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4. Bid a final adieu to vain and carnal companions, to all sinful and carnal pleasures and pastimes, and to every known sin, all which tend to stupefy the heart; and by reading, meditation, and prayer, endeavor with all your might to obtain a realizing sense of your true character and state. Cast yourself at the foot of sovereign grace, and cry with the blind man, "Lord, that I might receive my sight!" "That I may see and know what I am, what I deserve, what I need; and the only way to obtain relief, by free grace through Jesus Christ." However, that you may not trust in your own doings to recommend you to the divine favor, nor be encouraged from your own goodness to hope for mercy, constantly remember,

5. That the divine law, which you are under, requires that you love God for himself; whereas, all you do is merely from self-love. Yea, it requires you to love God with all your heart; whereas, there is no love to God in your heart; and it requires this sinless perfection on pain of eternal damnation, for the least defect; so that by the law you are already condemned. By mere law you are therefore absolutely and forever undone. You stand guilty before God. But mere law is the rule of right, and standard of justice. If justice should take place, you then see your doom. There is no hope from this quarter. Wherefore you lie at the mercy of God, his mere mercy, who is absolutely unobliged to grant you any relief for any thing this is all a mere chimera. The Father is as full of love and goodness as the Son. The Son is as holy and just, as great a friend to the law, and as great an enemy to sin, as the Father. They are both of one heart. Yea, they are both one God. (John x. 30.)

Some seem to resolve the whole of God's law and government, and the death of Christ, into the mere arbitrary will of God; as though the whole were not the result of wisdom, of infinite wisdom, but rather of mere arbitrary will. But it does not appear by Scripture, or otherwise, that the infinitely wise God ever determines any thing without reason, or does any thing but what is wise for him to do. But rather the whole of divine revelation joins to confirm the truth of St. Paul's observation, that “God worketh all things after the counsel of his own will." All his perfections, if I may so speak, sit in council; and all his decrees and works are the result of infinite holiness, justice, and goodness, directed by infinite wisdom.

There is but one way to solve the difficulty; there is but one thing can ever satisfy our hearts. A sight of the glory of the God of glory, will open to view the grounds and reasons of the law, and convince us that it is holy, just, and good, glorious, and amiable, and worthy to be kept in credit, to be magnified and made honorable, by the obedience and death of the Son of God. But, then, if the law is good, we, who have broke it, are not fit to live. Death is our due. The Judge of all the earth cannot but do right. His nature, law, and honor, call aloud for our destruction. He cannot be just, if he does not destroy us. It will bring everlasting reproach upon his government, to spare us, considered merely as in ourselves. When this is felt in our hearts, then, and not till then, shall we feel our need of Christ, and be prepared to look to the free grace of God through the redemption that is in Christ, and to exercise faith in his blood, who was set forth to be a propitiation, to declare God's righteousness, that he might be just, and yet the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.

you can do. He might justly have left all mankind in this state, without a Savior; and he may, on the same grounds, as justly leave you in this state, without a Sanctifier. He did not give his Son to save this lost world for our righteousness' sake; Yea, had we been righteous, we should not have needed his Son to die in our stead. Nor does God give his Holy Spirit to convert any poor, perishing sinner, for his righteousness' sake; Yea, it is his being entirely destitute of all that is spiritually good, and dead in sin, that occasions his standing in perishing need of converting grace. And although all the promises of God are in Christ Jesus, yea, and in him amen, yet, as to those who are out of Christ, they are so far from being entitled to the promises, that the wrath of God abideth on them. Therefore,

6. If ever you are renewed by the Holy Ghost, it will be, not for any goodness in you, but merely from God's self-moving mercy and sovereign grace, through Jesus Christ. (Tit. iii. 5, 6.)

7. How dreadful soever this representation makes your case appear, yet, if this is your true state, you must see it, that you may know your need of Christ and free grace, and be in a capacity, understandingly, to give a proper reception to the glad tidings of the gospel, namely, that through Christ, God is ready to be reconciled to the returning penitent, who justifies God, approves his law, quits all claims, and looks only to free grace, through Jesus Christ, for salvation. (Luke xviii. 13. Rom. iii. 24-26.)

8. Saving faith consists in looking to free grace, through Jesus Christ, for salvation; thus viewing God's law, and your own case, as they really be; and he that thus believeth, shall be saved. Therefore, repent and be converted, and your sins shall be blotted out. Behold, now is the accepted time, and now is the day of salvation! And by me, one of Christ's ministers, God does beseech you to be reconciled, and I pray you in Christ's stead, be you reconciled to God. For God hath made his only-begotten Son to be a sacrifice for sin, that all who are united to him by a true and living faith, might return to God with acceptance, and be justified, and have eternal life through him.

ears.

Ther. Every word you have spoken sinks down into my The Lord grant the truth may pierce my heart through and through. The rest of my days I will devote to the business of my soul. I thank you for your kind instructions; I beg your prayers; the anguish of my heart calls me to retire Adieu! dear sir, adieu!

Paul. May the only wise God be your effectual instructor,

my Theron! Adieu!

To my dear Aspasio,

These Dialogues are presented, by

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My melancholy letter of December last, with a copy of the substance of the conversation I had with Paulinus, at three several times, you have doubtless received long ago, as it is now three months since I wrote. If you have been impatient at hearing nothing from your friend for so long a time, I more; tossed to and fro, for months together, like a feeble ship at sea, in a tempestuous night, ready every moment to sink.

