ion from such a
walking in God and after Christ, you fall under a twofold contradiction,
and commit a twofold lie: first, between your profession and practice,
then in your profession itself,--your practice is directly cross to the
very general profession of Christianity. But besides that, there is a
contradiction in the bosom of your profession. You affirm you are
Christians, and yet refuse the profession of holiness. You say ye hope for
heaven, and yet do not so much as pretend to godliness and walking
spiritually. Nay, these you disjoin in your profession, which are really
one, without which the name of Christianity is an empty, vain, and
ridiculous appellation. There must be then a great darkness of
misapprehension in your minds, that you take on the name of Christians,
and will not know what it imports, and therefore in the mean time, you
profess that which destroys and annuls your former profession. Now,
certainly, this is a grosser lie, a flatter contradiction, than needs much
inquiry into, to find it out. It is so palpable, that I wonder that these
very common and received principles of truth do not use up within to
testify against it, for if ye do not own the profession of holiness and
communion with God, what advantage have you then of Christianity? Tell me,
what will it serve you for? Can it save you? Can a bare, empty,
contradicted, and blasphemed title save you? And if it do not save you, it
will make your condemnation the greater. Let this then first be settled in
our hearts, and laid down as a principle,--that the most general profession
of Christianity lays an inviolable bond and obligation upon us, to all
that is imported in the particular expressions of a Christian's nature,
walk, and society. Whether we take it so or not, thus it is: to be a
Christian infolds all that can be said, and if it do not import these, it
is not true to its own signification nor conformed to Christ's meaning.
You may deprave the world as you please, and deform that holy calling so,
as it may suit to your carriage, but according to this word, in this
acceptation of it, you shall be judged, and if your Judge shall in that
great day lay all this great charge upon you, what will it avail you now
to absolve yourselves in your imaginations, even from the very obligation
itself?

Let us suppose, then, that you are convicted of this, that Christianity,
in the most general and common acceptation, is inclusive of fellowship and
communi