cessary to the establishment of right principles, and proceeding upon gratuitous assumptions, has, as might be expected, built castles in the air. It is this philosophy which is equally adverse to religion and true science, whereas the former is friendly to both; and he who is not careful to distinguish between them, may come at length to confound the light flippancy of Voltaire, or the grave and impious sophistry of Helvetius, and Diderot, with the wisdom of Bacon, or the science of Newton.

One thing more I would suggest to the serious reader; which is, not rashly to take offence at words or phrases, though they should not be perfectly theological, when he admits the sense meant to be conveyed by them. This is an evil to which good men are sometimes liable, and which the following considerations I hope may serve to obviate.

Let it first be remarked, that the influence of association extends itself as

powerfully over language, as it does over things or persons. It is this which often reflects an odium on the phraseology of scripture, by suggesting an idea of enthusiasm, cant, or hypocrisy. The words virtue*, rectitude, reformation, with others of the same family, are of a good sound, and will give no offence to the most gay and thoughtless; but to talk of grace, holiness, regeneration, is a diction that will not

*This is a word which often occurs in the following discourse; and to prevent, if possible, all misapprehensions of its meaning, I would here remark, that, when taken generally, it is used to denote picty towards God, as well as benevolence towards men. In this sense it is found in some good writers; and with the same extensive application it may still, as I conceive, be allowed to the Christian moralist, notwithstanding the abuse it has suffered by bad men, who, after they have employed it to express the whole of human duty, have narrowly confined this duty to the offices of social and civil life : an abuse which goes at once to shut all religion out of the world, and in its ultimate tendency to destroy even that virtue which is pretended; for virtue, though under its most relaxed and contracted form, can never long subsist when separated from piety: a truth to which the experience of all ages has. borne testimony, and which has lately been confirmed by a dreadful example.

always be endured even by those who on the whole are not indisposed to religion. And in such cases it deserves to be considered, whether it may not sometimes be more adviseable to endeavour, by the former mode ef expression, heightened in its meaning, to elevate and reconcile the mind to the doctrines of revelation, than by the latter probably to do nothing more than provoke disgust or prejudice; at least, whether such a liberty may not be permitted to a layman, and in a discourse which is not confined to theological topics. I know that a sacred regard is due to the very language of scripture, and that a wanton or injudicious departure from it is not the least considerable among those causes, by which Christianity has suffered in its most essential doctrines, and been almost reduced to a system of ethics; but it ought also, on the other hand, to be remembered, that condescension to the infirmities of the weak or the prejudiced is a point of much consequence, and which the scripture itself strongly enforces both by precept and

example. Fully sensible of its importance to the success of the gospel, the apostle Paul nct only binds it as a duty upon others, but became himself all things to all men, that by all means he might save some. In his speech no less than in his conduct, to the Jews he became as a Jew, that he might gain the Jews, to them who were without law as without law, that he might gain them who were without law*. Let any one compare his discourses before Agrippa and the court of Areopagus with those he addressed to the synagogue, and he will find them, both in style and matter, admirably accommodated to the occasion, In the former, there is nothing that would not do honour to the eloquence of Greece or Rome, and in the latter nothing that is not perfectly conformable with the character of a learned Jew, who had sat at the feet of Gamaliel. And so far as any one partakes of the wisdom and charity of this great apostle, he will be studious of the same pious

* See 1 Cor. ch. 9.

accommodation to persons and circum

stances.

Again: The example of those men who employ eve at of human eloquence, and who resort even to the peculiar dialect of scripture, in order to overspread the world with infidelity, vice, and anarchy*, may furnish something towards his apology, who endeavours to improve the language of moralists and philosophers to the support of scripture doctrines and practices, or, in other words, of religion and virtue, of order and social happiness.

In the last place, I would observe, in general, that a scrupulosity of temper in

* Of this abuse of scripture expression we have had a remarkable instance in the word regenerate, which some years ago (about the time when the above was written strangely found its way into our ordinary discourse; so that instead of plain reformation we heard of nothing but regeneration; and to regenerate the laws, constitutions, opinions, and manners of society became the magic language which dwelt upon the lips of every modern reformado.