4J2. THE PHILOSOPHY OF UNBELIEF IN MORALS AND RELIGION, AS DISCOVERABLE IN THE FAITH AND CHARACTER OF MEN. BY THE REV. HERMAN HOOKER, M. A. There is a peculiar evidence of divine truth which you never see— see wh a r m« NEW YORK: ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, No. 285 BROADWAY. 1850. ^ H5l Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, BY ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, In the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New York. PREFACE. Numbers live in the neglect of religion, without know- ing or considering the cause of their indifference to it. They profess to receive the Bible as the word of God, and if they do so, their conduct is inexplicable and op- posed to all reason and analogy,, There is, therefore, ground for presuming they are in error on this point ; and if they are so, it is indispensable that they should be undeceived, as a first step to a correct understanding of their spiritual condition. This incongruity between the accredited faith and the conduct of men is so com- mon, and in degrees so various, that it is to be feared we are ceasing to regard it as an exception to a general law— as something monstrous in practice — and are satisfying ourselves with the virtue of acknowledging it, or per- haps of declaiming against it, while we take not the trouble to inquire into the reason and enormity of it. This inquiry the author has endeavoured to conduct — with good design he knows — with what good effect he leaves for the reader to judge. As the discussion ad vances, much is said, referring to the varieties of human VI PREFACE. character, and to the secret operations and tendencies of unbelief, suitable to be reflected on by devout believers, and yet not ultimately, it is thought, impertinent to the steady design of the work. Having shown, or presumed, that numbers may justly be denominated infidels, who do not so consider them- selves, and are not generally so considered by others, notice is taken of the confirmation which this view receives from the Scriptures, and of the adaptation of the doctrines of Christianity to the known nature and wants of man, and to the ends which it proposes to effect, and in the accomplishment of which man is made, what he is not and cannot be in any other way, both blessed and deserving to be so. The inference, then, which is more or less disclosed in every branch of the subject, is, that if our views of Christianity do not renovate our natures and sway our conduct, it is because they are delusory, the mere allow- ances which an evil heart has made in its own vindica- tion, and in which it loses sight of itself and of God together, while looking as at an image of its own cre- ation, and which it kneels to and worships as having qualities that are in accordance with itself — which yet itself has imparted, or rather are itself again. Philadelphia, June 28, 1836. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Vanity of man separate from his immortality — The chances of being finally lost — Plans and hopes of safety — Strange con- trariety of faith and practice — Deep delusion- — The art and success of spiritual foes — Infidelity not readily owned — Per- sons chargeable with it in practice — The Reader — His can- dour — His interest in the subject — Its difficulty no discou- ragement 13 CHAPTER II. Moral character and speculative belief — Man consists of a dou- ble nature, half angel and half beast — Natural process down- ward — Tendency to be less and less spiritual in the affec- tions and the understanding — Views of moral excellence, how acquired — Standard of comparison — Moral attributes of the Deity — Danger of misconceiving them — Proneness to error from the corruption of human nature — From the limited faculties of the mind — A case supposed — Diffidence of our capacity to judge correctly of moral qualities, the truest wis- dom 24 CHAPTER III. Various modes in which human character is disclosed — Preva- lence of hypocrisy — Its tendency to self-deception and infi- delity — Morality of secular men a proof of their infidelity — Devotees of fashion — Dignity of their vocation — Their irreli- gion — Their freedom from the affectation of goodness — Their errors — The best virtues of unconverted men seem not to 7 b CONTENTS. Page acknowledge a God — They infer the greatest misconception of personal character — They centre in creatures, and afford the clearest evidence of a faithless heart — Peculiar depravity of such persons — Their sinning without a motive — Things which try men's souls — Their complaints and their preten- sions illustrate their infidelity — Their self-importance and misery — Contrast of their reasoning and conduct with the suggestions of faith — Happiness of a mind resting on God. . . 40 CHAPTER IV. Moral worth of incidental actions and opinions — Their pecu- liarity with reference to the objects of faith — Proper estimate of worldly interests — Singularity of religious indecision — Its contrariety to reason and analogy — Casual devotion — -Its ab- surdity—Its action considered as the cause and fruit of infi- delity — All true faith considered as necessarily influential in proportion to the value of its object — Prevalent inattention to the Scriptures — Connexion between faith and knowledge — Infidelity of those who give but a casual attention to religion — Their hope — Their conduct contrasted with their faith and caution in business affairs — Their singular inconsistency — The faith and practice of a nominal believer compared wdth those of a professed infidel — What there is to choose between them — Religious pretenders — Their liability to self-delusion from the facility with w T hich they gain credit 81 CHAPTER V. Error in estimating our own qualities a cause of our miscon- ceiving the divine perfections — Obstacles to correct views of ourselves — Readiness with which men confess the evil of their hearts — Process by which men are reconciled to evil ways — Causes which perpetuate this delusion— Their unob- served operation — Tendency of worldly companions and amusements to foster infidelity — This danger inferred from our mental constitution — Presumption of those who disre- gard it — Delicacy of religious sentiment — Its easy decay — Peril of virtue and faith where the influence of religion is dis- CONTENTS. 9 couraged — Great changes in moral character occurring with- out our notice — Blindness to the infidelity consequent upon them — Difficulty of breaking from worldly society — Things implied in our attachment to it — The prospect presented to the mind — Worldliness — Practical atheism — Peculiar dan- gers of youth — Whether religion is an easy practice — What is essential to make it so — Its nature — Its requisitions agree- able to the truest philosophy 113 CHAPTER VI. Want of self-knowledge a cause of error in religion — Self-love — Examples of its deceptive operation — Its opposition to cor- rect views of truth — Perils of the state to which it carries the mind — Difficulty of understanding this state, and of escaping from it — Errors that grow out of it — Its incompatibility with moral improvement — Two weighty inferences — Sense of guilt always slight in habitual sins — Great sins rendered sin- less in our eyes by a continuance in them — Secret sins — The peculiar danger of them — Their effect on the moral percep- tions — The false security and infidelity which insensibly spring from them — The folly of deciding on our character from the opinion of others — Deceptive appearances — Prayer of a Roman worshipper — Great inconsistencies in practice — Instruction drawn from the conduct of the thief and the rob- ber — The moral decency of their example compared . with that of others — Effect of sinning on the judgment— Errors in one respect leading to error in all others — Reflections 189 CHAPTER VII. Influence of character on belief — Direct application of the rea- soning in the preceding chapter — Analogies between what men think of themselves and what they think of others — These considered as the cause and proof of infidelity — Indif- ference of men to religion not accidental, but the result of settled opinions — Mental processes by which these opinions are acquired — The deductions of sense taken for those of rea- son—Reason held in the service of sense— Singular love of 10 CONTENTS. the world — Our own depravity approved when it goes to excess in one direction, yet hated under other and lower ma- nifestations — Idolatry — Analogy of its forms to human cha- racter — Condition of the heart — Its changes great, yet imper- ceptible — Nature, not counsel, taken for a guide in spiritual perplexity — Its inventions — Its resentment of the truth — Its proneness to clothe God in its own likeness — Spiritual idol- atry — Analogies bearing on the general subject — True basis of practical infidelity 170 CHAPTER VIII. Singularities m human conduct — Importance of knowing our- selves — Proneness to possess God with our own likeness- Causes of delusion in our judgment of him — Application of the subject to the reader — Reasons for distrusting his own opinions shown by various analogies— Continued argument with him — Separate responsibility of the head and heart — Peculiar evidence of divine truth — Difficulties in the way of believing — When they are insuperable — How overcome — Misconceptions of the gospel — Necessity of divine grace — Questions and troubles about human ability considered — Of- fice and sacrifice of Christ, how estimated — Characteristics of the times — Needful despair — Proofs of infidelity 20? CHAPTER IX. Man treated as a rational being in all the divine dispensations — No mysteries of feeling in regard to the doctrines of grace — Reason a competent judge of things necessary to salvation — Hinderances to its right exercise — Our difficulty with religion our fault — Contrariety of the sentiments and practice of Christ to human nature a ground of unbelief — Our incapa- city to comprehend and believe the gospel — How acquired — How to be removed — Divine grace attainable when truly desired — Acts of holy obedience free and rational — Dispensa- tions of grace encouraging in every scriptural view of them — Power of truth — Misconceptions of it the same thing as infi- delity — Testimony of the Scriptures — Striking guilt of sin- ners in likening God to themselves 236 CONTENTS. 11 CHAPTER X. Page Inferences growing out of or consistent with the principles of the preceding discussion — Doctrines of religion viewed in relation to our spiritual necessities — Mode of justification — Due esteem of divine grace — Operation of faith — -Its effects rational — Agency of the Spirit — His fruits contrasted with the works of the flesh — Just deductions of reason — Contra- riety of Christianity to our corrupt nature a proof of its divine origin — Reason competent to judge of this — The assistance it gives to faith — Obligation it imposes on us to believe strongly — Justness of our thoughts of God depending on the purity of our hearts — Conceptions of holy men contrasted with those of the wicked — Necessity of a light that tries and purines 260 POPULAR INFIDELITY. CHAPTER I. Vanity of man separate from his immortality — The chances of bekig finally lost — Plans and hopes of safety — Strange contrariety of faith and practice — Deep delusion — The art and success of spi- ritual foes — Infidelity not readily owned — Persons chargeable with it in practice — The Reader — His candour — His interest in the subject — Its difficulty no discouragement. The transient nature of his existence, as well as the little he can know and do at best, stamps an in- expressible meanness on man, if we contemplate him aside from the hope of immortality. But regarding him as destined to live beyond the present scene, to live in bliss or wo, in glory or dishonour, according to the character of his agency here, every thing about him seems important. Indeed, the danger is, that our respect for him as a being of this high destiny, may hinder our being duly shocked with his de- generacy, when he voluntarily forsakes the end of 2 13 14 POPULAR INFIDELITY. his existence, and assumes a character, which, had it been his by creation, would only awaken surprise and distrust of the wisdom of his Creator. We should, in that case, see nothing in it for admiration, but every thing for wonder and dissatisfaction. But, mean as it would then appear, we now seem to be little offended that the multitude live as without knowledge or concern for their immortality. The hope they have of living for ever, and of answering ends suitable to so noble a design, serves, it may be, to raise them in their own estimation, but has no control over their pursuits ; and looking to their im- providence and their passion for sensible things, we see little prospect- of their recovery to spiritual life. This, however, is not the worst of their condition. They have lost all right perceptions of their own character and of the objects which they must under- stand and love as the appointed means of renewal, and yet follow their convictions, such as they are, without doubting that they are right; so that the chief danger that they will fall short of their calling, seems to arise from their disposition 'to order their own steps/ and to confide in their own views, with- out making due allowance for their nature and its proneness to misconception. Almost every one has a plan or hope of being saved, which supposes his character to be very POPULAR INFIDELITY. 15 different from what it really is. We never find any one living in the quiet expectation of being for ever depraved and miserable, but the great majority are living quietly in a practice that tends directly and strongly to this result. They continue in a practice which they pretend not to justify as innocent, and can hardly be said to consider as sinful, yet a practice which has confessedly deceived thousands, and in which thousands have confessedly perished. Still, they apprehend no evil, and cherish a secret expectation that all is to turn out well with them in the end. They have no idea of things as they are; they judge not of themselves as of others ; they are in a deep sleep, and the most that can often be done, is to keep them wakeful enough for worldly dreams; and did they but think them dreams, they would soon perceive themselves poor and destitute, without any reasonable concern or action for relief. But they do not so think ; the god of this world surrounds them with a false efful- gence, which confuses their vision, and gives a decep- tive appearance to every object, and the true light which clears the reason and the affections ' shines not unto them/ Like some creatures we know, they seem to see best through a medium which is dark to nobler beings, and that object which should give light and joy is without glory to them, lulling 16 POPULAR INFIDELITY. them to slumber, and justly making them a spectacle and wonder to all others. But the rest they have, is but a sleeping storm; the security they feel, is but blindness to danger ; the freedom they claim, is but a slavery grown easy and natural to them ; the victory they are ready to arro- gate to themselves, is but the triumph of their foes, in which they are permitted to participate, only to complete it. Their prison and chains are not fully prepared, and they are encouraged to assume the honours and the airs of victors, only to finish, the deception, and to make them the more loyal to their masters. Thus their spiritual enemies improve every advantage, while they make no resistance, and have no warfare as they view it. They have served Satan so well that his service is freedom, and no stoop for them, so long as they are not required to call him master; and, as it is his service, not his title, which he wishes them to own, they have no disa- greement. Power of darkness and delusion, he first darkens the mind to delude it, and then perpetuates the spell by setting it off for a fancy-piece of light, flattering the subject of it with marks of reason and excellence, which he indulges him to call his own. Nothing short of the prevalence of some delusion, deeper and more influential than men are generally aware of, is sufficient to account for this indifference POPULAR INFIDELITY. 17 to spiritual concerns. Writers may ascribe it to infidelity, but the bare evidence of the Christian system does not affect it : that system is professedly believed by the generality of those who manifest this indifference. They disclaim infidelity as a crime, as a baseless fabric, and are shocked at the bare name of' it as applied to them. Indeed, if you could persuade them that they are infidels, they would not feel safe for a moment, and their first inquiry would not be for truth and evidence, but for a way of escape from guilt. But they have always had a respect for the Bible as an inspired book ; the existence of a Supreme Being, with such attributes and purposes as it ascribes to him, they have never doubted : and they are not now to be convicted of infidelity. That they have not a saving belief of these truths they admit; but then they have such a belief as they deem respectful to them, and likely to lead on to it. They might, perhaps, be convinced that they have not such a belief as deters them from sins and crimes which set God and his word at defiance ; still they insist that it is a belief. It ap- pears to have little or no influence on their practice, still they regard it as a very important affair, and would not part with it on any account. They ac- knowledge their accountability and sinfulness, and, though sinning daily, claim that they are less daring, 2* 18 POPULAR INFIDELITY. and more innocent and respectful, than those who deny both. They have the happy way of resolving the matter so that they keep the thing, and shun the name of it. It is satisfactory to them, not that it has any reason in it; not that it proves any superior goodness in them; not indeed that it restrains them from any iniquity ; but that it tallies with their household notions and conceptions of the beauty of faith, and the deformity of its opposite. There are two sorts of virtuous, not pious, people, which deserve some designation; — those, who, from a natural delicacy of their physical and mental struc- ture, run virtuously without a principle of action, or a rule of judgment, exhibiting the most attractive graces of thought and feeling, responding to every call of sympathy and regard, and bearing the richest fruits, which yet are as 6 apples of gold in pictures of silver/ merely representations of the beautiful reality: — and those, who, without any uncommon advantage of nature, or exemption from temptation, have preserved a certain health and harmony of ex- ercise in their moral powers, and kept themselves within the attraction of virtue, its colours not greatly changing in their view, and they, though captives to the powers of the present world, yet retaining some freedom of the spirit, and dwelling fn a kind of mid- heaven, whence they look down with a conscious- POPULAR INFIDELITY. 19 ness of superiority to the rest of their species as needful to sustain them in their elevation, as it is indicative of their imperfection. Thus it is possible so to yield the heart to the claims of justice and humanity, and so to occupy the mind with ennobling objects and investigations, as to preserve, in a com- mendable degree, the freshness of the moral feelings. But this is all a night- growth, liable to perish in the morning; a painted edifice, outwardly new and beau- tiful, while its timber is struck with decay, and will bend and break with the storm. A discarding of God and his counsel, self-reliance, self-aggrandize- ment, atheism, is the life of the structure: it is the heart which conveys vigour to all its living extremes. It was never reared, and it can never subsist, with- out the service of pride, vanity, a love of promotion, and the praise of men; and these do not more cor- rupt than enfeeble every thing they fashion and control. They have no part in the c workmanship' of God: 1 they do not so much as seek his aid, or acknowledge him in any of their doings. These remarks may serve to characterize great numbers who would start at the charge of infidelity; who value themselves for virtues,, which, on a close inspection, appear to infer a want of faith ; who, to say the least, live in the habitual neglect of religion, 1 Eph. ii. 10, good men are called his ' workmanship.' 20 POPULAR INFIDELITY. without knowing or considering the ground of their indifference to it. These points will, in course, be the subject of investigation. We can presume on no ability to do justice to our conceptions of the subject upon which we are enter- ing; much less, that we entertain conceptions wor- thy of its importance. But if we be able in any measure to clear the way of the reader, and start such trains of thought as, when pursued out and applied with the faithfulness of an honest inquirer, shall reconcile him to a just view of his condition, we shall have no fear that he will consider his time ill spent, though the chief advantage he gains should in justice be accredited to himself. More than this; if he shall allow to us the credit of an interest in his welfare, and deem that the amiable, and a sense of duty the graver, reason of our inquiries, we will not be so injurious to the courtesy of such judgment, as to suspect that slight disappointments may deter him from pursuing them, while there is a possibility of attaining the good they propose. If he has duly considered what others are, though he has not so duly considered what he is, he will not forget that he is of the same nature with them; nor will it appear a thing incredible that he should be convicted of faults and errors in his estimate of himself, which, if they be more refined and less POPULAR INFIDELITY. 