4. Just at this time, when we wanted little of _filling up the measure of our iniquities_, two or three clergymen of the CHURCH of ENGLAND began vehemently to _call sinners to repentance_. In two or three years they had sounded the alarm, to the utmost borders of the land. Many thousands gathered together to hear them; and in every place where they came, many began to shew such a _concern_ for religion, as they never had done before. A stronger _impression_ was made on their minds, of the importance of things eternal, and they had more earnest _desires_ of serving God, than they had ever had from their earliest childhood. Thus did God begin to draw them toward himself, with the cords of love, with the bands of a man.
Many of these were in a short time deeply _convinced_ of the _number_ and _heinousness_ of their _sins_. They were also made throughly sensible of those _tempers_, which are justly hateful to God and man, and of their utter _ignorance_ of God, and entire _inability_, either to know, love, or serve him. At the same time, they saw in the strongest light, the _insignificancy_ of their _outside religion_: nay, and often confessed it before God, as the most abominable _hypocrisy_. Thus did they sink deeper and deeper into that _repentance_, which must ever precede _faith_ in the Son of God.
And from hence sprung _fruits meet for repentance_. The drunkard commenced sober and temperate; the whoremonger abstained from adultery and fornication; the unjust from oppression and wrong. He that had been accustomed to curse and swear, for many years, now swore no more. The sluggard began to work with his hands, that he might eat his own bread. The miser learned to deal his bread to the hungry, and to cover the naked with a garment. Indeed the whole form of their life was changed. They had _left off doing evil and learned to do well_.
* 5. But this was not all. Over and above this _outward change_, they began to experience _inward_ religion. _The love of God was shed abroad in their hearts_, which they continue to enjoy to this day. They love him, _because he first loved us_, and with-held not from us his Son, his only Son. And this love constrains them to love all mankind, all the children of the Father of heaven and earth, and inspires them with every holy and heavenly temper, the whole mind that was in Christ. Hence it is that they are now uniform in their behaviour, unblameable in all manner of conversation. And in whatsoever state they are, they have learned therewith to be content: insomuch that now they can _in every thing give thanks_: they more than patiently acquiesce, they rejoice and are exceeding glad, in all God’s dispensations toward them. For as long as they love God (and that love no man taketh from them) they are always happy in God. Thus they calmly travel on through life, being never weary nor faint in their minds, never repining, murmuring or disatisfied, casting all their care upon God, till the hour comes that they should drop this covering of earth, and return unto the great Father of Spirits. Then especially it is, that they rejoice with joy _unspeakable and full of glory_. You who credit it not, come and see. See these living and dying Christians.
“Happy while on earth they breathe Mightier joys ordain’d to know, Trampling on sin, hell and death, To the third heaven they go?”
Now if these things are so, what reasonable man can deny (supposing the scriptures to be true) that God is now visiting this nation, in a far other manner than we had cause to expect? Instead of pouring out his fierce displeasure upon us, he hath made us yet another tender of mercy: so that even when _sin did_ most _abound, grace_ hath _much more abounded_.
6. Yea, _the grace of God which bringeth salvation_, present salvation from inward and outward sin, hath abounded of late years in such a _degree_ as neither we nor our fathers had known. How _extensive_ is the change which has been wrought on the minds and lives of the people! Know ye not that the sound is gone forth into all the land? That there is scarce a city or considerable town to be found, where some have not been roused out of the sleep of death, and constrained to cry out, in the bitterness of their soul, _What must I do to be saved_? That this _religious concern_ has spread to every age and sex; to most orders and degrees of men? To abundance of those in particular, who in time past, were accounted monsters of wickedness, _drinking in iniquity like water_, and committing all _uncleanness with greediness_.