His zeal was especially apparent in opposition to those doctrines
which seemed to derogate from the divine honours of the Son and Spirit of
God, and from the freedom of divine grace, of the reality and necessity
of its operations in the conversion and salvation of sinners.

With relation to these I must observe, that it was his most steadfast
persuasion that all those notions which represent our blessed Redeemer
and the Holy Spirit as mere creatures, or which set aside the atonement
of the former, or the influence of the latter, sap the very foundation of
Christianity by rejecting the most glorious doctrines peculiar to it.
He had attentively observed (what indeed is too obvious) the unhappy
influence which the denial of these principles often has on the character
of ministers, and on their success, and was persuaded that an attempt to
substitute that mutilated form of Christianity which remains, when these
essentials of it are taken away, has proved one of the most successful
methods which the great enemy of souls has ever taken, in these latter
days, to lead men by insensible degrees into deism, vice, and perdition.
He also sagaciously observed the artful manner in which obnoxious tenets
are often maintained or insinuated, with all that mixture of zeal and
address with which they are propagated in the world, even by those
who had most solemnly professed to believe, and engaged to teach the
contrary; and as he really apprehended that the glory of God and the
salvation of souls were concerned, his piety and charity made him eager
and strenuous in opposing what he judged to be errors of so pernicious a
nature. Yet I must declare, that, according to what I have known of him,
(and I believe he opened his heart on these topics to me with as much
freedom as to any man living,) he was not ready, upon light suspicions,
to charge tenets which he thought so pernicious on any, especially
where he saw the appearances of a good temper and life, which he always
reverenced and loved in persons of all sentiments and professions. He
severely condemned causeless jealousies and evil surmisings of every
kind, and extended that charity, in this respect, both to clergy and
laity, which good Bishop Burnet was so ready, according to his own
account, to limit to the latter, "of believing every man good till he
knew him to be bad, and his notions right till he knew them wrong." He
could not but be very sensible of the unhappy consequences which m