21 palpable, are not less destructive than those he sees in others. Indeed, should he prove to be gravely- criminal, he will not think any previous suspicion of it an impertinence, or consider himself as wronged by- conviction, but only favoured with a discovery which candour and interest oblige him to welcome as the dawning of a better mind, a coming to himself which not more necessarily precedes all right rea- soning than all spiritual excellence; — from which last he may have gone so far, that the loss itself is not mourned, while the miseries of it are vainly felt and deplored. It would be an unjustifiable aspersion, if he be known to be even well affected towards himself, to suppose he would quarrel with a truth, or shut his eyes to the evidence of it, when it could be improved to his own exaltation, and to the fur- therance of his Creator's will. We would be too jealous of the honour of our nature, claiming nothing for its goodness, to presume him thus destitute of all decency of regard for himself, and for the divine authority and wisdom. But if we grant him to be of a considering humour, not ready to break with his Maker for eternity, not doubting his justice, his goodness, his absolute perfection, and still, not seeing them as realities, not affected by what he believes, or rather, is apprehensive of, — it is not too much to expect, it is the least that can with civility be looked 22 POPULAR INFIDELITY. for, that he will see he cannot with any show of reason vindicate his continuance in a state wherein he blushes to own himself either the friend or the foe of God, but wishes to be ranked as standing on anomalous and neutral ground; for this would be but a nonsuit of his claims to any other than a brute import- ance, since it is only when we are without reason that we can be without character. We may think we feel indifferent to an object, but if that object be one of incomparable perfection and interest, it must have claims upon our highest regard, and, when these claims are enforced to the exclusion of all inferior objects which we have chosen in its place, it will be found, that not to have loved this the noblest and best of all, is not a mere worthless indif- ference, but the cherishing of the elements of an unappeasable enmity to it. It is not more clearly a part of the great design of the universe that all bodies should tend to a common centre, than it is the chief design of rational creatures that they should tend with strongest affection to the greatest and most worthy object of such regard; nor is this law of the material system more needful and proper to its destined action, than that of spirits to their safe and rational action, while both alike are allowed to attract smaller objects, and to feel their attraction, yet only as parts of a whole, and in pursuance of this POPULAR INFIDELITY. 23 their chiefest end. Why, therefore, one is not in love with this object, but goes counter to the ordi- nance of his nature, as well as to the claims and commands of Him whose claims could not be greater nor his commands more reasonable, and whose wills concerning us, expressing both his perfection and intending ours, may be summed up in one, 'be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect/ enjoining on us his likeness in order to our participating in his felicity, — is a question that may reasonably claim his first attention; and which, now that he deems it an unjustifiable reflection upon his faith, to infer that he denies its importance, he should be presumed to approach with candour and self-distrust, and as caring less to obtain that which he cannot keep, than to possess himself of that good which he knows he cannot lose. 24 POPULAR INFIDELITY. CHAPTER II. Moral character and speculative belief — Man consists of a double nature, half angel and half beast — Natural process downward — Tendency to be less and less spiritual in the affections and the understanding — Views of moral excellence, how acquired — Stand- ard of comparison — Moral attributes of the Deity — Danger of misconceiving them — Proneness to error from the corruption of human nature — From the limited faculties of the mind — A case supposed — Diffidence of our capacity to judge correctly of mora qualities, the truest wisdom. It was stated in the outset, that the great danger of our losing the chief and only durable good arose principally from a too great trust in our own judg- ment of spiritual things, without duly considering the influence of our corrupt nature upon the per- ceptions and decisions of the mind. The operation of moral character upon speculative belief, though difficult to detect in particular cases, is yet in some measure understood and admitted by all. Both our sensibility to moral qualities and our perception of them may change and decay from neglect, or be choked and overrun by the growth of other and opposing principles. "Man, as he consists of a double nature, ' flesh and spirit/ so is he placed in a middle rank, betwixt an angel, which is a spirit, POPULAR INFIDELITY. 25 and a beast, which is flesh; partaking of the qualities and performing the acts of both. He is angelical in his understanding, in his sensual affections bestial; and to which of these he most inclineth and con- formeth himself, that part wins more of the other, and gives a denomination to him: so as he, that was before half angel and half beast, if he be drowned in sensuality, hath lost the angel, and is become a beast; if he be wholly taken up with heavenly meditations, he hath quit the beast, and is improved angelical. It is hard to hold an equal temper; either he must degenerate into a beast, or be advanced to an angel. Mere reason sufficiently apprehends the difference of the condition." 1 It will not, perhaps, be doubted, it is so evident that it will not here be reasoned, that the process in every man is naturally downward, to the gratification of his inferior nature, and to the love and pursuit of sensible things. As the conse- quence of this, it is equally evident that he does not see either the objects of sense or those of faith in their true character. He is in the case of the blind man, who, when asked if he saw aught, was sure he saw something, which yet was not a proper sight, for he saw c men as trees/ He sees wealth, beauty, and honour; but it is not a proper sight, because he sees not all about them; he sees them not as a snare, 1 Bishop Hall's < Select Thoughts,' No. Ixii. 3 26 POPULAR INFIDELITY. and does not sanely estimate their use to him. He sees the pleasures and enticements of sense; yet it is a question whether he sees them or no, beeause he sees them only as harmless and desirable: there is no reason in the sight. He sees all temporal goods; but we can hardly say whether he has a sight of them or no, because he sees them not as they are; he sees them ' as trees walking;' he does not see the reason and beauty of them; he does not see them as beams and proofs of that perfection of them, w T hich is reserved as c glory to be revealed/ But, becoming less and less spiritual in his affections and under- standing, the derangement in his sight of spiritual objects must be still greater. What was lovely and tasteful in moral excellence gradually disappears, and the very virtues comprised in it are for the most part mean and spiritless in his view: still, he reasons about them, and fully confides in his own decisions. He never doubts the soundness of his views, but there is an inconsistency between them and his feelings and conduct, which does not appear with regard to any other subject. If we can find the cause of this, all difficulty will vanish, and we shall be able to account for much, in the practice of men, which seems not to be compatible with any just appreciation of their own welfare, or of the charac- ter of God; much, which is precisely as we should POPULAR INFIDELITY. 27 suppose it would be, if the light that is in them were indeed darkness. We would not be understood to deny that men may have views of moral excellence much purer than their practice; but it is certain that their moral character does more or less modify their views, and, in this way, involve them in most dangerous errors. This truth may be discerned in the very process by which we arrive at a judgment of moral qualities. Our nearest approaches to the discovery of the ex- cellence of any object are made by comparing it with other objects, which are more or less excellent. In such a comparison, its advantage, or disadvantage, is the more visible, for the brightness or obscurity of those with which it is contrasted. Who, for instance, can discover a single colour on a fabric in which all colours are intermingled ? Who can have any proper ideas of degrees in benevolent actions, unless he has had, or witnessed in others, an exer- cise of malevolence ? Who can declare one counte- nance more beautiful than another, if he has not in his mind some standard of comeliness, with which to compare it ? It is thus evident that we must form our judgment of the distinctive excellence of objects, by the process of comparison. Let us, now, consider the probable effects of this process upon our notions of the moral attributes *8 POPULAR INFIDELITY. of God. These attributes must be designated by- words, commonly used and understood. Is he holy, just, and good ? If these terms are not understood in their application to the character of men, we shall understand them as little, when they are applied to God. Our notions of what is just or good in man will enter into all our reasonings, and form the basis of our thoughts concerning what is just or good in God. The same is true of all his moral attributes. They exist in him without defects; in man, with the blemishes of imperfection and guilt, and as dim sha- dows and uncertain semblances of the .divine reality. But the dimness and the uncertainty are all his own: nothing can be laid to the charge of God; he made man in his own image; the fountains of his being were all pure and his sight was perfect, till he cor- rupted them and chose his darkness, and now that abundant light is come, and a new way opened for his recovery of this blessedness, he is held fully responsible for the errors of his judgment. But while he remains in his darkness, and has not the relish of his blessedness, what errors may he not commit, associated as he is with beings of universal and acknowledged imperfection — himself naturally as imperfect, as the greatest profligate he beholds. We will suppose him called to contemplate the moral perfections of God, and that they are designated, POPULAR INFIDELITY. 29 as they must be, by terms, the import of which he has learned from their usage among men, as applied to themselves. In proportion as the acts or qualities in himself and others which are called just and good, are imperfect, will not his notions of God, formed according to the use of language in refer- ence to such acts or qualities, be inadequate and unworthy? If he believes, and doubtless he does, that he is as good as any around him, and, although imperfect in all his moral exercises, regards himself with complacency, upon what principles shall we conclude, that he will be likely to entertain, in these respects, higher views of God than of himself? We have thus far considered the effects of this process, as if man had no temptations or promptings to reason otherwise than honestly and impartially on the subject, and on this admission, we see no ground for inferring that his conclusions will be safe and correct. But when we come to make proper allowance for his self-love, his ignorance, his pas- sions, his false interests, there is no chance that he will be either impartial or correct in his judgment. If he forms and cherishes higher views of the divine excellence than of his own, he must be dissatisfied with himself, and that is disagreeable to nature; he must also live in perpetual fear of the divine displea- sure, and we commonly see no evidence of this in his 30 POPULAR INFIDELITY. conduct. The wickedest men are often the most self-complacent and fearless, and they must either not think at all on this subject, or think to no pur- pose. Their passions have become such reasoners, that they justify their own indulgence. An argument in favour of a chosen error, which would once have put them on their guard as being fallacious, is now sound and convincing; and, as they falsely estimate their interests, it would be the happiest, the best con- trivance in the world, if they could have every thing in their pleasures and pursuits as it now is, without disappointments, and with the approbation of God. If they could have the matter thus, depraved and unthankful as they are, they would have no self- reproaches, and no more shame than an angel that has never sinned. They would eat, drink, and in- dulge themselves, without a thought of God; they would think of any thing more than him, and indeed, he can gain their attention now, only by his terrors. He lays his hand upon them, and they tremble and look up, but no sooner is it removed and the shock past, than he is forgotten. This shows what they think of sin, and what bright reasoners they must be on moral excellence. Their passions, and inte- rests as they understand them, are in direct conflict with just views of the character of God, and to sup- pose that they will judge impartially in this case, is POPULAR INFIDELITY. 31 to give them credit for a disinterestedness which they never show in any other, and which, therefore, it is irrational to expect they will show in this. Their ignorance also renders them incompetent judges of the right or wrong of the divine proceed- ings. But they never think of this; they try them by their own standard of what is right and proper, with as much confidence as they would, if they knew every thing. This is a fruitful source of error, aud of disaffection towards the character of God. According to this rule many events appear to them unjust or cruel, and such as they confidently believe they should not have permitted, had they possessed the control of them. In this way, they easily rise in the esteem of their own character; they impute faults to God which they do not discover in them- selves, and turn his counsellors and reprovers, when- ever any thing crosses their wishes. What ought we to suppose such men think of God, especially when it is no secret what they think of themselves? Is it any wonder that they are not alarmed at their condition ? Do they believe in the true God, or have they created, fancied one, who needs their advice, or, at least, is in favour with their desires? From the limited nature of his faculties, it is also clear that he, who does not submit his heart and understanding to the w T ill of God, in full reliance 32 POPULAR INFIDELITY. upon the wisdom and equity of all his dispensations, will sometimes fall into the greatest errors, and the most confident questioning of the perfections of God. Suppose he witnesses a good action — one that is a certain duty in the instance before him, which, how- ever, in a little time, is found to have operated, in a way that could not be foreseen, injuriously to inte- rests more extensive and important than those which it immediately promoted, he cannot still doubt that the action was good, and it might have been good so far as the design of the agent is to be considered; he regarded it at the time so clearly a duty, that the neglect of it would have been thought proof of great imperfection, and, if it be supposed that an Omniscient Being, seeing all effects in their causes, would not have performed such an act, he would, certainly, have been thought imperfect and criminal. Independent, then, of any influence from association with depraved beings, if he has not that confidence in God which constrains him to believe that what he does, though it be apparently evil and injurious, is yet necessarily wise and good, he will often charge him with folly, and refuse submission to his will. When, therefore, we connect the ignorance of man with his estrangement from God, whose ways, according to the rule by which so ignorant a being determines what is good, will often appear to POPULAR INFIDELITY. 33 be evil, and consider also, that he is associated with beings as depraved as himself, whose virtues consti- tute a medium of deceitful and tarnished lustre with which he is prone to clothe all invisible agents, can we believe that he will form correct opinions of the moral attributes of God ? Is it reasonable to suppose that he will have just ideas; will so abstract himself from the imperfection that is in, and around, him, as to have vivid and pure conceptions of attributes of which he can have no notion, except as he compares them with such feelings within him as correspond to their nature, and with such shadows of them as are fleeting before him? If he could not learn the height and dimensions, the beauty and costliness of a temple, the like of which he had never seen, from surveying its ruins ; if he could not conceive pro- perly of the splendour of the sun, from observing the moon which reflects his light so dimly, that, with all the aid of surrounding stars, it is night when he is absent, how shall he judge of that 'excellent glory' which comprises and excels all others, by the blemished and dying lights within him — by the dust that remains, but scarcely glitters, amidst the ashes of the ruin in which he is involved ? What image will he frame from the materials before him? He hears not the voice of God, and no cloud, no symbol of his presence and glory, rests upon the mountains* 34 POPULAR INFIDELITY. Will he think of a c golden calf/ or will he bow to stocks and stones? He might do so, if education and custom had not taught him better. He must now have a more refined and specious idolatry ; he must have in speculation and profession what he calls the true God : but in heart, in worship, he will have images without number, if they may be with- out name. Even as he estimates the character of God, he makes him an image, a being not such as he is, but such as he would have him. If unrestrained by prevailing modes of belief and expression, and unassisted by divine revelation, he would conceive of God as loving what he loves; as hating what he hates; and as possessed of such virtues, and only such, as he possesses. Having never seen a being of greater excellence than himself, he would form all who are invisible, in his own image, and think of them only as propitious to his own cherished gratifications. This process of an evil heart, by which it likens all things to itself; this tendency to misconceive all truth at variance with his propen- sities, no education, no usage, no creed, can fully counteract. He takes his notions of the perfection of any moral quality, from that form of it in which it exists in his own mind ; and this individual com- plexion, this identity, he transfers to it, when he contemplates it in the character of God, If he has POPULAR INFIDELITY. 35 wrong notions of any moral quality in his own mind or practice, yet, as he delights to cherish them, as they are a part of himself, and the best he has, they will prevail in his conceptions of God, in whose attributes he is so sharp to discover the colours of his own character. There is no glass in which he will not see himself; no moral perfection which he will not blemish with his likeness. Hence the difficulty of convincing him of his guilt ; hence his bold, his complacent perseverance in the beaten ways of transgression; hence his dreams Of pardon, his venturing on the mercy of God, when his peril is greatest, and his sins call loudest for retribution. He believes indeed; he has a God and a faith in him, but it is something worse than infidelity, with respect to the word and attributes of that glorious Being whom it aspires to honour; it not only discredits what he is, and what he says, but it ascribes to him qualities which he has not, and which would bring him down to a level with his sinful creatures. It ' changes his truth into a lie, and his glory into an image made like unto corruptible man,' but he sees not the criminality of it; he gives it the name of reverent service, though he is himself too irreverent, too thoughtless, to know what he has done, or, knowing, to feel the evil of it. It is surely not well for the best of men to confide 36 POPULAR INFIDELITY. greatly in their understanding of spiritual excellence. Their imperfections will cast their shadows upon the brightest objects, and with all their desire to understand them aright, with their greatest readiness to suspect and accuse themselves, they cannot attain to this perfection ; they w T ill sometimes greatly dis- parage God by their unworthy, though their best, thoughts of him. Under pretence of celebrating one of his perfections, they may depress and wrong others, and make them repugnant the one to the other. What then shall be thought of the difficul- ties which sinners have with the character and dispensations of God? What shall be thought of their competence as judges of either? What con- cern should they have, lest, while they endeavour to frame a consistent notion of God, they leave out of it every thing that is truly a perfection; and, lest, through their proneness to make their conception of him agree with themselves, they cause it to disagree with him ? As an absolutely perfect Being, he comprehends in himself all real perfections, without contradiction or repugnance, and they can neither add to, or take from, him, without sullying his cha- racter, and abstracting from it less or more of that salutary influence which it is adapted to exert upon their hearts. It is suggested by all they know of themselves and others, and most consonant with POPULAR INFIDELITY. 37 Iheir caution in other cases, that they should be wary, lest they speak too hastily concerning what he does ; lest they magnify the greatness of his mercy so as to lose sight of their guilt and danger in it, or make it exclude other attributes which are essential to his perfection, and which concern them not less than that which they are most forward to extol. When difficulty with him occurs, it is but decent and modest to defer our opinion; it is stupid and arrogant not to suspect and inquire whether the fault be not wholly in our own minds; in that narrowness which cannot commodiously entertain the boundless perfec- tions of the Deity, and comprehend their points of union, or their union which completes the glory of each; in that indolence which declines patient in- vestigation and prevents us from doing what we can, or that self-conceit which disposes us to be satisfied with our convictions, right or wrong, and imposes on us an ability of doing what we cannot, of understand- ing that which is incomprehensible, of appreciating that which is so excellent that we do not relish it, and could not even bear to behold it aright. It is difficult to express the rashness of a sinner, who treads confidently, and figures largely, on this holy ground: more difficult to conceive that he can think it rational to confide in the worthiness and 4 3S POPULAR INF1DELITF. adequacy of his thoughts of God, especially if they do not disaffect him with himself and his sins. