Reason has fled from this humiliating ground, and set up a religion, or rather a variety in religion, of her own. We will only take the chief of those into view, which most nearly relate to the subject of these Essays; only premising, that all the sects, we shall mention, pretend a regard to the Scripture,

And with respect to the use of reason, it being an excellent gift of God originally perfect in our nature, it is to be regarded, though now depraved, in all things but those, which are above its powers, as all divine things most certainly are; and on these therefore it would be irrational to employ it. As this objection is of much importance, it may be worth while to give it a short consideration.

The case of ENTHUSIASM briefly stated.

That there is an intercourse upon the business of salvation between the Spirit of God and the spirits of men, really, powerfully, and effectually, cannot be doubted or denied by those, who will receive he authority of the following Scriptures among many others: John iii. 5. vii. 39. Rom viii. 2, 9, 11, 16, 26. Gal. iii. 14. Eph. ii 18. 1. Pet. iv. 14. John xvi. 13. Rom. xiv. 17. 1 Cor. vi. 19. Titus iii. 5.

What these Scriptures (which are the wise revelation of God) promise, testify, and explain, as the undoubted priviledge of ALL real Christians, cannot therefore be nonsense, nor yet what is usually understood by enthusiasm. This last term then, in its common evil sense, must be applied to something very different from the grace of God or (what is the same) the operation of his Holy Spirit, enlivening, enlightening, and enabling the souls of his people; or, while we pass strictures upon men and their errors, we may extend our censures unwarily to the truth of God itself. The real Christian "does not only believe (says Mr. Addison, who will not be suspected for a fanciful devotee) but feels there is a Deity. He has actual sensations of him; his experience concurs with his reason; he sees him more and more in all his intercourses with him, and even in this life almost loses his faith in conviction. In short, the person who has a firm trust on the supreme Being is powerful in his power, wise by his wisdom, happy by his happiness." Spect. No. 46 and 441. Will any man call this enthusiasm ?

It is right to ask then; what is properly enthusiasm, that dangerous evil against which we hear so loud an alarm in the world? It cannot be gross vice or immortality; for, generally, vicious and immoral people exclaim vehemently against it. Nor is it carelessness or unconcern about salvation; because the more indifferent people are in that respect, the more violent is their outcry upon the matter. Is it then an enthusiasm in the pursuit of the world's pleasure, riches, and honors? in the chase of its gaieties, parade, and professions? Certainly not; for this is by no means an enthusiasm condemned, but, if successful especially, admired, followed, and crowned with applause. Nobody puts a stigma upon people with these accomplishments, nor believes them to merit the

so far at least as it can be wrested to support their respective opinions. As to those, who are such masters in reason, as to reject the Bible altogether; it would be too foreign to our matter, and require too long a discussion for this place, even if it had not been sufficiently done already; which indeed it has been by Dr. Leland and by several others.

odious title of enthusiastic creatures, if even life, health, and substance are wholly laid out upon these objects.

On the other hand (as we have seen the impressions of divine grace, and all their "sober certainty of waking bliss," must be above the imputation of any ill name; or God and his truth, however impossible in fact, will seem to fall under condemna. tion.

Yet this mark of infamy is placed only upon religious professors. 'Tis a something in religion which is thus branded ; and, if it deserve the brand, let it fore ver wear the shame. But it can only deserve this, by being contrary to the express and written word of God,

Agreeable to this principle; the true defination of religious enthusiasm (not regarding the misapplication, but the commonly received sense, of the term) may be somewhat like the following.

An elevation, conceit, effusion, or inflation only of the human mind, under the impulse of which it pretends to think or act in religious concerns, without having or without regarding the proper warrant of God's written word, which being fixed in its canon and closed in its prophecy, is now the only settled rule, law, and testimony, by which all the circumstances of religion are to be proved

and determined.

