39. I would only ask, Are you such indeed? Do you answer the character under which you appear? If so, you are consistent with yourselves. Your principles and practice agree together. Let us try whether this is so or not. Do you not take the name of God in vain? Do you remember the sabbath-day, to keep it holy? Do you not speak evil of the ruler of your people? Are you not a drunkard, or a glutton, faring as sumptuously as you can every day? Making a God of your belly? Do you not avenge yourself? Are you not a whoremonger or adulterer? Answer plainly to your own heart, before God the judge of all. Why then do you say, you believe the scripture? If the scripture is true, you are lost. You are in the broad way that leadeth to destruction. Your damnation slumbereth not. You are heaping up to yourself wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. Doubtless, if the scripture is true, (and you remain thus) it had been good for you if you had never been born. 40. How is it that you call yourselves men of reason? Is reason inconsistent with itself? You are the farthest of all men under the sun from any pretence to that character. A common swearer, a sabbath-breaker, a whoremonger, a drunkard, who says he believes the scripture is of God, is a monster upon earth, the greatest contradiction to his own, as well as to the reason of all mankind. In the name of God, (that worthy name whereby you are _called_, and which you daily cause to be blasphemed) turn either to the right hand or to the left. Either profess you are an infidel, or be a christian. Halt no longer thus between two opinions. Either cast off the bible, or your sins. And in the mean time, if you have any spark of your boasted reason left, do not _count us your enemies_ (as I fear you have done hitherto, and as thousands do wherever we have declared _they who do such things shall not inherit eternal life_) _because we tell you the truth_: seeing these are not our words, but the words of him that sent us. Yea, though in doing this, we use _great plainness of speech_, as becomes the ministry we have received. _For we are not as many who corrupt_ (cauponize, soften, and thereby adulterate) _the word of God. But as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God, speak we in_ Christ. *41. But, it may be, you are none of these. You abstain from all such things. You have an unspotted reputation. You are a man of honour, or a woman of virtue. You scorn to do an unhandsome thing, and are of an unblameable life and conversation. You are harmless, (if I understand you right) and useless from morning to night. You do no hurt,――and no good to any one, no more than a straw floating upon the water. Your life glides smoothly on from year to year; and from one season to another, having no occasion to work, “You waste away In gentle inactivity the day.”