in lively exercise; how should we resent the idea of failing in the performance of so sacred an obligation! Such are the genuine characters, such the natural workings of a lively gratitude. And we believe, without doing violence to the most established principles of human nature, that where the _effects_ are so different, the _internal principle_ is in truth the same? If the love of Christ be thus languid in the bulk of nominal Christians, their joy and trust in him cannot be expected to be very vigorous. Here again we find reason to remark, that there is nothing distinct, nothing specific, nothing which implies a mind acquainted with the nature, and familiarized with the use of the Christian's privileges, habitually solacing itself with the hopes held out by the Gospel, and animated by the sense of its high relations, and its glorious reversion. The doctrine of the sanctifying operations of the Holy Spirit, appears to have met with still worse treatment. It would be to convey a very inadequate idea of the scantiness of the conceptions on this head, of the bulk of the Christian world, to affirm merely, that they are too little conscious of the inefficacy of their own unassisted endeavours after holiness of heart and life, and that they are not daily employed in humbly and diligently using the appointed means for the reception and cultivation of the divine assistance. It would hardly be to go beyond the truth to assert, that for the most part their notions on this subject are so confused and faint, that they can scarcely be said in any fair sense to believe the doctrine at all. The writer of these sheets is by no means unapprized of the objections which he may expect from those, whose opinions he has been so freely condemning. He is prepared to hear it urged, that often where there have been the strongest pretences to the religious affections, of which the want has now been censured, there has been little or nothing of the reality of them; and that even omitting the instances (which however have been but too frequent) of studied hypocrisy, what have assumed to themselves the name of religious affections, have been merely the flights of a lively imagination, or the working of a heated brain; in particular, that this love of our Saviour, which has been so warmly recommended, is no better than a vain fervor, which dwells only in the disordered mind of the enthusiast. That Religion is of a more steady nature; of a more sober and manly quality; and that she rejects with scorn, the support of a mere feeling, so volatile and indeterminate, so trivial and useless, as that with which we would associate her; a feeling varying in different men, and even in the same man at different times, according to the accidental flow of the animal spirits; a feeling, lastly, of which it may perhaps be said, we are from our very nature, hardly susceptible towards an invisible Being.