inflictions in another world. The gains of unrighteousness, or meddling with any forbidden fruit, is a violation of the laws of God that muft ruin you for ever; though the punishment for fo doing cannot be equal to the torments prepared for the tyrant and oppreffor, the murderer, the adulterer, the drunkard, and offenders in the highest crimes. We must cease to do evil, and learn to do well, in order to be faved. Not according to promifes and prayers at last, not according to legacies to be paid to the poor when we are dead, fhall we be judged; but as we have rectified the judgment and the will, made virtue the governor of the heart, and in all things fought God's glory, not our own, This do, and you will live. May 1, 1701 a John Orton.

Orton.

1001 gridentat per hity Areflection on 51This extraordinary paper the bones of John Okon! furprized me very greatly, and when from reading it, I turned my eyes to the bones of John Oxton, I could not help breaking out in the following reflection ——— And is this the once lively, gallant, drinking Jack Orton, who thought for forty years that he was made for no higher end than to gratify every appetite, and pafs away time in a continual circle of vanity and pleasure! Poor skeleton, what a miferable fpectacle art thou! Not the leaft

remain

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remain of activity and joy, of that fprightliness and levity of mind, that jocund humour and frolic, which rendered thee the delight of the wild focieties of thy youthful time: Grim, ftiff, and horrid, is the appearance now: vain mirth and luxury, licentious plays and fports, can have no connection with these dry bones.

O Death, what a change doft thou make! The bulk of mankind are averse to serious thought, and hearken to the paffions more than to the dictates of reafon and religion: To kill time, and banish reflection, they indulge in a round of diffipations, and revel in the freedom of vicious exceffes: Their attention is engroffed by fpectacle. and entertainments, and fixed to follies and trifles: giddy and unthinking, loofe and voluptuous, they spend their precious hours in the gay fcenes of diverfions, pomp and luxury; and as if the grave and a judgment to come, were a romance of former times, or things from which they are secured, never think of these important and momentous fubjects with minds bewitched by exorbitant pleasure, and faculties enervated and broken by idle mirth and vanity, they pass their every day away without any of that confideration which becomes reafonable beings, and creatures defigned for a VOL. II. Itate

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state of immortality: but at laft, you appear, and in a moment turn delight and admiration, into averfion and horror: strength, wealth, and charms, you instantly reduce to weakness, poverty, and deformity, in the first place; and then, to a fkeleton, like the bones before me.

Nor is this the worft of the great revolution. When death approaches, the amufements of sense immediately fail, and past transactions, in every circumftance of aggravation, crowd into the mind: confcience reproaches loudly, the heart condemns, and the fick tremble at the apprehenfions of a vengeance they laughed at in the days of diverfion, and the midnight hours of the ball: as they come near the black valley, they fee the realities of a future ftate; and agonies convulse their fouls terrors, till then unknown, enter their breasts; and, in anxieties that are incapable of being uttered, and expectations the most torturing, on a review of life, they pafs from the plains of time into the ocean of eternity. Here lies the frame, like the dry bones before me; but, the foul is gone to the feffions of righteousness ; and perhaps, the dreadful fentence of the divine juftice is pronounced on it. This is a tremendous affair, that calls for timely

and

and ferious confideration. Eternity! Eternal mifery! They that have done evil, to come forth unto the refurrection of damnation !

I will take thy advice then, thou glorious penitent, John Orton; and fince it is in my power to come forth, unto the refurrection. of life, and obtain immortality, honour, and glory, with the righteous, in the kingdom of their father, I will open the reforming gofpel night and morning, and by its heavenly directions, regulate my conduct. I am determined to make a wife and ferious preparation for death and judgment. To the best of my power, I will provide for that day, when the prayers and charities of the righteous will be brought forth as their memorials before the tribunal of Jefus Christ.

This this is the thing to be minded. The brightest scenes of worldly prosperity and grandeur are contemptible, when they do not accord with virtue and piety. Death, in a few years, blends the prince and the meaneft fubject, the conqueror and the flave, the statesman, the warrior, and the most infignificant, in one promifcuous ruin; and the schemes, the competitions, and the interefts, which have engaged the chief attention of the world, are brought to nothing, and appear, too often, ridiculous:

but righteousness is unchangeably glorious, and in the universal ruin, receives no detriment: when all human power and policy will be extinct, concealed piety and perfecuted virtue, will again appear, and be owned as His by the Lord of Hofts, in that day when be maketh up his jewels.

I will love thee therefore, O Lord, my ftrength; yea, I will love thee: and it ever fhall be my heart's defire, that my foul may behold by faith in itself, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, able and ready to change it into the fame image from glory to glory, reflected upon, and conveyed to it by the Spirit of the Lord. May my portion here be this bleffed transforming union, that I may be made partaker of the divine nature, by impreffions from it (24.) I shall then have

(24.) The expreffion-partaker of the divine nature by impreffions from it, may, perhaps, be thought by fome readers, to approach to vifion; and to contradict my own opinion before delivered, in relation to this fubject: let me obferve then, that by impreffion, I here mean no more, than bright beams of light caft upon the foul by the prefent Deity; as he fits all power, all knowledge, in the heart, and dispenses such rays of wisdom to the pious petitioner, as are fufficient to procure a lafting fenfe of fpiritual heavenly things. God is not only in heaven. He dwelleth indeed

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