been mistaken for the silence of guilt: it is time that the young, upon whose unpractised minds they are always at work, should know, that moderation is not wholly indefensible; and it is time they should be taught to exact, of religious presumption, proofs as severe as its pretensions are high.

Not that it is meant by these remarks to insinuate, that the church is endangered by this denomination of christians; I hope, and believe that its roots are too deep, its structure too admirable, its defenders too able, and its followers too firm, to be shaken by this or any other species of attack; but if such dangers do exist, which I am not able to perceive, that danger is not from principles well known, and previously refuted; it is not from men who profess to reason about their faith, and who give you some means of making to them a reply; but it is from that fanaticism, which professes only to feel, and not to reason, which is intangible, and invisible to its enemies, which it is no more possible to meet with the common efforts of reason, than it is to dispute with a burning fever, or to argue down a subtle contagion.

the

There exists too, in this sect, not only arrogance of which I am speaking, but that unchristian charity in the judgment of the motives of others, which is the natural consequence of such arrogance; they are perpetually in the habit of putting on the actions of the rest of mankind, a construction which depreciates all other religions, and exalts their own; like all small sects, living, and acting together, their proselytes inflame each other, by mutual praise, into an exaggerated sense of their own value; and glide, imperceptibly, into a kind of confused notion, that they are a chosen, and consecrated people, placed by God in the bosom of idolatry, to purify, and to save mankind. It is impossible not to perceive, that such are the secret feelings by which these men are influenced, and, perceiving it, it is not possible, at the same time, to admit, that they hold the christian faith in all that vigour, purity, and vitality, which they would make us ordinary Christians to believe.

Another mischief which they do to the cause of religion is, that, by their

eager, and overheated imaginations, they bring discredit upon the sacred cause, and upon the name of religion; they are taunted as the priests of Baal were taunted;—" cry aloud, for he is a God: cither he is talk

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ing, or pursuing, or he is in a journey, or, peradventure, he sleepeth, and must “be waked: and they cried aloud, and cut themselves, after their barbarous manner, "with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed

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out upon them." Nothing can be more mistaken in fact, than to look upon the frantic extravagance, or the undignified trifling of their teachers as innocent: Nothing is innocent which casts the faintest shade of error, or of folly upon true religion: Nothing is innocent which disposes the minds of men to confound a serious Christian with an enthusiastic Christian: Nothing is innocent which induces them to dishonor alike the firmness of rational conviction, and the vehemence of ignorant passion; nothing which, by disgusting correct judgments, runs the remotest risque of involving sober Christianity in the fate of low fanaticism.-He who is reproached for being in one extreme,

comforts himself that he is not in the other; if he neglects the duties of religion, if he is' absorbed by the world, if he violates the clearest rules of right, and wrong, he pleads that he is no hypocrite, no fanatic, that he despises the senseless, barbarous raving, which passes so often under the name of religion. And this is, perhaps, the greatest evil of enthusiasm; it is not that an enthusiast may not himself be a better man, but that he makes others worse men; for the publican says in his turn, thank God, I am not as this Pharisee, and then goes headlong into every sin, because he will avoid extravagance, hypocrisy, and ostentation: Thus it is that human vices and errors are perpetually acting upon each other, that we seize hold of what others do too much, in order to justify ourselves in doing too little, and are, on the opposite side, provoked to do too much, because we observe others to do nothing at all; the horrors of infidelity produce the follies of enthusiasm; and the follies of enthusiasm disgust men into the horrors of infidelity.

If power, and praise are the objects

you seek, under the name of religion, or, if you are mistaken enough to suppose, that that which is good in some degree is good in every degree; that the holy apostle, Saint Paul, when he talked of a righteousness over much, and of a zeal without knowledge, talked of those feelings which did not, and which could not exist, then, do as these men do, make a new god, after your own heated mind, and carry the narrow spirit of a faction into the great business of eternity. But if you really wish to excel all other Christians in your faith, and to exercise, most worthily, that religion which hallows, and guides the world, aim at that moderation which, while it is the most difficult, is the most unhonoured, the most unnoticed, and the most unrewarded, of all human virtues; do that which a Christian ought to do, without proclaiming that you do it; do not insult men to imitate you by the loftiness of your pretensions, but allure them to follow you by the sweetness, and beauty of your life. When you come world, let a vene

to pray to God before the

rable, and sacred decorum preside over