tion of their hearts, they now absolutely choose their own part. They call evil good, and good evil: And they act accordingly. Those among them, who are profligate and licentious, scoff and scout the very name of faith, hope, holiness, and the things of God and salvation. They are all for the world, and the things of the world, and desire to have no part or lot in the matter. What right then have such to complain, if they are dealt with only according to their desire? They counted the lives of real Christians to be madness, and their end without honour. And if they themselves find hereafter, that they have made a foolish choice; yet they will then remember, it was their own choice; and that, when any thing better was set before them, they put it all away, and, deliberately or perseveringly, preferred vice to virtue,

4

earth

earth to heaven, and the service of the devil to the service of God.

§ 52. And here it may be observed, that this circumstance is and ought to be a most awful and alarming consideration to every man who is conscious to himself, that he has no desire for the influence of the Holy Spirit, and of course no solicitude for his salvation. If such a one should cast an eye upon these reflections, let me earnestly exhort him to pause for a moment, and ask himself-If he have no wish or desire for these blessings now, and if death should overtake him in this perilous state of mind, how dreadful indeed must his plunge be into the everlasting, yet unavoidable, abyss before him! If he be certain of nothing else, of this he is most. assuredly certain, that he hath no present comfort of faith, and no just prospect of hope; unless the vague idea can be called one, that he shall either

H 5

either be nothing at all, (which is the atheist's best consolation,) or worse than nothing (which is the unbeliever's dread) throughout eternity. And, if the perseverance in this course, accompanied with a detestation of the things of God, be not arrant rashness, or rather the stupid and headstrong madness of sin and unbelief; let him smite upon his heart, and again deliberately ask "What is ?"

§ 53. Our Lord says, Blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me ; because indeed every carnal unregenerate heart is and must ever, while it. continues such, be in a state of continual offence and dislike, with him, with the nature of his life, with the purpose of his word in hiding pride from man, with the gracious confessions of his people, and with the principle and power of his salvation. He, therefore, who is not offended in Christ, must be one, who is trans

formed

formed into his image, and so is capable of a sympathy or unity of spirit with him. He, who hath not this sympathy, but can only feel with the world, and as the world, will ever distaste both the simplicity and mortifying nature of the Gospel, and, above all, must be disgusted with the very mention of the inward work of the Spirit of God, as outrageous stuff or fanaticism; forgetting or not knowing the many things, which God himself in his Word, and his Church in all ages, have said concerning it. And if it can be endured by such a one for a moment, it will not be for its own sake, but for the sake of that paltry dress of human wit or language, with which some ingenious man or other imagines he can adorn it.

§ 54. Those of a graver sort, who are more refined in their conduct and views, but who, building too much upon the powers of fallen nature, the H 6 deplorable

deplorable state of which they do not understand, will therefore oppose, directly or indirectly, the covenant or constitution of Grace, established by the three Persons in Jehovah, for the execution of which, these Alehim, or Witnesses, or Persons, have revealed themselves under distinct and descriptive names, from almost the beginning of the world. Possessed by this error in the outset, such men speak not of faith as a grace communicated officially by the Holy Spirit, nor of the other concomitant graces as entirely proceeding from his divine agency; but as the considerate acts and determinations of a man's own mind, after due reflection upon the propositions and arguments which have been set before him, independently, at least, in the turning point, of all influence from on high. Now, the people, who take up with this merely rational and selfcreated faith, and deny or limit the spiritual