and blessed assurance of salvation in the knowledge of Him will never be. It may survive such a system for a time, but it cannot be identified with such a system when matured. To be with God, while always rendering the soul subversive[errata 1], must render it independant of man, that is, it asserts no rights, but, when the need is, it says, we ought to obey God rather than man. The first of these works of Satan, then, is the pretence to the extraordinary operation of the Spirit. That is ephemeral. It is suited to the ill-directed, but righteous, cravings after that manifestation of spiritual power which was and is the only true source of living blessing on the earth, when that power has faded away. The other is the orderly establishment of men in the place of that power. This lasts. It is suited to unbelief, as, in its full development, it always generates it. Montanism is passed. The spiritual pretensions of Irvingism are in fact passed. The system of men and ordinances set up by it, abide. So practically among the Friends. This is common to both, as far as they go, that the manifestation of Christ in living power for the peace of souls, and the truth as to Him, is weakened and set aside more or less. Orthodox truths may, as we have seen in one of the cases I have supposed, be maintained : but as it is the work of the Holy Ghost alone to present Christ to the soul, so that it should be in the power of that living faith which sets the soul in blessed fellowship with the Father, in true joy, leaving the impress of its own everlasting nature upon it, which the Holy Ghost can alone give, and the Holy Ghost alone maintain, the consequence is that such communion with Christ is lost, and the conscience ceases to be before God. In the former of the cases I have supposed, Christian truth is generally lost, that is, saving truths connected with the person of Christ, and error substituted on these points. The Spirit’s alleged presence eclipses, instead of revealing them. In the latter they are rather plausibly subverted in their effect on the soul than set aside. As justification by faith in the Popish system, where, while every orthodox truth is maintained, the love and work of
