ceive as the doctrine of Friends, and what not. There is Jesuitism to be found elsewhere than in the Church of Rome. Socinians have many a time exposed themselves to the charge of employing the terms of truth in such a way as to convey the essential elements of error. I would not impute this unworthy artifice to any of your writers: but I have no alternative between this imputation and that of confused conceptions. It is always a suspicious symptom of the correctness of any doctrine, when it cannot be stated in explicit terms, and the plain import of these terms sustained throughout the discussion of it with unequivocal consistency.

To avoid confusion, I shall take up the doctrine relative to the authority of the Scriptures, as taught by BARCLAY,-leaving any notice of the difference between him and others to a future opportunity. And I shall begin with an exemplification, from this writer, of what I mean by using the language of truth to convey error. After having laid down his second proposition, which affirms the doctrine of immediate divine revelation, independent of, and superior to, not only natural reason but the Holy Scriptures, and possessing, to the mind that receives it, the same certainty as the first truths, that the whole is greater than its part, and that two contradictories can neither be both true, nor both false;-he opens his illustration thus:"It is very probable that many carnal

" and natural Christians will oppose this proposition; "who, being wholly unacquainted with the movings "and actings of God's Spirit upon their hearts, judge "the same nothing necessary; and some are apt to "flout at it as ridiculous :-yea, to that height are "the generality of Christians apostatized and degen. "erated, that, though there be not any thing more "plainly asserted, more seriously recommended, or

more certainly attested, in all the writings of the "Holy Scriptures, yet nothing is less minded or more "rejected, by all sorts of Christians, than immediate "and divine revelation; insomuch that once to lay "claim to it is a matter of reproach. Whereas of "old, none were judged Christians, but such as had "the Spirit of Christ, Rom. viii. 9. But now, many "do boldly call themselves Christians, who make no difficulty of confessing they are without it, and "laugh at such as say they have it. Of old they

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were accounted the sons of God

"the Spirit of God, ibid. ver. 14.

who were led by

But now, many aver themselves sons of God, who know nothing of "this leader; and he that affirms himself so led is, "by the pretended orthodox of this age, presently "proclaimed a heretic. The reason hereof is very "manifest, viz. because many in these days, under "the name of Christians, do experimentally find that

they are not actuated nor led by God's Spirit; yea, "many great doctors, divines, teachers, and bishops,

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"of Christianity (commonly so called) have wholly "shut their ears from hearing, and their eyes from "seeing, this inward Guide, and so are become strangers unto it; whence they are, by their own "experience, brought to this strait, either to confess "that they are as yet ignorant of God, and have "only the shadow of knowledge, and not the true "knowledge of him, or that this knowledge is acquired without immediate Revelation."*

I should have little if any hesitation in subscribing to the entire contents of this paragraph. I believe in "the movings and actings of God's Spirit upon the heart." In a certain sense, I believe in "immediate and divine revelation :"—that is, I believe, that, in a way which we do not understand, and are warned against expecting to understand (John iii. 8.), the Holy Spirit operates upon the human mind, in imparting to it the spiritual discernment of the truth, excellence, suitableness, and glory, of the testimony of the Gospel contained in the Scriptures ;-so operates, as that, by the experience of the influence of this testimony, the enlightened subject of it comes to have "the witness in himself" of its divine original. And this spiritual discernment may, in a modified sense, be called the revealing of Christ to the mind. But when Barclay applies the terms used by him to

* Barclay's Apology, &c., pages 19, 20. Edit. London, 1780.

all who do not concur with him in his doctrine of the equal, or rather the superior, authority of immediate and independent revelations to those of the written word, and unchristianizes all such, as coming under the solemn sentence of exclusion-" if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his ;"-he either deceives himself, or he deceives others; he writes either ignorantly or jesuitically.-In proof of this, observe. By immediate revelation he means a revelation independent of the Scriptures,-not the spiritual discovery merely of the excellence of what the Scriptures contain, but a communication by the Spirit to the mind, without and above them. Now, he is quite correct in "distinguishing betwixt the certain "knowledge of God and the uncertain; betwixt the "spiritual knowledge and the literal; the saving "heart-knowledge, and the soaring, airy, head-know"ledge," and in affirming that "the former can be"obtained by no other way than the inward, imme"diate manifestation and revelation of God's Spirit, "shining in and upon the heart, enlightening and "opening the understanding."* This is language which I should have no objection to adopt; but it would be with the explanation, that the word im"mediate should be held as signifying, not that the "manifestation" of the Spirit was independent of the

Ibid. page 20.

written word, but only that the Spirit's operation was directly upon the sinner's mind ;-and the word "revelation" not as meaning the discovery of new and otherwise unknown doctrines, but the discovery of the truth and excellence of those made known in that word. This, however, is not the view of the case intended by Barclay :-and therefore, when he goes on to affirm, in unqualified terms, that this truth "hath been acknowledged by some of the most re“fined and famous of all sorts of professors of Chris"tianity, in all ages;" "who being truly upright"hearted and earnest seekers of the Lord," "and "finding a distaste and disgust of all other outward "means," ""have at last concluded with one voice, "that there was no true knowledge of God, but that "which is revealed inwardly by his own Spirit;"he writes, I repeat, either ignorantly or jesuitically: -for the fathers and others whom he quotes certainly did not hold the sentiment as held by him. They might use terms resembling, or even the same with those which he uses; but it would not have been in the same sense in which he uses them. The immediate teaching of the Spirit meant by them, and which they might call revelation, is simply what I have mentioned, that divine illumination, by which the truth and excellence of the doctrine contained in the gospel testimony are discerned, and its power experienced. As an exemplification of what I mean, I