meaning, or explaining them away, when they are pressed on them by those who detect the evil. This any one conversant with the subject cannot but have noticed. The denial of the doctrine positively stated where the influence exists, as held in any such sense, or its explanation, is the very thing that marks the power of evil. With this will be found the attributing to those who hold the truth, every kind of doctrine they abhor, where there is influence enough to have their statements believed. Popery is the plain example of this. Another mark, whatever the apparent devotedness, yea, and real devotedness sometimes, is that the spirit of the world is acquiesced in. The poor will be nursed as instruments, and the rich (and so the clever) flattered for support. Another mark is the extreme difficulty of fixing them to any definite statement, save as they have power to enforce it. And then it is bound on others; and there is the sternest rejection of all who do not bow. Calumny of the saints, and of their doctrines, has been known from the testimony of the blessed Lord himself onward. The influence of females and of money will be found too largely employed. In cases of the second character of evil I have noticed, the combinations of a party will always be found. There is another mark, often incomprehensible to one not under the influence, and that is an incapacity of conscience to discern right and wrong, an incapacity to see evil where even the mere natural conscience would discern, and an upright conscience reject it at once. I speak of this incapacity in true saints. The truth is, the soul is not, where under this influence, (for it may be upright in other things) at all in the presence of God, and sees every thing in the light of the object which governs it; and, as to these things, the influence of the enemy has supplanted and taken the place of conscience. The moral marks will be found to attach to every case of evil power.
I am satisfied that I have seen these principles distinctly at work in what has produced the system established at Plymouth. Some may think I have copied it for the picture. I have not. Let them, if they have ever
