rongest language his belief that 'every act of what is called
Divine vengeance, recorded in Scripture, may and ought, with the
greatest strictness of truth, to be called an act of the Divine love. If
Sodom flames and smokes with stinking brimstone, it is the love of God
that kindled it, only to extinguish a more horrible fire. It was one and
the same infinite love, when it preserved Noah in the ark, when it
turned Sodom into a burning lake, and overwhelmed Pharaoh in the Red
Sea.'[573] If God did not chastise sin, that lenience would argue that
He was not all love and goodness towards man. And so far from its being
a lessening of the just 'terrors of the Lord,' to say that His
punishments, however severe, are inflicted not in vengeance but in love,
such wholesome terrors are placed on more certain ground. Every work of
piety is turned into a work of love; but from the licentious all false
and idle hopes are taken away, and they must know that there is 'nothing
to trust to as a deliverance from misery but the one total abolition of
sin.'[574]

A few words may be added upon what was said of enthusiasm by one who was
generally looked upon as the special enthusiast of his age. How much the
usual meaning of the word has altered since the middle of the last
century, is well illustrated by the length at which he argues that
'enthusiasm' ought not to be applied only to religion, and that it
should be used in a good as well as in a bad sense.[575] It is 'a
miserable mistake,' he says, 'to treat the real power and operation of
an inward life of God in the birth of our souls, as fanaticism and
enthusiasm.'[576] 'It is the running away from this enthusiasm that has
made so many great scholars as useless to the Church as tinkling
cymbals, and all Christendom a mere Babel of learned confusion.'[577]
Instead of being blameable, the enthusiasm which meant perfect
dependence on the immediate inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit
in the whole course of life was one, he said, in which every good
Christian should endeavour to live and die.[578] But he was too wise a
man not to warn his readers against expecting uncommon illuminations,
visions, and voices, and revelations of mysteries. Extraordinary
operations of the Holy Spirit granted to men raised up as burning and
shining lights are not matters of common instruction.[579] Many a fiery
zealot would be fitly rebuked by his words, 'Would you know the sublime,
the exalted, the angelic