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An assurance, therefore, that the sins which are felt to be a burden intolerable" are forgiven, and that the ground of that apprehension of future punishment which causes the penitent to "bewail his manifold sins," is taken away by restoration to the favour of the offended God, must be allowed, or nothing would be more incongruous and impossible than the comforts, the peace, the rejoicing of spirit, which, both in the Scriptures, and the services of all churches, are attributed to believers. If, indeed, selfcondemnation, and the apprehension of danger, as Mr. Southey seems to think, have no foundation but in the imagination, the case is totally altered. Where there is no danger, deliverance is visionary, and the joy it inspires is raving and not reason. But if a real danger exists; if by various means men are brought under a serious concern to escape it; if it cannot be avoided but by an act of grace on the part of Almighty God, we must have some assurance of the performance of that act in our own case, or the guilty gloom will abide upon us. The

whereby we apprehend the sweet offer of our Saviour, is Faith, which, in short, is no other than an affiance in the Mediator. Receive peace and be happy: believe, and thou hast received. Thus it is that we have an interest in all that God hath promised, or Christ hath performed. Thus have we from God both forgiveness and love, the ground of all, whether peace or glory."-Bp. Hall's Heaven upon Earth.

"It is the property of saving faith, that it hath a force to appropriate, and make Christ our own, Without this, a general remote belief would have been cold comfort. 'He loved me, and gave himself for me,' saith St. Paul. What saith St. Chrysostom? Did Christ die only for St. Paul? No; non excludit, sed appropriat ;' he excludes not others, but he will secure himself."--Bp. Brownrigg's Sermon on Easter Day.

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more sincere and earnest a person is in the affairs of his salvation, the more miserable he must become if there be no possibility of his being assured that the wrath of God no longer abideth upon him; and the of wisdom will be no longer "ways of pleasantness, and her paths paths of peace." The doctrine of assurance, therefore, does not stand alone, and is not to be judged of as an isolated doctrine; and for this reason it was quite consistent in Mr. Southey, to fix the stigma of enthusiasm upon the doctrines of human corruption, guilt, and danger, as those in which assurance "has its root." With them the doctrine of assurance must stand or fall. Forgiveness implies a previous danger; and if we have no means of knowing when that danger is escaped, we may ask for peace and comfort, but assuredly we do not perform a reasonable service. Such petitions themselves imply the doctrine.

Few Christians of evangelical views have, therefore, denied the possibility of our becoming assured of the favour of God in a sufficient degree to give substantial comfort to the mind. Their differences have rather respected the means by which the contrite become assured of that change in their relation to Almighty God, whom they have offended, which in Scripture is expressed by the term justification. The question has been, (where the notion of an assurance of eternal salvation has not been under discussion, and with this Mr. Wesley's opinions have no connection,) by what means the assurance of the Divine favour is conveyed to the mind. Some have concluded that we obtain it by inference, others by the direct testimony of the Holy Spirit to the mind. The

latter was the opinion of Mr. Wesley; but it was not so held, as to reject the corroborating evidence of inference. His words are, "It is hard to find terms in the language of men to explain the deep things of God. But, perhaps, one might say, (desiring any one who is taught of God, to soften or strengthen the expression,) the testimony of the Spirit is an inward impression on the soul, whereby the Spirit of God witnesses to my spirit that I am a child of God, that Christ hath loved me, and given himself for me, that I, even I, am reconciled to God." This is Mr. Wesley's statement of the doctrine, from which it will appear that, in his view, the assurance spoken of above as the only source of religious peace and joy, and without which such affections cannot be produced by religion, is conveyed to the mind immediately by the Spirit of God. Before, however, our "rational" religionists, headed by Mr. Southey, open the full cry of enthusiasm upon this venerable man, it is right to remind them, that he never failed to connect this doctrine with another, which, on the authority of St. Paul, he calls the witness of our own spirit, "the consciousness of having received, in and by the spirit of adoption, the tempers mentioned in the word of God, as belonging to his adopted children-a consciousness that we are inwardly conformed, by the Spirit of God, to the image of his Son, and that we walk before him in justice, mercy, and truth, doing the things which are pleasing in his sight." The manner in which he here connects the testimony of the Spirit of God, and the testimony of our own spirit, the direct and the inferential testimony that we are in the favour of God,

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and which he never put asunder, though he assigned them distinct offices, cannot be overlooked if justice be done to his opinions; and Mr. Southey, if he understood the subject, is most unfair in not stating it. In order to prevent presumption, Mr. Wesley reminds his readers, that this direct testimony is subsequent both to repentance, and a moral change so vast, that no man can mistake it who examines himself by the Scriptures; and on the other hand, to guard against delusion, he asks, "How am I assured, that I do not mistake the voice of the Spirit? Even by the testimony of my own spirit, by the answer of a good conscience towards God: Hereby you shall know that you are in no delusion, that you have not deceived your own soul. The immediate fruits of the Spirit ruling in the heart, are love, joy, peace; bowels of mercies, humbleness of mind, meekness, gentleness, long-suffering. And the outward fruits are, the doing good to all men, and a uniform obedience to all the commands of God." This is Mr. Wesley's doctrine, as stated by himself; and from these extracts it will appear, that Mr. Southey has only taken that part of it which might best support his charge of enthusiasm, and has left out all those qualifications and guards under which this tenet was taught by the Founder of Methodism. I ask, then, for proofs of the enthusiasm of this doctrine as thus stated? An enthusiastic doctrine is unsupported by the sacred records, but the authority of Scripture is here pleaded. "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God." The witnesses are the Spirit of God and our own spirit; and the fact to which testi

mony is given, is that "we are the children of God. "And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, "Abba Father!" Other passages of similar import occur in the New Testament; and to them might be added all those texts which speak of the inward intercourse of the Spirit of God with believers, of his dwelling in them, and abiding with them the source of comfort and peace, and which, therefore, imply the doctrine. Mr. Southey will allege that other interpretations may be given. He, for instance, would furnish a different sense of the passages just cited; but are we enthusiasts because we do not admit Mr. Southey's interpretations? This is not surely the rule by which he distributes opprobious epithets. Other interpretations may be given; but until we are convinced that Mr. Wesley and other divines have not given the most natural sense of the above passages, and one which is best supported by the spirit and letter of other parts of the Sacred Volume, the aspersion of enthusiasm will not certainly induce us to abandon our opinion. Such passages, as it appears to us, cannot be interpreted but as teaching the doctrine of assurance, conveyed immediately to the mind of true believers by the Holy Spirit, without allowing such principles of construction as would render the sense of Scripture uncertain, and unsettle the evidence of some of the most important doctrines of our religion.

But Mr. Wesley was not alone in this opinion, and Mr. Southey might have hesitated to brand him as an enthusiast for teaching this doctrine, had he known, that divines of the greatest eminence have