to take our state as we find it, and to employ ourselves earnestly about nothing but fecuring that better state, that glorious immortality, to the affured hope of which we have been raised by the redemption. that is in Christ.

I will further inftance in the difputes about juftification. There are no dif putes which have difturbed the Chriftian church much more; nor are there any which can appear to a confiderate man more unmeaning and trifling. The principal fubject of thefe difputes has been the question, whether we are justified by faith alone, or by faith in conjunction with good works. You should confider, with refpect to this queftion, that those who hold notions the moft rigid make juftifying faith to be the feed and principle of perfonal holiness; and that there is no fect of Chriftians (however extravagant. their doctrines may be) which has not fome expedient or falvo for maintaining the

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neceffity of good works. If they say that perfonal holiness is not a condition of justification, they fay what amounts to the fame, that it is a qualification which must be found in all juftified perfons, and that without it we cannot be accepted. If they fay that we are juftified by faith alone, they add, that we cannot be justified by that faith which is alone (that is, by a faith not accompanied with good works) and that it is only on the virtuous believer, or the man who proves the truth of his faith by his works, that the grace of God in Chrift will confer future happinefs. How trifling then have been the controverfies on this fubject? As long as all acknowledge that it is only that faith which works by love, which purifies the heart and reforms the conduct, that can juftify us; of what confequence is it to determine the particular manner in which it juftifies us? As long as all hold that the practice of righteousness is necessary to bring us to heaven, what does it fignify

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nify whether it is neceffary as the condition of heaven, or as an indifpenfible qualification for it?

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Farther. There have been violent difputes about the future refurrection of mankind; fome maintaining that the very body which had been laid in the grave (and afterwards made a part, perhaps, of a million of other bodies) is to be raised up; and others denying this, and afferting more rationally, that the doctrine of the refurrection relates more to the man than to the body, and means only our revivifcence after the incapacitation of death, or our becoming again embodied and living spirits in a new state of existence, it being, in their opinion, a circumftance of no confequence (provided the living agent is the fame) whether the body is the fame or not. In truth, it feems very plain, that our present and our future bodies must be effentially different. The one is fleb and blood. The other is not to be flesh

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and blood; for St. Paul tells us exprefsly, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. But be this as it will; the difpute on this fubject is of no particular confequence. Provided we know that we are to be raised up, we need not be very anxious to know with what bodies we are to be raifed up. There is no more reafon for disturbing ourselves about this, than there would be (were we going to take poffeffion of an inheritance) to disturb ourselves about the materials of the dress in which we fhall enter upon it.

Akin to this fubject of difpute is another which has much perplexed the minds of many good Chriftians, and about which they have given way to many very unreafonable prejudices. I fhall hope that those who now hear me are fuperior to these prejudices; and, therefore, I will be explicit on this fubject. The subject I mean, is "the intermediate ftate between "death and the refurrection." The common perfuafion is, that this intermediate ftate is to be a state of rewards and punishments.

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nishments. But many think the fcripture account to be, that rewards and punishments are not to begin till the general judgment; and, confequently, that a sufpenfion of all our powers takes place at death which will continue till the morning of the refurrection, when the wicked fhall awake to everlasting fhame and contempt, but the righteous to life eternal. The obfervation I have made on the other fubjects of difpute which I have mentioned, is particularly applicable to this. It is a difpute about the manner and circumftances of a scripture doctrine, and not about the doctrine.itfelf. Let the fact be acknowledged (as it is by every Christian) that we are to be raised up from death; and, if virtuous, to live for ever in a better ftate through the grace of God in Chrift: Let, I fay, this fact be acknowledged, and we need not care fhould the truth be that it is to be preceded by a state of fleep and infenfibility. On this fuppofition, death will only be rendered more awful; for when the exercife of our men

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