“Finery is often attended with an expensive table, at least with such delicacies as our purse can reach. St. Paul _kept his body under_, and was _in fastings often_; and our Lord gives us directions about the proper manner of _fasting_. But the apostle did not _know_ the easy way to heaven taught by Dr. Crisp; and our Lord did not _approve_ of it, or He would have saved Himself the trouble of His directions. In general, we look upon fasting much as we do upon penitential flagellation. Both equally raise our pity; we leave them both to popish devotees. Some of our good old Church people will yet fast on Good Friday: but our fashionable believers begin to cast away that last scrap of self-denial. Their faith, which should produce, animate, and regulate works of mortification, goes a shorter way to work; it explodes them all.” Fletcher continues to write in the same strain, through many succeeding pages; but one more extract must suffice. “If _these shall go into eternal punishment_; if such will be the end of all the impenitent Nicolaitans; if our churches and chapels swarm with them; if they crowd our communion tables; if they are found in most of our houses, and too many of our pulpits; if the seeds of their fatal disorder are in all our breasts; if they produce Antinomianism around us in all its forms; if we see bold Antinomians in _principle_, bare-faced Antinomians in _practice_, and sly _pharisaical Antinomians_,[250] who speak well of the law, to break it with greater advantage,—should not every one _examine himself whether he is in the faith_, and whether he has a _holy Christ_ in his heart, as well as a _sweet Jesus_ upon his tongue; lest he should one day swell the tribe of Antinomian reprobates? Does it not become every minister of Christ to drop his prejudices, and consider whether he ought not to imitate the old watchman, who, fifteen months ago, gave a _legal alarm_ to all the watchmen that are in connexion with him? And should we not do the Church excellent service, if, agreeing to lift up our voices against the common enemy, we gave God no rest in prayer, and our hearers in preaching, till we all _did our first works_, and _our latter end_, like Job’s, _exceeded our beginning_? “Near forty years ago, some of the ministers of Christ, in our Church, were called out of the extreme of self-righteousness. Flying from it, we have run into the opposite, with equal violence. Now that we have learned wisdom by what we have suffered in going beyond the limits of truth both ways, let us return to a just scriptural medium. Let us equally maintain the two evangelical axioms on which the Gospel is founded: 1. ‘All our salvation is of God, by free grace, through the alone merits of Christ.’ And, 2. ‘All our damnation is of ourselves, through our avoidable unfaithfulness.’” Footnote 250: