dered, his heart is not given up to God; spiritual wickedness, under fair shows of zeal, still keeps possession for the god of this world;' and the shrewd hypocrite artfully imitates the behaviour of a true Israelite, just as Satan transforms himself into an angel of light.' Is he at last deeply convinced, that the only means of escaping destruction, and capitulating to advantage, is to deliver up the traitor Sin? Yet what a long parley does he hold about it! What a multitude of plausible reasons does he advance to put it off from day to day! "He is yet young :-The Lord is merciful :-All have their foibles :-We are here in an imperfect state :-It is a little sin-It may be consistent with loyalty to God: It hurts nobody but himself:-Many pious men were once guilty of it :-By and by he will repent as they did," &c. &c. When louder summons and increasing fears compel him to renounce the lusts of the flesh,' how strongly does he plead for those of the mind! And after he has given up his bosom-sin with his lips, how treacherously does he hide it in the inmost recesses of his heart! Never did a besieged town dispute the ground with such obstinacy, and hold it out by such a variety of stratagems, as corrupt man stauds it out against the repeated attacks of truth and grace. If he yields at all, it is seldom before he is brought to the greatest extremity. He feeds on the dust of the earth;' he tries to 'fill his' soul with the husks' of vanity; and fares hard on sounds, names, forms, opinions, withered experience, dry notions of faith, and empty professions of hope, aud fawning shows of love, till 'the famine arises,' and the intolerable want of substantial bread forces him to surrender at discretion, and without reserve. Some stand it out thus, against the God of their sal vation, ten or twenty years; and others never yield, till the terrors of death storm their affrighted souls, their last sickness batters down their tortured bodies, and 'the poison of the arrows of the Almighty drinks up their wasted spirits.' What a strong proof is this, of the inveteracy and obstinacy of our corruption ! TWENTY-EIGHTH ARGUMENT. BUT a still stronger may be drawn from the amazing struggles of God's children with their depravity, even after they have, through grace, powerfully subdued and gloriously triumphed over it. Their Redeemer himself' is the Captain of their salvation:' They are embarked with Him, and bound for heaven; they look at the compass of God's word; they hold the rudder of sincerity; they crowd all the sails of their good resolutions, and pious affections, to catch the gales of Divine assistance; they exhort one another daily,' to ply the oars of faith and prayer with watchful industry; tears of deep repentance and fervent desire often bedew their faces in the pious toil: They would rather die than draw back to perdition; but, alas! the stream of corruption is so impetuous, that it often prevents their making any sensible progress in their spiritual voyage; and if in an unguarded hour they drop the oar, and faint in the work of faith, the patience of hope,' or 'the labour of love,' they are presently carried down into the dead sea of religious formality, or the whirlpools of scandalous wickedness. Witness the lukewarmness of the Laodiceans, the adultery of David, the perjury of Peter, the final apostacy of Judas, and the shameful flight of all the disciples. TWENTY-NINTH ARGUMENT. WHEN evidences of the most opposite interest agree in their deposition to a matter of fact, its truth is greatly corroborated. To the last argument, taken from some sad experiences of God's people, I shall therefore add one, drawn from the religious rites of Paganism, the confession of ancient Heathens, and the testimony of modern Deists. When the Heathens made their temples stream with the blood of slaughtered hecatombs, did they not explicitly deprecate the wrath of heaven and impending destruction? And was it not a sense of their guilt and danger; and a hope that the punishment they deserved might be transferred to their bleeding victims, which gave birth to their numerous expiatory and propitiatory sacrifices? If this must be granted, it is plain those sacrifices were so many proofs, that the considerate Heathens were not utter strangers to their corruption aud danger. But let them speak their own sentiments. Not to mention their allegorical fables of Prometheus, who brought a curse upon earth by stealing fire out of heaven; and of Pandora, whose fatal curiosity let all sorts of woes and diseases loose upon mankind: Does not Ovid in his Metamorphoses give a striking account of the fall, and its dreadful consequences? Read his description of the golden age, and you see Adam in Paradise; proceed to the iron age, and you behold the horrid picture of our consummate wickedness. If the ancients had no idea of that native propensity to evil, which we call original depravity, what did Plato mean by our "natural wickedness." And Pythagoras, by the fatal companion, the noxious strife that lurks within us, and was born along with us?" Did not Solon take for his motto the well-known saying, which, though so much neglected now, was formerly written in golden capitals over the door of Apollo's temple at Delphos, "Know thyself?"