very spiritual men, are inflicting upon them. For, I believe, before God, and in his protection, I dare to utter it, that my own church is translating spiritual truth into intellectual forms as zealously as ever the Papists did translate them into sensual forms, and that the "dry rot of infidelity" is working as hastily her destruction, as the fermentation of sensual lust is working the downfal of the Papacy. And I believe, moreover, that in the ruling party of the Church of England, there is as much of formality and Pharisaism, and as much if not more hatred of spiritual truth than in the Papacy, which hath retreats where piety pours itself out unseen. And that, take it for all in all, the Church of England, though pure in doctrine, and devout in prayer, hath, from total want of discipline, no right to be considered as a church, but as a mere national institution where Christian doctrine is preached. And I believe, moreover, that the Dissenting bodies are becoming generally so political and sectarian, not to say radical in their spirit, and so invaded with popular feeling, so commanded and overawed by it, that the Spirit of God is very closely confined, and sorely grieved, and much quenched amongst them. And to the Evangelical body of the Church of England, which I did once look upon as a star in the gloom, and to the spiritual of all churches and sects (for it is the work of the Spirit blowing where he listeth), I have this to say, that if they will preach less a dogmatical, and more a personal Gospel; that is, present the persons of the Godhead, thus purposing, thus speaking, and thus acting, for men, rather than the abstract purpose, word, and action, if they will go about to separate a church

from the worldly mass by preserving the sacraments, those bulwarks of the visible church, full of meaning, and pure in application, as far as man can preserve them, the Lord may be pleased to make them the bearers of his standard; but if not, (and faint, faint are my hopes,) if they go about to court the favour of princes and prelates, and put their trust in their growing numbers, or in their Shibboleths of shallowest doctrine, or in their favourite preachers and approved books, then let them mark that it was spoken and said unto them by one that loves them much, though him they have little loved, that they also shall die away like an untimely birth, and bring forth no fruit of reformation to the land, and shall be cast out with that general casting out of the Gentile church which is now at hand, when the Lord, weary with the obstinate and incurable rebellion of the Gentiles, shall visit them as he heretofore visited the Jews; and bring in the Jews, as he heretofore brought in the Gentiles of his free grace, and give to them and the Election of the Gentiles, according to grace, the kingdom and glory everlasting, of which he hath spoken by the mouth of all his Prophets since the world began.

Into which appropriation by the sense of all things to itself, if we were to inquire a little, we shall find it to be at the very core, and to be the very bane of our fallen nature; that it is a law strong and stedfast, which carries with it the natural mind, and turneth all its faculties from the Spiritual Creator and the invisible world to the creatures and the visible world; which nourisheth the faculties and tastes and appetites, and other affections of the body, and in a manner deifies

them, making their works, whether mechanical or ingenious, to be admired and held in reverence, and wholly exalting the visible world, and the properties thereof, as the fit and proper subject of man's study, of man's delight and appropriation, and that of all which the issue is sin and death: wherefore this evil bias of fallen man is called the law of sin and death in his members; and the mind with which it serves itself is called the carnal or fleshly mind; and the fruits of it are called the fruits of the flesh, which are these: "Adultery,fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like." Contrary thereto is the law of the spirit, which is not able in the fallen creature to have free course, by reason of the bondage of its will, and that original propensity to evil, which is the condition of a fallen creature, but is redeemed and delivered by the power of the Son of God, the original Creator of the spirit and of all things, who hath manifested the method thereof in his Gospel, and made known to us the utter incapacity of nature to undertake the work, and the indispensible necessity of Divine power, which is therefore called grace, because it is freely offered to us without money and without price, and wrought in us by the abiding ministry of the Holy Ghost, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, and brings with him into our hearts the good-will and gracious ministry of all the Persons in the Godhead, whereby we are created anew after the image of God in righteousness and true holiness. The spirit, being thus born again by power from on

high, puts forth its proper energy, in conformity with the will of God, and fights against the law of the sense, according to the words of the Apostle, "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." As the spirit grows in strength upon the milk of the word, and feels its strong refuge in the Divine Persons, and is able to hold communion with them by prayer, faith, and action, it cometh to pass that it reclaimeth and recovereth the various faculties of understanding and of feeling from the dominion of the senses, and turneth them to the discovery of God in every region of the visible world, of providence and of grace, filling the outward forms and sloughs of things with spiritual substance, and beholding in the changing appearances and phenomena, the unchanging realities of the Divine purpose and goodness which they express, and so redeeming time, place, and circumstance to spiritual uses, and living a spiritual life in the midst of wicked visible things: all which cometh from the original fountain of Christ's righteousness, and floweth into our souls by the channel of faith, opened and kept open by the Holy Ghost. And "the fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.

Now, forasmuch as this is all my philosophy, all my political economy, all my legislation, and, in my opinion, containeth every good fruit which can grow upon the stock of human nature, I have nothing else to offer for the restoration of the health of Ireland, affected with superstition and all its debasing fruits of sensuality; nor for the restoration of the health of Scotland, fast hastening into the worship of the understanding, with its various

consequences of self-conceit, hardness of heart, barrenness of spirit, and formality; nor for the restoration of the health of England, distracted by a thousand contending sects, who work together a fermenting mass of religious and political confusion, out of which no man knows certainly what good and evil is to come; and this probably that much of both is likely to arise. And therefore it becomes me, after having stated, according to my notion, the source of the evil, to set forth by what means these spiritual remedies ought to be applied to Ireland, seeing I do believe that it is only these which will accomplish the work of its regeneration.

II. With respect to the remedy to be applied to a people which have been suffered to fall into the low state of superstition and sensual degradation to which Ireland hath come, every man will speculate according to the faith he is of, and the light which God hath given him. Those that have no faith in a revelation of the will of God, and in a providence fulfilling the same, or only a nominal and inactive faith therein, as is the case with all our political economists, and almost all our statesmen, can of course look only to the secondary causes with which they are acquainted, and in the operation of which they have faith : in which lore of secondary causes being but indifferently read, it is a poor and beggarly account they can give of the matter; but such as it is it must be mentioned and considered, because of the noise it has made, and the likelihood that it will in whole or in part be adopted. Being ignorant of the spiritual world, and most of them