finned against many notable means afforded you of God for your prefervation from fin. (1.) You have finned in the face of the dreadful threatenings of God's vengeance against it. You have finned under the very thunderings of mount Sinai and when the flames of hell have, out of the threatenings of God, been staring you in the face, even then you have dared to provoke the Moft High, flighting all thefe formidable evidences of his anger. (2.) You have finned against dreadful examples or infiances of the judgments of God against offenders. You have, as it were, feen your companions turned into hell, and yet you have perfifted in the crimes for which they were ferved fo. Say now, who of you, in fome one remarkable instance cr other, has not feen the judgments of God against fin and finners? Sure our land has of late afforded remarkable inftances not a few. Have you not feen fome, out of a fever of lust, fall into fickness, and out of this drop into the bottomlefs abyss of the fcorching wrath of God? and, notwithftanding all this, you have finned on, and have not guarded against fin. (3.) You have finned contrary to great and precious gofpel-promifes; thefe great and precious promises, that are breafts full of light, full of life, confolation, and ftrength, full of fpiritual fupplies for ftrengthening poor men against the affaults of fin. (4.) You have finned against the glorious gofpel-ordinances, all of which are defigned for the destruction and ruin of fin, and are the pipes through which the fupplies contained in the promises are conveyed to the Lord's people. (5.) You have finned a. gainst all the frivings of the Spirit of God with you, in ordinances and providences; and confequently have refifted the Holy Ghoft in your fins. (6.) You have finned against that fovereign ordinance of God, the antitype of the brazen ferpent, Jefus Chrift, who is lifted up for that very end, that he may fave his people from their fins; and bids all the ends of the earth look unto him for that end, Ifa. xlv. 22. "Look unto me, and be ye faved, all the ends of the earth." The God who has been holding him forth to you, who has provided you in all these great and notable advantages, is the God you have finned againft, whom you have rebelled against, and treated unworthily in thefe horrid violations of his law, which we have enumerated to you above. But this is not the only

only aggravation of your fins, that you had helps against fin: But,

2. You have finned against the God of your mercies, the God who has loaded you with his favours. O fad requital you have given to God for all the kindneffes he has done to you, fince the morning of your day! May he not justly, nay, may we not in his name, lay that to your charge, which we find him with wonderful folemnity charging upon his people, Ifa. i. 2. "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord hath spoken, I have nourifhed and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me." Have not you been nourished and brought up under the care, and by the providence of God? and has be not met with the fame entertainment at your hand? Now, this is a dreadful aggravation of your guilt. For, (1.) It is not one mercy, or two, but innumerable mercies, innumerable kindneffes. Reckon, O finners! what the mercies of God are, if you can. Nay, if ye can count the stars in the heaven, or the fand of the fea-fhore, you may. David fays in that 71ft Pfalm, "That he knows not the number of God's falvation;" and who may not fay with him in this? God every day preferves you from many thousands of inconveniences that would destroy you, and bestows upon you many thousands of mercies. He' loads you with his benefits, and ye load yourselves with your fins against him. Ye turn the point of them all, as it were, against God, and make these very mercies he gives you weapons of unrighteoufnefs to fight against him. As his favours, fo your fins are more than the hairs of your head. Look round you, whatever you fee, whatever you enjoy, chothes, food, or whatever contributes to the comfort of life, that you have from him; and this is the God, O finners! against whom ye have finned, who treats you thus, in whom ye live, move, and have your being," as the apostle obferves, Acts xvii. 28. (2.) As the mer. cies are many against which ye have finned, so they are great. If any can be called fo, thefe which you have at the hand of God may. What is great, if all that is needful for life and godliness be not. And no lefs does the provifion that that God has made amount unto; and no lefs has the Lord God given unto you; Has not "his divine power given. to you all things that pertain to life and godliness?"

2 Pet. i. 3. Have not ye a gospel-defpenfation, food and raiment? And what is more needful? And yet against these great mercies you have finned. When God has fed you to the full, Jefhorun-like, you have waxed fat, and kicked against the God that has fed you all your life long, Deut. xxxii. 15. (3.) Ye have finned notwithstanding of a long tract of thefe many and great undeferved kindneffes; and this extremely enhances your guilt. What! would he not be looked on as a very monster in nature, who would kill the man that was putting his meat in his mouth? who would watch opportunities against one who had done him wonderful kindneffes and this is exactly your cafe; you have finned, and that against the God of your mercies. And therefore, (4.) Your fins are all acts of monstrous ingratitude, than which nothing worfe can be laid to the charge of any man. It is a fin that makes a man worse than the beaft of the field: The ox knoweth his owner, and the afs his master's crib," Ifa. i. 3. The dulleft of beafts know who do them kindneffes, and fawn, as it were, upon thofe that feed them ordinarily; but ye, O finners! have kicked and lift up the heel against the God that has fed you all your life long, and fo are guilty of the most horrid ingratitude. And do you thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwife! But this is not all that may be faid for aggravating your wickedness in finning against God. For,