§ Are we not informed by Heathen historians, that Socrates, the prince of the Greek sages, acknowledged he was naturally prone to the grossest vices? Does not Seneca, the best of the Roman philosophers, observe, "We are born in such a condition, that we are not subject to fewer disorders of the mind, than of the body?" Yea, that "all vices are in all men, though they do not break out in every one;" and that, "to confess them is the begin + Kakia Ev Ovσel. Hence that excellent definition of true religion, Θεραπεια ψυχης, The cure of a diseased soul. Λυγρη γαρ συνοπαδος ερις βλαπτουσα λέληθεν, Γνώθι σεαυτόν. Hac conditione nati sumus; animalia obnoxia non paucioribus animi quam corporis morbis. Omnia in omnibus vitia sunt, sed non omnia in singulis extant. ning of our cure?"* And had not Cicero lamented before Seneca, that "men are brought into life by nature as a step-mother, with a naked, frail, and infirm body; aud a soul prone to divers lusts?" Even some of the sprightliest poets bear their testimony to the mournful truth I contend for. Propertius could say, "Every body has a vice to which he is inclined by nature."+ Horace declared, that " no man is born free from vices," and that "he is the best man who is oppressed with the least:"§-That "mankind rush into wickedness, and always desire what is forbidden :”|| -That "youth hath the softness of wax to receive vicious impressions, and the hardness of a rock to resist virtuous admonitions :" In a word; that " we are mad enough to attack heaven itself, and," that " Our repeated crimes do not suffer the God of heaven to lay by his wrathful thunder-bolts."§§ And Juvenal, as if he had understood what St. Paul says of the carnal mind,' affirms, that “ nature unchangeably fixed" tends, yea, runs back to wickedness," as bodies to their centre. Thus, the very depositions of the Heathens, in their lucid intervals, as well as their sacrifices, prove the depravity and danger of mankind. And so does likewise the testimony of some of our modern, deistical philosophers. The ingenious author of a book, called "Philosophical Inquiries concerning the Americans," informs us, it is a custom among some Indians, that, as soon *Vitia sua confiteri sanitatis principium est. † Unicuique dedit vitium natura creato. § Nam vitiis nemo sine nascitur, optimus ille est Gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas; Nitimur in vetitum semper cupimusque negata. §§ Cælum ipsum petimus stultitia; neque Per nostrum patimur scelus Iracunda Jovem ponere fulmina. ..Ad mores natura recurrit Damnatos, fixa et mutari nescia. as the wife is delivered of a child, the husband must take to his bed, where he is waited on by the poor woman, who should have been brought there; and that to this day, the same ridiculous custom prevails in some parts of France. "From this and other instances," says our inquirer," we may collect, that, however men may differ in other points, there is a most striking conformity among them in ABSURDITY.” The same philosopher, who is by no means tainted with what some persons are pleased to call enthusiasm, confirms the doctrine of our natural depravity by the following anecdote, and the ironical observation with which it is closed. The Esquimaux, (the wildest and most sottish people in all America,) call themselves men, and all other nations barbarians. "Human vanity, we see, thrives equally well in all climates; in Labrador as in Asia. Beneficent nature has dealt out as much of this comfortable quality to a Greenlander, as to the most consummate French petit-maitre." The following testimony is so much the more striking, as it comes from one of the greatest poets, philosophers, and deists, of this present free-thinking age : "Who can, without horror, consider the whole earth, as the empire of destruction? It abounds in wonders, it abounds also in victims; it is a vast field of carnage and contagion. Every species is, without pity, pursued and torn to pieces, through the earth, and air, and water. In man there is more wretchedness than in all other animals put together: He smarts continually under two scourges, which other animals never feel; anxiety and a listlessness in appetence, which makes him weary of himself. He loves life, and yet he knows that he must die. If he enjoys some transient good, for which he is thankful to heaven, he suffers various evils, and is at last devoured by worms. This knowledge is his fatal prerogative: Other animals have it not. He feels it every moment rankling and corroding in his breast. Yet he spends the transient moment of his existence in diffusing the misery that he suffers; in cutting the throats of his fellow-creatures for pay; in cheating and |