speaking a language, of carrying three hundred weight, &c. &c. is acquired by a frequent doing of the same thing; but can this be said of lying, swearing, drunkenness, or other vicious customs? Is the ability to do any of these things, strictly speaking, acquired by long practice? On the contrary, are they not as easy of performance, as to the mere act itself, on the first essay, as they ever afterwards become? But why then are they called habits? Because there is a resistance of a moral nature usually experienced in the first acts of sin, from the expostulations of reason and conscience, carrying a strong analogy to the difficulty which is encountered in the gradual formation of physical or mechanical habits. This moral resistance, like difficulties of the other kind, gives place to frequent repetitions of the act. The light of reason is at length put out, the voice of conscience is silenced, and the sinner now experiences a complete moral facility in repeating his crime as often as temptation and opportunity invite. I offer these remarks, Mr. Editor, with considerable diffidence, as having occurred to me in thinking on the subject; and if I am wrong, I shall be happy to stand corrected, should any of your correspondents, in a civil way, point out my error. At all events, my meaning in the extract in question, and the reasoning upon which it is grounded, are both suficiently obvious, and will not easily, I conceive, be shewn to be inconsistent with common sense, and sound principles of morality; the only tribunals to which I am solicitous to appeal. A vicious practice, Sir, I have contemplated as an effect, for which I assign vicious inclination as the cause. And my proof of the doctrine in one word is this, that the practice which does not proceed from vicious inclination, is not a vicious practice. I have one more observation to trouble you with, relating to the subject of your correspondent's concluding stricture, where he professes himself perplexed by the distinction at which I had glanced, "between an inability, natural and involuntary, and that want of power which results wholly from moral depravity." Yet he himself uses the terms "natural power," and "moral power," as if be admitted some distinction between them to exist. I might be entitled, therefore, to ask him wherein tirat distinction consists? And how he reconciles with any such distinction the subsequent reasoning of the same paragraph, in which it is taken for granted, and indeed affirmed, that, as affecting the responsibility of moral agents, they are without a difference? Take my meaning, if it be not already sufficiently plain, from the following easy illustration. A lame man tells you, that he cannot help limping: a drunkard, that he cannot help drinking to excess, Both plead the want of power; but it is a natural power that is wanting in the first case-the man must limp, whether he will or not; a moral power only in the second-that power which resides in a rectified will, and which consequently is weakened by every act of sin a man commits, till, in the last stages of depraved habit, it may be conceived to be wholly lost. But is not this state of moral inability a man's crime, and not his apology? And is not such diminution of power precisely as the increasing strength of vicious inclination? The want of power, therefore, in the moral sense of that term, what is it else, in plain English, but the want of will? demonstrated to my apprehension by this, that whatever produces a conversion of the will, whether temporary or permanent, proportionably restores the power, which before was impaired or lost. Thus, the knowledge that poison is in the cup will for the occasion turn inclination into aversion, and the man will refuse to drink: while the grace of God, which " enlighteneth the eyes, and converteth the soul," can alone make this change of will-as, in innumerable instances of the most inveterate evil habits, it has made it--radical and lasting. I trust I have succeeded, Sir, so far at least as to make my own meaning easy to be understood. Farther than this explanation, I mean not to advance into a controversy, which has often been agitated to little useful purpose. To go a shorter way to work, and save both G.S. W. and myself a great deal of trouble, I will beg leave to inform him, that the views I entertain on the subject to which his animadversions point, coincide with those which he may find in Dr. Jonathan Edwards's well-known Trea tise on the Human Will; to which, therefore, 1 beg leave to refer him for any further resolution he may desire of the difficulties of which he has complained. A COUNTRY CLERGYMAN. MODERN CHARACTERS. CHARACTER OF AMANDA. AMANDA is a young lady, who, with out possessing any peculiar piety, has received some very pleasing dispositions from nature, and has also derived great advantages from education. When a child, she was the delight of her friends and companions, the favourite of her brothers, and the source of much happiness to her parents. She was good-natured and obliging, submissive and obedient, and singularly tender and affectionate. She was taught to rise early, to be temperate in her diet, to observe the utmost propriety in her dress, to be punctual to her appointments, and almost invariably to devote certain hours of the day to their appropriate occupations. She thus became exercised in habits both of bodily and mental self-denial and diligence. Her temper, originally fine, was rendered still more excellent by the management of a most able, though