At first, (I mean after I had left Paulinus, and retired, as I had determined to spend much time in meditation and prayer,) I called in question a maxim he seemed to take for granted, that "we are all, by nature, under a law, requiring perfect obedience, on pain of eternal damnation ;" which he so insisted was a glorious law, holy, just, and good. Thus I thought with myself: "Perfect obedience! That is more than we can yield. And am I forever lost for the first offence? How can that be just? Can the kind Father of the universe require more of his creature, man, than he can do? and then punish him with eternal damnation for not doing? Can this be right?" Indeed I now felt I had an Arminian heart.

But on a certain evening, as I was reading St. Paul's Epistles to the Romans and Galatians, in which he affirms, that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men; that the very heathen themselves are without excuse; that the whole world stand guilty before God, and every mouth stopped; that the law curseth every man who continueth not in all things written in the book of the law, to do them; and that Christ was made a curse for us, to redeem us from the curse of that very law,—I was greatly shocked and confounded. One while I said, "This law cannot

be right." But again, I said, "Why then was it not repealed? Why did the Son of God bear its curse, and die to answer its demands?" I looked through the Old Testament, I looked through the New; and this notion of the law I saw was so inwrought into both, that it must be granted, or the whole of divine revelation given up. I felt the heart of an infidel; I was full of doubts and scruples as to the truth of the Bible; and when I reflected on the external evidence of divine revelation, as represented by our late writers, particularly by Dr. Leland, whose view of deistical writers I had lately read, I was drove even to atheism. For if there is a God, the Bible must be true. But if the Bible is true, the law, in all its rigor, is holy, just, and good.

Thus I was unsettled in all my principles, and set afloat as on a boisterous ocean, like a ship without a compass or a helm; in great anxiety and deep perplexity, ready many times to conclude to go back, at all adventures, to my old hope, as the only way for rest; thinking I had as good live and die on a false hope, as live and die in despair.

Till, on a certain time, I began thus to reason in my heart: "Whence all these doubts, O my soul? Whence all these Arminian, Socinian, deistical, atheistical thoughts? Whence have they all arisen? From viewing the law of God, as requiring perfect obedience, on pain of eternal damnation. But why? Had I rather turn an infidel, than approve the law as holy, just, and good? Is this my heart? Once I thought I loved God, and loved his law, and loved the gospel. Where am I now?" Those words of the apostle seemed to picture my very case "The carnal mind is enmity against God, and is not subject to his law, neither indeed can be." This text engaged my attention and fixed my thoughts; and looking into my heart more and more, I found the spirit of an enemy to God and to his law in full possession of my soul.

Till now I had entertained, at least sometimes, a secret hope that my state was good; although it seemed as if I had quite given it up. But now I began in a new manner to see, or rather to feel, I was dead in sin.

A realizing sense of God, as the infinitely great being, the almighty Governor of the world, holy and just, a sin-revenging God, a consuming fire against the workers of iniquity, daily grew upon my heart, and set home the law in all its rigor. A fresh view of all my evil ways from my youth up, continually preyed upon my spirits. Eternity! Eternity! O, how dreadful it seemed! I watched, I prayed, I fasted. I spared no pains to obtain an humble, broken, contrite heart. But

notwithstanding my greatest efforts, my heart grew worse, my case more desperate, till, in the issue, I found myself absolutely without strength; dead in sin; lost; condemned by law; self-condemned; my mouth stopped; guilty before God. I was forced to be silent; as it was but fair and right that God should be an enemy to me, who was an enemy to him; and but just if he should forever cast me off. And in this case I had perished, had not mere sovereign grace interposed. But in the midst of this midnight darkness, when all hope seemed to be gone, at a moment when I least expected relief, for the commandment came, sin revived, and I died, -even now, God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, shined in my heart. Thus was the case :

me.

It was in the evening, after the day had been spent in fasting and prayer, as I was walking in a neighboring grove, my thoughts fixed with the utmost attention on God, as a consuming fire against his obstinate enemies; on the law, as cursing the man that continueth not in all things written therein to do them; on my whole life, as one continued series of rebellion; on my heart, as not only dead to God, and to all good, but full of enmity against the divine law and government, and, shocking to remember, full of enmity against God himself. Feeling that my whole heart was thus dead in sin, and contrary to God, I felt it was a gone case with me. There was no hope, no, not the least, from any good in me, or ever to be expected from I lay at God's mercy, forfeited, justly condemned, lost, helpless, undone! And "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy," I clearly saw, was the fixed resolution of the Almighty. Thus stood my case; a poor, wretched, sinful, guilty creature, completely ruined in myself! I retired to the most remote part of the grove; where, hid under the darkness of the evening, and the shade of spreading trees, no eye could see me. First, I smote on my breast; but could not look up to heaven, nor speak one word. I fell on my knees; but I could not speak. I fell prostrate on the ground, and felt as one ready to sink into eternal ruin; having no hope, unless from the sovereign good pleasure of my angry Judge. As I lay prostrate on the ground, a new scene gradually opened to my view. It was new, and it was exceeding glorious. God appeared not only infinitely great, and infinitely holy, as the Sovereign of the whole universe, but also infinitely glorious; even so glorious as to be worthy of all the love and honor which his law requires. The law appeared holy, just, and good. I could not but approve it from my very heart; and said within myself, ere I was aware, "Let all heaven forever love and adore the infinitely

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