SECTION III. 29 the influence ofthe dying loveand the redeemingblood of Christ, softening and melting your hearts into a sincere sorrow for sin, and holy desires to love God, and be made like him ? Has the gospel (which you yourselves profess to be so much a better spring of holiness than natural religion can furnish you with) has this gospel had its proper and powerful and sanctifying effects on your hearts and on your lives I Do you behave with só much more honour, justice and goodness amongst men, and with so much more piety toward God as your advantage re- quires ? You who have sn often the great and evangelical mo- tives of the life and love, the example, the sacrifice and the death Of Christ set before you in public worship, has your love to God and man grown fervent in proportion to such persuasives? How dreadful will your case be, if after all pretences to an evangeli- cal ministry you disgrace the gospel of Christ in this ministra- tions of it, by intemperate, immoral or irreligious lives ? If you have better helps to holiness and virtue, according to your own sentiments, than others enjoy, let your consciences never be satisfied till your heart and life be reformed and puri- fied in proportion to your professed advantages, lest you make Christ the minister cf sin, and lest the preachers of a cruci- fied Christ be exposed by your means as the licancers of un- righteousness: Again, you profess to chose such a ministry asnot only informs the minds in general of the truths and duties of christianity, but makes aparticular search and enquiry into souls and consciences, and teachss the hearers by evidences and characters drawn from the word of God to examine and judge of themselves and their own state and case: you like such preaching best as enters into the various turnings of the heart of man, and unfolds and dis- covers the subtle workings of sin in the soul, and its manifold disguises to conceal itself from the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. s ou expect to hear your ministers address themselves distinctly to persons of various characters ; to direct their discourse sometimes to the indolent and thougldess sinner, or the conceited and presumptuous. soul, in order to rouse them out of their security, and to thunder upon the sleepy consciences of men who speak a falsepeace to themselves, and , awaken them to a sight of their mistake, and their infinite peril. You expect . your ministers would sometimes enter into the particular case of convinced and awakened souls, and treat with them about their important and everlasting interests, and put them upon most earnest enquiries about the way to be saved; that we should assist them in their spiritual conflicts amidst all their budding hopes, and their blasting fears,`in all the pious and secret jea- lousies of their own hearts, their doubts and complaints, their holy desires and trembling tendencies toward God and Chris',
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