INTRODUCTION.

O LORD, are not thine eyes upon the truth? Thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved; thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than a rock, they have refused to return.

Therefore I said, Surely these are poor they are foolish; for they know not the way of the Lord, nor the judgment of their God.

I will get me unto the GREAT MEN, and will speak unto them; for they have known the way of the Lord, and the judgment of their God: but these have altogether broken the yoke, and burst the bonds. Jerem, v. 3 - 5.

It is a sad reflection on the perverseness and obstinacy of human nature, to observe how little force and influence the most frequent and solemn warnings, the clearest convictions, the loudest calls, and the most striking example have on men to reform them, and this, though attended with heavy afflictions and severe chastisements, extending even to death.

This is what the pathetic and zealous prophet here lays before us, Thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than a rock.

Resolution in a good cause is great, generous, and noble: but stubbornness in a bad one, is as rebellion and the sin of witchcraft; that is, 'tis rebellion against God, and taking part which the arch-rebel, making a league and confederacy with him, and fighting under his banner.

Though such stubborness was not the apparent temper of any of the offenders, which are the subject of these papers, in their last extremity, yet it certainly is the character of too many who survive them, and will not be warned by their unhappy fate.

Our prisons, by means of this obstinacy in them, and neglect of discipline in others, instead of being houses for the correction of vice and reformation of manners, for reducing and inuring the idle and vicious to habits of industry, virtue, and piely,