Section 10.

SECTION 10.

An address to baptized heathens.

HERE I would take leave of my readers; but they have consciences as well as reason, and therefore I beg leave to address the former of those powers, as bluntly as I have done the latter; diversifying my expostulations according to the different cases of the persons, into whose hands Providence may direct these sheets.

1. If you do not make the bulk of my readers, I fear you make the bulk of the nation, O ye that regard pleasure, profit, and honour, more than justice, mercy, and the fear of God; ye that, far from embracing Divine truth at the hazard of your character, spread abroad scandalous untruths, to the ruin of other people’s reputations: ye who try to persuade yourselves, that religion is nothing but a monstrous compound of superstition, enthusiasm, and priestcraft: ye who can violate the laws of temperance or honesty without one painful remorse; breaking through promises, oaths, and matrimonial or sacramental engagements, as if there were no future state, no supreme Judge, no day of retribution, no Divine law enacting that “whosoever loveth or maketh a lie shall be cast into the lake of fire; that the wicked shall be turned into hell, with all the people that forget God:” ye are the persons that I beg leave to call baptized heathens. Baptismal water was applied to your bodies, as a figure of the grace which purifies believing souls. Ye received, and continue to bear, a Christian name, that binds upon you the strongest obligations you can possibly be under, to partake of Christ’s holiness, and to lead a sober, Christian life: but how opposite is your conduct to that of Christ! Alas! conscientious heathens would disown you; and shall God own you? Shall the Searcher of hearts forgive your immorality, in consideration of your hypocrisy? Will you live and die with such a lie in your right hand and upon your forehead? God forbid! If you have not sold yourselves to the father of deceits for ever, pay yet some attention to natural, moral, and evangelical truths. They recommend themselves to your senses, your reason, and your conscience.

1. Regard natural truths. Earthly joys vanish like dreams. Life flies like an arrow. Your friends or neighbours are daily seized by sickness, and dragged into eternity. Death comes to terminate, your delusions, and set his black seal upon your false lips, your wanton eyes, your rapacious hands, your luxurious palates, your sinful, treacherous breasts. Ere long the king of terrors will screw you down in his hard couch, a coffin: he will convey you away in his black carriage, a hearse: he will confine you to his loathsome dungeon, a grave; and there he will keep you in chains of darkness and corruption, till the trump of God summon you to judgment.

2. And say not that the doctrine of a day of judgment is a fable. If you do, I appeal to moral truths. Is there not an essential difference between truth and falsehood, between mercy and cruelty, between honesty and villany? Have you, with all the pains you have taken about it, been able to erase from your breasts the law of truth and mercy, which the righteous God has deeply engraven there? Is there not something within you, that, bad as you are, forbids you to wish your father dead, that you may have his estate; and your wife poisoned, that you may marry the woman you love? If you say that these are only prejudices of education; I ask, How come these prejudices to be universal? Why are they the same, even where the methods of education are most contrary? Why do they reign in the very countries where there are neither magistrates nor priests; and where of course politics and priestcraft never bore the sway? If your consciences would condemn you for the above-mentioned crimes; how much more will God do it, who is the Author and Judge of your consciences? Does not your good sense tell you, that so sure as the wonderful machine of this world did not make, and does not preserve itself, there is a God who made and preserves it? And that this God is possessed of ten thousand times more truth, equity, impartiality, justice, and power, than all the righteous rulers in the world were ever endued with? And, to say nothing of the gracious checks and sad forebodings of your guilty consciences, does not your reason discover, that as certainly as this great God is possessed of infinite wisdom, power, and justice; and has given us a moral law, he will call us to an account for our breaches of it; and that, as he does not in general do it in this world, he will infallibly do it in a future state?

3. If reason and conscience thus lead you to religion; regard religious truths. They are supported by so great a variety of well attested facts, by such clouds of righteous witnesses, by so many astonishing miracles and accomplished prophecies’ they so perfectly agree with the glory of our Creator, the interests of mankind, the laws of our nature, and the native desire we have for immortality: they so exactly coincide with our present, as well as future happiness, that you cannot expose your unreasonableness more, and do yourselves greater injury, than by rejecting them. What reasonable objection can you make to these Scriptural directions? “Cease to do evil. Learn to do good. Speak the truth in love. Return to the Lord. Call upon his name.” Say, “Grant to us in this world the knowledge of thy truth, and in the world to come life everlasting.” Confess yourselves sinners, great sinners: spread this melancholy truth before the throne of Divine mercy; — spread it with tears of undissembled repentance: “Except you repent, you shall all perish:” but if you “sow in tears, you shall reap in joy.”

And suppose not that I want to drive you to despair. On the contrary, I declare that, dangerous as your case is, it is not absolutely desperate. The Gospel offers you a remedy. You have dealt with lying shadows, but you may yet embrace the eternal substance. You have wounded the truth; but Christ, from whom you have the name of Christian, — Christ, who says, “I am the truth,” has been wounded for you. You have crucified revealed truth, and the Prince of life has been crucified in your place. I point you to his cross, and declare, in the name of unprejudiced reason, that few histories are supported by such a variety of indisputable evidences as the wonders that redeeming love wrought on Calvary for you.

Let not the scandalous falls of apostates, and the bad lives of hypocritical Christians, frighten you from the Gospel. Immoral and unloving men, high as their pretensions to faith may be, are no more Christians than you. Suffer not the disputes of professors to keep you in infidelity; for they prove the truth, and not the falsehood of Christianity; being expressly foretold, Acts 20:30; 1 Corinthians 11:19; Jude 1:4; 1 Timothy 4:1. Nor stupidly wonder that the serpent should most spitefully bruise the heel of the truth that most powerfully bruises his head. Above all, be candid; be inquisitive; apply to the “Father of lights” for direction; and his invisible hand will conduct you over every rock of offence, and lead you to the sure foundation, “the Rock of ages, the truth as it is in Jesus.” How near is that truth to you! It always embraces mercy, and mercy now embraces you. O! the length and breadth, the depth and height of redeeming mercy! It spares you to believe, to repent, to live. The arms of Divine patience still encircle your guilty souls, and bear up your mortal bodies above the terrors of the grave. Crying as your sins are, the cries of your Saviour’s blood are yet heard above them. Provoking as your unbelief is, it has not yet provoked God to set upon you the seal of absolute reprobation. Unspotted holiness, glorious majesty, flaming power, thundering justice, weeping mercy, bleeding love; — all the Divine attributes join yet in a concert of grace and truth. You are the objects of it; and the burthen of their terrifying, melting accents is, “Turn ye, turn ye: why will ye die, O house of Israel?” Why should “iniquity be your ruin? Turn! for I have redeemed you. Turn! and the second death shall have no power over you.” Turn! and you “shall have a crown of life.” Thus, my dear fellow sinners, and far more earnestly than I can describe, mercy and truth exert themselves in your behalf; waiting only for your consent, to diffuse their Divine perfumes through your convened souls. This is “the day of God’s power” — your Gospel day. This is “a day of salvation,” a day of spiritual jubilee, a day of “the year of release.” Know it: improve it: break your bonds, claim your liberty: change your service: scorn to be the devil’s drudges: become the servants of the Most High. Regard neither the husks nor the grunts of the swine: the heavenly feast is before you: the Father of the prodigal son runs to meet, to forgive, to welcome, to embrace you; and to raise your doubting hearts, he bids me impress these gracious promises upon your yielding breasts: “When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness, and does that which is lawful and right, [and what is more lawful and right for sinners, than to repent, believe, and obey the Gospel?] he shall save his soul alive. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, for he is merciful; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”