Mot. 3d, Take a view of the noble patterns of humility that are set before us for our imitation. The saints militant are patterns of it. Abraham, the father of the faithful, in the forecited xviiith of Genesis, with what humility does he address himself to God! 66 Behold, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, who am but dust and ashes." And his grandson, Jacob, follows his footsteps herein, "I am less," says he, "than the least of thy mercies." In a word, Job, David, Isaiah, Paul, and all the "cloud of witnesses," have cast us a copy of humility. Again; the saints triumphant cast us a copy of this grace: they take their crowns off their heads, and cast them down at the Mediator's feet, ascribing the glory of all to him, saying, "Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen." Again; angels are patterns of it: they do not look on it as a disparagement to be ministering spirits to the heirs of glory. With what humility do they cover their faces with their wings in the presence of God! Is. vi. Again; Christ is a blessed pattern of this grace: "Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly:" he has left us an example, that we should follow his steps therein. "He humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." Though he was the high God, yet he "took upon him the form of a servant." And therefore "let the same mind be in us, which was also in Christ Jesus," Phil. ii. 5. In a word, the infinite Jehovah, the eternal God, casts us a copy of humility: for "he humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven, and in the earth;" and, as you see in my text, though he be high, yet has he respect unlo the lowly. And are not all these patterns worthy of our highest imitation? And if all this will not prevail, I offer, A fourth motive, Consider the evil and danger of the sin of pride, that lies directly opposite to it. 1. It is loathsome in the sight of God; he cannot endure to look on it; he beholds it afar off. In Prov. vi. 16, it is set in the very front of these things that the Lord hates: "These six things doth the Lord hate; yea, seven are an abomination to him:" and the first of them is a proud look. God hates every sin, but he proclaims open war and hostility against the proud. 2. The evil of it appears, in that it is a sign of a rotten heart within: Hab. ii. 4: "Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him." As humility and sincerity, so pride and hypocrisy go hand in hand. 3. It is the fertile womb of many other evils. It is the spring of division: Prov. xiii. 10: "Only by pride cometh con tention." As I was saying just now, there are a great many divisions amongst us at this day. Church and state are divided, congregations and families are divided, ministers and people are divided: What is the matter? Pride lies at the bottom. If our proud hearts were but so far humbled, as to confess our faults one to another, our divisions would soon come to an end. Again; pride is the mother of error and heresy: a root of bitterness that is troubling our Israel at this day. When men, especially clergymen, who have all a conceit of infallibility with them, have asserted any thing that is amiss in point of doctrine, their pride will not allow them to retract. Truth itself must rather fall a sacrifice, than their reputation sink. Pride of reason is the very soul of the Socinian, and pride of will the soul of Arminian errors, and pride of selfrighteousness is the source of that legal spirit which so much prevails in our day. Again; pride is the spring and root of apostacy; for, says Solomon, "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." Peter's pride was the immediate forerunner of his denying his Lord and Master. But, again, consider that God has a particular quarrel with the sin of pride: he has threatened to "scatter the proud, in the imagination of their own hearts." You may read a lecture of God's controversy with the proud, Is. ii. 11-13, &c. "The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down.-The day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up, and he shall be brought low." And, ver. 17: The loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low; and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day." O what ruin has the sin of pride brought along with it! 1st, It turned angels into devils, and threw them from heaven into hell; "being lifted up with pride, they fell into condemnation," as the apostle insinuates. God could not endure pride to dwell so near him; and therefore he tumbled them down from heaven, and laid them "under chains of eternal darkness." 2dly. It was pride that has wrecked all mankind, when it creeped out of the higher into the lower Paradise. "Ye shall be as gods," said the serpent; and immediately the bait was catched at; though, in the event, it made them more like the devil than God. 3dly, We might trace the story of what ruins it hath brought with it upon the ungodly world. Pharaoh refuses to bow so far to the command of God, as to let Israel go; saying, "Who is the Lord, that I should obey him:" And therefore he and his host shall "sink like lead in the mighty waters." Haman's pride brought him to an ignominious end: though he was his prince's greatest favourite to-day, yet he was hanged to-morrow on the gallows which he had set up for poor Mordecai. Nebuchadnezzar proudly vaunts himself of his royal palace. "Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?" and immediately he is turned out from the society of men, and made to eat grass with the oxen. Herod, after his fine oration, receives that applause from the people without any check, "It is the voice of a God, and not of a man; and immediately the angel of the Lord smites him, and he is eaten of worms." 