Page:Duty of redeeming the time in evil days, illustrated and enforced.pdf/9

Rh their poison, and Prelastics theirs, without due check or control. A spirit of apostasy from the faith once delivered of the saints, appears eminently in these our unhappy days, wherein the very foundations of religion are struck at, and the mysteries of it called to an account before the bar of corrupted reason, and measured with the crooked reed of man's natural light. And at this day is that fulfilled amongst us in this church, which the apostle addressed to the elders of the church of Ephesus, "Also of your own selves shall men arise speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them," Acts xx. 30. The spring of gospel-doctrine, which sometime ran clear, is now disturbed, truth is fallen in our streets, and equity cannot enter, and Zion's wounds are multiplied in the house of her friends. The days are evil on this account: for.

1st, It is very dishonourable to our Lord Jesus Christ, the purchase of whose blood gospel-truths are; for of them we should never have heard, had not be given himself to the death for lost sinners. And the more they are obscured and vailed, the more is the Mediator's glory eclipsed; which may be matter of mourning to those who love his name.

2d. It is an evidence that the saviour of the glorious gospel is much lost, and that the glorious truths thereof, on which exercised souls have often sweetly fed, are much disrelished. And so it speaks soul exercise to be very rare, and the experience of the power of truth on men's spirits to be fallen very low.

3d. It is a fore-token of the work of conversion, which has long been very rare, its being yet more rare. The gospel is the great mean of conversion of sinners unto God, Gal. iii. 2. and therefore Satan strives with all his might to pervert it, and so to make it the more unfit for reaching for its end.

4th. It is a sad prognostic of the further woful decay of practical godliness. The doctrine which is of God is according to godliness," Tit. i. 1. and that which hath not a tendency to promote real godliness, is not a doctrine from God. The law in its due place leading sinners to Christ, and leading them as a rule of life in Christ, tends to this end: but when it is put out of its due place, it is