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon: that which excels, he has never seen; the other is but a reflection of it; it serves indeed to relieve the darkness of the night, but is not sufficient for the purposes of the day; nothing minute can be seen in it, and he, who should attempt to frame by it a nice and complicated structure, would be guilty of great presumption, and might be ruined, if not by the needless expense, yet by the dangerous action, of it. When a man has once established a character for holiness and virtue, if a known impostor brings even plausible accusations against him, and endea- vours, not without argument, and with great appa- rent sincerity, to show that he is no better than his corrupt and lawless neighbours, nobody would be- lieve him. To entertain for a moment such testi- mony, would not only be esteemed weak and un- charitable, but a just ground for charging us with a desire to believe it, or a likeness to the character falsely ascribed to the innocent. And when it is considered what an impostor the human heart is, what sinners experience of its impositions in them- selves and others, and what inducements they have, or rather imagine they have, to extenuate its POPULAR INFIDELITY. 39 wickedness, or shut their eyes to it, (which is so great that none but God can know it,) 1 how shall they justify it to their reason, or make their con- duct consistent with the rule of their judgment in other cases, when they arbitrarily confide in their perception and appreciation of the attributes of God ; in the testimony of their deceitful hearts to his spot- less holiness and untainted righteousness, which alike prove his displeasure with them, and require their displeasure with themselves! 1 The prophet Jeremiah, when contemplating the wickedness and deceitfulness of the heart, exclaims, * Who can know it V as much as to say, no man can. 40 POPULAK INFIDELITY. CHAPTER III. Various modes in which human character is disclosed — Prevalence of hypocrisy — Its tendency to self-deception and infidelity — Morality of secular men a proof of their infidelity — Devotees of fashion — Dignity of their vocation — Their irreligion — Their free- dom from the affectation of goodness — Their errors — The best virtues of unconverted men seem not to acknowledge a God — They infer the greatest misconception of personal character — They centre in creatures, and afford the clearest evidence of a faithless heart — Peculiar depravity of such persons — Their sinning without a motive — Things which try men's souls — Their com- plaints and their pretensions illustrate their infidelity — Their self- importance and misery — Contrast of their reasoning and conduct with the suggestions of faith — Happiness of a mind resting on God. Men disclose their real character in many ways. Small incidents, rightly considered, are very decisive of it. They show by signs and complaints, to which they are apt to attach little or no import, what is in them, and what they think of God and of his word. And what individuals disclose from any cause or *vent, is adequate proof of what all others, having the same principles, would do in a similar case. It is true that we are apt to look with surprise upon the conduct of others, as though we were incapable of doing what they have done, yet this is a feeling which universal observation condemns as founded POPULAR INFIDELITY. 41 in ignorance and self-deception, and as one of th« coverts in which an evil heart conceals itself fron our view. Were we to take the trouble to examine into our own history, we should find we have, from time to time, committed acts and sins, to which, at different periods, we had thought ourselves in no degree exposed, and have come to a hardi- hood in impenitence, and in neglect of our duties, which, in a season of more tenderness of con- science, we contemplated with horror. Every year of life is marked with changes of this character. They prove that w T e know little what we are, or what we shall be; that 'he that trusteth in his own heart is a fool,' no wiser for experience, and as con- fident of future goodness as if he had been only goodness itself from the beginning; — a 'fool/ be- cause all he can know is something concerning God or his creatures, and he knows nothing of either — nothing, certainly, that deserves the repute of under- standing. This deception is seldom so complete but it is known to himself, more seldom so well set off but it is seen by others to be a counterfeit of goodness, a confidence of virtue that does but express the loss of sensibility to it. Hypocrisy is often spun of a very fine thread, so fine that even the spinner can hardly tell it from the material it is designed to 42 POPULAR INFIDELITY. represent; but, when he affects to put it off as better than that, and to be surprised that that so often fails and disappoints our hopes, he may be suspected of too much interest in the matter to be honest. His confidence is the fruit of success, not of excellence: just as the counterfeiter is confident, and sets the standard value upon his spurious coin, both because it will bring him that, and because, if he lets it go for less, it would expose the secret of his profession. His assurance increases with the success and profit of his trade; he comes soon to think well of that and of himself; seeks the best society and connex- ions, under the colour and pretence of a well earned fortune and reputation ; and, taken by others for w T hat he affects to be, no one resents any suspicion of his honour or integrity more sharply, or is more clamorous against the misdeeds of others. But expose his crimes — bring him out of his conceal- ments — cover him with shame and contempt, and he will prove a mystery of iniquity; his capabilities surprise himself as well as others; all of the decency, the philanthropy, the seemingness of the gentleman, which he had, is gone at once, and his heart swarms with every species of crime and meanness. So it will turn out with all the more refined and less criminal degrees of hypocrisy. They conceal pow- ers of evil which, in certain emergencies, under POPULAR INFIDELITY. 43 great pressures, or for chances of great advantage, will lay by the mask, and exhibit a front of brass that shocks and shames every beholder. Examples of this are occurring every day through all the gra- dations of society, and in individuals as little sus- pected as any others; some of them so distinguished that everybody knows and speaks of them; but others, and by far the greater number, known only to those more directly affected by them. What we wish the reader to observe as pertinent to our inquiry is, that the preceding remarks show that men gene- rally have lower views of moral honesty, and of all the qualities essential to the fear of God and a re- spect for his revealed commands, than they pretend, or suppose, they have; and that their faith, as they will have it called, is not a faith in things as they are, but involves a radical misconception of the objects which it embraces. There is another view of the subject which, though disagreeable to nature, is yet worthy to be considered. All men are ready to condemn hypocrisy, if not to boast that they are clear of it; the very word is odious, and yet nothing is more common than some degree of it. If men, good and bad, were taken for what they affect to be, they would generally pass for more than they are worth. No doubt some are suspected of evil wrongfully: suspicion, however, is 44 POPULAR INFIDELITY. gloomy, and usually the issue of guilt: but know ledge is lustrous; it is truth revealed and compre- hended. Genuine goodness so sharpens the sight of inward corruption, that it is prone to be more self-distrustful, than distrustful of others; but what of humility or goodness is genuine in most men, for want of due caution, is apt to be so pressed down with adverse mixtures, that it is seldom visibly uppermost in their speech and conduct. Paul saw nothing in the third heavens that was of a nature to foster pride; but if he dwelt upon it merely as a vision by which he was distinguished, he might be lifted up above his measure. Hezekiah had that in him which he had lost sight of, and which, we are told, caused the Lord to leave him, that it might break out and bring him to a better understanding of his heart. David said, in his prosperity, * I shall never be moved;' an expression of his satisfaction with earthly goods; an intimation that he had for- gotten his dependence, and begun to prefer the gift to the Giver, — the streams to the fountain. It is difficult to keep under a light head and a self- complacent, self-seeking heart: they will rise to the top of every thing, and it requires a great weight to sink them; and when sunk and shamed, they will perhaps float and be airy beneath the visible surface; they will affect a lightness to conceal the sense of POPULAR INFIDELITT. 45 their condition, and endeavour to gain that place and confidence by impudence and pretension, which they could never acquire by capacity and virtue. They will flatter, not bribe; they will provoke others, by deference and kindness to be sure, to speak praise of them, which, if they had any proper modesty, any just self-estimation, they would blush to hear, and fall to pitying the weakness that could speak it. But not so: they think it discernment, moderate and candid judgment, and fall to praising the speaker, perhaps, with a view to enhance the value and authority of what he has said. There is a great deal of this thing in the world, and it never w T ould, of itself, remind us of greatness or goodness. It is like a doubtful coin; those who handle most of it, doubtless, could not get on well without it; they find their profit in it for a time, but we cannot tell what the end will be. Men, good men, must oe greatly good, if they are not quite content, we will not say desirous, to be esteemed more highly than they deserve; but to know they are so esteemed, and to be lifted up by it; to think it their due for no other reason, and to complain and take offence, when any happen to think differently, is a species of hypocrisy, a deception in good earnest, a claiming of excellence which does not belong to them, — a proof that they are losing sight of themselves in their admiratio- 46 POPULAR INFIDELITY. of an image of others' making; that they take pe * liar pleasure in such attesting of their merits, and are in danger of preferring it to the c answer of a good conscience;' that the judgment of men, rather than the judgment of God, is becoming the object of prevalent solicitude; and that the advantage, the credit of virtue, is more looked to, than virtue itself. We need not say that we have here the elements of infidelity. Let it, however, be especially considered, that these thoughts are not without application to those who have all along been more directly in view, — persons professing to receive the Bible as the word of God, rated as good and useful members of society, and yet acknowledging themselves to be destitute of the life and power of religion. If there be this de- ceivableness of heart in good men, and this tendency to put themselves off for more than their real value, which none are sharper to perceive or readier to believe than those who pretend to no religion; if they are apt to affect and appropriate as their own, graces and powers which others, whether discerningly or no, accredit to them; we are bound to conclude that this aptitude or proneness to deceive and be deceived, is much greater in those who have no motives, no principles to oppose it, such as humility, penitence, fear of God, or even consistency of character. Such POPULAR INFIDELITY. 47 persons are never rated according to their true cha- racter. All observation shows this. Should we note the developments of human character around us; should we reason from what transpires in our own bosoms, we should be convinced that the moral- ity of secular men is a £ vain show;' that it is uncer- tain, not like the oak that strikes its roots deeper and stronger in its foundation, while its branches spread and aspire to the skies, but like a feather in the air, sure to obey the direction of the wind, to rise and fall with it, yet settling down, down, at every intermission, till it fastens on the earth, and is seen to rise no more. Their morality wants a heart, a principle of life and durability; its motives neither look to, nor proceed from, virtue; but, like 'the fooPs eyes/ fix on any thing but God. This ac- counts for its sad and frequent failures. Such men universally pretend to more than they have. They have principles of evil within them which are kept under, generally, from motives no better than the principles themselves, — motives, certainly, that can never purify the heart, and must indispose and steel it to those that can. Their motives are such as they might have if there were no God: they are not drawn from his word, and, if they have any respect to their accountability to him, it is a respect of fear, not of love; it implies no understanding or approbation of 48 POPULAR INFIDELITY. his character; it is a mere observing, hardly a fear- ing, of his thunder; it is only nature's involuntary recognition of its Author; a blush of guilt that vanishes with thought; something, like our daily noticing of the presence of the sun, not as any thing we have to do with or think of, except as it serves or incommodes ourselves. There is no God in it; and if it may be said to bow at the shadow or thought of one, it is the god of infidels, not the c true God who is reconciling the world unto himself by Jesus Christ/ but a god only having such perfections as it suits them to give him; a god who has no concern with rational creatures, but to see that they are not destroyed by any irregular action of his works, who will make them amends for the accidents, losses, and sufferings, which they cannot avoid, and who is complained of, when he crosses their desires, and but spared, when he does them good; a god who is afar off, has no communication with his thinking creatures, and keeps them alive and permits them to multiply, nobody can tell for what. If we consider what their designs, motives, and affections fasten on, what they look to and centre in, all the faith we discover is, that God was somehow concerned in the making of the world, and that they as his creatures do not exactly live without him. Is the desire of wealth, of knowledge, of office, the POPULAR INFIDELITY. 49 ruling passion ? — every track leads to this path, every stream runs into this channel; there is no God, no world besides. Here the rock is formed, against which all other currents dash with no power to melt or bear it away. As we look upon the spectacle, we have only the idea that the rational being before us was made to lay up money, to gain some applause and distinction from his fellows, and then die; or that he has lost his proper attraction, pursues no end suitable to himself or to the mind of his Creator, and is to be known as rational more by his feet and hands, than by any proof he gives of faith in the word of God, or in the worth of his own immortal nature. There are others, church-going people too, they are often, — persons neither good nor bad, — harmless creatures that live to enjoy themselves with others, 1 who seem to think that all which is committed to them to do, is to keep up the fashion of the world. From morning till evening, perhaps not from eve- ning till morning, they are watching the pulse of fashion; every symptom of the creature, always sick at best, is studied as if the event of life turned upon it; all her whims are to be imitated, and he who has the start of others in conformity? thinks himself 1 ' There is a sort of men, whose coining heads Are mints of all new fashions/ — 5 50 POPULAR INFIDELITY. made for the time. These airy minds spend their strength in contriving and inventing fresh amuse- ments for themselves and others, in thinking and talking over the incidents and hap-hazards of the day, and in compliments and ados preparatory to the coming prospect. They never talk on serious subjects, except as an act of penance; and he who does so in their presence, runs a chance of being thought a novice, unacquainted with the fashionable world, — a world where such things are not in vogue. While every thing about them, properly considered, is serious, grave as with the impression of moment- ous truth, they are light and thoughtless; or, if they think at all, it is as people breathe, without knowing it. Should they ever wear out, it will not be by a rational operation, but as a fire does, for want of fuel. They must have full scope and excitement: take these away from them, and they flounce and give signs of constraint, like a fish in shallow water, or wilt inanimately, like a flower cut down in the sun. They love the shades through which tne light of truth never breaks ; and the fewer thoughts and reflections they can do with, the happier they are. Would you punish them, bring out their temper, or discover their drift, — make them stay with them- selves, cross their will, tax them with the reading of a truth -telling book, or with a conversation on POPULAR INFIDELITY. 51 the useful employment of time, and you will discover at once that they have had, and will have, nothing to do with reality; it is a dull and gross affair; a weed in a bed of flowers, a jewel set in iron, so thought, be- cause it is nature shown in the grain, truth shorn of fancy colours, and duty seen as it runs in practice. Their thoughts will not come down to so plain a thing; they live for other and gayer ends; and like the ' flower-shaped psyche/ they fly and light, and light and fly awhile, nobody the better for their pre- sence, or the worse that they are gone. But were thinking creatures made simply to run these rounds? no time for rest, no place for rational entertainment by the way ! Were they made to add, to multiply, and subtract with ciphers only? Do they know there is a God? — or knowing there is, do they ever think that they are known to him? Patterns of civility, exact observers of propriety, quick avengers of neglects, do they give him a look or a bow of recog- nition, as he speaks and passes in his dispensations? i The ox knoweth his owner/ but these people do not know, do not consider, to whom they belong. Look through all their doings, pleasures, plans, and you will find no sympathy, no pause, no check, caused by divine truth. The affectation of good and reverent qualities proves some consideration for them: but thev have not this; thev do not, whatever 52 POPULAR INFIDELITY. else they affect, so much as affect a show of devotion As Lot's wife, for looking back and not believing the word of the Lord, was changed into a pillar of salt, so they seem to be fashioned into an unnatural structure, 6 looking before and after/ steeled against obedience, and bent on idols and self-indulgence. F you take from them the diction and metre of lashion, the thoughts and affections which are bred in worldly fancies and amusements, what do you leave them but empty vessels, mansions whose great inhabitants are kept in chains by usurpers, or pre- sented as strung up in bones, with no heart, no flashes of wit and conscience, shadowing life and hope. They are ' without God in the world;' that is, they are without that influence from him, enter- ing into their affections, joys, plans, hopes, and shaping the conduct, which a belief of his word would impart. They are infidels, no better in con- dition and prospect, than those who acknowledge they are so; and if they do not know it, it is because they have not taken the trouble to be informed: they want the reflection necessary to conviction. There can be no living after the manner above described, without ignorance of the word of God, (and to be ignorant of it, when we have it in our hands, is to despise and reject it,) or without some inward, sleepy contrivance of our own, by which we POPULAR INFIDELITY. 53 underrate the blessedness promised to obedience, and hope to escape the punishment threatened against transgression, — and this, again, is infidelity. Other remarks might be made in reference to this class of individuals, which would lead to the same conclusion. As a general principle, it is worthy to be noted, that there is nothing which true faith prompts us to shun more resolutely than the ' appear- ance of evil.' The true believer sees nothing more to be dreaded than sin. He has such experience of its bitterness, yea, of his proneness to it, that like ' the prudent man/ he ' foreseeth the evil and hideth himself.' If called to meet it in any of the forms of temptation, he distrusts his strength, and attempts to stand up and go forward, only in the strength of the Lord. Persons, who have none of this expe- rience, are already captives, ' sold under sin.' They have made it their element so long, and their thoughts and feelings flow in its channels so naturally, that nothing seems to be wrong. They do not identify its nature, or separate it from themselves. If we apply this principle to the devotees of fashion and pleasure, to idlers at large, they will appear to personate infidelity. Sin, considered abstractly, is no evil in fheir view. They never think that its nature is to obstruct all faith in the word of God, — that low apprehensions of its evil nature tend directly 5* 54 POPULAR INFIDELITY. to produce diminishing impressions of the excellency of the divine law, and of the worth of the privileges and blessings of the gospel. In short, their views make ' the manifold wisdom of God' in the great plan of redemption by the sufferings and death of Christ, foolishness, a downright misconception of their condition and necessities. Entertaining these notions of sin, and affected by them in this manner, no wonder they are not troubled by it, and do not seek deliverance from it. Who will apply for grace when he feels that he has strength enough without it? Who that is whole will seek a physician ? Who that is in no danger will fly to a refuge ? Who can be penetrated with shame and sorrow for that which he deems no crime, or discredit to himself? Who will learn to depend on a foreign agency to live virtuously, when virtue is his boast, and considered to be his birthright ? No persons are in greater danger of falling into these views of sin, and the unbelief they engender, than those to whom we have alluded. They are not, generally, addicted to distinguished iniquities, —things that expose them- selves, abash pride, and endanger character. They are strict observers of decency and moderation in sinning. They are only devoted to pleasures and amusements called innocent. They are not pious to be sure, but that is no crime, not a thing to be POPULAR INFIDELITY. 