3. You have done all this wickedness without any prevocation. When fubjects rebel against their fovereign, they have usually fome fhadow of excufe for the taking up arms against him; but ye have none. What have ye to allege in your own defence, O criminals? What iniquity, what fault have ye found in God, that ye have gone backward and forfaken his ways? "Produce your cause, faith the Lord; bring forth your ftrong reafons, faith the King of Jacob," Ifa. xli. 21. What have you to offer in your justification? Sure I am, the ordinary pretences which are upon fuch occafions made use of, to justify a fubftraction of obedience from the kings of the earth, will do you no fervice. (1.) You cannot, you dare not quarrel God's claim. to the fovereignty of the world. What will, what can make it his due, if creation, prefervation, benefits, and the fupereminent excellencies of his nature, qualifying

qualifying him as it were for fo great a poft, do not give a juft claim! And God has a right to the government of the world upon all these accounts. He made us, and not we ourselves he is the mighty Preferver of man; he loads us daily with his benefits; and there is none like him to be his competitor. (2.) You cannot allege unjust laws. You cannot fay that he has overftretched his prerogative, and with-holden any part of that which w was your unqueftionable due. No: who dare implead the Moft High of injuftice?"Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" Are not his laws most just always? and his judgments most righteous? Is he not a God of truth, and without iniquity? Sure he is. We boldly bid you a defiance to discover any thing unjust in that body of laws which God has given to the fons of men. Nor, (3.) Can ye allege the rigour of his laws, that he is an auftere one, and has gone to the utmost he might with you, exacted all that he poffibly could. No; he has confulted your good in the frame of his laws, and has contrived them fo, that every one who understands what he fays, muft own, that, had mankind been at the making them, they could not by all their joint wit, have gone near to make them fo exactly answer the defign of the high God-his glory in the good of the crea ture, as he has done.

4. Nay further, your fins have this aggravation, that they are committed without any prospect of advantage, to countervail the damage you sustain. Could ye pretend, that ye can by your disobedience gain fome great thing, if it did pot excufe you, it would make you to be pitied, as being overborne by a very great temptation. But this cannot, dare not be alleged: no; you" spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which doth not profit." You can make no hand of it. You offend the God of your mercies without any provocation, and that for a very trifle. He has not ftood with you upon the greatest, and ye fcruple the leaft points with him; yea, for a very fhadow of pleasure, ye ftand not to offend him. Nay,

5. You fin, notwithstanding the interpofition of the most folemn vows to the contrary; and therefore we might have made this one of the ingredients of fin, perjury. All of you, who are now before the Lord, ftand folemnly engaged

F

to.

to fear, and obey, and ferve the Lord, all the days of your lives. When you were offered to God in baptism, then you came under the vows of God; and when you have given your prefence in the public affemblies of God's people, fince ye came to age, ye have folemnly owned and ratified thefe vows; and yet, notwithstanding all thefe, you have finned against God, even your covenanted God; and therefore there is perjury in all your fins. You have despised the cath in breaking the covenant of your God.

6. When you have finned, and continue to fin against God, yet ye continue to profefs fealty and jubjection to him, and thereby add fearful hypocrify and mockery to your wickedness; like that profane people with whom the prophet Malachi had to do, who dealt traitorously with God, wearied him with their wickednefs, robbed him of his due, and yet afferted their own innocency in all; and this, throughout the whole of that book, is charged upon them as an aggravation of their guilt. Their profeflion they till kept up, and challenged God to show wherein they had failed of their duty. Now, this is much your cafe; your very appearance here carries in it fuch a challenge. Would ye come here without fcruple, and fo boldly rush into God's prefence, whom ye have offended, were ye not at this with it, that ye judge God either knows not, or will not be offended with what ye have done.

Now, you have heard your charge opened. It is nor, as we have faid before, fome petty mifdemeanor that is libelled against you, but crimes as black as hell, atheism, idolatry, blafphemy, robbery, rebellion, and murder, and that against the God of your mercies, over the belly of a great many notable preventing means of grace, in fpite of the moit folemn vows to the contrary, without any fhadow of provocation, any prospect of real advantage; and all this, notwithstanding a great many profeffions to the contrary,

Here is the fum and fubftance of your indictment, enough to make heaven and earth astonished, that God does not in fury fall upon us, and make an utter end of us. If every one faw his own concerument in this matter, how would we be effected? it would make a ftrange work in this houfe. This, Oinners! is your charge: what have ye to anwer to it Plead ye guilty or not? Sure I am, every

foul