themselves,' and misleading fools, like Balaam, who loved the wages of unrighteousness. Wells they are,' at first without a drop of Christ's living water, and to you dangerous pit-falls; but afterward filled with the stinking puddle of unbelief and wickedness. They are clouds, carried with a tempest, and driven about by every wind of false doctrine; leaning to their own understandings,' as all-sufficient, they despise the word of God, speaking great swelling words of vanity, and while they promise their hearers liberty, are themselves the servants and slaves of corruption, for of whom, or, of whatsoever, a man is overcome, of the same he is brought into bondage. There are certain men,' saith St. Jude, crept in unawares, turning the grace,' or indulgence of God, in worldly things, into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ,' carried by an abuse of God's bounty into all manner of sin, and by sin into total infidelity. These are trees,' at best, bearing no fruit, plucked up by the roots and withered; or loaded with such as the tempter did, and still continues to recommend. These are murmurers and complainers, walking after their own lusts,' which are never to be satisfied. These are waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame,' their own frothy blasphemies against things which they know not. These are wandering stars,' twinkling here and there, and setting fools agape at their unusual and unsteady motions. These are they who separate themselves, having not the Spirit,' who is one, and always makes one body of every set of men under his direction. To finish this prophetic character and bring its features still closer to the present times, hear what the Divine Spirit saith by St. Paul.Know, that in the latter days perilous times shall come, for men shall be lovers of themselves,' delighting in their pride and lusts, covetous, proud, blasphemers, unthankful, unholy, ungrateful to God, and unholy in themselves, false accusers,' equally vile in themselves, and vilifiers of others; incontinent, fierce, and despisers of those that are good;' given up to all manner of sensuality, brutish to the rest of mankind, and particularly shewing the utmost contempt for better men than themselves; traitors, heady, high-minded,' betraying the cause of God by turning his religion into poison in the minds of his poor ignorant peo

ple; giddily running after new opinions; setting themselves up as wiser than other men; and often than the penmen of the holy Scriptures; lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God,' warmly hunting after their own worldly designs, and even professing a coldness, which they call moderation, for the Christian religion; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof,' talking in a high strain of morality, but running down faith as weak and superstitious; and acting as if they had not the fear of God before their eyes; ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth;' changing their notions of religion every day, and pleading, that God loves variety in religion, as if no one religion were better than another. From such turn away,' lest laying hold of your pride by their own, they should turn you away from God, who declares, there is but one faith,' and from Christian humility. Whenever you hear them talking high of the light of nature, know, they are infidels, and disbelieve the light of revelation. Whenever you hear them running on in the praise of benevolence, know that they use that word, as it were, to express something better than Christian charity, and have just then put on the mask, in which they mean to lead you aside from the word of God. In this they affect the angelic garb, not more to gain your confidence than to set off their own excellence. When you hear them railing at our creeds as too obscure to be understood or believed, or as the works of mere men, though they themselves are, and must be sensible, that every tittle of those creeds is founded on the plain and express words of God; know, that they mean wholly to overthrow your faith. When you hear them complain, that the commandments are too hard to be kept, recollect and know, that they are repeating the very words of the old serpent to your mother Eve. When they promise you new lights in regard to religion, and to moral good and evil, as he did, know, that you shall indeed taste the pleasures they promise you, and find your eyes and all your senses opened to the evil that is to follow with a vengeance. As true Christians, you can know nothing but good; as their disciples, you shall know evil too, both temporal and eternal.

The teachers I am warning you to be aware of, do still pretend some reverence for the commandments of God,

But these teachers af

though they persuade you to a good life by hardly any thing else than their own reasonings and reflections. They moralize indeed, as it is called, but seldom or never on the principles of the gospel, or draw their reasonings from the articles of Christian faith. This is preaching up themselves, not Christ Jesus. The commandments are indeed. holy, and pure, and good. They are the great rules, by which we are to live now, and to be judged hereafter. But no man follows a rule of action without some reason or motive for so doing. Now, the reasons or motives to every Christian for keeping the commandments, and obeying God, are found in the articles of our faith. Our creed is the very life and soul of the commandments. fect to treat the articles of our creed with contempt; seldom or never dwell on those articles in their discourses, but give you their own feeble reflections in favour of a regular life, instead of them. Fools, I call them, as is evident from the almost universal corruption of manners, and the horrible growth of wickedness, which have spread among us ever since this unaffecting manner of handling the cause of Christian virtue hath prevailed in these unhappy kingdoms. The fear and love of God, with the spirit of piety, devotion, virtue, and even common decency, forsook us, as fast as we forsook our faith. Let me, my dearly beloved in Christ, persuade you to come back, to examine your creed, and the word of God, that you may clearly see what stress is laid on that faith. Consider, without believing in God your Father, who made you, and the world for you, how is it to be hoped, you, as his child, should love him, and serve him in keeping his commandments? Without believing in God your Saviour, who died for you, how is it to be hoped you should love him, and keep his commandments, the very proof he requires of your love.' Without believing in God your Comforter, how is it to be hoped you can keep the commandments, since his great purpose in descending on you is to enforce obedience to those commandments? Without believing in a judgment to come, and a heaven or hell to follow that judgment, how can it be hoped, that you should make these commandments the rule of your life here, or feelingly consider them as the rules whereby you are to be judged hereafter? Are these articles of your faith to be kept

