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 the landlord?—which, I think, if obtained, would not have lasted long! The men of that principle, after they have served their own turns, would then have cried up property and interest fast enough! This instance is instead of many. And that the thing did and might well extend far is manifest; because it was a pleasing voice to all poor men, and truly not unwelcome to all bad men. To my thinking, this is a consideration which, in your endeavors after settlement, you will be so well minded of that I might have spared it here: but let that pass.

And now as to spirituals. Indeed in spiritual things the ease was more sad and deplorable still; and that was told to you this day eminently. The prodigious blasphemies; contempt of God and Christ, denying of Him, contempt of Him and His ordinances and of the Scriptures: a spirit visibly acting those things foretold by Peter and Jude; yea, those things spoken of by Paul to Timothy! Paul declaring some things to be worse than the antichristian state (of which he had spoken in I. Tim. iv: 1, 2, under the title of the Latter Times), tells us what should be the lot and portion of the Last Times. He says (II. Tim. iii: 2–4): "In the Last Days perilous times shall come; men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful," and so on. But in speaking of the antichristian state he told us (I. Tim. iv: 1, 2) that "in the latter days" that state shall come in; not the last days,