However confident as
to the truth of the doctrine he has set up, he cannot, after two public
admonitions, be ignorant that it is a doctrine contrary to the articles
of his communion with the Church that has admitted him; and in regard of
his alienation from that communion, he is necessarily [Greek:
autokatakritos],--though in his pride of heart he might say with the man
of old, "And I banish you."
Ib. p. 123.
--as soon as the miraculous gifts, or gift of discerning spirits,
ceased.
No one point in the New Testament perplexes me so much as these (so
called) miraculous gifts. I feel a moral repugnance to the reduction of
them to natural and acquired talents, ennobled and made energic by the
life and convergency of faith;--and yet on no other scheme can I
reconcile them with the idea of Christianity, or the particular
supposed, with the general known, facts. But, thank God! it is a
question which does not in the least degree affect our faith or
practice. I mean, if God permit, to go through the Middletonian
controversy, as soon as I can procure the loan of the books, or have
health enough to become a reader in the British Museum.
Ib. p. 126.
And what if, after all, spiritual censures (for of such only I am
speaking,) should happen to fall upon such a person, he may be in some
measure hurt in his reputation by it, and that is all. And possibly
hereupon his errors, before invincible through ignorance, may be
removed by wholesome instruction and admonition, and so he is
befriended in it, &c.
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