enemy. He will give death a commission to seize you, and drag you to his flaming tribunal. He will break off the treaty, and never make you one offer of reconciliation more: he will strip you of all the enjoyments he was pleased to lend you, while you were under a reprieve, and the treaty was not come to a final issue; and will leave you nothing but bare being, and an extensive capacity of misery, which will be filled up to the uttermost from the vials of his indignation. He will treat you as his implacable enemy, and you shall be to him as Amalek, Exod. xvii. 16, with whom he will make war for ever and ever. He will reprove you, and set your sins in order before you, and tear you in pieces, and there shall be none to deliver. He will meet you as a lion, "and as a bear bereaved of her whelps, and will rend the caul of your hearts. Hos. xiii. 8. He hath for a long time held his peace, and endured your rebellion; but ere long he will go forth as a mighty man: he shall stir up jealousy like a man of war; he shall cry, yea, roar; he shall prevail against his enemies. Ah! he will ease him of his adversaries, and avenge him of his enemies. He will give orders to the executioners of his justice: These mine enemies, that would not that I should reign over them, bring them hither, and slay them before me. Luke xix. 27. And now, if you will not submit to peace, prepare to meet your God, O sinners! gird up your loins like men; put on all the terror of your rage, and go forth to meet your almighty adversary, who will soon meet you in the field, and try your strength. Call the legions of hell to your aid, and strengthen the confederacy with all your fellow-sinners upon earth; put briers and thorns around you to enclose from his reach. Prepare the dry stubble to oppose devouring flame. Associate yourselves, but ye shall be broken in pieces: gird yourselves; but alas! ye shall be broken to pieces.

But O! I must drop this ironical challenge, and seriously pray you to make peace with him whom you cannot resist then all your past rebellion will be forgiven; you shall be the favorites of your sovereign, and happy for ever; and earth and heaven will rejoice at the conclusion of this blessed peace; and my now sad heart will share in the joy. Therefore, for your own sakes I pray you to be reconciled to God.

SERMON IV.

THE NATURE AND UNIVERSALITY OF SPIRITUAL DEATH.

EPHES. ii. 1 and 5.-Who were dead in trespasses and sins. Even when we were dead in sins.

THERE is a kind of death which we all expect to feel, that carries terror in the very sound, and all its circumstances are shocking to nature. The ghastly counte nance, the convulsive agonies, the expiring groan, the coffin, the grave, the devouring worm, the stupor, the insensibility, the universal inactivity, these strike a damp to the spirit, and we turn pale at the thought. With such objects as these in view, courage fails, levity looks serious, presumption is dashed, the cheerful passions sink, and all is solemn, all is melancholy. The most stupid and hardy sinner cannot but be moved to see these things exemplified in others; and when he cannot avoid the prospect, he is shocked to think that he himself must feel them.

But there is another kind of death little regarded indeed, little feared, little lamented, which is infinitely more terrible the death, not of the body, but of the soul: a death which does not stupify the limbs, but the faculties of the mind: a death which does not separate the soul and body, and consign the latter to the grave, but that separates the soul from God, excludes it from all the joys of his presence, and delivers it over to everlasting misery; a tremendous death indeed! "A death unto death." The expression of St. Paul is prodigiously strong and striking : Θανατος εις θανατον. Death unto death, death after death, in all dreadful succession, and the last more terrible than the first, 2. Cor. ii. 16, and this is the death meant in my text, dead in trespasses and sins.

To explain the context and show you the connection, I shall make two short remarks.

The one is, That the apostle had observed in the nineteenth and twentieth verses of the foregoing chapter, that the same almighty power of God, which raised Christ from the dead, is exerted to enable a sinner to

believe. We believe, says he, according to the working or energy Eveyear of his mighty power which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead. The one, as well as the other, is an exploit of omnipotence. The exceeding greatness of his mighty power is exerted towards us that believe, as well as it was upon the dead body of Christ to restore it to life, after it had been torn and mangled upon the cross, and lain three days and three nights in the grave. What strong language is this! what a forcible illustration! Methinks this passage alone is sufficient to confound all the vanity and self-sufficiency of mortals, and entirely destroy the proud fiction of a self-sprung faith produced by the efforts of degenerate nature. In my text the apostle assigns the reason of this. The same exertion of the same power is necessary in the one case and the other; because, as the body of Christ was dead, and had no principle of life in it, so, says he, ye were dead in trespasses and sins; and therefore could no more quicken yourselves than a dead body can restore itself to life. But God, verse 4th, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us; that God, who raised the entombed Redeemer to life again, that same almighty God, by a like exertion of the same power, hath quickened us, verse 5th, even when we were dead in sins; dead, senseless, inactive, and incapable of animating ourselves. Let any man carefully read these verses, and consider their most natural meaning, and I cannot but think common sense will direct him thus to understand them. The scriptures were written with a design to be understood; and therefore that sense which is most natural to a plain unprejudiced understanding is most likely to be true.

