Part I. p. 49.
It is enough, it seems, that all the disorderly classes of mankind,
prompted as they are by their worst passions to trample on the public
welfare, should 'know' that they are, what every one else is convinced
they are, the pests of society, and the evil is remedied. They are not
to be exhorted to honesty, sobriety, or the observance of any laws,
human or divine--they must not even be entreated to do their best.
"Just as 'absurd' would it be," we are told, "in a physician to send
away his patient, when labouring under some desperate disease, with a
recommendation to do his utmost towards his own cure, and then to come
to him to finish it, as it is in the minister of the 'Gospel' to
propose to the sinner 'to do his best', by way of healing the disease
of the soul--and then to come to the Lord Jesus to perfect his
recovery. The 'only' previous qualification is to 'know' our misery,
and the remedy is prepared." See Dr. Hawker's Works, vol. vi. p. 117.
For "know," let the Barrister substitute "feel;" that is, we know it as
we know our life; and then ask himself whether the production of such a
state of mind in a sinner would or would not be of greater promise as to
his reformation than the repetition of the Ten Commandments with
paraphrases on the same.--But why not both? The Barrister is at least as
wrong in the undervaluing of the one as the pseudo-Evangelists in the
exclusion of the other.
Ib.
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