Page:The Cottagers of Glenburnie - Hamilton (1808).djvu/377

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trine, so as to make it pre-eminent, to the disparagement of the other Gospel truths, and to the exclusion of the Gospel virtues. We are too rash in accusing such persons of hypocrisy. Hypocrites may in all sects find shelter; but I believe in my conscience, that few, if any, of their founders, or most zealous friends, have been actuated by any other principle than honest, though misguided zeal;—a zeal, the natural effect of having fixed the attention exclusively on one point, until its importance is exaggerated beyond all bounds. We know, that whatever occupies the imagination will enflame it; but so wisely has the divine Giver of light and life adapted the light of revelation to our present condition, that, against this weakness of our nature, an ample provision is made, in the equal importance given to ail the various truths revealed as objects of faith, and by accepting, as the only test of our sincerity, such a degree of moral purity as it requires our utmost vi-