Page:The rock of wisdom.djvu/122

 its covering is victory: it is insured forever, while time lasts, and eternity rolls: it is fire proof, and water cannot drown it, for this reason the master above said, bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples, so that it may stand unto the redemption day. But now of late I have found myself better armed against these drone bees than formerly, when my bounty is going to the families of God's children. Fret not: do not be duped by the devil, a serpent or a wolf in a sheep skin. "God is my life:" Gen. 29. Jacob's journey is like unto the journey of man through time, and the well that Jacob see, the well of salvation, and the field, the world, and the three flocks of sheep lying by it, three sons of Noah, going to the east and to the north, and to the south. Behold! these are the sheep of the whole world, and only but the one well for all the sheep. O! come and drink in time. Isa. 12: 3. "Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation." John 4: 6. Jacob's well. do. 14. "But whosever drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up unto everlasting life." So amen. God grant unto all the faithful peace, in time and in eternity.

See here a proof of a third place, or middle state of soul as some people sayeth, for these spirits in prison, to whom Christ went to preach after his death, were not in heaven, nor yet in hell, of the damned, because they say heaven is no prison, and Christ did not go to preach to the damned. Baptism is said to be of the like form with the water by which Noah was saved, because the one was a figure of the other. Some say that baptism has not its efficacy in order to salvation, from its washing away any bodily filth or dirt, but from its purging the conscience from sin, when accompanied with suitable disposition in the party to answer the interrogation made at that time with relation to faith, the renouncing of satan, with ail his works, and the obedience to God's commandment, 1st Pet. 4. Where there is a full remission of sin, as in baptism, there is no more occasion for a sin offering to be made for such sins already remitted, and as for sins committed afterwards, they can only be remitted in virtue of the one oblation of Christ's death. He speaks of the sin of