55 lepented of or alarmed at. Nothing is more com- mon, say they, and we may safely and without reproach go with the multitude in one respect, if we shun their vices in others, Thus they are confident; nq temptations scare them, no danger of being brought near great offences along an inclined road of evil is apprehended, and the only wonder is, that they last so long; that they do not sooner and oftener slide, break through all restraint, and stand out as matured criminals. There is criminality in all they do, for they do nothing well; and not to do well, is to do wrong. Their great error is, that they do not see the sinfulness of sin in their forge tfulness of God; in their not rating and loving objects according to the measure of their worth and excellence. These things show that their nature has run wild from goodness, — that they are estranged from God; and to be estranged from him is the sum and essence of ail sin, the very heart of infidelity,— that keeper of the conscience that shuts out the entrance of truth, and cries peace, peace, when all the peace there is, is only that, when pains and fears give way to death. If we examine the best virtues of unconverted men generally, and particularly of such as we have last described, we shall find new light on the subject. It requires no great insight into human nature, to discover the remnants of a now fallen, but once 56 POPULAR INFIDELITY. glorious, structure; and, what is most remarkable, to see that the remains of this ancient greatness are more apt to be quickened and drawn out by their semblances and qualities, found in creatures, than by the bright and full perfection of them which is in the Creator; — that the heart puts on its most benign face, and sends forth prompt returns of gratitude and love to creatures who have bestowed on us favour and displayed other amiable quali- ties, while He, whose goodness is so great, so complete, so pervading, that there is none besides it, — the gifts and qualities, with which we are so readily enamoured, being his, and not his creatures', except as they are permitted to pass through their hands to ours, — is unrequited, unheeded, unseen, though hanging out his glory from the heavens, and coming down to us in streams of compassion and love, which have made an ocean on earth that is to overflow and fill it. How strange it is, that all this love, so wonderful in itself, so undeserved, so dif- fused, that we see it in every beauty, and taste it in every enjoyment, — should be lost on creatures whose love for the gentler and worthier qualities of each other, runs so often into rapture and devotion ! How strange that they should be so delighted with streams which have gathered such admixtures of earth, w T hich cast up such ' mire and dirt/ and have such shallows POPULAR INFIDELITY. 57 and falls that we often wreck our hopes in them,— as not to be reminded by them of the great and unmixed fountain whence they have flowed, or of the great ocean, to whose dark and unbottomed depths they will at last settle, as too earthy to rise to its pure and glorious surface ! There are many mysteries in human nature, but none greater than this: for while it shows man is so much a creature of sense and so devoid of faith, that objects, to gain his atten- tion and affection, must not only be present to him, but have something of sense and self in them, we are still left to wonder how he could, with such manifestations of divine goodness in him, around him, and for him, have failed to see and adore them, and become so like a brute, as not to think of God, the original of all that is lovely, when thinking of those his qualities which so please and affect him in creatures; and this, though they be so soiled and defaced by sin, that his unmixed fondness for any the most agreeable of them, instead of being an accomplishment, is a sure indication of a mind sunk greatly below the standard allotted to it by the Creator. Our wonder will be raised higher still, if we con- sider that our nature, when most corrupt and per- verse, is not wholly lost to all sense of gratitude, but may be wrought, upon by human kindness, when all 58 POPULAR INFIDELITY. the amazing compassion and love of God fail to affect it; if we consider that the very worst of men who set their faces against the heavens, affronting the mercy and defying the majesty thereof, are sometimes so softened with a sense of singular and undeserved favours, that their hearts swell with grateful sentiments towards their benefactors, and something akin to virtue is kindled up where no- thing of the kind was seen before; we might think it incredible, if there was any doubting of what we see and know. When we see such men so ready to acknowledge their obligations to their fellows, and to return service for service; so impatient of being thought ungrateful, when they have any character or interest to promote by it, and sometimes, when they have not; so strongly affected with the goodness of him who has interposed between them and temporal danger or death, and yet so little moved by the love of God in Christ, which has undertaken their rescue from eternal and deserved woes, and not merely their rescue, but their exaltation to fellowship with himself, and to the pleasures for evermore at his right hand, — a love compared with which the greatest love of creatures is as a ray of light to the sun and that ray mixed and darkened, while this is so dis- interested and free in the grounds and motives of it, that it is exercised towards those who have neither POPULAR INFIDELITY. 59 merit to invite, nor disposition to receive it; when we see this, and find that this love, so worthy in itself, so incomprehensible in its degree and in the benefits it would confer, is the only love to which they make no returns of thankfulness or regard, we may ascribe as much of it as we please to the hard- ness and corruption of their hearts, but that will not account for such conduct Depravity, considered by itself, will not enable us fully to understand it Depraved, sensual, and perverse as they are, they have something in them that is kindled by human kindness, and why should it not be kindled by the greater 'kindness of God our Saviour?' It is not because it is a divine kindness ; not that it is less needed — not that it is bestowed in less measure, or at less expense. And if it is because they do not apprehend this kindness, do wot feel their need of it, do not see any thing affecting in the measure and expense of it, this is infidelity; and it grows out of an entire misconception of their own character, and of the character and law of God. It is a total blind- ness to distant and invisible good and evil. It is a venturing of every thing most important to them- selves on an uncertainty, which they would not and could not do, if they had any understanding of the value of the interests at stake. They really see nothing important but the gratifications of sense and 60 POPULAR INFIDELITY. time: still they have the remains of a capacity foi something higher. These may be contemplated with profit, if not with admiration. They resemble the motions in the limbs and heart of animals, when the head is severed from the body. They are symptoms of a life that of itself must come to no- thing; a life that is solely pouring itself out on the ground. But as this is all the life they have, an image of life, and that only of life in death; and as the motions of it are only excited by the creature's kindness, we discover in their best virtues, or rather, in their only breathings and indications of virtue, the evidence of a faithless heart. The different classes of people brought to our view in this chapter, generally consider themselves very innocent; some, because they are free from great vices, and others, because great vices have blinded their eyes to guilt. But it is observable that the ground of this supposed innocence is the same in all, and lies in mistaken views of the evil nature of sin, and of the gospel plan of delivering them both from its pollution and curse; so that the most virtuous one of them is as much an infidel in this as the most vicious, that he does not believe himself to be totally ruined by sin, totally destitute of any thing accept- able to a holy God, and totally dependent on him for grace to renew and fit the soul for the bliss of POPULAR INFIDELITY. 61 heaven. Their virtues, too, though in some more clearly manifested than in others, are in all the same as to the grounds and objects of them. They are such as love, gratitude, sympathy with the distresses, and patient endurance for the welfare, of others. We see much of these in one way and another, and sometimes very attractive examples of them. But, as has been shown, their aptest, if not their only exercise, is in view of the favours, claims, and vir- tues of creatures. These display acts of love, grati- tude, and self-denial, strongly fastening on and ending in the creatures, while they are in no degree moved by the greater occasions and excitements of these virtues, found in the dispensations and perfections of the Creator. These very virtues then, which are more the distinction of some than of others, yet in some way the boast of all, are, as truly as their vices, the proof of rank infidelity — that mixture of folly and estrangement which seems to say, ' there is no God/ They all, too, pay a certain homage to virtue — some by their unwillingness to be thought without it; others by their sensibility to manifestations of it in friends and benefactors; and others, far the greater number, by false pretensions to it. We allude to this now as a proof of peculiar depravity, especially in those who have been considered as claiming for 6 62 POPULAR INFIDELITY. themselves a special exemption from it. Their very claim to virtue, their affectation of it, shows that their nature and interest plead in its behalf. This part of their conduct seems to acknowledge, in some sense, the worth and advantages of Christian virtue. And thus far, at least, it serves to evince that the temptations to sin and irreligion not only do not make their appeal to the reason of man, but are op- posed both by his reason and interest. If we allow that men are strongly prone to conceal their vices, and to display virtues, whether they have them or not, there can be no better evidence that immorality and impiety are found to be inexpedient in the pre- sent life. It shows that the witnesses against them are thick on every side; that the practice of them is not merely a disadvantage, but a wrong and a vio- lence against reason, as well as a contempt and breach of the will of God. That must be a singular wickedness, a sin-loving sinfulness indeed, that is abashed and reproved at every turn, and still sins on with pain and hazard, without the hope of ad- vantage, and against the strongest pleadings of a better mind. Such persons sin without a gain; and, if they are to be credited, without a love of it too. They sin with acknowledged disadvantage and in- jury to themselves. Indeed, on their principles, nobody can tell why they sin at all, unless it be as POPULAR INFIDELITY. 63 water runs downhill, because it cannot stop itself, and has a seeking to get as low as it can. They have that in them which rejects the testimony of God concerning his Son, brings his counsel to naught, casts back his gifts at his feet, and thus exalts itself 4 above all that is called God/ If they could have faith without reflection, be delivered from misery in their sins, and obtain heaven without a cross; then well and good: they would like to have it so. They are barely (for they seem not to study or calculate much about it) willing to be saved on their own terms, and see no wisdom in any other. Hence their wonderful ingratitude for redemption. Hence the doctrine of Christ is clouded and deprived of its proper influence, by their misconceptions of it and of their own character. Their minds are filled with mean and unworthy thoughts and suspicions of God, which are but the types and shadows of themselves, pointing to those revelations of great depravity, which they are so apt to make on occasions of temp- tation and affliction. There are times and events which 'try men's souls,' and bring to light ' the hidden things of dark- ness.' It seems to be a general law of God's deal- ings with his rational creatures, to give them pres- sure enough of some kind, to make them show out what they are. This is perhaps a reason why the 64 POPULAR INFIDELITY. actors in great deceptions and iniquities seem to be so often struck with infatuation and a strange pro- pensity to self-disclosure. But there is nothing un- natural in it. There are always folly and miscalcu- lation in sin: it is the weakest as well as the worst of things; it is as stupid as it is criminal. Still there is, besides this natural tendency of sin, a ten- dency in the dispensations of God to bring out the real character of men. And none are more apt to disappoint our expectations, (unless indeed we have profited by observation, so as to expect little from them,) than those who, without any pretence or show of piety, make large pretensions to the moral virtues, and have indeed a fair appearance of them. They sometimes, all at once, without any apparent maturing process, develope a capacity for impiety and crime that would shock the hardiest infidel to wit- ness. Hazael, no doubt, had been a faithful servant; he had the confidence of his king, and, if he were not a dissembler, was confident of his own virtue, when he came to consult the prophet, Elisha, con- cerning the recovery of his master's health. But so great was his capacity for iniquity, that 'the man of God wept' as he looked upon him; and when Hazael inquired for the occasion of his tears, he an- swered, ' because I know the evil that thou wilt do unto the children of Israel.' And when told the POPULAR INFIDELITY. 65 crimes he would commit — confident that he could not be guilty of such deeds — Hazael replies in that haste which intimates either disgust or resentment, 'But what! is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?' And Elisha answered, 'The Lord hath showed me that thou shalt be king over Syria.' Here was the temptation; and, forewarned as he was, what did he do? He returned to his master with a lie in his mouth, the secret abomina- tions of -his heart were unloosed, he murdered the helpless king, and ' reigned in his stead/ So it turns out with numbers of this class. But one in- stance is as good as many, to show that there is no stability, no principle, no nature of goodness in any of them. Should God lay his hand upon the best of them, as he did upon his servant Job, they would disclose their great sinfulness, if not in abandoning themselves to vices and crimes, yet in more direct and expressive manifestations of enmity to him. Should he afflict them with sores, break up their peace, take away their possessions, children, and friends, they would not require a special tempter, they w T ould show, before half the trial was over, that their service, their virtue, had been for reward; they would, not prompted by another, but self- moved, 'curse him to his face;' and, instead of sub- mitting, and. if need were, dying, like a rational 66 POPULAR INFIDELITY. creature returning to God, they would fly from him, and suffer themselves to be taken, as they do the robber to take their money, only when they could resist it no longer. It is observable that when troubles and crosses do not break the human will and render it submissive to the will of God, they only stir up its resistance to discharge itself in complaints against him. Such complaints always suppose that the sufferings in the case are not deserved, are unjustly inflicted, and altogether inconsistent with the divine wisdom and goodness in the government of the world. It will be seen at once that this view is wholly at variance with any true knowledge of God, his word, or the heart of man, and that it disqualifies for the exercise, as well as disproves the existence, of the lowest de- gree of faith in either as revealed in the Scriptures. These complaints indeed assume man to be wiser than God, and affect a desire to govern, to be out of his hands, and to be without him, and without hope from him, in the world. Nothing can more clearly express distrust of his word and perfections, or more immoderately exalt the wisdom and merit of man. On the ground of these assumptions, his will is to prevail in every thing; he is to be con- sidered as knowing what is best for him, as entitled to what he has, as needing no correction, and as POPULAR INFIDELITY. 67 wronged by every pain he feels — a pretension in which he swings clear from God and all duty to him; not to mention that it makes him infallible, and God an erring and unauthorized disturber of human affairs. We say not that men ever believe all this, when they stop to reflect; but in the haste of passion and interest their faith may go on at this rate. But whether they be said to believe it or no, they appear sometimes to act and speak it. They act, if not on the faith, on the presumption of it, which is worse; for hastily to presume that respect- ing God and his dispensations, which is so extrava- gant and impious that we cannot considerately be- lieve it, is a singular aggravation of guilt. To entertain an injurious suspicion of another's character, without so much as inquiring whether there be any ground for it, is proof of no ordinary depravity. It indicates a delight in evil surmises, a love of evil for its own sake, an inconsideration for the rights of others, which, under protection from personal harm, would not stop at any injustice. Men may be so prejudiced and depraved, as to be greatly liable to form wrong and injurious conclusions even after much inquiry for the truth. It may also be very dif- ficult to convince them of their error, and still, they may have too much conscience, too much considera- tion, to adopt such conclusions, without any examina- 68 POrULAR INFIDELITY. tion, or to retain them, without some persuasion of their truth. There are, if we may so say, marks of rationality in their guilt, concessions at least that they hold themselves responsible for what they do and think. But what should be thought of those who never ask whether they are right or wrong; who are wrong chiefly on subjects of the greatest moment to themselves, and most criminally wrong, because subjects of such a nature that a little reflec- tion would be sufficient to set them right? If it argues peculiar depravity in men to take up and credit a report, fatal to the reputation of one who has been long known and spoken of by them as distinguished for his goodness, without concerning themselves to know the truth of it; still, as a good man at best is imperfect and sometimes falls from the just eleva- tion he has gained, it is not so very wonderful, though so very wicked, that they should do this, as that they should presume to impeach the justice and wisdom of God in his dealings with them, without being at all awed by his perfections or their own ignorance and guilt; without indeed so much as in- quiring whether there may not be good reasons for what he does — reasons looking after their best wel- fare and growing out of his perfection: — and this, when in their prosperity, when he allowed them' to have their way in every thing, though it were a way POPULAR INFIDELITY. 69 of disservice to him and of destruction to themselves, none were more certain to take occasion to sin from his goodness, or more ready to profess their patience and pleasure to continue in his hands! What has changed their views? What has put to flight their reverence and consideration at once? God has not changed. His goodness is no more tarnished or di- minished than the sun's light and greatness, by the clouds that have darkened their prospect. Must they always have a clear sky? Must they be visited only with gentle breezes and heavenly dews? Must there be no winds and storms? Must they be exempt from the general laws which the Creator has established? Must he work a perpetual miracle in their behalf, that nothing may give them pain, and that every thing may go as they would have it? Suppose he should, and should do the mind of all in the same way? Would there be any room for him to have a will of his own? Would any thing but confusion and disorder follow? Should the wishes of others con- flict with their own, which must prevail? They, or others, on this plan, must be subjected to disappoint- ments and crosses; and thus no way seems to be left for God to silence their complaints and secure their approbation, but to let them have their plea- sure in every thing, and to do his own pleasure with respect to all others. What importance then 70 POPULAR INFIDELITY. do they take to themselves! What ignorance and distrust of God do they betray, in their murmurs against his dispensations! The moment they are tried and shaken a little, they fall off from him, like the dead limbs and leaves of a tree. They have a certain elevation, but there is no life and vigour in it; and, when its earthly props are taken away, it falls to the ground. They are like those people who have great trust and pleasure in their physician, when their health is returning and the prospects of worldly enjoyments are brightening afresh; but no sooner do new pains and doubtful symptoms arise, than they lose all confidence, and vent their impa- tience in reproaches. The doctor must give them instant relief, or he has no skill; he must be ever at their side, or he is inattentive, though the world beside is dying for want of his assistance. Here is a mistake which people often make in complaining of God. They appear to think that they are very special objects of his attention — that he comes out of his ivay to reach and afflict them. They forget that they are each but one of a world, and that clouds and sunshine are no respecters of persons. They zvill see at once the reason and ad- vantage of his dispensations. They must feel the profit; they must have a sight and taste of it, and not be comnelled to trust and look for it Like a POPULAR INFIDELITY. 