"Lord, have mercy upon us. Lord, have mercy upon us. And again "From our enemies defend us, O CHRIST," &c. &c. Of prayer, in the same impassioned strain, and addressed immediately to the Lord Jesus, some fine specimens are furnished in the Private Devotions (Evxai idiai kabŋμepivai) of Lancelot Andrews, the good and great bishop of Winchester; but contenting myself with simply announcing the circumstance, shall forbear making extracts. In conclusion:-May the writer hope that the hints here offered, however desultory their character, will be received with indulgence, as the utterances of solemn and long-established conviction. If he knows any thing of himself, he does not possess a captious and carping spirit. If there be any thing in Congregationalism which he loves more than another, it is its close conformity to Scripture, and the simplicity which pervades its worship. A desire to make its worship more scriptural, while he would not destroy its simplicity, is the motive which impels him thus publicly to commend his views to his brethren in the faith. He is persuaded, did time and multitudinous engagements permit, that a much stronger case might be made out in their favour, at once from ecclesiastical and liturgical history, and from the records of inspiration. What has been stated, however, is surely enough to court inquiry, and elicit opinion. Will you, dear Sir, excuse the length which I have been drawn out upon a subject which lies near to my heart-literally and truly 66 Thought of the busy day and sleepless night.” And will his brethren in the ministry forgive the seeming presumption of one "less than the least of all," offering the reveries of his secret soul, as rules for the formation of their practice? These thoughts, hastily penned, a sense of duty has at length constrained him to make public, with a desire to draw forth a general expression of sentiment on the subject; and not without the expectation, that some, at least, may be led to adopt a view which, without arrogating to himself infallibility, the writer has ventured to regard as the truth of God. November 5. A PRESBYTER. P.S.-May I be allowed further to express the hope that what I have said will not prevent Mr. Kidd giving us the benefit of his mature experience and serious cogitation on this subject-a subject the importance of which we cannot overvalue. It is not too much to say, that the soul of prayer, which is the soul of piety, is involved in it. IS THERE ANY CONSTITUTIONAL PREDISPOSITION IN MIND TO RECEIVE A PARTICULAR CLASS OF ERRORS? themselves THE writer has so often observed, in the persons who group into the various sections of religious profession, a character so distinctive and so congenial with the sentiments adopted, that he is led to ask, Is there any constitutional predisposition in mind to receive a particular class of errors? In endeavouring, however, to obtain an answer to this question, he can admit none which does not recognize the principle, that minds of any physical constitution are more or less exposed to all the delusions of Satan, by which he blinds the eyes of those who do not believe; much less would he think, that natural constitution necessarily leads to the reception of some congenial temptation. The force of the "father of lies," if grace prevent not, will be too great for the mind apparently the least disposed to listen to his sophistry, to resist with success; while-sing, O heavens! and rejoice, O earth!—the Spirit of God, can enable the Christian to oppose the notion, and completely to rebut the attacks to which he seemed naturally fitted and predisposed. But we still think there are what may be called affinities, subsisting between the mind and the error with which it most easily amalgamates. It were perhaps more easy to show, that education exerts an influence in forming some of the great classifications in Christian society; as the errors of one rank in life seldom trench upon those in a position either much higher or much lower. How distinctive the notions of the well educated on subjects of religion, and those of the untutored community! We however confine ourselves, as far as we are able, to the natural constitution of mind, as it is displayed in a predominance either of the intellect, of the will, or of the affections; and as this constitution is modified by the degree of ascendency which one state of the mind may hold over the other two, or by the near approach to equipoise in this mental combination. The Infidel in a Christian land will, if the writer be not greatly mistaken, be found to have a predominance of the will. This essay does not deny instances of respectable intellect in the ranks of unbelievers, but certainly he is not disposed to judge, that, as a body, they are peculiarly gifted with intellect of the highest order; and where intellect discovers itself most, he conceives it is so estranged from the kindly feelings, and so mastered by the will, that, determined to carry a sinister object, it rather assumes the form of cunning shrewdness than of sober judgment,-a kind of maniac philosophy, resembling a light which shines through the fissures of an injured habitation. An analysis of such minds as Paine's, and even of Gibbon's and Hume's, will, it is conceived, strengthen this assertion. Self-will is the very staff of infidelity. The Socinian, or, as he modestly terms himself, the Unitarian, will, it is conceived, be found to be superior to the Infidel, in a rather more even balance of the will and the intellect, yet perhaps equally remote from an artless play of the feelings. The system, therefore, with which he is charmed possesses neither fear nor love, but it promises to secure the object of self-will in a way reputable to the understanding. The intellect disdains the subterfuges of those who wholly renounce the Scriptures, and yet the will is determined not to abandon its own designs; and hence the ingenuity and industry, the wit and the learning, which constitute the pedestal on which Unitarians exhibit their mermaid system. Were not the subject awful, one should be tempted to say, "Spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici." The supporters of this profession, allowing, even with their own qualifications, the authority of the Scriptures, are like the men who open the sluices, and then endeavour to sweep the waves of the ocean back from their inundated houses. It is to no purpose to object, that many Unitarians have distinguished themselves as mathematicians; since the will has little employment in such exercises, and has no objection to the reasoning powers taking the lead in the pure and physical sciences: it is of a moral question that the will is tenacious, and so artful as well as powerful, that she often induces the intellect, aided by habit, to look for evidence of a wrong species, and to ask demonstration instead of high probability, and comprehension