igence to make their calling and election sure, idle all the day, so
that no persuasion can induce them to engage seriously to fall about a
working out their own salvation in fear and trembling; and, on the
other, equally diligent and industrious to divert men from trusting in
the name of the Lord, and staying upon their God; setting them on work
to go and gather fuel, and kindle a fire, and compass themselves about
with sparks, that they may walk in the light of their own fire, and in
the sparks that they have kindled, knowing well that they shall this way
most certainly lose their toil and travel, and have no other reward at
his hand of all their labour, but to lie down in everlasting sorrow,
while the stout-hearted and far from righteousness and salvation, shall
get their soul for a prey, and be made to rejoice in his salvation, and
bless him who hath made them meet to be partakers of the inheritance of
the saints in light.

I am neither the fit person for so great an undertaking, nor do these
limits, within which I must bound myself, permit me to expatiate in many
notions about the nature of this excellent and precious thing, true
gospel holiness. Oh! if, in the entry, I could on my own behalf and
others, sob out my alas! from the bottom of my soul, because, be what it
will, it is some other thing than men take it to be. Few habituate
themselves to a thinking upon it, in its high nature, and soul enriching
advantages, till their hearts receive suitable impressions of it, and
their lives be the very transumpt of the law of God written in their
heart; the thing, alas! is lost in a noise of words, and heap of notions
about it; neither is it a wonder that men fall into mistakes about it,
since it is only the heart possessed of it that is capable to understand
and perceive its true excellency. But if it be asked what it is; we say,
it may be shortly taken up, as the elevation and raising up of a poor
mortal unto a conformity with God. As a participation of the divine
nature, or as the very image of God stamped on the soul, impressed on
the thoughts and affections, and expressed in the life and conversation;
so that the man in whom Christ is formed, and in whom he dwells, lives,
and walks, hath while upon the earth, a conversation in heaven; not only
in opposition to those many, whose end is destruction, whose god is
their belly, whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things; but
also to those pretenders unto and