unfounded, and their hope delusive. Choose ye the former alternative if ye please : but you must excuse me if I embrace the latter. Believing as I do the word of God to be true, I must believe, and must exhort you also to believe, that they who make hght of sin " shall not inherit the kingdom of God." The drunkard, the swearer, the whoremonger, in short the careless sinner, may " think his ways right ; " but, if there be any truth in the word of God, they shall end in death. The express declaration of God concerning them is, " The end of those things is deaths"
II. The next way to which I would call your atten- tion, is that of proud unbelief .
Associated with loose morality will be found, for the most part, a contemptuous disregard of the Gospel. Ungodly men feel no need of it ; they see no excel- lency in it ; they consider it as unworthy of their attention ; and they leave it as a proper field for the discussion of angry disputants, or the contemplation of wild enthusiasts.
If any urge the necessity of faith in Christ, they either contend, that, having been educated in the belief of Christianity, they have all the faith that is necessary ; or they cut the matter short, and tell us in a word, " His faith cannot be wrong, whose life is in the right." As to the idea of their salvation depending on the exercise of faith, they cannot for one moment endure it : nothing is too bad to be spoken of so preposterous an opinion : and all who maintain such a sentiment are set down as designing hypocrites, or as gloomy fanatics.
Thus confident are they that their way is right.
But what saith the Scripture to these things? Does God himself lay no stress on the exercise of faith ? Does he leave us at liberty to embrace or reject his Gospel as we please ? Having given us his only- begotten Son to die for us, and set him forth to be a propitiation for sin through faith in his blood, does he attach no guilt to unbelief? Does he represent the
f Rom. vi. 21.