stranger in our Israel, or sadly smitten with that epidemic plague of
indifferency, which hath infected many of this generation, to a
benumbing of them, and rendering them insensible and unconcerned in the
matters of God, and of their own souls, and sunk deep in the gulf of
dreadful inconsideration, who seeth not, or taketh no notice of, nor is
troubled at the manifest and terrible appearances of the inexpressibly
great hazard, our all, as Christians in this life, is this day exposed
into. I mean the mystery of the gospel of the grace of God, wherein the
exceeding riches of his grace, in his kindness towards us, through
Christ Jesus, hath been shown. We have enjoyed for a considerable time,
a clear and powerful dispensation hereof, in great purity and plenty;
but, alas! is it not manifest to all, that will not wilfully shut their
eyes, that this mercy and goodness of God hath been wickedly abused, and
the pure administration of his grace and love perfidiously sinned away,
by this apostate generation. Are our spots this day the spots of his
children? Are their fruits answerable to the Lord's pains and labour
about us, to be seen even amongst the greatest of professors? Is there
that gospel holiness, tenderness, watchfulness, growing in grace, and in
the knowledge of Jesus Christ, that growing up in Christ, in all things
that heavenly mindedness, that fellowship with the Father and with his
Son Christ Jesus, and that conversation in heaven, that the
dispensation of grace, we have been favoured with beyond many, and have
been long living under, did call for at our hands? Alas! our grapes are
but wild and stinking. Wherefore (and who can think it strange, if it be
so?) the Lord seemeth to be about to contend with us, by covering our
horizon with Egyptian darkness; many who would not receive the love of
the truth, that they might be saved, being already given up to strong
delusion, that they should believe a lie, and many more in hazard to be
drawn aside to crooked paths, by men of corrupt minds, who have been,
and are still busy to vent and spread abroad, with no little petulancy