test therein laid down; I demand your serious attention to the arguments by which I shall endeavour to point out and ascertain "that which is good;" and I pray God for Christ's sake that he may give his blessing to the enquiry, and enable you to hold fast the opinions you may thus adopt to the present peace and eternal welfare of your soul.

I would not however have you by any means suppose that I am about to argue against what can with any propriety be denominated an excess (2) of religious principle. I do not think that there can be such an excess. I do not see how we can love too earnestly or serve too devotedly Him whom it is our acknowledged duty to love and to serve with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our soul, and with all our strength." Neither I conceive are we ever likely to be too zealous for our

neighbour's good, when we are bound to love him as ourselves, and to do unto others as we would they should do unto us. No, it is not against an excess of religion that I would argue, but against a mistake in that excess; against a dangerous error which consists not in obeying Christ more than others, but in disobeying one part of his Gospel under a notion of complying more strictly with the rest. The views with which your mind is now agitated are if I rightly understand them violations rather than excesses of Christian principle; they lead not to the too zealous fulfilment but to the direct transgression of Christian duty; and it will be my endeavour to convince you that such is the case, by an enquiry into their nature and tendency, with a constant reference to the words and to the spirit of the Gospel.

There are many circumstances which render such an enquiry difficult, especially where there is no opportunity of personal conference: and perhaps it may be desirable to point out and obviate some of these particulars, with a view to the more satisfactory result of the enquiry thus earnestly undertaken. For indeed I would fain hope that our present communication is no vain wrangling of words, no strife of ingenuity, or contest for human victory; the peace of mind, perhaps the eternal welfare, of one or both enquirers is at stake; and we cannot surely doubt, that He who has given us the same faculties, the same language, the same word of revelation, has put it in our power to arrive at the same conclusions on matters of such deep and common concern. Known unto Him are all our thoughts; let no erroneous pre

judice obstruct their right employment! To His providence we must refer this our unexpected conference; let us conduct it with honest purpose of conviction, as in the presence of His all-seeing eye!

I. One circumstance which operates strongly against the success of any written communication on such subjects is, the difficulty of defining each word as it occurs, and of ascertaining whether each person attaches the same ideas to the terms on which the controversy (if I may so call it) depends. Words are not used in the Bible with the same strict and unvarying significations in which they occur in the works of human science. The Bible was written for mankind in general, it was adapted for the apprehension of all sorts of readers, and men ordinarily derive their apprehension of any single term from the sense of the whole passage in which

it occurs. To such readers the Bible is in some respects more plain than to those whose education has been of a more refined description. For it is continually the object of science to ensure accuracy by using one term in one sense only; and thus the minds of educated men are apt to get a habit of attaching some one particular notion to each single term, without reference to the meaning of the context. That much error has flowed from this source has been very generally lamented. The manner in which it takes place may be understood by any one who considers the various senses in which the word

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faith,” (3) for instance, occurs in the New Testament, and the absurdities which have arisen from not keeping them distinct in the interpretation of the different passages. The same remark will apply to the several senses of