"From my childhood up," he says, "my mind had been full of objections against the doctrine of God's sovereignty, in choosing whom He would to eternal life, and rejecting whom He pleased; leaving them eternally to perish, and to be everlastingly tormented in hell. It used to appear like a horrible doctrine to me. But I remember the time very well, when I seemed to be convinced and fully satisfied as to this sovereignty of God, and his justice in thus eternally disposing of men, according to his sovereign pleasure. _But never could give any account, how, or by what means I was thus convinced_, not in the least imagining at the time, nor a long time after, that there was any extraordinary influence of God's Spirit in it; but only that now I saw further, and my reason apprehended the justice and reasonableness of it." In this extraordinary passage, the most instructive he ever penned, he confesses, undesignedly but clearly, that his faith in the Calvinistic theology did not rest on those arguments by which he has confirmed so many others in that tremendous creed, but was the result of supposed supernatural illumination. The true solution would be, "Sit pro ratione voluntas!" Much as we find to admire and revere in this eminent man, the history of his mind forbids us to rely on him with implicit confidence as an expositor of divine truth. His religion was exalted, his genius wonderful, but the subordination of his judgment to his imagination was an immense evil, producing an almost superstitious dread of the operations of his own mighty mind, suppressing its energies, its growth, and its expansion. He presents an example, not less of the weakness than of the majesty of human nature. We cease to wonder, when he describes the happiness of the spirits of the redeemed in heaven, as being derived, in part, from their listening to the groans and lamentations of lost souls in hell. Nor can we doubt, that if he had been born and educated a member of the Church of Rome, he would have lived and died, like Fenelon or Pascal, a splendid ornament of that impure communion, a conscientious advocate of that servile faith.