The text which is generally cited on this occasion, is _Matthew vii. verse 15._ But how unhappily chosen! In the preceeding chapters, our Lord had been describing, that _righteousness_ which _exceeds the righteousness of the_ Scribes _and_ Pharisees, and without which we cannot _enter into the kingdom of heaven_: Even the life of God in the soul; holiness of heart, producing all holiness of conversation. In this, he closes that rule which sums up the whole, with those solemn words, _Enter ye in at the strait gate_: (such indeed is that of universal holiness) _For wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction. The gate of_ hell _is wide_ as the whole earth; _the way_ of unholiness _is broad_ as the great deep. _And many there be which go in thereat_; yea, and excuse themselves in so doing, _Because strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it_. It follows, _Beware of false prophets_; of those who speak as from God, what God hath not spoken; those who shew you any other way to life, than that which I have now shewn. So that the _false prophets_, here spoken of, are those who point out any other way to heaven than this; who teach men to find _a wider gate, a broader way_, than that described in the foregoing chapters. But it has been abundantly shewn, that we do not. Therefore (whatever we are beside) we are not _false prophets_.
Neither are we (as has been frequently and vehemently affirmed) _deceivers of the people_. If we teach _the truth as it is in Jesus_, if we _speak as the oracles of |God|_, it follows, that we do not _deceive_ those that hear, though they should believe whatever we speak. _Let God be true and every man a liar_: every man that contradicts his truth. But he will _be justified in his saying, and clear when he is judged_.
One thing more I infer, “That we are not _enthusiasts_.” This accusation has been considered at large; and the main arguments hitherto brought to support it, have been weighed in the balance and found wanting: Particularly this, “That none but _enthusiasts_ suppose either that _promise_ of the Comforter¹ or _the witness of the Spirit_², or _that unutterable prayer_³, or _the unction from the Holy One_⁴, to belong, in common, to all Christians.” O my Lord, how deeply have you condemned the generation of God’s children! Whom you have represented as rank, dreaming _enthusiasts_? As either _deluded_ or _designing_ men? Not only bishop _Pearson_, a man hitherto accounted both sound in heart, and of good understanding: but likewise archbishop _Cranmer_, bishop _Ridley_, bishop _Latimer_, bishop _Hooper_! and all the venerable compilers of our liturgy and homilies: All the members of both the houses of convocation, by whom they were revised and approved: Yea, king _Edward_, and all his lords and commons together, by whose authority they were established! And, with these _modern enthusiasts_, _Origen_, _Chrysostom_, and _Athanasius_ are comprehended in the same censure!
¹ _John xiv. 16, 26. xvi. 13._
² _Romans viii. 15, 16._
³ _Romans viii. 26, 27._
⁴ _1 John ii. 20, 27._
I grant a deist might rank both us and them, in the number of _religious madmen_: Nay, ought so to do, on _his_ supposition, that the gospel is but a _cunningly-devised fable_. And on this ground, some of them have done so in fact. One of them was asking me, some years since, “What! are _you_ one of the knight-errants? How, I pray, got this quixotism into _your_ head? You want nothing: you have a good provision for life; and are in a fair way of preferment. And must _you_ leave all, to fight windmills; to convert savages in _America_?” I could only reply, “Sir, if the bible is a lie, I am as very a madman as you can conceive. But if it be true, I am in my senses. I am neither a madman nor _enthusiast_. _For there is no man who hath left father, or mother, or wife, or house, or land, for the gospel’s sake; but he shall receive an hundred fold, in this world, with persecutions, and in the world to come, eternal life._”
Nominal, outside Christians too, men of form, may pass the same judgment. For we give up all our pretensions to what they account happiness, for what they (with the deists) believe to be a mere dream. We expect, therefore, to pass for _enthusiasts_, with these also. _But wisdom is justified of all her children._