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and perish. Heb. vi. They have a great sense of their sinful, guilty, undone state; of the wrath of God, and dreadfulness of damnation, and are mightily brought down; and then have a great sense of the mercy of God, the dying love of Christ, and the glory of heaven: and they think they are converted, and they are ravished with the thought. However, in the end, all is turned to feed their pride and their presumption, and to harden and embolden them in sin. They are not so much afraid of sin now, because they are confident they shall never go to hell. And many times this sort of people, through the great swelling of spiritual pride, and the immediate influences of Satan, come to have strange experiences; turn to be strange creatures; broach strange errors; and seem to be nearly forsaken by God, reason, and conscience: and yet, (yea, and by the same means,) get to be the holiest creatures in the world, by their own account. But while the sinners, with whom the Holy Spirit strives, do many of them turn out after this sort, some in one way and some in another, there are others with whom God makes thorough work; that is, makes them thoroughly understand and feel their sinful, guilty, helpless, undone state, and see into and believe the gospel-way of salvation, through Jesus Christ, and return. home to God in that way. And now they are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation. 1 Pet. i. 5. And here God has mercy on whom he will have mercy; and even so it has been as to the external means of grace from the beginning of the world. With some, God has taken more pains and longer; and with others, less pains and shorter but when all the rest of the world degenerated to heathenism, God took effectual methods with the Israelites to keep them from doing so too. And thus, in a resembling manner, he does, with all the spiritual seed of Abraham; with his elect whereby, in spite of all opposition, they are brought to glory at last; they are fed with manna every day: the pillar of cloud by day, and of fire by night, is their continual guide; and the rock which follows them is Christ; i. e. they are fed and are guided, they live and are refreshed, and are helped to hold on their way, by continual influences from on high, by constant communications of divine grace. And so the path of the just is

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REMARKS. Never is any poor sinner under the light of the gospel passed by, without being awakened by the Holy Spirit; but God sees he is deaf to the voice of his word, and hates to be awakened, and loves to go on secure. Never is any awakened sinner forsaken by the spirit of God, and left to take his own way, and run his own ruin, but that first he resisted and grieved the Holy Spirit, and stifled conviction, and rent away, as it were, out of God's hands. And never is a poor sinner savingly brought home to God and trained up for heaven, but that, from first to last, it was absolutely and entirely owing to the infinite goodness, free grace, and almighty power of God. And, indeed, thus will it appear at the great day of judgment, that all who perish are wholly to blame, and all that are saved will have none to glory in but the Lord. But I have elsewhere so much insisted upon the nature of the influences of the Holy Spirit, that I must not here enlarge.

Thus the way to life is opened by Christ Jesus, and all are invited to return and be saved. And thus we see the methods which God takes for the recovery of a sinful, guilty world. And from all that has been said we may draw these inferences.

1. It is undoubtedly the duty of poor sinners to be deeply affected with all these wonderful methods of divine grace, and to strive and labour with the greatest painfulness and diligence, to fall in with the design of the gospel; to be sensible of their sinful, guilty, undone state, and to look to the free grace of God, through Jesus Christ, for relief, and to repent and return to God through him. Luke xiii. 24. Strive to enter in at the strait gate. Some are of the opinion, that because the very best that sinners can do, while enemies to God in their hearts, is, as to the manner of it, sinful and odious in the eyes of the divine holiness, that therefore their best way is to do nothing, but to sit still and wait for the spirit; but nothing is more contrary to scripture or reason. The scripture says, Strive to enter. And reason teaches, that when the God of Heaven, the great Governor of the world, is thus coming out after guilty rebels in a way of mercy, it becomes them to be

deeply affected thereat, and to exert all their rational powers in opposition to their sloth and corruptions, labouring to lie open to the means of conviction; avoiding every thing that tends to promote security, and to render ineffectual the methods of divine grace, and practising every thing that tends to their further awakening. And O, let this be remembered, that it is sinners' resisting the methods of grace, which causes God to give them over. Psal. lxxxi. 11, 12, 13. But my people would not hearken to my voice: and Israel would none of me. So I gave them up to their own hearts' lust: and they walked in their own counsels. O that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways!

