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TREATISE

CONCERNING

RELIGIOUS AFFECTIONS.

BY

JONATHAN EDWARDS, A. M.

WITH

AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY,

BY THE

REV. DAVID YOUNG,

PERTH.

SECOND EDITION.

GLASGOW:

PRINTED FOR WILLIAM COLLINS;

OLIVER & BOYD, WM. WHYTE & CO. AND WM. OLIPHANT, EDINBURGH ;
w. F. WAKEMAN, AND WM. CURRY, JUN. & CO. DUBLIN ;
WHITTAKER, TREACHER, & ARNOT; HAMILTON, ADAMS, & Co.
SIMPKIN & MARSHALL; BALDWIN & CRADOCK;

AND HURST, CHẲNCE, & CO. LONDON.

MDCCCXXXI.

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INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

It is painfully instructive to reflect on the extent to which the depravity of man is at once indicated and aggravated, by the irreclaimable waywardness of his propensities and passions. By carrying this thought into the department of religion, we shall see the expounding principle of his depravity laid open to us; and, while there may still be a mystery over the origin of this principle, which remains to be cleared away by other evidence, yet we shall find it manifest, that man is the enemy of God by wicked works, by being previously his enemy in the spirit of his mind. But although we were to make a more confined use of the thought, and apply it only to those actions in which there is supposed to be no direct impiety, and which are interdicted by Christianity only in their excesses, or seasons, or circumstances, we shall still find an element working in the human mind-more mildly in some, and more fiercely in others, which argues disease in its moral constitution. The creatures which are merely animal are guided by instinct, and they are guided securely by it-maintaining a perfect uniformity, exhibiting a

thorough consistency in their likings and aversions, and prosecuting both with amazing steadiness, in subserviency to their real enjoyments: or, if there be an instance of deviation, to any observable extent, in any individual of any one of their species, that instance is marked, and wondered at, as a singularity; which shows at once how rarely it occurs, and how little power it has to shake our confidence in that, which with them is the ordinary course of nature.

With man, however, the case is vastly different. Not only is he led astray by that which ought to be the glory of his nature, but even the law of instinct is baffled and bewildered, enfeebled by resistance, or vitiated by perversity, till it is no longer capable of a right appropriation of terrestrial things. Viewing him simply as made for this world, and keeping the specialities of religion altogether out of the question, there is still room for the assertion, that he is unaccountably the creature of extremes; to be found in almost any state of mind except that one which tends most directly to promote his comfort. But the spring of all this extravagance is the violence of undisciplined propensity. We see his tendency to excess unfolding itself, and involving him in manifold little perplexities, as he passes through the scenes of his early childhood; for, in no instance does he leave the nursery till, in despite of the wisest guardianship, he has betrayed the existence of partialities and dislikes, which tend to do him injury, and are sure to end in bitterness, unless they are counteracted. The degrees of such aberration may be greatly diversified, and the fondness of parental love may delude itself with imagined instances in which there is no such

thing,-while, in these very instances, the symptoms of them may be quite apparent to the eye of an impartial observer.

Nor can we go far in accounting for these evils, on the principle that their victim is young; for, were they peculiar to youth, we might ascribe them to that hasty shooting forth of passion which belongs to the immaturity of his age, but which the slower growth of reason and experience would, in due time, restrain and rectify. Such a solution, however, is opposed by fact. Reason does grow up, and experience grows up; for the dullest man, who is exempted from absolute idiocy, is placed in circumstances which constrain an advance in both. But the evil is not cured. Propensity retains the control, and either allures the understanding into its measures, or prosecutes inclination in defiance of her dictates. A comparison of the child with the man of years, may indeed show us, that, in the case of the latter, the disease has passed under various modifications, and, of course, has assumed an altered complexion; and from this, it may be loosely inferred to have altogether disappeared. On a closer inspection, however, it will be found, that such an inference is untenable, and that scarcely any thing has been gained by the superadded strength of faculty which elevates the man above the infant, but a corresponding accession to the power of his mental malady. The workings of injurious predilection in the mind of the child, although violent and impetuous, may be combated with some hope of success; because they have neither the firmness of purpose, nor the obstinacy of habit, which, if unresisted, they are afterwards to acquire. But the same

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