helping the sinner to confess his sins, and feel the misery that is hid under them, helps him to an art of hiding, nay, of defending them. For that which the lusts and passions do, contrary to the wisdom from above, is proved to be right reason, - by this wisdom from below, whose greatest skill is shewn in keeping all the powers and passions. of the natural man in peace and prosperity; and so the poor blinded sinner lives and dies in a total ignorance of all that light, blessing, and salvation, which could only be had by a broken and contrite heart. For (N. B.) with respect to conscience, this is the chief office of worldly wisdom; it is to keep all things quiet in the old man, that whether busied in things spiritual or temporal, he may keep up the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, without any disturbance from religious phantoms, and dreams of mystic idiots; who, for want of sober sense, and sound learning, think that Christ really meant what he said in these words, "Except a man be born again of the Spirit," or from above," he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." For this wisdom, come to his highest perfection, is a classic moral painter, which though it cannot alter the nature, yet can change the colours of every thing: it can give to the most heavenly virtue, such an outward form and colour, as will force the stoutest of aged and learned men to run away from it; and to a

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vice of the greatest deformity, it can pencil such charming features, as will make every child of this world wish to live and die with it. Its next perfection is that of a flattering orator, who has praise and dispraise at his own free disposal; for as they are all of his own making, so he can dispose them on whom and on what he will; not only as outward interesting occasions call for them, but also as the inward necessities, the ups and downs of his own poor self, want them. For self, however willing to be always strong, has its weak hours, and would be ever tottering, unless this elbow-crator kept him every day (though perhaps not every night) free from the disturbing whispers of - a seed of God in his soul. Now join (if you please) learning and religion, to act in fellowship with this worldly-wisdom, and make their best of it; and then you will have a depravity of craft and subtilty, as high as flesh and blood can carry it; which will bring forth a glittering Pharisee, with a hardness of heart greater than that of the sinner publican.

"Demas," says St. Paul, "hath forsaken me, having loved this present world." Here you see all the good and blessing that is inseparable from the wisdom of this world, it always does the same thing, and has the same effect, wherever it is; it will do to high and low, learned or unlearned, clergy or laity, that same unavoidably, which it did to

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inen are turned from the power of Satan unto God. God is only another name for the highest and only good; and the highest and only good means nothing else but LOVE, with all its works. Satan is only another name for the whole and all of evil; and the whole of evil is nothing else but its whole contrariety to love. And the sum total of all contrariety to love, is contained in pride, wrath, strife, self, envy, hatred, revenge, mischief, and murder. Look at these, with all their fruits that belong to them, and then you see all the princely power that Satan is and has in this fallen world.

Would you see when and where the kingdoms of this fallen world are become a kingdom of God? the gospel-prophet tells you, that it is then and there where all enmity ceases. "The wolf," says he, shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard 'shall lie down with the kid; the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling, together, and a little child shall lead them; the cow and the bear shall feed, and their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw, like the ox. The sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice's den. For (N. B.) they shall not HURT or DESTROY in all my holy mountain;" that is, through all holy Christendom. Isa. xi. 6.

See here a kingdom of God on the earth, it is

nothing else but a kingdom of mere love, where all HURT and DESTROYING is done away, and every work of enmity changed into one united power of heavenly love. But observe again and again, whence comes this to pass, that God's kingdom on earth is and can be nothing else but the power of reigning love? the prophet tells you it is because, in the day of his kingdom, "the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." Therefore, O Christendom, thy wars are thy certain proof, that thou art all over as full of an ignorance of God, as the waters cover the sea.

As to the present fallen state of universal Christendom, working under the spirit and power of the great fiery dragon, it is not my intention, in any thing I am here upon, to shew how any part of it can subsist, or preserve itself from being devoured by every other part, but by its own dragon wea

pons.

But the Christendom which I mean, that neither wants nor allows of war, is only that where Christ is king, and his Holy Spirit the only governor of the wills, affections, and designs of all that belong to it. It is my complaint against, and charge upon, all the nations of Christendom, that this necessity of murdering arms is the dragon's monster, that is equally brought forth by all and every part of fallen Christendom; and that there

fore all and every part, as well Popish as Protest. ant, are at one and the same distance from the Spirit of their Lord and Savicur, the Lamb of God, and therefore all want one and the same entire reformation.

In these last ages of fallen Christendom, many reformations have taken place; but, alas! truth must be forced to say, that they have been, in all their variety, little better than so many run-away births of one and the same mother, so many lesser Babels come out of Babylon the great. For among all the reformers, the one only true reformation has never yet been thought of.. A change of place, of governors, of opinions, together with new-formed outward models, is all the refor mation that has yet been attempted.

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The wisdom of this world, with its worldly spirit, was the only thing that had overcome the church, and had carried it into captivity; for in captivity it certainly is, as soon as it is turned into a kingdom of this world; and a kingdom of this world it certainly is, as soon as worldly wisdom has its power in it. Not a false doctrine, not a bad discipline, not an usurped power, or corrupt practice, ever has prevailed or does prevail in the church, but has had its whole birth and growth. from worldly wisdom.

This wisdom was the great evil root at which the reforming axe should have been laid, and must