It would manifestly be better that men should be left to the darkness and wanderings of unassisted reason, than that they should receive the immediate instructions of heaven, unless they possess at the same time a public and fixed rule to which all such supernatural instructions are to be conformed, and by which they are to be discriminated; for the errors of reason, how great soever they may be, carry with them no weight of divine authority; but if the doctrine of divine communications be admitted, and admitted without reference to a public and permanent standard of truth, then every extravagance of impiety may claim a heavenly origin; and who shall venture to rebuke even the most pestilent error; for how shall the reprover assure himself that he is not fighting against God? It has already been affirmed that enthusiasm, far from being necessarily or invariably connected with fervor or feeling, is often seen to exist, in its wildest excesses, conjoined with the most frigid style of religious sentiment. Thus, for example, the three egregious perversions of the doctrine of divine influence, which have been described in the preceding pages, are maintained, and have been professed and defended during several generations, by a sect remarkable, if not for the chilliness, at least for the stillness of its piety, and its contempt of the natural expressions of devotional feeling; and even for a peculiar shrewdness of good sense in matters of worldly interest. But the incongruities of human nature are immense and incalculable; or it would not be seen that general intelligence, and amiable manners, and Christian benevolence, are often linked with errors which, if viewed abstractedly, might seem as if they could belong only to minds that were lost to wisdom and piety. SECTION IV. ENTHUSIASM THE SOURCE OF HERESY.