r affections towards him languid and lukewarm, little proportioned to
what they, who at such a price have been rescued from ruin, and endowed
with a title to eternal glory, might be justly expected to feel towards
the Author of their deliverance; little proportioned to what has been
felt by others, ransomed from the same ruin, and partakers of the same
inheritance: if this, let it be repeated, be indeed so, let us not shut
our eyes against the perception of our real state; but rather endeavour
to trace the evil to its source. We are loudly called on to _examine
well our foundations_. If any thing be _there_ unsound and hollow, the
superstructure could not be safe, though its exterior were less
suspicious. Let the question then be asked, and let the answer be
returned with all the consideration and solemnity which a question so
important may justly demand, whether, in the grand concern of all, _the
means of a sinner's acceptance with God_, there be not reason to
apprehend, that the nominal Christians whom we have been addressing, too
generally entertain very superficial, and confused, and (to speak in the
softest terms) highly dangerous notions? Is there not cause to fear,
that with little more than an indistinct and nominal reference to Him
who "bore our sins in his own body on the tree," they really rest their
eternal hopes on a vague, general persuasion of the unqualified mercy of
the Supreme Being; or that, still more erroneously, they rely in the
main, on their own negative or positive merits? "They can look upon
their lives with an impartial eye, and congratulate themselves on their
inoffensiveness in society; on their having been exempt, at least, from
any gross vice, or if sometimes accidentally betrayed into it, on its
never having been indulged habitually; or if not even so" (for there are
but few who can say this, if the term vice be explained according to the
strict requisitions of the Gospel) "yet on the balance being in their
favour, or on the whole, not much against them, when their good and bad
actions are fairly weighed, and due allowance is made for human
frailty." These considerations are sufficient for the most part to
compose their apprehensions; these are the cordials which they find most
at hand in the moments of serious thought, or of occasional dejection;
and sometimes perhaps in seasons of less than ordinary self-complacency,
they call in also to their aid the general persuasion of the unbounded
m