If this definition be correct, we shall find the censure of enthu siasm to fall upon two sorts of persons. First, those, who pretend to divine inspiration,while they are only warmed by a deluded fancy, ABOVE the word of God and BEYOND its sanctions: And, secondly, those who rejecting all supernatural aids or (what is the same) the particular efficacy and omnipotence of those aids, are so vainly puffed up by their fleshly mind, as not to hold the head [CHRIST] for spiritual nourishment or erudition, and by following their own spirits venture to intrude into those things which they have not seen; and therefore proceed WITHOUT the word and AGAINST it. Both of these act upon the same common principle, however different the effect; their own natural and corrupted mind being ruler and guide in both. For, as the one sort is borne aloft by a wild and unbounded imagination, the other blindly follows a corrupt and incapable reason; which two are different powers indeed, but are however powers alike of the same human understanding.

Upon this view of the case then, it may appear, that the depraved energy of fallen man, if it attempt divine things without assistance or without rule, is urged by that arrogance or inflation of an undisciplined soul, which deserves the name, because it bears the nature, of enthusiasm; and consequently that these are the religious en

Some of the German Anabaptists, among other points, thought perversely of the trinity, holding the three persons to be three essences, different from each other in nature, power, and glory, and maintaining that their unity consisted only in that kind of will and consent of operation, which may subsist between two or three kings, or did subsist among the disciples of Jesus. They also held the sameopinions with Marcion, Cerdon, &c. concer the person of Christ, and respecting the divinity of the Holy Spirit. They took their composition from Arianism and the enthusiasms of some antient heretics, and wrought it up, with some wild conceptions of their own, for a new sect or sects, to which they gave a new denomination. It is right, however,to say, that the northern Anabaptists in Germany, and the society called Baptists in England, were always people of a different stamp; the latter of whom are for the most part of the same principles with our Congregationalists or Independents, excepting in the article of baptism.

About the same time with these Anabaptists, the famous Michael Servetus made his appearance, for the trouble and disgrace of the reformation. It is an old remark?" Where God founds a church, the devil will build a chapel." It was permitted to be so, in this case; And the reason of it may be seen in 1 Cor. xi. 19. The devil chuses his instruments, for the most part, with his usual sagacity: And Servetus, in respect to the abilities of his mind and to his literary attainments, was qualified to do honor to a better patron. Like his master, he was indefatigable, and went to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it. He wrote much, as well as travelled much, and took uncommon pains to disseminate his opinions, or rather the opinions of Paul of Samosata, which he improved in their error. He opposed the doctrine of the trinity with the utmost virulence, and led the way for the Socinians; upon which account, perhaps, it is, they are

thusiasts, who presume to soar above God's revealed wisdom in his word, or pretend to obtain divine knowlege without divine teaching, and to act or determine in spiritual things by the strength of their own weak and incompetent faculties.

Nothing has been said here of diabolic impressions, because, whatever they may act upon the human mind, they so act according to the mode of its corruptions and depravities, that the result can only be the same abuse or contradiction of the revealed will of God, and therefore must merit no other name.

In confirmation of these sentiments, the reader is requested attentively to compare the following Scriptures: Is. viii. 20. John viii. 47. John ii. 5. Matth. xxiv. 25.-1 Cor. ii. 11. &c. iii. 16. Eph. ii. 18. Phil. iii. 3. 1 John iv. 13. Jude 19. Luke xxiv. 45. John xv. 5..