71 child that is put to a task, with the promise of a re- ward to-morrow, they become impatient and idle, while the reward is out of sight; but only bring it to their eye and keep it there, and they will do and suffer twice as much as was required to obtain it. In affliction they reason like a child whose thoughts are taken up with the smart of a burn, and therefore refuses to be comforted by the fire, forgets its design, and thinks it has no use but to burn: or like a child that has been spoiled by indulgence, they think it proper that every will should bend to theirs, take every cross as a wrong, and resist every invasion with as much sharpness and confidence as if the world were all a nest and they the wasps that made it. There is something fundamentally wrong in the moral condition of such people. We see nothing of the character of goodness in them, and as little of the reflection and support of faith. Instead of making other things their appendages, they seem to append to and lean on every thing. They are like vessels that are kept from shrinking, or falling to pieces, only by the air that fills them. They are given to change, and the reason is or seems to be, that they know not what well enough is, or know- ing, cannot let it alone. It will do for children to complain of crosses, and to desire novelties, and we should bear with them, if they have little reason t)l POPULAR INFIDELITY. in either; but grown people ought to conquer their desires, not let their desires conquer them. Know- ing the little there is to choose between one and another thing, except so far as it may be more or less turned to our spiritual account, we ought to be diffident of our choices, and at most, to conclude that we should profit little by that which the highest wisdom, tempered with the most condescending- goodness, denies to our desires. What is less agree- able to faith and reason, than the conduct of a rational being, discontented with his present condition, and languishing for this and another thing, as if nothing allotted to him w 7 ere such as it should be, or such as he might safely determine to have it? The kind of computation which we are disposed to make in these matters, is very decisive of our character. Faith is not apt to turn chooser of the bounties of God, but attaches chief value to that which bears the clearest stamp of his will, regarding more the good intent, than the sensible fruition, of the gift. It indulges no large expectation, especially no immoderate craving, of temporal enjoyment, well assured that but little can be lost here at most, and that nothing can be in- tended to afford us rest, which we must so soon leave and our fondness is so apt to turn to our harm. It makes us afraid to complain that we have so little to enjoy; it rather fills us with wonder that POPULAR INFIDELITY, 73 we have so much. It always looks before it leaps, and has the manhood to bear with present ills, so long as there is promise or hope of their conducting to the best result at last. How admirable are the reflections and actions prompted by the genuine faith of the Christian, con- trasted with those of the complaining, restless spirit of unbelief! When he comes to try a new situa- tion, he expects to find it little better, perhaps worse, than the one he leaves. If things are not right at home, in himself, he knows that things abroad, out of himself, will not make him happy. He is able, like the bee, to extract sweets from the bitter- est flowers, (flower to him every thing that will yield a sweetness,) and to feed, in inclement seasons, on the honey that is in his hive, that is, in himself, through the culture and the treasuring of kind and pious affections. He lets patience have her 6 perfect work/ because that is the way for him to be made i perfect and entire/ 1 ' He inherits the promises through faith and patience.' 2 He < has need of pa- tience, that, after he has done the will of God/ and suffered according to his will, 3 he may receive the promised reward; for in due time he knows * he shall reap, if he faint not.' 4 He knows that the final re- ward is sure — that it will come at last — and that it i Jam. i. 4. > Heb, vi. 12. * Heb. x. 36. « Gal. vi. 9. 74 POPULAR INFIDELITY. is so great that when it comes, it will abundantly recompense all his work, yea, and patience too. 1 He has in the most trying allotments ' the patience of hope/ the sweetness and evenness of a mind at peace with God. How happy then is he that truly con- fides in God; that has < his fruit unto holiness/ both ' the hundredfold' in this life, and in the end, c life everlasting V 2 Now, if the task is easier, and the benefit greater, what can excuse our folly and guilt, or rather what can make them greater, if we will not give up our- selves to be ordered by his guidance, and will not submit to the strokes and burdens which he may lay on us? The task is easier, for nothing is harder than to strive against God, and to have all our crosses aggravated and our pains imbittered, by restless, corroding, and despairing appetites and fu- ries. The benefit is greater than if we could by resistance have our own wills, and enjoy the world to the full: for ' God is not unrighteous to forget' our ' labour of love/ and our c patience of hope/ and will confer on us a great and eternal reward. But in the world there is nothing permanent and dura- ble; and if there were, it would not be suitable to us, because how long soever that might last in itself, yet we could not last to enjoy it. Though our tem- ■ Heb. x. 37. 3 Rom. vi. 22. Mark x. 30. POPULAR INFIDELITY. 75 poral goods and comforts were not movable, yet we are; though they might stay with us, yet we could not stay with them; and though they should procure many advantages and pleasures for us, yet that would make the pain and loss of parting with them greater, and by attaching us to life here, might cheat us out of life hereafter. It clearly does not suit our best reason to be greatly anxious for distinctions and comforts here; but there is as much true reason as piety in the counsel, to be c always abounding in the work of the Lord/ and that upon the ground, that 1 we know our labour is not in vain in the Lord.' 1 An inordinate love of the world in some shape is a principal source of impatience, murmuring, and unbelief among Christians. Every thing here is so uncertain that, unless we rest upon something more stable, we shall be the subjects of perpetual change. When the world rises in importance to us, that will magnify our disadvantages and losses, and propor- tionably shut out from our view the objects of faith, and from our hearts the comforts of our interest in them. We are thus borne off upon a dangerous sea, without any certain direction and object, and every wind rocks, and troubles, and alarms us. If we well consider it, we shall learn to set lightly by creatures, that we may not have an ill farewell with ' 1 Cor. xv. 58. 76 POPULAR INFIDELITY. them at last; we shall not envy the distinction and happiness of those worldly minds that seem to reap the fruit of their service and toil in the success and glory of their affairs. They find but a show and semblance of the reality which they seek in these things; 'they weary themselves for very vanity;' they fulfil in their experience, and in their end, the inspired declaration, ' man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain.' 1 Sorrow and repentance is the only end to which they will come at last, and the best end to which they can come in time, and the sooner it comes the better for them; 'for the end of those things/ rested in, 'is death/ 2 It would be unaccountable that the Christian, who has tasted the bitterness of sin, and the sweetness of pardon and hope, who has been under the conduct and in sight of the world to come, should again be found spending his 'money for that which is not bread, and his labour for that which satisfieth not/ had we no experience of his infirmities, and his proneness to divide the heart between God and the world. Hence the necessity of his many correc- tions and sorrows. Hence we discover the great goodness and wisdom of God, in the uncertain con- tinuance and value of all earthly possessions. He ' Psal. xxxix. 6. ' Rom. vi. 21. POPULAR INFIDELITY. 77 kindly corrupts these streams and undermines these foundations, that we may not rest here to our harm. He makes ' the way of the transgressor hard/ and blocks up the ' broad road' of sinners, that he may win them by present difficulty to think of future good, and by the present poverty of their joys, to seek that t fulness of joy which is in his presence.' He thus sets himself like a sun in our view, serving us by that which we deem disservice, and enlighten- ing ua oy that which we miscall darkness. If that which most endangers our greatest good is the greatest evil, then prosperity is often a greater evil than adversity, and what is best for us is often that which is most painful, and most nearly slays us to the world. 1 The vapours and clouds w r hich gather in the sky, always leave it clearer and purer. They obscure for a while the lights of heaven, but these soon come out again with a softened and more cheer- ful effulgence. The ancients were in great fear and imagined evil from the eclipses of the sun, and still the sun was unchanged; it had as much light and glory as ever, as many planets were moved by its attraction, and only the harmless shade of a body that could never shine, except in a lustre not its own, had got between them and the delight of their eyes. So it happens in lesser systems, in our own ! James iv. 4 7* 78 POPULAR INFIDELITY. experience. When darkness or tribulation comes on us, we are apt to start and fear, i as though some strange thing had happened to us.' 1 The comfortable countenance of the ' Light of the world' is perhaps veiled for a little, and we are left, it may be, to be 6 partakers/ though slightly, of the darkness that he experienced in the extremity of his suffering for our sakes; but it ill befits us to complain, to despond, to doubt that ' his glory shall be revealed,' and * that we shall also be glad in it with exceeding joy.' 3 These things should not move us out of our course of duty or stay us in it; but, like the moon when she suffers an eclipse, we should continue on, losing no motion and no order, till we regain that presence of which we are deprived, and which gives us all the glory we have, whether it be for our joy or for the light and comfort of others, We should be too simple to wonder, if we take alarm sometimes where no danger is, and too knowing, though knowing so little, to be confident in deciding against the good- ness of measures, the reasons of which are hid in the wisdom of God. Alas! that we should ever in our troubles charge God foolishly, and quickly conclude that all these things are against us. They come not because God is willing to afflict, but to expose our dangers and defeat our foes. They 1 lPetiv. 12. 2 ibid. 13. POPULAR INFIDELITY. 79 would call us off from the world, take away our false dependencies, and make us confess that 'all our springs/ those of comfort, as well as those of strength, are ' in him,? 1 So great is the pride and weakness of nature, that we but deceive ourselves, if we think it safe to have much of the world in our hands. Our glory is to live above it, and to do this is to ' live by faith on the Son of God/ for ' this is our victory over the world, even our faith.' Faith puts down the world, by spreading over it the glory of Christ, the bright shadowing of ' better things to come.' But the world, rising up, fastens on our pride, drives us from a throne of grace, and causes us to come to God, if come we do, with greater thoughts of ourselves than of him, and no wonder we go away without comfort; for ' God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace only to the humble.' 2 We are thus left to our complaints, without conso- lation and without freedom, while the thoughts and affections of the truly humble and faithful, escape from the solitude and constraint of earth, like birds released from their cage, and lose themselves in the lustre and expanse of a native heaven. As the shaken tree roots deeper, as the blast that beats down the flame causes it to rise higher, so they, when brought low by adversity, mount upward, and, when 1 Psal. lxxxvii. 7. 2 James iv. 6. 80 POPULAR INFIDELITY. shaken by the storms, bind themselves closer to the rock they are resting on. They have the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ, and come what will, come sorrow and bereavement, come sickness and death, they are never vanquished. He that is in them is ' greater than all/ Such is the reasoning and the operation of faith. It does not estimate the events of life, according to the suggestions of a world- ly policy. Nothing more strongly indicates the fatal prevalence of unbelief, than a restless, complaining spirit. Such a mind can hardly have the persuasion there is a God; much less can it have a due impres- sion of his perfections. It feels all the insecurity and has all the trouble it would, if God had made no promises, and exerted no wisdom and power to bring all things to a just and happy consummation. How vain the resources, how dread the comforts of a faithless mind ! and that mind is essentially faithless that cannot find repose in the arms of a universal Providence, and rejoice to feel its care and own its control. Hanging our hopes on the Lord, and with affections deeply, sweetly rooted in his truth and perfections, he will be to the soul in all troubles, as a great shade in a weary land, and as the morning upon the face of nature, both its joy and its glory. POPULAR INFIDELITY. 8* CHAPTER IV. Moral worth of incidental actions and opinions — Their peculiarity with reference to the objects of faith — Proper estimate of worldly inte- rests — Singularity of religious indecision — Its contrariety to reason and analogy — Casual devotion — Its absurdity — Its action consider- ed as the cause and fruit of infidelity — All true faith considered *s necessarily influential in proportion to the value of its object — Prevalent inattention to the Scriptures — Connexion between faith and knowledge — Infidelity of those who give but a casual atten- tion to religion — Their hope — Their conduct contrasted with their faith and caution in business affairs — Their singular inconsist- ency — The faith and practice of a nominal believer compared with those of a professed infidel — What there is to choose between them — Religious pretenders — Their liability to self-delusion from the facility with which they gain credit. Actions incidentally and coldly performed, opi- nions which, like the features of the face, are ours without our volition, and to which we are chiefly partial because they are ours, though ours in a way which we cannot account for, have little worth in them. They are merely accidents of the mind. There is neither faith, nor heart, nor reason in them. Neither are they instinctive, for instinctive actions and desires have a suitable end; but these seem to have no end at all; none, truly, which they aspire to with that consistency which should entitle them to the dignity of being designed. Still the religious 82 POPULAR INFIDELITY. acts and opinions of many seem to be of this charac- ter. It is no uncommon thing for persons, without any consciousness of the process, to confound truth and error, reason and fancy; to take the flashes of the animal spirits for the light of evidence; to think they believe things to be true or false, when they only fancy them to be so, and fancy them to be so, only because they would have them so, or, what is easier, because such is the fancy of others. Such persons have an accidental faith and religion — con- veniences that never stand in the way of their de- sires. But what renders this peculiarity worthy of par- ticular consideration is, that it respects matters which they confess to be of greater importance than any other, and matters too whose nature and excel- lency must strongly engage the heart which they engage at all, because the heart will love something strongly and can find nothing else that will bear a comparison with them — nothing, indeed, which they do not make a trifle, or at least convert into a mere hint of the good they contain — causing it, whether by its worthlessness or value, to point to themselves, as the greatest and worthiest objects of our desire and search. That from persons so considering them, these objects so transcendent and inviting that they must needs transport whom they engage, should POPULAR INFIDELITY. 83 receive only a casual attention, a respect so much below what they pay to other things that it seems more like an intentional slight, than a conscious ob- servation of them — is a singularity in the practice of rational creatures, which no philosophy could lead us to presume, and no discretion allow us to credit, if we did not see it daily before our eyes. A just and rational appreciation of these objects does not indeed hinder our paying to worldly ad- vantages a due regard, neither despising nor adoring them; not slighting their use in the present state nor letting them abate our ardour for the more ex- cellent glory and riches of another; not depending on them for distinction and happiness, but looking to them as means of doing good; not lifted up by the influence and respect which they procure, so as to despise others, or fall into the weakness of esteem- ing ourselves made regal and absolute by them, as petty princes often are, by the cringing and service of minions, of whom it is hardly a degradation to affect to be their creatures, but still, w T hose import- ance is shown to better advantage in the event, than that of their masters who take their consequence from it, and are induced thereby to set an unnatural value upon their smiles and lay claim to that homage from equals which could only be their due as the creators of them. If religion did wholly 84 POPULAR INFIDELITY. and arbitrarily withdraw men from the pursuit of worldly interests, it would be strange, as things are, if they did not act counter to it; but, when it only claims to regulate that pursuit and to turn those in- terests to the best account, making them all subser- vient to ends which are acknowledged to be unspeak- ably more important, yet abstracting nothing from the enjoyment of them here; it is passing strange it should set so lightly on their minds, that they scarcely know if there be any such thing, and con- cern themselves as little to secure it, as if it were but a mere shadow of the good which they so eagerly seek from this troubled and uncertain world. There must be some cause of this, different from any to which it is usually referred. Their conduct with respect to all other objects, bears some analogy to their professed convictions; but this, confessedly the most adorable and worthy object, is contem- plated, if contemplated at all, with a kind of irreso- lution which as properly bespeaks their dread as their desire of it — their desire, as fearing they may need it — their dread, as not relishing its excellence, and as having insulted and forfeited it by a practical preference of other interests which they dare not profess to esteem before it — leaving them in a state of indecision, wherein their thoughts reach not to it, and rest so easily with them, that a mere profes- POPULAR INFIDELITY. 85 sion of regard to it comes in their view to compen- sate for the want of regard itself. This singularity of which we are speaking, is often found in the character of men who are so very moral in most respects, that it would seem hardy to deem them irreligious. But, as God has given rea- son only to man, thus making him a noble and know- ing creature, it is very singular that man should em- ploy that reason in all his moral and social actions and duties, and yet only do the acts of God's worship and service with indifferency of mind, or when some great event or calamity rouses him to it; that he should perform his relative duties, his duties to man with such design and constancy, as that his whole life may be compared to a volume written with forecast of the ends it should answer, while the thoughts and acts which signify any recognition of God and his claims, are but the parentheses which might be left out without breaking the sense, and, we might add, without so much as blemishing the morality of the author. Such casual thoughts and devotions do less honour than injure so worthy an object as they aspire to: they do greatly affront the Divine Ma- jesty by denying to him the chief homage of that faculty in the bestowing of which he has chiefly ho- noured us; they would even degrade him below ourselves, by apportioning to him less care and 8 86 POPULAR INFIDELITY. respect than are given to his creatures; paltry, cost- less things that they are, they would take the place of faith and devotion, when they have not so much of the grace of consideration and design, as is ex- pressed in an idle mimickry of them. They indeed evince such indifference to man's most weighty con- cerns, such misplacing of his affections, as would leave it in doubt, if we knew nothing more of him, whether he be a rational creature or no: for to be *ble to think of God as a being proper to worship; to be capable of a religious sentiment, of a spiritual advancement and attend no more to it; to trust all which he owns to be most important to casual thoughts, thoughts which he neither bids nor heeds, is such an impertinence, rather such an impersonal- ity of mind, that as in the stare of idiocy, we cannot tell whether there be thought in it, or whether it be a mere animal surprise. Such absence of reason and consideration in the practice of man in reference to this subject, while in theory he acknowledges its incomparable import- ance, and while he is lively to the obligation, and thoughtful in the discharge, of his relative duties, is not to be accounted for without the supposition of that darkness and unbelief of mind which shuts out from the soul all communion with God and all sen- sible realization of his truth. He acts a part so un- POPULAR INFIDELITY. 