not very religious governess. The eye of this lady was constantly upon her charge. Every attitude and gesture of the young pupil was observed, and her manners were formed according to the strictest rules of female decorum. The purity of her mind was at the same time consulted: for the perusal of novels, with few exceptions, and likewise of some compositions of our English poets, was interdicted. When Amanda came out into the world, she was every where accompanied by her prudent and experienced mother; who assiduously instructed her in all those rules of worldly wisdom and precaution, by which the character of a young woman becomes established in fashionable society. She was enjoined to refrain from indulging herself in violent and hasty friendships; and at the same time to beware of raising up any enemies. Hence she was admonished to restrain the first impulse of her feelings either of affection or dislike; to bestow her attentions both on the old and on the young; both on her acquaintance of a lower, and on those of a higher class; to speak somewhat favourably of all; to bear patiently the tediousness and dullness of unattractive individuals; and when accosted by young men too freely and familiarly, to be proportionably guarded, and ceremoniously polite. Amanda has been taught to mix some flattery with her civilities; she has, however, practised in the school of the world a certain kind of useful discipline and self-command. Her ideas have also been enlarged by opportunities of hearing the conversation of intelligent men, the extent of whose talents and information have moderated her opinion of herself; and her encreasing acquaintance with persons of the highest rank, has continually added a fresh polish to her manners. Amanda joins to a sound understanding, a very kind and sympathizing heart: while her benevolence, therefore, makes her wish to please, her good sense enables her, in almost all cases, to effect her purpose. She enters into every feeling of her company. She has now acquired, through long practice, an almost intuitive perception of what is deemed by the more refined part of society, to be proper to be said or done on every occasion. Among her superiors and equals, she is the accomplished woman; she is attentive, without oppressing them by her civilities. She furnishes her share of agreeable remark; yet never engrosses, and rarely leads the conversation. She indulges no egotisms; betrays no disgusting vanity; is hurried into no improprieties of temper; allows herself in no violent exaggerations; and avoids, especially when she is in mixed company, censorious observations on absent characters. If she utters a sarcasm, it is against herself; if she relates an interesting anecdote, it is to the advantage of some other person. Amanda likewise manifests great kindness when she finds herself in a circle of her inferiors. Many women of her rank in life take credit for general condescension, because they sometimes shew a compassionate attention to the lowest of their fellowcreatures. They are not aware that benevolence and humility are much more clearly evinced, by affability towards persons placed only at a small distance below them, persons with whom they are in some danger of being confounded. Amanda has gained her popularity in the quarter of which I now speak, by manners a little different from those which she adopts in the higher circles. Fearing to distress her more humble acquaintance by too stiff a silence, she often takes the lead among them, and communicates freely that superior knowledge which she possesses. Her conversation is restrained only when there is danger of too much encouraging the forward or the vain. No persons offend her taste more than those individuals of the middling class, who affect gentility, but are evidently underbred. Her benevolence, however, prevailing over her fastidiousness, she sympathizes with these as with others. But if I wished to exhibit Amanda in the most favourable point of view in which she can be placed, I would draw her picture when she is visiting the poor who surround her father's splendid mansion in the country. She occasionally enters the humble abodes of the cottagers, enquires into the health of each member of the family, and examines into their means of comfortable subsistence. She imparts to the unlettered tribe the information with which she has, for their sake, enriched herself. She labours assiduously to remove their prejudices. She instructs them how to improve their chimnies, to economise their fuel, to render their food more cheap, wholesome, and nutritious, how to mitigate the diseases, and, perhaps, preserve the lives of their children. Is there a bickering among the females in the village? She enters with calm ness and precision into the causes of the dissension; and allays the heat through the influence of her authority. By her known determination not to favour the unworthy, she promotes much honest industry; and she saves not a few in the extremity of their want; for she reports to her fond and admiring father the cases which she has seen, and extracts from his purse many a piece of silver or of gold, which, if Amanda had not interposed, would have been applied to very different uses. I have observed, that Amanda, nevertheless, is not particularly distinguished for piety. I did not mean to affirm, that she had no religion. There is so natural an alliance between piety CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 13. and benevolence, (the benevolence I mean which is active and