*3. This love we believe to be the medicine of life, the never-failing remedy, for all the evils of a disordered world, for all the miseries and vices of men. Wherever this is, there are virtue and happiness, going hand in hand. There is humbleness of mind, gentleness, long suffering, the whole image of God, and at the same time a peace that passeth all understanding, and joy unspeakable and full of glory.

4. This religion we long to see established in the world, a religion of love, and joy, and peace, having its seat in the inmost soul, but ever shewing itself by its fruits, continually springing forth not only in all innocence, (for love worketh no ill to his neighbour) but likewise in every kind of beneficence, spreading virtue and happiness all around it.

5. This religion have we been following after for many years, as many know, if they would testify: but all this time, seeking wisdom we found it not; we were spending our strength in vain. And being now under full conviction of this, we declare it to all mankind: for we desire not that others should wander out of the way, as we have done before them; but rather that they may profit by our loss, that they may go (tho’ we did not, having then no man to guide us) the straight way to the religion of love, even by faith.

Now, is there any power in your soul, whereby you discern either these, or him that created them? Or, can all your wisdom and strength open an intercourse between yourself and the world of spirits? Is it in your power to burst the veil that is on your heart, and let in the light of eternity? You know it is not. You not only do not, but cannot (by your own strength) thus believe. The more you labour so to do, the more you will be convinced, it is the gift of God.

12. This is a short, rude sketch of the doctrine we teach. These are our fundamental principles: and we spend our lives in confirming others herein, and in a behaviour suitable to them.

Now, if you are a reasonable man, although you do not believe the Christian system to be of God, lay your hand upon your breast, and calmly consider, what it is that you can here condemn? What evil have we done to you, that you should join the common cry against us? Why should you say, Away with such fellows from the earth: it is not fit that they should live?

*14. Let us consider this point a little farther. You yourself believe there is a God. You have the witness of this in your own breast. Perhaps sometimes you tremble before him. You believe there is such a thing as right and wrong, that there is a difference between moral good and evil. Of consequence, you must allow, there is such a thing as conscience; I mean, that every person, capable of reflection, is conscious to himself, when he looks back on any thing he has done, whether it be good or evil. You must likewise allow, that every man is to be guided by his own conscience, not another’s. Thus far, doubtless, you may go, without any danger of being a volunteer in faith.

15. Now then, be consistent with yourself. If there be a God, who being just and good, (attributes inseparable from the very idea of God) is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him, ought we not to do whatever we believe will be acceptable to so good a Master? Observe: if we believe, if we are fully persuaded of this in our mind, ought we not thus to seek him? And that with all diligence? Else, how should we expect any reward at his hands?

17. Yet again. Are we to be guided by our own conscience, or by that of other men? You surely will not say, that any man’s conscience can preclude mine. You, at least, will not plead for robbing us, of what you strongly claim for yourselves. I mean, the right of private judgment, which is indeed unalienable from reasonable creatures. You well know, that unless we faithfully follow the dictates of our own mind, we cannot have a conscience void of offence toward God and towards man.

*19. “Sir, (said that unhappy man, at my first interview with him) I scorn to deceive you or any man. You must not tell me of your bible; for I don’t believe one word of it. I know there is a God, and believe he is all in all, the Anima mundi, the

20. Will you object to such a religion as this; that it is not reasonable? Is it not reasonable then to love God? Hath he not given you life, and breath, and all things? Does he not continue his love to you, filling your heart with food and gladness? What have you not received of him? And does not love demand a return of love? Whether therefore you do love God or no, you cannot but own it is reasonable so to do; nay, seeing he is the parent of all good, to love him with all your heart.

25. If you say, “But those that profess this faith are the most unreasonable of all men;” I ask, “Who are those that profess this faith?” Perhaps you do not personally know such a man in the world. Who are they that so much as profess to have this evidence of things not seen? That profess to see him that is invisible? To hear the voice of God, and to have his Spirit ever witnessing with their spirits, that they are the children of God? I fear you will find few that even profess this faith, among the large numbers of those who are called believers.

