enunciation of all belief.

The state of undisturbed tranquillity and repose in one, who has
divested himself of all responsibility in matters of religious belief
and practice, enjoying an entire immunity from the anxious and painful
labour of trying for himself the purity and soundness of his faith, is
often painted in strong contrast with the {8} lamentable condition of
those who are driven about by every wind of novelty. The condition of
such a man may doubtless be far more enviable than theirs, who have no
settled fixed principles, and who wander from creed to creed, and from
sect to sect, just as their fickle and roving minds suggest some
transitory preference. But the believer must not be driven by the evils
of one extreme to take refuge in the opposite. The whirlpool may be the
more perilous, but the Christian mariner must avoid the rock also, or he
will equally make shipwreck of his faith. He must with all his skill,
and all his might, keep to the middle course, shunning that presumptuous
confidence which scorns all authority, and boldly constitutes itself
sole judge and legislator; but equally rescuing his mind from the
thraldom which prostrates his reason, and paralyzes all the faculties of
his judgment in a matter of indefeasible and awful responsibility.

Here, too, it is questioned, and not without cause, whether the
satisfaction and comfort so often represented in warm and fascinating
colours, be really a spiritual blessing; or whether it be not a
deception and fallacy, frequently ending in lamentable perplexity and
confusion; like guarantees in secular concerns, which as long as they
maintain unsuspected credit afford a most pleasing and happy security to
any one who depends upon them; but which, when adverse fortune puts
their responsibility to the test, may prove utterly worthless, and be
traced only by losses and disappointments. Such a blind reliance on
authority may doubtless be more easy and more free from care, than it is
to gird up the loins of our mind, and engage in toilsome spiritual
labour. But with a view to our own ultimate safety, wisdom bids us look
to our foundations in time, and assure ourselves {9} of them;
admonishing us that if they are unsound, the spiritual edifice reared
upon them, however pleasing to the eye, or abounding in present
enjoyments, will at length fall, and bury our hopes in its ruin.

On these and similar principles, we maintain that it well becomes
Christians, when