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for the conduct of deacons, he says they must "hold the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience." Of reprobates, who have departed from the faith, and given heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, he speaks, as "having their conscience seared with a hot iron." And finally, he seems to be describing the most desperate state of sin, in which a man can be sunk, when he says, "unto the pure all things are pure; but unto them that believing is nothing pure; and conscience is defiled." be a more hopeless condition, than when that very conscience, which God has mercifully implanted within our breasts to warn and check us in our sins, itself becomes corrupted and perverted, and loses the power of discerning what is sinful?

are defiled and unbut even their mind For what indeed can

To this dreadful, this almost totally lost and abandoned state, we are in danger of being reduced, if we habitually disregard the admonitions. of our conscience. As long as a man sins with fear and trembling, with some restraint, some reluctance, some pain, some hesitation, some forebodings, some remorse, so long there is yet hope of him. The war is going on between the "law of his mind," and the "other law in his members" -the spirit and the flesh still strive within him

- his better part is not entirely subdued-there are yet signs of life-there yet remains a power of resistance, which by the grace of God may be rendered effectual-the man has some perception of his sin-he feels something of the burthen and misery of it, and of the condemnation due to it— though in captivity he is not pleased with his chains-he has some desire to be free. Here is a hope of recovery; he may yet exclaim, "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" And he may yet with grateful heart reply, "I thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord." But when once he has made that unhappy and fatal progress in sin, that he feels no check or restraint in the commission of it, when all scruples, doubts and fears concerning it have vanished from his mind, when the law of the flesh is as it were his principle and rule of life, it is greatly to be feared that he has effectually quenched and grieved the Holy Spirit, that he is altogether dead in trespasses and sins, and that there is scarcely a hope of his reviving through the ordinary operation of divine grace; it seems to require a miracle to restore him. This is the state of those, who are said to be hardened in sin, and to have their consciences seared with a hot iron, i. e deadened and benumbed and incapable of sensation. A man is

not hardened as long as his sin torments him, as long as he reproaches and condemns himself for it, as long as he merely wishes that he had resolution and strength to contend against it.

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My brethren, if there are any of you, who in the sad career of vice, still feel within yourselves the existence and working of the "willing spirit," (and I hope there are none among you sunk so deep as to have no experience of this) Oh cease to oppose those better suggestions! beware of stifling that friendly voice, which now warns you of your danger, but which, too long neglected, may soon be heard no more! You are in a miserable state now; I know nothing more miserable than a man living thus at variance with his better feelings and principles and knowledge, and ever disapproving of his own conduct. It is like a civil war, or domestic strife, when subjects are in rebellion against their king, or the household quarrelling with the master of the family; all is confusion, tumult, unhappiness;-or as the holy scriptures well describe the turbulent state of such a man's mind, it is "like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt." An evil conscience can make a hell in this life, and it will probably cause no little portion of the pains of hell hereafter. What have not men done to escape from its stings and

lashes? How often have they been goaded to despair and madness, till self-destruction appeared to their perverted reason the only remedy for anguish too grievous to be endured?

Is it desirable therefore to put an end to these torments by any means? No: there is a way, which though it may diminish the present suffering, increases the real evil. Too often the wretched victim of sin, unable to bear his wounded spirit, endeavours to silence his self-upbraidings, and to quiet his fears by reasoning himself out of all moral and religious principle, (a thing not difficult to those who love darkness rather than light) or gives himself up to unrestrained indulgence, that he may have no time for bitter reflection. Thus men commit spiritual suicide, by the sword of infidelity on the one hand, on the other, by plunging headlong into "hurtful lusts, which drown them in destruction and perdition," and thus they may smother the voice of conscience, if they are so madly bent upon their own ruin; the spirit of God will not always strive with them; the devil will help them with all his delusions, to accomplish the work that he most desires. They may at length suppress every good emotion; and as the diseased patient, when his body has begun to mortify, feeling his pains removed, fancies himself convalescent,

though that is the surest symptom of his approaching dissolution, so the sinner, who has thus deceived himself into tranquillity, may imagine that at length he has found happiness, and knows not that it is a fatal ease which he experiences; the tumult indeed has subsided in his soul, and all is hushed and calm, but this death-like stillness portends a dreadful and an eternal storm; the greatest horrors that the mind can suffer, are better than this awful composure and deadness of the soul. Where there is fear of ruin, there still is hope of salvation; but when that fear has been deliberately subdued, by false reasoning, or by deeper draughts of the deadening poison of sin, I know not what hope can remain. A guilty conscience, with all its torments, is infinitely better than no conscience at all,-for its voice may yet be heard and heeded; but when it has ceased to warn, "the last state of that man is worse than the first."

And is not a good conscience best of all? A mind tranquil, serene, and happy, and this, not the result of any delusion of infidelity, or intoxication of vice, but arising from inward peace, and a well founded hope of the favour of God? Who can doubt it? Who would not exchange

worlds, if he had them, for this precious, this

invaluable treasure? Oh! that we had those

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