the poor Christian is he himself?

Inasmuch as ye did it Would these infidels re

to one of these, ye did it to me.' duce us again to that sort of friendship, which both before, and in our Saviour's time, had been attended with the most horrible consequences? How loud would have been the cry of infidels against his religion, had he but seemed to open a door for such friendships, as they were then called?

Was it because the Christian covenant or vow does not make brethren of us all; does not oblige us to every act of kindness towards all men, particularly towards all our fellow-members in Christ Jesus; does not prompt us to mutual and universal love by motives sufficiently inducing; does not form us into a society of any importance to our happiness, nor give that society such a head, or such laws, ordinances, and constitutions, as are able to govern it wisely, and establish it firmly; that numbers of men (for women are excluded) associate for mutual aid and comfort, in the freemason club? Can they anew bind themselves by repeated oaths to the same brotherly beneficence, already provided by the Christian vow, without disowning that vow as obligatory? Or have they found out some new ends of thus uniting, forgotten by the gospel, which are of moment enough to justify the use of three or four other vows, not a little prolix? Or do they think themselves at liberty to prostitute the solemnity of a vow to matters of small importance, or to abuse it by an application to matters not foreign only, but inconsistent with the matter of their prior vow ratified in baptism? Are these vows justifiably applied to a secrecy in things too nugatory to be published, or in things, which if published, might be of use to all mankind? What sort of utility is it, that women, one half of the species, must not share in; or that all other men, but the initiated, must be forbidden to partake of? Have these brothers bespoke a building (for they speak of themselves as builders and architects) in heaven, accommodated to the assemblage of a lodge, when the host of heaven may be excluded, and the eye of God shut out? How shall they manage in eternal daylight, to whose assemblies night and darkness are made absolutely necessary? There are no nocturnal doings in the kingdom of Christ who is the light, whether we consider that kingdom as commencing in

this life or perfected in the next. Christ, our head and representative, loved all men, died for all men, and prescribed his spirit of love and charity as the distinguishing sign and characteristic of his followers, towards all men, not in this or that particular act of beneficence, but in all acts of beneficence, in every proof or fruit of a kind heart towards every image of God. We cannot be members of his body, if not governed by the mind of him our head. But they are not governed by the mind or will of this head, who bound their charity, and appropriate it to a select number, especially by a vow, in any degree warmer or stronger, than to the other members of Christ, who stand equally in need of their assistance. This narrow-hearted detachment of love forms a most unsightly wen on the body of Christ, or rather an unnatural extravasation of its vital blood and spirit on its very heart. Long before the present king of Prussia abolished freemasonry out of his dominions, I thought it an association detrimental, and on some conjectures, dangerous to civil government. It sets up imperium in imperio. It is a solemn league and covenant under the sanction of more oaths than one, whereby a numerous and formidable body of men are bound together for ends and purposesWhat ends and purposes? It seems these are not to be known, or but in part. Why not wholly? So far as they are known, they are either nugatory or derogatory to true religion, which is the sole basis of civil society. However, it can hardly be supposed that so many persons some of them otherwise of good understanding, should be so solemnly sworn together and governed by a grand lodge in the capital, for nothing than mere puerilities, or ends much better already provided for by the church of Christ and the laws of our country. Let the state look to it. For my own part, I have frequently known this benevolent fraternity get drunk after the wise business of the lodge was over, commit horrible outrages on one another, and still more frequently join in acts of enormous villany, oppression, and cruelty against the non-initiated. Nay I have seen a freemason culprit, with the cast of a sign or two, turn the judge and jury from the due course of law and justice, directly against the clearest evidence, and against the dictates of their own consciences, if they had any consciences but

those of freemasons. This is no news to the public. Thousands can join me in this report, and would as openly make it, as I do, were they not terrified with the thoughts of irritating so large a body of men. Blessed be God, I am not, and do say these things from motives of piety and humanity, hoping for protection from my Master, or willing to suffer in his cause; and not without reason to believe, that the worthy nobility and gentry, thus unfortunately associated by curiosity at first, and now by oaths, which perhaps it is sinful to keep, may on these remonstrances, either quit the fraternity, or suffer it no longer to be extended to the illiberal and barbarous part of mankind, at random.

130. Some men exhaust their understandings on a multiplicity of trifles, and are much at a loss in matters of moment. A man at sea in a storm, sensible that he is soon to perish, with all on board, is little or not at all concerned about the cash or goods he may have embarked. Yet this man, should he escape, shall be more anxious, when at land, about his worldly substance, than about his present and future happiness, which consists not in the abundance of the things he possesses, purely because he now thinks he may live awhile longer here, and almost forgets that eternity and heaven, to which life and riches bear no proportion, are before him. This man hath lost his senses, and knows not that men die at land as well as at sea, and that he himself shall die in a moment, for the longest life is but a moment, or less than a moment, to eternity. Ere he can recover the use of his reason he must be again on shipboard in a storm.

