mother tongue, to have made it

ture.

lie so egregiHow, in the

ously as in that word it doth. face of all Scriptures, can they believe that the world will be any better, but rather will grow worse and worse, until Satan be cast out of it? and when he is cast out, it will be with rendings, and writhings, and breakings-up of naWith such a spirit in it, how can they think to establish a millennium upon it? Doth not the Apostle John say, that " the world and the fashion of it passeth away;" and all the Scriptures testify that "it shall be changed like a vesture, and removed?" After which, we find it likewise continually stated, that it shall not be removed for ever: which change in the world is effected at the time of the casting out of Satan, which is before the Millennium. By looking upon the world itself as to be converted in the mass; instead of looking upon it as the mass out of which the children of God are to be chosen and drawn forth, and which, after it has yielded the appointed number of God's elect, shall be destroyed by the righteous judgment of God-out of which act, at once of destruction and renovation, shall come forth the habitation of the risen saints and the sojourners in the flesh whom God spareth from the catastrophe-it cometh to pass, that they are seduced, by their very benevolence towards men and zeal towards God, to work against the stream of his purpose, and shall be found opposed to him in the day of his appearing.

Forgetting that trial of fire which every man's work is to endure, they are building upon the foundation of the church, hay, wood, stubble, and other destructible materials of the world: and they say one to another, as they build, Behold how the building groweth into an house!' but it is an house which will be consumed in the day of the Lord. This cometh out of ignorance of the doctrine of election-or, I may say, the doctrines of grace in general-concerning which more hereafter.

The third enemy, of whose incurable malice and ungodly nature the church at present is but little aware, is the flesh--that is, the natural man, the fallen creature-which is enmity unto God, and is not subject unto the law of God, neither indeed can be. This doctrine, of the incurable ungodliness of the natural man, is taught to us in the sacrament of Baptism, which signifieth the death of the natural unto the life of the spiritual creature. But, because the sacrament of Baptism is totally rejected and disbelieved in as a mystery of grace, it cometh to pass, that the doctrine of the law of the flesh is no longer understood; but, like the world, of which it is the ruler, man's fallen nature is thought capable of regeneration without a previous death: it is thought possible to wash the Ethiopian white. Therefore a certain law and licence is given to the workings of natural feeling, an authority and indulgence to the powers of the natural understanding, and a favour shewn for the

accomplishments of the natural mind and the accommodations and expedients of natural life-in one word, a compromise with the world and the men of the world, and, which is worse, with ourselves, stealeth over us, and worketh in us all manner of equivocations, errors, and hypocrisies. Whereas, if the separateness of the church were believed in, and the complete contradiction of the spiritual and natural man, it would come to pass then, instead of leaning towards, we would incline away, at all times, from the wickedness which is in the fallen creature in his best estate and so it would necessarily come about, that we should be found faithful and true witnesses for the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and of all who believe in his name; for the present life and future judgment of Satan and this world, and all that submit to his princedom. Now, forasmuch as I believe that God is glorified by our faithful witness for his Son against Satan, and for the regeneration against the world, I have no doubt that he is well-pleased where such a broad, distinct, and full testimony, by loss of good name, loss of goods, loss of life, is borne; even as he ill-pleased, and full of wrath, on account of that equivocal, indistinct, and much to be mistaken testimony which is borne by those who are in quest of honour, wealth, dignity, and worldly preferment. And as to the former he will come, in their day of greatest strait, with deliverance and salvation; so to the

latter, in their greatest glory, fullest estate, and fairest name, will he come with utter and everlasting destruction: according as it is written, Psalm xxxvii. 35-37; "I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay-tree: yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not; yea, I sought him, but he could not be found. Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright; for the end of that man is peace."

This leadeth me to observe a second cause of that direful apostasy unto the end of which we are near arrived; which is, ignorance of the nature of a church-or, I should say, of the church-which, on the one hand, the Papists make visible; and, on the other hand, the Evangelicals make nothing at all. Now, the church, in the light in which it hath been viewed by all orthodox divines, is nothing else than a symbol or visible representation of the invisible body of Christ, the church of the first-born whose names are written in heaven: and, according to the law of God's ordinances, he who will not study the symbol, and give it due reverence, shall never come to the understanding or to the enjoyment of the thing, the invisible reality, which it representeth. As the washing with water is not the regeneration of the Holy Ghost, but that in the right using of which faith may, and ought, stedfastly to look for the regeneration of the Holy Ghost: so is the visible church, its unity of faith, its exercise of dis

cipline, its worship, and its government, not the invisible body of Christ, but that outward form and symbol thereof, in the right use of which alone can the benefits of the invisible church be obtained, possessed, and enjoyed. For want of respect unto-I may say, want of apprehension of this ordained connection between the visible and the invisible, as necessary, in my opinion, to the life of the church, as to the life of man is the union of body and soul, it hath come to pass, and must needs always come to pass, that what forms of religion remain in use are merely as forms used, and not looked upon as full unto faith of a holy spiritual substance and thus hypocrisy in its worst form-which is, the using of God's signs as if they signified nothing gracious, but were at best equivocal, and commonly unfruitful--is introduced, and becomes in a manner licensed, yea, and even sanctified. Insomuch, that if you speak of the church and to the church as a company of believers, and of Baptism as a spiritual death and resurrection, and of the Lord's Supper as an eating and a drinking into the true spiritual invisible body of Christ, and of preaching as the voice of the Spirit to the church, and of ordination as the communication by the Holy Ghost of the several gifts necessary to the office-bearers of the church, they lift up their hands, and say, What hideous errors! what enormous superstitions! what abominable heresies! Which is to say, for their own parts