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THE

DESTRUCTION OF DEATH

BY THE

FOUNTAIN OF LIFE;

OR

DEATH ABOLISHED BY LIFE AND IMMOR

TALITY BROUGHT TO LIGHT.

THE LAW OF THE WISE IS A FOUNTAIN OF LIFE, TO DEPART FROM THE SNARES OF DEATH. PROV. XIII. 14.

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DESTRUCTION OF DEATH,

&c.

To the Right Worshipful and Worshipping Company oft assembled and assembling at Providence Chapel, their old weather-beaten Servant sendeth greeting.

BELOVED IN THE LORD,

Grace, mercy, and peace, be with you through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen, and amen.

I HAVE long had an earnest desire in my soul to write a few scraps upon a subject, which of all others I find the most difficult to describe.

"There are diversities of operations," saith the Apostle, "but it is the same God which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the, Spirit is given to every man to profit withal,' 1 Cor. xii. 6, 7. Some of these operations are very perceptible; such as the illuminating influences of the Spirit, which bring us from darkness to light; his enlarging the heart, which brings us from bondage to liberty; strengthening us by the Spirit's might when heart and flesh both fail; his comforting operations, which makes us forget our poverty, and banishes misery from the mind; his revealing the righteousness of Christ and pronouncing the sentence of justification, which puts off our sackcloth, and girds us with gladness, silences all our accusers, and fills

us with joy and peace in believing. All these, and many more, the weakest believer can easily perceive; and when under them is sensible enough of their influence, and talks sweetly about them, though he doth not always understand what he says. But the hardest to define is that of God's breathing the breath of life, or quickening, by the Spirit, the soul that is dead in trespasses and sins.

In the whole course of my ministry, which has been now upwards of thirty years, no subject has exercised my mind, or puzzled my judgment so much as this. And indeed it is but lately that I have been led distinctly to observe the different stages of it, and these but in a small degree, so as to be able to bring them out, and set them forth to others, with any satisfactory clearness.

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Not long since a small pamphlet was put into my hand, published by a woman at Clapham Common; but whether it was her own performance, or transcribed from some author, I know not; the title is The Life of God in the soul of Man.' Never was a title and a performance so badly matched. But no persons make so free with the most mysterious and profound subjects of divinity, as those professors whom the God of this world hath blinded; and who, by acting the hypocrite in Zion, have seared their conscience, and made it past feeling,

In this little work of mine now in hand, though I intend to write nothing but what I have experienced, felt, and enjoyed; yet I know that I

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