the pretended wisdom of men hath taken liberty to act
enmity, and to dispute against God. But truly, the rebellion and
insubjection against the truth of God is more generally practised, even by
the multitude of men though in an unfree, hidden way, how few do believe
their own desperate wickedness, though God hath testified it of man? Doth
not every one apprehend some good to remain in his nature, and some power
to good? What an impossibility is it to persuade you that all mankind are
under the sentence of eternal condemnation, that children, who have not
done good or evil, are involved in it also? Your hearts rise against such
doctrines, as if they were bloody and cruel inventions. To tell you that
many are called and few chosen, that the most part of them who profess the
truth are walking in the way to hell, and shall undoubtedly fall into it,
you may hear such things but you bless yourselves from them, and cannot be
persuaded to admit them into your minds, the hearts of men will be giving
the very lie to the God of truth, when he speaks these things in his word,
God forbid that all that be true! If we should expound the law unto you,
and show you that the least idle word, the lightest thoughts, the smallest
inward motion of the heart deserves eternal misery, that anger is murder
in God's sight, that lusting is fornication, that covetousness and love of
the world is idolatry, these things you cannot know or receive. There are
so many high imaginations in your minds, that exalt themselves against the
knowledge of God, so many thoughts that are mustered and set in battle
array against the holy truths of God, that truly no weapons of human
persuasion or instruction can be able to cast down your misapprehensions
and imaginations, or reasonings of your hearts, or able to scatter these
armies of rebellious thoughts, and bring them in captivity, (2 Cor. x. 4,
5). Man's darkened mind is a stronghold, that all the repeated and
continued beatings of the word, the multiplying "precept upon precept and
line upon line," cannot storm it to make any true light shine into it. It
is a dungeon, a pit so shut up and enclosed, no door nor window in it, so
that albeit the Son of righteousness shine upon it, and round about it,
there is no beam of that light can enter in the hearts of many thousands.
The generality are drowned as yet in a deluge of ignorance, under the very
light of daily preaching. It is a night of as thick darkness within m