and, I flatter myself, will equally welcome this my second; as this, as well as that, contains the effusions of a heart often op-pressed with sorrow, and a soul overwhelmed with grief.

But methinks my reader may feel inclined to ask, Who am I? and, What am I? To which I would answer, that I am no stranger to the sorrows and vicissitudes of a wilderness state, and have been often, like poor mistaken Jacob, ready to say, "All these things are against me!" I take the liberty, therefore, to inform my reader, that a few years ago I foolishly imagined my mountain stood strong, (as to worldly concerns,) as I was then prosperous in business; but God, in his wise unerring providence was pleased to tumble my mountain over my ears, and lay all my flattering prospects in the dust; and through accumulated losses I was brought very low: yet, blessed be my God, I have never wanted bread, though I have often wanted faith, but having obtained help from God, I continue to this day, still looking and expecting the sun again to shine: but, upon the whole, I trust I can, when cloathed and in my right mind, bless God more fervently for my trials, than ever I did for my prosperity; for now I can see the hand that gives, and bless the Giver;-now I can live upon my God, who many years ago blessed that sweet promise to my soul, though I at the time hardly knew what it meant, "Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; and as thy days, so shall thy strength be ;" and hitherto the Lord has helped me.

As to what I am; I own to my reader, I am what the proud, good-hearted, self-conceited, self-saving pharisee calls an Antinomian: but, blessed be my God, I can defy the charge; neither is there a man can be found to prove it. That I am no free-willer, no Arminian, no work-monger, I readily grant; but I am a poor sinner, who is entirely divested of all hopes of salvation, but from the everlasting love of God, flowing through the atonement, finished, and eternally complete for all the royal seed. If this is to be an Antinomian, then I am one, and I wish to live one and die one: but as for my maintaining Antinomian principles, I trust my conduct, in every respect, contradicts; and to that odious, nay, that damnable opinion, of doing ill that good may come, or sinning that grace may abound, I can say from my heart, God forbid for, although I put not the least trust in any of my

external works, or duties as some call them, being fully persuaded that my works, my repentance, my act of faith, or any thing I can have or may do, have nothing to do in my salvation, as the procuring cause: nevertheless, as to my outward walk, life, and conversation, I have no objection to jump into the scale with any of my calumniators, who feel themselves gratified in fixing a charge that best becomes themselves, as I have no doubt I am enabled to work harder, from life, than these poor Arminians do for life; but while they are from year's end to year's end boasting of their duties and their doings, I would be ever making my boast of a precious Christ, as the way, and the only way, as the truth, the sum of truth, as the life, and the only source of life, to a poor dead sinner: and whoever are quickened by the eternal Spirit and made to live to God, it is because their life was hid with Christ in God.

I am well aware it would be much more to my advantage, and that I should be much more esteemed by the professing world, if I could but halve it and go between, and hold with those who maintain, or rather attempt to maintain, that Christ died for all the world equally alike; but, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, because I trust I have felt its power, therefore I cannot help declaring what little I do know, and I would testify to the world what I have tasted and handled of the word of God; but to say Christ died for all, is to say, he died for Judas, as well as for Peter or Paul: if Christ died for all, why are not all saved?—is God too weak, and man too strong? or, is God willing, but the perverseness of man's will frustrates Jehovah's designs?

Some say the death of Christ has placed every man in a salvable state, but that their being eternally saved depends upon their acceptance of the offered mercy and complying with the terms of it; which acceptance and terms, some say, is not the result of God's eternal purpose and grace, but of man's free will and choice. But the poor writer of these lines is fully convinced that man's salvation flows entirely from God's eternal mind; for, as the apostle argues, even so now, in this day of apostasy, there is a remnant according to election of grace; and if it be by grace, why then it cannot be of works; and if it be of works, why then it cannot be of grace: but that doctrine that gives so much room for

