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that God sent him, it would be to denounce judgments upon a people, especially spiritual; but the hand of God was here. And, when he got his commission to preach to that people and they grew more and more deaf and blind, he cried out, How long? And the answer was returned, Until the city be without inhabitants, and the land utterly desolate. After he insisted a little in explaining these words, he said, groaning deeply, If he knew any thing of the mind of God, this is the commission that we are getting, and the commission that ministers will get, to preach the generation more and more deaf and blind. And preach who will, and pray who will, this deafness and this blindness shall remain until many habitable places in Scotland be as waste and desolate as these mountains (looking to them with a very weary countenance.) But remember I am setting no time to this we know not what spirits we are of; a thousand yarn appear in his sight, as one day; and a delayed thing is neither forgot nor forgiven; and the longer delayed, the sorer when it comes. It will be the midnight cry, the foolish found asleep, and the wise slumbering, and will come upon you as a thunder-clap! He went on to the following verse, Yet in it will be a tenth, who shall be as an Oak, which hath the substance in the root. And from that he asserted, that, as the Lord had preserved a remnant through all the periods of the Church, so he would preserve a remnant that would ride out all these winter storms.
He preached upon these words in the forenoon, Be not high-minded, but fear. His first note was, That these who know themselves best, would fear themselves most; and that, as it was hard to determine what a length a hypocrite may go in the profession of religion, it was as hard to determine what a length a child of God may go in defection, having grace, but wanting the exercise thereof; and that a Christian ⟨might⟩ go through nineteen trials, and carry honestly in them, and fall in the twentieth. While in the body, Be not high-minded, but fear. I am not speaking this of these wretched creatures, wo to them! some of them are nothing but devils, and many of them are misled. For the Lord's sake look not to these, I mean John Gibb and his ⟨company⟩
The
