meetness for his glory may be conspicuous in the eyes of all. So shall your intercessions prevail for others also ; and in that great day, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, you shall shine forth as the sun in the firmament for ever and ever.]
2 Thess. ii. 11, 12. For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie : that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
THE Apostles, even as our Lord himself had done, spake of the day of judgment as near at hand. To individual souls it was so ; because at the instant of our death our state is irrevocably and eternally fixed. But, as it respects the world at large, it was, and still is, far distant ; there being many prophecies yet to be accomplished, previous to its arrival. The Thessalonian converts, interpreting too literally some expressions in St. Paul's former epistle, had formed an expectation that the day of judgment was almost instantly to appear : the Apostle therefore, in this epistle, rectifies the mistake ; and informs them that before that time there would be a most grievous apostasy in the Church, which would issue most fatally to the souls of all who should bear a part in it. It would originate in unbelief, and terminate in perdition.
The words which I have just read will lead me to trace the progress of unbelief ; from its commence- ment, in the rejection of the Gospel, to its termi- nation, in the destruction of the soul. When suffered to prevail, it leads to,
I. A wilful rejection of God's mercy in Christ —
It is not from a want of evidence that men reject
the Gospel —
[There is in the Gospel evidence enough to satisfy any candid inquirer. But men have an aversion to the truth.
c c 2