4thly, As God has punished it in the wicked, so he has shown his resentment against it in his own children. And pass who will, they shall not miss a stroke, if their hearts be lifted up within them: "You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities." David's pride prompted him to number Israel, that he might make his boast that he was king over so many thousands; and thereupon a raging pestilence, in three days' time, sweeps away seventy thousand of Israel. Hezekiah's pride made him to show his treasure of precious things to the king of Babylon's ambassadors; and therefore his posterity and his treasures must be carried away to Babylon out of their native land. In a word, though you were as the signet on God's right hand, you shall not escape a stroke of fatherly wrath and anger, if you allow pride to lodge in your hearts. That threatening shall surely take place, both among friends and enemies, Prov. xxix. 23: "A man's pride shall bring him low." And if it miss his person, it shall fall heavily on his family: Prov. xv. 25: "The Lord will destroy the house of the proud." VI. The sixth and last thing I proposed was, to offer a few advices, in order to your attaining this lowly frame and temper of soul which the high God doth so much regard. 1. Go to the law as a schoolmaster; read the ten commandments, and Christ's spiritual commentary upon them, Matth. v. View the law of God in its utmost extent and spirituality; for it is exceeding broad. This would make the proudest heart to lie in the dust: Rom. vii. 9: "I was alive without the law once; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died." The feathers of his pride and legal righteousness soon fell, when the law in its spirituality was set before his eyes. 2. Get Christ to dwell in your heart by faith; for the reigning power of this evil is never broken, till Christ come by the power of his Spirit, bringing down the towering imaginations of the heart, and erect his throne there. The more of Christ, the more humility; and the less of Christ, the more pride. When the Spirit of Christ enters into the heart, he stamps the likeness and image of Christ there. O then, if you would have this humility and lowliness of spirit, "lift up the everlasting doors, that the King of glory may come in:" he brings a glorious retinue of graces with him, of which this is one of the first. 3. Be much [employed] in viewing the glorious perfections of the Majesty of heaven, as they are displayed in the works of creation and providence; but especially as they shine in the face of Jesus Christ, and the glorious work of redemption through him. When the prophet Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, and his train filling the temple, he cries out, "Wo is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips." See Job xlii. 5, 6. "I have heard of thee," says he, "by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth thee: wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." 4. Be much in viewing "the rock whence ye were hewn, and the hole of the pit whence ye were digged;" I mean your original corruption and depravation; how you are "conceived in sin, and brought forth in iniquity." And O how much of this cleaves even to believers themselves, while they are on this side of eternity! There is a law in the members continually warring against the law of the mind. This laid the great apostle Paul in the dust, notwithstanding his high attainments. 5. Be much in viewing the vanity of the creature, and all things below. "Vanity and vexation of spirit" is written in legible characters upon all things under the sun. "The fashion of this world is passing away." Be much in viewing the bed of the grave, where you must lie down shortly, and where rottenness and corruption shall cover you: let this make you say, with Job, "to corruption, Thou art my father; and to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister." View an awful tribunal, and endless eternity, that is to follow on the back of death, where you and I shortly shall stand panels and receive a sentence from the righteous Judge, which shall determine our state for ever. 6. Lastly, Be much in eyeing those patterns of lowliness and humility which I already mentioned. God, angels, and saints, have cast you a copy of it. But especially be much in viewing the humility and humiliation of the Son of God, which is proposed as the great pattern, Phil. ii. 5-8: "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus: who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." Having, therefore, these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.-2 COR. VII. 1. Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.-Rev. XXII. 14. If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.-JOHN VII. 17. PREFACE. THE following discourse is one of those for which I am become a debtor to the public, on the occasion mentioned in the preface of that upon Rev. iii. 4. Although I am abundantly sensible of my lame management of this important subject; yet I am not conscious of swerving, in any one point of doctrine, from the word of God, and the approved standards of this church: and, if in the least jot I have departed from them, either in this or any other of these sermons charged with heterodoxy, I am so far from pretending to infallibility, that I hope I shall never be ashamed publicly to retract what, upon conviction, shall be found to be amiss. I look upon it as one of the most difficult things that belongs to us ministers, in the dispensation of the everlasting gospel, so to divide the word of truth, as to deliver it in the order and connexion in which God has laid it in the new covenant. Indistinct views here cannot miss to lead both ourselves and hearers into a maze and labyrinth of confusion, and exceedingly mar the sweetness of divine truth, with the success of the gospel. Every truth of God, even in itself, and abstractly considered, is precious; but the beauty, lustre, and sweetness of divine truth is never seen or felt, until the truth be known as it is in Jesus." All the truths of divine revelation meet in him, as the beams in the sun, or as the spokes of a wheel in their centre; insomuch, that, if any truth of God be handled, or any duty of the law inculcated, abstractly from him, it is taken out of its proper place where God has set it, and, consequently, cannot miss to lose its savour and beauty: and, therefore, it was not without ground the apostle expressed himself, as we have it, 1 Cor. ii. 2: "I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified." He is the glorious "foundation laid in Zion," and "another foundation can no man lay;" and if, in building, we do not keep our eyes continually on this chief corner stone, we cannot shun to make very confused and irregular work. In a particular manner, when • Preached at Kirkaldy April 12, 1724, |