there are elders or brethren in all churches, to call to, and manage this worship of God, in the world: if you abide in your subjection and worship as you are commanded.

Thirdly, These meetings of yours, instead of being an ornament to the church in which you are, are a shame and blemish to those churches. For they manifest the unruliness of such women, or that the church wants skill to govern them. 1 Co. xiv. 23. Have you not in your flock a male?' Mal. i. 14. Fourthly, Suppose your meetings in some cases were lawful, yet since by the brethren they may be managed better, you and your meetings ought to give place. That the church together, and the brethren, as the mouth to God, are capable of managing this solemn worship best: consider -1. The gifts for all such service are most to be found in the elders and leading men in the church and not in the women thereof. 2. The spirit for conduct and government in that worship, is not in the women, but in the men. 3. The men are admitted in such worship, to stand with open face before God, a token of much admittance to liberty and boldness with God, a thing denied to the women. 1 Co. xi. 4, 5. 4. For that when meetings for prayers are commanded, the men, to be the mouth to God, are mentioned, but not in ordinary women, in all the Scriptures. Where the women and children, and them that suck the breasts are called, with the bride and bridegroom, and the whole land, to mourn: yet the ministers, and elders, and chiefest of the brethren, are they, and they only, that are bid to say, 'Spare thy people, O Lord! and give not thine heritage to reproach.' Joel i. 13, 14; ii. 15—17. 5. The word for encouragement to pray believ ingly in assemblies is given to men. And it is the word that makes, and that sanctifies an ordinance of God: men, therefore, in all assemblies for worship, should be they that should manage it, and let others join in their places.

she must do it, I mean as to worship, in her heart to God. 4. Nor, do I think, that any woman that is holy and humble, will take offence at what I have said; for I have not in anything sought to degrade them, or to take from them what either nature or grace, or an appointment of God hath invested them with: but have laboured to keep them in their place. And doubtless to abide where God has put us, is that which not only highly concerns us, but that, which becomes us best. Sisters, I have said what I have said to set you right, and to prevent your attempting to do things in such sort unto which you are not appointed. Remember what God did to Miriam, and be afraid. Be as often in your closets as you will; the oftener there the better. This is your duty, this is your privilege: this place is sanctified to you for service by the holy Word of God. Here you may be, and not make ordinances interfere, and not presume upon the power of your superiors, and not thrust out your brethren, nor put them behind your backs in worship.

Be also as often as possibly you can, in worship, when the church, or parts thereof, are assembled for that end, according to God's appointment. And when you are there, join with heart and soul with your brethren in all holy petitions to God. Let the men in prayer be the mouth to God, and the women list after with groans and desires. Let the men stand with open face in this worship, for that they are the image and glory of God, and let the women be clothed in modest apparel, with shamefacedness, in token of the remembrance of what has been touched afore.

When women keep their places, and men manage their worshipping of God as they should, we shall have better days for the church of God, in the world. Je. xxix. 10–14. Women are not to be blamed for that they are forward to pray to God, only let them know their bounds; and I wish that idleness

women upon this work. Surely they that can scarce tie their shoes, and their garters, before they arrive at the tavern, or get to the coffee-house door in a morning, can scarce spare time to be a while in their closets with God. Morning closetprayers are now, by most London professors, thrown away; and what kind of ones they make at night, God doth know, and their conscience, when

to look at home: And God mend me and all his servants about it, and wherein we else are out. I have done, after I have said, that there are some other things, concerning women, touching which, when I have an opportunity, I may also give my judgment. But at present, I intreat that these lines be taken in good part, for I seek edification, not contention.

Tus little catechism is upon a plan perfectly new and unique. It was first published as a pocket volume in 1675, and has been republished in every collection of the author's works; and recently in a separate tract. The earliest edition that has been discovered bears the date of 1691; from which our copy has been prepared for the press. This is the first book of this class that was composed upon the broad basis of Christianity, perfectly free from sectarian bias or peculiarity. It is an exhibition of scriptural truths, before which error falls without the trouble of pulling it down. It is in the world, like the ark of God in the temple of Dagon. It is alike admirably calculated to convey the most important truths to the inmates of a palace or of a workhouse,-to the young or to the aged,―to the ignorant Roman Catholic, or to the equally ignorant Protestant. Its broad catholicity is its distinguishing excellence. In the separate communions included within the general church of Christ are various, and in many respects, inestimable compendiums of Christian truth, arranged for the catechetical instruction of the young and ignorant; but it cannot be denied that these, one and all, exhibit some marks of sectarian feel

ing and dogmatic teaching in the details that relate to the special views which each communion takes of certain scriptural doctrines. The reason why this should be the case is very obvious: there would be no differences of opinion amongst Christians except from conviction that these differences are essential, and such conviction naturally leads to these points of disagreement being (may we not say?) rather too obtrusively enforced as part and portion of a saving belief. All Bunyan's efforts were to awaken sinners to a sense of their degradation, misery, and danger, and to direct them to the only refuge from the wrath to come-the hope set before them in the gospel; and then leaving the pious convert to the guidance of his Bible in forming his connections in the pilgrimage of life. Bunyan is solemnly in earnest; his desire is, that poor sinners should be relieved from ignorance, darkness, and destruction, and be introduced into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. May his impressive injunction be indelibly fixed upon our souls, To read, ponder over, and receive the wholesome medicine as we shall answer in the day of the terrible judgment.'-GEO. OFFOR

Holy and beloved,

ALTHOUGH I have designed this little treatise for public and common benefit, yet considering that I am to you a debtor not only in common charity; but by reason of special bonds which the Lord hath laid upon me to you-ward, I could do no less, being driven from you in presence, not affection, but first present you with this little book; not for that you are wanting in the things contained herein, but to put you again in remembrance of

AMEN.

first things, and to give you occasion to present something to your carnal relations, that may be, if God will, for their awakening and conversion: accept it therefore as a token of my christian remembrance of you.

