soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, Tit. ii. 11, 12. God works in the elect to will and to do of his own good pleasure. There is no obedience without grace, no fruits without the Spirit, no good works without faith, no honest labours without love. The obedience of bond-children is like this author's book, nothing but the pride and arrogance of a fleshly mind, vainly puffed up: spurting his free thoughts at his Maker's sovereign decree, and exalting his own free-agency; talking about grace, while he is veiled under the law; boasting of doing what God requires, while destitute of the Spirit; cannot think a good thought, and is an utter stranger to the plague of his own heart; contending for the redemption of the world, while his conscience is gasping for the atonement; confess one doctrine, and preach another; talk of preaching the elect out of their own meeting, and styling himself a friend to all mankind. Does grace teach any thing like this? Is this duty? Is this gospel obedience?

Grace and duty, promise and precept, are inseparably connected in the salvation of God's elect: the Spirit is given, and the promise too; and they shall remain in the saints for ever. The law is written upon the tables of their heart by the Spirit of the living God. God puts his fear within them, causes them to walk in his statutes, to keep his judgments and do them. But as for men that are given up to trust in their free-agency, and to

mutter their evil thoughts against the Lord; they are strangers to the covenant of promise; they are under the law, and know nothing but of the conditional promises thereof, which secures nothing to their souls but pride and boasting: "The strength of sin is the law." Such men break the commandments all the day long: they hate the elect. Christ says, his people shall be hated of all men for his name's sake. Such are murderers, John says; and if they offend in one point, they are guilty of all: they nurse that enmity that God has put between them and the saints.

We know God's attributes are never opposed ' in his word:' they are revealed there: they harmonize in the Saviour as revealed there; and they shine there and that of divine sovereignty appears first, and shines in all the rest; which this free-thinker has taken care to leave out of his assemblage, in order that poor, depraved, ensnared, captivated, and fettered free-agency may shine in all her brilliant lustre, and in all the dazzling rays of an insignificant glow-worm.

If it be granted, that some imagine they are elected, while they indulge sin, and deceive 'themselves,' they are then on as good a footing as Mr. Skinner. To trust in election, while destitute of the faith of God's elect, is nearly the same as trusting in universal redemption, while a stranger to the application of the atonement: both trust in vanity; one in a false heart, and the other in a

false doctrine: the scriptures call the former a fool, Prov. xxviii. 26; and the latter a liar, Rev. ii. 2.

Mr. Skinner concludes his Pamphlet with a flourish To the mercy of God in Christ this free agent is indebted; and to whom he hopes to attribute all the praise of his salvation, when the mists of error, which now shade the universe, shall be dispersed by the refulgent beams of endless day. I answer: Indebted to sparing mercy he is, because he is yet alive; therefore God has not dealt with him according to his sinful thoughts. All the universe is not shaded with the mists of error, though free-agency has blinded his eyes. As for salvation, he knows nothing about it by the forgiveness of his sins; because out of his heart proceed evil thoughts.

I shall conclude also; and submit this answer to the decision of the great day: when all hearts shall be open, and their deepest recesses known: when the mystery of iniquity shall be revealed, free-agency shall be wounded out of the house of the wicked, and their sandy foundation be discovered even to the neck: when the self-justifier shall be unmasked, and placed at the rear of publicans and harlots: when the mean man shall be brought low, the haughty humbled, and the mouth of them that speak lies be stopped: when freethinkers shall be holden with the cords of their sins; the universalists be condemned with the

world; the proud helper stoop to the iron rod; the able performer shall be unable to deliver his soul, or the false prophet to say, there is not a lie in my right hand: Then shall mystical Babel be razed, and her builders be confounded, routed, and ruined: Then-then shall the elect, gathered from all winds, shine forth as the sun, see as they are seen, and know as they are known. They shall blaze in electing love, exult in divine joys, shine in everlasting light, solace in endless pleasure, and hymn particular redemption, till self-existing divinity can fail, and eternity find a period.

END OF THE SEVENTH VOLUME.

T. Bensley, Printer,

Bolt Court, Fleet Street, London.