promised Redeemer died, and to that only. Present yourselves as fuppliants for mercy through faith in his atoning blood. It is only by his atoning blood that your fins can be washed away. It is only by faith that the fruits and merits of the death of Chrift can be received and applied to the benefit of your foul. But remember that, if you wish Christ to be your Saviour, you must receive him as your Mafter. If you defire a justifying faith, it must be a living faith. It must be a faith wrought by the Holy Ghoft. faith which governs the heart.

It must be a

It must be a faith which worketh by love. It must be a faith which labours after univerfal holiness. You must give up yourselves wholly to Christ. You must make it your conftant object, and your fupreme delight, to obey all the commandments of your Lord; to walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit; to have your heart filled with Christian tempers, and controlled by Chriftian motives. These bleffings are in no degree to be attained by your own ftrength. They are entirely the gifts of the Spirit of God. But Christ, by his death, has purchased them for all who feek them through him. If you feek them by daily and fervent prayer, offered in his name and grounded on his merits; if, in proportion

E 2

portion to the grace which he has vouchsafed, you conftantly ftrive to act as his faithful servants; he will bestow them in larger and larger abundance upon you. Then will he acknowledge you for his own at the last day: and while he commands the wicked, who remain under the curfe of the law, to depart into everlasting fire; will address to you the unchangeable benediction, "Come, ye bleffed "of my Father: inherit the kingdom pre66 pared for you from the foundation of the "world."

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SERMON III.

On the Nature and Efficacy of Divine Grace.

2 COR. xii. 9.

And be faid unto me, My Grace is fufficient "for thee: for my Strength is made perfect " in Weakness."

FOR the accomplishment of any useful defign, it appears neceffary, that all infe

rior inftruments fhould be fubjected to one fuperintending power. In the ftructures of human mechanifm, however numerous, however complicated may be the contrivances by which the ultimate object is pursued; fome main-fpring, fome mafter-wheel, fome ruling force, fome preponderating weight, actuates and controls all the subordinate parts, and gives motion and efficacy to the whole. It

is thus, if we may prefume to connect together by any femblance of comparison the labours of terreftrial feeblenefs and ignorance with the operations of infinite perfection; that the divine wifdom conducts its plans to their appointed fuccefs. Earth and air, cold and heat, clouds and funshine, the interchange of day and night, the gradual viciffitudes of feafons, and all the principles of vegetation by which food is produced and ripened for mankind: these are all but means governed and directed by the providence of God. Youth and age, health and sickness, affluence and poverty, profperity and distress: these and all other fecondary causes through which falvation is vouchfafed to man, are all but inftruments in the hands of the Firft Caufe: thefe are all but miniftering agents fubfervient to the fway of the grace of Christ.

Never perhaps was the power of divine grace more gloriously difplayed than in its effects wrought through the inftrumentality of St. Paul! Never perhaps among all the children of Adam did it form to itfelf a more able, or a more willing minifter! This great inftructor of the Gentiles, in vindicating his character and his apoftolical authority against the infinuations of falfe teachers among the Corinthians, was led to fpecify, among other

evidences

evidences of his divine commiffion, the vifions and revelations with which he had been favoured in a very uncommon measure by his Lord. He defcribes himself as having been caught up into Paradife; into the third. Heaven, whether in the body or out of the body he knew not; and as having heard unfpeakable words, words not to be uttered by human lips. The Saviour of the world, however, fhewed himself not unmindful that his holy apostle was but man. According to the wisdom difplayed in all the difpenfations of his providence, he tempered his extraordinary mercies with fuch a portion of humiliation and fatherly chastisement, as might guard his beloved fervant against fpiritual pride, and extravagant ideas of his fuperiority over his fellow Chriftians. There· was given to St. Paul, to use his own words, a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet him, left he should be exalted above meafure through the abundance of the revelations. This thorn in the flesh, the precife nature of which, as being well known to the Corinthians, among whom he had refided eighteen months, it was not neceffary to particularife; evidently appears to have been fome perfonal infirmity, which St. Paul regarded as likely to impair his ability and leffen his usefulness