"By a slow and imperceptible progress": Secker on the fruit of the Spirit

From Thomas Secker's Sermon CX - 'The only Satisfying Evidence that a Portion of theSpirit of God is Imparted to Men, is the UniformDisplay of Practical Piety and Virtue' - on Galatians 5:22-23, the fruit of the Spirit.  In referring to the "inward motions of the Holy Spirit", Secker stresses "we have seldom, if at all, an immediate and distinct perception of these influences".  This was a common defence of Anglican experience and pastoral practice, later repeated, for example, by Mant.  It can be seen as having a continued relevance in Anglican thinking, challenging some of the emphasises within 'Weird Christian' discourse and the assumptions that often underpin advocacy within contemporary Anglicanism of congregationalist or sectarian models in opposition to parish and national church:

Nor is it any real [objection] from experience, that we have seldom, if at all, an immediate and distinct perception of these influences. For our fellow-creatures influence us often very strongly, without our perceiving it; much more then may the Almighty. And that the operations of his power, in the works of grace, should be secret, and silent, and commonly gradual, is by no means improbable, since they are so in the works of nature. This gives occasion in each for the thoughtless to forget God, but for the considerate to admire him the more; who, by a slow and imperceptible progress, for the most part, brings to perfection the fruits of the Spirit, as he doth those of the earth; and the former, if due cultivation be not, wanting, with infallible success; filling the heart of the Christian always, as well as of the husbandman usually, with food and gladness.