IN RELIGION. 155 sophisticated word of God. That this may be the case, is the cordial wish and prayer of many who loved and respected them before they were unhappily led astray, by erratic fancies, into these se- ducing theories. There is no method which the subtle adversary of mankind has not devised to injure religion. When the church is at a low ebb, when she is sunk in forms and outward observances ; when zeal is asleep, and all seems safe because all is still, he sometimes rouses her, but it is to wrong purposes : it is not to advance the interests of Christianity, but to bend his force against some symptoms of its returning spirit, which begin to break out : these symptoms of incipient zeal he calls enthusiasm, though an evil which, perhaps, in that stage of the church, does not exist ; he, however, strives to prevent the existence not of enthusiasm but of zeal, that the frigid may enjoy their doze, and not be re- proached by the threatened exertions in 6
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