therefore have not directly countenanced it, is freely acknowledged. But that some who rank among the Calvinistic party have had recourse to it, will immediately be proved; and looking to the approval by persons who are held in considerable repute as Calvinistic divines of one publication, at least, in which it is broadly asserted, I cannot help suspecting, that many more are secretly pleased both with it, and with the employment of it, than would openly choose to avow that they are so.

The present work has for its object to vindicate the grand scriptural and protestant doctrine of the assurance of faith against all classes and descriptions of opponents. But it will be found more particularly to have a reference to the sentiments of those who, under pretence of favouring and supporting the doctrine, are at bottom its bitterest and deadliest foes. I intend shewing that the absolute and infallible certainty of God's love to ourselves personally, and of our own personal enjoyment of everlasting life, is not merely a privilege which, as believers of the gospel and justified persons, we may enjoy, but that it is a privilege which, as believers of the gospel and justified persons, we all of us actually do enjoy. As necessarily implied in this, it will be shewn that every one who labours under doubts and fears concerning God's love to himself personally, does not believe the gospel and is not justified. One subject intimately connected with the doctrine of the assurance of faith will likewise be treated of. I mean the fate of the family of man considered as a whole. Concerning

scarcely any other topic do the minds of such even as are Christians appear to be less informed than this, and therefore concerning scarcely any other topic do they appear more decidedly to stand in need of scriptural instruction. The fact is, that in regard to this topic the minds of Protestants now, are not one whit more advanced than the minds of their forefathers were at the period of the reformation. Besides, although, as shall afterwards be shewn, a man may believe the gospel, and thereby have the certain knowledge of what he himself personally and his fellow believers afterwards shall be, while his views concerning the ultimate fate of mankind in general may be exceedingly vague, obscure, and unsatisfactory; yet, as shall be shewn likewise, it is only by understanding upon scriptural principles what shall be the fate of all, that his privileges as a believer, and the value of the assurance of faith as a means to an end, can by him be thoroughly appreciated. A man may be a Christian who knows not distinctly what shall be the ultimate destiny of all—but no man can possess enlarged and enlightened views of Christianity—no man can understand the scriptures as a whole-by whom the paradox of the human race being everlastingly punished, and yet being through Christ Jesus raised to the enjoyment of everlasting life, is not comprehended.

In asserting the doctrine of the assurance of faith it is melancholy to think that I shall have to encounter the opposition, not merely of the irreligious, but also of the religious portion of the community. That the former

should oppose me is not to be wondered at. The sceptic who avowedly pays no regard to the authority of revelation, and considers the whole of the prophetical and apostolical writings to be one mass of cunningly devised fables, having nothing to substitute for the sacred volume, consistently enough with his own principles, scoffs at the idea of its being in the power of any man to discover, without the possibility of being mistaken, what shall be his own state and circumstances hereafter. But that those who profess to receive the scriptures as a divinely inspired record, should make common cause, and join in an unholy alliance with avowed infidels in this matter, this-this indeed is distressing. Is it possible that religious characters, especially "the serious" and "the evangelical," can be so blind and infatuated as not to be aware of what they are doing? When they make it their constant practice to speak of their own personal destiny hereafter as being to themselves a matter of uncertainty, and to run down as chargeable with arrant presumption those who profess to have received from the scriptures complete satisfaction as to their own personal and everlasting happiness, does it never occur to them that they are using the language, sanctioning the principles, and playing the game into the hands of the open and inveterate enemies of Christianity? A moment's reflection, surely, is all that is required to convince even the dullest among them of the truth of this. Is it not avowed, nay, gloried in by the sceptic, that notwithstanding all his investigations into the Book of Nature, he finds himself in a state of

doubt and uncertainty with respect to his own future destiny? And if, according to almost all those who pay the bible the compliment of representing it to be the Book of God, it has not been able to raise them above a state of doubt and uncertainty with respect to their own future destiny likewise, wherein, pray, even by their own shewing, consists the superiority of the Bible over the book of nature? If in abandoning open and undisguised scepticism, for what is commonly called a profession of Christianity, I am to be left as much in the dark as ever respecting my own fate hereafter, what real reason can be assigned to me why I should not continue honestly to avow myself a sceptic? If the sceptic and the Christian are both doubtful and uncertain with respect to futurity, what real difference is there between scepticism and Christianity, and what real reason is there for my preferring the one to the other? Alas, alas, little are our religionists aware of the slur which they bring upon the Christian cause by representing the gospel of Jesus as leaving the mind in rẻgard to futurity exactly where it finds it. Is there no way of rousing such characters from their lethargy? Is there no way of convincing them of the folly-the egregious folly of their procedure? One moment professing that there is nothing they have so much at heart as to be able to know for certain what they shall be when emancipated from these bodies of flesh and blood -and yet the next, sitting down contented with that bare possibility of future happiness, which they share in common with the veriest sceptic! And this they call

Christianity! To shew that, while human statements and reasonings on the subject of religion leave the mind always doubtful, and generally uneasy in the prospect of eternity, it is the grand, the necessary, the distinguishing prerogative of the word of God, whenever believed in, to cast out of the mind all fears respecting our future state, and, by imparting to us the absolute and infallible certainty of everlasting happiness, to inspire us with joy that is unspeakable and full of glory, has been my chief object in undertaking and persevering in this present essay. Happy shall I be, if, as the consequence of perusing it, any, nay even a single one out of the number of my readers shall find himself set free from the distressing thraldom of doubts and fears. The priestly tribe, I am well aware, will not thank me for my labours; and, indeed, when I consider that the doctrine of man's being necessarily more or less uncertain respecting his future state and prospects, is the principal foundation of their ghostly influence, it is rather too much to expect that they should do so; but, surely it is not impossible that the opposition of some of them even may be overcome, and that in our own day we may witness a repetition of that rarest and most astonishing of all the miracles of the Primitive Church, a great company of the Priests obedient to the faith. Acts vi. 7.

Had the adversaries of the doctrine of the assurance of faith restricted themselves in their opposition to it, to the use of what might fairly have been deemed legitimate arguments, I should at once have proceeded to shew, that See the quotation from Turretin, at page 9. C