87 suitable to his nature and interests, that we should consider it, if our views were straight on this sub- ject, proof of the greatest weakness and self-decep- tion, if not of something worse and wilder On matters of astounding moment he now wills; in an instant he wills not; in another he knows not whe- ther he wills or no. He importantly aims at no- thing, and to nothing comes. He lives and dies unimproved by the experience of others, and unim- proving others by his own. Such indecision, such an end in relation to the affairs of the world, would indicate an abandonment of our proper nature, and whatever we may think of it as affecting the higher concerns of eternity, certain it is that it cannot be the fruit of considering them; and not to consider them, when we admit our high concernment in them, and are summoned to it by so many argu- ments of invitation and as with the alarm-voice of the spirit within us and of all nature around us, is to despise and reject them as in our slumbers, and to become infidels, if not by the action of our rea- son, yet by the chance of our indifference. Such treatment of the claims of religion is the direct effect of infidelity ; and this conviction must be theirs who will consider not only what influence the revealed will of God is entitled to have, but what it actually has, on minds that believe it. Men are 88 POPULAR INFIDELITY. universally curious to look into futurity, and to know something of their condition after death; and nothing could be more worthy, or better adapted, to sway their conduct, than a thorough persuasion of the truth of the revelation which God has made on this subject. When they come to this understand- ing, and see their immortal interests side by side with those of time; when they feel that there is but a step between them and the full reality, but an un- certain period, (and that short at longest and unsatis- fying at best,) between them and their eternal sepa- ration from every thing the heart attaches to here, except what God has approved and set apart for heaven, — they will feel the actuating spirit of the word, and if they do not i become whole/ 1 will at least be willing to consider and ' do many things.* 2 But, as the case often stands, they come far short of this: they honour the subject only with casual no- tices; they want, indeed, the sensibility and pur- pose about it of the judge (have they more merit than he?) who said within himself i Though I fear not God, nor regard man; yet, because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her; I will do what is right in her case, that I may be rid of her importu- nity.' 3 Awakened sinners sometimes attempt to procure relief to a troubled conscience on this prin- 1 John v. 4. 2 Mark vi. 20. 3 Luke xnii. 4, 5. POPULAR INFIDELITY. 89 ciple; they do some proper things as with impa- tience to have them out of mind; but those now under consideration are not awakened; they are not troubled with their sins, and of consequence do lit- tle or nothing to procure peace by good works. They have good works to be sure, but, as we have remarked, their works point not to God, but to their credit and influence in the world, to the endowment and happiness of relatives and friends; and not to a preparation of themselves and others for heaven, by the control and subversion of sin in the heart. All belief concerning matters of importance, espe- cially if matters necessarily affecting us, or affording the means of securing any desirable object, will always have much influence on a sound mind; and this is not more true with respect to any thing than the truths of religion. These truths are also aided in the impression which they are adapted to make, by the conscience of man, and by the necessity of his nature for the instruction and relief which they fur- nish. Any such credit of them, as men usually give to facts and statements in the history of very distant times and countries, would cause them to take an important place in their thoughts; for it is not ne- cessary that they should love the truth, in order to feel it, any more than it is necessary that they 8* 90 POPULAR INFIDELITY. should love the sun, in order to be apprized of its heat. Our love of an object will, indeed, increase the influence of our faith in it, by disposing us to entertain it in our minds, and by sweetly confirm- ing our experience of it; but there are some objects so immense and glorious that, when we really credit their existence, though we should not be well disposed towards them, they will take hold of us in so many ways that we shall find it difficult to escape from them; and the very effort to do so, may make us more sensible of our trouble, as he would be, who should shut his eyes to rid himself of a pain, or run to get out of the light of day. It is, therefore, evi- dent that such persons, as we have described, do not credit the stupendous truths of the gospel. They only think they do. They are not indeed infidels on the ground of reflection and evidence, and per- haps, if they should attempt to be, it would result in convincing them that they are so from the want of it. But it is one thing to have infidelity in the heart, guarding as i a strong man armed' against the entrance of truth, and another thing to have admit- ted it there, with such understanding as that we can give a reason of it. They have clearly not done this: still they are not alive to the great and affect- ing truths of religion; and their conduct, contrasted POPULAR INFIDELITY. 91 with that of those who are, shows that they have come to doubt them by an easier way than that of investigation. We can have no better proof of this, than their habitual inattention to the record which God has given of his will. This record is as the letting down of heaven to earth, as the breaking out of a sun upon our darkness. It is the very heart of love, the mind of God, conveyed to us as with his own voice in Jesus Christ. It has been the food and joy of his people in every age. Of this we have a strik- ing illustration in the eager desire manifested for the Scriptures at an early period of the reformation in England. " Entire copies of the Bible, when they could only be multiplied by means of amanuenses, were too costly to be within the reach of very many readers; but those who could not procure the 'vo- lume of the Book/ would give a load of hay for a few favourite chapters, and many such scraps were consumed upon the persons of the martyrs at the stake. They would hide the forbidden treasure under the floors of their houses, and put their lives in peril, rather than forego the book they desired; they would sit up all night, their doors being shut for fear of surprise, reading or hearing others read the word of God; they would bury themselves in the woods, and there converse with it in solitude; 92 POPULAR INFIDELITY. they would tend their herds in the fields, and still steal an hour for drinking in the good tidings of great joy: — thus was the angel come down to trou- ble the water, and there was only wanted some pro- vidential crisis to put the nation into it, that it might be made whole." 1 This desire is not confined to times of persecution. It is the outstanding distinc- tion of all the saints who have their record in the Bible, and the mark of all faithful people. They delight in the Scriptures ' after the inner man/ make them their ' meditation all the day/ give heed to them as to ' a light that shineth in a dark place/ 2 ' get understanding through them, and there- fore hate every false way.' And if they who pro- fess to credit them, and yet give them only casual thoughts, and, with perhaps the exception of the lessons appointed for Sunday, read them less than other books, and, when reading them, find no life, nor sweetness, nor persuasion in them; if they who take it for granted that they know them, and there- fore do not seek to have an understanding in them, would search into them, as into depths that con- ceal the richest treasures, they would soon find c a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about them/ and hear { a voice speak- ing unto them/ (which now they do not so much as 1 Blunt's Sketch of the Reformation in England. 2 1 Pet i. 19. POPULAR INFIDELITY. 93 fancy they hear,) and saying, * This is the way, walk ye in it; n ? Walk while ye have the light, lest dark- ness come upon you.' 2 They would indeed feel that 'the water was troubled' as with life from above, and their drinking of it would be as the put- ting on of immortality. The Scriptures have an evidence in them which is not seen by glances; they have a fire in them which must be mused upon, before it will begin to burn; like the heavens, they have lights and wonders in them which are not seen by common gazers, and though they may receive them from the report of others to whom they have come as by observation, yet it is as things of which they have no knowledge, and with which they have no means of communication. Casual thinkers on religious subjects know less of the Scriptures than they suppose. There may be nothing in them which they have not heard or read, and yet scarcely any thing which they have considered. Nothing important, nothing that im- ports an increase of understanding, was ever ac- quired in this way. So much wisdom on this subject is taken for granted, that, like the knowledge of ourselves, it is likely to be most defective when it is deemed most complete. But faith and know- ledge go 'hand in hand/ and when one is indistinct, 1 Isa. xxx. 21. 2 John xii. 35. 94 POPULAR INFIDELITY. both are. When we are content with guesses in place of knowledge, our faith at most is but a peradventure ; it is not the stay of the mind, but a broken wing, which, while it indicates that we were designed for noble flights, proves that we are disabled for them. If it give a look towards God and duty, it is as the look of * eyes which see not/ while the secret current of feeling and influence sets all the other way. This must be so, unless we have a faith which prompts us to serve God, because we know him, or to seek him, because we know him not. Thus faith always runs either in or after knowledge, and knowledge turns to a happy experience first, and then to assurance and complete blessedness. Hence to know God is to enjoy him by way of experience, as well as * to have eternal life' 1 by way of reward. But to know him is first 'to know Jesus Christ whom he hath sent ; 5 for ' no man knoweth who the Father is but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him.' 2 He has spoken and acted out his will in our nature; he is the ' way, the truth, and the life, and to as many as receive him, he gives power to become the sons of God.' To know him, then, is to know God, and know him, too, in a way that is as obliging as it is condescending, and should be as grateful as 1 John xxii. 3. Comp. Rom. ii. 23. 2 Luke x, 22. POPULAR INFIDELITY. 95 it is honourable to our nature. Truly it is no diffi- cult science which we are to learn, no cold abstrac- tion which we are to study, but the simple truth, — the life coming to us all animated as with our own sympathies, — nothing but an experience which we are to make our own, and that, the experience of the Father's Well-beloved, — blessed in him in all but what he endured for our sakes, — in us blessed with all the sweetening his love can give it, and ending in 'all the fulness of God!' It is this knowledge of God which natural men have not ; and it is a great aggravation of the guilt of their unbelief and hard- ness, that it is a knowledge which is proposed to them warm as with the kindliest affection for them, and commended to them as a tried experience of their necessities. Were there nothing tender and lively in it, it would not be so strange, though strange it were, that they should be unbelieving. But the truth to be believed is as well adapted, as it is worthy, to affect their hearts; and if they give it only a loose and unstudied entertainment, a forced and outward obedience, it is the best possible proof that they do as little know as believe it. They may have no suspicion that they are ignorant of God. They may have grown up with some vague impressions of his being and attributes, which they dignify with the name of knowledge, but, though the real ' sons of i*6 POPULAR INFIDELITY. Eli/ they * are the sons of Belial, who know not the Lord.' 1 They walk in the vanity of their minds, < being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them.' 2 To this we are taught to ascribe 'the blindness of their hearts/ and the unfruitfulness of their lives. They are indeed alienated from God through ignorance. This is the great cause of their unbelief and hardi- ness in transgression ; and they must feel after him by knowledge, before they can reasonably expect to find him by faith. They must become ignorant by a persuasion that they are so, before they can become wise by an understanding of what wisdom is. They must search the Scriptures if in them they think they have eternal life, and through them come first to the < break of day.' After taking a view of the ' dark ages' in which men were corrupted by ignorance, and content with mere glimpses of knowledge, "what," says Dr. Good, " is the upshot of the whole ? — the moral that the survey inculcates? Distinctly this; amo- ral of the utmost moment, and imprinted on every step we have trodden — that ignorance is ever asso- ciated with wretchedness and vice, and knowledge with virtue and happiness." This moral is as clearly illustrated in the life of individuals as in i 1 SanLii. 12. 3 EpK iv t 18. POPULAR INFIDELITY. 97 the history of nations — in the experience of a single Christian as in that of the church of Christ. Divine truth, as imbodied and shadowed forth in the Scrip- tures and in the lives of Christians, is the i salt of the earth/ the ' light of the world ;' and, where it is not known and heeded, corruption and darkness must prevail. The amount of its influence must also depend upon the degree of attention that is given to it. Cold and incurious thoughts will not answer the purpose. There is a ' secret of the Lord* in his word which does not come out of it unsought, like a flash of lightning or a dash of rain from the cloud. It is disclosed to waiting and attentive eyes, not suddenly and fully, but by a way of gradual dif- fusion which makes it more a part of ourselves, or rather ourselves indeed, than our acquirement — we being made thereby ' partakers of a divine nature.' God does not intend that we shall have the best things, if we will not 6 search diligently until we find them.' We are not to pass from poverty to riches, from ignorance to knowledge, from a state of sin to a state of faith and holiness, in a moment, and with- out an effort. And were we as practical and wise with respect to divine as other things, we should not look for this latter change without great effort, nor should we be deterred by that necessity from applying our mind to it, unless indeed the object 9 98 POPULAR INFIDELITY. were deemed undeservable in comparison with others. So that it is not the requisite effort that deters us from the pursuit of divine knowledge, but our low appreciation of it — our utter unbelief in regard to the great interest we have in it. Were there no want of faith in this latter sense, we should soon know that, as 'the kingdom of heaven suf- fereth violence/ so do 'the violent take it by force/ 1 We should not wonder that we are required to do so much, but that so much may be gained by the little that we can do. We should not so easily satisfy ourselves with the acting of religion on holy days, and in an outward compliance with its forms and customs. We should not find it so difficult to call off our thoughts from the world, and to turn them to heaven with designs and desires carrying us there. Our first wonder would be that there is a heaven for us, — our greater wonder, that it should be pro- cured at an expense so great that we cannot tell which is greatest, the love which bore it, or the guilt which made it necessary. Our strongest de- sire to be there would be that we may ' be for ever with the Lord/ who is such, and could love us so, that our loving him is not so much his will, as our privilege, and not so much his glory, as we would make it ours. Faith indeed would set every thing ' Matt. xi. 12. POPULAR INFIDELITY. 99 right in the dispensations and requirements of God, and make religion, not our trouble and hinders nee, but our help and delight — the work and end for which we came into the world. It would not suffer us to c halt between two opinions/ or to be without any opinion at all ; to be satisfied with occasional compunctions and partial reformations; to be scared from one indulgence by fear, and tempted from another by interest, and allied to others by inclina- tion ; to talk devotion and humility, and yet, without discomposure, to retain pride and to practise self- interest. It is a modest grace, which, while it con- fides in the promises of God, blushes with the shame, and labours with the distrust, of a wicked and deceit- ful heart. It is satisfied only with the complete likeness of its object. How different then is the work of faith from the conduct of those whose character has been under review! Giving to the truths and duties of religion but an outside and casual respect, they live in an in- curious, ignorant, and unrelenting condition. They are not sufficiently conversant with them to imbibe any influence from them, nor sufficiently thoughtful of them to have any certain persuasion of their obligation. Persons of this description have various shades of character. In some infidelity is more speculative ; in others there seems to be little 100 POPULAR INFIDELITY. speculation about it, and it only shows itself in the pernicious fruits of their lives and manners; but we ' know them all by their fruits.' They are found everywhere in the ranks of those who speak favour- ably of Christianity, who attend places of worship, and who alike feel themselves insulted and scan- dalized when they are charged with infidelity; yet nothing is more just We need not, and they need not, be mistaken. There is no profit in delusion. There is no charity in concealing the truth. Infi- delity runs in their speculations, oozes up in their worldly musings, and comes fully out in their drift and habits. The religion of the best of them amounts only to a state of indifference and luke- warmness; but the worst have too much moderation and taste in sinning to • glory in their shame/ or to ' suffer the sickness of their drunkenness, and yet call it pleasure:' they are not so far gone in iniquity; but with respect to the infidelity of all, we may say what was said, by one 1 of their own number, of the popes of Rome: "No man looks for holiness in the bishops of Rome ; those are the best popes who are not extremely wicked." They all have a certain faith, and the chief mischief of their state is, that they seem to think that if they were infidels, they should 1 Papirius Massonius. — See Jeremy Taylor's Sermon on Growth in Grace* POPULAR INFIDELITY. 101 have no faith at all. This is a great mistake. They would then, as now, believe and not tremble, have convictions, and presumptions, and hopes (all dis- turbers only) of acquaintance and happiness with God, while wrapt in their own darkness, and loving that darkness well. They must look elsewhere, if they would find a difference between themselves and professed infidels. They are on the same track with them here, and the only difference is, that some have the start of others. This conclusion will be confirmed by a more par- ticular view of their conduct. If we analyze their hope, it will be found like their worship, a casualty, an incident like our thousand wishes, that come and go we cannot tell why or whither. Such wishes are the drones that feed on our stores, but add nothing to them. They return empty from all their excur- sions; and so the hope of many not only does not work any good, but hinders them from working any, by imposing on them the belief that it does. It not only lives at their expense, but it reconciles them to remain out of true possession, by keeping in their view the deceitful colours of the prospect. While they recede from it by the visible bias and action of their spirits, its false lights beguile them to think they are drawing near to it. Its reasoning is: I shall be happy hereafter in him towards whom 102 POPULAR INFIDELITY. I live in habitual disaffection now. I shall covet then that glorious Presence which now I do not so much as seek, and cannot so much as enjoy. I can be happy in him whom I do not love, and love whom I do not know. I depend upon his favour, but my way of inviting and securing it is to live as without him; to keep myself a stranger to him while he gives me good things to enjoy, and to fly to him at last, when nothing else is left to lean upon. I would remain as I am, but, as I cannot, I am willing, when I must go, to be taken to the bliss of heaven, and, though that be not bliss to me now, I can trust to his mercy to make it so then. In this distant region where his communications are obscure and restrained, I see that his goodness abounds, and why should I doubt, when the time for full rewards and disclosures shall come, that it will much more abound ; that it will at least then meet the new and peculiar exigencies of creatures for whom now he provides with a father's care, not discrimi- nating between the evil and the good, but embracing them all as children, erring children, yet children still? Such is their case. They are believers and doers of ' many things.' Their condition differs little from the common state of the unconverted, and that dif- ference, with respect to great numbers, is to their ^vantage. We are, then, concerned to understand POPULAR INFIDELITY. 