6. And lastly, when we are careful that all ours as well as ourselves keep sabbaths. This is a main clause in our obedience to the fourth commandment :-"Thou, thy son, and thy daughter, thy man-servant, and thy maid-servant," &c. (Deut. v. 14.) Every one in their several capacities must keep the sabbath. To be strict ourselves in the duties of a sabbath, and careless what the rest of our families do; whether our children or servants sleep, or be idle, dance, or play at cards, sing idle songs, or take God's name in vain, &c; this is not to call the sabbath "honourable." "I know Abraham, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord." (Gen. xviii. 19.)

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(IV.) " And shalt honour him, or glorify him." The verb in the Hebrew, ina Vecibbadto,* may be rendered "it" or "him;" but the sense seems to incline to the latter, "him," rather than "it." The day having had its title of veneration put upon it before, "honourable," this may more properly belong to God, even to the whole blessed and glorious Trinity, requiring at the hands of every one that enjoyeth this blessed privilege of a sabbath, that they ascribe the honour and glory of it unto God. And that is done,

1. When we make divine authority the sole ground of our separating and sanctifying the whole day to his peculiar service and worship, without alienating any part or parcel of that holy time to our own carnal uses and purposes." Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it:" there is the duty: as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee:" there is the authority. [Deut. v. 12.]

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2. When, as we make God's command our ground, so we make God's glory our end.-When we make it our design to set up God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in all his glorious and infinite perfections, in our adorations and admirations upon that his holy day. And that is done in a special manner, when we make it the great business of a sabbath to ascribe to each glorious Person in the Trinity the glory of his proper work and operation, whereby he challengeth a title to and interest in the sabbath. For example :

(1.) When we ascribe to God the Father the glory of the stupendous work of creation.-And that is done by a due contemplation of all his glorious attributes, shining forth in this beautiful structure of heaven and earth, celebrated by the royal Psalmist in Psalm xix. 1: "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handywork." The transcendent excellencies of the glorious Jehovah are conspicuous and illustrious in this admirable theatre of the world, that is to say,

First. His power.-(i.) In creating all things out of nothing. (ii) And that by a word of his mouth.

Secondly. His wisdom.-In making all things in such a beautiful and exact manner and order. As the great Physician said of the body of man, "No man can come after God and say, This might have been better;" so in the fabric of heaven and earth, neither man nor angels can say, "Here is a defect, and there is a redundancy: it had been better there had been more suns and fewer stars, more land, and less sea," &c. No; when the divine prophet had stood, and in his most

• From 1 Cabad, honorare.

† GALENI Liber de Usu Partium.

serious contemplation looked through the creation, he could spy out nothing that could have been otherwise, but breaks out in admiration : "O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all." [Psalm civ. 24.] He could see nothing from one end of the universe to another, but what speaks infinite perfection: "In wisdom hast thou made them all!" And as the omnipotency and wisdom of God is magnified in the creation, so also,

Thirdly. His bounty.-In bestowing all this visible creation upon man for his use and benefit: as one saith, "God made man last, that he might bring him, as a father brings his son, into an house ready furnished." This is one branch of our honouring God, when we ascribe to God the Father the glory of the work of creation.

(2.) When we ascribe to God the Son the glory of his most glorious work of redemption.-Wherein these particulars are wonderful :

(i.) His ineffable incarnation.—“Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh,” (1 Tim. iii. 16,) that is, the invisible God made visible in a body of flesh. This was a mystery indeed a Son in heaven without a mother; and a Son on earth without a father.

(ii.) Christ's stupendous being "made under the law." (Gal. iv. 4.) -Behold, He that made the law, was made under the law! Under the ceremonial law, that he might abolish it. Under the moral law, the preceptive power of it, that he might fulfil it, that so every believer might have a righteousness" which he may call his own; (Rom. x. 4;) the maledictive power of it, that he might take it away. (Gal. iii. 13.)

(iii.) Christ's work of redemption was principally transacted by his death and passion. For therein he laid down pretium redemptionis, "the price of redemption," which was "his own precious blood." (Acts xx. 28; 1 Peter i. 18, 19.)

(iv.) This great work and mystery of our redemption was perfectly consummated in Christ's glorious resurrection.-Wherein he "spoiled principalities and powers, and made a show of them openly, triumphing over them" v auT. (Col. ii. 15.) Some render it, "in it," and would refer it to his cross: but ev auto is to be understood here in the masculine gender, not in the neuter; and so to be translated, "in himself." Christ, rising from the dead like a conqueror, led death, and the grave, and hell, and the devil in chains after him; as conquerors in war were wont to lead their vanquished enemies, whom they had taken prisoners, in chains of captivity after them, exposing them to the public scorn of all spectators.

Thus we are to ascribe the glory of the work of redemption to Jesus Christ the Son of God; and thereby do honour God in our sanctifying of his holy sabbath.

(3.) We likewise glorify the Holy Ghost, when we ascribe to him the honour of the work of sanctification.-Whether we look upon it in that first miraculous effusion of the Spirit which our Lord Jesus, as the King and Head of his church, did first purchase by the blood of his cross; and afterward ascended into heaven and obtained of his Father when he took possession of his kingdom; and, lastly, did abundantly pour down

upon the apostles, and other officers and members of his evangelical church, in the day of pentecost, (Acts ii. 1-4,) which was (as it were) the sanctification of the whole gospel-church at once in the first-fruits ; or whether we understand that work of sanctification, which successively is wrought by the Holy Ghost in every individual elect child of God; happily begun in their first conversion, and mightily upheld and carried on in the soul to the dying day. This is a glorious work, consisting in these two glorious branches of it, mortification of corruption, which, before the Holy Ghost hath done, shall end in the total annihilation of the body of sin; (that blessed privilege groaned for so much by the blessed apostle, Rom. vii. 24 ;) and the erecting of a beautiful fabric of grace, holiness in the soul, which is the very "image" of God, (an erection of more transcendent wonder and glory than the six-days' workmanship,) which the Holy Ghost doth "uphold" and will perfect unto the day of Christ. (Heb. i. 3.) And this is the great end and design of the sabbath and of the ordinances of the gospel, according to the word which the great Maker and Appointer of sabbaths speaketh: "I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them." [Ezek. xx. 12.]

