will change that age from evangelical into pharisaical, which I see fast coming about; and, moreover, it will prepare the way for the Law to make void the Gospel, as indeed it is at this day; and bring about many other evils, into which time permitteth not that I should enter.

8. The charge of unholiness we brought home unto the men of this generation, by shewing into what indifferency, not to say contempt, the most spiritual, and they in particular, had come, with respect, first, unto God's holy word, that they should have corrupted it by the intermixture of Apocryphal books, and, when detected therein, should have gone about to defend it with all their might, not scrupling in their zeal to strike at the very root of inspiration itself; which if they have not subverted, they have at least shaken, in the minds of many; summoning into action the evil-speaking, contentious, unholy periodical publications. And now, such is the spirit of hypocrisy spread abroad, that these very men, who have so acted, and so defended their deed, will tell you that they do it for the Gospel of Christ's sake, and to further the glory of God! and consider themselves as persecuted for righteousness, because they have been called to question for their delinquency! Nor have they confessed, nor will they confess, nor, because the spirit of hypocrisy is upon them, are they able to confess, that they have erred by being unholy, in so far as the holy word of God is concerned. I do

not mean to say, that knowingly they are hypocrites, but I do say that they have lost the faculty of discerning what hypocrisy is, and are under the mastery of a delusive, deceitful spirit. I brought the charge of unholiness home to the church, upon the ground, also, of indifference to, or desecration of, religious ordinances, particularly Baptism, and the Lord's Supper: whereof, being called upon to administer the former as the great seal of sin's forgiveness, and the great covenant that the Holy Ghost will be given, and teaching all the people to look upon themselves as cleansed from dead works and empowered to serve the living God, they have gone about to gainsay this everlasting truth of Baptism, and to repudiate the church as teaching thereby the abomination of baptismal regeneration-to wit, that every baptized person is in the act of baptism by the Holy Ghost possessed and inhabited-and they have succeeded in bringing that ordinance and covenant of God into a commonness, amongst those called the religious world, which grieves my spirit, and from which to deliver my flock hath cost me many laborious hours and days, yea, and years. And now, if you bring this charge home, they say, it is all done to give honour unto the Holy Ghost, to prevent men from over-estimating mere forms, and to teach them to look for the Divine work in their souls!-another proof of that delusion with which their eyes are covered, and which preventeth them from discerning the

church at all as a holy thing; as if they rather looked upon it as the source of mistake and error than as the medium of all blessings. And so have they brought it to pass, or at least done their utmost to bring it to pass, that the whole body of baptized persons should regard themselves as delivered from Divine obligation, and in the state of people first visited by a missionary; instead of being in the state of a people who, with their fathers, and their fathers' fathers, have been in covenant with God, and under obligations innumerable to the Gospel of his Son Jesus Christ: which, again, has deprived the pastor's office of its reverence and its holiness; deprived the church of its authority; and set all the relationships of life upon the basis of human law and expediency, instead of being rested upon the basis of Divine authority, Gospel ordinance, and church responsibility. But, still, these things they cannot discern, there is a blind upon their eyes: they see not the power of these ordinances, and yet they retain their form.-With respect to the desecration of the Lord's Supper, it hath been a crying sin in the land for a long season, yet never has been cried out against until the time came to commit another act of unholiness, by removing the magistrate from under the authority of Christ; and then, all at once there springeth up such a puritanical zeal as will last just until it hath accomplished the act of unchurching the nation, and

destroying all its sanctities in the sight of God: which really is Satan's arch-work, and methinks the consummation of hypocrisy-if, indeed, it do not escape out of that category into the category of infatuation and madness. If ever I knew infatuation, it is this act of the church, to cast away the holy supervision which the state had given her over its magistrates. It is also the height of ingratitude unto the state, to have thus refused to do for it the office of examining into the Christian principles and conduct of its magistrates. And, alas for the poor people, who have thus been forsaken by the church, their guardian mother, and left at the mercy of Socinian and Infidel rulers! But most of all the unholy act done under the shameless mask of holiness, affronteth my spirit the most, and maketh me blush, when I call myself any more a churchman. Truly, truly, they have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof.

9. "Without natural affection." This form of the natural soul, whereby it is linked in some relation or other to every living soul, and which by the second table of the law, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," hath been sanctioned upon the highest possible authority, we shewed had become relaxed in these latter times in a great degree; as is evidenced by the diminished authority of parents over children, and the diminished duty of children to their parents: which evil the church, instead of attempting to remedy by enforcing

upon both the obligations of Baptism, she hath shamelessly undone that strong band, by holding little discourse concerning that mystery, and exercising little reverence in the ministration of the same. The church, indeed, hath stepped in with certain inventions of schools to remedy the evil; but this also is only a form without the power for it is no longer the church's office of rearing up her catechumens unto man's full grown estate, but it is to give bare forms of reading the Scriptures, with as little instruction as possible upon the truth therein to be taught: There is no attempt to get at the soul of natural affection, and to work upon it by the Holy Ghost. There is no doctrine concerning it taught unto the parents; and, I may say, there is none taught unto the children; but the form which hath been got up of infant schools, and other schools, is cried up to heaven, while the power of natural affection is left to sicken and die. All this cometh of expediency; an expedient being the form of a thing good, and not the good thing itself. In like manner might I speak concerning the form in which Christian love expresseth itself towards the Heathen by means of missionary societies. To preach the Gospel unto the Heathen, is one of the acts of natural affection under the power of the Holy Ghost; but now, behold! if any one set forth in order, as I have done, the apostolical spirit of the missionary, and the difficulties which it will overcome through its great strength of love; if you endeavour to explain what a self