of salvation and perishing for ever. If they think or feel as though the danger was small-as though it was an easy matter to escape the wrath to come and attain to future happiness as though there was a connection between what they can do, at any time when they find it necessary, and the salvation of their souls, it may be expected, that they will go on easy and careless in the ways of their own hearts; as is the more general practice of many in the present day. Therefore, if it be really desirable and important, that sinners should be engaged in a diligent and earnest attention to the ordinary means of light and salvation to the bible to preaching to religious instruction to reading and meditation, and in earnest and importunate cries to God for help and salvation; it appears to be equally desirable and important, that they should be thoroughly convinced of their miserable, lost, and awfully dangerous state. Though sinners in the use of means will never change their own hearts, nor bring them selves to a compliance with the gospel; yet the ideas and sense of the truth respecting God's character and their own, the law and the gospel, the character of Christ and the way of salvation, which are excited, impressed, obtained, or conveyed, in the way of diligent and earnest attention to means, are, according to God's usual method of operation, in a sense preparatory to saving conversion; and ordinarily, I conceive, that we are not to expect true and saving conversion, without something of this antecedent preparation. It, therefore, appears very desirable, and highly important, that sinners should have that conviction and sense of danger, which will rouse and thoroughly excite them to such earnest enquiry and attention. Hence again, We may infer, that those doctrines and truths declared in the word of God, by which the real situation of sinners is brought up to view, and which are well suited to produce a conviction and sense of their danger, are proper and important to be plainly preached, and placed be. fore them, in as clear and convincing a light as possible, however disagreeable to their hearts those doctrines may be, and whatever painful sensations they may excite in them. There is a strong propensity in the selfish, sinful hearts of fallen men, to flatter themselves with the hope of peace and safe. ty-of an exemption from future misery and the enjoyment of final happiness, although, for the present, they pursue the courses agreeable to them. Hence it is generally found, that those doctrines which are favorable to or consistent with such a hope, are more agreeable to many, than those of a contrary complexion. Yea, the doc. trines which are calculated to bring clearly into their view, God's true character and their own, and to show them their danger and abolute dependence on the sovereign mercy of God through a Mediator, are found to be very unpalatable, and often objected against and opposed, and sometimes irritate and provoke them. Hence, some have thought it not expedient, but rather of hurtful tendency, to preach certain doctrines, which are acknowledged to be contained in the scriptures, lest some should be provoked, and others disheartened and discouraged. But since nothing will so thoroughly arouse and engage the attention of sinners, as a deep conviction and sense of their danger and certain destruction, unless God is pleased to interpose his power and mercy for their salvation, it is doubtless desirable and expedient, and highly important, that those doctrines and truths should be plainly preached, and placed before them in a clear and convincing light, which are suited to destroy their vain and delusive hopes to awaken them from their dangerous security-to bring up to their view and to make them sensible of their true character and situation, of their real danger and total insufficiency to avert or escape impending ruin, without the special interposition of divine mercy. The doctrines of the Bible, properly stated and arranged, are admirably adapted to answer these purposes. their situation indeed awfully dangerous and threatening; unless they see, or think they see, reason to hope and expect the execution will not take place upon them. But some, who profess to believe these truths, appear to think, that God is so gracious and merciful, and hath made such provision by the mediation of Christ for the salvation of sinful men, and put them into such a capacity to secure their own salvation, as to be in a great measure insensible, that they are indeed in great danger of falling short of future happiness and perishing for ever. It is true, that the scriptures represent God as being infinitely gracious and merciful; but at the same time, as wise, as holy and as just, as he is merciful and gracious. They also teach great plainness, that Christ hath made a sufficient atonement for sin, and is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth; and call upon all to repent and believe, that they may be saved; and promise eternal life to every truly penitent believer in Christ, who heartily obeys the truth; and plainly hold forth, there is nothing to keep men from obeying the gospel but the wickedness of their hearts; so that if they fail of salvation and perish, they will perish through their own fault. The scriptures teach with great plainness and decision, that all mankind are in a fallen, sinful, guilty state-in fact sinners, by nature children of wrath, dead in sin, and under a righteous sentence of condemnation to suffer the wrath of God for ever; and that this awful At the same time, the scripsentence may be put in execu-tures teach with equal plaintion at any moment, if God sees ness, that the awful sentence of fit. condemnation, which is out against sinners, will certainly be executed upon them in all its dreadful weight, if they die in their sins; and that they will These truths, if placed in the view of sinners with convincing evidence, and believed by them, must make then sensible, that alie in their sins, unless they God is at liberty to do as he pleases-to show mercy or not, as he, in his infinite wisdom and sovereign pleasure, sees fit. No doctrine is more plainly taught by Christ and his apostles, than that of the absolute sovereignty of God, in the dis pensation of saving mercy, and in choosing the subjects on whom he will bestow it. That God worketh all things according to the counsel of his will-that all things which take place, come to pass or are eternal purpose that Christ's people or sheep, whom he will effectually save, were given to those, and those only, who are given to him by the Father, will come to him and be savedthat God chose them in him before the foundation of the world, that they should be holy, and without blame before him These plain scripture doctrines, if fully believed, one would be ready to think, might be sufficient to make sinners feelingly sensible, that their situation is indeed awfully dan-accomplished according to his gerous and threatening. Nevertheless, sinners may admit the truth of these doctrines, and not seem to call them in ques-him by the Father that all tion, and yet remain, in a great measure, easy and careless, and insensible of their danger, from a persuasion or conceit, that God hath promised to grant, or will undoubtedly grant them, all needful assistance that all needful divine help is so connec-in love; and ted with what they can do, that they may presume upon obtaining it; and thus feel as though they were able