is an inestimable blessing, and impartiality in religious inquiries an indispensable duty. But the above maxim becomes false and dangerous by being carried an excessive length; and it is carried to this excess by the favour of two suppositions which are false and groundless. The maxim is applied frequently to justify an open and virulent opposition to the most important truths of the gospel; nay, sometimes, even a denial of all religion, natural and revealed. To be able to apply it thus, it is necessary to suppose that false opinions will have as good an influence upon the heart as true. If this is the case, the boasted privilege of free inquiry is not worth having, and all the labour bestowed on the search of truth is entirely thrown away. Another supposition contained in the above maxim is, that a person may be as sincere in embracing gross falsehoods, as in adhering to the truth. If this be true, our Creator hath not given us the means to distinguish the one from the other, which is the highest impeachment both of his wisdom and goodness.

Such persons do not consider, that a corrupt inclination in the heart brings a bias on the judgment, and that when men do not "like to retain God in their knowledge," he frequently, in his righteous judgment, gives them up to a reprobate mind. Nay, when they reject his truth from an inward hatred of its purity, he is said to send them strong delusion, as in the following passage: "Because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie; that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure

in unrighteousness."

But the nature of regenera

tion will serve, in a peculiar manner, to show the danger of error. If men form wrong notions of God, if they love, and worship, and resemble a false god, they cannot be renewed, they are not like, and therefore unfit for the presence of the true. Be not deceived, he cannot deny himself, and therefore "there is no fellowship of righteousness with unrighteousness, no communion of light with darkness, no concord of Christ with Belial."

I must here, to prevent mistakes, observe, that this ought by no means to be extended to differences of smaller moment, under which I rank all those which regard only the externals of religion. I am fully convinced, that many of very different parties and denominations are building upon the one "foundation laid in Sion" for a sinner's hope, and that their distance and alienation from one another in affection is very much to be regretted. Many will not meet together on earth for the worship of God, who shall have one temple above, where all the faithful, "from the east, and from the west, from the north, and from the south, shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of their" eternal "Father." But, after all, I must needs also believe that it is possible to make shipwreck of the faith. This appears plainly from the following, as well as many other passages of Scripture: "But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction."

If

any take up false notions of God, or expect sanctification and eternal life in any other way than he hath pointed out in his word, though they may now build their hope on a fond imagination that he is such a one as themselves, they shall at last meet with a dreadful disappointment in this awful sentence, Depart from me, I know ye not, ye workers of iniquity."

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SECTION II. There must be a discovery of the infinite glory of God.

In the second place, As there must be a discovery of the real nature, so also of the infinite glory of God. He must not only be seen to be just such a Being as he really is, but there must be a sense of the infinite worth, beauty, and perfection of his character. These two things, though intimately connected, are yet so distinct from one another, as to deserve to be separately considered. The first is necessary, but it is not sufficient alone, or by itself. There can be no true religion, unless there be a discovery of the real nature of God. But though there be a knowledge of what God is, unless there be also a discovery of the excellence and glory of this nature, he can never be the object of esteem and love. It is one thing to know and another to approve; and whilst this last is not the case, whatever we may know or affirm, or be persuaded of with relation to the Supreme Being, we do not know him to be God, nor can possibly glorify him as God. This momentous truth we may surely comprehend, by what is analogous to it in our experience between created

natures. Speculative knowledge and love are by no means inseparable. Men may truly know many things which they sincerely hate: they may hate them even because they know them: and when this is the case, the more they know them they will hate them with the greater virulence and rancour. This not only may, but always must take place, when natures are opposite one to another: the one sinful, for example, and the other holy. The more they are known, the more is their mutual hatred stirred up, and their perfect opposition to each other becomes, if not more violent, at least more sensible.

We have little reason to doubt that the fallen angels, those apostate spirits, have a great degree of speculative knowledge. I would not indeed take upon me to affirm, that they are free from error and mistake of every kind, yet it seems highly probable that they have a clear, though, at the same time, a terrible apprehension of what God is; for they have not the same opportunities, or the same means of deceiving themselves, that we have in the present state. But do they love him, or see his excellence and glory? Very far from it. They believe and tremble; they know God and blaspheme. The more they know of him, the more they hate him; that is to say, their inward, native, habitual hatred is the more strongly excited, and the more sensibly felt.

The case is much the same with some sinners when first awakened, and it continues to be the same so long as they are kept in bondage and terror. They have an awful view of the holiness of God's nature, of the strictness of his law, and the greatness of his power. This is directly levelled against their own

corrupt inclinations, and carries nothing with it but a sentence of condemnation against them: "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them." This brings forth their enmity, which before perhaps lay hid. It is remarkable, that some persons of loose and disorderly lives, will sometimes maintain, at stated seasons, a profession of piety. So long as they can keep their consciences still and quiet by general indistinct notions of God, as very easy and gentle, no way inclined to punish, they think of him without aversion, nay, will go through some outward forms with apparent satisfaction and delight. Their notion of divine mercy is not a readiness to pardon the greatest sinner on repentance, but a disposition to indulge the sinner, and wink at his continuance in transgression. No sooner are such persons brought to a discovery of the real character of a holy God, than their thoughts of him are entirely changed. They have gloomy views of his nature, and harsh thoughts of his providence; they fret at the strictness of his law, and, as far as they dare, complain of the tyranny of his government. Their sentiments are the same with those expressed by the men of Bethshemesh: "Who is able to stand before this holy Lord God? and to whom shall he go up from us?"

I cannot help observing, that here we are, if I may speak so, at the very fountain-head of error. What is it else that makes many frame to themselves new and flattering schemes of religion? that makes them imagine a God so extremely different from that holy Being he is represented in his own word? When men will not conform their practice to the principles