particular application of it to your own souls, and lay the weight of your eternal salvation upon the faithfulness of a promising God in Christ. And, to encourage you to do it, consider that additional security he has given us to encourage our faith; he superadds his oath to his promise, and seals both with the blood of his Son, and the seals of baptism and the supper; and the three witnesses of heaven attest the truth of it, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit: and what more can the most jealous heart desire? Here is ground to believe without doubting, to believe with full assurance of faith.

6. If you would take the benefit of the law of faith, go to a court of grace, to a throne of grace, where the law of grace is enacted, and put a God of grace to the execution of his own laws or acts of grace, and be persuaded that he will take care to make them good and effectual to thy soul. This is the advice of the Spirit of God: Ezek. xxxvi. 25-27, after sovereign grace had enacted many gracious laws of faith, saying, "I will sprinkle clean water upon you, A new heart will I give you, I will put my spirit within you;" it is added, ver. 37, "For these things I will be inquired of by the house of Israel," &c. So that you see the promise must be pleaded at the throne of grace; only when you plead the benefit of the promise, or law of grace, take care you do not plead your own, but Christ's right: do not think that your own pleading, your own frame or qualification will entitle you to the promise, or the blessings promised; for this is just to run back to the law of works to found your claim and title to the covenant of grace, and the blessings of it. Remember in all your pleadings and wrestlings to go out of yourselves for a right to the promise to Christ; "in him they are all yea and amen;" he is the first Heir, and it is only in and through him, and his everlasting righteousness or satisfaction, that we can lay claim. to any thing in heaven or in earth, since the forfeiture we fell under by the breach of the covenant of works in our first parents; therefore serve yourselves heirs to the promise as it is in Christ the covenant of grace is nothing else but a free disposition of eternal life, and of every thing belonging to it, by Sovereign grace through the righteousness of Christ. Now, take things as God has laid them, and do not invert that order, by founding your right to the promise upon any thing in yourself.

7. Lastly, In pleading the law of faith, be sure to employ the "Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. who is the propitiation." God hears not sinners, but only through the mediation or intercession of his eternal Son. And therefore whatever business you have in the court of grace. whatever acts or laws of grace you would have sued and ex

ecuted with respect to your souls, put all in the Advocate's hand, who "maketh intercession for the transgressors," and who is so well skilled in the laws of the court of grace, that he never lost a poor man's cause. If you will adventure to plead the promise, and present your own bills before God in your own name, and not in the name of the great Advocate with the Father, how can you expect to speed? Can you be accepted of the Father, when you put a slight upon the Son? No; he hath made us accepted only in the beloved: Whatsoever ye ask the Father in my name, I will do it."

592

SERMON XVIII.

THE STONE REJECTED BY THE BUILDERS, EXALTED AS THE HEAD-STONE OF THE CORNER.*

PREFACE.

READER,

THE following sermon gave occasion to three days' warm debate in the Reverend Synod of Perth and Stirling, and has been the subject of much talk and speculation since that time. Whether the censures of men about it be just or unjust, is now submitted to the impartial world to judge. The sermon was copied from the author's original notes by another hand, who could read his characters, but was in no hazard of making any additions or alterations. Several things here were omitted in the delivery for the sake of brevity: but nothing material was delivered, but what comes abroad. And with reference to the expression quarrelled with, so soon as the author knew what passages of his discourse were pointed at by the Reverend Synod, (which was the day immediately after it was preached,) he took care to revise. his notes, and make these expressions run in the terms in which they were delivered, as near as either he or some of the audience could remember.

The author's design in pitching and preaching upon that text, was what he could to raise the glory of the blessed Corner-stone, to set up the corruptions of the Jewish builders as so many beacons, that builders of our day might beware of them, and to cast in the small mite of his testimony against what, to him, appears

• Preached at the opening of the Synod of Perth and Stirling, at Perth, October 10, 1732.

an injury done, either to Christ personal or mystical. If these ends be reached, either in the preaching or publication, it will afford matter of joy to the author, whatever be the event of the depending process with respect to himself.

If any think, upon the reading of the following discourse, that there is too great freedom used with respect to the present steps of defection; let them remember, that there is now no other way left to bear testimony against such things, but by warning the world against them, from press or pulpit; representations and petitions from ministers or church-members at the bar, being utterly disregarded, and no access to enter any protest or dissent against these proceedings in the public records, for the exoneration of conscience, or the information of our posterity, that such things did not pass in our day without a struggle and testimony against them.

If any of the author's friends and well-wishers be afraid of farther trouble to him, upon the account of this sermon; let them know, that, through grace, he chooses rather to suffer with the oppressed members of Christ, than to enjoy all the ease and pleasure of those who oppress them in their spiritual liberties; which being the purchase of a Redeemer's blood will be reckoned for before the scene be ended. Heb. xi. 24-26; 1 John iii. 16; 2 Thess. i. 6, 7.

The stone which the builders rejected, the same is made the head-stone of the corner.-PSAL. CXVIII. 22.

It is probable this psalm was penned by David, when the ark of God was brought up from the house of Obed-edom, to its proper place in Jerusalem, after the intestine broils between the house of David and Saul had happily issued in David's promotion, by the common consent of all the tribes, to the crown and kingdom of Israel. But though this was the occasion, yet the Spirit of God had in it a farther view, namely, to Christ himself, of whom David and his administrations were but a faint type and shadow.

David's accession to the throne was through many storms of opposition: although God had chosen and ordained him for the kingdom and government; yet he was opposed by the house of Saul, and those who adhered to that family: yet

after all, the house of David prevailed. Just so was it with the son of David, our glorious Redeemer: hell and earth combined against the Lord and his Messiah, but God had determined that the government should be upon his shoulders, that his King should be set upon his holy hill of Zion; and he carries his design against all opposers, as you see in my text, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is made the head-stone of the corner.

I need not stay to prove that these words are to be understood of Christ, after the express application that is made of them to him by himself and his apostles in the scriptures of the New Testament, Matth. xxi. 42; Acts iv. 11; 1 Pet. ii. 7; 8; Eph. ii. 20.

In the words we may notice the following particulars, (1.) The metaphorical view in which the church is here represented; namely, that of a house or building. (2.) The character that our Immanuel bears with respect to this building: he is the stone in a way of eminence, without whom there can be no building, no house for God to dwell in among the children of men. (3.) The character of the workmen employed in this spiritual structure, they are called builders. (4.) A fatal error they are charged with in building of the house of God: they refuse the stone of God's choosing; they do not allow him a place in his own house. (5.) Notice the place that Christ should and shall have in this building, let the builders do their worst, he is made the head-stone of the corner. The words immediately following, declare how this is effected, and how the saints are affected with the views of his exaltation, notwithstanding the malice of hell and earth: "This is the Lord's doing, and it is wonderful in our eyes."

In discoursing on this subject, I shall just follow the order of the text now laid down, by explaining the particulars named, and then deduce a few inferences from the whole.

I. Let us take a view of the church under the notion of a house or building. This metaphorical view of the church is very frequent in the scriptures, both of the Old and New Testament: Is. ii. 2, 3: "It shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains.-And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob." The same way of speaking occurs also in the scriptures of the New Testament, 1 Cor. iii. 9: "Ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building." Hence Paul, writing to Timothy, directs him how to behave himself in the church of God, which is the house of the living God.