instead of authority. The Unitarian, drawn by the intellect and the will, but by the will as the stronger, travels far from the regions of that affectionate and obedient state of mind which can hear the voice, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord." The imagination may, in many respects, be considered, that state of mind in which the affections in many instances employ the intellectual powers, especially those of selection and combination, and task them with the creation of an unreal existence. The mind most susceptible of the worst parts of Methodism, such as a trusting to impression and an appetite for religious excitement, often of a violent, sometimes of a marvellous character, is one in which the passions have an ascendency. The Wesleyan creed, in respect to its peculiarities, seems to be the belief of the feelings, and consequently full of change and self-opposition; estimating the Divine Character as well as the Christian hope and security, by the frames and feelings, which, like an April day, alternate between the cheerful and the gloomy. The writer makes these assertions in perfect knowledge of the intellectual as well as moral excellences of many in that community; he knows how both to admire and to love the great and the good of that zealous body of people; but still he believes that Methodism, in its more exciting doctrines, has great affinity to minds in which the feelings have the mastery. The element of Wesley and Coke was the affections, and they loved to people that element with spectres of their own imaginations; nor was Dr. Clarke, great as he certainly was, less constitutionally qualified to inhabit castles of romance, and to converse with orang-outangs, than he was intellectually and morally fitted to illustrate the sacred volume, and to fan the devotions of a worshipping congregation. If the writer were to hazard a conjecture of the mental constitution most suited to Hyper-Calvinism and Antinomianism, he would say, this has likewise a predominance of feeling. These feelings, however, oscillate between the two extremes of the arc, severity and indulgence, the one leading to a sort of dogmatic criticism, the other to mawkish cant; the one to an undue stress on disputable sentiments, the other to too low an estimate of moral precept and conduct; the one attempts to explain the secret things which belong to God, the other to spiritualize the most literal and secular portions of inspired history and command. O! that some craniologist would favour us with casts of those heads which compose so remarkable a group in the school of miracles and tongues! One might then, if Gall and Spurzheim are to be credited, form some judgment of their physical predispositions. Here the affections must be tyrants, and the imaginations their drudges and slaves. And with all respect to those individuals who have taken the lead in these manifestations, and they have many claims to respect, the earlier history of their minds records this physical structure. Few have read the orations and arguments of the late Caledonian preacher, without observing a disproportionate play of the imagination. The same remark will apply to other members of this fraternity, both laymen and ministers, both English, and Scotch, and Irish; nor can we overlook, in this inquiry, the fact, that the sex whose excellence it is rather to think with the heart than with the understanding, has occupied a very prominent rank in the Newman-street chamber of imagery. If we look at the two parties which trouble the Christian church at the present moment in our own country, the one improperly identifying themselves with the town of Plymouth, and the other with the city of Oxford, we shall see the affections and the will, in both, throwing the judgment into the shade. The former profess, and we do not now question their sincerity, to resolve all religion into love; and their ima gination, employed by the affections, endeavours to depict a sort of primitive Christian society, actuated and cemented together by one heart and one common interest. This beau ideal of a church, however, is not on its constitution and working copied from any record of ancient, much less of Scriptural Christianity, but from their own feelings; for, contrary to all written for our instruction in the Acts of the Apostles, and in early uninspired ecclesiastical books, and, in defiance of the nature of things, they imagine a tone of pious feeling and a line of conduct, without a system of pious doctrine; and conceive it possible to edify the church more by a miscellaneous and accidental service of unaccredited brethren, than by the labours of men devoted to the ministry of the word, and recognised by the church as pastors and teachers. In the social intercourse which the lower class of brethren are allowed to hold with the higher, and in the self-denying liberality of the latter, we may perceive and admire the charity which they profess; but where in their "will worship," and in their almost total disregard of ecclesiastical order, shall we detect a sound understanding? The will must be strongly determined thus to set the imagination to overturn all order and distinction in civil and religious society; and to prefer the abstract idea of affection to the practical workings of a spirit of love, and of a sound mind. The Oxford Tractarians, as they are sometimes called, though going to the opposite extreme, and though giving the lead to the imagination, may be fairly considered as betraying a great, if not an equal want of judgment. Their poetry, mystic and ascetic as it is, proves them to be deficient in neither affection nor imagination; and their prose, though perhaps over-rated, is nevertheless a monument of heavy and patient learning. Their feeling is, however, a sort of Pantheism, the sympathy with the shades of antiquity, the colour falling from painted windows, the responsive vibration of the pealing organ; it is not the affection which burns to brightness, and gives a clearer and a more obedient knowledge of the Divine will, as the love of God is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. Whatever reputation may be awarded men who have spent years in perusing the Greek and Latin fathers, that of their sound judgment must be damaged, when the puerilities, the platonisms, the worse than rabbinical speculations and legends of these uninspired writers, are held in higher estimation than the generous, and rational, and holy doctrines and practices of the New Testament. For the classic to prefer the Latinity of the second or third century to that of the age of Augustus, is nothing compared with a theologian turning from the word of God to the words of men, and of such men as were some of the fathers. We conclude, therefore, that in both these classes of professing Christians, the will and the passions are predisposed to abuse and degrade the intellect. |