Letters to Mrsbevan Author:Griffith Jones General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1832 Original Publisher: Whittaker Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can selec... more »t from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: V. The religion of the age lamented. 1733, Feb. 22. -- If the three rules of directions for carrying on reformation mentioned by the Doctor in his sermon, namely the frequent and attentive reading of God's holy word, good example and discipline, were practised by the heads of families, religion would be mightily promoted thereby, which now seems to be much upon the decline. If while good magistrates, and other good men, associate themselves and join endeavours for the correction of open vice and immorality, there were numbers of good ministers and spiritual pastors who would combine together in joint consultation and zealously exert their utmost endeavours to engage and assist parents and masters in the good method, which the pious Doctor proposes, I should hope to see religion flourishing in some good degree again. But the generality of all callings are grown so stupidly hard under the neglect of these means, and so infatuated, and we seem to be in so much sloth and indolence, that I fear a severe scourge will hardly awake us to a due sense of our duty. The account of the great mortality in Lon don, is very lamentable; but it is still more so, that most men, as you observe, are too insensible of it. What means can profit men, if they continue blind and senseless under the discipline of heaven; surely as the prophet says," when the judgments of God are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness ;" that is, they will then repent, and become righteous if ever they will. I cannot say that I remember one instance of sound con- t a version, or that...« less