50. Oh! no longer shut your eyes against the light. Know you have a name that you live, but are dead. Your soul is utterly dead in sin; dead in pride, in vanity, in self-will, in sensuality, in love of the world. You are utterly dead to God. There is no intercourse between your soul and God. You have neither seen him (by faith, as our Lord witnessed against them of old time) nor heard his voice at any time. You have no spiritual senses exercised to discern spiritual good and evil. You are angry at infidels, and are all the while as mere an infidel before God as they. You have eyes that see not, and ears that hear not. You have a callous, unfeeling heart.
51. Bear with me a little longer: my soul is distrest for you. The God of this world hath blinded your eyes, and you are seeking death in the error of your life. Because you do not commit gross sin, because you give alms, and go to the church and sacrament, you imagine that you are serving God; yet in very deed you are serving the devil. For you are doing still your own will, not the will of God your Saviour. You are pleasing yourself in all you do. Pride, vanity, and self-will, (the genuine fruits of an earthly, sensual, devilish heart) pollute all your words and actions. You are in darkness, in the shadow of death. Oh! That God would say to you in thunder, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.
52. But blessed be God! He hath not yet left himself without witness!
“All are not lost! There be, who faith prefer,
Tho’ few, and piety to God!”
Who know the power of faith, and are no strangers to that inward, vital religion, the mind that was in Christ, righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. Of you who have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, I would be glad to learn if we have erred from the faith, or walked contrary to the truth as it is in Jesus. Let the righteous smite me friendly, and reprove me; if haply that which is amiss may be done away, and what is wanting supplied, till we all come to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.
53. Perhaps the first thing that now occurs to your mind, relates to the doctrine which we teach. You have heard, that we say, “Men may live without sin.” And have you not heard that the scripture says the same? (We mean without committing sin.) Does not St. Paul say plainly, that those who believe, do not continue in sin?——That they cannot live any longer therein? Romans vi. 1, 2. Does not St. Peter say, He that hath suffered in the flesh, hath ceased from sin?——that he no longer should live——to the desires of men, but to the will of God, 1 Peter iv. 1, 2. And does not St. John say expressly, He that committeth sin is of the devil.—For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God, doth not commit sin: for his seed remaineth in him, and he cannot commit sin, because he is born of God, 1 John iii. 8. &c. And again, We know that whatsoever is born of God sinneth not, chapter v. 18.
54. You see then, it is not we that say this, but the Lord. These are not our words, but his, And who is he that replieth against God? Who is able to make God a liar? Surely he will be justified in his saying, and clear when he is judged! Can you deny it? Have you not often felt a secret check, when you was contradicting this great truth? And how often have you wished for what you was taught to deny? Nay, can you help wishing for it at this moment? Do you not now earnestly desire, to cease from sin? To commit it no more? Does not your soul pant after this glorious liberty of the sons of God? And what strong reason have you to expect it? Have you not had a foretaste of it already? Do you not remember the time when God first lifted up the light of his countenance upon you? Can it ever be forgotten? The day when the candle of the Lord first shone upon your head?
“Butter and honey did you eat,
And lifted up on high,