entirely discountenances any such assump

tion.

But there is yet another point upon which the experience of the Church is valuable in enabling us to form a conclusive opinion upon the pretensions to miraculous or extraordinary gifts. It is this. That we learn by its experience, that these pretensions are no new things; that in different ages of the Church men have arisen laying claim to precisely the same powers, and demanding for their warnings and denunciations the same implicit respect, declaring that they spake not merely under those ordinary influences of the Divine Spirit which every Christian is instructed to seek, but as passive instruments in the hands of that Spirit, who dictated to them every message, every warning, every word. These claims have, whenever advanced, been made the subject of strict and impartial investigation by the orthodox members of the Church of God; in all ages the spirits have been tried, and it is not too

66

much to add, that in all ages, having been weighed in the balance" of the sanctuary, they have been found wanting."

66

If it be necessary to offer any apology for occupying the time of a Christian congregation with facts and opinions respecting these pretenders and heretics of former days, the following most sound and judicious sentiments of the truly eminent and pious Baxter, may not be without their use: "I must confess," he says in his treatise upon the sin against the Holy Ghost,' "it is my opinion that we have been much to blame in not making known. to common Christians somewhat more of the nature of the heresies of the first ages and the effects of them, by which they might have been better fortified against them; for now, for want of such information, the poor wretches take old, rotten, damned heresies, for new light from the Spirit of Christ, and many are ready, upon that very notion and account, to run after them to their own perdition, little knowing

or thinking that ever these heresies were in the world before, and how they were used by Christ and his Church. Had they but known when and how their highlyhonoured fancies did first arise, and what they brought forth, and how they sped, and what men they were that handed them down from Simon Magus till the time of their burial, the devil could not so easily have dug them up again, and have got religious men to make a feast of them."* Notwithstanding the quaintness with which the sentiments are expressed, the truth they contain is so valuable, that few will be displeased with the garb in which it is clad. Having this authority, I shall feel the less reluctance to bring before you the forgotten and by-gone fancies of deluded men, as they will tend to show that there is no assumption of extraordinary power, no fancy of supernatural communication from on high, on the part of the modern

*P. 287, vol. xx. Baxter's Practical Works, edit. 1830.

claimants, which has not had already its counterpart, and been exposed and repudiated, and ultimately silenced, by the combined voices of the churches of God, under the real direction of that Spirit who has been grieved by those who have affected to pay Him the most abundant honour.

The first instance in which any thing similar to the present delusions is recorded as having appeared in the Church of Christ, is at so early a period as to excite our most unfeigned astonishment at the audacity of that evil spirit, who could thus dare to introduce the counterfeit, while the genuine coin, bearing the impress of the living God, was still before the eyes of all.

We are told by Eusebius,* quoting a writer antecedent even to himself, that A.D. 171,-therefore actually before the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit had departed from the Church,-there arose

* See Lardner's History of Heretics, p. 388, edit. 1780. 4to.

a sect called after the name of their founder, Montanists, who claimed for themselves direct inspiration from the Holy Ghost, "supposing God to have made some additional revelations by Montanus," the head of the sect, "for the perfections of believers."* They spake many foolish and fanatical things, "glorying in their own supposed superior sanctity and happiness, and were deluded with the most flattering expectations, reviling every church under heaven which did not pay homage to their pretended inspirations." It is a singular fact, that, as has been the case with most, if not all, pretenders to these miraculous powers, they held the Millenarian views‡ very much in the same manner as they are held by the claimants of the same powers at the present day.

Of this sect Milner remarks, "It has ever been one of the greatest trials to men

* Lardner, ut supra.

† Eusebius, quoted by Milner, vol. i. p. 260.

Tertul. adv. Marc., lib. iii. cap. 24, p. 499, B. C.