But in their
preaching they laid the whole stress, well-nigh, of their efforts
upon morals, to the neglect of doctrine; and in their theology, they
attributed to human reason a strength and authority which gradually
opened the way to the invasion of the gravest heresies. Of generally
purer character than their opponents, they were also abler
preachers. But while valuable as moral treatises, their sermons were
most defective; for the peculiar doctrines and spirit of the gospel
were evaporated." It cannot be doubted, that a class which included
such men as Henry More, Cudworth, Tillotson, and Burnet, hardly
deserves the wholesale reprobation hurled upon it by Bunyan. That
some of them carried their LIBERALISM to a dangerous extreme, and
that all of them allowed too great latitude of sentiment in
theology, and, by their philosophical speculations, obscured the
simple glory of the gospel, is indeed true; but some who bore this
name were men of unquestionable piety, as well as of eminent genius
and scholarship.]
It is interesting to contrast the mixture of divine truth and human
speculation, and the almost melancholy doubts, exhibited in the
writings of so excellent a man as Cudworth, with the strong and
certain convictions, and the clear, well-defined views of Christian
doctrine of John Bunyan, connected as they were in his case with the
almost exclusive study of the word of God.
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