self-denying) that where I see a pre-eminent degree of the one, I feel almost irresistibly impelled to assume the existence of some portion of the other. Amanda is a professor of Christianity. She occasionally receives the sacrament, and prepares herself for it with great solemnity. She behaves, I am sure, with great propriety when she is at Church. She kneels very devoutly during the prayers, and evidently listens to the sermon. I take for granted, that she is accustomed to say her daily prayers; and I have heard, from good authority, that she reads her Bible. She dwells, indeed, on what she calls the plainer parts. She prefers the Gospels to the Epistles; the Sermon on the Mount to any other portion of the Gospels; and the text "Judge not that ye be not judged," to every other passage of the sermon. She denies, however, no one doctrine of Christianity. She is neither sceptic, heretic, nor schismatic. She is as religious as any one needs to be in the opinion of the majority of her friends, as well as in that of more than half the world. She is rather too religious, according to the views of that part of her acquaintance, who are very giddy and some what profane. Still, however, according to my idea, religion is the very article in which Amanda will be found to fail. But how shall I prove my point? My first step shall be to subjoin some few additional observations respecting Amanda; and I will afterwards endeavour to mark her deficiencies by the means of two other characters of my acquaintance. I begin with the defects of Amanda's faith. It is true, that she denies not, as was before observed, any one doctrine of Christianity; but to none of them does she give sufficient prominence and weight. She submits to them with all due reverence, accounting it to be contumacy and rebellion against the authority of the Church to question their truth. But she examines little into their practical consequences; she perceives them indistinctly, believes them faintly, and interprets them loosely. The truth is, that she has as yet made but small progress towards emerging out of that state of natural ignorance and error respecting these subjects, in which we C all remain, until a discovery of the evil of sin, and a sense of our own exposure to the just condemnation of God, on account of our transgressions, make us fly for refuge to the grace of the Gospel: hence, though deeming herself a perfect Churchwoman in her faith, she is apt to side, in some respects, with the very apostles of heterodoxy; and when accused of a departure from the true tenets of the Church, I have known her to justify herself exactly as they do, by observing, that to perform well our relative duties (a phrase which too often means little more than to be respectful to our relations and attentive to the courtesies of life) is the great point, and that practice is all in all. Amanda, I am confident, cannot but confess, that although she is warm in her natural feelings, she is, at present, very cold in her religion. Even before her most private friends, she says little on the subject. She has a maxim by which she justifies her silence. She holds it to be a degradation of Christianity to turn it into a topic of familiar discourse. Religion, she tells you, is a secret thing. By means of this sentiment she conceals from herself and others her want both of that sound religious knowledge which will stand discussion, and of a more operative and lively faith. She forgets that "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth" will not fail to " speak." In short, she rather excites in me the idea of "the languid professor of an hereditary faith," than of the partaker of the animated joys, the glorious hopes, and the blessed consolations of the Gospel. But let us next consider more particularly her practice; for as yet we have viewed it chiefly on the favourable side. The great source of Amanda's deficiency in this respect (for great will her deficiency be found to be), is the same which has been already mentioned as the cause of the errors in her faith, namely, the want of a just sense of the true nature and evil of sin. In estimating guilt, she considers not so much the transgression against God as the offence against society, or the injury done to some individual. Observe her language: "virtuous and vicious, mischievous and beneficial, criminal and innocent, honourable and dishonourable, correct and incorrect, creditable and discreditable, proper and improper," are her terms. The word sinful is scarcely to be found in her vocabulary; nor are the terms "godly, sanctified, holy, children of God, regenerate," to be discovered in her divinity. All these are deemed by her to be theological expressions, derived indeed from the New Testament, and transferred from thence into our ancient and venerable liturgy, and even adopted into the language of our ancestors. But then she well remembers how much religion was discredited in a former century, by some who remarkably abounded in a phraseology of this sort. Amanda keeps extremely clear of their fault. Her error is on the side of the contrary extreme. I grant that it may be proper to make a guarded use even of those scriptural expressions, which have been heretofore much perverted, or may now be imperfectly understood; and that the pious mind will affix a Christian sense to more modern theological phrases. I apprehend, however, that Amanda is in great danger of annexing to the terms which she employs, those low ideas which they are so well calculated to convey; for