131. How came it to pass, saith the infidel, that, if Christ wrought so many miracles openly in the sight of multitudes, all mankind did not flock in to him? So many evident proofs of a divine power, especially shewn in healing the sick, raising the dead, and other acts as demonstrative of infinite goodness, seem irresistible. Christ himself complains of the Jews for their unbelief under these causes of conviction; and even believers are surprised at it. The infidel does not put this question because he is sure he would have believed, had he seen all the miracles, but to insinuate an improbability that any miracles were really wrought.

But this man should know, that it is one thing to astonish, and another to convince; one thing to convince a mind under no contrary biasses, and another to convince when such are strongly rooted; one thing to convince the judgment, and quite another to convert the heart. He does not at all conceive how the heart can possibly be concerned in conviction or faith, though his own heart hath ten thousand times prevailed with him to act against his convictions; that his head and heart are closely connected by his natural make; and that he never acts with vigour, on mere conviction, when it is not seconded by the warmth of his affections or passions. How many people are there, who, in matters of curiosity and wonder, stop at that which astonishes, and make none, or very slight reflections on the causes or end of that which strikes them with surprise? But is this infidel sure, had he seen the miracles of Christ, and been commanded, as a proof of his faith, to forsake his riches, to abdicate his ambitious views, to renounce his sensual pleasures, to mortify all his fleshly desires, to take up his cross, and to follow Christ through persecution and death; is he sure, I say, that he would have believed with all his heart, as well as with all his understanding? It is very plain he would not, for, at this day, there is more than sufficient cause of conviction offered to him, in the unanswerable proofs, that the miracles were actually wrought, that a cloud of prophecies, delivered long before, were actually fulfilled in Christ, and that a number of prophecies, published by Christ and his apostles, are, every day, fulfilled before our eyes in these latter times. Yet he is still an infidel; and why? but because repentance and virtue, and a course of life wholly contrary to his habitual desires, wishes, schemes, is the necessary consequence of believing in Christ. He is at law, and we will suppose, for it is possible enough, hath a bad cause; yet no force of reason, so strong is the bias of interest, can give him the least room to doubt its soundness. Or he is furiously enraged against his neighbour upon a groundless apprehension of injury, yet, till he cools, the united reasonings of all mankind, even of his wife or brother, who, to his knowledge, most tenderly love him, cannot in the least satisfy him that he wrongs his neighbour, or even that he is too warm in loading him with

reflections or reproaches of the bitterest kind, and calling him out to a duel. This man nevertheless thinks he knows himself, knows he would have been a thorough Christian, had he seen the miracles of Christ; and so, on this supposed knowledge he is persuaded, or believes (for he can but believe) that no such miracles were ever performed. Take him in regard to faith, and he is all head. Take him in regard to the affairs of life, to his lawsuit and his quarrel, and he is all heart. Do not too readily credit him as to the first; credit your own eyes as to the second. Our Saviour had to do with a great majority of men, thus rationally open, and thus passionately shut to conviction. A rich young man, struck with his miracles, and the wisdom of his preaching, became his declared disciple, but as soon as he talked of self-denial, of voluntary poverty, and of taking up a cross to follow him, the young gentleman quickly perceived that he wrought no miracles, and that his doctrines were not worth a farthing. Of the very same stamp were the thousands of loaf disciples, who could even fatten on miracles, which however could circulate no nourishment to their heads. The miracles operated with great force on the understandings of many beholders, on whose hearts ease, wealth, and pleasure, operated with still more. The sight of a man, whose heart goes foremost, and whose head follows, is very common, is no miracle, nor even a phenomenon. At a dead pinch between head and heart, many who saw the miracles, ascribed them to the devil. Our modern infidel laughs at this, the devil having taken care never to appear to him, but in the shape of gold, a bottle, or a wench, no frightful things to him. Christ's chosen apostles followed him at first, rather because they hoped he would restore the kingdom to Israel, than in obedience to the highest conviction; and one of them, contrary to it, sold him for thirty small pieces of silver. Judas was not, could not be, an infidel; but his heart was uppermost. It is the predominancy of the heart, that defends some men from the faith, and makes others who embrace it, act against it. Had it been the scheme of Christ to raise the Jews to universal monarchy, and in order to it, had he but destroyed with a word, two or three thousand Romans, for a sample of his power, it is to me a clear point, that every Jew would have