THE DANGER OF STIFLING RELIGIOUS CONVICTIONS. God, it will be attended with this sign, that it will conduct to the fountain opened in the blood of the sin-atoning Lamb. 2. The secret love of sin in the heart is often the source of stifled conviction. A person, who had made shipwreck of his Christian profession, but who was afterwards recovered to deep and genuine repentance, wrote to his pastor in the following striking terms :"Rev. and dear Sir,-I must conclude from a full and faithful review of my case, that, though I was no hypocrite, I was never converted to God. I had awful convictions and tossings of mind under the word, and I mistook them for real grace. I never hated sin, though I forsook it in some of its grosser forms. I continued attending ordinances punctually, without feeling any true delight in God; and sought rather to abate the clamour of an accusing conscience, than to partake the pure and elevated pleasures of communion with God in Christ Jesus. There was little, therefore, in my state of mind to keep me from becoming an easy prey to temptation. I had persuaded myself, indeed, that I was a Christian; but I had not the true delights and aversions of one. In these circumstances, the enemy of souls waited for my halting, and in an evil hour I fell by a deceived heart. My old besetting sin got the mastery over me, and then I rushed onward in the commission of evil, to drown and stupify conscience, till, at last, it ceased to be a reprover, and would never more have uttered its voice again, had not a merciful God devised the means, and exerted the almighty power, by which I have been brought to feel far more the malignity of sin, than even the ruin to which it conducts. difference between my present and my former convictions is this; formerly, I trembled at the thought of hell; now, I tremble at the thought of sin. Then, I mistook terror of conscience for conversion,-now, I feel that conviction is nothing, but that, Christ is all and in all," " The 427 I believe, brethren, that there is vital truth in this view of the subject. Sin cannot die, but as we feel the allconstraining power of the death of Christ. The goodness of many is as the morning cloud and the early dew; because, though they have had powerful convictions of sin, they have never seen the real turpitude of moral evil, and have never become the subjects of a genuine principle of holiness in the heart. There some secret sin yet lurks, which it requires nothing but the power of temptation to develop. There is much terror about sin, but there is not inbred hatred of it in the soul; nor can there be until Christ crucified has become the object of habitual transforming contemplation. The process by which conviction is stifled, is often very gradual and imperceptible, though it is sometimes sudden and overwhelming. Frivolous society habitually minged in; light and trifling literature; relaxed habits of devotion once cultivated; and familiarity with convictions often vanquished-aided by the deceitfulness of the human heart, and by the devices of the arch-deceiver, may all contribute to bring on that stupefaction of conscience, which is always fearful in proportion to the depth and keenness of the original awakening. We come now to inquire, III. What will be the terrible consequences of stifled convictions in religion? Here the doctrine of Scripture is alarming in the extreme. It seems almost to consign to utter despair and wretchedness the case of those who have silenced the voice of conscience, who have cast off fear, and now "work all uncleanness with greediness." "He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy," Prov. xxix. 1. "If we sin wilfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries," Heb. x. 27, 26. "It is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again to repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and expose him to open shame." Heb. vi. 4. "For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning," 2 Peter ii. 20. Such texts, I fear, are made too light of among us. There is a disposition, by adroit expositions, to take off the edge of them, lest they should breed sentiments of despair! But are people generally tending to despair? Is there not much more of presumption obtaining, in these days, among gospel hearers? Would that we could see those who have shaken off religious convictions yielding to despair! They might thus be stirred up to true repentance; they might thus be " plucked as brands from the burning." But this is the very difficulty described, they cannot, they will not despair. They might yet be saved, if they would despair. Christ is able to save them; but they will not be saved by him; the refuge provided is all-sufficient, but they will not betake themselves to it, there is mercy with God that he may be feared, but they can hear of it without emotion, and trample on it without remorse. This is the only impossibility hanging over their salvation. They are bound in the adamantine chain of impenitence. Their consciences are steeped in tenfold insensibility. They are in danger of sleeping that sleep from which they will never more awake, till they hear the voice of the archangel and the trump of God. The ordinary means employed by God in saving sinners have been expended on them in vain. They have stood on the very threshold of the ark, but they have not entered in; they have looked into the opened fountain of redeeming blood, but they have never plunged beneath its crimson flood; they have felt the vanity of the world, but they have not taken hold of the pleasures of religion; they have tasted the bitterness and the curse of sin, but they have never escaped from its thraldom and its pollution; they have said by their words and by their actions, that they