thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes : but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment^" The general warning given by St. Paul is plainer still ; " If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die*"." Lest we should mistake his meaning, he frequently enumerates the works of the flesh : " Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, envyings, mur- ders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like ; these," says he, " are the sins, of the which I tell you before, that they who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God''." But because men are ready to offer vain pleas and excuses for such things, he parti- cularly guards us against laying the smallest stress on any surmises of our own, or any suggestions of others : " Let no man," says he, " deceive you with vain words : for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience*^." But Moses, and after him the Prophet Jeremiah, meet the case in the most pointed terms : '' It shall come to pass," says Moses, " when a man shall hear the words of this curse, and shall bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace though I walk in the imagination of my heart ; the Lord will not spare him ; but the anger of the Lord and his jealousy shall smoke against that man ; and all the curses that are written in this book shall come upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven''."
Now permit me to ask. For what end are these things written ? is it merely to alarm and terrify us ? Can we conceive that God would falsify, in order to keep us within some decent bounds ? Is there any necessity for him to resort to such an expedient ; or could he do it in consistency with his own perfections ? Here then we are reduced to this dilennna; either to believe that the word of God is full of the most palpable falsehoods from one end to the other, or to acknowledge that the confidence of ungodly men is
a Eccl. xi, 9. b Rom. viii. 13. ^ Gal. v. 19—21.
^ Eph. V. G. e Dcut. xxix. 19.