raises a doubt whether there be a God ; or, at least, whether he interfere at all in the concerns of men1*, or will judge the world in righteousness at the last dayc. He will take occasion also from the difficulties that there are in Scripture to draw men to infidelity. " How can that be the word of God which is so full of contradictions ? And who can know with any certainty what it declares to us, when those who pro- fess to believe it, are of such opposite sentiments ?" By such temptations as these he assaults chiefly the avowed enemies of God. But there are other temp- tations whereby he labours (and with too much success) to turn from the faith those who confess the divine authority of the Scriptures. He will draw them into errors of various kinds, and thus under- mine the principles which he could not destroy by open assault. Time would not suffice to point out the innumerable errors to which he has given birth, and by which he has destroyed the souls of men : but there is one way in which almost all of them have been produced and propagated : he induces men to take some one truth of Scripture, and to magnify its importance beyond all due bounds, and to exalt it, not only above all other truths, but to the utter exclusion of them ; and thus he founds error upon truth, and the most " damnable heresies " upon the sacred records. Mark the different heresies, and examine them by this test ; and the truth of the observation will im- mediately appear. Because our blessed Saviour was a man, and both lived and died as an example to his followers, therefore the Socinians affirm that he was only a man, and that he died only as an example ; and thus they set aside both his divinity and atone- ment. Because the Spirit of God is represented as dwelling in believers, therefore the Mystics reduce all religion to a vain conceit about the light within them ; from a regard to which, they overlook the work of Christ for them, yea, and supersede the plainest institutions of religion, and, in a very great degree, the Scriptures themselves. In the same
* Ps. lxxiii. 12, 13. c Zeph. i. 12.