i 136 Ali APOLOGY, &C. These things joined together, put a strong bias upon Mt Judgment of the man, and it is exceeding difficult to be removed ; and it is evident that his prayers, his practice in religion, his secret acts of devotion, are all regulated by the instructions ho has received from his parents or some of his teachers : This makes his spirit grow uneasy under ceremonious forms, and he is quite untuned for devotion by the very sound of the organ. These things must needs have a mighty force on the minds of young sincere creatures beginning their course of religion and christianity, to establish them in the non-conformist way. And I might also add, how rude and indecent a thing the plain and -natural worship of the dissenters appears to one, that has been bred up to ornament and ceremony in .the several parts of wor- ship.in the established church. By education and custom a par- ticular form of religion is so mingled with their nature, and wrought into their constitution that you might as soon alter their palate, and change their taste of meats, as you can persuade their souls to dislike the ministry under which they llave been . brought up, and to forsake the mode of worship to which 'they have been trained. They are so positive they are in the right, that they never had, any thought of calling these things to a new examination. Secondly, The prejudice of the mind in favour of the dissen- ters'grows yet stronger, if Jonathan has found his soul awaken- ed to a fear,of hell, and been effectuallyconvinced of sin by the terrors of the lawunder the preaching of some Boanerges, some son of thunder in a meeting house ; and has been afterwards led gently into the knowledge of Jesus Christ the Saviour, and has been taught to apply himself unto him for salvation by hum- ble faith. Ifthe Spirit of God has made the preaching of par- don and grace, by a dissenting minister, effectual to calm the surges of his troubled conscience, and to lead him in the way of peace andholiness towardsheaven, perhaps he feels his passions refined, his sinful appetites mortified, his temper changed from earthly and carnal, to spiritual and heavenly, hownatural will his whole soul becarried out to love this ministry? And he would not willingly absent himself one day from the teachings of this Barnabas, this son of consolation ; he despises all the finer flourishesof consequence, he can take no pleasure in the more polite, and perhaps more argumentative discourse of a doctor or bishop in the church of England ; but where he has found light and food, and rest for his dark and distressed, and hungry soul, thither he will go constantly to worship, and he callsthat the sanc- tuary of the Lord, withoutonce enquiring whether a parish church may not be the sanctuary of the Lord too ; nay perhaps his pas- sion for the dissenters may rise so high as to deny the presence of God in the assemblies of the established church, or to allovy very little of it there.
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