then commonly follows the most suprising and remarkable relief. Prophecies have many accomplishments. This prophecy was accomplished first in the relief and deliverance of the distressed Jews from their Babylonish captivity. The Spirit of God did not only deliver them from their bondage, but raised up men of undaunted zeal to retrieve the purity and honour of religion, when it had been almost quite buried in oblivion. But this prophecy had a more remarkable accomplishment in the first ages of christianity, when severe and bloody enemies ran their course in a furious persecution of the church, like an uncontroulable torrent carrying all before it, yet still the Spirit of God did lift up a standard and caused the number of believers to increase, who bore a noble evidence for the truth of the gospel. And we hope that this prophecy will still have a further accomplishment yet. If we

consider how numerous and shameless, I may say, how common and impudent the despisers and opposers of serious piety are in our days, what shall we think but that the enemy is coming in like a water-flood, and threatens to overflow our land with a worse deluge than that which drowned the world in the days of Noah. And though for any thing I know, it may be suffered to proceed to a greater extremity, than we have yet seen, yet in God's due time, I trust he will seasonably and surprisingly lift up a standard against the enemies and persecutors of Jesus Christ; for such in reality are all the despisers and opposes of his holy religion. Reasons and human means only, will not serve to stop the tide of iniquity, which now flows so fast upon us. No standard will suffice to oppose it but that of the

Holy Spirit's lifting up; which should remind us always to have recourse to the Spirit of God for direction, assistance, and success in every thing we attempt for the improvement of religion in ourselves or others. Every sincere private Christian may every day experience the truth of this in his own soul, when he is beset with crowds of temptations, that the enemy may be said to be coming in like a flood. Whence comes his light to see them; how comes he to be awakened and strengthened to resist them, but by the Holy Spirit lifting up his standard within him, whereby he gains a conquest over them.

I am so much in love with this text that I could wish to hear an honest and plain discourse on the same; but now a-days times are so bad, that the world runs after nothing but paint and artful embellishments in every thing. Vicious palates care not for wholesome and medicinal food. But I need not tell you that those always are the best sermons which bring one's heart nearer to God, which render Christ dearer to us, by representing our need of him, our misery without him, and our privileges by him, and which convince us of the necessity of holiness, and of the Spirit's influence to that end, exciting and assisting us to mortify the dearest sin, and to vanquish the strongest temptation, and weaning us from earthly enticements, teaching us to live in communion with God, and to bear up comfortably under all the disquietudes of this life, and fitting us for a comfortable passage through the pangs of death.

The religion of the age lamented.

1738, FEB. 22.-If the three rules of directions for carrying on reformation mentioned by the Doctor in his sermon, namely the frequent and attentive reading of God's holy word, good example and discipline, were practised by the heads of families, religion would be mightily promoted thereby, which now seems to be much upon the decline. If while good magistrates, and other good men, associate themselves and join endeavours for the correction of open vice and immorality, there were numbers of good ministers and spiritual pastors who would combine together in joint consultation and zealously exert their utmost endeavours to engage and assist parents and masters in the good method, which the pious Doctor proposes, I should hope to see religion flourishing in some good degree again. But the generality of all callings are grown so stupidly hard under the neglect of these means, and so infatuated, and we seem to be in so much sloth and indolence, that I fear a severe scourge will hardly awake us to a due sense of our duty.

The account of the great mortality in Lon don, is very lamentable; but it is still more so, that most men, as you observe, are too insensible of it. What means can profit men, if they continue blind and senseless under the discipline of heaven; surely as the prophet says, "when the judgments of God are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness;" that is, they will then repent, and become righteous if ever they will. I cannot say that I remember one instance of sound con

version, or that had the appearance of it, among persons that passed through afflictions and sickness without any relentings or humbling sense of their sins. The general unconcernedness and insensibility, the false security, and presumptuous confidence, that now appear in the world in matters of salvation, seem to me, to be a sign of impending judgment, whether it is now begun or not; for, we need not in these last days, a spirit of prophecy to predict the approaching of divine judgments. The predictions and judgments in holy writ, the forebodings and events, that followed in old times, the obstinate bent and prevailing corruption of men, with the severe visits that attended them in former days, are sufficient to notify to us what we may expect: for what has been, will be, and judgments are types of one another. And if we have recourse to the many accounts of this sort in sacred record, we shall find that the abounding of iniquity,-deafness to divine warnings, boldness in wickedness,-superficial performance of religious worship, apostacy from the truth of God, and especially fearless security or false confidence withal, were never at a great distance from some judgment or other if repentance and humiliation did not prevent it.

The world is now grown obstinately perverse and wicked, impatient of reproof, and flattering itself with false peace and confidence of its own devising, the exact temper that is the usual forerunner of ruin, as we may observe, in many examples:-The idolatrous Cananites resting secure and trusting to the walls of Jericho, without addressing themselves to heaven for relief, were utterly destroyed. The Israelites presuming for protection from the presence of the ark of the covenant, when they had forsaken

the God of the ark, were made prisoners of war by the Philistines. And they also the Philistines swelling with the conquest of their Dagon, were soon confounded. Sisera prided himself in his iron chariots, slept in the jaws of death, and was slain with an iron nail. Agag cheered up and presumed that the bitterness of death was passed, when his next breath was the very last. Lot's warning to the men of Sodom, seemed to them but as jest or mockery, when their destruction was no further off than the next day. Just so it fared with the prophets a little before the Babylonish captivity. Their admonitions were treated with contempt and reproach. Not very many years before the utter ruin of the Jews' polity and temple, they despised and made light of the gospel invitations, and turned from them, one to his farm, and another to his merchandise. But the most remarkable judgment, and perhaps the most significant of the judgment that is to come, was the deluge upon the old world, whose inhabitants were alarmed with the preaching of Noah and the admonition of God's Holy Spirit, yet they went on in their wonted course, secure and careless, minding nothing but provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof, till the day that Noah went into the ark, and the flood surprized them: and we are told expressly that as the days of Noah were, so shall the coming of the Son of man be.

It seems then that men will be setling themselves on the lees of their corruption at the approach of the last day, crying peace to themselves, and looking for safety and continuance of many good days, when sudden destruction shall seize them as a thief in the night. When the five foolish virgins slept and their lamps were gone out, there was a sudden mid