On the Peculiar turn of the Present Age. CRISPUS. Good morning, my dear Gaius: I am glad to see you. The world is busy in grasping wealth, in discussing politics, and in struggling for dominion; all trifles of a moment: let us retire from the tumultuous scene, and discourse on subjects of greater importance. Gaius. I am glad, my dear Crispus, to find your mind exercised on such subjects. The present agitated state of the world is doubtless a great temptation to many to let go their hold of heavenly things, and to bend their chief attention to subjects which originate and terminate in the present life. Crisp. My mind of late has been much engaged on divine subjects. I find in them a source of solid satis B faction. Yet I must confess I feel as well a variety of difficulties which I should be happy to have removed. I have often found your conversation profitable, and should wish to avail myself of this and every other opportunity for improving by it. Gai. Suitable conversation on divine subjects is commonly of mutual advantage; and I must say there is something, I know not what, in the countenance of an inquisitive serious friend, which, as iron sharpeneth iron, whets our powers, and draws forth observations where, otherwise, they had never existed. I think I have been as much indebted to you for asking pertinent questions, as you have been to me for answering them. com Crisp. I have been lately employed in reading the works of some of our first Reformers and on : paring their times with the present, I have observed that a considerable difference has taken place in the state of the public mind. At the dawn of the Refor. mation, the bulk of mankind were the devotees of superstition, and stood ready to extirpate all those who dared to avow any religious principles different from theirs. Even the Reformers themselves, though they inveighed against the persecuting spirit of the Papists, yet seem to have been very severe upon one another, and to have exercised too little christian forbearance, and too much of a spirit that savoured of unchristian bitterness towards those whose ideas of reformation did not exactly coincide with their own." A great deal of their language, and some parts of their conduct, would in the present day be thought |