Ib. p. 12.

But the anti-moralists aver * * that they are quoted unfairly;—­that although they disavow, it is true, the necessity, and deny the value, of practical morality and personal holiness, and declare them to be totally irrelevant to our future salvation, yet that * * I might have found occasional recommendations of moral duty which I have neglected to notice.

The same ‘crambe bis decies cocta’ of one self-same charge grounded on one gross and stupid misconception and mis-statement:  and to which there needs no other answer than this simple fact.  Let the Barrister name any one gross offence against the moral law, for which he would shun a man’s acquaintance, and for that same vice the Methodist would inevitably be excluded publicly from their society; and I am inclined to think that a fair list of the Barrister’s friends and acquaintances would prove that the Calvinistic Methodists are the austerer and more watchful censors of the two.  If this be the truth, as it notoriously is, what but the cataract of stupidity uncouched, or the thickest film of bigot-slime, can prevent a man from seeing that this tenet of justification by faith alone is exclusively a matter between the Calvinist’s own heart and his Maker, who alone knows the true source of his words and actions; but that to his neighbours and fellow-creedsmen, his spotless life and good works are demanded, not, indeed, as the prime efficient causes of his salvation, but as the necessary and only possible signs of that faith, which is the means of that salvation of which Christ’s free grace is the cause, and the sanctifying Spirit the perfecter.  But I fall into the same fault I am arraigning, by so often exposing and confuting the same blunder, which has no claim even at its first enunciation to the compliment of a philosophical answer.  But why, in the name of common sense, all this endless whoop and hubbub against the Calvinistic Methodists?  I had understood that the Arminian Methodists, or Wesleyans, are the more numerous body by far.  Has there been any union lately?  Have the followers of Wesley abjured the doctrines of their founder on this head?

Ib. p. 16.

We are told by our new spiritual teachers, that reason is not to be applied to the inquiry into the truth or falsehood of their doctrines; they are spiritually discerned, and carnal reason has no concern with them.

Even under this aversion to reason, as applied to religious grounds, a very important truth lurks:  and the mistake (a very dangerous one I admit,) lies in the confounding two very different faculties of the mind under one and the same name;—­the pure reason or ‘vis scientifica’; and the discourse, or prudential power, the proper objects of which are the ‘phaenomena’ of sensuous experience.  The greatest loss which modern philosophy has through wilful scorn sustained, is the grand distinction of the ancient philosophers between the [Greek:  noumena], and [Greek:  phainomena].  This gives the true sense of Pliny—­’venerare Deos’ (that is, their statues, and the like,) ‘et numina Deorum’, that is, those spiritual influences which are represented by the images and persons of Apollo, Minerva, and the rest.