* According therefore to the Doctor’s divinity both reason and scripture require, that the true Christian be _inwardly blind_, inwardly _deaf_, and void of all inward _feeling_. For if neither scripture nor reason will allow of any inward senses, then they must both of them require an _inward insensibility_. But as scripture from _Genesis_ to the _Revelation_, is full of proofs of these inward senses, I shall not now produce them: I shall here only observe that _hardness of heart_ is a well known phrase of scripture, and every where _signifies_ some degree of _blindness_, _deafness_, and loss of _feeling_. I suppose it will not be said that it signifies blindness, or loss of _outward eyes_ and _ears_, or feeling: neither does it signify a want of _human reason_, or natural _sagacity_; for _learned_, _polite_, and _ingenious_ men, are full as subject as others to this hardness of heart. Therefore the scripture is as open, as plain and express in declaring _for inward senses_, as it is in declaring against such a thing, as _hardness_ of _heart_. Hardness of heart is that to the _inward_ senses, which a deep, or as we call it, _dead sleep_, is to the _outward_. It keeps our inward eyes, and ears, and feeling all locked up.
14. A broken and a contrite heart unlocks our inward senses, and makes us see, and hear, and feel the things, which could no more be seen, heard or felt before, than a man in a deep sleep can hear, and see, and feel the things, that are said and done about him.
Water frozen into a rock of ice, is very different from the same water melted, warmed, and moving under the influence of the sun and the air.
Now this difference between water _flowing_, full of _light_ and _air_, and the same water frozen into a dark, hard rock of ice, is but a small resemblance of the difference between a _hardened_ heart, and the _same heart_ become broken.
15. But I return to the Doctor. His further instruction to this sort of people stands thus. They are told by him, “that their high notions of spiritual improvements have this effect: on the one hand, they lead to _presumption_, on the other to _desperation_.” “He has been told, _he says_, that some have been actually thrown into despair. They have been made stark mad, and received into _Bedlam_ as such. _And then he cries out_, Was the religion of Jesus Christ intended to make people mad? Is this for the honour of Christianity?”
* I shall not here question the Doctor’s information. I shall only observe, that when our Saviour was upon earth, there were two sorts of _mad_ people about him; the _one sort_ ran about in disorder, tore their cloaths and cut their own flesh; the other sort raved in malice, threw dust into the air, stopped their ears, and cried out _crucify him, crucify him_.
* It may be asked, which of these two sorts of state? Whose madness was the most shocking, that of the lunatics, or that of the _High Priests_, _Scribes_, and _Pharisees_? Those who only mangled their own bodies, or those that thirsted after the blood of Christ, and would have no rest till they saw his body nailed to the cross? To me the _lunatics_, seem to be in a _less degree_ of disorder; and the reason is this, because I see that our Saviour could heal them, but not the Priests, Scribes, and Pharisees.
Now is it reasonable, on account of the _madness_ of these Priests, Scribes and Doctors of the law, to say, “Is this for the honour of the _Jewish law_? Were the _law and the prophets intended to make people mad_?” If the Doctor knows how to excuse the law and the prophets, tho’ these great students of them were in such a desperate state of _madness_, then Christianity may be blameless; tho’ here and there a Christian (so called) may be fit for _Bedlam_.
16. Again, are there others, who desire to bring the whole form of their lives under rules of religion, to let the spirit of the gospel give laws to the most ordinary, indifferent, innocent and lawful things and enjoyments; so that, as the apostle speaks, _whether they eat or drink, or whatever they do_, they may _do all to the glory of God_?
These people are told by the Doctor, that “Wholly abstaining from things indifferent and innocent in themselves, as forbidden and unlawful, people were in the most disordered and distempered is a signal instance of being righteous over-much; and so on the other hand, is making things indifferent to be necessary, and matters of duty.”