Part 61

*_Theophilus._ This resolution, _Academicus_, only shews that you are just come to yourself; for every thing short of this earnest desire to live wholly unto God, may be called a most dreadful infatuation or madness, and insensibility that cannot be described. For what else is our life, but a _trial_ for the greatest evil, or good that an eternity can give us? What can be so dreadful, as to die possessed of a wicked immortal nature, or to go out of this world with tempers, that must keep us for ever miserable? What has God not done to prevent this? His redeeming love began with our fall, and calls every man to salvation, and every man is forced to hear, tho’ he will not obey his voice. God has so loved the world, that his only Son hung and expired, bleeding on the cross for us. Are we yet sons of pride, and led away with vanity? Do the powers of darkness rule over us? Do evil spirits possess and drive on our lives? Is remorse of conscience no longer felt? Are falshood, guile, debauchery, profaneness, perjury, bribery, corruption, and adultery, no longer seeking to hide themselves in corners, but openly entering into all our high places, giving battle to every virtue, and laying claim to the government of the world? Are we thus near being swallowed up by a deluge of vice and impiety? All this is not come upon us, because God has left us without help from heaven, or exposed us to the powers of hell; but because we have rejected and despised the _whole mystery_ of our salvation, and trampled under foot the precious blood of Christ, which alone has that omnipotence that can either bring heaven into us, or drive hell out of us. O _Britain, Britain_, think that the Son of God saith unto thee, as he said, _O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate._ And now let me say, what aileth thee, O _British_ earth, that thou _quakest_, and the foundations of thy churches that they _totter_? Just _that same_ aileth thee, as ailed _Judah_’s earth, when the divine Saviour of the world, dying on the cross, was _reviled_, _scorned_, and _mocked_, by the inhabitants of _Jerusalem_; then the _earth quaked, the rocks rent_, and the sun refused to give its light. Nature again declares for God, the earth and the elements can no longer bear our sins: _Jerusalem_’s doom for _Jerusalem_’s sin, may well be feared by us. O ye miserable _pens_ dipt in _Satan_’s ink, that dare to publish the folly of believing in Jesus Christ, where will you hide your guilty heads when nature dissolved, shall shew you the rainbow, on which the crucified Saviour shall sit in judgment, and every work receive its reward? O tremble! ye _apostate_ sons, that come out of the schools of Christ, to fight _Lucifer_’s battles, and do that for him, which neither he, nor his legions can do for themselves. Their inward pride, malice and rage against God, and Christ, and human nature, have no _pens_ but yours, no _apostles_ but you. They must be forced to work in the dark, to steal privately into impure hearts, could they not beguile you into a fond _belief_, that you are _lovers_ of truth, _friends_ of reason, _detectors_ of fraud, great _genius_’s, and _moral philosophers_, merely, because ye blaspheme Christ, and the gospel of God. Poor deluded souls, rescued from hell by the blood of Christ, called by God to possess the thrones of fallen angels, permitted to live only by the mercy of God, that ye may be born again, my heart bleeds for you. Think, I beseech you, in time, what mercies ye are trampling under your feet. Say not that reason, and your intellectual faculties, stand in your way; that these are the _best gifts_ which God has given you, and that these suffer you not to come to Christ. All this is as vain a pretence, and as gross a mistake as if ye were to say, that you had nothing but your _feet_ to carry you to heaven. For your _heart_ is the best and greatest _gift_ of God to you; it is the highest, greatest, and noblest _power_ of your nature; it forms your whole life, be what it will; all evil and all good comes from it; your heart alone has the key of life and death; it does all that it will; reason is but its _play-thing_, and whether in time or eternity, can only be a _mere beholder_ of the _wonders_ of happiness, or _forms_ of misery, which the right or wrong working of the heart has caused.