the creature to boast, and to which our pious Arminians are so attached, and by which they put in for so great a share of the glory of their salvation, cannot be of God: For I am Jehovali thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour, I am Jehovah, that is my name, and my glory will I not give unto another. And I think nothing can be more contrary to the gospel, which pulls down the pride of man and takes away all boasting from the creature; for, as the prophet speaks, the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of man shall be brought low, and the Lord alone shall be exalted, in the salvation of his people. Read the 89th Psalm, and almost in every leaf of the New Testament, and a free, full, and finished salvation, through the sacrifice of Christ, may be found; and for my own part, I cannot help thinking, that where the doctrine of God's free and eternal election, and God's everlasting love, and his eternal choice of his people to everlasting life, as completely justified through the righteousness of the incarnate Jesus, is not maintained, it cannot be the gospel: for, as many as God had fore-ordained, believed; and, because they are sons, God sends forth the Spirit of his Son into their hearts, crying Abba, Father; and because they were sanctified, or set apart, by God the Father, and united to God the Son, they are called by the power of God the Holy Ghost, and so made to rejoice that they are made partakers of those blessings God had predestinated them unto: for, as Jehovah speaks, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure. And what is Jehovah's pleasure, but that his chosen people should be saved from deserved hell, and saved in a way honourable to his own perfections, and so as to secure the glory to himself?

For my part, I think we cannot conceive of the glories of God's perfections, if we give up the doctrine of free election; for here the glories and excellency of his divine nature appears in its highest lustre, here we see Jehovah's sovereignty and supremacy, who has a right to dispose of his creatures as he please. Many of the high and noble doctrines of the gospel are concerned in this. What will become of the glorious doctrine of redemption, between the Father and the Son, in the counsels of old, which we read of in almost every part of the Bible? there we may read of covenant, ordered in all things and sure, an everlasting covenant,

founded in divine love, established in divine mercy, and secured in everlasting faithfulness. O how delightful is this covenant in

the eyes of a poor, ruined, self-emptied, perishing siuner, who is led also to see and believe that God, who has made the covenant, engages for its full accomplishment: such as these can say, as well as Paul, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us, (not who may bless us, but hath blessed us), with all spiritual, covenant, and eternal blessings, according as he hath chosen us in him, before the foundation of the world, that we might be holy, as united to him, and without blame before him, having Christ's righteousness imputed to us: and what is the language of those happy chosen and called people? is it to the praise of my free will, my exertions, my repentance, my obedience, my faithfulness, my piety, my prayers, my good works? No, no, no such language, from a heaven-taught soul; but all those who are enlightened by the Spirit of God will say, to the praise of God's glorious, free, unmerited, efficacious, and discriminating grace, that made us accepted in the Beloved, in whom we have redemption, who hath saved us and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works or deservings, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in him, before the birth of time.

This is the Rock on which I stand,

And who shall pluck me from his hand?

That the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent are and ever will be hostile to each other, is certain: may God give me grace, and my reader too, to stand our ground and manifest ourselves as much alive to the cause of our adorable Jesus, as our enemies are in their fruitless attempts to overthrow the foundation on which all God's elected people stand;—a foundation, the gates of hell shall not prevail against: for, if the foundation could be removed, what would the righteous do?

I often think, what a poor, miserable, deplorable creature, must he be, who ministers in divine things only with a scholastic head, but with an uninfluenced heart: but, blessed be our eternal God, whatever men may preach or say, God's people are eternally safe, folded in the arms of everlasting security, in the bosom of their good Shepherd, where they shall be safe through all the

eventful periods of this world's vicissitudes; for Jesus is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, and his promise, like himself, who gives unto his people eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them from his hands, unworthy, ill and hell deserving as they are in themselves; and, as I observed in my former preface, I rejoice still in the same opinion, that God loved his people before time, loves them through time, and will love them to all eternity, and that it was everlasting love that decreed their everlasting salvation; it was love that provided the Ransomer, it was love that moved the co-equal Son of Jehovah to assume our nature, to live for sinners and die for sin, that God might save his beloved people, in a way in which both law and justice become the sinner's friend.

If you, my dear reader, are one who knows something of nature's depravity, and are sometimes smarting under the plague of your own heart, then you will read, with some degree of pleasure and profit, I trust, what will be treated with contempt by the wise in their own conceit: but, to all the lovers of Jesus, who know that salvation is entirely and unconditionally free to the poor sinner, without money or price, to such I subscribe myself,

Their willing and obedient Servant,
For Christ's sake,

Sudbury, February, 1819.

DANIEL HERBERT.