ight and wise and
justifiable to be driven by an abuse of God's gifts to denounce the
legitimate and faithful employment of them? What human faculty--which
among the most precious of the Almighty's blessings is not liable to
perversion? What unquestionable moral duty can be found, which has not
been transformed by man's waywardness into an instrument of evil? Nay,
what doctrine of our holy faith has not the wickedness or the folly of
unworthy men employed as a cloke for unrighteousness, and a vehicle for
blasphemy? But by a consciousness of this liability in all things human,
must we be tempted to suppress the truth? to disparage those moral
duties? or to discountenance the cultivation of those gifts and
faculties? Rather would not sound philosophy and Christian wisdom
jointly enforce the necessity of improving the gifts zealously, of
discharging the moral obligation to the full, and of maintaining the
doctrine in all its integrity; but guarding withal, to the utmost of our
power and watchfulness, against the abuses to which {7} any of these
things may be exposed? And we may trust in humble but assured
confidence, that as it is the duty of a rational being, alive to his own
responsibility, to inquire and judge for himself in things concerning
the soul, with the most faithful exercise of his abilities and means; so
the wise and merciful Ruler of our destinies will provide us with a sure
way of escaping from all evils incident to the discharge of that duty,
if, in reliance on his blessing, we honestly seek the truth, and
perseveringly adhere to that way in which He will be our guide.

It is a question very generally and very reasonably entertained among
us, whether the implicit submission and unreserved surrender of
ourselves to any human authority in matters of faith, (though whilst it
lasts, it of course affords an effectual check to open scepticism,) does
not ultimately and in very deed prove a far more prolific source of
disguised infidelity. Doubts repressed as they arise, but not solved,
silenced but not satisfied, gradually accumulate in spite of all
external precaution; and at length (like streams pent back by some
temporary barrier) break forth at once to an utter discarding of all
authority, and an irrecoverable rejection of the Christian faith. From
unlimited acquiescence in a guide whom our associations have invested
with infallibility, the step is very short, and frequently taken, to
entire apostasy and the r