sciences of men on the part of any who should assert special claims
to spiritual illumination.

Locke struck a keynote which was harped upon by a host of theologians
and moralists after him, whenever, as was constantly the case, they had
occasion to raise their voice against that dreaded enemy, enthusiasm.
There were many who inveighed against 'the new modish system of reducing
all to sense,' when used to controvert the doctrines of revelation. But
while with vigour and success they defended the mysteries of faith
against those who would allow nothing but what reason could fairly
grasp, and while they dwelt upon the paramount authority of the Spirit
which inspired Holy Scripture, they would allow no sort of spiritual
influence to compete with reason as a judge of truth. Reason, it was
perpetually argued, is sufficient for all our present needs. Revelation
is adequately attested by evidence addressed to the reason. We need no
other proof or ground of assent; at all events, none other is granted to
us. It was not so indeed in the first age of the Church. Special gifts
of spiritual knowledge and illumination were then given to meet special
requirements. The Holy Spirit was then in very truth immediately present
in power, the greatest witness to the truth, and its direct revealer to
the hearts of men. Many of the principal preachers and theological
writers of the eighteenth century dwell at length upon the fulness of
that spiritual outpouring. But it is not a little remarkable to notice
with what singular care they often limit and circumscribe its duration.
A little earlier or a little later, but, at all events, at the end of a
generation or two after the first Christian Pentecost, a line of
demarcation was to be drawn and jealously guarded.

In the second book of Warburton's 'Doctrine of Grace' there is a
singular instance of apparent incapacity on the part of a most able
reasoner to acknowledge the possible existence in his own day of other
spiritual influences than those which, in the most limited sense of the
word, may be called ordinary. He is speaking of the splendour of the
gifts which shed their glory upon the primitive Church and afterwards
passed away. He dwells with admiration upon the sudden and entire
changes which were made in the dispositions and manner of those whom the
Holy Spirit had enlightened. Sacred antiquity, he says, is unmistakeable
in its evidence on this point, and even the assailers of Christiani