ed. As your persons had never been accepted but in him, no more can any of your services. All your repentings, if you had wept out your eyes for sin, would not have satisfied the justice of God, nor procured you pardon and justification, without the satisfaction and merit of Christ. If he had not first taken away the sins of the world, and reconciled them so far to God, as to procure and tender them the pardon and salvation contained in his covenant, there had been no place for your repentance, nor faith, nor prayers, nor endeavours, as to any hope of your salvation. Your believing would not have saved you, nor indeed had any justifying object, if he had not purchased you the promise and gift of pardon and salvation to all believers.

Objection. But, perhaps, you will say, "That if we had loved God, without a Saviour, we should have been saved; for God cannot hate and damn those that love him.' To which I answer, You could not have loved God as God, without a Saviour to have loved him as the giver of your worldly prosperity, with a love subordinate to the love of sin and your carnal selves, and to love him as one that you imagine so unholy and unjust, as to give you leave to sin against him, and prefer every vanity before him, this is not to love God, but to love an image of your own fantasy; nor will it at all procure your salvation. But to love him as your God and happiness, with a superlative love, you could never have done without a Saviour. For, 1. Objectively; God being not your reconciled father, but your enemy, engaged in justice to damn you for ever, you could not love him as thus related to you, because he could not seem amiable to you; and therefore the damned hate him as their destroyer, as the thief or murderer hates the judge. 2. And as to the efficiency; your blinded minds, and depraved wills could never have been restored so far to their rectitude, as to have loved God as God, without the teaching of Christ, and the renewing, sanctifying work of his Spirit. And without a Saviour, you could never have expected this gift of the Holy Ghost. So that your supposition itself is groundless.

3. Indeed conversion is your implanting into Christ, and your uniting to him, and marriage with him, that he may be your life, and help, and hope. "He is the way, the truth,

and the life and no man cometh to the Father, but by him"." "God hath given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son: he that hath the Son, hath life; and he that hath not the Son, hath not life"." "He is the Vine, and ye are the branches: as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the Vine, so neither can ye, except ye abide in him: he that abideth not in Christ, is cast forth as a branch, and withered, to be burned"." All your life and help is in him, and from him: without Christ, you cannot believe in the Father, as in one that will shew you any saving mercy, but only as the devils, that believe him just, and tremble at his justice. Without Christ, you cannot love God, nor have any lively apprehensions of his love. Without Christ, you can have no hope of heaven, and therefore no endeavours for it. Without him, you cannot come near to God in prayer, as having no confidence, because no admittance, acceptance, or hope. Without him, how terrible are the thoughts of death, which in him we see as a conquered thing: and when we remember that he was dead, and is now alive, and the Lord of life, and hath the keys of death and hell, with what boldness may we lay down this flesh, and suffer death to undress our souls! It is only in Christ that we can comfortably think of the world to come; when we remember that he must be our Judge, and that in our nature, glorified, he is now in the highest, Lord of all; and that he is "preparing a place for us, and will come again to take us to himself, that where he is, there we may be also P." Alas! without Christ, we know not how to live an hour; nor can have hope or peace in any thing we have or do; nor look with comfort either upward or downward, to God, or the creature; nor think, without terrors of our sins, of God, or of the life to come. Resolve, therefore, that as true converts, you are wholly to live upon Jesus Christ, and to do all that you do by his Spirit and strength; and to expect all your acceptance with God, upon his account. When other men are reputed philosophers, or wise, for some unsatisfactory knowledge of these transitory things, do you desire to know nothing but a crucified, and glorified Christ: study him, and take him (objectively) for your wisdom. When other men have confidence in the flesh, and in their shew of wisdom, in will-worship, and humility,

m John xiv. 6. n 1 John v. 11, 12.

• John xv. 4-6. P John xiv. 3.

after the commandments and doctrines of men, and would establish their own righteousness, do you rejoice in Christ. your righteousness; and set continually before your eyes, his doctrine and example, as your rule: look still to Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith, who contemned all the glory of the world, and trampled upon its vanity, and subjected himself to a life of suffering, and made himself of no reputation, but "for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame," and underwent the contradiction of sinners against himself. Live so, that you may truly say as Paul, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live: yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me"."

J

Having given you these directions, I most earnestly beseech you to peruse and practise them, that my labour may not rise up as a witness against you, which I intend for your conversion and salvation. Think on it, whether this be an unreasonable course, or an unpleasant life, or a thing unnecessary? and what is reasonable, necessary and pleasant, if this be not?

