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I propose to instance a few of these smooth things which teachers may address to the people who love to be deceived, or wherewith the people themselves lay a flattering unction to their own souls.

I. The first of these, which though not generally ranked among the smooth things, I hold to be the universal deceit, and that in virtue of which we so MAGNIFY THE PRESENT WORLD, give such an exaggerated importance to things present and things sensible, regard time as if it had all the worth and endurance of eternity, and look on eternity as a thing of remote and shadowy insignificance, the care and consideration of which may be indefinitely postponed.

II. A MEAGRE AND SUPERFICIAL IMAGINATION OF THEIR GUILT, AND PROPORTIONALLY TO THIS, A SLIGHT APPREHENSION OF THEIR DANGER.

III. A man who feels his disease so slight, will be satisfied with a very slight remedy; and accordingly the remedy which men are satisfied with, is RESTING ON THE GENERAL MERCY OF GOD. God is represented as a Being full of tenderness, thus making it the whole character of the Godhead, and in this way lulling themselves into a deceitful security — not thinking of one set of attributes, justice, truth, and righteousness, but keeping these in the background, and bringing in the foreground, God being of universal tenderness and benignity, and who will not be severe on the follies of His poor erring creatures.

IV. A CERTAIN ANTINOMIAN SECURITY which they connect with the doctrines of grace and justification by faith. When we see people reposing on their orthodoxy, and making use of it as a soporific to lull themselves, we should ply them with questions founded on the true representation which the New Testament gives. Are they running so as that they may obtain? Are they fighting so as that they may gain a hard won victory? Are they striving so as that they may force an entrance at the strait gate?

(T. Chalmers, D. D.)

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KJV: That this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the LORD:

WEB: For it is a rebellious people, lying children, children who will not hear the law of Yahweh;