to be saved, taking the
Scriptures to be of divine authority!' And I stand here, on this divine
authority, to prove that the unbeliever is the more likely to be saved:
that unbelief, and not belief, is the safe side, and that a man is more
likely to be damned for believing the gospel, and because of his having
believed it, than for rejecting and despising it, as I do.... But, if a
patient hearing be more than good Christians be minded to give us, when
thus advance to meet them on their own ground, their impatience and
intolerance itself will supply the evidence and demonstration of the
fact, that, after all, they dare not stand to the text of their own
book, that it is not the Bible that they go by, nor God whom they
regard: but that they want to be God-a'-mighties themselves, and would
have us take their words for God's words; you must read it as they read
it, and understand it as they understand it: you must 'skip, and go on,'
just where a hard word comes in the way of the sense they choose to put
upon it: you must believe what the book contains, what you see with your
own eyes that it does not contain: you must shut your eyes, and not see
what it does contain; or you'll be none the nearer the mark of their
liking.... Taking the authority of Scripture, for this argument's sake,
to be decisive, I address the believer who would give himself airs of
superiority, would chuckle in an imaginary safety in believing, and
presume to threaten the unbeliever as being in a worse case, or more
dangerous plight, than he. 'Hast thou no fears for thy presumptuous
self?' when on the showing of thine own book, the safety (if safety
there be) is all on the unbelieving side? When for any one text that can
be produced, seeming to hold out any advantage or safety in believing,
we can produce two in which the better hope is held out to the
unbeliever? For any one apparent exhortation to believe, we can produce
two forbiddances to believe, and many threaten-ings of God's vengeance
to, and for the crime and folly of, believing. To this proof I proceed,
by showing you:--1st. What the denunciations of God's vengeance are:
with no comment of mine, but in the words of the text itself. 2d. That
these dreadful denunciations are threatened to believers: and that they
are not threatened to unbelievers. And 3d. That all possible advantages
and safety, which believing could confer on any man, are likely, and
more likely to be conferred on the unbeliever