both the company which she keeps, and even the book's of morality which she peruses, contribute to give to her mind that irreligious bias of which I complain. Amanda is a great enemy to the new French philosophy; and she lives chiefly among persons of professedly anti-jacobin principles. But she is not aware, how naturally she is carried by the general spirit of the times towards the very system which she condemns. Her ethics are not sufficiently founded on religion. She draws her motives from earth rather than from heaven. She is too much used to consider human actions as bad in proportion either as they violate conscience, however unenlightened, or as they wound our natural and instinctive sensibility, or as they offend against man's short-sighted notions of expediency, or as they depart from certain trifling rules of propriety and decorum, or contradict the maxims of honour established by the world. They are far too little contemplated as violations of the revealed law of God, or as means of drawing down his indignation. It is on this account that I term her a moral rather than a religious character. One consequence of this fundamental error in Amanda is her want of a sufficient perception of the evil of profaneness. I do not say, that she herself is accustomed to make a light use of the awful name of God; but I affirm, that she day by day hears it profaned by others without apparent emotion, and without seeming to feel any consequent diminution of the pleasure derived from their society. It will, perhaps, be said in her excuse, that she is scarcely sensible of these violations of the third commandment. I grant it; and her insensibility it is which establishes my argu ment. Her Sunday is by no means very strictly kept; and even the more gross violations of it by others are not the objects of her very serious regret, much less of her censure. I may possibly be suspected of requiring her to observe the day in a more strict and pharisaical manner, than the liberal spirit of Christianity demands. I reply, that her Sunday, with even its few strictnesses, is now a burthen to her; and that this consequence results from her viewing Christianity too much in the light in which the Jews contemplated their religion, namely, as a law of works and ceremonial observances, and from her esteeming it too little as a dispensation of pardon to the guilty, and of mercy, consolation, hope and joy. Her religion having, on this acCount, never much interested her feelings, is not sufficiently the subject of her conversation, of her reading, and of her meditation. As soon as Amanda shall begin to derive pleasure from the Gospel, she will naturally incline to the more strict, or as I would rather call it, the more religious observation of the sabbath. But the great practical evil which results from her estimating right and wrong so much by the rules and maxims of men, and so little by the spiritual and perfect law of God, is this: she is tempted habitually to regard actions rather than motives; the propriety of the words which she utters, rather than the purity of the inward thought which dictated them; the outward manners more than the sanctification of the heart. "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul," but the law of man is imperfect, principally regarding the mere actions of the life, and concern ing itself with only a small portion even of these. Amanda! Have you ever carefully considered this perfection of the law of God? Do you habitually scrutinise all those various motives, affections, and imaginations of your mind, which it is the express object of the divine law to regulate? Have you ever surveyed the vast extent of your duties, and contemplated the guilt of each sin, even of omission? I suspect that a large number of your actions are conceived by you to belong to a class, which you term indifferent. I am afraid you fancy, for example, that conscience needs to take no cognizance of the manner in which you employ a great portion of your time, of your conversation, substance, and influence. The duties of life, as you term them, being fulfilled, and of these you have a very narrow idea, I fear that the remainder of your talents is deemed to be at the disposal of your own humour; conscience merely demanding that they shall be turned to no use directly mischievous: and because some part of this large remnant is employed according to the dictates of your natural benevolence, I fear, that instead of saying, when we have done all we are but unprofitable servants," you are ready to take credit for certain works of supererogation. But be assured, that there can be no action which is strictly indifferent, no hour that is without its duty; that even no deed can be strictly right in the place of which a better might have been substituted; that our very amusements need to be subjected to the law of God, and all our affections to be measured out according to the dictates of the same law, God himself being the supreme object of our desire. Such sentiments as these would suggest to you, on the one hand, a high standard of practice, and would produce on the other a very deep humility. I must name another important evil, which results from the system of Amanda. I have often observed in her a disposition to value too highly in others, that kind of correctness in which she herself excels, and I suspect that, in spite of all her benevolence, she exercises too little charity towards those who may have heretofore grievously offended. Would you convince Amanda that you are a |