Christ in redeeming you to the inheritance of everlasting life.

These doctrines, and such as these, the corruption of your own nature, the sufficiency of divine grace, the excellency of faith, the necessity of good works, the power of prayer, the beauty of holiness, the new commandment of love, and the new foundation laid in Jesus Christ our Lord, these doctrines, and such as these, you will daily see more plainly, know more surely, and believe more heartily. These you will know to be of God, if you are willing to do his will. You, I say, who have been already brought in some degree to know them. For we speak not here of those who have learned otherwise. We presume not to say that they must necessarily be more deficient than ourselves in an honest purpose of obedience to the truth. Only we hold, that with the same Scriptures open in their hands, the same faculties in their minds, and the same Holy Spirit shed abroad in their hearts, all ought to be of one mind, in

one church. Only we fear, if all are not, that the fault lies in some reluctance of our own to do faithfully what we may know clearly to be the will of God. Only we would stir up ourselves, and quicken our own purposes of obedience; as the best help for our own guidance into truth, and the best means to make others also like minded. All never can be expected to agree. Nor can we hope perhaps, that in this world, any single Christian will attain to a full and perfect knowledge of that truth which can be but one. But of this each may be sure for himself, that there is no so helpful means towards attaining right knowledge, as to labour after right practice. Nor would any thing go so nigh to bring us all to one profession of Christian faith, as for all to be in earnest fulfilling what each holds to be the rule of Christian holiness.

Do then what you know, and you shall have grace to know more. Do what you know more, as you advance in knowledge, and you shall have grace to advance yet farther. For thus to every one that

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hath shall be given;" (Matt. 25. 29;) not if having he neglect the gift that is in him, but if having he improve what he hath, and so prove himself fit to have

more.

SERMON VI.

THE DAY OF THE LORD.

2 PETER 3. 11, 12.

Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness; looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God.

ST. PETER, at the commencement of this chapter, warns us, that "there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." (Ver. 3, 4.) (Ver. 3, 4.) We know that such persons are now come; that

there are now men who openly proclaim their disbelief of God's word, of the promises, and of the threatenings, which the Bible contains. And we therefore conclude, that we are now living in those very last times of which the Apostle speaks, in that period of the world, which, however long it may continue, is to be its last, in its present state and condition.

For it is here to be observed, that whilst there have been several distinct stages of divine revelation, in respect of which some times are called the latter, and some the last; there has been no such revolution in the outward world since the creation of Adam, or at least since the flood in the time of Noah. During all these generations of mankind, the things we see around us have followed the same settled laws. The heavens and the earth present the same usual appearance. The planets pursue their appointed courses. The sun fails not to rise and set; nor the moon alternately to increase and wane. Summer and