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gratitude and love. The world sets before you only little things, seen it is true, but uncertain as riches, which make themselves wings and fly away,' carrying with them your sensual pleasures, and all your folly prides itself in. Faith in the promise of God offers you great things, unseen indeed at present, but absolutely certain and eternal. If 'you live by faith, and not by the sight of your eyes and the pride of life,' these great things shall in you shut out the sight of those little things, and this is the victory which overcometh the world, even your faith.' This, for instance, is that wise and glorious faith, which, fixing the eye of the soul on a judgment to pass on it, and on the eternal joy or misery that is to follow that judgment, encourages the martyr to die in flames for his holy religion.

And it is that same faith, which calling up your attention and desires from things below, and fixing them on things above, on the glory, honour, and immortality,' engaged to you by the promise of God, may 'mortify the deeds of the flesh' in you, and give you a claim to the character of martyrs; for who are martyrs, but they who renouncing themselves, their corrupted nature, their pride and sensual pleasures,' repose themselves, with all their hopes and comfort in God? Every true Christian, though not called to the stake for his religion, is in some degree a martyr, for ' he dies daily' by the mortification of sensuality, and imitates Christ, the great martyr, 'who before Pilate witnessed a good confession for us.' Do not be discouraged at this, for your short affliction' in dying to the pleasures of sin 'shall work for you a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.' If your faith shuts you in from pride and fleshly pleasure, it opens to you the glories of an immortal crown, and those rivers of pleasures which flow at the right hand of God,' insomuch that, even in this life, your conscience and hope in him shall pour upon you such delights as infinitely exceed those of the sensualist. Know, that while you are at home in the body,' more especially if you at all obey your body, to fulfil the lusts thereof, you are absent from the Lord.' Although, therefore, you' walk in the body, do not walk after the body.' Be willing rather to be absent from the body, that through the Spirit you may be present with the Lord. Know you not, that your body is the tem

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ple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you,' which you have from God, and that you are not your own? for you are bought with a price. Defile not the temple of God' by filling it with carnal impurities, but glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.' You may glorify God the more for being in such a body, if you fight the good fight of faith' against the corruptions and disorderly affections of that body; if you labour, as you ought to do, to cleanse it from all pollution, that it may be a fit habitation for his Holy Spirit. Ye are the temple of the living God, as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; I will be their God, and they shall be my people. I will be a Father to them, and they shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, cleanse yourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is the Lord that worketh in you, both to will and to do.'

The sacrifices of beasts, appointed as acts of devotion in the old world, were considered by all, who understood the true intent and end of that appointment, as representations and shadows of the one only great and effectual sacrifice of Christ for the sins of all men. Since that hath been offered up on the cross, those shadows are lost in the substance, and there is now no more sacrifice for sin. Yet there are still some other sacrifices to be made by us as proofs of our gratitude and love towards God, as free-will offerings of duty to him, and as means of purification in ourselves. You are at all times, but more especially when you commemorate the death of Christ in his last supper, ' to offer up yourselves, your souls and bodies, as a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto God,' whose property ye are by right of creation and purchase on his part, and of the baptismal vow, renewed and repeated at his table, on yours. Nay, the sacrifice of beasts, in some sense, is still due by us; I mean the sacrifice of the beasts within us, not the innocent lambs and doves of our good dispositions, considered as offerings rather than sacrifices; but the goats of our lascivious desires; the devouring wolves of our avarice and oppression; the savage tigers of our pride, wrath, and revenge; the wily and venomous serpents of our fraudulent arts, and poisonous

calumnies. With these we must not play, as with the dogs and cats of our own harmless humours, but must slay them on the altar of God, as not more odious to him, than destructive to ourselves. Here we ought to cut them in pieces, that the fire from heaven of our holy religion may consume them. This it is to be kings and priests to God;' kings, in ruling our own rebellious passions with a royal severity; and priests, in offering up to him sacrifices by such selfdenial, as he hath shewn by offering up for us his precious blood, an infinitely greater self-denial, as then he quitted the glories of heaven, to save us from the infamy and torments of hell. Thus it is, my dearly beloved in Christ, that you should prepare yourselves to celebrate his death at his own table. But if you go on to indulge and overfeed these beasts within you by gluttony, drunkenness, wantonness, quarrelling, murdering, what do you become but entirely beasts yourselves? what do you make your bodies, but temples, and yourselves, but priests, of the devil? what but priests, who consume yourselves in fire from hell, as so many burnt-offerings to that horrible author of all your sins and miseries? Let your common sense answer these questions to itself. Ask the word of God, how it came to pass, that the faith of Abraham was counted to him for righteousness?' Ask it, why he is called the father of the faithful?' and it will tell you, because he offered up his beloved son to God, and in so doing was ready and willing to slay with his own hand the most innocent and amiable son, as dear to him as his own life, and the heir of all the promises. And can you call yourselves the children of this patriarch, if you sacrifice nothing? Can you hope to shelter yourselves in his bosom when you die, if you will not part with things of far less value, to prove the firmness of your faith, and the sincerity of your Christian profession; to save your souls; to please and honour your God, who gave up his onlybegotten and well-beloved Son for your salvation?

