the self-examining religious understanding, not the externally-investigating critical understanding; that It teaches a man, thoroughly to know himself ab intra, not by any special illapse accurately to decide upon the truth or falsehood of a litigated doctrine ab extra.

Its object is, I apprehend, to remove the moral darkness of our fallen nature, to communicate a thorough knowledge of our own utter weakness and corruption, to dispel the delusive dreams of our own innate sufficiency and goodness, to cast down all high imaginations, and to shew us practically and feelingly what we have become through sin that so we may thankfully and eagerly aspire after a better state through grace*.

But, unless I greatly mistake, its object is not to

* The whole scriptural rationalè of Fallen man, morally dark by nature, and morally illuminated by grace, is briefly propounded by our Lord himself in his address to the Church of Laodicea.

Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not, that thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire that thou mayest be rich, and white raiment that thou mayest be clothed and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see. Rev. iii. 17, 18.

The object, we see, of the illumination of the Spirit, is not to make men unerring doctrinal critics, but to teach them selfknowledge through a powerful application of Scripture to their consciences.

convey to our intellect the alone true meaning of a difficult passage in Scripture: its object is not to enable us to determine, peremptorily and without appeal, what Scheme of Doctrine must be received, and what Scheme of Doctrine must be rejected.

To settle the import of a litigated text, we must, simply and with full honesty of purpose and (I will add) with devout prayer for such moral tempers and dispositions, collect and weigh all the evidence which lies within our reach; not expect any peculiar illuminating descent of the Spirit into our minds, after the way of a communication to the intellect. It was, indeed, the office of the Holy Ghost to guide the Apostles into ALL truth: truth intellectual, as well as truth moral*. But they, like the Prophets before them, were the specially inspired delegates of heaven: and, as the vehicle of God's message to man, it was plainly necessary, that all possibility of doctrinal error should, with them, be supernaturally precluded. We, however, are placed in a very different situation: we must look only for the ordinary or moral, not the extraordinary or intellectual, gifts and graces of the Spirit. God forbid, that any Christian man should deny the moral illumination of the Holy Ghost: but, to expect his intellectual illumination, in order that we may unerringly decide, whether the calvinistic view of Election, or any other view of Election, be correct or incorrect; and

*John xvi. 13.

to make the grant of such intellectual illumination a subject of prayer to the throne of grace; this, I think, is a plain, and, I fear, also a dangerous, mistake.

In effect, to pray for intellectual illumination, after the mode recommended by Augustine and Mr. Milner; to pray, that is to say, that God would reveal to us the certainty of a particular Scheme of exposition, which, with some varieties, they pronounce to set forth the undoubted mind of Scripture thus to pray is neither more nor less, than to pray for the lofty prerogative of Personal Infallibility. For, if God, in answer to prayer, ordinarily teaches the true meaning of a litigated passage in Scripture, the interpretation, thus by the Holy Spirit conveyed to the mind of the petitioner, must needs be infallibly accurate and it were alike impious and presumptuous to question any further the soundness of the interpretation thus authoritatively propounded. Under such an aspect of the matter, which inevitably results from the plan before us, we might as reasonably question the message of an inspired Prophet or Apostle, as impugn the calvinistic or semicalvinistic exposition of the doctrine of Predestination when a pious man shall declare that he has made it a subject of prayer, and that he has risen from his knees internally convinced by the Spirit of the undoubted correctness of this System or of that System.

(2.) The grievously delusive unwarrantability,

however, of preferring any such prayer, will readily and (as it were) practically appear, if we only consider the necessary, and indeed actually experienced, consequence of the practice.

Two persons, we will say, each with perfect though mistaken sincerity, supplicate the throne of grace, that the true interpretation of those texts, which speak of Election and Predestination, may by the Holy Spirit be conveyed to their divinely illuminated intellect.

The prayer is, by each party, duly put up: and the incongruous result is; that The one person becomes a decided Calvinist, and that The other person rises from his devotions a stedfast Armi

nian.

Now, clearly, the interpretations, which they henceforth confidently recommend as answers severally vouchsafed to their prayers for intellectual illumination, cannot both be correct.

How, then, if we admit the fitness of the practice, are we to determine between the two opposing expositions? WHICH interpretation are we bound in conscience to receive as the unerring communication of the infallible Spirit of unmixed truth?

Without the very extremity of arrogant assumption, neither individual, I apprehend, can presume to say, that his interpretation is the genuine dictate of the Spirit, and that the interpretation of his opponent is advanced purely under the influence of a strong delusion.

I put not any mere imaginary case: the unseemly incongruity, here pointed out, has actually occurred, as the result of the unauthorised prayers of two very good, though very mistaken, men.

Mr. Whitfield says: Inever read any thing that Calvin wrote: my doctrines I had from Christ and his Apostles: I WAS TAUGHT THEM OF GOD. And he further somewhat more distinctly states, in regard to the particular doctrine specially alluded to: Election is a doctrine, which I thought, and do now believe, WAS TAUGHT me of god *.

Yet Mr. Wesley broadly declares: that HE HAS AN IMMEDIATE CALL FROM GOD to preach and publish to the world, that Mr. Whitfield's doctrine is highly injurious to Christ †.

From the very purport of these jarring allegations, I venture to conclude, that Mr. Whitfield and Mr. Wesley had alike prayed to God for a right understanding of the texts which are litigated between Calvinists and Arminians: for neither of them could have well imagined, that he was taught of God or that he had an immediate call from God, without the antecedent preparation of much thought on the subject mingled with much prayer ‡. Yet,

* Whitfield's Lett. 214. Gillie's Life of Whitfield, p. 68. cited in Nott's Bampton Lectures, p. 247, 248.

+ Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xi. p. 322. cited in Nott's Bampton Lect. p. 248.

We may the more reasonably infer such to have been the case from Mr. Whitfield's own account of his claims and habits.