character, and to the secret operations and tendencies of unbelief, suitable to be reflected on by devout believers, and yet not ultimately, it is thought, impertinent to the steady design of the work.
Having shown, or presumed, that numbers may justly be denominated infidels, who do not so consider themselves, and are not generally so considered by others, notice is taken of the confirmation which this view receives from the Scriptures, and of the adaptation of the doctrines of Christianity to the known nature and wants of man, and to the ends which it proposes to effect, and in the accomplishment of which man is made, what he is not and cannot be in any other way, both blessed and deserving to be so.
The inference, then, which is more or less disclosed in every branch of the subject, is, that if our views of Christianity do not renovate our natures and sway our conduct, it is because they are delusory, the mere allowances which an evil heart has made in its own vindication, and in which it loses sight of itself and of God together, while looking as at an image of its own creation, and which it kneels to and worships as having qualities that are in accordance with itself-which yet itself has imparted, or rather are itself again.
Philadelphia, June 28, 1836.