or had a sufficiency to secure their salvation. In this way it is probable, that many quiet their own minds, allay their fears, and extinguish or prevent the sense of danger, which would otherwise awakening by means of the gospel is in them the most serious concern and attention. predestinated them to the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself ac cording to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glo ry of his grace-that from the beginning he chose them to salvation through sanctification of the spirit, and belief of the truth-that their effectual call in execution of this eternal pur pose that he saves them, and But although the scriptures calls them with an holy calling, assure us, that God will readily not according to their works, give the Holy Spirit to them but according to his own pur who ask him for it, as hungry pose and grace, which was giv children ask their fathers for en them in Christ Jesus before bread; yet they teach with great the world began these things plainness, that it is not in their these doctrines, are asserted in hearts thus to ask, and never the New Testament, with all will be, unless God puts it there; the plainness and decision, and that with respect to this, | which can well be expressed by words. From these divinely revealed truths it indisputably follows, that it depends on the sovereign pleasure of God, whether sinners will be converted and saved, or not that they can neither entitle themselves to an exemption from the wrath to come, by any thing which they can say or do; nor bring God under obligation to have mercy on them; but that he will extend merey to them, or not, according to the purpose formed in the exercise of his sovereign pleasure, without any other guide than his own infinite wisdom and perfection. Therefore, if sinners were understandingly and thoroughly convinced of these truths, they ting sinners to a diligent and engaged attention to the means of salvation, and to cry earnestly to God for mercy, use their best endeavors to place before them the before-mentioned and similar divinely revealed truths, clearly stated and properly ar ranged in their true scriptural light, in as plain, forcible and convincing a manner as may be, accompanied with fervent, persevering supplication and prayer to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose blessing is indispensibly necessary to render them effectual to any saving purpose. PRESBYTES. must feel themselves in the Abstract of Faber on the Pro hands of God; and that from his sovereign mercy alone, as the original moving cause, there is any room to hope for salvation, or an exemption from everlasting destruction. phecies. NO. VI. (Continued from p. 255.) HE author now proceeds to Tcomment on the second Chapter of the little book, for substance as follows. The Great red Dragon, or the devil, is the main spring of the apostacy; he actuated the two horned beast; and this last instigated the ten horned beast to trample on the gospel of Christ. The idea adopted by Bp. Newton that the prophet in this chapter resumes the subject from the first propagation of This view of their danger, and of their helpless, hopeless situation from every source except the sovereign mercy of God through the Mediator, would exceedingly tend to produce in them the greatest attention and concern, and to excite them to repair and cry earnestly to him for mercy; and, as the natural consequence, as far as is con-Christianity, that the dragon is pasistent with their present temper, to attend and listen to his instructions, to refrain from the ways which they know or believe to be forbidden by him and displeasing to him,gle between Christianity and paganand to do as he requires. Wherefore, let those, who wish to be instrumental of exci gan Rome, that the man child born of the Church is the mystic Christ, more especially the emperor Constantine, that the war between Michael and the dragon was the st rug ism, cannot be supported. It is inconsistent with his own statement, that the little book described the temple still enjoyed the light of the word; for in the spiritual Heaven where is the throne of God, the mystic child remained secure. The Waldenses and Hussites in the worst times preserved the word of God, as their best treasure; and it will finally break the apostacy itself as a potter's vessel. The dragon is represented with seven heads and ten horns, to shew, that he persecutes the woman by the agency of the seven-headed and ten-horned beast mentioned in the next chapter; or the Papal Roman empire: with a tail, to denote the corrupt superstition taught by the two-horned beast, or false prophet, with which he draws the third part of the stars of Heaven, and casts them down to the earth; or, causes the Christian calamities of the Western Church; and with the little book itself which repeatedly declares that it contains nothing but the history of the 1260 years. It is improbable that the prophet should resume a subject disclosed under the six first seals, which had been opened in their or der. The great red dragon is the devil and not Pagan Rome. The analogy of Scripture language forbids the application of the term man-child, meaning the son of the church, to Constantine. Christ and not Constantine was destined to rule all nations with a rod of Iron. His prolepsis of the period of 1260 years is not to be found in the language of the prediction; and the appearance of the dragon, as well as of the woman, in heaven, shews, that the scene is in the church gene-bishops to apostatize from the faith. ral; and the combatants professedly there; which never was the case with Pagan-Rome. The fact is, Heaven is the church general; The voman flees into the wilderness for safety, where she is fed with the heavenly manna of the word, in the which is spread far and wide midst of the spiritual barrenness around. earth. So long as Satan found att apostate church the best station for he continued in it: but when the persecuting the faithful, just so lang witnesses were ascended into Hea the woman is the spiritual church ; the same as the temple, and the two witnesses. The part of Heaven With respect to the war in Hea occupied by the dragon is the nomven between Michael and the dra inal church, or the outer court of gon, it is important to recollect, that the Gentiles: the man-child is the the dragon is neither the Roman mystic word of God, formed in the empire, nor the Pope, but simply the devil; for this alone will lead us hearts of believers: of this manchild the church continued travail-meant by his fall from Heaven to to a right understanding of what is ing during six centuries, when the dragon stood before her to devour her child as soon as it was born. This he attempted, by promoting the great apostacy; and by stirring up the seven-headed and ten-horned beast to persecute the faithful. Accordingly, the corrupt church of Rome revived the old idolatry, under a different name, and introduced a host of Mediators, besides the Personal Word, and locked up the literal word in a dead language. They of the outer court sat in thick darkness; but the witnesses of the ven, not in Germany only, but in Britain, Sweden, and Denmark, at the reformation; and the Papal thunders were no longer regarded, he was driven from Heaven, or the church, to the earth, as a station now better suited to the attack of the woman, retaining, however, his in fluence over the apostate church, though an engine of less force than |