departure from original truth, has usually been an entire yielding up the mind to arguments and motives merely rational or metaphysical, till by these the head has been turned away from the truth of God, by the doubtfulconjectures of men; the heart has become gradually alienated from the simplicity of the Gospel, deadened to the spiritual influence which it preaches, quickened in proportion to the pride of the flesh or the applause of the world, and at length sunk into a poor, vapid, wordy, and worldly, profession of religion at best, or too often into a conduct and conversation altogether foreign to the doctrine of the cross and the spirit of the Redeemer. Men of name, too, the teachers of others, may grow up in this way so extremely wise and rational, as to renounce the very word evangelical; and it will be well if the thing, signified by that name, in the end

may

may please them. People rarely quarrel with significant and well-known terms, but from a secret distaste, if not ignorance, of the principles, for the explanation of which those terms are employed. These declinations or swervings from the purity of revealed truth should therefore be, not only matters of cursory notice, but of serious and lasting warning, at all times, to those who name the name of Jesus," lest from one gradation to another they also fall, first into heresy of principle, and then, as an almost necessary consequence, into some of the numerous species of iniquity.

62

§ 71. The Holy Spirit rarely blesses; and cannot be expected to bless at all, any other than his own sound or unsophisticated truths. These lead, and always lead, the soul immediately to Christ, as the great foundation of faith and hope, and the pure spring of life and holiness. And therefore those

preachers, or writers, who, instead of pointing to the Saviour and the Holy Spirit, are directing men, more or less, to their own powers, to rational investigations of spiritual things, to metaphysical inquiries concerning divine truth, or to fine-spun theories of human invention, all of them opposite to the plan and simplicity of the Gospel, have their reward in cold unanimated hearers, or uninfluenced and useless attentions. Rarely do even sounder doctrines possess the happy effect of truly converting sinners, when adorned with the meretricious splendors of man's wisdom, with a labored style, with ornamented flourishes, with the glitter of human wit or oratory, employed too much for the purpose of gaining human applause. Too often, in these cases, → "The sheep look up, but are not fed." God generally leaves man to himself, when man looks rather to himself than

simply to his God.

Nor do real

Christians receive content or edification from classical elegancies of expression, or studied points borrowed from antient heathens, who neither knew God nor themselves. Things, not words, are the food of their souls; things, communicated by the Author of all wisdom, in the plainest and most appropriate terms; things, growing out of truth, infallible and divine, filling the heart with a lively hope of a blissful immortality, and preparing the mind for its perfect enjoyment. On the other hand, fine and admired discourses, barren of this gracious substance, may cause charmed with the preacher or writer, but they lead them not from the playhouse, or the card-table, or fashionable amusements, or sordid views and endeavours, or, in short, from the corrupt and degenerated spirit and expectations of the world. These tink K 6 ling

men to be

ling cymbals are seldom owned to the change of heart, and consequently to no real change of life and of practice. The profession may alter; but the world to such will. still be the same. Preachers of this sort may seem, like instruments of music, to sound well; but they only sound. And their hearers go off as from a concert; admiring the tunes and the performers perhaps ; but neither duly fed nor properly informed. The utmost that can be expected to result, or that usually does result, from this trash and tinsel of man, is a specious reformation of manners, a sanctimonious countenance upon some occassions, incidental benefactions to the poor, or other circumstances of an exterior kind; while the heart remains dead as a stone to the life and knowledge of God, and fully possessed by what is contrary to him. All this shall be christened, it may be, with the name of cool and

rational