Here then is the third branch of our sanctifying the sabbath, namely, the ascribing to God the Holy Ghost the glory of the work of sanctification.

And this is proper work for Christians, in the intervals and void spaces between the public ordinances,-to sit down, and first seriously and impartially to examine the work of grace in our souls, 1. For the truth of it. 2. For the growth of it: and then, if we can give God and our own consciences some scriptural account concerning this matter, humbly to fall down, and to put the crown of praise upon the head of free grace, which hath made a difference where it found none. And so much for this text at this time.

SERMON VII.

BY THE REV. THOMAS SENIOR, B.D.,

FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

HOW WE MAY HEAR THE WORD WITH PROFIT.

Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.-James i. 21.

THESE Jews to whom the apostle writes were guilty of many foul and scandalous sins; but their master-sin was the love of this world: "Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God." (James iv. 4.) And from this sin arose many other evils wherewith they are charged in this epistle, as,

1. Their tickling joy in hopes to get gain: "Go to now, ye that say, To-day or to-morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain." (iv. 13.)

2. Their hoarding-up of riches: "Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days." (v. 3.)

3. Withholding the pay of the labouring man: "Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth." (v. 4.)

4. Their fightings and contentions one with the other; yea, their killing one the other to get their estates : "From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not even from your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain." (iv. 1, 2.) Their desiring to have, made them kill one the other, as Ahab did Naboth.

5. Their admiring the rich and vilifying the poor: "If there come into your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment; and ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing." (ii. 2, 3.)

6. And lastly, to name no more, hence arose their unprofitable hearing of the word: "But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves." (i. 22.) They heard, they had the best places at meetings; but they were hearers only, they did nothing for riches, as Christ tells us, choked the word: "And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life." (Luke viii. 14.)

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And as they were guilty of these moral vices, so [they were] erroneous in the doctrine of faith, especially in that main article of justification, holding an empty and inefficacious faith sufficient to interest a man in Christ:

"What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him?" (James ii. 14.) Can such a faith save him ? Μη δυναται ἡ πίστις σωσαι αυτόν ; "Can that faith save him? Can such faith save him?" That faith that saves is always fruitful; and that faith which is not fruitful is no true faith. The apostle doth not deny that we are justified by faith, by faith only; but he denies that faith without works is a true faith, it is only an empty and airy notion; and such a faith cannot justify nor save a man.

Well then, this being the case and condition of the people, it was impossible they should be quiet and patient hearers of the word, but must needs fret and fume against it as that which contradicts their lusts, errors, and delusions. The apostle, therefore, to take them off from this bitter and untoward spirit in hearing the word, gives them this wholesome counsel and advice from God: "Wherefore, laying apart all filthiness," &c.

All filthiness, purapiav-I will not restrain it to covetousness, nor to scurrilous and reproachful speeches, but take it in its utmost latitude, as denoting sin in the general. 'Puños, from whence comes purapia, sometimes signifies "the filth of the flesh." Ou σарxos aπoteσIS PUTOU. Ου σαρκος αποθεσις ῥυπου. "Not the putting away the filth of the flesh." (1 Peter iii. 21.) And punapos is applied to filthy garments : "And Joshua was clothed," iuaria pumapa, "with filthy garments." (Zech. iii. 3.) And so it may ἱματια be taken in James ii. 2: "A poor man," ev punapa eσnt, "in vile raiment." Hence we learn that sin is a filthy thing. Sin is called filthiness in Prov. xxx. 12: "There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness." And therefore, when God calls us from sin, he bids us wash ourselves: "Wash you, make you clean." (Isai. i. 16.) "Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit." (2 Cor. vii. 1.) And we read of this, as that they are ashamed of their sins, and loathe themselves for them, and abhor themselves because of sin, and cast them away as a polluted and menstruous cloth. All these expositions denote the filthiness of sin.

And superfluity of naughtiness, περίσσειαν κακιας—Κaxia is often taken in the scripture for " malice: "Therefore let us keep the truth, not with old leaven, not with leaven," xaxias, "of malice." (1 Cor. v. 8.) But, because it hath here no article, and because it often signifies all manner of sin, I will give it rope, without any limitation. The apostle, then, by "superfluity of naughtiness," means the redundancy and overflowing of sin amongst those professors. There is a chaos of sin in all of us; but it was very spreading and luxuriant in these professors: and no marvel, for they loved money, which is the root of all evil.

"The witnesses"

It significs the "Put ye off all these

Laying apart, aтobeμevo-Or "laying down :" UTTEDEVTO, "laid down their clothes." (Acts vii. 58.) rejection, casting off, or putting away of sin. things," (Col. iii. 8,) saith Paul: and again: "Put off the old man." (Eph. iv. 22.) And so Peter: "Wherefore," azobeμevo, "laying aside αποθέμενοι, all malice." (1 Peter ii. 1.)

Receive with meekness-Receive, that is, hear it, entertain it, give it entrance and admission.