380 MISCELLANEOUS THOOeITS. But we christians are taught further to believe, that all men are sinners; and surely you yourself must acknowledge you have been guilty of many violations of the law of God and nature, and you have not always performed that reasonable service to God which your own conscience requires. Have you not too often bee] tempted to alienate some of those very powers of body or mind from the service of God, which you had before devoted to him as your living sacrifice ? Have your soul, your lips, and your hands been always employed in their duty to this God ? LIave you never indulged a criminal wish, never spoken an evil word, or committed an action which your own conscience condemns? Think of this, Apistus, and your conscience may tell you that you are a sinner too. We believe also, that without a sacrifice for sin, there is no acceptance- with God, and we have reason to think that God has told us so. But this God in his infinite mercy has provided such a sacrifice ; he has made the body and soul of his own Son a dying sacrifice of atonement : this is the only ground of our hope, and it is a glorious ground indeed! Now if our religion be true, what will become of Apistus, who confesses he bath been a sinner, and yet renounces at once this only hope and this atonement ? Heb. x. 26, 27, 3I. " For if we sin wilfully, that is, by renouncing the christian sacrifice, after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there resiaineth no more sacrifice for sin, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indigna- tion which shall devour the adversaries. And it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." XLIX. To Pocyon. The Mischief of warm Disputes and Declamations on the Controverted Points of Christianity. My dear P. I GAVE your last letter a joyful entertainment; methought it talked so pleasingly and so long with me, as if it meant to make amends for its tedious delay : One of the chief subjects of its discourse was the extensive design of divine love to men. I have been debating with myself, whether I should return my friend an answer to his proposed thoughts on a point so abstruse and difficult : I have not yet decided the cause for myself for want of sufficient study and thoughtfulness, though-you know I have been no stranger to diligence in academical studies these several years past: It seems to require larger time, and a vast and more comprehensive survey of things, in order to fix my opinions in these controversies, or pronounce any thing certain in doctrines so much disputed ; unless it please God himself by a divine ray to strike a powerful light upon any particular' truth, and convey it in that light to the understanding and the conscience
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