The other remark is, That the apostle having pronounced the Ephesians dead in sin, while unconverted, in the first verse, passes the same sentence upon himself and the whole body of the Jews, notwithstanding their high privileges, in the fifth verse. The sense and connection may be discovered in the following para phrase: "You Ephesians were very lately heathens, and, while you were in that state, you were spiritually dead, and all your actions were dead works. In time past ye walked in trespasses and sins, nor were you singular in your course: though it be infinitely pernicious,

yet it is the common course of this world, and it is also agreeable to the temper and instigation of that gloomy prince, who has a peculiar power in the region of the air; that malignant spirit who works with dreadful efficacy in the numerous children of disobedience; but this was not the case of you heathens alone: we also who are Jews, notwithstanding our many religious advantages, and even I myself, notwithstanding my high privileges and unblemishable life as a pharisee, we also, I say, had our conversation in times past among the children of disobedience; we all, as well as they, walked in the lusts of the flesh, fufilling the desires and inclinations (para) of our sensual flesh, and of our depraved minds; for these were tainted with spiritual wickedness, independent upon our animal passions and appetites; and we are all, even by nature, children of wrath even as others in this respect we Jews were just like the rest of mankind, corrupt from our very birth, transgressors from the womb, and liable to the wrath of God. Our external relation and privileges as the peculiar people of God, distinguished with a religion from heaven, makes no distinction between us and others in this matter. As we are all children of disobedience by our lives, so we are all, without exception, children of wrath by nature but when we were all dead in sins, when Jews and Gentiles were equally dead to God, then, even then, God, who is rich in mercy, had pity upon us; he quickened us; "he inspired us with a new and spiritual life by his own almighty power, which raised the dead body of Christ from the grave." He quickened us together with Christ: "We received our life by virtue of our union with him as our vital head, who was raised to an immortal life, that he might quicken dead souls by those influences of his Spirit which he purchased by his death; and therefore by grace are ye saved." It is the purest, richest, freest grace, that such dead souls as we were made alive to God, and not suffered to remain dead for

ever.

This is the obvious meaning and connection of these verses; and we now proceed to consider the text, dead in trespasses and sins; you dead, we dead, Jews and Gentiles all dead together in trespasses and sins. A dismal, mortifying character! "This one place," says Beza,

"like a thunder-bolt, dashes all mankind down to the dust, great and proud as they are; for it pronounces their nature not only hurt but dead by sin, and therefore liable to wrath.*

Death is a state of insensibility and inactivity, and a dead man is incapable of restoring himself to life; therefore the condition of an unconverted sinner must have some resemblance to such a state, in order to support the bold metaphor here used by the apostle. To understand it aright we must take care, on the one hand, that we do not explain it away in flattery to ourselves, or in compliment to the pride of human nature; and, on the other hand, that we do not carry the similitude too far, so as to lead into absurdities, and contradict matter of fact.

The metaphor must be understood with several limitations or exceptions; for it is certain there is a wide difference between the spiritual death of the soul, and the natural death of the body, particularly in this respect that death puts an entire end to all the powers, actions, and sensations of our animal nature universally, with regard to all objects of every kind: but a soul dead in sin is one partially dead; that is, it is dead only with regard to a certain kind of sensations and exercises, but in the mean time it may be all life and activity about other things. It is alive, sensible, and vigorous about earthly objects and pursuits; these raise its passions and engage its thoughts. It has also a dreadful power and faculty of sinning, this is not its life but its disease, its death, like the tendency of a dead body to corruption. It can likewise exercise its intellectual powers, and make considerable improvements in science. A sinner dead in trespasses and sins may be a living treasury of knowledge, an universal scholar, a profound philosopher, and even a great divine, as far as mere speculative knowledge can render him such; nay, he is capable of many sensations and impressions from religious objects, and of performing all the external duties of religion. He is able to read, to hear, to pray, to meditate upon divine things; nay, he may be an instructor of others, and preach perhaps with extensive popularity; he may have

"Hoc uno loco, quasi fulmine, totus homo, quantus quantus est prosternitur. Neque enim naturam, dicit læsam, sed mortuain, per pecatum; ideoque iræ obnoxiam."