the relinquishment of it, not only does not give pleasure, but positive pain, though you know its reality, purity, and intensity; the fact is, the affections are occupied, and there is no place. So it is by nature with every man, and while he remains in this state, no knowledge of love, however real, intense, and devoted, when he sees its tendency to disconnect him from the only source of known enjoyment, by the substitution of that which he has no senses to appreciate, will ever be found available. It appears to me, that the spiritual immortal generation of the second Adam, the Lord from heaven, is in Scripture represented to be as real and absolute as the generation from our earthly head, and only invisible from being spiritual. It has its proper food, its proper growth. Without being thus begotten from above, though you could display all the beauties of him who is the chief among ten thousand, the altogether lovely, though you could display all the Father's love to the church from the day he commanded his gathering it, till this day, it would be as powerless as spreading the most sumptuous banquet before the dead. With respect to the general design of vindicating the government of God from the charge of partiality, which I feel to be at the bottom of Mr. Erskine's views, I do not see that the Lord has committed it to us, but, whenever in the Old Testament or in the New, he pleads with his children against their ingratitude, it is from the specialty of his love. He does not say to the Israelites, I have dealt with you after a common dealing with all; but, with what nation has the Lord dealt as with Israel. So, in the New, he says, "I have chosen you, not you me." In the prayer of our Lord, in John xvii. in the Epistles of Paul and Peter--in the Revelations, and so in all the called and chosen, and faithful, who are written in the Lamb's book of life, and have been from the foundation of the world, from the beginning to the end, I see a constant reference made, and the warmest and most enlarged attachment of the affections demanded, on the ground of peculiar, especial, and personal choice on the part of God. That all this is consistent with every perfection of God's character, and, therefore, with his equal justice and mercy, I have the fullest assurance, but that we are in possession of the means of shewing it, or that the Lord requires it at our hands, I feel fully assured of the contrary. And the danger Mr. E. seems to apprehend from stating the doctrines of election as they are usually stated, are more imaginary than real. For God, who by his Holy Spirit begets the soul again in the likeness of the divine nature, gives to that nature thus begotten the power of discriminating in its food between night-shade and sweet pasture.--When he has created in the soul of any human being the love of himself, he gives him, with this love, the privilege to rejoice that his name is written in heaven, and the minister of Christ is by