in their hearts," and, without going to the plain of Dura, sacrifice all to the king's "golden image."

And 5thly. The most diabolical sin; persecution, that favourite off. spring of Satan, transformed into an angel of light. Persecution, that bloody, hypocritical monster, which carries a Bible, a liturgy, and a bundle of canons in one hand; with fire fagots, and all the weapons invented by cruelty in the other; and with sanctified looks, distresses, racks, or murders men, either because they love God, or because they cannot all think alike.

Time would fail to tell of those who, on religious accounts, have been stoned and sawn asunder by the Jews, cast to the lions, and burned by the heathens, strangled and impaled by the Mohammedans, and butchered all manner of ways by the Christians.

Yes, we must confess it, Christian Rome has glutted herself with the blood of martyrs, which heathenish Rome had but comparatively tasted. And when Protestants fled from her bloody pale, they brought along with them too much of her bloody spirit. Prove the sad assertion, poor Servetus! When a Romish inquisition had forced thee to fly to Geneva, what reception didst thou meet with in that reformed city? Alas! the Papists had burned thee in effigy; the Protestants burned thee in reality, and Moloch triumphed to see the two opposite parties agree in offering him the human sacrifice.

So universally restless is the spirit of persecution which inspires the unrenewed part of mankind, that when people of the same religion have no outward opposer to tear, they bark at, bite, and devour one another. Is it not the same bitter zeal that made the Pharisees and Sadducees among the Jews, and now makes the sects of Ali and Omar among the Mohammedans, those of the Jansenists and Molinists among the Papists, and those of the Calvinists and Arminians among the Protestants, oppose each other with such acrimony and virulence?

But let us look around us at home. When persecuting Popery had almost expired in the fires in which it burned our first Churchmen, how soon did those who survived them commence persecutors of the Presbyterians? When these, forced to fly to New-England for rest, got there the staff of power in their hand, did they not, in their turn, fall upon and even hang the Quakers? And now that an act of toleration binds the monster, and the lash of pens, consecrated to the defence of our civil and religious liberties, makes him either afraid or ashamed of roaring aloud for his prey; does he not show, by his supercilious looks, malicious sneers, and settled contempt of vital piety, what he would do should an opportunity offer? And does he not still, under artful pretences, go to the utmost length of his chain, to wound the reputation of those whom he cannot devour, and inflict at least academic death* upon those whose persons are happily secured from his rage?

O ye unconverted among mankind, if all these abominations every where break out upon you, what cages of unclean birds, what nests swarming with cruel vipers, are your "deceitful and desperately wicked

hearts!"

See Pietas Oxoniensis.

TWENTY-FIFTH ARGUMENT.

How dreadfully fallen is man, if he has not only a propensity to commit the above-mentioned sins, but to transgress the Divine commands with a variety of shocking aggravations! Yes, mankind are prone to sin :

I. Immediately, by a kind of evil instinct: as children, who peevishly strike the very breast they suck, and betray the rage of their little hearts by sobbing and swelling, sometimes till, by forcing their bowels out of their place, they bring a rupture upon themselves; and frequently till they are black in the faces, and almost suffocated. II. Deliberately, as those who, having life and death clearly set before them, wilfully and obstinately choose the way that leads to certain destruction. III. Repeatedly: witness liars, who, because their crime costs them but a breath, frequently commit it at every breath. IV. Continually, as rakes, who would make their whole life one uninterrupted scene of debauchery, if their exhausted strength, or purse, did not force them to intermit their lewd practices; though not without a promise to renew them again at the first convenient opportunity. V. Treacherously, as those Christians who forget Divine mercies and their own repeated resolutions, break through the solemn vows and promises made in their sacraments, and, sinning with a high hand against their profession, perfidiously fly in the face of their conscience, the Church, and their Saviour. VI. Daringly, as those who steal under the gallows, openly insult their parents or their king, laugh at all laws, human and Divine, and put to defiance all that are invested with power to see them executed. VII. Triumphantly, as the vast number of those who glory in their shame, sound aloud the trumpet of their own wickedness, and boast of their horrid, repeated debaucheries, as admirable and praiseworthy deeds. VIII. Progressively, till they have filled up the measure of their iniquities, as individuals: witness Judas, who, from covetousness proceeded to hypocrisy, theft, treason, despair, and self murder: or, as a nation, witness the Jews, who, after despising and killing their prophets, rejected the Son of God; affirmed he was mad; stigmatized him with the name of deceiver; said he was Beelzebub himself; offered him all manner of indignities; bought his blood; prayed it might be on them and their children; rested not till they had put the Prince of Life to the most ignominious death; and, horrible to say! made sport with the groans which rent the rocks around them, and threw the earth into convulsions under their feet. IX. Unnaturally: (1.) By astonishing barbarities: as the women who murder their own children; the Greeks and Romans, who exposed them to be the living prey of wild beasts: the savages, who knock their aged parents on the head; the cannibals, who roast and eat their prisoners of war; and some revengeful people, who, to taste all the sweetness of their devilish passion, have murdered their enemy, and eaten up his liver and heart. (2.) By the most diabolical superstitions: as the Israelites, who, when they had "learned the works of the heathens, sacrificed their sons and their daughters to devils; and, by the horrible practices of witchcraft, endeavoured to raise and deal with infernal spirits. And (3,) by the most preposterous gratifications of sense: witness the incests and rapes The reaso eason which engaged the publisher of these sheets to preach to some of the colliers in his neighbourhood, was the horrid length they went in immo.