Next I present it to all those unconverted, old and young, who have been at any time under my preaching, and yet remain in their sins:* and I

* How awful the thought that persons should sit under so faithful and searching a ministry, and still remain in their

is of the nature of the Godhead, but sheweth that it is not of the same matter as his body, which is dust. Ge. xviii. 27.

Q. Is not the soul then of the nature of the Godhead?-A. No, for God cannot sin, but the soul doth; God cannot be destroyed in hell, but the souls of the impenitent shall. Eze. xviii. 4. Mat. x. 28.

Q. How did God make man in the day of his first creation?-A. God made man upright. Ec. vii. 29. In the image of God created he him.' Ge. i. 27.

Q. Did God, when he made man, leave him without a rule to walk by?-A. No: he gave him a law in his nature, and imposed upon him a positive precept, but he offered violence to them, and brake them both. Ge. iii 3, 6.

Q. What was the due desert of that transgression?-A. Spiritual death in the day he did it, temporal death afterwards, and everlasting death last of all. Ge. ii. 17; iii. 19. Mat. xxv. 46.

Q. What is it to be spiritually dead?-A. To be alienate from God, and to live without him in the world, through the ignorance that is in man, and through the power of their sins. Ep. iv. 18, 19.

Q. Wherein doth this alienation from God appear?—A. In the love they have to their sins, in their being loth to come to him, in their pleading idle excuses for their sins, and in their ignorance of the excellent mysteries of his blessed gospel. Ep. ii. 2, 3, 11, 12; iv. 18, 19. Ro. i. 28.

Q. What is temporal death ?—A.To have body and soul separated asunder, the body returning to the dust as it was, and the spirit to God that gave it. Ge. iii. 19. Ec. xii. 7.

Q. What is everlasting death?—A. For body and soul to be separate for ever from God, and to be cast into hell fire. Lu. xiii. 27. Mar. ix. 43.

Q. Do men go body and soul to hell so soon as they die?-A. The body abideth in the grave till the sound of the last trump; but the soul, if the man dies wicked, goes presently from the face of God into hell, as into a prison, there to be kept till the day of judgment. 1 Co. xv. 52. Is. xxiv. 22. Lu. xii. 20.

Q. Do we come into the world as upright as did our first parent?-A. No: he came into the world sinless, being made so of God Almighty, but we came into the world sinners, being made so by his pollution.*

Q. How doth it appear that we came into the world polluted ?-A. We are the fruit of an unclean thing, are defiled in our very conception, and are by nature the children of wrath. Job xiv. 4. Ps. li. 5. Ep. ii. 3.

*All mankind, as born into the world, show, as soon as the mental powers open, aversion to God, to his purity, his law, his gospel; the doctrines of grace and the work of the Spirit upon the heart. A solemn proof of the universal taint given by original sin.-Ed.

Q. Can you make further proof of this ?—A. Yes, it is said, That by one man came sin, death, judgment, and condemnation upon all men. Ro. v. 12-19.

Q. Do we then come sinners into the world ?— A. Yes, we are transgressors from the womb, and go astray as soon as we are born, speaking lies. Is. xlviii. 8. Ps. lviii. 3.

Q. But as Adam fell with us in him, so did he not by faith rise with us in him? for he had no seed until he had the promise.-A. He fell as a public person,† but believed the promise as a single person. Adam's faith saved not the world, though Adam's sin overthrew it.

Q. But do not some hold that we are sinners only by imitation ?—A. Yes, being themselves deceived. But God's word saith, we are children of wrath by nature, that is, by birth and generation.

Q. Can you bring further proof of this?-A. Yes: in that day that we were born, we were polluted in our own blood, and cast out to the loathing of our persons. Again, the children of old that were dedicated unto the Lord, a sacrifice was offered for them at a month old, which was before they were sinners by imitation. Eze. xvi. 4—9. Nu. xviii. 11-16.

Q. Can you make this appear by experience? -Yes: the first things that bloom and put forth themselves in children, shew their ignorance of God, their disobedience to parents, and their innate enmity to holiness of life; their inclinations naturally run to vanity. Besides little children die, but that they could not, were they not of God counted sinners; for death is the wages of sin. Ro. vi. 23.

Q. What is sin ?-A. It is a transgression of the law. 1 Jn. iii, 4.

Q. A transgression of what law?-A. Of the law of our nature, and of the law of the ten commandments as written in the holy scriptures. Ro. ii 12-15. Ex. xx.

Q. When doth one sin against the law of nature? A. When you do anything that your conscience tells you is a transgression against God or man.

Ro. ii. 14, 15.

Q. When do we sin against the law as written in the ten commandments ?-A. When you do anything that they forbid, although you be ignorant of it. Ps. xix. 12.

Q. How many ways are there to sin against this law?-A. Three: by sinful thoughts, by sinful words, and also by sinful actions. Ro. vii. 7; ii. 6. Mat. v. 28; xii. 37.

Q. What if we sin but against one of the ten com

By the word 'public' is to be understood a federal head, or the representative of all his posterity. Adam's faith can only save his own soul; his sin taints all his sced.-ED.