103 their faith, and to fix a definite character upon it. This we may be aided to do by considering the correspondence between their faith and practice in worldly business. We see nothing left to chance here, and nothing done, without a designing and adapting of means to ends. They consider the ne- cessities of the country, and the places where their business will be most likely to succeed. They watch the changes in the market, the signs of the times, the agitations and revolutions of governments, the suc- cess or failure of those around them, prying into the causes of each, and taking every warning and ad- vantage from them, in the management of their own affairs. In this way they acquire a business-faith, which is based upon reasonable evidence — a busi- ness-caution, which shows their profiting by the skill, the rashness, or miscarriage of others — and a business-discernment, which qualifies them to detect good and evil in their signs. And they act out these acquirements ; they measure their steps, and consider the effect of each on the event of their affairs; they see quickly where to apply their force, and their zeal, their activity, quickens with every new proof that it will accomplish its design. If they meditate changes in their residence, their employ ment, or their style of living, they study into the present and future consequences, and endeavour to 104 POPULAR INFIPELITr. adapt their tastes and habits to them ; if they are to come into the presence of wise men or princes, they are intent to know how they shall speak, and carry themselves suitably to their character and station, not seeming to be unapprized of their own inferior ity, nor affronting the dignity which they wish to propitiate ; if a great end is to be gained by extra ordinary effort, or the most difficult adventures are believed likely to lead on to fortune or other dis- tinction, they run the greatest hazards, endure the greatest hardships, traverse continents, cross oceans, (asking perhaps the prayers of the church, and so far well doing, yet asking it for a safe conduct in securing temporal advantages, when they seldom think, and might scorn perhaps, to ask the same assistance to secure eternal,) and do all things with a care and sagacity well worthy of rational beings: but how changed, how adverse to this, is the opera- tion of their faith in spiritual concerns ! Professing to admit their claim upon their first attention, and their unequalled value to themselves, yet putting them off with occasional thoughts, suffering the re- membrance of them to be merged in the stream of other imaginations, or perhaps bidding them begone, in impatience of their restraints ; expecting, they know not how soon, to enter into the bright pre- sence of God, angels, and just spirits, and to have their POPULAR INFIDELITY. 105 heaven in a holy communion with them, yet omit- ting every preparation for it, and not even inquiring how they shall deport themselves before the Majesty on high, or conform to the services and usages of his court; believing that after death the greatest possi- ble change will take place in their residence, their enjoyments, their pursuits, yet not caring to temper and mould themselves to it, but rushing upon that which is of the greatest interest to them, as if they had no part in it, or shutting their eyes to the event, when its shadows come over them and its steady approach cannot be doubted : never, indeed, com- puting their advances, as well pleased to be receding from, as approaching to, their object; never heeding the port or surprisal of the multitude, but walking with composure after them, though their lights are going out in despair by the way ; never acquiring any faith, any caution, any discernment in spiritual things ; in nothing manifesting the thought, the engagedness, the resolution with which they pursue the world, but all the capabilities of spiritual life sinking and dying within them (as before the time) without so much as the appearance of a death-strug- gle or a death-sigh for better things! If a man should conduct thus in his temporal affairs, all would say he had no faith in the success of his exertions, or did not value the objects to be 106 POPULAR INFIDELITY. gained by them. But should he claim to believe that all worldly advantages were within his reach, and to set the highest value upon them, and yet conduct in this manner, we should either set him down for a blockhead, a deranged person, or one who had added to the want of such faith the hypo- crisy of professing to have it. And should he set up in some particular business, and give only casual thoughts to it, never seeming to make it the object of pursuit, or to be concerned whether he prospered in it or no, and yet claim credit from others on the ground of such business so attended to, he would not only be distrusted, but, if he persevered in this course, denounced as desiring to conceal his evil con- dition, and to contract debts which he had not the means or expectation of discharging. With what grace, then, does he ask us to give him credit for faith in the gospel, who leaves his whole concern in it ' at loose ends/ and is content to float upon the stream that is bearing him from God, with a force that increases with the distance, and will soon make his return impossible ? Why should he not be considered and treated as an infidel ? Has he a kind of faith in these things ? So has the infidel, but nobody can tell what it is, or what it does, in either case, — unless, indeed, it deters them both, like the faith of failing tradesmen, from looking into their POPULAR INFIDELITY. 107 affairs, lest they should have a fuller view of their ruin. It is not a faith which breeds caution and solicitude, but that improvidence which shuts its eyes and concludes, if conclude it ever does, to take things as they come. Infidelity in both is, as ever, a lazy, dreamy vice ; in quiet the most stupid, in rage the most terrible of creatures, but, what is remarkable, blind alike in its rage and mildness. But we see nothing in them of the grace of faith, that birth of intelligence, which, fixing its far-reach- ing eye on things not discernible by sense, admits now, of a repose that is sweet and lively, and now, of an excitement that is great and burning, yet in order but as reason, and in noise but as light in motion. If we judge of them by their spirit, we see no difference ; if by their works, we see both breaking the same ground, and looking for the same increase. Both ' sow to the flesh, and of the flesh reap corruption' daily and visibly. Both are self- confident, self-complacent, indisposed to devotion, and c trusting in themselves that they are righteous/ Both are disposed to carry this impression as far as they can, and when they make it succeed with men, to take that for an argument that it will pass for a reality with God. Both are the willing dupes of ' an evil heart of unbelief/ and, in spiritual matters, < grope as if they had no eyes.' Both have 108 POPULAR INFIDELITY. a price all price beyond, put into their hands to get wisdom — the one openly discrediting its value, and thinking himself wise and good enough without it — the other putting upon it all manner of professed respect, and acknowledging bis folly and destitution without it, yet burying it in the earth as a talent which he cares not to employ; and, if neither the priest nor the Levite, but ' a certain Samaritan' was < neighbour to him that fell among thieves/ which of these is the believer? Which treats his Lord with most reverence — he that discredits the gift and his need of it, or he that professes to credit both and does not act conformably to either? he who rejects the offer which he thinks made to him without authority, or he who affects to receive it as of the authority which it claims, and yet never attempts to possess himself of the good it proposes? Which has the most fear of God — he that sins largely as doubting his word, or he that deliberately sins enough as believing it to incur his just displeasure forever? he that sees God as angry with the wicked every day, and is every day sinning, or he that sees him only as indifferent to human actions, and con- tinues to do what he will ? Which should we think the better man — he who receives our bounties and favours as thinking they came from us, yet never returns any thanks or discharges any obligation POPULAR INFIDELITY. 109 they lay on him, or he that receives them, as he does the showers of heaven, by the chance or right of his condition, and as little thinks of his duty to us as of the clouds that, without mind, drop down the rain ? he that pays us an external respect and deference because he thinks it shall profit him, or he that passes us by as though we were not, and is as regardless of his own interests as of our rights ? What, indeed, shall we think of the faith of those who give to the commands of God but an incidental and unstudied obedience? who believe too much, or rather cannot doubt enough to enable them to discard him from their thoughts altogether, and yet are content with thoughts which have no motive to his glory, and do as little restrain and temper them as honour him? who take credit to themselves for acknowledging obligations to which their whole life is as an act of untiring resistance? who entertain him in their loneliness, not as a friend from whom they have nothing to conceal, with confidence and affection, but as a stranger of doubtful appearance, with coldness, with suspicion, and dread? What, indeed, shall we think of those who can contemplate (believingly, as they say) the most affecting and worthy objects ' without any thoughts arising in their hearts V who can move on, already in the 10 1M) • POPULAR INFIDELITY. 6 shadow of death/ with eyes open on eternity, while the question of their love to God hangs in doubt, and this, though they cannot tell which is the most wonderful, the greatness of his love to them, or the happy and glorious effects and issues of their loving him? who have it in their faith, that he is < a consuming fire' to the wicked, and yet, without any invitation or permission to treat with him in their own persons, venture before him with a plea of personal merit, with a price in their hand, the hire of service, which is to buy them pardon and eternal life, — thus making his wisdom foolishness, and dispensing with the atonement and offices of his Son? — and this, too, when it is another part of their faith to depend solely on him ; to believe that many who c in that day cry Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name ? and in thy name done many wonderful works?' shall, as at the very entrance of heaven, find destruction bursting upon them from the words, c I never knew you : depart from me.' You have slighted my blood, my grace, my promises, my infinite compassions, and now come with the offering of your merits in their place. I have wrought out for you a perfect righteousness, and, not accepting it, you have gone about to establish a righteousness of your own. I have borne the punishment of your sins, but you POPULAR INFIDELITY. Ill have not borne my cross, and you can have no part in my joy and glory. All the analogies of human conduct lead us to infer, and we should not be surprised to find, that deception is sometimes practised in religion. If men can gain any advantage by it, it is not reasonable to suppose that they will abstain from it in this any more than in other cases. If they will do penance, cut and deform their bodies, perform pilgrimages, persecute and put to death i the saints of the Most High' and think they do him acceptable services, why should it be doubted that they may do much to work out a righteousness of their own, make ' long prayers 5 and a great show of humility and zeal, by which the same end is to be effected with less expense and less pain to nature, when they have not a particle of the spirit of the Master they affect to serve? All, no doubt, do something in this way; but the wonder is that they do no more; though doing less or more would leave them alike faithless. The omission is only to be accounted for on the ground of their disrelish to spiritual virtues, and of the little profit they derive from the credit of them. Still, a self- righteous, and therefore a faithless spirit, actuates the religion of many. Caring much for the re- putation, and something for the reality, of piety, without perhaps intending deception they come by 112 , POPULAR INFIDELITY. degrees to claim stoutly the excellence which others, in their charity, presume them to have. No one is disposed to call in question their Christian preten- sions; and being without that brokenness of heart and faith in Christ which cause them to fly from them- selves for support and direction, they walk in the sight of their own eyes, and take the outside for the inward life of religion. This they can maintain without any modification of their natural desires ; and, as it procures for them some peace of con- science, and much confidence and credit with others, no wonder if they trust it, value it, and think it acceptable to God, to whose perfections they are as Dlind, as to the miseries and plagues of an unsancti- ned heart. POPULAR INFIDELITf. 113 CHAPTER V. Error in estimating oar own qualities a cause of our misconceiving the divine perfections — Obstacles to correct views of ourselves — Readiness with which men confess the evil of their hearts — Pro- cess by which men are reconciled to evil ways — Causes which perpetuate this delusion — Their unobserved operation — Tendency of worldly companions and amusements to foster infidelity — This danger inferred from our mental constitution — Presumption of those who disregard it — Delicacy of religious sentiment — Its easy decay — Peril of virtue and faith where the influence of religion is discouraged — Great changes in moral character occurring without our notice — Blindness to the infidelity consequent upon them — Difficulty of breaking from worldly society — Things im- plied in our attachment to it — The prospect presented to the mind — Worldliness — Practical atheism — Peculiar dangers of youth — Whether religion is an easy practice — What is essential to make it so — Its nature — Its requisitions agreeable to the truest philosophy. We have hitherto considered the influence of the depravity of our nature on our judgment and prac- tice, with reference chiefly to the duties which we owe to God. This, too, is the principal object of every part of the present discussion. But whatever leads to such errors, either of opinion or practice, as we have contemplated, must evidently be the cause of great errors in our estimate of our own character. Indeed errors in the faith and practice of religion 10* 1 14 POPULAR INFIDELITY. always presuppose errors in our judgment of our- selves, if they do not proceed from them. We must rightly understand our own character, or we never can rightly understand the character of God and the wisdom and fitness of his proceedings with us. That, which is most apt to betray us into self-delu- sion, will be a chief cause of error in the concerns of religion. It is therefore pertinent to our object to consider the influence of our depravity on our views of ourselves. The mistakes of this descrip- tion, which we may be able to detect, will assist us to determine what confidence we should have in the purity and adequacy of our conceptions of the moral perfections of God. The question for our decision will be whether, if erring and partial in our views of our own moral qualities, we shall be likely to be correct and impartial in our estimate of the require- ments of the divine law? A general obstacle to correct views of ourselves, as well as of God, is our self-ignorance; and this is ignorance which we are naturally too indolent to discover, and too self-complacent to suspect, before some glaring evidence of it has been forced upon the mind. Our intimacy with the subject seems to us to suppose knowledge, — and inquiry and solicitude are therefore not entertained ; and what is most easy and necessary to be learned remains unknown. For this POPULAR INFIDELITY. 115 reason, our knowledge of subjects rarely presented to the mind, and requiring much investigation to be understood, is often more perfect than our know- ledge of those with which we are more familiar, and which may be more easily investigated; and as this ignorance is shameless, because common, and grateful, because it keeps us in favour with our- selves, it is no wonder if we assume the credit, while we are destitute of the life and proper operation, of knowledge. He, whose religion is something better than profaneness, will not find it difficult to be- lieve that he is both good and knowing indeed, if they, whose hearts and heads he studies in the inferences of their conduct, can have countenance for these qualities ; and this too, when they show in nothing that they have them not so much as in the extravagance of their pretending to them — adding to their destitution of the qualities so great dulness in the perception of them, that they need but to know them to be convinced that they have them not. There is one thing with which we may always be familiar, w r hich may be seen in every individual about us as in a glass, which shares in all our cares and affections and runs in every thing we do; and, though there be nothing more important for us to know well, there is yet nothing of which we gene- 116 POPULAR INFIDELITY. rally know so little. It is that self, busy and present in every thing, — that strangely anxious, yet more strangely improvident presence which works such wonders on us, and such suspicions in us, which in others flatters us to discern our weakness, and in ourselves flatters us to conceal it ; in them praises us barely to hide the envy which dreads our dis- covery, and in ourselves detects the secret, yet glories in the praise ; in them makes our opinion the test of what is fit and noble, while it affects to be indifferent to all opinions but its own, and both in them and us smiling at the parts which others act, but acting the same with scarcely any consciousness of its own doings — itself yet the most engaged and observing of creatures! Men, whose consciences and understandings are not wholly perverted, feel and will confess the evil of their hearts ; but charge it upon them as it operated in a particular case, and they will show by apologies that they do not believe it. No one is disposed to withhold the confession of our general depravity, and many make it rather with an air of triumph than of humiliation, as if there were magnanimity in it, or were no want of virtue where there is no unusual absence of it; but attempt to lift the veil which covers their corruptions, and they start back as if an enemy had approached them POPULAR INFIDELITY. 117 without a warning. They will not come to the investigation ; and it seems fair to judge that they are conscious of deeds which would be reproved. Their conduct, in this particular, also implies a readiness to hide themselves from their own view, and a capacity to be satisfied with iniquity that is concealed from the view of others — a state, it should be noted, totally inconsistent with just views of sin or holiness. They do not fear the invisible Searcher of hearts, and the confidence of their associates gives them the confidence of virtue. They walk erect in all the expressiveness of conscious worth, when, if their motives and acts were fully known, they would fly in shame from the presence of those who praise and trust them. The process, by which we become reconciled to evil ways, is gradual and often imperceptible. Actions that are merely doubtful as to their morality, first gain approbation, and the little beginnings of vice are tole- rated without alarm. The mind, naturally tender and timorous, is not easily tempted to commit acts of distinguished iniquity. Its moral dread of vice is not overcome by such bold attacks; but it is done by the undermining influence of humbler departures from virtue. These steal their way into our very constitution before we are apprized of our danger, and without a rattle to remind us of their venomous 118 POPULAR INFIDELITY. nature. They are the young vices which we take to our bosoms; the enemy's spies which we enter- tain not only with our secrets, but with our best provisions; i the foolish virgins' to whom we are giving the ' oil in our lamps/ without any flar that it will ever fail us. We think we have light enough and to spare. Our small defects are hid in the shade of our greater virtues, and if by the light of truth and conscience they are ever made to appear, like spots upon a planet, they are surrounded with splen- dour, and, what is satisfactory, are not visible to mortal eyes. Thus, through the deceitfulness of sin, we are first drawn into its power, and cheated into the belief that all is well because no evils are experienced, we become confident of virtue in the loss of sensibility to guilt, and in the successes of un- discovered crime, are reconciled to ourselves by the continued favour and countenance of the good. But the process, by which we are beguiled from virtue, and deluded into a sinful complacency with our own character, is not more subtle or unobserved than the operation of the causes which tend to per- petuate the delusion. The best of men are liable to be influenced in their opinions of themselves by the depravity of the heart. Running in the thoughts and affecting the understanding of men, it causes not only many individual errors, but a lax and danger- POPULAR INFIDELITY. 