Every body is loudly complaining of the badness of our times, and the degeneracy of our morals. Sinners now proclaim their sin like _Sodom_, and the nation hath suffered more than a _second deluge_ by an innundation of every sin, and every kind of corruption that was ever committed or practised under heaven: “The whole head is sick, the whole heart faint; from the crown of the head to the sole of our feet, we are full of wounds and bruises, and putrifying sores.” Shall there no man be found then to stand in the gap? None dare to attempt at least to stem the impetuous torrent? None venture to go out with their lives in their hand, and cry to a profane, careless, busy world, “Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.” Can any considerate, much more can any real good man be so cruel, as even to wish that the gospel should be confined either to church or meeting, when there are so many thousands and tens of thousands, who as to spiritual things, know not their right hand from their left, and who never go either to church or meeting at all? If some are called to be settled ministers (and may the great Head of the church fill all our parish-churches and meeting-houses with true evangelical pastors!) may not others be called out to be itinerants? Have there not been presbyters at large, even from the earliest times of christianity? And if some of a more inferior rank and order should be qualified, and thrust forth by the great LORD of the harvest, when the harvest is so great, and the labourers so few, who shall dare to say to Him, “What dost thou?” Shall our eye be evil because he is good? If _Isaiah_ was a courtier, was not the Prophet _Amos_ a herdsman? In the days of _Moses_, when the _Israelites_ were under a more immediate divine theocracy, news was brought him, and that too even by a _Joshua_, that _Eldad_ and _Medad_ were prophesying in the camp, without his licence or his ordination; what doth this meek man of GOD say? “Enviest thou for my sake? Would to GOD all the LORD’s people were prophets.” And in the days of our LORD himself, his beloved disciple _John_, before his heart was more enlarged by divine love, said unto him; “Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and he followeth not with us, and we forbad him, because he followeth not with us.” But what said JESUS, that good Shepherd and Bishop of souls? “Forbid him not.”
Such instances, such striking instances as these, methinks, should make good men careful not to give way to a narrow, selfish, bigotted spirit; and caution them against joining with the world in smiting their fellow-servants, by crying down or speaking slightingly and reproachfully of a method of preaching and acting, which, maugre all opposition, for these thirty years last past hath been blessed and owned of GOD to the converting of thousands; not to a bare name, sect, or party, or merely to head or notional knowledge; but “from darkness unto light, from the power of Satan unto GOD;” from holding the mere form, to the true abiding possession and practice of true scriptural godliness, in heart, lip, and life. But if good or bad men now dislike, and therefore oppose such an irregular way of acting, they may be told to their comfort, that their uneasiness on this account, in all probability, will not be of long continuance; for few will choose to bid, or offer themselves candidates for such _airy pluralities_: to go thus without the camp, bearing all manner of reproach; to become in this manner; “Spectacles to GOD, to angels, and to men;” to sacrifice not only our natural, but spiritual affections and connections, and to part from those who are as dear to them as their own souls, in order to pass the _Atlantic_, and bear the colds and heats of foreign climes; these are such uninviting things to corrupt nature, that if we will have but a little patience till a few old weary heads are laid in the silent grave, these uncommon gospel-meteors, these field-phenomenas, that seldom appear in the latitude of _England_, scarce above once in a century, without the help of any coercive means, will of themselves soon disappear. They begin to be pretty well in disrepute already: yet a little while, and in all human probability they will quite vanish away. But though I am neither a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, I am greatly mistaken, if in the Redeemer’s own good time and way, some spiritual phœnix will not hereafter arise, some blessed gospel-instrument be raised, that shall make the devil and his three-fold army, “The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life,” to fly before the sound of the gospel trumpet.