would break their covenant with death and hell, but still they are the victims of a deceived heart, and the chain of iniquity is more firmly and fatally bound around them now than at any former period in their history. If they are not eternally lost, it will be by a miracle of boundless grace. The probability of their salvation is as slender, as was that of Simon Magus, or Demas, who loved a present world, or Alexander, the coppersmith, or any of the first apostates from the gospel. But where, I ask, lies the difficulty? My unhappy brother, it is with thyself. You have hardened your own heart by stifling your convictions, and by casting off the visitations of God. A few more steps in your impenitent career, and you are beyond the reach of mercy—even of Divine mercy itself. How inexpressibly terrible the prospect which lies beyond death and the grave, to such as have succeeded in banishing their former concern about eternal things! Alas! what remains for such, but " a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries ?" Those materials of an awakened conscience, which they have lulled to repose, will be kindled afresh by the fire and brimstone of the lake, and will burn and blaze with inextinguishable ardour through the countless ages of eternity. Oh, the bitter, the intolerable remembrances of that scene where God forgets to be gracious! You will never be able to forget the opportunities you enjoyed the ministers whose message roused you for a time-the convictions of sin and duty which flashed upon your spirits the secret vices or the THE DANGER OF STIFLING RELIGIOUS CONVICTIONS. corrupt associations which ensnared you the society of the good whom you forsook, and the depths of iniquity by which you forced your passage to the habitations of the lost. O plead this day with God, that he would recover you by his grace to deep repentance. Ask him to break that flinty heart, which you have hardened to tenfold obduracy. Entreat him, that he would show you a naked human heart, in all its deformity, and that heart your own. Cry, as did the apostle when sinking beneath the troubled wave, "Lord, save, I perish." Go directly to the cross; for only the love of Christ will strike a death-blow at the sin of an impenitent heart. Break off that secret, corroding evil, which has well nigh effected your ruin, and angels may yet sing over your redemption. The great general lesson of this address is the danger of stifling religious conviction. I would solemnly warn all who hear me against committing this dangerous sin. It has slain its thousands and tens of thousands. O let the faintest whispers of conscience be listened to as the voice of God, calling you to escape from perdition, and to betake yourselves to the Redeemer of lost souls. Shun every pursuit, relinquish every fellowship that would deaden the power of conscience. Press on with ardour to the goal at which all true religious convictions must aim; viz., entire settlement in the truth of Christ. Think it not enough that you are convinced of your danger; but flee to the Divine remedy, and seek the purification of conscience, by faith in the blood of the everlasting covenant. directly to the cross of Christ, and there lay aside the burden which sin has brought upon the conscience. There is no other remedy for a sinoppressed soul but the peace-speaking blood of atonement. That blood can cleanse from all sin. Its virtue is infinite, arising out of the infinite dignity of him who shed it. The untold millions who have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, have subtracted nothing from its vir Go 429 tues. Like an opened fountain, it presents itself to the gaze of perishing sinners, with this inscription over it, "Wash, and be clean." O I would plead tenderly and earnestly with those whom God has graciously visited with convictions. Why has he thus dealt with you, and not suffered you to go on thoughtlessly according to the course of this world? Has it not been in mercy to your soul? suffer not these monitions of the Spirit -these inward awakenings of the soul, to pass away unimproved. If they are quenched by you, they may never return, and then your doom is sealed in everlasting impenitence. I ask, and do not make light of the question, if God has not been long dealing with some of your consciences? You have felt powerfully, at times, that all was not right with you for eternity; you have looked with dismay at your past sins; you have been impressed with the conviction, that if death were to overtake you, it would find you unprepared to obey the summons. Dear friends, do not trifle with such impressions. They are golden opportunities in your history, which, if slighted, may never return. Delay not to follow your convictions out to a practical result. No longer halt between two opinions. Decide for God. Give your heart to Christ. What hinders this happy surrender of yourselves this day to the service of God? Your present position is one alike insecure and unhappy ; insecure, for your convictions cannot save you unhappy, for no one can be happy under the lash of an accusing conscience. Besides all this, I would remind you, that every fresh conviction stifled, but infuses a new element of hardness into the heart. Truth resisted stupifies the conscience; but truth embraced, softens and subdues the spirit. O tremble at the thought of being delivered over to a reprobate mind! Review, I beseech you, this day, God's dealings with you in the matter of conviction. Think when he first began to afflict your conscience. Con sider by how many methods he has haps, a mother, now in glory, by her covered; but, oh, rest not in it, but press onward to decision, follow it out to its results, take fast hold of life, give Christ your heart, unite yourself