119 ous 4 public opinion/ which is apt to be referred to, as authority for what is right and proper. We have stated, and it may be repeated, that we are disposed to think little of imperfections and sins which are supposed to be common to man; and it is not less true that any evil practice, which public opinion sanctions, will lose the appearance of evil as it respectably prevails. Who, indeed, is likely to feel remorse or shame for what the world approves? Guilt finds countenance for itself in guilt; and he that lacks beauty or virtue will not wish to conceal himself where neither is esteemed. In this practical reference of our conduct to the judgment of the world, the 6 blind lead the blind/ and sustain each other in the way of ruin. Many united will be confident in a bad cause, which no one alone would have courage to defend. Each one finds encourage- ment for himself in the example of others, and so each is supported, and in his turn supports another. Few are at all apprized to what extent their opi- nions are influenced and moulded by the practice of their associates. To one of two societies we must belong, the sefvants of God, or the servants of satan; the votaries of time, or the votaries of eternity: they are each of them striving for the mastery, and saying, " Come with us." We may now be tender and respectful to the claims of religion, but we have 120 POPULAR INFIDELITY other sentiments, stronger than these, to which we shall be tempted to yield, if we enter ourselves with those who are devoted to the amusements and inte- rests of time. There is a spice of atheism, a dash of immodesty towards religion in all they do and say, which is the more dangerous, because it is so mild and diffused a thing that it requires more than ordinary watchfulness to detect it, and more than ordinary courage to give it its true character. With them life and death, hope and disappointment are spoken of without advertence to God, and with regard only to physical causes and effects. The motives and the works of piety are referred to prin- ciples of selfishness and hopes of gain, such as per- vade their own minds in the business of the world. If we hear and consider with attention, we shall find the sentiment breaking out like a restrained fire at every opening, that all men have the same end, and the only difference is, that of many lawful ways to it, some take one, and some, another. The most serious and awful scenes of human existence are commented on as incidents in a world of chance. The sensibility and thoughtfulness, which they awaken in the less confirmed of their number, are contemplated, and perhaps adverted to, as symp- toms of weakness and inexperience, to w r hich it is their felicity to be superior. Now, let it be con- POPULAR INFIDELITY. 12 1 sidered that our religious sentiment is not naturally our strongest; that, like other delicacies of the mind and heart, it recoils at first, and then loses its nature when used to ungenial associations, and becomes, if not the conscious, the real subject of an impure con* version; that our strongest tendency is to fix our affections on the world, to break from the restraints of eternity, to adjust our opinions to the standard of our companions, and to make their esteem a great and leading object in our speeches, smiles, and favours— and can it be doubted that here is an active and power- ful cause of degeneracy and unbelief ? Can we doubt that the result of this combination will be to create in us a necessity for pleasures, and a complacency in pursuits and imaginations, hostile alike to religious consideration and to correct views of personal cha- racter, and certain to perpetuate the delusion, if not checked by the intervention of crosses and calami- ties which shall bring us back to a ' right mind/ and to the < abundance that is in our Father's house V We remember one (who seemed to run well in reli- gion) who, falling among the enemies of his Lord, denied him in fear of their displeasure — and another, (who heard the preacher ' gladly, and did many things/) who afterward, (though i he knew him to be a just man/) ' for his oath's sake/ (made in a glee,) and ' for their sakes who sat with him/ (for he 11 122 POPULAR INFIDELITY. desired their approbation,) i commanded his head to be brought in a charger, and given to the damsel/ who had demanded it as the price of the amusement she afforded them. There are slighter, but not dis- similar, acts of denial and crime, to which we are perpetually tempted in the society of men devoid of religion. Their practice, indeed, is but a denial of its claims, but a blow at the destruction of that which they profess to honour as 'just.' We place our- selves where all is against Christianity, and nothing in favour and honour of it; where the irreligious tendencies of our nature are drawn out and applaud- ed; where it requires more than ordinary courage and strength to preserve or even express any con- cern for the interests of the soul; where we are strongly tempted to be silent about religion, to ac- quiesce in its banishment, to suppress our convic- tions, and to pass on to a guilty and cowardly siiame of it, when in the chosen presence of those, who, maugre their friendship, would spoil us of hope and salvation, and think they done us no disservice. Think as well as we may of the society of worldly minds, it gives no entertainment to religion, and will not tolerate the serious mention of it. The life and gayety which prevail there would fly at its approach, like birds scattered by the presence of the fowler. There is, if not an instinct, a ready appre- POPULAR INFIDELITY. 123 hension, a guilty shrinking from it, which as well expresses its infrequency as its unwelcomeness there. If we suppose that we can covet such society, and suf- fer our thoughts to follow its lead, and to repose in its moods, without the peril of our virtue and of our confidence in the truths of religion, we are unac- quainted with our nature and the strength of our mind. We may continue in it and be conscious of no change of opinion, relinquish no article of faith, and incur no charge of singular guilt or vainness of purpose; but we shall fall from our estate in a more general and less observable way; we shall lose our susceptibility to spiritual impressions; indistinctness of perception, aversion to prayer, and deadness to praise will come on, and the strength of the hold which religious principle has upon us will be weak- ened at every point, before we are apprized that we have changed in any. The cause of this change, of this diffusion of infidelity in the mind, should be borne in remembrance. It is the breaking up and merging of the sinner's convictions of the nature of sin, and of the degree of his own sinfulness, which has taken place as the direct effect of habitual con- verse with that society, where every thing is plan- ned, spoken, and done in disunion from God; where it is no crime to exclude religion from the thoughts, and where selfishness, pride, and all the spiritual 124 POPULAR INFIDELITY. forms of wickedness are treated as innocent, and only the vices and crimes, which impair confidence and reputation, and put in jeopardy ' their own things/ are noted and condemned as sins. The infidelity, which results from changed views of personal guilt and danger, (and our views in this respect are always changing for the worse when not improving, and, though changing by insensible de- grees perhaps, yet greatly changing,) is seldom per- ceived by the subject of it, and in this lies its dead- liest advantage. It is * a wolf in sheep's clothing/ having indeed all of the dulness, with none of the innocence of that useful animal. It is a virus that has been infused without a sting, and works without pain, consuming the, health and obscuring the sight. Its process is as insensible as that of age, disabling and bringing us under its power. No speculative opinions are changed, no great truth is formally re- nounced; still the change is great; it is diffused through the whole man, and when he contemplates it, it awakens no alarm, and is not likely to be seen either in its cause or effect. It is nature upon which only the changes of experience and age have passed, taking something from its susceptibility and power, but nothing from its goodness and faith. Such are the views which men have of the grown corruption of the heart, when it assumes only an even and POPULAR INFIDELITY. 125 natural shape; and, of course, the infidelity which they involve is rarely suspected. They must be convinced that their views of sin have been modi- fied by their associations, that in the unmixed world- liness of their thoughts and affections there is an element of darkness, a growth of death, which mars and defiles their conceptions of truth, before they can understand their true condition or its proper remedy. This is the reason why it is so difficult to persuade them of their infidelity, and why the truth, when presented to their mind, has so little effect. They are not sensible of the character of the change that has been wrought in their estimation of sin and holiness, and retaining still their opinions, something as a tree retains its limbs when life is gone from them, they esteem themselves as good believers as ever. The truth affects them little, because they do not see their occasion to be affected by it, and, observe, they never will see it, while they continue to view their character as reflected from the conduct of others who approve of them as they are, and act as they do. Such example has the effect of weakening their convictions of sin, of impairing their fear of God, and estranging the mind from the evidences of his truth. This done, they are left exposed to other consequent causes of unbelief: they have esta- 11* 126 POPULAR INFIDELITY. blished their worldly associations and friendships, and consistency requires that they should continue in them; the difficulty of a return to religious con- sideration is thus greatly increased; the singularity of such a course and the reproachful surprise it might awaken are more strongly apprehended, and they have not the courage to do the duty they would. This is the best view of their case; and it may be very far from comprehending the whole evil and difficulty of it. They have perhaps drank in so great a measure of worldliness, that they would not ex- change it for religion, if they could, would not break from the ranks of its neglecters, if there were no obstacle in the way, no sacrifice of esteem and no reproach to be incurred by it. Like the deranged, or the foolish man, they may be struck spell-bound, with the splendour of their prison-walls, and obstinately refuse to come out, when its doors are opened and liberty proclaimed. When this infatuation, this pleasure with worldly bonds, is added to the en- hanced difficulties and sacrifices which they must undergo in breaking from them, reason despairs of their recovery. There is, indeed, no hope of it from themselves. Every influence is operating, every motive is drawing, to help them on in the discredit of religion, and to give them repose with- out it. True, they have yet some distrust of their FOPULAR INFIDELITY. 127 safety, but they see nothing singular in their condi- tion, and, as the numbers who rank with them swell on every side, with hearts light and countenances imaging confidence and delight, their fears are allayed. They take courage from observing the unconcern of others; they would tremble to face the danger alone; to be solitary sinners they could not endure; to see all their companions running in the ways of righteousness would cause instant dissatis- faction and alarm; to be marked and set apart in this way, this would make them hate the distinction which now they so much covet, bring down their high looks, imbitter their pleasures, and run every thing, save religion, to dross and littleness. But their strength stands in numbers, (strange that they should not deem it a strength drawing to destruc- tion,) and their boldness (cutting the air in the rear of powerful leaders, no danger near or looked for) like an insect circling a blaze, repelled by the heat, hut inferring no danger from the light, is daring because not seeing, and cheerful because not con- sidering — both illustrating and prompting the ex- clamation, 'if the light that is in us be darkness, how great is that darkness!' 1 Enough has been said to evince that neither the mind nor the heart can be clear in an element from I Matt vi. 2, 3. 128 POPULAR INFIDELITY. which religion is expelled. Next to positive im- piety and sensuality, the greatest obstacle to faith is that worldliness which is acquired in the chosen society of those who are living without God. It stupifies the conscience, cools the affections, breeds distaste to serious reflection, accustoms the mind to the absence of religion, and gives scope and nourish- ment only to the corrupt tendencies of our nature. It is a world, in which God is practically allowed to have no part, which is separated from eternity, where all trifles have a dangerous value, and every thing is permitted to drift but what may be gathered up and turned to the advantage and pleasure of a wasting life. And when it is considered what our nature is, what our proneness, under the wisest and best restraints, to self-indulgence and the neglect of spiritual concerns, can it be thought safe for our virtue, to say nothing of our faith, to strike for plea- sure and notoriety in such an element of atheism as this ? to inure the heart to a fascination that steels it to the impression of danger, to shut God out of the mind, and let nature run, without the guidance of his grace, * like a river smooth Along its earthy borders V If we can do this safely, we may blot out as super- fluous half of the precepts and cautions of the word POPULAR INFIDELITY. 129 of God; our nature is not what it is there described to be, nor what we have seemed to find it in expe- rience; we have been deceived; there is no danger of being corrupted by ' evil communications/ no cross in religion, no self-denial, no crucifixion of the natural man, no ' worldly lusts' to be slain, nothing to be done but to consent to be borne to heaven, or rather, to let our nature carry us there. Alas, that any should indulge in a dream like this; should think themselves proof against f the wear and tear' of this current; or should esteem religion so little as to enter themselves on this ground, and take their chance for salvation in a race that leads directly from it, and must soon leave it out of sight! This is to turn their back on God, to stop their ears to his calls, to close their eyes to the lights he has set in their path, and all in an easy expectation of get- ting to heaven at last. That any will do this, while they have a speculative belief in Christianity, and no settled purpose of living and dying without an interest in it, is an instance of wonderful self-decep- tion, a proof that the plague of their hearts has got a deep and unsuspected hold, and that the excel- lence, the heart, the whole of Christianity but its outside is gone from their creed, and gone, too, through the advances of corrupt nature, and leaving no sense of vacancy and loss behind. We cannot 130 POPULAR INFIDELITY. express the trouble we feel in viewing the prospect before them. Those generous and noble youth, whose loveliest distinction is their sensibility to vir- tue, and to a Saviour's compassion; who engage us so by their confidence, their warm and unsettled affections, their inexperience of sorrow and the dan- gers of deception — all beautiful as they are — we see them giving their hearts to the world — we cry, but cannot make them hear — we look on, and see them as trees already in e yellow leaf;' the angel that was in them has disappeared, gone in all but his visage; a blight has fallen on the religious delicacy of the mind, and, " Like the crush'd flower, no time, no art, Can make it bloom again." We see them yet: their hearts beat only for worldly pleasure and admiration; none of their associates feel surprise or attempt to turn them to better things; their simple feelings are acquiring the vigour and hardiness of a worldly maturity, and they are moving on — a wonder to all but those who are going the same way, yet no wonder to themselves— numbers falling into the grave, numbers wasting with disease, numbers bowed down with anguish and disappoint- ment, numbers consuming with envy and pride, numbers finding pleasure ceasing to please, numbers acknowledging that 'all is vanity/ with no heart to POPULAR INFIDELITY. 131 seek for substance, and numbers looking back on a life gone through, and a world tried and emptied, and forward to an eternity just at hand, yet having no heart, no resolution to prepare for it:-— we see them no more — but the world is going on as before; their places are filling up, and ceasing to know them, none the better that they have lived, or the sadder that they are gone. 1 It is difficult to account for the inconsideration with which persons, accustomed to be wary and thoughtful on other subjects, will put in peril their spiritual interests, without supposing a greater de- gree of unbelief in their mind than they are ready to acknowledge. To say the least, it evinces a degree of insensibility to the claims and per- fections of God, a disaffection with his service, a 1 If we have nothing secure, nothing which will be ours to enjoy forever, 'what shadows we are,' and what shadows do we dote upon ! When contemplating this truth, that was a natural reflec- tion of Mrs. Cooper, which we find in her life by Adam Clark. " When I view mankind, their disappointments, miseries, diseases, and wretchedness, and see that each individual has a cup of sorrow to drink; I feel surprised that this world should ever be alluring to my eyes ; that it should ever lay siege to my heart with so much success; that the things relative to another world should be so dimly viewed, so lowly prized. Religion, if it be sincere, must be the prevailing disposition of the mind ; it must supersede every thing else ; it must be a progressive work, and the soul must be preparing for a state of perfect holiness." Can this be done, can we have any religion at all, in a society where all concern for it is looked out of countenance, and only worldliness is indulged % 122 POPULAR INFIDELITY. decided preference of the world to him, which can- not be continued in, without the most fearful hazard of running into infidelity. It is an ordinary con- comitant of such a state to have all the better and earlier convictions of the mind unsettled. When com- mon respect and tenderness toward religion is dissi- pated, truth, once received and felt, will come under suspicion, and be turned off as uncertain. The great realities of a future life will hang in doubtfulness; we shall begin to suspect our need of faith in them, and to look with more boldness and composure to the trial of them without the preparation which the gos- pel requires. We want no better proof of this than reflection on the operation of our own mind will give us; but, if we should not so readily find it here, we may see it in the multitudes who, in maturity and old age, are living without religion, and dying without concern. This indifference proceeds from a gross perversion of the intellectual powers in reference to spiritual objects, which has its origin in the quali- ties of the heart. They did not anticipate this result, — they could not have been satisfied with any rational prospect of it, — but now, that they are the subjects of it, they see nothing strange or alarming in it. These considerations show what the peculiar dan- gers of youth are, in associations which withdraw their attention from religion and put them upon POPULAR INFIDELITY. 133 satisfactions foreign to it. There is death in the enchantment of this circle. The leaven of the Pharisees — formality in religion, and distaste to spiritual duties — will spread through all the facul- ties of their soul, not leaving, ultimately, so much as a lukewarmness for God. We have sometimes thought that religion is not a little dishonoured, and they not a little deceived, by well meaning representations of it as an easy prac- tice. Its yoke may indeed be easy, and its burden light, but it is only love to Christ and deadness to the world that can make it so. There is no such thing as a religious practice without a conflict with ourselves, — a sacrifice of our devotion to the amuse- ments and pursuits of the world ; and, if this be deemed a great hardship, it proves too clearly that the heart is not yet broken in penitence, nor kindled into reciprocal flames by the love of Christ. It is only poising between the world and God, proposing conditions to him, not accepting of his, and indulging thoughts as little worthy of the excellency of his service, as of the greatness of the hopes that are entertained from it. To set out in religion with this mind is not to follow Christ, but to bargain with him for the enjoyment of the world; to dictate on what terms we will be saved, and to pledge to ourselves his acquiescence in them ; to presume on 12 134 POPULAR INFIDELITY. his forbearance, and to confide in his mercy and complacency towards us, while we refuse to separate from the world and to bear his cross. It is a species of self-indulgence that will serve him only so far as he will let us do it in our own way. How much religion persons of this humour would have, or how much practical consideration of Christ's benefits and counsels they evince, it is hard to say. It is wonderful that they should pretend to any; and in- deed they pretend to so little, and so little evince, that one is in doubt whether it is their pleasure to have the credit of any. Religion, were it as accom- modating to our natural desires as their practice shows it to be, would be little better, as a restraint upon the corruption of our nature, than a warrant for its indulgence in all the ways of preferring the creature to the Creator. Our Saviour did not mis- take the truth on this subject when he told