I dedicate him unto Thee,
soul, body, and spirit. Not as the wicked of this world, or the
hirelings of a Church profanely called by Thy name, do I dedicate
this Thy servant to Thee: Not in words and form, learned by rote,
and dictated by the limbs of Antichrist, but, Lord, I give him into
Thy hand, as a captain putteth a sword into the hand of his
sovereign, wherewith to lay waste his enemies. May he be a two-
edged weapon in Thy hand and a spear coming out of Thy mouth,
to destroy, and overcome, and pass over; and may the enemies of
Thy Church fall down before him, and be as dung to fat the
land!"
From the moment, I conceived it decreed, not that I should be a
minister of the gospel, but a champion of it, to cut off the enemies
of the Lord from the face of the earth; and I rejoiced in the
commission, finding it more congenial to my nature to be cutting
sinners off with the sword than to be haranguing them from the
pulpit, striving to produce an effect which God, by his act of
absolute predestination, had for ever rendered impracticable. The
more I pondered on these things the more I saw of the folly and
inconsistency of ministers in spending their lives striving and
remonstrating with sinners in order to induce them to do that
which they had it not in their power to do.
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