For who can shew it to be so contrary to the whole spirit of the gospel, to call in the _assistance_ of the saints, or to deny the cup to the laity, who can shew this to put so entire a stop to salvation by the gospel, as to condemn this _advice_ to young divines, as a reproach to Christianity? For all the ends of the gospel may be pursued, and men may arise out of the corruption of their nature, notwithstanding these two mistakes: but to condemn it as an error inconsistent with grace and sense, a reproach to Christianity, for young divines to renounce worldly views, and devote themselves wholly to God, is striking at the whole root of all holiness, and a denial of the whole spirit of the gospel. Our church requires all its candidates for holy orders, to make profession of their being moved and called by the Holy Ghost to enter into the service of the church: this, I should think, is proof enough, that the spirit of this world ought not to be alive in them, when they make this profession; and yet, if any young persons should come to be ordained, thus dead to all worldly views, thus wholly devoted to God, they ought according to the Doctor, to be rejected by the bishop, as being led by a spirit that has lost all _grace_ and _sense_, and is a _reproach_ to the Christian religion. It is needless to quote particular texts of scripture, teaching the same that I have here taught; the whole nature of our redemption is a standing proof of the same thing; for we want to be redeemed for no other reason, but because we are born children of this world, ♦and have by nature only the life, spirit and temper of this world, in us: this is our fall, our curse, our separation from God; and therefore we can have no redemption, but by a renunciation of all the workings of the life of this world in us, by a total dying to, and denying ourselves; because all that we are, as to our state, spirit and life in this world, is a life that carries us from God, a life that should not have been in us; ’tis a life begun by the fall, a life of sin and corruption, which cannot enter into heaven. Indeed the life that we have in this world, from _Adam_, is not to be _naturally_ destroyed, nor are the necessaries and conveniences of life to be rejected, nor is any one to renounce his share in the employments that are useful to social life: the renunciation of this world reaches no farther than the renouncing the spirit, and inclinations of it. We may stand in our stations, when we stand in them as the servants of God, as citizens of the new _Jerusalem_, who have amongst earthly things, our conversation in heaven: we may keep our possessions, when we possess them as the things of God, and use them not as nature, but as the Spirit directs us; when we do thus, we have the poverty of spirit, which the gospel requires, and come up to the sense of that command given to the young man, _to sell all that he had, and give to the poor_. ♦ “ahd” replaced with “and”