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God's sustenance, nor hinder us from saying, with the Psalmist, "My God, even my God, is my refuge." Tell me, brethren, if that were not formal friendship which was only felt in particular frames and feelings of the soul. Tell me, if that were not cold love which required ever to be recounting her evidences, as a Papist doth her beads. What! is the possession, inhabitation, and regeneration of God's Spirit no more than this Galvanized state of being? You know what I mean by a Galvanized body: when life is extinct, by the application of a Galvanic apparatus they can cause it to move its limbs, distort its face, and give other mimic signs of a living thing. Such a life is that which in fits and starts manifests its action, and in moods and humours of the soul shews its existence. Nay, but that is not life; that is not Divine life. I tell you, brethren, there is something better for you than this. Be not offended when I say that you shall know and feel better things than this. Blame me not, if this discourse should reprove you of formality still; but rather bless me, for having brought more excellent things unto your remembrance; and, forgetting the things which are behind, reach forward to the things that are before, striving for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ. It is not dead spiritualities, but a living Spirit, that is your inheritance. After which living, quickening Spirit seek ye for into the possession of the same

ye have been baptized; and if ye have not realized his sweet and precious influences, it is because you have not believed and hoped enough. Be glad, therefore, that so much remaineth of good and of delight to experience and to enjoy. Cast away the formalities, and the pretences, and the imitations of men: yield yourselves to the realities, the enjoyments, the delights of the Spirit of God. Say, "Be it unto thy servant according to thy will! I am thine: lead me by the waters of thy pleasure. My God, shew me thy salvation. My Lord, fill me with thy good Spirit. Make me to know the joy of thy chosen, and to rejoice with thine inheritance."-My dear brethren, step not formally from duty to duty, but be filled with the will of God: add not evidence to evidence, but be filled with trust in God. Dwell in God, and let God dwell in you: abide in him abundantly, for his goodness and his mercy endureth for ever. Fear not: " Trust in the Lord, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength."

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I am sure that no one who hath proved, as I have done, the idleness of what is called spiritual and evangelical society; the timorousness of their spirit, the instability of their thoughts and opinions, their love of novelty and excitement, their bitterness and violence towards any one who cleaveth not to them, or to their leaders -no one who hath proved, as I have done, the sandy thinness of this soil, and its incapacity to receive, to retain, or to fructify the true and pre

cious seed of the kingdom, will account me to have spoken harshly, or unjustly, or uncharitably. As God knoweth, this fashion of religion, which hath come up in our cities, is the subject of my daily grief and daily prayers. My desire is to see every saint in full communion and fellowship with the Holy Ghost. I do not wish you to be under Moses; nor yet to know Christ according to the flesh; nor yet to be under the bondage of a visible church; nor yet to be under the influence of a religious society, or religious world; but to be delivered into the free communion and fellowship of the Spirit of Christ. Let Moses and his law be the terror and horror of your natural man, and force you unto Christ, who hath kept the law, and oblige you to take shelter from the curse of God, and refuge under the wings of Jesus, who hath fulfilled all righteousness. Take Christ's work in the flesh as your deliverance from the law; take his death and crucifixion as the crucifixion and death of your natural man; but, as you would not hang upon a cross for ever, nor for ever be immured in a tomb, receive the Holy Ghost, freely offered unto you in the church of Christ, set forth to you in the ordinances, bestowed upon you in Baptism, continually renewed unto you in the holy Supper, and exhibited to your faith in the communion of the saints. This Holy Spirit, I say, Spirit of love, Spirit of freedom, receive ye, and enjoy ye; and be by him endued with

power from on high to crucify the flesh, with its corruptions and lusts; to overcome the world, with all its forms and fashions; and to live with God in the fulness and freeness and blessedness of his chosen people. Adopt none of their formalities, neither Legal nor Papal nor Methodistical; but, as free, use your freedom unto the glory of God, and not unto licentiousness. This is the power of godliness, to be led by the Holy Spirit; to be under His power whose law is the law of liberty; when self no longer swayeth, no longer liveth, but Christ liveth in us, and the same mind which was in him is also in us.

I could say much more concerning these various formalities, Legal, Papal, and Methodistical or Evangelical, but time permitteth not: wherefore I do take leave of this part of the subject, with a solemn commendation of you to the grace of God, that ye be not again entangled with the yoke of bondage. Remember, that those whom the Son hath made free, are free indeed.

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SERMON XVII.

DISCOURSE RECAPITULATORY, TO SHEW THE PHARISAICAL CHARACTER OF THE TIMES.

2 TIM. iii. 1-5.

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their ownselves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.

HAVING now completed the round of these fearful sins, and shewn them to apply unto the state of society and the church in which we now live, I feel desirous of performing two things further, before giving this large discourse unto the church in general. The one is, to recapitulate the substance of what hath been said, and at the same time to expose, point by point, the disguise of Satan, under which he is purloining the treasures of the church; that his arts may be laid open, and the Pharisaical

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