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holy ends, to leave you to the buffettings of Satan: but, believe me, believe God himself, he will return with mercy and salvation, and with everlasting loving-kindness he will gather you. What though your sins are great the merit of the Redeemer's sacrifice is infinitely greater; what though the cry of them reach even to the heavens, his precious atonement surmounts them all; yea, although they are of a scarlet or crimson stain, the blood of Jesus, the Son of God, shall wash you, and make you white as wool, or the whiter snow. Satan is indeed permitted, as the accuser of the brethren, to load your consciences with heavy accusations; but yet a very little while, and the base accuser shall be cast down; Satan shall be trampled for ever under your victorious feet.

Let my friend consider the many great and precious promises which are made to the "poor in spirit, the weary and heavy laden, the captive, the brokenhearted sinner, the hungering and thirsting soul, the mourner for sin, &c." these are the names' and characters of the Redeemer's people, and all these meet together in my brother; which is to us, though not to yourself, an evident token of your adoption by grace into the elect family. Had he not loved you, he would never have put his own seal upon you; had he not chosen you to salvation, through sanctification of the Spirit, you could never thus have groaned under the depravity of your nature; and having loved you, it is with an everlasting love, a love which never can alter, but is sure to endure to the end. How can my brother sink, whilst the arm of everlasting love is underneath him? Or perish, whilst the eternal God is his refuge? O my friend! think of the above characters of the redeemed, and try if you find not some of them belonging to yourself.

He ceased here, and the sick man, with a trembling voice, replied: I thank you my dear Sir, in the most grateful manner, for your tender care for my welfare; but,alas! I can see nothing in me that looks in the least like to the character of the Redeemer's people. I see no promise in the Bible that belongs to me; for a

word of promise would be a comforting stay to my sinful soul, now in my last distress. It is true, that many times in my life, the trouble of my mind hath been. alleviated by such considerations as you propose; but now I am a dying man, ready to land upon a dark eternity, and cannot draw rational conclusions from such considerations, O eternity! eternity! nothing can make me look into eternity with pleasure, or render Death in any wise comfortable, but a sensible manifestation of my interest in the death and resurrection of Christ, the Spirit himself bearing witness with my own spirit that I belong to, and am born of God. The pain of dying is nothing when compared with the pangs of soul I fell in looking forward to a dreadful futurity. I may now say, in the language of the Psalmist," Deep calleth unto deep, at the noise of his water-spouts; all his waves and billows are gone over me; I sink in deep waters, wherein there is no standing." I know, my friends, you would have me trust in God, and apply the promises to myself; and gladly I would, but I find that I can as soon remove mountains, and cast them into the sea, as trust and believe in God with a faith of appropriation. He hideth himself from me, and how shall I discern him! O that I knew where I might find him! I would come with Job, even to his seat, and spread my complaint before. him; but, alas! he covereth himself with darkness, and will not admit of my approaches; I press forward, but cannot find him; I look back to past experience, but can see no track of his Spirit's work; I turn me to the right hand and left, but can perceive nothing at all of him. On the contrary, I am environed with devils, and my own sins, which are more dreadful to me than all the infernal tribes ; these only do separate betwixt me and the God of salvation.

I thought that here the poor man's words were a third time interrupted with the agitation of his grief, and he shed abundance of tears: his friends prayed with and for him, fervent and much distressed they seemed to be in prayer; every one imitating the conduct of the wrestling patriarch, when at Peniel.

They likewise reasoned with him concerning the immutability of divine love the infinite value of the blood of Christ, the certainty of the promises of the covenant, the wise ends which God might have in withdrawing from him in his calamity, the assurance which the scripture gives us of the Holy Spirit finishing his work in the souls of his people, and the confirmed malice of the implacable temper. They likewise expressed their hope that the Lord would yet appear for him in a way of consolation, before he would take him down into the dark valley of the shadow of death · but, if it should be otherwise, they were assured of his landing safe on the shore of felicity; but all their endeavours seemed to be fruitless, for he still persist ed in his belief that the righteous God had, in strict justice, cast him off, as unworthy of a place among

his chosen ones.

