XXIV. PROLEGOMENA. 



pilots who have weathered the storm, and are 

 gone to the haven before us. We must follow 

 them in their courses, or otherwise, by steering 

 according to the compass of our own judgment 

 of the way, we shall get out of our latitude, and 

 fall among the })irates of heresy into the whirl- 

 pool of jeopardy, and be lost. Let us ponder 

 for a moment on this metaphor, faithfully de- 

 pictive of reality ! What would he the sensations 

 of an obstinate man sinking in a boat which his 

 perverseness at the rudder had overturned, if 

 only sinking into water, and at the same time 

 viewing a fleet of happy adventurers entering the 

 longed for port, conducted by one pilot now 

 gone too far to hear him, and guided by a beacon 

 now only shining from afar on his misfortunes 1 

 His consolation might be that all of them, the 

 happy mariners of the one fleet, as well as the 

 poor fool in the wreck, would soon jepose to- 

 gether in the earth, and be laid in the silent level 

 of the grave. But this consolation will not apply 

 to the shipwreck on the Stygian lake. Follow 

 up in imagination the sensations of a man whose 

 proud exercise of private judgment lost him 

 the bark of Eternal Life, in a lake of unquench- 

 able fire, in which there is no soothing hope, 

 no more affectation of the repose of the tomb, 

 but everlasting torments, wailing, and gnashing 

 of teeth ; and this too, coupled with the eternal 