Yet

so exceedingly zealous to defend his reputation. Spanheim, who at least was as likely to know correctly about him as they, informs us, that he was bomo ad omnem improbitatem effictus," a man framed for all sorts of wickedness."* this unhappy man could sit down to correct proofs of a Latin Bible, printed at Lyons, and to write a preface and marginal notes for it, after the declaration of his principles. He went farther; for he entitled one of his books, The restitution of Christianity; though it tends to sap the very foundation of all Christianity. With this conduct, he pretended to believe, that the Bible was a divine revelation: And yet he wrote many things in direct contradiction to it. He followed his own ingenuity, which is generally allowed to have been great; and this seems to have misled him in warping the Scriptures to a preconceived system, which he maintained with such an intemperance of language and heat of spirit, as certainly could give neither himself nor his opinions any weight or value. He was a metaphysician, and thought to comprehend by reason, what only is delivered to the church as an article of faith. No natural man can endure this bidded wisdom of God (as the apostle calls it ;) nor even allow it to be wisdom at all, because hidden from him. Servetus deserves to be placed at the head of modern Anti-trinitarians, and may be esteemed the wretched martyr of a bad cause. The putting him to death, however, cannot well be justified, if it was adjudged only for his heterodox principles; and serves to shew, in that case, that good men, left to the passions of their own corrupt hearts, are capable of doing very ill things.

Soon after Servetus, the Spaniard Valentinus Gentilis an Italian newly vamped up the opinion of John Grammaticus or Philoponus, and contended, in opposition to the Unitarians, that there were three eternal Spirits, numerically different, and different in degree. This was Tritheism, or the opinion of three Gods, with a witness. Yet he found followers, and especially in Poland and Transylvania. These followers, aiming to improve their master's opinions, carried their refinements so far, as to reproduce the different degrees of Arianism and Socinianism, which, from that time to this, have so eminently edified the world in all things but one-the true knowledge of God, by a life of faith and communion with Him. But this, according to them, is a mere error, in religion; and on the other hand, according to the Bible, all re

*Misc. Sacr. Ant. Lib. x. col. 1544. See, to the same effect, MELCH. ADAM. In vit. Calvini. p. 89.

ligion, which does not end in this, is mere delusion.-These are wide extremes; and the Bible must be cut up and framed anew, before they can be reconciled.

In this first age also of the reformation, arose the famous Loelius Socinus, an Italian of family at Sienna, and his memo. rable nephew Faustus. The uncle was, according to Span beim, a consociate with Bernard Ocbin, with Gentilis abovementioned, and several others, to the number of forty in the whole, in the Venetian territory. These people, being for the most part men of acknowledged abilities with respect to human attainments, set up and propagated, by combining the old heresies of Paul of Samosata, of Photinus, of Pelagius, and in some degree of Arius, a new and famous heresy, which from the Socini its principal founders, is now well known by the name of Socinianism. From their Racovian school in Poland, this error has spread itself, and particularly in the countries professing protestanism, through all Europe. It is (among the pure Sociniansat least) not many removes from Mabomedism; insomuch, that one Adam Neuser, a German theologist of the Socinian order, openly espoused the Turkish religion, was circumcised at Constantinople, and pressed his example upon his brethren; which he might, not very inconsistently, do; the ground-work of the two religions being pretty much alike. For though (as it hath been observed)* not one example can be produced of a Turk turning Christian, or to any other religion; yet for a Socinian, who renounces that distinguishing tenet of Christianity, the divinity of Christ and the Spirit, to commence Mahometan, is rather an easy than a violent transition. And there have been people among us of the Socinian leaven, who have tacitly acknowledged this, by proposing a formal renunciation of the doctrine of the trinity,in order to win the Turks,“who, (as one pleasantly says) pray five times a day that the may never beCome Christians." Perhaps some of them would think it rather hard, if they were obliged to pray half so often, that they might never become Turks.

After the Socini, uncle and nephew, the most considerable abettors of this opinion abroad have been Ostorodius, Crellius, Smalcius, Volkelius, Conrad Vorstius, &c. The names at home are too numerous to be mentioned; and it might seem likewise invidious to mention them. Suffice it therefore to add, that these great masters of reason have been very well answered by several English and foreign divines; among the former of whom Dr. Jonathan Edwards, whose Preservative against Socinianism might be recommended to an English reader, was none of the least.

* Iväs's travels through Persia, p. 318.