Page:Copy of a letter, written by the Rev. Mr. William Barlas.pdf/5

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Every day and hour which you continue in your present course, you are treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath! and, oh! what a vast treasure of it you are making for yourself! and you will get it all. How you think to reckon with the Judge of all, for your incalculable and accumulated guilt, exceeds conception; God is still as holy and omnipotent as when the earth opened and swallowed up his enemies; when Uzzah was struck dead for touching the ark; or when Annanias and Sapphira perished in a moment for lying to the Holy Ghost. You do not believe the Bible, else the.many threatnings would alarm, arraign, and terrify you: one thing I am absolutely sure of, viz. If at: any time you shall in earnest think of seeking saving mercy from God, the desolation you have brought on Whitehill; the hurt you have done to religion, and the godly; and the singular, unparalleled injury you have done me; will fill your heart with terror, your soul with anguish, your conscience with agony, and your mouth with confession. In the nature of things, it is impossible you can pray for mercy, without confession of such enormous and unheard-of guilt: but I fear you have sinned the sin unto death; the day will declare: you are still alive: it is my settled opinion, that you will never be allowed to go off this earth without a visible stroke,—a stroke that will confound you, and astonish all my enemies. Twelve months ago, and upwards I said different times, to many different people, with great seriousness, that whoever escaped a visible stroke, Margaret Mackie and Jean Walker would not: as to her, my words have not fallen to the ground, and they will not fall to the ground about you. If it be true that she and you, and John Anderson, and some others, entered into a deliberate plot to accuse, it was a most finished and execrable piece of wickedness, and will not pass unpunished. Nelly Mackie says, that her sister said it to her; and that the added, "Since I en-