DOCTRINE OF PARTICULAR REDEMPTION. 47

member of a body, in order that he may enjoy all those privileges which Christ has claimed for him, and which are laid up for him in Christ.

On the other hand, to those sects which set up the notion of individual faith and a particular redemption as the ground of a church, we say, -You are no witnesses to mankind; you proclaim yourselves enemies to mankind; you separated yourselves to be witnesses for separation, not for union; you deny salvation to the world, and yet you adopt the principle of the world in your own constitution. And we say further, in this faith of an universal atonement, and of a church grounded thereon, we uphold the doctrine of personal justification, as you never can do; we show what right a man has to account himself righteous in Christ, and how he never can be righteous in any other way; and we testify, that the enjoyment of this righteousness, and a full communion with God and his brethren, is the salvation which he is to seek, which in his selfish carnal nature he can never enjoy.

Again, then, I would ask your Friends to beware how they reject the Quaker doctrine of an universal light, for any of those partial and selfish notions upon which the sects are built. Let them take care, lest, while they fancy they are asserting the doctrine of the atonement more explicitly than your old Friends, they lose the very life and meaning of that doctrine altogether. And since they cannot stay where they are, since the doubts, once excited in their minds, can never

48

GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT.

be quelled till they have obtained full satisfaction,

-let them enquire diligently, whether there is not some way of reconciling their old faith with their new discoveries and obtaining the perfect fruit of both. And when you have understood yourselves on this point, you will understand also the true meaning of that tenet of Quakerism respecting the immediate influence of the Holy Spirit of God, which the dissenters are so apt to deride. Those who believe in a church and communion, established in a complete atonement, complain of you, not for what you assert, but for what you fail to assert, on this point: not for saying, that the Spirit is an occasional Teacher; but for saying, that he is not a constant Teacher: not for saying, that there are occasional lapses and visitations of the Spirit; but for saying, that He does not dwell constantly and habitually with men : for saying, that the whole church of God, and the body of each man who will live as a member of that church, and renounce his individuality, is not the temple which He delights to hallow: not for saying, that He occasionally opens men's lips to speak in his name; but that every power, and gift, and faculty of man's body, soul, and spirit, are not under His regulation, and intended to be used for His glory: not for saying, that He has a particular class of ministers, whom he intends to be teachers of his people, and to whom he sends gifts and inspirations for that end; but for saying, that He has not carefully preserved such a race in every age, by whom he has promised to

teach his church; making it the sin of the minister not to believe that he has this continual power and guidance with him, and to cultivate every faculty as if he had it; making it the sin of the people not to believe that his teaching shall be effectual for their greatest good.

III. In the remarks which I have made hitherto, I have wished to shew you how the refusal of religious people, to acknowledge the great mystery of man's connection with the Word, has driven them to all kinds of shifts and inventions to explain the truths which they felt necessary to their well being. I have shewn you how, in treating the doctrine of justification, they have resorted to notions which outrage the truth of God; how, in treating the doctrine of the atonement, they have resorted to notions which outrage the love of God; and I have shewn you, that, by restoring this mystery to its proper position, we are enabled to get rid of these awkward tricks and devices of the carnal understanding, and to place the great truths which they have disguised on a firm and real foundation. I have shewn you, that, in taking this course, we are not only doing no violence to Scripture; but that we are exhibiting the connection between one part of Scripture and another; enabling you to understand them literally, without the aid of a number of glosses, which the (so-called) literal interpreters unconsciously introduce and, at the same time, teaching you that Scripture is not merely a collection of texts, but

D

50

LOCK AND STILLINGFLEET.

the exhibition of a grand and coherent scheme, by which God has trained man to the knowledge of his true position, and of Himself.

Indeed, I feel bound to say again, as I have said once before, that, let religious men deceive themselves as they will, it is not reverence for Scripture, but reverence for a system of philosophy, which makes them unwilling to acknowledge this mystery, and ready to adopt any clumsy and disingenuous artifices in order to get rid of it. It is Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, and not the Inspired Volume, which leads them to denounce all notion of a communication to the heart of man, but what comes through words and letters, and the organs of sense. They may talk of caring nothing about philosophy, of despising metaphysics; and they may be quite sincere in saying we know very little about them: but the carnal notions which lie under this system of metaphysics, and make it so natural and so plausible, may pervade the mind, and prevent the heart from expanding, where formal knowledge is entirely wanting, or has been sedulously avoided. That the most thoughtful men of Europe, whether Christians or infidels, have been driven to reject this system, from the sheer impossibility of reconciling it to facts and reason, I need not tell you. But it is worth remembering, that it was attacked on its first formal promulgation, as undermining the principles and premises upon which the church universal stands.

There are some letters usually prefixed to Locke's Essay, which, his admirers boast, caused the death of Bishop Stillingfleet, to whom they were addressed. Whether their idol deserves the credit of that achievement, I cannot say. But a prophecy of Stillingfleet's, which is treated with bitter scorn in these letters, has been proved by the experience of a century and a half, to be rather less childish than it seemed to his antagonist. The Bishop says, that whenever the notion should gain currency, that all the principles of human thought are derived from sense and experience, the doctrine of a Trinity must be discarded. You remember, with what a shout of laughter Locke replies to this remark. "I believe in the Trinity," cries the philosopher; [there is a pious fraud in words, but let that pass;] "I believe in the Trinity, because it is a doctrine laid down in Scripture; the bishop may do as he pleases." And his admirers, among the orthodox English dissenters, have been shouting in full chorus, ever since,-"We believe in the Trinity, because it is written of in Scripture; let the bishops do as they please." Were I writing to some infidel opponent, who thought that the church is based on a contempt of reason, and that Locke and the dissenters are the best defenders of it, (till a happier era shall come,) I should call his attention to this plain avowal, that they believe in a doc-. trine utterly contradictory to all the principles of human thought which they recognize, be