viction was evidently sudden and premature, soon caught up, and soon laid aside; as may be gathered from his expostulation with these precipitate professors. "I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain (says he to them). Brethren, I beseech you, be as I am: for I am as ye are ; ye have not injured me at all. Ye know how through the infirmity of the flesh I preached the Gospel unto you at the first. And my temptation, which was in the flesh, ye despised not, nor rejected; but received me as an angel of God, even as Jesus Christ. Where is then the blessedness ye spake of? For I bear you record, that if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them unto me" (Gal. iv. 11, &c.).

10. Another sort, but not worse than others, as it may be reckoned an incipient faith, is the mere assent to divine truths, such as the being and attributes of God, his judgment, providence, and the like, without much feeling: which is very near to the first mentioned case of apathy, if not to dissent or doubting. For faith in God, to be perfect, should be consenting as well as assenting: yet this often precedes the other, if it does not contribute to the same; which makes it somewhat, to have only so much as an assenting faith; seeing consent may follow. So it happened to our Saviour's first apostles, and afforded a striking example of both sorts of faith to future believers, namely, of an assenting and consenting faith: when these were required to believe, and doubtless did believe, many things of him being on earth; also ate the new Passover with him, which is what we call Receiving the Lord's Supper, and all in their unenlightened state, i. e. with a mere passive or assenting faith. But after our Saviour's ascension and the descent of the Holy Ghost, being excited in a superior manner, and enlightened with heavenly wisdom, they had a thorough sense and lively comprehension of the mystery of the kingdom of God in Christ: and then their faith was both assenting and consenting;

full, perfect and assured. A rather comfortable prospect for us, not entirely, but rather; because our Saviour tells us, as he told others, "Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of Heaven" (Matt. v. 20). It is impossible, that the religious of our day should be more conformable or acquiescing in their national mode of worship, than the scribes and Pharisees of our Saviour's time were; also for any one to know, whether his faith will ever be more lively and consenting than theirs, so that we have not much room to boast: and if our faith should never rise beyond the characteristic here intended, we must die in unbelief, or in a FASHIONABLE MISBELIEF; which amounts to the same in effect.

11. Finally, to conclude this sample of misbelief with another fashionable sort, and much of a piece with the preceding, if it do not rather deserve the name of Infidelity than of Misbelief-as common a sort as any, is faith without works or obedience; which they call a dead faith, and may therefore be similarly called a fatal misbelief: being naturally vapid, inconsequential, and unproductive, without savour, without fruit: and in short, hardly deserving the name of Faith or Belief. For what a man truly believes, he will as inevitably practise, if he can; HIS PRACTICE BEING REGULATED AND DESCRIBED BY

HIS BELIEF. "And why call ye me Lord, Lord, (asks our Saviour,) and do not the things which I say?" (Luke vi. 46). This is a sort of credit that one man would not thank another for, and very different from what we owe to God; as however great our reliance and expectations may be towards Him, they should not interfere with other dues that he requires, and also has a right to exact from us. It seems like adding insult to infidelity, to believe in God and his word, without doing thereafter: to believe, that he enjoins this action, that forbids, patronizes and ap proves this sort of conduct, to that is decidedly averse; to believe thus on either hand, without a corresponding at

VOL. II.

R

tempt; but, it may be, the reverse. Servants who should conduct themselves in this idle and insolent manner towards some masters on earth might expect to be well striped for it.

66

As infidelity or misbelief in this simple degree is chiefly a want of faith, and faith, as before observed under that head, is the pure gift of God, and utterly beyond the scope of our own acquirement, it may seem hard too, that a servant which knew his Lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, should be beaten with many stripes" (Luke xii. 47) for such neglect; when so much more than knowledge was required for performance, and much of that also out of his reach: but may not the same consideration be equally applied to want of stature, strength, and even of common necessaries? We must needs suffer more or less for the want of only one of these inferior commodities, although its attainment should not have been placed within our reach by an overruling Providence; and if men are liable to suffer only for want of one of the least of these, what should hinder them from suffering likewise for the want of so important an article as faith in every degree; and especially when, as it most: frequently happens, they have brought that want upon themselves by their own misthinking perhaps, or misdoing? "For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to ALL men" (Tit. ii. 11): whether they chose to see it or not.

But our acts of faith may be run out to sin, and become extinct, as well as the properties of love, respect and obedience. We see numbers in the world who are seemingly incapable of either of these properties: who are so abominably selfish, that they can neither love another, nor respect themselves; neither pay much deference to the authority of others, nor yet be very well satisfied with that of their own corrupt inclination: and it may be the same with their faith. They have trusted themselves too much; and now they are quite listless: they have run out their faith to vanity, instead of drawing out their soul to the hungry

(Isai. lviii. 10): they have done believing; and will never believe again without a new creation.

By some of those who would reply against God, (of whom more hereafter,) it may be alleged, that our insensibility or indifference towards Him is a natural consequence of our having never seen Him: but it is also natural to consider our earthly parents and benefactors, whom we have seen, with the same eye of indifference, if not with ingratitude. It is well known that gratitude and sensibility, the ingredients of faith, are not natural to man at present; that they were and ought to be so, we know and feel too sometimes; but so they are not at present. And we now meet with a very few men, to whom it might not be said as it was to the haughty king of Babylon, soon after the example that had been made of a predecessor in his dignity as faithless and unfeeling as himself, " And thou, his son, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all this" (Dan. v. 22). For he was evidently one of those gentiles who walk, according to the phrase of St. Paul, in "the vanity of their mind; having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart" (Eph. iv. 17, 18), and not because they have not seen their proper Object of worship. For (as St. Paul likewise observes) "the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead: so that they are without excuse" (Rom. i. 20); and, it might be added, also without remedy as long as they shall continue in this state. Neither faith nor fidelity towards God may be expected from one of that darkened, unregenerate class; on the contrary, from various causes besides his natural alienation, he will still degenerate, and be farther alienated from God continually: among which extraordinary, or rather, resulting causes the following may be enumerated.

1, An inordinate fear and dread of human observation, a pusillanimous habit of concealment towards man, as if he was every thing. This will make us forget by degrees that universal and penetrating observation, which we may indeed forget, but cannot elude.

2, A principal trust and reliance towards the same quarter, more dangerous if possible than fear. Indeed it is hard to conceive, how men reckoning so much on each other as many are found to do, can have any reliance on God, or think much of any relation to him. And if men cannot take his word for any thing; if the honour of being related to him as friends, as children, as his chosen, be not worth any thing, where may be their faith, and whence is this high endowment to be expected? "How (said our Saviour to the mercenary Jews)-how can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only?" (John v. 44.) It is impossible, that men can believe while they labour under such a wretched infatuation: their judgment is all awry; their dependence is a broken reed. How can men help them in such a case? "The apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith" (Luke xvii. 5), believing in God with him: and believers may help believers truly in this respect; but from unbelievers unbelievers cannot get what they have not. For " no man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son which is in the bosom (or confidence) of the Father, he hath declared him" (John i. 18): and here is all their remedy; in this principle, or beginning.

It appears then, that people cannot be innocent in simple infidelity or unbelief, still less in misbelief, and less again in other shades or degrees of ungodliness to be now considered.

§ 2. Among such other shades or DEGREES, as they may be rather called, the first that claims our attention is the offence, or sin as we may call it, of self-justification, or what in Scripture has been called a replying against God: which may not be thought much by some, yet deserves in