is the proper object of our trust, in order that He, and not our faith in him, may work them in us. Alas ! that we should ever forget our own total insufficiency, and the inefiicacy of mere instrumen- tal causes, when the fact is, that we are nothing, and that without Christ we can do nothing, however numerous or fitting the instruments may be to which we resort. Even prayer and faith, when rightly un- derstood, necessarily imply this. We solicit help from another, because we need that which we cannot ourselves supply ; and our trust in another, supposes that we are bowed down under an imbecility, which renders it necessary for us to repose on a power higher than ourselves. If we ask light from Christ, we surely confess our darkness ; if deliverance, that ours is a bondage which no other power but his can break ; if purity, that we are unholy beyond all recovery by any process of moral healing which we can put into operation upon ourselves ; if we trust in his perfect atonement, we profess at least to acknowledge a per- fect demerit in man ; and if we receive in faith the promise of the Holy Spirit, we confess that the ex- XXlll ercise of a supernatural influence alone is adequate to raise this prostrate nature of ours into any degree of moral elevation, and to advance our restoration into a " meetness for the inheritance of the saints in light." If, therefore, in these more spiritual exercises of prayer and faith, which are the real efforts of a soul to lay hold on God, we see nothing but mere instituted instrumentality no moral efficiency at all in them- selves, but the simple means by which a creature all guilt and helplessness, comes to God through Christ, that he maybe made to him " wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption ;" of all which he is the only source, and all which must be imparted by him, through whatever channel he may please to convey them : then surely the more external ordinances and circumstances of religion, wisely ordered as they are, and calculated to awaken attention, feeling, and in- terest, by their adaptation to produce impression by laws fixed in our nature, are still in themselves but mere instruments having no efficiency, but as they lead us from ourselves, and from themselves also, to God in Christ. Even the impression they produce, that is, the feeling they inspire, is as instrumental in its character as that by which it is produced. It is greatly delusive to rest in this as an end ; and thus to mistake mere excitement for piety, and sentiment for devotion. These are natural effects ; but they are seized by the Holy Spirit, to be made the instru- ments of effects beyond themselves. By the facul- ties of our nature, he works his own renewing process in the heart of man, but still it is only by them ; making use of the convictions of the judgment to in- fix those deeper convictions of the conscience,, in XX iv which only the true vitaUty of truth is felt ; and, through natural sentiment, implanting a feeling dis- tinct in its nature, though operating through that, to new and higher objects. Thus the love of God is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost, and car- ries the soul habitually upward in heavenly affections, devout thoughts, and uninterrupted intercourses, to the perennial fountain of spiritual and eternal life, in- finitely beyond the range of the natural faculty which is thus called into action : thus the ordinary bene- volence of nature is heightened into the lofty grace of charity to man ; and thus true zeal is inspired, the principle of which is a restless jealousy for the hon- our of God, attempered by the constraining love of Christ, and tenderest sympathy for the immortal in- terests of our fellow- sinners ; attributes which the zeal of some who have given their bodies to be burned" may perhaps have wanted. Behold, then, the way of God laid open through the Mediator; the access to the mercy-seat, through the rending of the vail; and God "communing" with man, so as to receive his prayers, and to " shine forth from between the cherubim," in rays of light and influence upon his worshipper, in token of accep- tance. If, by the habitual actings of faith, I dwell there, " I dwell in God, and God in me." I seek him in his sanctuaries, and I find, not well-com- posed ordinances, and the merely natural sentiments of awe and delight which they are calculated to in- spire ; but I find the Lord of the temple himself, and know that there is now a more glorious sense in which he dwells with man upon earth, than in the visible Sihechinah which filled the temple of Solo- XXV mon. If, in the exercise of the same faith, I turn inward into my own heart, I find him there, for " he dwells with you, and shall be in you." Here is my strength to do, and my strength to suffer ; here is that " well of living water" promised by our Lord, " springing up into