O ye that deny the Lord that bought you, yet hear the word of the Lord. You seek rest, but find none. Even in laughter your heart is in heaviness. How long spend ye your labour for that which is not bread, and your strength for that which satisfieth not? You know your soul is not satisfied. It is still an aching void. Sometimes you find (in spite of your principles) a sense of guilt, an awakened conscience. That grisly phantom, religion, (so you describe her,) will now and then haunt you still. Righteousness looking down from heaven, is indeed to us no unpleasing sight. But how does it appear to you. Horribili super aspectu mortalibus astans? How often are you in fear of the very things you deny! How often in racking suspense! "What if there be an hereafter! A judgment to come! An unhappy eternity!" Do you not start at the thonghts? Can you be content to be always thus? Shall it be said of you also, "Here lies a Dicer long in doubt If death could kill the soul, or not? Or, are you already convinced, there is no hereafter? What a poor state then are you in now? Taking a few more dull turns upon earth, and then dropping into nothing! What kind of spirit must you be of, if you can sustain yourself under the thought! Under the expectation of being in a few months swept away by the stream of time, and then for ever "Swallow'd up and lost, In the wide womb of uncreated night!" But neither indeed are you certain of this; nor of any thing else. 66 It may be so; it may not. A vast scene is behind. But clouds and darkness rest upon it." All is doubt and uncertainty. You are continually tossed to and fro, and have no firm ground for the sole of your foot. O let not the poor wisdom of man any longer exalt itself against the wisdom of God. You have fled from him long enough: at length suffer your eyes to be opened by him that made them. You want rest to your soul. Ask it of him, "who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not!" You are now a mere riddle to yourself, and your condition full of darkness and perplexity. You are one among many restless inhabitants, of a miserable, disordered world," walking in a vain shadow and disquieting yourself in vain." But the light of God will speedily disperse the anxiety of your vain conjectures. By adding heaven to earth, and eternity to time; it will open such a glorious view of things, as will lead you, even in the present world, to a peace which passeth all understanding. 66. O ye gross, vile, scandalous sinners, hear ye the word of the Lord. "Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; so iniquity shall not be your ruin. As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of a sinner, but rather that he should turn and live." O make haste; delay not the time. Come, and let us reason together. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red as crimson, they shall be as wool."-"Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments, red in his apparel?" It is he on whom the Lord "hath laid the iniquities of us all!" Behold, behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away thy sins! See the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth! He loveth thee. He gave himself for thee. Now, his bowels of compassion yearn over thee! O believe in the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved! Go in peace, sin no more! 67. Now cannot you join in all this? Is it not the very language of your heart? O when will you take knowledge, that our whole concern, our constant labour is, to bring all the world to the religion which you feel, to solid, inward, vital religion! What power is it, then, that keeps us asunder? "Is thine heart right, as my heart is with thy heart? If it be, give me thy hand. Come with me and see," and rejoice in my zeal for the Lord. No difference between us (if thou art a child of God) can be so considerable as our agreement is. If we differ in smaller things, we agree in that which is greatest of all. How is it possible, then, that you should be induced, to think or speak evil of us? How could it ever come into your mind, to oppose us or weaken our hands? How long shall we complain of the wounds which we receive in the house of our friends? Surely the children of this world are still "wiser in their generation than the children of light." Satan is not divided against himself: why are they, who are on the Lord's side? How is it that wisdom is not justified of her own children? 68. Is it because you have heard, "That we only make religion a cloak for covetousness? And because you have heard abundance of particulars alleged in support of that general charge?" It is probable you may also have heard, "How much we have gained by preaching already!" and, to crown all, "That we are only Papists in disguise, who are undermining and destroying the Church!" 69. "You have heard this." Well: and can you believe it? Have you, then, never heard the 5th chapter of St. Matthew? I would to God you could believe this! What is written there? How readest thou? Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute yau, and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my name's sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad; for great is your reward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets that were before you;"namely, by reviling them, and saying all manner of evil of them falsely. Do not you know that this (as well as all other scriptures) must needs be fulfilled? If so, take knowledge, that this day also it is fulfilled in your ears. For our Lord's sake, and for the sake of his gospel which we preach, men do revile us and persecute us, and (blessed be God who giveth us to rejoice therein) say all manner of evil of us falsely. And how can it be otherwise? "The disciple is not above his Master. It is enough for the disciple, if he be as his Master, and the servant as his Lord. If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household!" 70. This only we confess, that, "we preach inward salvation, now attainable by faith." And for preaching this, (for no other crime was then so much as pretended,) we were forbid to preach any more in any of those churches, where, till then, we were gladly received. This is a notorious fact. Being thus hindered from preaching in the places we should first have chosen, we now declare the "grace of God, which bringeth salvation," in all places of his dominion : as well knowing that God "dwelleth not in temples made with hands." This is the real, and it is the only real ground of complaint against us. And this we avow before all mankind, we do preach this salvation by faith. And not being suffered to preach it in the usual places, we declare it wherever a door is opened, either on a mountain or a plain, or by a river side, (for all which we conceive we have sufficient precedent,) or in a prison, or, as it were, in the house of Justus, or the school of one Tyrannus. Nor dare we refrain. A dispensation of the gospel is committed to me; and "woe is me, if I preach not the gospel." 71. Here we allow the fact, but deny the guilt. But in every other point alleged, we deny the fact, and call upon the world to prove it, if they can. More especially we call upon those who, for many years saw our manner of life at Oxford. These well know that after the most straitest sect of our religion, we lived Pharisees: and that the grand objection to us for all those years, was the being righteous overmuch : the reading, fasting, praying, denying ourselves; the going to church, to the Lord's table; the relieving the poor, visiting those that were sick and in prison; instructing the ignorant, labouring to reclaim the wicked-more than was necessary for salvation. These were our open, flagrant crimes, from the year 1729 to the year 1737; touching which our Lord shall judge in that day. 72. But waving the things that are past: which of you now convinceth us of sin? Which of you (I here more especially appeal to my brethren the clergy) can personally convict us of any ungodliness or unholiness of conversation? Ye know in your own hearts (all that are candid men, all that are not utterly blinded with prejudice) that we "labour to have a conscience void of offence toward God and toward man." Brethren, I would to God that in this ye were even as we. But indeed (with grief I speak it) ye are not. There are among yourselves ungodly and unholy men; openly, undeniably such: drunkards, gluttons, returners of evil for evil, liars, swearers, profaners of the day of the Lord. Proof hereof is not wanting, if ye require it. Where then is your zeal against these? A clergyman so drunk he can scarcely stand or speak, may, in the presence of a thousand people, * set upon another clergyman of the same church, both with abusive words and open violence. And what follows? Why, the one is still allowed to dispense the sacred signs of the body and blood of Christ. But the other is not allowed to receive them.-Because he is a field preacher! 73. O ye pillars and fathers of the church, are these things well-pleasing to him, who hath made you overseers over that flock which he hath purchased with his own blood? O that ye would suffer me to boast myself a little! Is there not a cause? Have not ye compelled me? Which of your clergy are more unspotted in their lives, which more unwearied in their labours, than those whose "names ye cast out as evil," whom ye count "as the filth and offscouring of the world?" Which of them is more zealous to spend and to be spent, for the lost sheep of the house of Isael? Or who amongst them is more ready to "be offered up for their flock upon the sacrifice and service of their faith?" 74. Will ye say, (as the historian of Cataline) Si sic pro patria! If this were done in defence of the church, and not in order to undermine and destroy it! That is the very proposition I undertake to prove. That "we are now defending the church, even the Church of England, in opposition to all those who either secretly undermine, or more openly attempt to destroy it?" 75. That we are Papists, (we, who are daily and hourly preaching that very doctrine, which is solemnly anathematized by the whole Church of Rome) is such a charge, * At Epworth, in Lincolnshire. |