its efficacy, as a motive to grateful returns, is
limited to those who recognize and value it. A patriot has delivered
millions of ignorant, suspicious, ungrateful countrymen. His services
are to be used as an argument for joining in some effort for his
honour; and those who acknowledge and bless his exertions are
especially addressed, and reminded that "he loved _you_, laboured for
_you_, achieved happiness for _you_." Would this contain even an
insinuation, that they were the exclusive objects of his disinterested
ardour? In such an address not only would the common benefit be
mentioned peculiarly as a good bestowed on themselves; but their
acknowledgment of it, and their distinguishing susceptibility to the
feeling of its worth, would be referred and appealed to, as reasons
why that was looked for and demanded of them, which from others might
be as justly asked, but not so naturally expected. Such appeals are
the apostolic epistles to the churches, as contrasted with their
proclamation of Christ to the world.

NOTE B, page 103.

The moral condition of man, his seeing no desirableness in the object
presented to him by the Gospel, Mr. Erskine shews, at great length, to
be the grand obstacle to his enjoying it. The capacity to know and
believe, he indeed conceives to bring with it the capacity to enjoy.
But if a change in the moral state is necessary in receiving the
truth, this surely obviates the objection that such truth would be
unpalatable and uninfluential to those whose moral state is
_unchanged_.

Our business, however, is not with Mr. E. but with the truth of the
matter. Mr. Groves' remarks refer to the _nature_ of regeneration, and
to the _necessity_ of a change in the affections, in order to man's
appreciating the object presented to him in the Gospel: these he
considers as objections to the doctrine that the simple knowledge
and belief of that object are "the cause of spiritual life in the
unregenerate;" and he uses the analogy of food, which he says, is not
the cause of life, although it be the support of it. Certainly the
contemplation of Jesus is not the cause, but it is the commencement
and exercise of spiritual life, which needs no commencement of a
distinct kind from its subsequent functions. As to the analogy of
food, it will be seen whether the language of Scripture bears us out
in making the same distinction between the source and the sustenance
of spiritual, as of natural life.

What, indee