If this be the truth, as it notoriously is, what but the
cataract of stupidity uncouched, or the thickest film of bigot-slime,
can prevent a man from seeing that this tenet of justification by faith
alone is exclusively a matter between the Calvinist's own heart and his
Maker, who alone knows the true source of his words and actions; but
that to his neighbours and fellow-creedsmen, his spotless life and good
works are demanded, not, indeed, as the prime efficient causes of his
salvation, but as the necessary and only possible signs of that faith,
which is the means of that salvation of which Christ's free grace is the
cause, and the sanctifying Spirit the perfecter. But I fall into the
same fault I am arraigning, by so often exposing and confuting the same
blunder, which has no claim even at its first enunciation to the
compliment of a philosophical answer. But why, in the name of common
sense, all this endless whoop and hubbub against the Calvinistic
Methodists? I had understood that the Arminian Methodists, or Wesleyans,
are the more numerous body by far. Has there been any union lately? Have
the followers of Wesley abjured the doctrines of their founder on this
head?
Ib. p. 16.
We are told by our new spiritual teachers, that reason is not to be
applied to the inquiry into the truth or falsehood of their doctrines;
they are spiritually discerned, and carnal reason has no concern with
them.
Even under this aversion to reason, as applied to religious grounds, a
very important truth lurks: and the mistake (a very dangerous one I
admit,) lies in the confounding two very different faculties of the mind
under one and the same name;--the pure reason or 'vis scientifica'; and
the discourse, or prudential power, the proper objects of which are the
'phaenomena' of sensuous experience.
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