, it is manifest,
that there is no sure criterion whereby any one can ascertain the
reality of them, even in his own case, much less in that of another. All
we know is, that pretenders to these extraordinary assistances, have
never been wanting to abuse the credulity of the vulgar, and to try the
patience of the wise. From the canting hypocrites and wild fanatics of
the last century, to their less dangerous, chiefly because less
successful, descendants of the present day, we hear the same unwarranted
claims, the same idle tales, the same low cant; and we may discern not
seldom the same mean artifices and mercenary ends. The doctrine, to say
the best of it, can only serve to favour the indolence of man, while
professing to furnish him with a compendious method of becoming wise and
good, it supersedes the necessity of his own personal labours. Quitting
therefore all these slothful and chimerical speculations, it is true
wisdom to attach ourselves to what is more solid and practical; to the
work which you will not yourself deny to be sufficiently difficult to
find us of itself full employment: the work of rectifying the disorders
of the passions, and of implanting and cultivating the virtues of the
moral character."--"It is the service of the understanding which God
requires of us, which you would degrade into a mere matter of bodily
temperament, and imaginary impulses. You are contending for that which
not only is altogether unworthy of our Divine Master, but which, with
considerate men, has ever brought his religion into suspicion and
disrepute, and under a shew of honouring him, serves only to injure and
discredit his cause." Our Objector, warming as he proceeds, will perhaps
assume a more impatient tone. "Have not these doctrines," he may
exclaim, "been ever perverted to purposes the most disgraceful to the
Religion of Jesus? If you want an instance, look to the standard of the
inquisition, and behold the pious Dominicans torturing their miserable
victims for the Love of Christ[25]. Or would you rather see the effects
of your principles on a larger scale, and _by wholesale_ (if the phrase
may be pardoned;) cast your eyes across the Atlantic, and let your zeal
be edified by the holy activity of Cortez and Pizarro, and their
apostles of the western hemisphere. To what else have been owing the
extensive ravages of national persecutions, and religious wars and
crusades; whereby rapacity, and pride, and cruelty, sheltering
t