out of sight? Or what other principles can serve instead of them to keep a nature so corrupt and frail as yours within the bounds of its duty, and to a sense of its eternal interest? The highest degrees of fear, gratitude, love, are here called forth with the voice of God. All your desire of happiness, all your horror of misery, both infinite and eternal, are here awaked by that trumpet which shall raise the dead. Hear it with the ears of your heart, and arise to a new life; so shall you have your share in the first resurrection.

After so many repeated warnings from our blessed Redeemer Christ and the Holy Ghost; after a character and picture, so plainly unmasking the present deceivers; after, by your own experience, observing the horrible flood of infidelity, of corruption, and wickedness, streaming from these fountains of vice and confusion, and sweeping before it all ranks of men, in pride, luxury, wantonness, perjury, iniquity, oppression; can you think of giving your ears and hearts to such destroyers? As they are bringing on themselves swift destruction;' as they are soon utterly to perish in their own corruption, whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not; and whose damnation slumbereth not;' can you, if you join them, hope for a better fate than that of your leaders? Cease, my son,' saith Solomon, to hear the instruction, which causeth to err from the words of knowledge,' namely, the words of God. Whoso despiseth these words, shall be destroyed; but he that feareth the commandment, shall be rewarded.'

The real church of Christ is a society, bound together by love; but all sectaries labour to divide the visible church into associations, dismembered and imbittered by hatred, which frequently, and in no small degree, affects the peace and truth of the real church; out of which, however, there is no salvation for him, who can read or hear the word of God. Whosoever cuts himself off from this church, cuts himself off from Christ its head, and delivers himself over to Satan, for the destruction of the flesh;' and if he do not, in time, by faith and repentance, restore himself to the communion of Christ, for that of his soul also. If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.' And in close pursuance of this admonition given you by the Holy Spirit, if any man

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presumes, publicly or privately, to teach you any thing else, different from or contrary to the gospel, which you have already received in the word of God, let him be accursed.' Assure yourselves, that whosoever does so, is secretly the enemy of Christ, and of your souls. The Holy Spirit hath perfected the gospel of God, and hath left nothing for any man to add, to take away, or to change, howsoever 'the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.' Know, that he, who is here called the God of this world, in a severe reflection on the submission of mankind to him, is no other than the devil?

No friend of truth will call me uncharitable for the harshness of the terms I use in speaking of these reprobate deceivers, when he finds, I take them from the word of God himself, or can so easily justify them by that word, and by my tenderness for the safety of those souls I am speaking to. You would laugh at him, who should call it uncharitable to proceed with thieves, robbers, and cut-throats, as the laws appoint, that is to throw them into dungeons, load them with irons, expose them to public infamy in trials, and hang them when found guilty; nor can you justly say, he is uncharitable, who, in a most affectionate regard for your souls, points out to you the snares laid for you by a far worse kind of men, far worse surely, for when they pretend to preach up Christianity, they labour only to corrupt and subvert its fundamental principles in your minds; they but spunge on Christ and your property, making merchandise of your souls,' and havoc of all your hopes. Whether their ways of thinking are right or wrong, can this their practice be right? Or can the cause of God admit, or that of truth require, the aid of imposture, of lies borrowed from the devil? Was it so that Christ and his apostles maintained the cause of our holy religion against the persecuting power. of Jews and Romans? Ought not the faithful watchman to give warning, when he sees the enemy secretly undermining the foundations of Christ's church, and his religion? When he sees the wolf stealing through a thicket to worry the sheep? In such a case, his dog, as I, if not a dumb dog,' should bark aloud, be his voice ever so sharp and harsh. If