The almost Christian discovered, in some sermons on Acts 26, 28 with a blow…

Now would it not make you tremble, to see a Man born up in the Air, as the Poets feign of Icarus, with waxen Wings that are subject to melt and fall off, and betray their charge to certain ruin and perdition. Thus it is with every one that have gone far in Christianity; and is it not you that fly only with waxen Wings, I mean the Power of Nature, and the common Works of the Holy Ghost, which may fall off and leave you in Eternal ruin.

And from hence it follows in the fourth place, that these Mountainous Professors, who have attained to an high pitch, yet ⟨p. 116⟩fall short of Grace, because they want firm footing to assure their standing; they usually either desperately tumble headlong into the Commission of some foul gross Sins, or else they grow brain-sick, and turn aside to the maintaining of some prodigious error; this is usually the Issue of such lofty Professors, as we see a Cloud that hath been sucked up by the Sun, how it hovers a while in the Air, but anon it is wrapped and whirled about with every Wind, and so it is utterly lost and dissipated, or else it falls down again to the Earth in Storms, and is turned only into mire and dirt; Even so fares it with many a Professor, he is drawn up out of the Earth, and above the Pollutions of the World, by a common influence of the Holy Spirit, and for a while he hangs and hovers in a lofty Profession, but having no firm Basis to sustain him, he is either blown up by an empty Cloud, and driven away by every Wind of Doctrine, and lost amongst various Sects and Opinions; or else after a while, he falls back again into the filthy conversation and worldly pollutions, that he had escaped and ends only in mire and dirt, and this because they have not that ⟨p. 117⟩incorruptible seed within them that shall never die. Indeed true Grace is of it self Immortal, but it is from that engagement, that God hath laid upon himself to preserve it in those, who are diligent in the use of those means, by which it may be maintained. But now an unregenerate Man is left wholly to his own Power, to preserve him in that Station in which he shines: And if the Angels themselves and Adam fell from their first Estate, merely through the mutability of their own Will, who had power to continue in it, how much more certainly then will these carnal Professors fall from their high pitch, who have less Power to enable them to stand, and greater Power against them to cast them down: To aggravate the exceeding great Folly and Apostasy of these elevated break-neck Professors, see that most dreadful place,