Book excerpt: Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: dences for heaven; the conflicts he hath with the devil; and the office of Christ as an Advocate. And in order to convey my thoughts as intelligibly as possible it is written by way of dialogue; question and answer being an excellent way of conveying information, and with which the word of God is replete. The persons made choice of to carry on the dialogue, are Cushi and Ahimaaz, two servants of David, both stiled in Scripture good men. Cushi is here represented as one wrought upon by grace while he observed the visible hand of God with David; which is intended to shew how a Christian's life, and the hand of God with him, impresses the mind and convicts the conscience of a sinner. Ahimaaz is represented as running with tidings before he was sent; which is introduced as a caution to the many in our days, both learned and illiterate, who take on them the office of the ministry, without any spiritual qualification for it, or divine call to it; who are encouraged and emboldened by nothing else but pride, insensibility, and ignorance. A thirst for human applause, and ignorance of the experience and wisdom of the Church; ignorance of the plague of the human heart; ignorance of the majesty of God, and the importance of the ministry, appear to be the basis and bulwark of too many. The houses of Saul and David are introduced as prefiguring the family of the old Adam and the chapter{Section 4household of faith. Cushi's halting between the two is intended to exhibit the struggles that the weak believer feels between the flesh and the spirit. The revival of the work of grace on Cushi, at the death of David, is introduced to shew that many young converts, who are a scourge to the servants of God in their lives, are brought to lament their death, being ignorant of their worth till t...