27. Perhaps it is the same case with you. If so, I am grieved for you, and can only wish, ’till you do see a living proof of this, that you would not say, you see a christian. For this is scriptural christianity, and this alone. Whenever therefore you see an unreasonable man, you see one who perhaps calls himself by that name, but is no more a christian than he is an angel. So far as he departs from true, genuine reason, so far he departs from christianity. Do not say, this is only asserted, not proved. It is undeniably proved by the original charter of christianity. We appeal to this, to the written word. If any man’s temper, or words, or actions are contradictory to right reason; it is evident to a demonstration, they are contradictory to this. Produce any possible or conceivable instance, and you will find the fact is so. The lives therefore of those who are called christians, is no just objection to christianity.

29. It is every way suited to the nature of man; for it begins in a man’s knowing himself; knowing himself to be what he really is, foolish, vicious, miserable. It goes on to point out the remedy for this, to make him truly wise, virtuous, and happy; as every thinking mind (perhaps from some implicit remembrance of what it originally was) longs to be.

It finishes all, by restoring the due relations between God and man; by uniting for ever the tender Father, and the grateful, obedient Son; the great Lord of all, and the faithful servant, doing not his own will, but the will of him that sent him.

30. But perhaps by reason you mean, the faculty of reasoning, of inferring one thing from another.

But we can in no wise agree with this. We find no authority for it in holy writ. So far from it, that we find there both our Lord and his apostles continually reasoning with their opposers. Neither do we know, in all the productions of antient and modern times, such a chain of reasoning or argumentation, so close, so solid, so regularly connected, as the epistle to the Hebrews. And the strongest reasoner whom we have ever observed, (excepting only Jesus of Nazareth) was that Paul of Tarsus; the same who has left that plain direction for all christians, In malice, or wickedness, be ye children; but in understanding, or reason, be ye men.

31. We therefore not only allow, but earnestly exhort all who seek after true religion, to use all the reason which God hath given them, in searching out the things of God. But your reasoning justly, not only on this, but on any subject whatsoever, presupposes true judgments already formed, whereon to ground your argumentation. Else, you know, you will stumble at every step: because ex falso non sequitur verum. It is impossible, if your premisses are false, to infer from them true conclusions.

33. And till you have these internal senses, till the eyes of your understanding are opened, you can have no apprehension of divine things, no idea of them at all. Nor consequently, till then, can you either judge truly, or reason justly concerning them: seeing your reason has no ground whereon to stand, no materials to work upon.

35. What then will your reason do here? How will it pass from things natural to spiritual? From the things that are seen to those that are not seen? From the visible to the invisible world? What a gulph is here? By what art will reason get over the immense chasm? This cannot be, till the Almighty come in to your succour, and give you that faith you have hitherto despised. Then upborn as it were on eagle’s wings, you shall soar away into the regions of eternity; and your enlightened reason shall explore even the deep things of God, God himself revealing them to you by his Spirit.

36. I expected to have received much light on this head, from a treatise lately published, and earnestly recommended to me, I mean, Christianity not founded on argument. But on a careful perusal of that piece, notwithstanding my prejudice in its favour, I could not but perceive, that the great design uniformly pursued throughout the work, was to render the whole of the christian institution both odious and contemptible. In order to this, the author gleans up, with great care and diligence, the most plausible of those many objections that have been raised against it by late writers, and proposes them with the utmost strength of which he was capable. To do this with the more effect, he personates a christian: he makes a shew of defending an avowed doctrine of christianity, namely, the supernatural influence of the Spirit of God; and often, for several sentences together, (indeed in the beginning of almost every paragraph) speaks so like a christian, that not a few have received him according to his wish. Mean while with all possible art and show of reason, and in the most laboured language, he pursues his point throughout, which is to prove, “that christianity is contrary to reason;” or, “that no man acting according to the principles of reason, can possibly be a christian.”

38. I have hitherto spoken to those chiefly, who do not receive the christian system as of God. I would add a few words to another sort of men; (though not so much with regard to our principles or practice, as with regard to their own:) to you who do receive it, who believe the scripture, but yet do not take upon you the character of religious men. I am therefore obliged to address myself to you likewise under the character of men of reason.

