the old man remains unmortified, and the heart is unrenewed still. Comparing myself with what I once was, and looking on my companions with disdain, I may there stick faster in self, and get into a worse and more dangerous state than I was before. If any of you think me too severe, remember you are the person I mean? for you think me so only because I touch your case. The drunkards and sabbath-breakers, cursers and swearers, say to us, you can never preach but you preach against us: as a good man once replied to a person, who complained against us ministers for this preaching; I will put you in a way, said he, that we shall never preach against you; how is that? why leave off cursing and swearing, &c. then your consciences will be clear, and the ministers will look over your heads; happy they that are convinced of it! You have now heard me, I hope, speak a word against reformation; you have not heard me speak a word a. gainst being converted from the church of Rome; against being converted to the church of England; or, against being good; no, all these are right in their place: but all these conversions you may have, and yet never be truly converted at all. What is conversion then? I will not keep you Fonger in suspense, my brethren: man must be a new creature, and converted from his own righteousness to the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ; conviction will always precede spiritual conversion: and therefore the protestant divines make this distinction, you may be convinced and not converted, but you cannot be con.. verted without being convinced; and if we are truely converted we shall not only be turned and converted from sinful self, but we shall be

converted from righteous self; that is the devil of devils for righteous self can run and hide itself in its own doings, which is the reason self-rightcous people are so angry with gospel preachers; there are no such enemies to the gospel as these: there were Jews who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, that set all in an uproar, and raised the mob on the apostles. Our Lord denounced dreadful woes against the self-righteous Pharisees: so ministers must cut and hack them, and not spare; but say wo, wo, wo to all those that will not submit to the righteousness of Jesus Christ! I could almost say, this is the last stroke the Lord Jesus gave Paul, I mean in turning him to real Christianity; for having given him a blow as a persecutor and injurious, he then brought him out of himself by revealing his person and office as a Saviour. I am Jesus,-Hence says the apostle, I count all things but loss-that I may win Christ, and be found in him; not having righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ; the righteousness which is of God by faith. You hear him not only speak of himself as injurious, as a blasphemer, but also as a Pharisee; and in vain we may talk of being converted till we are brought out of ourselves; to come as poor lost, undone sinners, to the Lord Jesus Christ: to be washed in his blood; to be clothed in his glorious imputed righteousness; the consequence of this imputation, or application of a Mediator's rigeteousness to the soul, will be a conversion from sin to holiness. I am almost tempted to say, it is perverseness in people to preach against the doctrine of imputed righteousness, because they love holiness, and charge the Calvinists with being enemies to it: how can they be charged with bein enemies to Sanctification,

who so strenuously insist on its being the genuine fruit, and unquestionable proof of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, and application of it by the Spirit of grace? They that are truly converted to Jesus, and are justified by faith in the Son of God, will take care to evidence their conversion, not only by the having grace implanted in their hearts, but by that grace diffusing itself thro' every faculty of the soul, and making an universal change in the whole man. I am preaching from a bible that saith, He that is in Christ is a new creature, old things, not will be, but are passed away, all things, not only will, but are become new. As a child when born has all the several parts of a man, it will have no more limbs than it has now, if it lives to fourscore years and ten; so when a person is converted to God, there are all the features of the new creature and growth, till he becomes a young man and a father in Christ; till he becomes ripe in grace, and God translates him to glory. Any thing short of this is but the shadow instead of the substance; and however persons may charge us with being enthusiasts, yet we need not be moved either to anger or sorrow, since St. Paul says, I travel in birth till Christ be formed in your hearts.

The author of this conversion is the Holy Ghost: it is not their own free will; it is not. moral swasion; nothing short of the influence of the Spirit of the living God can effect this change in our hearts; therefore we are said to be born again, born of God, of the Spirit, not of water only, but of the Holy Ghost; that which is born of the flesh is flesh, but that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit; and though there is, and will be, a contest between these two opposites, flesh and spi

rit, yet, if we are truly converted, the spirit will get the ascendency; and though for a while nature and grace may struggle in the womb of a converted soul, like Jacob and Esau, yet the elder shall serve the younger, Jacob shall supplant and turn out Esau, or at least keep him under: God grant we may all thus prove that we are converted. This conversion, however it begins at home, will soon wark abroad; as the Virgin Mary was soon found out to be with child, so it will be soon found out whether Christ is formed in the heart. There will be new principles, new ways, new company, new works; there will be a thorough change in the heart and life; this is conversion: at first it begins with terror and legal sorrow, afterwards it leads to joyfulness; first we work for spiritual life, afterwards from it; first we are in bondage, afterwards we receive the spirit of adoption, to long and thirst for God, because he has been pleased to let us know, that he will take us to heaven. Conversion means, a being turned from hell to heaven, from the world to God. We have not so much as asked a person to sell his all, to leave his shop, to lay any thing at our feet: when we talk of being converted from the world, we mean being converted from the love of it: the heart once touched with the magnet of divine love, ever after turns to the pole. I think it is said of a sunflower, though I question whether it will always hold true, that it turns to the sun; I am sure it is true of the Redeemer's flowers that grow in his garden, they not only look to the sun, but they And fresh life, warmth, and transforming influence from him who is their all in all. Here christianity appears in its glory; here the work done is worthy the Son of God. To be converted only to a

party, is that worth Christ's coming from heaven to earth for; that we might have a set of principles without having them affect the heart? for to be baptized when young, or as some to come out of the water at age, and turn out as bad as ever, is a plain proof of the necessity of being baptized by the Holy Ghost.

What say you to this change, my dear souls? is it not god-like, is it not divine, is it not heaven brought down to the soul; have you felt it, have you experienced it? I begin to catechize you already, for I could spend a whole sermon in speaking of conversion; but I am afraid those that sit under the gospel have more need of heat than light; would to God we had as much warmth in our hearts, as light in our understandings! But if there be any of you here that are not yet converted, upon what grounds do you hope for conversion? Give me leave to say, that you ought to repent and be converted, for till then you never can, never will, never shall find true rest for your souls. What wrong notions have people got of conversion! they think it is a wretched thing, and dread being converted; not knowing what it is, they think it is a frightful thing. I know one some time ago, that came to some Methodists; dear, says the person, you are cheerful, I could be glad if I was a Methodist too, if there was a majority of them in the land: but God help us to go to heaven with the minority, if the majority will not follow. But, my dear hearers, there is not a single soul of you all that are satisfied in your stations is not the language of your hearts when apprentices, we think we shall do very well when journeymen; when journeymen, that we should do very well when masters: when single,