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Chrift is the whole of your falvation-he is all; and it is by ftudying him, and in the exercife of faith on every part of his work, we inwardly receive and enjoy the benefits of it. Would you triumph over death? Look at Chrift, and at him only. Confider how completely he hath put away fin, and brought in everlasting righteoufnefs. Remember, he hath conquered death, and him that had the power of death. Live on his victories over death; then you may live as though death had already done its office, because the fting is taken out of it, and Christ hath abolished it. Jefus will be with thee, O believer, when all the fprings of nature cease within thee, and will fwallow up thy death in life everlasting. It may be thou mayeft have no ftruggle in death. It pleases our Lord at times to take his people to himself fo fuddenly, that they are actually out of the body, without, as it were, feeling the ftroke of diffolution. Some are gone by fudden death, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye; which fhews what our Jefus can do. When and where this is not the cafe, he is with his dying faints, fupports them frequently in a wonderful manner, often lets down fuch rays of his own glory and fhines fo immediately on them, that they find themselves in their dying moments in the very fuburbs of glory. Lift up your heads, then, ye ranfomed of the Lord, who will foon be encircled in the icy arms of death; for your complete deliverance from all fin and forrow draweth nigh. Christ is all

in death and he will be

all in glory.

You and I

fhall have no other being in heaven, but what we have in Jefus. We fhall live in Jefus, fpend an eternity in beholding him, lofe our little mite of creature being, and be everlastingly filled with all the fulness of God. Not a faint in glory lives a single moment to himself; not an eye in glory, but is fixed on the worthy Lamb. May the Holy Ghost give us fuch a foretaste of heaven, glory, and immortality, as may cause us to long to be for ever with the Lord. Even fo, Lord Jefus. Amen.

SERMON

XXII.

THE TRUTH AS IT IS IN JESUS.

EPHESIANS, Chap. iv. Ver. 20, 21.

But ye have not fo learned Chrift; if fo be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jefus.

THE

HE epiftle before us was written by Paul when he was a prifoner for Jesus Christ at Rome; but though he was bound, the word of God was not bound; though he was ftraightened in body, yet

the Holy Ghoft took the advantage of it to enlarge his mind, opening more the eyes of his understanding, giving him more fublime and vaft discoveries of the infinity of grace, of the myfteries of the gofpel, of everlasting love and free grace, in their high and eternal original, with the perpetual spring and ftreams of divine clemency which flow therefrom: so that the holy apostle feems to speak of this epiftle as the highest proof and inftance of his real fpiritual knowledge of Jefus, faying, Whereby when ye read (referring to the two former chapters) ye may understand my knowledge in the myflery of Chrift. See chap. iii. ver. 4.

He enters into the depth of thofe things which are hid in God, as far as they concern us; brings them out, opens, explains, and fets them forth to view in the first chapter: in which he treats of that fundamental act in God, which is the one foundation from whence grace and glory are fettled on us, and fecured to us, viz. eternal, perfonal, unconditional election in Chrift, before the foundation of the world. Which act, as it flowed from the free, fovereign, everlasting love, and good pleasure of JEHOVAH the Father's will, gave the elect being and exiftence in Chrift from everlasting; by which means they had union with, interest in, and relation to the perfon of Christ, God-man, before all worlds. This high and ftupendous grace of election is fhewn forth by fome of the immediate fruits and effects of it. God having, by election, given his people fupercreation being and existence in Chrift, out of the fame love wherewith he loved their perfons in Chrift, and bleffed them in him with all spiritual bleffings. And as their election was thus owing to his own fovereign, free, and immutable will, fo, by an act of his infinite understanding, he decreed their being and their utmoft well-being in Christ, predeftinated them to the adoption of children, and accepted their perfons in the perfon of the God-man, his first and eternally beloved. All which high, eternal acts of grace towards the elect, are attributed solely to grace; Chrift, as head and mediator, having no influence in them, he being, as fuch, the object of election as well as his church; therefore thefe acts

He

which are eternally eftablished in the mind and will of God, are faid to be to the glory and praife of his grace. The apoftle defcends from these high and ancient mountains of everlafting love and free grace, to speak of Chrift the ancient and eternal head of the elect church of human race, as the glorious, all-fufficient mediator of reconciliation, and the redeemer of it from fin and eternal ruin: 'in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of fins, according to the riches of his grace. He ftyles the gofpel the myftery of God's will, and calls it the gospel of falvation, which, as accompanied with the efficacy of the Holy Ghost, is the means by which Chrift is revealed, madẹ known, believed on, received, and enjoyed. fhews how the Holy Ghoft is the fealer of the elect; and clofes thefe fubjects with a prayer, in which all the articles of our most holy faith are included, or expreffed; and the degrees of Chrift's exaltation mentioned in it are, as Dr. Ames obferves, anfwerably oppofite to the degrees of his humiliation: his rifing from the dead being opposed to his death; his afcenfion into heaven, to his defcent into the grave, and going down into hell, or into the state of death; and, his fitting at God's right hand, to his remaining in the grave, and in the ftate of death. After which, the apoftle fets forth the love, mercy, and grace of God, as the original caufe of quickening, raifing up, and delivering the elect from that ftate of fin, guilt, death, and wrath, which they were in by Adam's fall, and in which they remained all the days of their unregeneracy: out of which, through the quickening

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