everlasting life." There I under- stand how " I live ; yet not I, but Christ that liveth in me." I cannot feel solitude, for God is with me ; my happiness is no longer bound up with external circumstances, for the highest source of my comfort lies beyond the reach of the accidents of the joys and sorrows of this outward scene ; and there is a quiet haven of interior peace into which the waves of an agitated world are not suffered to roll, or if they ruffle the surface by their distant shock, they pene- trate not into its depths of assured tranquillity : *' Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee." Here too is my guard against temptation ; the mani- fested presence of God is the life of the conscience, as his teaching is its lights and gives to it a sensitive- ness which shrinks at the slightest touch of sin. The desires too which are thus awakened are bound- less, as expatiating in an infinite good, ever giving and never exhausted : perfect satisfaction, and insa- tiate aspirings after richer supplies and nearer inter- course, strangely then unite in a heart which is at once at rest and restless ; ever fixed as on a moveless rock, and yet " ever forgetting things behind, ajid pressing to those things which are before." Thus it is that the sanctification of the soul ever advances under the direct influence of the Sanctifier. Be- holding his glory with unveiled face, and coming thus B 59 xxvi under its transforming energy, " we are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." This is that true Christianity, which is neither merely formal, nor merely doctrinal. It has forms and it has doctrines; but to both it adds vitality. Thus the gulf is passed which the original offence placed between God and his creatures, and it is passed through Christ " the way," and by the instru- mentality of that trust in him which is produced by the agency of the Holy Spirit, in a broken and con- trite heart. Yet glorious as this, the true and " hid- den life" of a Christian, now is, it is but incipient life. It puts much into present possession, but such is " the fulness" of the grace of Christ, that this is but a pledge, " an earnest" of that " eternal life" which is the " prize of our high calling." What that is we must die to know. How fresh, how bright, how copious, how deep the stream of the river of the water of life, clear as crystal, unmingled with any imperfection of earth, which flows from under the throne of God and the Lamb, we "shall know when we shall be ever with the Lord." The various actings of this divine principle in man, as influencing the affections and the temper, the purposes and pursuits, and the various branches of that conduct upon which the laws of Christ place their control, are admirably jiortrayed, and persua- sively enforced by the excellent Author of the follow- ing work ; and it is in the well-proportioned union of all these, that its truth and power consists ; for, to unite the contemplative and the active life, is the great concern of every one who nobly aims at prov- xxviL ing the height and depth of true Christianity. There are errors on both sides. The Ascetics and Mystics of every age have gone to an extreme ; whilst those who give so small a proportion of time to the duties of religious retirement, as to expend more vital energy in external exercises, than is sup- plied by an internal converse with God, go to the other. Doubtless, along with errors of judgment, with superstition, and some degree of real fanaticism, we must allow to many, who, in former ages, sought the highest degree of holiness and joy in a contem- plative abstraction, a sincere and an ardent piety. In all, however, the fire burned dimly, because it was not fanned by a change of atmosphere ; it was not in human nature to have its affections held in that state of extreme tension, which tlieir notions of entire devotedness demanded ; and judging from the writ- ings they have left, and their biographical records, their religious warfare acquires a very different char- acter to that conflict to which we are summoned by our Lord and his apostles. Their contest was not with sinful appetites, only with innocent ones ; their following of Christ was not in the rough and arduous paths of outward service, but in the concentration of powerful and pathetic meditations upon his cross and passion. The arena of spiritual conflict was, in their case, wholly within ; and a great part of the struggle consisted in resisting the languor of overdone atten- tion, arresting the vagrancy of volatile thoughts, and rousing the ardour of feelings which had expended themselves by their very intensity. We have no class of persons among Protestants who exactly an- swer to these ; but there are perhaps not a few whose B 2 xxviii reliirion, like theirs, is wholly of the defensive charac- ter; and who, in pious retirement, in prayers, in read- in