Dr. Beaumont was not an inactive spectator, while he beheld his
parishioners thus exchanging the infirmities of the flesh for spiritual
contumacy; but the evil had spread beyond the reach of lenient remedies.
It is possible to instruct the ignorant, and reform a conscious culprit,
but who shall teach those who are wise in their own eyes, or convince an
offender, who, while he condemns righteousness as filthy rags, boasts of
his freedom from the power of sin. The church was deserted, or
frequented only by the Doctor's most inveterate opponents, who came not
to reform their lives, but to impugn the doctrine of one, whom they had
previously denounced, as not preaching the gospel, and what with
omissions, transpositions, inuendoes, and insertions, they took care so
to disguise his discourses in their reports, as to make him appear to
maintain what he had uniformly controverted.
As his ministerial credentials were thus discredited, even while he
stood by the mercy-seat, as priest of the Most High, so when he
performed the social part of his pastoral functions, his visits to his
flock exposed him to derision and insult.
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