taken the greater pains with this work, reader, that I might furnish thee, if thou art a partaker of the grace of God, with an answer to the revilers of the power of godliness. Whenever these, either by word or by letter, reproach thee as a lawless Antinomian, call upon them to give an account how the laws of God were put into their mind and heart; and if they cannot do this, they are blind and dead in trespasses and sins; for all whom God. pardons have his laws in their hearts. Hold them down to this, reader, and you will soon see what they are; for, "The lips of a fool will swallow up himself," Eccles. x. 12. One of this stamp of preachers, who has long officiated in various parts, and who artfully cut at the power of godliness, and at all experience of it, not long ago sunk in his mind when he felt the need of that divine aid which he had maliciously levelled his enmity against. And, although I believe they send thousands to heaven in funeral sermons, who never enter there in a fiery chariot, yet they were constrained for once to say of him, even at the last, that he refused to be comforted: they might have said that the insulted Comforter refused to comfort him; for no man upon earth is either able or willing to refuse divine consolations when the Holy Spirit brings them in. It is shocking to see how such blind impostors go on, speaking evil of what they do not understand, until God discovers them. No one thing under heaven, reader, will ever bring peace into thy soul, but faith in the blood of

Christ. No breastplate but his righteousness; no rest but in his dying love shed abroad in the heart; no assurance of heaven but under the Spirit's seal; no joy but in the light of the King's countenance; no escaping the reign of sin but by being under grace; no usefulness in the ministry but by the Spirit's testimony; no fruit but by union with the living Vine; no escaping the fulfilling the lusts of the flesh but by walking in the Spirit. And, if my reader be a believer in the Son of God, he has something that keeps him more than setting a broken law before him, or bringing him under that unbearable yoke as his only rule of life; which establishes nothing but the preacher's emptiness, ignorance, and insensibility. Nor do any sinners live such scandalous lives as blind and hardened hypocrites. I was informed, not long ago, by a very reputable and God-fearing man, that, in a certain large town which swarms with such sort of professors, the last time the parish officers went round to try the measures and weights of tradesmen, they took away six hundred scanty measures and light weights, and that above five hundred of these cheats were professors: and I wonder not at it; for, when men have been brought forth and emboldened to act as stage-players before the Almighty, and taught to ridicule the power of godliness, they are fit for any wicked deed; so likewise are those disaffected preachers, who, though Jacobins, take the oaths of allegiance; and, though rotten Arminians, subscribe to the church articles.

Men who can break through such sacred bounds are prepared for every evil work; for, if oaths and subscriptions will not keep them, what will? No rule of life from God teaches men to swear falsely, nor yet to lie to the Holy Ghost. "Upon

all the glory," says God, "there shall be a defence." And wherever the glory of God arises and shines, and the Spirit of God and of glory rests, there is such a defence as these evangelists know nothing of; whilst those who are under it are kept by the mighty power of God through faith unto salvation. They have a breastplate of righteousness, through which no killing sentence can ever pass, and against which no accuser shall ever prevail. The believer has the filial fear of God in his heart, the goodness of God for its object; a tender conscience purged from sin, blessed with the witness of God's Spirit, and with a voice from the blood of sprinkling, proclaiming peace and eternal friendship with God. He walks in the light of God's countenance, and sees an unerring and never-failing providence passing daily before him, which excites watchfulness, gives a spring to gratitude, and fills him with wonder. He feels himself established in the favour of God, with which he is encompassed as with a shield; and stands with intrepidity where the wicked perish; I mean in the presence of God, Psal. lxviii. 2. The light of God shines in his understanding, life and peace in his mind, submission in his will, and the

love of God in his heart. Innumerable deliverances and innumerable promises are filed in his memory, manifold indulgences at a throne of grace, and soul-dissolving visitations, which have preserved his spirit, Job x. 12. He remembers his former affliction and misery, the wormwood and the gall, and of God's appearing as his deliverer when there was no hand to help. The frank forgiveness of all his innumerable crimes and accumulated guilt lays him under such noble ties and divine restraints to gratitude, as those unacquainted with the influence and inhabitation of God's Spirit are perfect strangers to. The consolations of the Spirit, or the comforts of love, the fervour and energy which the Spirit affords him in his approaches to God, the freedom of access, the enlargement of soul and freedom of speech, with which we are indulged at times, has no small influence in wooing the soul to cleave to God. While, on the other hand, the shyness and distance that takes place upon any unbecoming conduct; the intercourse being stopped, and spiritual desertion following, upon any unwarrantable liberty taken with conscience; the interruption of peace; the advantage taken by Satan; the straitness of soul, if not bondage, at a throne of grace; want of utterance, energy, and enlargement; the bitter reflections for base ingratitude and unthankfulness; the remorse at the thoughts of sinning against light and love; the disquietude of soul and confusion of mind; the weakening of faith; the

the

damping of love; the grieving of the Holy Spirit; the shame, the fear, the want of boldness, countenance, confidence, and fortitude, in company with the lively of God's family, or when engaged in God's work-how are such disqualified to strengthen weak hands, or prevail with God in prayer for others! How unfurnished for the work of faith, the labour of love, and the patience of hope, in our Lord Jesus Christ! These things have a greater weight, a more noble and powerful influence, and are more prevailing with the child of God, than all the considerations in the world besides. But a brutish man knoweth nothing of these things, neither doth a fool understand them. Psal. xcii. 6. This wisdom is too high for him: he cannot come near it by a thousand leagues, But to see a man, standing in a pulpit, crying out, 'The law is the believer's only rule of life,' which requires love, and he at the same time filled with desperation and madness; blinded by the god of this world; stumbling upon the dark mountains of Sinai and Horeb; savouring of nothing but flesh and blood; with all the dregs of guilt, filth, and corruption, in him; playing with empty oratory on the passions of hyporites; darkening counsel by words without knowledge; vitiating the minds of poor sinners against the gospel, by entertaining them with old wives' fables; unable to explain either law or gospel; strangers to pardon and to peace; ignorant of the Spirit's work, and destitute of every grace; what shall we say