degenerated from their first love, or appear destitute of the dispositions and habits of piety and virtue ; on those in whom these are suppressed by sensual desires and vicious habits, who have lived in the allowed practice of things forbidden or the omission of things required. In such persons repentance implies a total change of heart and life, of the mind and affections. Such persons including all unbelievers and notorious sinners, must repent and be converted that their sins may be blotted out. They must have a new heart, and a right spirit. They have gone far from God and duty; they have involved themselves in guilt, which soap and nitre cannot wash away. Well then may they have a sorrowful and contrite spirit. Well may it be heightened by a recollection of all the aggravating circumstances of guilt, the number and repetition of their offences, the continuance of folly, and the resistance of rebukes.

13. But the sensations and repentance of such persons are, and ought to be very different from theirs, who have never been guilty of any gross or scandalous sins. Persons who have been brought up under pious parents, who have been early blest with a religious ed

ucation, seasonable cautions and exhortations, enforced by good examples and encouragements, usually grow up in habits of righteousness, and pass from the cradle to the grave without any flagrant or mortal sin. These are such as our Lord declares just persons who need no repentance; that is, no repentance of grosser sins, which they have never committed. Their repentance, therefore, will consist of less alarming views .of the justice and vengeance of God, as their transgressions have not been so much those, which have indicated rooted depravity, as human infirmity. From early youth they have been accustomed to make the divine law the rule of their lives, the standard of their conduct, and the measure of their interests and happiness. They have lived free from habitual sins, from drunkenness, uncleanness, lying and injustice, and have committed none of those immoralities, on account of which, men will be excluded from heaven. Conscious therefore of sins of frailty only, not of settled depravity; of infirmity, not of hardheartedness, their trepidations will not be so violent, nor their agitations so terrific. They are conscious that personal guilt alone makes repentance necessary, and that it is

incidental to the violation of the divine laws; and not having committed gross offences, repentance, as implying a total change of heart and life, of the mind and affections, is not required of such persons as these, whose lives are thus regulated by the rules of the gospel, and in whose affections the love of God prevails. Theirs, therefore, will be of a different sort, more silent and serene, and such as will breathe only the small still voice.

14. But repentance of this last sort is necessary for them; because no sinless mortals are to be found amongst men in the present state-all having received the seeds of wickedness in their frame; all being of the same species, and possessing the same general constitution of body and mind as Cain, who slew his brother; as Pharaoh, who hardened his heart; as David, who violated the most sacred rights of his servant ; as Judas, who betrayed his Lord; or Peter, who denied him. As all therefore are exposed to sin, with more or less aggravation, the scripture speaks of "persons under every dispensation of religion, as righteous in a less perfect sense; such as are not free from sins, yet possess the inward dispositions of holiness, and gov

ern their lives by the principles of a divine faith; who seek to know, and, as far as known, to practise their duty-persons righteous in their prevailing character. Such was Job, perfect and upright, that feared God and eschewed evil-Zacharias and Elizabeth, who were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless-Nathaniel, an Israelite indeed, in whom there was no guile. Persons of this description Jesus Christ came indeed to call to repentance. He requires them to have a penitent sense of their defects and trangressions. He instructs them to walk humbly before God; to have a broken and contrite spirit, for their transient sins, for their daily infirmities and constitutional faults. But these he did not call to the kind of repentance necessary to corrupt idolaters, to hypocritical formalists, and to habitual and gross offenders; for this reason, that they are already become, in a good measure, what repentance is intended to make men, and need not the universal conversion, and entire amendment of their temper and practice. These he would encourage to advance in that path of rectitude upon which they have entered. They have already obtained an interest

L2

in his mediation, and he is able to save them to the ultermost. Agreeably to this principle, if any, in a christian country, have grown up under good impres sions and virtuous restraints, and have gradually become moulded into a righteous disposition and behaviour, they are not the subjects of that great and striking change which is necessary to others. They have already felt the efficacy of Gods word and spirit, or by the exercise of repentance have become that new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. But to persons such as these, as has been intimated, repentance is necessary; because the whole life of a christian is an exercise of humility, fear and watchfulness. But it is sinners of another sort who are more particularly addressed by our Saviour, whom he commands, in the New Testament, to repent and turn unto God; sinners, who have lived in a wilful, or presumptuous transgression, or neglect of the laws of God, whether they have saved their worldly reputa tion and consequence or not; whether their lives have been mischievous or only unprofitable. They must literally be sanctified wholly in spirit, soul, and body; and be created anew in Christ Jesus unto good works.