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where they have landed; avoid all Semipelagian, Arian and Socinian notions; see how directly they lead to infidelity. I beseech you by all the regard you have to the honour of God, to the virtue and happiness of your fellow citizens, to the interests of the Redeemer's king" dom, to the happiness and comfort of many of your fellow Christians, and especially to the reformation and salvation of a rising generation, and even generations yet unborn. By these regards, I say, I humbly and earnestly beseech you, seriously pause and think. Pause and think again. Ilave you not been led on nearly in the steps I have pointed out, and which I imperfectly pointed out to some leaders near a year and a half ago? Are you not now standing on ground, which you would at that time have shuddered at the thought of approaching? And can you tell me where you or your leaders will stop? Have you not been led from Calvinism to Arminianism?-from Arminianism to Semipelagianism?-from that to Arianism?-from Arianism to Socinianism? Thus you have arriven to the 5th grade in the road of error, which is five-eighths of the way to Atheism. Had the whole been discovered to you at first, you never could have been brought to the precipice on which you now stand. But you have been artfully prepared for each step, before you were inform ed of what lay before you; your minds have been illuminated (if I may use such a contradiction) by the mists of darkness, artfully cast before you. I again beseech you, seriously pause and think. Pause and think again. I earnestly beseech you, for my heart is in it-Pause and think! pause and think again!!!-Be

not, led by your feelings, they are a fallacious guide; suffer not your judgments to be biassed by your love or dislike to any description of men. I speak as unto wise men, judge ye what I say. Now, my Christian friends, I do with a heart bleeding for Zion's wounds, with love and esteem for you, bid you an affectionate farewell. DAVID RICE.

A SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CITIZENS OF KENTUCKY, PROFESSING THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO ARE, OR HAVE BEEN, DENOMINATED PRESBYTERIANS. By the Rev. DAVID RICE. (First printed in 1808.)

DEAR BRETHREN,

There is reason to suppose that some of you are willing to know my opinion of the present state of religion in our country, probably thinking my knowledge of it more accurate than it really is. Be this as it may, my late tour through part of this state, and the information I have received from other parts, give me some idea of it, which I am willing to communicate. If my information should not be in all respects accurate, you will correct it by the best means in your possession.

The present state of religion in this land, I think, must appear truly distressing to every friend of Zion. The night, years ago predicted, is now come; the clouds of darkness, then collecting, have overspread our hori

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Here, however, it is proper to observe, that a number of the professors of christianity better understand the great principles of the reformation than formerly, are more attached to them, and sensible of the danger of departing from them. This is one good effect produced, or rather occasioned, by the religious revolutions which have taken place in our country. In this respect we are much better prepared for a revival of religion than we were ten years ago.

Of those who formerly professed the doctrine of salvation by electing love and free sovereign grace, many seem now to abhor the doctrine of particular election. They must consequently conclude, that what distinguishes man, the good from the bad, the believer from the unbeliever, is their better improving a spark of grace given to every man by some exertion of their own will. The doctrine taught by such is, that now, under the gos pel, every man may be saved if he will. This proposi tion, rightly explained, is a precious truth of God's word; but as commonly used and understood, it leads into a fatal error.

The abettors of this doctrine of free will do not re alize that the chief difficulty, the main obstacle in the way of fallen man's salvation, is unwillingness: that man's depravity greatly consists in this: that until this is removed, nothing is, or can be, effectually done: that.

the proud, selfish, unholy heart of man, the carnal mind, which is enmity against God and his law, is equally opposed to the holiness of the gospel.

If salvation signified nothing but a deliverance from the misery of hell, all men would be willing to be sav ed: but if it implies a forsaking sin, as it certainly does, no unregenerated man was ever willing to be saved, nor ever can be. There is the same opposition to the gospel as to the law, and for the same reason; that is, because it is holy. It is impossible a man should be willing to be saved from sin while he is willing to live in the practice of it, which is the case of every natural man. This opposition of the will of man to the law and gospel universally reigns in every human heart; for there is none that doeth good, no not one; and it ever will reign there until nature is renewed by divine grace.

If man's salvation is suspended on this willingness, the whole human race must inevitably perish,unless made willing, in a day of Christ's power, by an act of sovereign grace. Offering salvation on condition of this willingness, though it is called preaching free salvation to all, is, if you go no further, preaching the doctrine of black despair to every truly convinced sinner who is well ac quainted with his own heart. Such an one finds in himself no hatred to sin, no love to God, no delight in his law, no true faith in Christ, no true desires to accept of Christ as a King and Saviour from sin. Though he knows he has no righteousness of his own, yet he feels a self righteous disposition, and an unwillingness to be entirely beholden to free grace. These bad dispositions of heart stand as an effectual bar in the way

of his accepting a free salvation: and unless the gospel provide for the removal of this, he must sink into despair. Unbelief and enmity to holiness rejects this free salvation: he then has nothing to look to but the unde served goodness of him who has mercy on whom he will have mercy.

It is ignorance of the corruption and self-righteousness of the heart, makes men fond of this doctrine. Pride is the root of sin in the human heart: to this pride the gospel is directly opposed, and one great design of its institution was to destroy forever every vain imagination of man.-Therefore it is that the pride of the heart, or the will, is directly opposed to the gospel: the opposition between them is mutual. The grace given to every man, if it does not overcome this opposition to the holiness of the gospel, will prove of no effect; but will leave every man in a state of sin and ruin: if it does overcome it, every man will be willing, he will ac tually choose Christ and free salvation through him: in other words, he will be converted and become a true christian.

There are some who imagine that the moral inability, or depravity of nature, derived from Adam to his posterity, is excusable in them; or that all the bad actions which flow from this depravity are not blame worthy.

If this doctrine be true, the posterity of Adam were by the fall entirely deprived of reason, and reduced to a state of brutality; or else, if men would have existed at all, there would have been a race of rational crea

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