39. I would only ask, Are you such indeed? Do you answer the character under which you appear? If so, you are consistent with yourselves. Your principles and practice agree together.

Why then do you say, you believe the scripture? If the scripture is true, you are lost. You are in the broad way that leadeth to destruction. Your damnation slumbereth not. You are heaping up to yourself wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. Doubtless, if the scripture is true, (and you remain thus) it had been good for you if you had never been born.

*41. But, it may be, you are none of these. You abstain from all such things. You have an unspotted reputation. You are a man of honour, or a woman of virtue. You scorn to do an unhandsome thing, and are of an unblameable life and conversation. You are harmless, (if I understand you right) and useless from morning to night. You do no hurt,—and no good to any one, no more than a straw floating upon the water. Your life glides smoothly on from year to year; and from one season to another, having no occasion to work,

42. I will not now shock the easiness of your temper, by talking about a future state. But suffer me to ask you a question about present things. Are you now happy?

These were doubtless much at ease. But can you think they were happy?—And how little happier are you than they?

*43. You eat, and drink, and sleep, and dress, and dance, and sit down to play. You are carried abroad. You are at the masquerade, the theatre, the opera-house, the park, the levee, the drawing-room. What do you do there? Why, sometimes you talk; sometimes you look at one another. And what are you to do to-morrow? The next day? The next week? The next year? You are to eat, and drink, and sleep, and dance, and dress, and play again. And you are to be carried abroad again, that you may again look at one another! And is this all? Alas, how little more happiness have you in this, than the Indians in looking at the sky or water!

*Ah poor, dull round! I do not wonder that Colonel M—— (or any man of reflection) should prefer death itself, even in the midst of his years, to such a life as this! And should frankly declare, “that he chose to go out of the world, because he found nothing in it worth living for.”

*Supposing then your end to be actually attained, suppose you have your wish, before you drop into eternity: go and sit down with Thleeanowhee and his companions, on the river side.—After you have toiled for fifty years, you are just as happy as they.

45. Are you, can you, or any reasonable man, be satisfied with this? You are not. It is not possible you should. But what else can you do? You would have something better to employ your time; but you know not where to find it upon earth.

*What then can you do? How can you employ the time that lies so heavy upon your hands? This very thing which you seek, declare we unto you. The thing you want, is the religion we preach. That alone leaves no time upon our hands. It fills up all the blank spaces of life. It exactly takes up all the time we have to spare, be it more or less: so that he that hath much, hath nothing over, and he that has little, has no lack.

47. Do you say in your heart, “I know all this already. I am not barely a man of reason. I am a religious man; for I not only avoid evil and do good, but use all the means of grace. I am constantly at church, and at the sacrament too. I say my prayers every day. I read many good books. I fast——every thirtieth of January, and Good-friday.” Do you indeed? Do you do all this! This you may do; you may go thus far, and yet have no religion at all; no such religion as avails before God: nay, much farther than this, than you have ever gone yet, or so much as thought of going. For you may give all your goods to feed the poor, yea, your body to be burned, and yet very possibly, if St. Paul be a judge, have no charity, no true religion.

50. Oh! no longer shut your eyes against the light. Know you have a name that you live, but are dead. Your soul is utterly dead in sin; dead in pride, in vanity, in self-will, in sensuality, in love of the world. You are utterly dead to God. There is no intercourse between your soul and God. You have neither seen him (by faith, as our Lord witnessed against them of old time) nor heard his voice at any time. You have no spiritual senses exercised to discern spiritual good and evil. You are angry at infidels, and are all the while as mere an infidel before God as they. You have eyes that see not, and ears that hear not. You have a callous, unfeeling heart.

52. But blessed be God! He hath not yet left himself without witness!

Who know the power of faith, and are no strangers to that inward, vital religion, the mind that was in Christ, righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. Of you who have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, I would be glad to learn if we have erred from the faith, or walked contrary to the truth as it is in Jesus. Let the righteous smite me friendly, and reprove me; if haply that which is amiss may be done away, and what is wanting supplied, till we all come to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.