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Among many others, in yourselves, and in the world around you, there is one most dangerous and deadly snare laid for you by the devil; whereof you cannot be too often nor too alarmingly warned; whereof Christ, foreseeing your weakness, blindness, and even inclination to fall into it, hath repeatedly cautioned you to beware; and the Holy Spirit, by St. Peter, St. Paul, St. John, and St. Jude, hath over and

over again reinforced this warning, not only to the Christians of their own time, but prophetically to all Christians of all times, and especially, if I mistake not, to us in these latter times. It is this, Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.'

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The word prophet, in the Old Testament, generally signifies one who foretells somewhat that is to come, perhaps long after it is foretold; but in the New Testament, a teacher, whether true or false, of religion, is, for the most part, styled a prophet. In this last sense it is that our Saviour is to be understood, when he requires you to be on your guard against false prophets or teachers. He knew that many such were to come in his name, and to deceive many,' by pretending to teach men of your kind the real truths of religion, but artfully bringing in damnable doctrines,' with false reasonings, and forced interpretations of Scripture; wearing outwardly the mask of piety, and pretending to be the only safe guides to truth, while from within he foresaw they would bring forth nothing but principles contrary to his, deceitfully leading their unwary hearer into all manner of wickedness.

Such deceivers, in considerable numbers, had thrust themselves into the church of Christ, in the very time of the apostles, insomuch that antichrist, a common name for all this sort of men, was then at work. It was on their account that St. John says to you, Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world.' You ask how shall plain men, like us, be able to try the doctrines of men so much more learned than ourselves, and so exceedingly cunning? I answer, easily, if you bring their doctrines to the touchstone of God's word, as the Psalmist had done, when he said, 'I am wiser than all my teachers; for thy testimonies are my meditation.' That, when you have any cause to suspect the doctrine of one pretending to teach you, the trial of his doctrine may be more easy, expeditious, and safe in its success, I have above furnished you with a very short and plain catechism, wherein every necessary principle of Christian faith and practice is laid down, and separately supported by texts of Scripture, the meaning of which you cannot mistake. This I have done, and made this whole

appeal to your common sense, because I am sensible, that in no age of the church so many wolves in wool ever spread themselves among the people of Christ, as in the present.

Wherefore if any of these false prophets should bid you pray to saints or angels, or kneel before images or pictures of any kind, the first two commandments of God forbidding you to do either, will sufficiently guard you. If any one should endeavour to seduce you into a dependance on your own righteousness, and not on faith in the blood of Christ, for your salvation, reject him with abhorrence; for Christ says, Whosoever believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved, and he that believeth not, shall be damned.' And the Spirit of God, by St. Peter, saith, There are false prophets among the people, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them.'

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On the contrary, if any one should teach you to depend on faith alone, and run down the necessity of good works, as the fruits and proofs of Christian faith, cast him from you, and listen to the Spirit of God in St. James, saying, ' Faith without works is dead. The devils believe and tremble.' If any of these false prophets should blasphemously teach you that neither Christ nor the Holy Ghost is the true eternal God, shut your ears against the devil, speaking in that serpent, and open your eyes to the word of God, quoted against him in the aforesaid catechism. Trust in the Lord,' saith Solomon, 'with all thy heart, and lean not to thy own understanding,' nor, let me add, to the understanding of other men, as fallible as yourself, since you have the wisdom of God's word to depend on. 'He that is of God, heareth God's words.' Your false teachers, 'hear them not; because they are not of God.' I press these scriptures upon you the more earnestly, because I doubt your ignorance and unwariness; and fear, as St. Paul did in the like case, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity which is in Christ.' My little catechism furnishes only two or three texts to prove each article, and your reading in the holy Scriptures will add many more to the same purposes; but not that one word of God should be enough for you to refute all that the devil's prophets can allege to the contrary, who, in imitation of their Master, quote Scripture, and

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