PREFACE. IT is a weight so inconceivable that dependeth on the soundness of our conversion and sanctification, that our care and diligence cannot be too great to make it sure. As the professed atheists, heathens, and infidels without ; so the self - deceiving hypocrites within the church, do wilfully cast away themselves for ever, by neglecting such a business of everlasting consequence; when they have time, and warnings, and assistance to dispatch it. Multitudes live like brutes or atheists, for- getting that they are born in sin and misery, and settled in it by wilful custom, and must be converted or con- demned. These know not (many of them) what need they have of conversion, nor what conversion or sanc- tification is. And some that have been preachers of the gospel, have been so lamentably ignorant in so great a matter, that they have persuaded the poor deluded people, it is only the gross and heinous sinners that need conversion, branding them with the name of Pu- ritans that will, not take a dead profession, joined with civility for true sanctification : and promise salvation to those that Christ hath with many asseverations pro - fessed shall not enter into the kingdom of God. Others, that confess that a thorough sanctification is a necessary thing, do delude their souls with something that is like it. Hence is the misery and dishonour of the church. Holiness itself is disgraced by the sins of them that are unholy, because they pretend to that which they have not. Hence it is that we have thousands, that call themselves Christians, that live a worldly, fleshly life, and some of them hating the way of godliness, and yet think they are converted, because they are sorry when they have sinned, and wish, when it is past, that they had not done it, and cry to God for mercy, and COD- 11 Ss
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