worship of that second Person in the Trinity, to an extent which may be termed exclusive: for God is to be addressed as Creator and Preserver, not less than as Redeemer; as Sanctifier, not less than as deliverer from the thrall of sin; as a father, rather than as an elder brother; as the God of all mankind, and not only as the God of Christians; and, finally, with a reverence and an awe proper to temper those familiarities which might arise from a consideration of the Supreme Being only in the person of the meek and lowly Jesus.

That the law, and the moral law, ought not to be preached under the dispensation and fuller light of the Gospel, is contrary to the teaching both of our Lord and his Apostles. Our Lord declared that he came not to destroy the LAW, but to fulfil it: and when he was asked by a certain ruler what he ought to do, in order to inherit eternal life, he replied, How readest thou the LAW? Thou shalt not commit adultery, nor kill, nor bear false witness: this do, and thou shalt live: as, likewise, on another occasion; Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and thy neighbour as thyself-on these two commandments hang all the Law and the prophets. The whole sermon on the Mount is a string of preceptive injunctions, explanatory and perfective of the moral LAW; and calculated to elucidate the divine Teacher's words, "If thou wilt

enter into life, keep the commandments." The Apostles, too, laid equal stress on an observance of the moral law; nay, laid it down as a rule, that whosoever should keep the whole LAW, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.

That the children of God have not to combat with their own sins, is another Moravian error; in like manner contradicted by the whole sermon on the Mount. Cast the beam out of thine own eye. Teaching us, that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should walk righteously in the world. We are to abstain from fleshly lusts that war against the soul. These and an hundred other passages plainly evince, that our warfare is with sin within our own breasts.

Faith, say the Moravians, is a joyful persuasion of our interest in Christ, and of our title to his purchased salvation. This is the Methodist doctrine of assurance. Let both Methodists and Moravians "rejoice with TREMBLING."

"Faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen." But we are not assured of what is only hoped for; assured we may be of their existence: but whether or not we shall obtain them, we are too frail, too much blotted with imperfection to be assured. Paul was not assured, for he states the possibility of his being, in the end,

cast away. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

We may add, that excessive attention bestowed on church music, tends to render religion too much a system of feelings: as in Catholic countries, the sublimest and tenderest harmonies are estimated and felt merely as exciting the transient and pleasurable emotions of an oratorio. Impassioned hymns, addressed in the language of love to the Saviour in his humiliated capacity, are repulsive to chaste and sober piety.

XVII. That a good man should lift his heart above terrestrial objects, that he should aspire to assimilate his mind to the serenity of the third heavens, and that the pure love whose object is God, should delight to repose itself on the bosom of the divine perfections, is but the natural result of ardent and amiable feelings. Nor is this pious frame of mind deserving of censure, unless it interfere with the ordinary duties of life. When carried to excess, it becomes sublimated into mysticism: an evil which prevailed during the reign of George II. Law's Call to the Unconverted has been justly praised by Dr. Johnson, as the finest piece of hortatory theology in our language. But as the author had imbibed the mystical philosophy of Jacob Behmen, it ought to be read along with a paper drawn up by Bishop Horne,

under the title of Cautions to Readers of Mr. Law. This tract, together with a letter to a lady, on the subject of Jacob Behmen's writings, is to be found in the Life of that Prelate by his friend, Jones. The Mystics were never incorporated into a distinct sect, if we except the disciples of Swedenborg, to be afterwards noticed. Some of them profess a high-wrought piety; and others delight in allegorizing Scripture. Among the former may be numbered Fenelon and Law: among the latter, the whole school of Hutchinson.

Mystical divinity, or an abstracted, sublime devotion, has been the delight of the learned and the ignorant; but one peculiar description of it consisting in an enthusiasm of the mind rather than in an ardour of the feelings, was confined to Hebrew scholars. John Hutchinson, dying in the year 1727, left his name to a party, which greatly increased after his decease; including Romaine, Horne, Parkhurst, Lord Culloden, Jones of Nayland, Stevens, Wetherell, Master of University College, and Hodges, the Head of Oriel*.

These, in imitation of their master, struck out a new and fanciful mode of reasoning, on philosophy, theology, antiquities, and other

* See the author of Sophron-Jones's Life of StevensJones on Figurative Language of Scripture-Horne's Abstract of Hutchinson's Writings, Edin. 1753.

sciences. In 1724 appeared the first part of Hutchinson's book, entitled Moses's Principia, in which he ridiculed Woodward's theory of the earth, and Sir Isaac Newton's doctrine of gravitation *.

This writer considered the Hebrew language without points, to be the language of God himself; and to contain recondite allusions to mental or spiritual things. He thought that natural philosophy and theology were wrapt up in its terms; and that by consulting its etymology, and attending to the sensible objects which its phrases expressed, allusions might be discovered to the divine essence, or to spiritual action. Thus Berith, which we render, covenant, he translates purifier; and Cherubim, he treats as an emblem of man, taken into the divinity in Christ. Melchizedec he considered, not as a type of Christ, but as a second Person of the Trinity in a human form: he conceived the air of the solar system to become grosser towards the circumference; and to be stagnant towards the pitch of outer darkness. The substance of air, being fire, light, and spirit, is the symbol of a Trinity. in unity for God is

When in his last illness, Dr. Mead, intending to cheer him, assured him he would soon send him to Moses; Hutchinson, not perceiving that a return to his studies was meant, dismissed the physician, observing, "I believe, Doctor, you will."