it? if any that are in the visible covenant of God should break that covenant, and make a league with Satan; if any that have sat down and eat at Christ’s Table, should so lift up their heel against him as to have fellowship at the table of devils, and (as it hath been represented to some of the afflicted) eat of the bread and drink of the wine that Satan hath mingled.  Surely, if this be so, the poet is in the right, “Audax omnia perpeti.  Gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas:”  audacious mortals are grown to a fearful height of impiety; and we must cry out in Scripture language, and that emphatical apostrophe of the Prophet Jeremy (chap. ii. 12), ’Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid:  be ye very desolate, saith the Lord.’...  If you are in covenant with the Devil, the intercession of the blessed Jesus is against you.  His prayer is for the subduing of Satan’s power and kingdom, and the utter confounding of all his instruments.  If it be so, then the great God is set against you.  The omnipotent Jehovah, one God in three Persons; Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in their several distinct operations and all their divine attributes,—­are engaged against you.  Therefore KNOW YE that are guilty of such monstrous iniquity, that He that made you will not save you, and that He that formed you will show you no favor (Isa. xxvii. 11).  Be assured, that, although you should now evade the condemnation of man’s judgment, and escape a violent death by the hand of justice; yet, unless God shall give you repentance (which we heartily pray for), there is a day coming when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed by Jesus Christ (Rom. ii. 16).  Then, then, your sin will find you out; and you shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and doomed to those endless, easeless, and remediless torments prepared for the Devil and his angels (Matt. xxv. 41)....  If you have been guilty of such impiety, the prayers of the people of God are against you on that account.  It is their duty to pray daily, that Satan’s kingdom may be suppressed, weakened, brought down, and at last totally destroyed; hence that all abettors, subjects, defenders, and promoters thereof, may be utterly crushed and confounded.  They are constrained to suppress that kindness and compassion that in their sacred addresses they once bare unto you (as those of their own kind, and framed out of the same mould), praying with one consent, as the royal prophet did against his malicious enemies, the instruments of Satan (Ps. cix. 6), ’Set thou a wicked man over him, and let Satan stand at his right hand’ (i.e.), to withstand all that is for his good, and promote all that is for his hurt; and (verse 7) ’When he is judged, let him be condemned, and let his prayer become sin.’

“Be we exhorted and directed to exercise true spiritual sympathy with, and compassion towards, those poor, afflicted persons that are by divine permission under the direful influence