138 ON NOVEL OPINIONS Should be mysteries ; but they believe that these sacred mysteries are meant as exercises of faith to the probationers for Heaven ; are meant topromote humility; which they consider, whatever others do, as a grand fundamental in religion. They do not pretend to know in what manner the Holy Spirit operates on the human heart, but they know that it does operate, because it produces that change of heart which they are not ashamed to call the renewing by the Holy Ghost, and which distinguishes the'Vital from the nominal Christian. They leave to those who have sufficient natural resources in their own minds, if such there be, to, reject assist- ance which they fervently implore ; as. sistance without which they, who think they stand, may finally fall. These humble dependants on Divine grace come at length to attain, in addi- tion to the external evidences of Christi- anity, an internal evidence in their own bosom, which, so far from giving them any elation of heart, any eccentricity of
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