committed in this land; the infamous fires, which drew fire and brim. stone down from heaven upon accursed cities; and the horrid lusts of the Canaanites, though, alas! not confined to Canaan, which gave birth to the laws recorded Lev. xviii, 7, 23, and xx, 16;* laws that are at once the disgrace of mankind, and the proof of my assertion. X. What is most astonishing of all, by apostasy: as those who, having "begun in the Spirit," and "tasted" the bitterness of repentance, "the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, make shipwreck of the faith, deny the Lord that bought them, account the blood of the covenant wherewith they were sanctified an unholy thing;" and so scandalously "end in the flesh," that they are justly compared to "trees withered, plucked up by the roots, twice dead," and to "raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever."

Good God! what line can fathom an abyss of corruption, the over. flowings of which are more or less attended with these multiplied and shocking aggravations?

TWENTY-SIXTH ARGUMENT.

If the force of a torrent may be known by the height and number of the banks which it overflows, the strength of this corruption will be rightly estimated from the high and numerous dikes raised to stem it, which nevertheless it continually breaks through.

Ignorance and debauchery, injustice and impiety, in all their shapes, still overspread the whole earth; notwithstanding innumerable means used, in all ages, to suppress and prevent them.

The almost total extirpation of mankind by the deluge, the fiery showers that consumed Sodom, the ten Egyptian plagues, the entire excision of whole nations who were once famous for their wickedness, the captivities of the Jews, the destruction of thousands of cities and kingdoms, and millions of more private judgments, never fully stopped immorality in any one country.

The striking miracles wrought by prophets, the alarming sermons preached by divines, the infinite number of good books published in almost all languages, and the founding of myriads of churches, religious houses, schools, colleges, and universities, have not yet caused impiety to hide its brazen face any where. The making of all sorts of excellent laws, the appointing of magistrates and judges to put them in force, the forming of associations for the reformation of manners, the filling of thousands of prisons, and erecting of millions of racks and gallows, have not yet suppressed one vice.

And what is most amazing of all, the life, miracles, sufferings, death, and heavenly doctrine of the Son of God; the labours, writings, and martyrdom of his disciples; the example and entreaties of millions that rality. One of them, whose father was hanged, upon returning himself from transportation, in cool blood attempted to ravish his own daughter, in the presence of his own wife, and was just prevented from completing his crime, by the utmost excrtion of the united strength of the mother and the child. When brutish ignorance and heathenish wickedness break out into such unnatural enormities, who would not break through the hedge of canonical regularity?

* In the last century an Irish bishop was clearly convicted of the crime forbidden in those laws, and suffered death for it.

have lived and died in the faith; the inexpressible horrors and frightful warnings of thousands of wicked men, who have testified in their last moments that they had worked out their damnation, and were just going to their own place; the blood of myriads of martyrs, the strivings of the Holy Spirit, the dreadful curses of the law, and the glorious promises of the Gospel. All these means together have not extirpated immorality and profaneness out of one single town or village in all the world; no, nor out of one single family for any length of time. And this will probably continue to be the desperate case of mankind, till the Lord lays to his powerful hand; seconds these means by the continued strokes of the sword of his Spirit; "pleads by fire and sword with all flesh;" and, according to his promise, causes "righteousness to cover the earth as the water covers the sea."

Is not this a demonstration founded on matter of fact, that human corruption is not only deep as the ocean, but impetuous as an overflowing river, which breaks down all its banks, and leaves marks of devastation in every place? This will still appear in a clearer light, if we consider the strong opposition which our natural depravity makes to Divine grace in the unconverted.