I now turned to my guide with disdain on my countenance, and thus addressed him: Ah, sir, what a wretched deceiver this man must have been in his life-time, that he is thus given up to the scourge of an evil conscience at his death! O! it is a fearful thing thus to play the hypocrite with God.

To which my guide, with some warmth, replied: I told you before, Novitio, that you must not always judge of a man's estate according to his outward appearance. This man, whom you so rashly censure, as a deceitful hypocrite, is the good Humilius: so far from being what you apprehend, that he is one of the precious sons of Zion, a faithful disciple of the Redeemer, and a special favourite of Jehovah, whose ways are in the deepest waters, and whose judgments are unsearchable. Few have equalled this venerable saint for fervour of Spirit and sanctity of life, and few have drank so deep of the heavenly Spirit of the immaculate Jesus, notwithstanding he is thus tried like silver in the furnace. Whilst health and vigour attended Humilius, he was blessed with a greater than ordinary discovery of his own sinfulness, both in the root and in the fruit; and he was one of the very few who daily grieve under a sense of the pollutions of their depraved hearts, and consequently

under a sense of the defilement and imperfections of their best services. This discovery greatly tended to lessen his comfort and joy, so that he seldom had those elevations of spirit with which some are favoured, but at the same time it had an happy tendency to make him extremely careful of all his proceedings. His conscience was affected with the slightest touch of sin, and smote him even for an unsanctified thought. He retained such a sense of sin, that he was always low and mean in his own esteem; saying with some ancient worthies," So foolish was I and ignorant, I was as a beast before thee: I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men ; and have not the understanding of a man." Contrary to the practice of many professors, he accounted himself the unworthiest of all, utterly unworthy of a place in the church of Jesus. On the other hand, his fellow Christians looked on him as a man of exemplary piety, holy, and unrebukable in his conversation in the church, and in the world; patient in tribulation, fervent and constant in prayer, desiring not his own, but the glory of God; not his own, so much as the good of the Redeemer's people.

This unexpected account of Humilius greatly amazed me, and made me more solicitous to know what might be the event.

Therefore I addressed my guide in the following manner: Venerable sir, I readily acknowledge my error, and humbly beg your pardon for my foolish censure and I pray you would signify your forgiveness, by informing me, whether it is possible for such as you have described Humilius to be cast off by the Almighty, and at last to perish. To which I thought Veratio replied: No, Novitio, it cannot possible be that such a one can perish, for there are none but the regenerated who can answer the description which I have given of the good Humilius; and any one may know, that none are regenerated, but those who are the objects of God's special love; that all those he loves with an everlasting love, he loves to the end; therefore, however dark he may be in regard to

union with, and interest in the Lord Jesus Christ, and through him in the love of God, it is not possible that he can perish. These are dark paths, Novitio, through which Humilius is led; nevertheless, they are sure paths, and lead directly to the kingdom of light and let me tell you, he is led even now by the Fountain of Light himself, notwithstanding he seems to be blind to any sense of his leader's presence. His patience under his affliction, his resignation to the divine will with respect to bodily pain, his abhorrence of himself on account of sin, and his justifying the ways of God, together with his earnest desire of forgivness and acceptance, are so many evidences of his interest in the love of God, though at present he can see none of them.

Sir, said I, permit me to ask you another question, for I am born t be troublesome. Can there be any reasons assigned, why the Lord should suffer some of his dearest saints to fall into such desertion and distress in their latest hours?

Yes, Novitio, said he, some reasons may be assigned why it should sometimes be so; but want of love in God to their persons, want of tenderness in the Redeemer, can never be justly thought to be the reasons for it; but God hath holy ends to answer by every part of his procedure, and no doubt by this dispensation also. I suppose that one end which he may propose by the troubles of good Humilius, may be, to stir up his professing people to double their diligence in the use of all appointed means, thereby to make their calling and election sure to themselves; that, when they arrive at their latest hours, they may be exempted from those spiritual conflicts with which they see others exercised.

Ah! but, sir, said I, how is it that the Lord maketh choice of those who are most eminent in holiness to endure those afflictions, which are designed for the edification and improvement of their surviving brethren ?

Veratio replied, There is no necessity, that I know of, Novitio, for you to ask a reason for the proceedings

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