tration, the following passages. Many more might be given.
| "The law and the prophets were until John; since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it." Luke, xvi. 16.
"He will judge the world |
in righteousness, by that man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.—See Ser. x. Ex. 3. |
EXTRACT III.
Belief and unbelief.
"And when we come to this principle, this gift of grace, this light, there is no necessity for us to be careful about what we will believe, and what we wont believe; because nothing can give us a true belief but this light. It will give every one of the children of men a belief sufficient to induce them to enter on the work of salvation aright. For as this is the medium, and the only one, by which God continues with his rational creatures; there is no other way by which he gives them an evidence of what is right and what is wrong. For he has set good and evil before us all; and left it for us to choose.—"Choose you this day whom ye will serve." Here as you come to this, you need not trouble yourselves, or recommend to your friends what they must believe, that they must believe this or that;—it is all nonsense, because a man cannot believe just what he wants to believe;—he cannot believe any thing but what the divine light gives him an evidence of, and this he must believe, and he cannot resist it. Here then we discover that belief is no virtue, and unbelief no crime—because why? It is an involuntary thing to man. But when the soul is willing to be instructed by the grace of God, it will be instructed, and when it is instructed, it will have an evidence of the truth, and it
