ess is to ask with St. Paul, when arrested in the midst of his
frenzy, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" This is the simple
question. He can bless our present state; He can bless our change;
_which_ is it His will to bless? If Wesleyan or Independent has come
over to us apart from this spirit, we do not much pride ourselves in our
convert. If he joins us because he thinks he has a right to judge for
himself, or because forms are of no consequence, or merely because
sectarianism has its errors and inconveniences, or because an
Established Church is an efficacious means of spreading religion, he
plainly thinks that the choice of a communion is not a more serious
matter than the choice of a neighborhood or of an insurance office. In
like manner, if members of our communion have left it for Rome, because
of the _aesthetic_ beauty of the latter, and the grandeur of its
pretensions, we are grieved, but, good luck to them, we can spare them.
And if Roman Catholics join us or our "Dissenting brethren," because
their own Church is behind the age, insists on Aristotelic dogmas, and
interferes with liberty of thought, such a conversion is no triumph over
popery, but over St. Peter and St. Paul. Our only safety lies in
obedience; our only comfort in keeping it in view.

If this be so, we have arrived at the following conclusion: that it is
our duty to betake ourselves to Scripture, and to observe how far the
private search of a religion is there sanctioned, and under what
circumstances. This then is the next point which comes under
consideration.

2.

Now the first and most ordinary kind of Private Judgment, if it deserves
the name, which is recognized in Scripture, is that in which we engage
without conscious or deliberate purpose. While Lydia heard St. Paul
preach, her heart was opened. She had it not in mind to exercise any
supposed sacred right, she was not setting about the choice of a
religion, but she was drawn on to accept the Gospel by a moral
persuasion. "To him that hath more shall be given," not in the way of
judging or choosing, but by an inward development met by external
disclosures. Lydia's instance is the type of a multitude of cases,
differing very much from each other, some divinely ordered, others
merely human, some which would commonly be called cases of private
judgment, and others which certainly would not, but all agreeing in
this, that the judgment exercised is not recognized and realized by the
par