Vid. a discourse on this subject by Timothy Dwight, D.D. President of Yale College, printed at Newhaven, A.D. 1798.
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Comparatively None. The number will be exceedingly small—the times resemble those just before the flood, when Noah was said to stand alone. The pageantry of Romish worship may be kept up in that church, till mystical Babylon shall be destroyed, in the awful manner foretold in the Revelation; but infidelity hath long since, tipped the foundation of catholic religion, being grafted on the ruins of superstition. The absurd doctrines, and legendary tales of popery, may have been credited in the dark ages, when many of the clergy were unable to write their names, or so much as read their alphabet; but the belief of them is utterly inconsistent with the light everywhere diffused since the revival of literature.
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Tormented them. This language is remarkable. It intimates that the pains occasioned in the wicked, by the warnings of the faithful are the same, in kind, as those of the damned, and that they are often severe. This accounts for the mad joy of infidelity—for the frantic triumphs of those who have persuaded themselves that religion is a fable. It accounts for the representation here given of the conduct of an unbelieving world, when infidelity shall have become universal, and the dead body of religion lie exposed to public scorn. Such is the time here foretold—a time when the age of atheism may be vauntingly termed "the age of reason."
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Revelation xiv. 15, 20.
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Daniel viii. 18, x. 9.
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2 Corinthians xii. 4-7.
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2 Kings iv. 26.
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Ezekiel xviii. 31.
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Romans vi. 2, 11.
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Genesis vi. 3.
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