to his church, come forward to his table, avow yourself to be his, and "press forward towards the mark of the prize of your high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Many of you, I fear, have long been lingering on the confines of a religious life. Why not enter in, and possess the land? What forbids that you should, at once and for ever, become happy? The obstacle lies not with God, but with yourselves. The blessings of salvation are as free as they are full and satisfying! Make trial for yourselves of the pleasures connected with a good conscience. O taste and see that the Lord is gracious! You are about, many of you, to see his people avowing their faith in a Redeemer crucified. Let the scene melt and move your best affections. Determine that you will no longer absent yourselves from the table of the Lord. As you witness the disciples of Christ showing forth his death, say within yourselves, "We will go with you, for we perceive that God is J. M. A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. WICKLIFF has the great honour of being the first that translated the Bible into English; but his version of the Old Testament has never been printed. William Tindal, assisted by Miles Coverdale, translated the New Testament into our language, and had it printed abroad, in 1526, but most of the copies were bought up and burnt by Bishop Tunstal and Sir Thomas More. In 1530 a revised edition of it was published; but this met the fate of the former. Thus perished the two first printed editions of the New Testament in English. But Tindal, eager to pro ceed in the good work of enlightening his countrymen, by giving them the Scriptures in their own tongue, applied himself with so much diligence to the great work in which he had engaged, that, with the assistance of his associates, he had the whole Bible ready for the press in 1532. It was from a foreign press that this first edition of the whole Bible in English issued. Copies of Tindal's translation of the Scriptures being sent to this country, so exasperated the clergy, that they applied for and obtained a royal proclamation, prohibiting the buying or reading of such translation or trans lations. In 1536, Tindal was first strangled by the hangman, and then burned near Tilford Castle. He cried with a loud and fervent voice before he died, "Lord, open the eyes of the King of England." On Tindal's death, the second edition of his Bible, which he had been preparing, was carried on by Coverdale. It was dedicated to Henry the Eighth, in 1537, under the borrowed name of Thomas Matthews, whence this has been usually called, Matthews' Bible. It was printed in Hamburgh, and through the interest of Archbishop Cranmer, license was obtained for publishing it in England. The first Bible printed by authority in this country was Tindal's version, revised, compared with the Hebrew, and amended in many places, by Miles Coverdale, afterwards Bishop of Exeter, and examined after him by Archbishop Cranmer, who wrote a preface to it, whence this obtained the name of Cranmer's Bible. It was published in 1540. In 1562, a new edition of it was published. Some English exiles at Geneva, in Queen Mary's reign, viz., Coverdale, Goodman, Gilbie, Sampson, Cole, Whittingham, and Knox, made a new translation, which was printed there in 1560, hence called the Geneva Bible. This contained various readings, marginal annotations, &c. On account of which it was held in high estimation, during that and the following reigns, by the Puritans. The second Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury endeavoured to improve the English translation of the Scriptures; had it printed on a large paper, and dispersed through the kingdom. This edition was printed in 1568, in large folio, and was afterwards called, the Great English Bible, and commonly, the Bishops' Bible. In 1569, it was also published in octavo, in a small but fine black letter; and here the chapters were divided into verses, in which the method of the Geneva Bible was followed, which was the first English Bible wherein any distinction of verses was made. It was afterwards printed in large folio, with corrections and several introductory observations, in 1572. This is called Matthew Parker's Bible. For about forty years this translation was used in the churches, though the Geneva Bible was more read in private, being printed about twenty times in as many years. After the translation of what was termed the Bishops' Bible, two private versions of the New Testament were made, the first by Laur. Thompson, from Beza's Latin edition, with the notes by Beza, published in 1582, and afterwards in 1589, varying very little from the Geneva Bible; and the second at Rheims, by the Papists, in 1584, called the Rhemish Testament. About thirty years after their New Testament, the Papists published a translation of the Old, at Doway, from the Vulgate, with annotations. The last English Bible was that which proceeded from the Hampton Court conference, in 1603. Many exceptions being made to the Bishops' Bible, King James gave orders for a new one. For this office, the king appointed fifty-four learned men. It being three years before the translation was entered upon, it is probable seven of them were either dead, or had declined the task. It was published in 1613, with a dedication to James, and is commonly called King James's Bible. Φιλολογος. INFANT BAPTISM. To the Editor of the Evangelical Magazine. MY DEAR SIR,-At your request, I will endeavour to give a clear and concise statement of the Scripture warrant and authority which we have, for the administration of the ordinance of Baptism, to the infants of parents who make a credible profession of their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The argument |