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son of perdition. And now by brethren, seeing the condition of these things, let us, for God's sake, and for your soul's sake, be watchful and stand fast, whereby Christ has made us free.
There are many in this day, we might say are heretics, although some people call the Methodists, heretics, but I do not call them so, nor do I believe that there is any man or woman, that had a moral form of religion, much more genuine religion, would call them so, for what I take to be a heretic, are the enemies of Christ, let them be who they may, for no christian is considered an heretic, and no christian is an enemy to the church of Christ. But there are many sorts of christians in the world, but not solid, steadfast, genuine christians, otherwise they would have remained in the church, I do not mean the temporal church, but the spiritual church of Christ, that is, grace and wisdom from the Holy Ghost. It is commonly understood of heretics, that they are not able to hurt the green tree, that is, such as have a lively faith, working by charity, but only the reprobate, they are represented as prepared for battle, as being ever ready to contend: they wear counterfeit gold on their heads, for all is but pretence and fiction in shape: they are as men in smoothness of speech, as women in fury and rage against all who oppose them: as lions, their breasts and hearts are as hard as iron, they are full of noise and subtilty: the sting of their pestiferous doctrine is worse than that of the scorpion's bite: their reign is generally but for a 6hort time, but we as christians of the true church of God, not that church, as some of our neighboring professors of the different sects, in which they go to say, that ihe church that Christ founded upon Peter the rock, was a temporal one, and that was the only true church; but I say it was a spiritual church, and the gates of hell never should prevail against it. I have often thought that people took the naked walls to be the church. Sometimes they build a house out of stone and mortar: they call that the church. And I have known members of different meeting houses, who have happened to visit a church of another society, who were considered almost, and sometimes in fact, have lost their membership, and they would have said to them, why did you not go to your own church? Now what I call the