TWENTY-SEVENTH ARGUMENT.

When the Lord, by the rod of affliction, "the sword of the Spirit," and the power of his grace, attacks the hard heart of a sinner, how obstinately does he resist the sharp, though gracious operation! To make an honourable and vigorous defence, he puts on the shining robes of his formality; he stands firm in the boasted armour of his moral powers; he "daubs with untempered mortar" the ruinous "wall" of his conduct; with self-righteous resolutions and Pharisaic professions of virtue, he builds, as he thinks, an impregnable tower; he musters and draws up in battle array his poor works, artfully putting in the front those that make the finest appearance, and carefully concealing the vices which he can neither disguise, nor dress up in the regimentals of virtue.

In the meantime he prepares "the carnal weapons of" his "warfare," and raises the battery of a multitude of objections to silence the truth that begins to gall him. He affirms, "The preachers of it are deceivers and madmen," till he sees the Jews and heathens fixed, even upon Christ and St. Paul, the very same opprobrious names: he calls it "a new doctrine," till he is obliged to acknowledge that it is as old as the reformers, the apostles, and the prophets. He says, "It is fancy, delusion, enthusiasm," till the blessed effects of it, on true believers, constrain him to drop the trite and slanderous assertion. He declares that it " drives people out of their senses, or makes them melancholy," till he is compelled to confess that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," and that none are so happy and joyful as those who truly love, and zealously serve God: he urges, that "it destroys good works," till a sight of the readiness of believers, and of his own backwardness to perform them, makes him ashamed of the groundless accusation. He will tell you twenty times over, "There is no need of so much ado," till he discovers the folly of being careless on the brink of eternal ruin, and observes, that the nearness of temporal danger puts him upon the utmost exertion of

his powers perhaps to get himself a name among his profane com panions, he lampoons the Scriptures, or "casts out firebrands and arrows" against the despised disciples of Jesus: "They are all poor and illiterate," says he, "fools or knaves, cheats and hypocrites," &c, &c, till the word of God stops his mouth, and he sees himself the greatest hypocrite with whom he is acquainted.

When by such heavy charges he has long kept off the truth from his heart, and the servants of God from his company, this kind of amme nition begins to fail; and he barricades himself with the fear of being undone in his circumstances, till experience convinces him that "no good thing shall God withhold from them that live a godly life," and that "all things shall be added to them who seek first the kingdom of God." He then hides himself in the crowd of the ungodly, and says, "If he perishes, many will share the same fate," till he sees the glaring absurdity of going to hell for the sake of company. He shelters at last under the protection of the rich, the great, the learned despisers of Christ and the cross, till the mines of their wickedness, springing on all sides around him, make him fly "to the sanctuary of the Lord ;" and there he sees the ways, and "understands the ends of these men.'

دو

When all his batteries are silenced, and a breach is made in his conscience, he looks out for some secret way to leave Sodom, without being taken notice of and derided by those who fight under Satan's banner; and the fear of being taken for one of them that "fly from the wrath to come," and openly take the part of a holy God against a sinful world, pierces him through with many sorrows."

Are the outworks taken? has he been forced to part with his gross immoralities? he has generally recourse to a variety of stratagems: sometimes he publicly dismisses Satan's garrison, "fleshly lusts which war against the" godly, and keep under the ungodly "soul;" but it is only to let them in again secretly, either one by one, or with forces seven times greater, 66 SO that his last state is worse than the first." At other times he hoists up the white flag of truth, apparently yields to conviction, favours the ministers of the Gospel, admits the language of Canaan, and warmly contends for evangelical doctrines; but, alas! the place has not surrendered, his heart is not given up to God; spiritual wickedness, under fair shows of zeal, still keeps possession for "the god of this world" and the shrewd hypocrite artfuly imitates the behaviour of a true Israelite, just as "Satan transforms himself into an angel of light."

Is he at last deeply convinced that the only means of escaping destruction, and capitulating to advantage, is to deliver up the traitor, sin? Yet what a long parley does he hold about it! What a multitude of plausible reasons does he advance to put it off from day to day! "He is yet young: the Lord is merciful: all have their foibles: we are here in an imperfect state: it is a little sin: it may be consistent with loyalty to God: it hurts nobody but himself: many pious men were once guilty of it by and by he will repent as they did," &c, &c. When louder summons and increasing fears compel him to renounce "the lusts of the flesh," how strongly does he plead for those of the mind! And after he has given up his bosom sin with his lips, how treacherously does he hide it in the inmost recesses of his heart!

Never did a besieged town dispute the ground with such obstinacy,