gave his apostles a commission to preach, it was in these words, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." The gospel brings the glad tidings of the covenant of promise made in Christ, and makes a free offer of all the promised blessings of the covenant. You have all an offer this day. In my master's name I stand up and invite every unpardoned sinner to come and receive of him free mercy and forgiveness. "And the Spirit and the bride say, come, and let him that heareth say, come, and let him that is athirst, come." Ho! every one that thirsteth for redemption in the blood of Christ, even the forgiveness of sins, come to the blood of sprinkling, that you may be made clean from all your sins, And if you find it in your hearts to accept of this free invitation, let not the sense of your unworthiness keep you back. Jesus is able to save you, bė ye ever so unworthy: for he can save to the uttermost. All is finished on his part. He is able, if you are willing; and he engages to use his almighty power for you, if you ask it. He freely offers you, without money and without price, pardon, righteousness, holiness, glory. He promises them in his word, binds it by oath, and confirms it by covenant. he has of blessedness and glory to give his people shall be yours, if you will accept his offer, and rely upon his promise.

All

But you are thinking still with yourselves, "the promises are indeed freely offered to all, but they be long to none, except to the heirs of promise." That is very true; and therefore it concerns you to be assured that you are an heir of promise. Do you desire to be so? Would you willingly be an heir to the unsearchable riches of grace and glory? O, say you, from my heart I desire it; what would not I give to know that the exceeding great and precious promises in scripture belong to me. But how came this desire into your heart? Was it from any uneasiness in your mind about your sins? Have you been awakened to see that all the threatenings of the

law belong to you, and that you have an interest in none of the promises of the gospel, and was it from hence that you waited upon God for mercy, desiring to experience his promised grace and salvation? And are you now waiting, deeply humbled under a sense of your sinfulness and helplessness? If this be your case, thus far you are right: for this is the first work of God's Spirit upon all the heirs of promise. He begins with convincing them of sin. They are lying in the same mass of corruption with other men, under the law, under guilt for breaking it, subject to death and hell. The Holy Spirit makes them sensible of their being in this state, and apprehensive of their danger, and puts them upon seeking deliverance. They seek, but cannot find, for want of faith. They hear and read in scripture of the love and power of Christ to save such sinners as they are, but they have no faith to rely upon the promises. This is not a comfortable state, but it is the way to get comfort for none will ever ask faith of God, whose gift it is, until they know the want of it, and therefore the Holy Spirit convinces all the heirs of promise that they have no faith, and they find that without faith they cannot take comfort in any of the precious promises: upon which they look up to him, who by his mighty operation is alone able to work faith in the heart. And let every one of you, who is thus waiting upon God, seek and you shall find. He that put the desire into your heart will give you possession of the thing desired. The Spirit of God will enable you to rely upon the word of promise, and to apply it to your own soul, and thereby he will speak peace and comfort to your conscience. And by acting faith thus upon the word you will be brought to the knowledge of your union with Christ; united to him by the bond of the Spirit on his part, and by faith on yours, you will be a member of his mystical body, and will derive influence and nourishment from him for the growth of your spiritual life. And being thus one with Christ, and Christ with you, you will

have an interest in all that he has. His grace shall be yours, his spirit yours, and all his promises shall be yours: for all things shall be yours, whether the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all shall be yours-because ye are Christ's. This is the experience of every heir of promise. The Spirit of God has convinced him of his sinfulness and of his misery. He has been brought to see his lost and helpless state; and in his guilty conscience he was self-condemned, finding himself to be a child of wrath, and an inheritor of everlasting torments. After the Holy Spirit had thus humbled him, he discovered to him the excellency of the Lord Christ, the infinite dignity of his person, and the infinite perfection of his righteousness; and then by the grace of the same good Spirit he was led to rely upon Christ for salvation; and to trust the word of promise, which engages to give free and full and eternal salvation to every one who believeth in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And after the Holy Spirit has enabled the soul to believe, and to rely upon the word of God, he carries on his work, until faith be grown exceedingly, even up to full assurance. This the scripture calls the seal of the Spirit, which he sets upon all the heirs of promise. Sealing comes after believing, and is a fresh evidence in confirmation of it. "After that ye believed," says the apostle, "ye were sealed with the Spirit of promise." First, he enables the soul to rest upon the promise, and to apply it in this manner-He that believeth shall be saved. I believe, therefore I shall be saved; and then he confirms this with his own testimony, and seals it to the heart: so that the sealing is for the believer's assurance, and not for God's. The Lord knoweth them that are his. Their names are written in his book. He knoweth their weakness, and how to strengthen them with might in the inner man. And when temptations are strong, and trials great, then the Holy Spirit commonly strengthens faith with his inward witness. He honours faith with his

