you, you are a set of sentimental Puritans, who will feel your own holiness to be in like manner blemished by having sympathy, conversation, intercourse, or dealings with publicans and sinners. For, if Christ might not, how may Christ's members? If God may not act efficiently unto the fallen, but must at that chasm let go the creature into the gulf; and if Christ may not follow the creature down the precipice, but must likewise stop short at the fall; what is the conclusion, but that it is a thing past Divine power, and unto Divine holiness repugnant, to descend into the gulf, and labour amongst the wretches there? Are they to be fished out by magic? is a word to bring them up? What a system! And what a fell conclusion for the redeemed church, who, as they grow into the likeness of God and of Christ, must desire to feel, must feel that they ought to feel, the same abhorrence of going down into the weltering abyss of the fallen creatures! Holiness becomes distance; love keepeth asunder; goodness avoideth its object; and the church-which is cast into the world to bear and to endure all reproaches and ignominies with meekness, as did the Lord; to encounter all wickednesses with grace, as did the Lord; to help all wretchedness and misery with redemption, as did the Lord; and without sullying herself by her condescension and diligence, but rather sanctifying herself the more--this church, which is set to shoulder and contend with wickedness on every side, is, by

such a doctrine concerning what the Lord did, or rather concerning the manner of his doing it, removed away into a sanctimonious distance, from which all her sympathies and all her actions proceed, as from an elevation and mount of holiness. If there be a difference and a distance and a natural antipathy between the humanity of Christ and the humanity of fallen men, the like difference, distance, and antipathy will there be between the members of Christ, as they grow into his likeness, and the humanity of other men. And if it shock you to think, or to be told, that the eternal Son of God came into such a substance as we are all made of, to do for it effectual acts of redemption and sanctification; then, I say, it will in like manner shock you to think, or to be told, that the Holy Spirit in you hath as sinful a substance to contend with as is that of the thief and of the murderer and the adulterer; and that every child of the Spirit is acted in by God unto holiness for the very end of teaching him, that the same Spirit which hath cleansed his leprosy can cleanse the leprosy of the foulest wretch who crawls in misery upon the earth. But we obey that Spirit, and go into the wicked heart of the wickedest men; and have pity on them, as bound of Satan; and come into true sympathy with them; and tell them that we are as bad, or worse, than they. Thus, I say, ply into the sinuosities and intricacies of the wicked heart surely

you will not, while you believe that the Lord did not. If you think it sin in the holy God to have done so, it cannot be his purpose that you should so sin; and therefore it must come to pass, yea, and is already come to pass, that the feeling of this religious world should be, Stand off, I am holier than thou. God forbid that I should offend the least of his little ones! but I must fulfil my office as an instructor; and this I do perceive, that the plague is already begun, and that there is no man to put on incense between the living and the dying. This is the true ground of their separation into a society of their own, instead of standing in their places, and shedding grace, mercy, and peace around their holy persons, because these, your families and your friends, are not holy enough. Holy enough! in the name of God I solemnly adjure you to tell me what region of the earth, what region of the fallen creation, was holy enough for the habitation of the Lord Jesus Christ. But, say your novices, he found an unfallen body to dwell in: he came into the fallen world, it is true; but, lest he should touch its pollution, he put around him a mantle of unfallen creation. Then I say, He was not man, nor the Virgin's son; for the virgin and all mankind have fallen. This also is the reason that you have got up a system of religious works distinct and separate from that church in which you are planted, that state of which you are members, and those

eternal ordinances of man, woman, and child, master and servant, king and subject, neighbour and neighbour, which, if you over-leap, God will not; if you postpone to aught besides, God will not. Ye will say, They are not postponed. Yes, ye pastors will scour the country for gain, and say your office is not postponed: ye wives will leave your children and your servants, to gape after novelties and meddle with affairs of management which become you not, and say, your motherly office is not postponed you laity will set on foot committees, haply under some woman patron, and controul the goings to and fro, the sayings and the doings of ordained ministers, and say, your office of subjection is not postponed: and ordained ministers will submit to it, and say, that their office of rule is not postponed: and so forth, and so forth-for it is endless ;--and all this, I say, cometh of your discontentment with the ordained works in which your fathers laboured, that you may take up something more holy, and please yourselves with vain exultings over them. Oh, it is a masterly work of Satan in no other way could he have brought us low. There was a perfection in our institutions, so many bulwarks flank our Zion around, that there was no other way of overcoming us but by inward treachery; and this, not the treachery of malice-for that we would have resisted-but the treachery of ignorance and indifference to that which we forego, in

the puritan zeal of attaining what our fathers possessed not. As if the people of a well fortified city, and which had resisted many sieges and assaults, should be prevailed upon, by presumption and folly acting on security, to go forth and build themselves another city, upon a site which was believed and applauded as impregnable; never dreaming the while, that while their vain speculation was proceeding, while they were demolishing their strong towers to build up their tower of Babel, the enemy would be upon them, and teach them, too late, their presumption, folly, and rashness. But, God's will be done: it is not mine to prophesy evil, save for the end of preventing it: and I do therefore resume again my discourse of the insufficient doctrine which is drawing on this ossification upon the heart of the church, turning her into a puritan Pharisee, from being the holy and tender spouse of Christ.

4. The next point of short-coming I regard to be in the doctrine of God's sovereignty, as concerneth all things in nature and in grace appertaining to the individual, to the church, or to the world. I mean, the absolute sovereignty of God as Creator, and the absolute dependence upon him of his creatures. Through the exclusive preaching of the grace of God that is in Jesus Christ manifested, and the very infrequent reference to the Father and the Holy Ghost in their personal actings and offices, it prevaileth amongst the Religious World to regard