Another thing, my Lord, to me seems darkly expressed, in page 18. (let not your Lordship be angry, for indeed I will endeavour to speak with all gentleness and humility): your Lordship’s words are these: “Nor need they any other evidence besides those _good dispositions_ they find in their hearts, that the Holy Spirit of GOD co-operates with their honest endeavours to subdue sin and grow in goodness.” If by good dispositions, your Lordship only means _good inclinations_ or desires, I deny that to be a sufficient evidence, that the Spirit of GOD co-operates with their honest endeavours to subdue sin and grow in goodness. For there is a great difference between good desires and good habits: many have one, who never attain the other. Many have good desires to subdue sin, and yet, resting in those good desires, sin has always had dominion over them. A person sick of a fever may desire to be in health, but that desire is not health itself. In like manner, many have good dispositions, or desires to be good, but that is not goodness itself. And consequently men need more evidence than good dispositions, to prove to themselves or others, “that the Holy Spirit of GOD co-operates with their honest endeavours to subdue sin.” If by good dispositions, your Lordship means good habits wrought in the heart by the Spirit of GOD, such as peace, love, joy, long-suffering, goodness, truth, &c. I then agree a man needs no other evidence: for these are the proper and genuine fruits of the Spirit itself.
Your Lordship immediately adds, “Nor that, persevering in their course, and praying to GOD for his assistance, and relying upon the merits of CHRIST for the pardon of all such sins, failings, and imperfections, as are more or less unavoidable in this mortal state.” I beg leave to ask your Lordship, whether this does not savour too much of the common divinity, That we are to do something for ourselves: or, in other words, that we have partly a righteousness of our own, and that JESUS CHRIST is to make up the deficiencies of that righteousness? What else can your Lordship mean, by saying, That we must rely on the merits of CHRIST for the pardon of “all such sins as are more or less unavoidable in this mortal state?” Did JESUS CHRIST come into the world, my Lord, only to save us from the guilt of such sins, as are more or less unavoidable in this mortal state? The scriptures every where affirm, that man hath no righteousness of his own, “That there is none righteous, no not one;――that all our righteousness is as filthy rags;” and that JESUS CHRIST died, not only to save us from the guilt of all such sins, failings, and infirmities, as are more or less unavoidable in this mortal state, but from all wilful sins, and also from that original corruption, which every man naturally engendered of the offspring of _Adam_, brings into the world with him. I hope I have not misunderstood, or overstrained your Lordship’s expression.
I come now to your Lordship’s caution against _enthusiasm_. For that, I suppose, your Lordship intended more particularly against me.
And here, my Lord, I beg leave to observe, That, in my opinion, your Lordship has by no means been clear enough in your definition of the word enthusiasm.
According to the fair rules of writing, was it not first incumbent on your Lordship to shew, that the word _enthusiast_ had a good as well as a bad meaning: that it signifies no more than _a person in God_, and consequently every christian, in the proper sense of the word, is an enthusiast? For St. _Peter_ writes, “That to us are given exceeding great and precious promises, that by these we might be partakers of the divine nature.”
And our church says, “If we receive the sacrament worthily, we are one with CHRIST, and CHRIST with us: we dwell in CHRIST, and CHRIST in us.” For which she has sufficient warrant from our LORD’s prayer, _John_ xvii. 20, &c. “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, I in them, and they in me, that they may be made perfect in one: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me, may be in them, and I in them.”