And if you meet with any of those distracted sinners, that would deride you from Christ and your salvation, and say, this is the way to make men mad,' or, 'this is more ado than needs;' I will not stand here to manifest their brutishness and wickedness, having largely done it already, in my book called, "A Saint or a Brute," and "Now or Never,' and in the third part of the "Saints' Rest:" but only I desire thee, as a full defensative against all the pratings of the enemies of a holy, heavenly life, to take good notice but of these three things.

1. Mark well, the language of the holy Scriptures, and see whether it speak not contrary to these men: and bethink thee whether God or they be wiser, and whether God or they must be thy Judge?

2. Mark, whether these men do not change their minds, and turn their tongues when they come to die? Or think whether they will not change their minds, when death hath sent them into that world where there is none of these deceits? And think whether thou shouldst be moved with that man's q Col. ii. 20-23. TM Gal, ii, 20.

words, that will shortly change his mind himself, and wish he had never spoke such words?

3. Observe well, whether their own profession do not condemn them; and whether the very thing that they hate the godly for, be not that they are serious in practising that which these malignants themselves profess as their religion?, And are they not then notorious hypocrites, to profess to believe in God, and yet scorn at those that "diligently seek him? to profess faith in Christ, and hate those that obey him? to profess to believe in the Holy Ghost as the sanctifier, and yet hate and scorn his sanctifying work? To profess to believe the day of judgment and everlasting torment of the ́ ungodly, and yet to deride those that endeavour to escape it? to profess to believe that heaven is prepared for the godly, and yet scorn at those that make it the chief business of their lives to attain it? to profess to take the holy Scripturesfor God's word and law, and yet to scorn those that obey it? to pray after each of the ten commandments, "Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law," and yet to hate all those that desire and endeavour to keep them? What impudent hypocrisy is joined with this malignity! Mark, whether the greatest diligence of the most godly be not justified by the formal profession of those very men that hate and scorn them? The difference between them is, that the godly profess Christianity in good earnest, and when they say what they believe, they believe as they say: but the ungodly customarily, and for company, take on them to be Christians when they are not, and by their own mouths condemn themselves, and hate and oppose the serious practice of that which they say they do themselves believe'.

As the Athenians, that condemned Socrates to death, and then lamented it, and erected a brazen statue for his memorial.

**Acosta saith, that he that will be a pastor to the Indians, must not only resist the devil and the flesh, but must resist the custom of men which is grown powerful by time and multitude: and must oppose his breast to receive the darts of the envious and malevolent, who, if they see any thing contrary to their profane fashion, they cry out, a traitor! an hypocrite! an enemy! lib. 4. c. 15. p. 404. It seems among papists and barbarians, the Serpent's seed do hiss in the same manner against the good Among themselves, as they do against us.

PART II.

The Temptations whereby the Devil hindereth Men's Conversion :› with the proper Remedies against them.

THE

HE most holy and righteous Governor of the world, hath so restrained satan and all our enemies, and so far given us free-will, that no man can be forced to sin against his will: it is not sin if it be not (positively or privatively) voluntary. All our enemies in hell or earth, cannot make us miserable: without ourselves; nor keep a sinner from true conversion, and salvation, if he do it not himself; no, nor compel him to one sinful thought, or word, or deed, or omission, but by tempting and enticing him to be willing: all that are graceless, are willfully graceless. None go to hell, but those that choose the way to hell, and would not be persuaded out of it; none miss of heaven, but those that did set so light by it, as to prefer the world and sin before it, and refused the holy way that leadeth to it. And surely man that naturally loveth himself, would never take so mad a course, if his reason were not laid asleep, and his understanding were not wofully deluded: and this is the business of the tempter, who doth not drag men to sin by violence, but draw and entice them by temptations. I shall therefore take it for the next part of my work, to open these Temptations, and tell you the remedies.

Temptation 1. The first endeavour of the tempter is, in general, to keep the sinner asleep in sin: so that he shall be as a dead man, that hath no use of any of his faculties; that hath eyes and seeth not, and ears but heareth not, and a heart that understandeth not, nor feeleth any thing that concerneth his peace. The light that shineth upon a man asleep, is of no use to him: his work lieth undone : his friends, and wealth, and greatest concernments are all forgotten by him, as if there were no such things or persons in the world: you may say what you will against him, or do what you will against him, and he can do nothing in his own defence. This is the case that the devil most laboureth to keep the world in; even in so dead a sleep, that their reason, and their wills, their fear, and hope, and all their powers shall be of no