2. From what has been said, we may learn that it is madness and folly for poor sinners to use the means of grace under a notion of doing their whole duty, and so pacify their consciences. The means of grace are designed, in the first place, to convince sinners of their sinful, guilty, ruined state and for them to forget, totally forget, this their end, and to go about to attend upon them under a notion of doing that duty which they owe to God, as something in lieu of that perfect obedience which the law requires, is quite to lose the benefit of the means of grace; yea, to thwart their very design; and tends to keep men from conviction and conversion, and seal them down in spiritual security. That which God directs them to do, to the end their consciences might be more awakened, they do, that their consciences might be more quieted. The means which were appointed to make them more sensible of their need of Christ and grace, they use to make themselves the more insensible thereof.

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3. Sinners are not to use the means of of making amends for their past sins, and recommending themselves to God, (Rom. x. 3.) nor under a notion that by their strongest efforts they shall be ever able to renew their own nature, (Eph. ii. 1.) nor under a notion they can do any thing at all to prevail with God to renew them, (Rom. xi. 35, 36.) But, on the contrary, in the use of the means of grace, they are to seek for and labour after a thorough conviction, that they can neither make any amends for their past sins, nor in the least recommend themselves to God; that they

cannot renew their own nature, nor in the least move God to show them this mercy, to the intent, that being thus convinced of their ruined, helpless state, they may be prepared to look to the free mercy and sovereign grace of God through Christ, for all things; which is the very thing that the gospel aims at, (Rom. iii. 9-26.) and which the means of grace are designed to promote, and bring them to; and to which the spirit of God, by his inward influences, does, in the use of means, finally bring all who are saved. Rom. vii. 8, 9. Gal. iii. 24.

For sinners to use the means of grace, under the other notions aforesaid, is practically to say, "We are not fallen, sinful, guilty, helpless, undone creatures; nor do we need the redeemer or the sanctifier which God has provided; nor do we lie at his mercy, or intend to be beholden to his mere sovereign grace. If we have sinned we can make amends for it if we have displeased God, we can pacify him again : if we are wicked, we can become good: or, if we do as well as we can, and then want any further help, God is obliged to help us."

If, therefore, sinners would take the wisest course to be the better for the use of the means of grace, they must try to fall in with God's design, and with the spirit's influences, and labour to see and feel their sinful, guilty, condemned, helpless, undone state. For this end they must forsake vain company, leave their quarrelling and contention, drop their inordinate worldly pursuits, and abandon every thing which tends to keep them secure in sin, and quench the motions of the spirit; and for this end must they read, hear, meditate, and pray; compare themselves with God's holy law, try to view themselves in the same light that God does, and pass the same judgment upon themselves; that so they may be in a way to approve of the law, and to admire the grace of the gospel; to judge and condemn themselves, and humbly to apply to the free grace of God, through Jesus Christ, for all things, and through him to return to God.

Thus we have gone through what was proposed under this third general head. We have considered the necessity there was of satisfaction for sin, and of a perfect righteousness.--

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We have considered what satisfaction for sin has been made, and what righteousness wrought out, and wherein their sufficiency consists. We have considered how the way of life has been opened by the means; and we have considered what methods God has actually entered upon for the recovery of lost sinners to himself. And thus, now, upon the whole, we see upon what grounds the great Governor of the world considered mankind as being in a perishing condition, and whence his designs of mercy originally took their rise, and what necessity there was for a Mediator and Redeemer, and how the way to life has been opened by him whom God has provided and so may now pass to the next thing proposed.

SECTION VII.

SHOWING THE NATURE OF A GENUINE COMPLIANCE WITH THE GOSPEL.

IV. To show the true nature of a saving faith in Christ. And because, by the whole, I am to explain the nature of the gospel, and of a genuine compliance therewith, therefore I will begin with a more general view of things, and afterwards proceed to a more distinct survey of faith in particular.

Now, a genuine compliance with the gospel, in general, consists in a spiritual and divine sight and sense of the great truths therein presupposed and revealed; and in a firm belief of those truths, and an answerable frame of heart; as is evident from 2 Cor. iv. 3, 4, 5. 1 Thes. i. 13. Matt. 13. 29. John viii. 32.

It is divine light, imparted by the spirit of God to the soul, which lays the foundation of all. Matt. xi. 25. Gal. i. 16. 2 Cor. 3., 18. This spiritual and divine light, according to the language of St. Paul, shines in the heart, and consists in the knowledge of GLORY; 2 Cor. iv. 6.; that is, in a sense of MORAL BEAUTY; a sense of that beauty there is in the mo RAL PERFECTIONS of GOD, and in all spiritual and divine hings; that HOLY BEAUTY which is peculiar to spiritual, and livine, and holy things; of which every unholy heart is per

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