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of the other parts. The fathers in Christ were once babes in Christ. The Spirit begins his work with conviction of sin, which is necessary to put the sinner upon seeking the promised mercies of the gospel. If you are seeking, that is another step towards your reliance upon God's word, and believing him faithful to fulfil his promises to your soul. And if you can rely upon his word, you have advanced one step farther towards the assurance of faith and the seal of the Spirit so that if any part of this character be yours, doubt not but the rest will be yours also-only press you on to the attainment of what is yet before. Let what has been done in you encourage you to proceed. You have some evidences of your inheritance, endeavour to get more, looking up to him who has begun, and praying him to carry on his own work, and fear not but you shall be brought to know that Christ is yours, and that all the promises made through him are yours also. And may this consideration stir you up to press forward, that what you are seeking is of inestimable value, and the happy possession of it will be eternal! When you are once heirs of promise you will be heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ, born to inherit the riches of grace and the riches of glory. All the blessedness which God has promised to give his children in time and in eternity is yours. You are heirs to the exceeding great and precious promises, and this brings me to the

Third general head of discourse, under which I was to treat of their exceeding greatness and preciousness. They are great in quantity, containing the greatest blessings which God has to give, yea, exceedingly great, beyond all description, and they are as good as great; they are exceeding precious, containing every thing truly valuable in earth or heaven. The greatness of the promises might be proved from many considerations. I shall mention at present but three or four. And the

First is, the state from which the promises offer to save man. He is fallen into a most miserable and

helpless bondage, and to the worst of enemies, and none but an almighty arm can deliver him. Before the promise is brought to him he is a transgressor of the law, under the curses of it, liable to be cut off every moment, and to suffer them in everlasting torments. And when justice comes to inflict the curses of the law upon him, what satisfaction can he make? What has he to plead, why sentence should not be immediately executed? He is silent. His mouth is stopped. He is self-condemned, and owns the sentence to be just which assigns him over to the tormentors, to suffer with them the vengeance of eternal fire. This is the desert of every son and daughter of fallen Adam. Sin has made them subject to all this misery, and has left them totally helpless; they can no more save themselves from the second death than they can from the first. While the long suffering of God bears with them in this mortal life, he sends them his promises; in which he offers to save them from guilt and misery, to cleanse them from the pollutions, and to heal them of the wounds of sin. And. are not these great promises, which engage to see such an almighty work performed? Surely they are exceeding great, since it requires the arm of the Lord God omnipotent to fulfil them by saving poor, gunty, helpless man from sin and Satan, from death and hell. Must not that be an exceeding great promise which engages to save man from exceeding great misery? And this greatness appears evidently in the

(2.) Next place, from what the promises offer to bestow upon the sinner. They not only engage to save him from all evil, but also to bestow upon him all good. They offer him a free pardon, that his sins may be forgiven, and he may be justified by faith and reconciled to God, and may have the love of God shed abroad in his heart, and may walk as an adopted son of God, worthy of his high calling, unto all well pleasing. And in this holy walking heaverwards, the Lord promises him every grace and blessing which shall be needful for him; yea, he has

engaged to make all things, sickness, reproach, persecution, trials and troubles of every kind, work together for his good. Are not these great promises which engage to bestow pardon, justification, peace with God, adoption, sanctification, and grace to profit under every dispensation of providence? yea, are not these exceeding great promises, which offer the sinner such exceeding great blessings? And offer them to him,

(3.) Upon the greatest motive that possibly can be, even the free grace of God. Deliverance from the evils of sin, and the bestowing of the blessings of salvation, is all of grace, proceeding wholly from the unmerited love and mercy of God. He is the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth. All creatures are his, bound to obey his holy will, and in case of disobedience bound to suffer the threatened punishment; and when man had disobeyed he had a right to nothing but punishment, and if it was remitted, yea, but for a day, this was an act of grace; but how much greater an act was it to pardon the sinner, to put honour upon him, and to restore him to a better state than he was in before he fell! If a friend bestow upon you a free gift, you acknowledge yourselves to be under a greater obligation than if he was to pay you the same sum for a just debt. How much then are you indebted to God? For he had no motive, but mere love, to induce him to make you any promise. Consider this motive, consider the promises, consider from what a state of misery to what a state of happiness God offers to raise you, and then admire and praise the greatness of that love which led God to make you such great promises. Well might the apostle call upon us to behold what manner of love it is for it passeth knowledge, it is so exceeding great. The blessings which his free grace has promised surpass all understanding. Even the souls of just men made perfect, who are now inheriting the promises, cannot adequately set forth the greatness of them: for they are eternal. And this is another

(4.) Consideration which exalts the greatness of the promises. They are of everlasting duration, and can never fail. When nature itself shall be dissolved, and heaven and earth shall pass away, then the promises shall be established. Not a tittle of them shall suffer in the universal conflagration; but they shall be then in their full extent most gloriously fulfilled. Many of them are reserved for the wonders of that great day. The raising of the body from corruption and mortality, admitting it to the vision of God, putting upon it and the soul never fading glory, a crown of righteousness, and palms of victory; and then bringing them to drink of those rivers of pleasure which are at God's right hand for evermore: these are some of the exceeding great promises which are to be completed at the Lord's coming to judgment. In that day the redeemed of the Lord will find that his divine power will fulfil the greatest of all his promises. When the captain of their salvation has brought them to the heavenly Canaan, the promised land of everlasting rest, then he will put them into the actual possession of all the promises. Like as Joshua, when he had brought the people into the promised land, called upon them to be witnesses for God, that every promise had been fulfilled to them, so may our almighty Joshua say to his redeemed people in the same words, "ye know in all your hearts, and in all your souls, that not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord your God spake concerning you; all are come to pass unto you, and not one thing hath failed thereof."-Joshua

xxiii. 14.

Let these considerations suffice to set forth the greatness of the promises. They are exceeding great in offering to deliver us from all evil, and to bestow upon us all good: the motive for doing this is the infinite love and sovereign grace of God, which advances the greatness of the promise by the freeness of it, and still farther advances it by what grace has promised to do for us glory, even to give us the

actual possession and eternal enjoyment of all the promises.

And are these things so? If they be, who then would not wish to be an heir of promise? Are the promises thus exceeding great? Why then do they not appear so to every one of us? What is the reason that the generality of men had rather be heirs to any other estate than to the promises? The text. tells us the true cause: they know not the preciousness of them: they are exceeding great in themselves, but they are not apprehended to be so without faith. As the apostle says of Christ, "to them that believe, he is precious," so we may say of the promises, to them that believe they are precious, and therefore their greatness does not strike any man, until he by faith tastes something of their preciousness. Christ is the sum and substance of all the promises. Christ himself is the first promise, and all the rest are branches from that radical promise. They are all made in Christ, and in him they are all completed. God has no good to give to sinners, but in relation to Christ, and all the promises of good are made in him, in consequence of his meritorious life and death, his resurrection and ascension-yea, the spirit of promise is given as the blessed fruit of Christ's intercession. Now no man sees any thing precious in Christ without faith; so neither, without it, does he see any thing precious in the promises. Christ has no form or comeliness, that they should desire him, and the promises have no such charms as to persuade him to live upon them. But faith gives a substance, a substantial presence to the things hoped for in the promises, and gives evidence of the believer's interest in the things not seen by the bodily eyes, and thus it enables the soul to experience the reality, and to find something of the value of the good things contained in the promises.

Perhaps you may be convinced of the necessity of faith to discover the preciousness of the promises, but you do not clearly understand how faith acts upon

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