464 DIRECTIONS AND /PERSUASIONS church is composed of all through the world that have this work upon them, and therefore it is called holy. The communion of saints, is the blessed vital fellow- ship of the sanctified ones: for these -only is the resur- rection unto blessedness, and the life everlasting with the Lord of life : for all others is the resurrection of condemnation, and the everlasting punishment. But if the other two articles of our faith have been so denied by the blind, it is less wonder if this be so. Some heretics denied God to be the Creator of the world ; and because they saw so much evil in the world, they said it was made by devils or evil angels, (who indeed made the sin, but not the world.) So dealt the Jews by the Son, and the second article of our faith. The sacrifice of bulls and goats, and such beasts, was all the sacrifice for sin that they believed in. And thus deal the multitude of the ungodly by the Spirit. Indeed they know not themselves suffi- ciently to know the need and worth of sanctification. They are too whole to value the skill and care of Christ or the Holy Ghost. The insensibility of spiri- tual death and misery, and thinking too lightly of original corruption, and too well of our depraved na- ture, is both the cause of many of the heresies of the learned, and of the common contempt of Christ, and the Spirit, "and recovering grace, in all the unre- generate. For it is not possible that men should have any deeper sense of the need or worth of the remedy, than they have of the greatness of their sin and misery. O sirs, did we not come upon this great disadvan- tage to you, that we speak to dead men, that have indeed .a natural life, which loth but take pleasure in their spiritual death ; how confidently should we "expect to prevail with you all ! But while "you think lightly of your disease, we can expect no better but that you think as lightly of Christ and holiness, and all the means that tend to your recovery ; and think of the new man, as the poets fabled of the Promethean race, that it grows out of the earth (of your own poor sorry purposes and performances) like ordinary plants!
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