own seal, bearing testimony with the believer's spirit that he is a child of God. Every child of God has this seal set upon him some time or other. When it is most for his advantage, and most for God's glory, then the Spirit gives him this earnest of his inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased posses

sion.

But, perhaps some person may inquire, how shall I know that I am sealed by the Spirit of God? You may know it by these scripture marks. First, have you been deeply convinced of sin, and of Christ's power to save you from sin? Have you been convinced of your damnable estate without faith, and have you been asking faith of God? and has he enabled you to rely upon the word of promise, which offers you free and full salvation, and are you verily persuaded that God cannot break his word to you, who are relying upon it? And have you been wait ing for the seal of the Spirit, hoping he would give you the inward witness of your adoption? All this is right. This is the previous work of the Holy Spirit, by which he prepares the heirs of promise for his seal; and if this be your experience you need not doubt but the witness is from heaven, when the Spirit of God beareth witness with your Spirits, that ye are the children of God. For, secondly, in the act of bearing witness with your spirits, he will give sufficient evidence that it is his testimony, both for his own glory and for the assurance of your faith. He comes to bear witness to a matter of fact, that there may be no more doubt concerning it in the court of the believer's conscience. The fact is this, "thou art now a child of God, through faith in Christ Jesus." He seals this testimony upon the heart with his own seal, that it may be authentic and lasting, and then doubts and fears vanish, conscience is assured that all enmity is now slain, and that God is a loving, reconciled Father, upon which the soul is led out into acts of praise and thankfulness, and with an holy triumph can say, "my beloved is mine, and I am his."

But some may think it is an easy matter to be deluded in this case. No, there will be no room for delusion, if your experience, before the testimony of the Spirit, was such as I have been mentioning, and if you attend, thirdly, to what follows after it. Does the witness abide? Is conscience at peace? Is your heart grateful? Is your faith lively and active? Not perhaps in so high a degree as when the Spirit did bear his testimony, but still in some good degree. In this case there can be no delusion; because that which has thus drawn your heart up to God did certainly come from God. If the seal had not been from the Holy Spirit, how could this fruit of the Spirit have been produced? The impression which was left demonstrates it was made by a divine hand: for when the Holy Spirit seals the soul, he not only seals it for Christ's property, but he also stamps the image and likeness of Christ upon it, which appears outwardly by its love to Christ, and by the acts of love. The soul is in love with the person, and with the offices and excellencies of Christ, and evidences this love by its love to his life and to his example, following and pressing close after them, and by its love to his graces, desiring strength from God so to walk even as Christ walked. This constant love to Christ proves the soul to be sealed by his Spirit, and the person thus sealed to be an heir of promise: for now he lives by faith upon Christ, and believes that all the promises made in Christ shall be made good to him. He has the earnest of their completion in his heart, and he has some of them fulfilled to him every day for a daily pledge of the perfect completion of the rest.

This is the character of the heirs of promise; and if any of you are thinking with yourselves, some part of this character is agreeable to our experience, but not the whole of it, and therefore we doubt whether we are heirs of promise or not, you should remem ber, that the heirs of promise grow up to this character by several steps and degrees, and if any part of it be yours you ought to press on to the attainment