offerings at the shrines of saints, to the endowment of monasteries and religious houses, as they call them, to a multitude of superstitious fopperies and ceremonies, that require so much time and care for their performance, as to eat out the very heart and life of true piety. And those that will do this drudgery of theirs, (and what will not men do to be freed from the hard task of inward piety?) they can easily excuse from the truly good and essential works of religion; yea, and persuade them to a presumption of meriting heaven, though in the mean while, they are apparently men of unmortified affections and vicious lives; especially if they are zealous for the Catholic cause, and against those whom they are pleased to call heretics. Nay, if they have this zeal, they will forgive them all the rest. This zeal shall be a fiery chariot, to convey even the murderers of their princes, with Elias, to heaven; and make them canonized for saints, and give them a name in the Roman Calendar, as red as the blood they have spilled. It is true, some good men there are in the Papacy, and, as well as they can, declaring against this wretched corruption of Christianity among them. But the common, current, ruling, and prevailing religion of the Church of Rome, is certainly such as I have described.

But now the true reformed religion, (I am sure that of the Church of England,) teacheth men the necessity of works truly good, of true contrition for their sins, of mortifying their sinful and carnal affections, of all the substantial works of piety, justice, and charity. It teacheth men not to expect heaven and salvation without these; but yet not to think of meriting heaven by them. It plainly teacheth, that for a man to be a protestant against Popery, will not serve his turn, unless he equally protest against the sin and wickedness of the world: that to be a member, by profession, of a reformed Church, will not save his soul, unless himself be truly reformed in his life and conversation. And if men after all this, live vicious lives, as too, too many among us do, they have not the least countenance from the doctrine of the Church wherein they live, but are continually under her severe reprehensions and reproofs, and are not suffered to live quietly in their sins; so that if they perish, it is purely their own fault and folly.

To conclude this matter; it is a very difficult task for men to

persuade themselves to deny all ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world, though they are rightly principled, and convinced of the necessity of so doing. What a case then are they in, whose very principles lead them to a vicious life; whose very minds, understandings, and notions of things, are corrupted; who are not yet convinced of the necessity of a holy life! "If the light within thee be darkness," saith our blessed Lord, "how great is that darkness!" It is impossible for men of such ill principles to live well, unless either their understandings be so weak as not to discern their consequences, (and then their weakness is their happiness,) or else a very strong inclination to virtue, and a mighty grace in them, conquer and overcome the venom and poison of them.

Wherefore, my dear brethren, let no man deceive you with vain words, but hearken to the word of God, which tells you, that you must not expect to "reap in mercy," unless you "sow to yourselves in righteousness." Let never either Jesuit or fanatic, persuade you to the contrary. Fix and settle in your minds such plain texts of Scripture as these: "Except ye repent, ye shall all perish"." "Follow peace and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord." "God will render to every man according to his deeds: to them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life: but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, &c. but glory, honour, and peace, to every one that worketh good. For there is no respect of persons with God"." Fix, I say, and settle these and such like places of Holy Scripture in your minds and memories, and let no sophistry of men or devils ever baffle or dissuade you from so plain a truth. Nay, let not your own hearts deceive you, as they will be apt to do, either by causing you to divert your thoughts from these express declarations of God's will, or to seek out shifts and evasions to elude them. But often call to mind, meditate, and think on, these Scriptures. Let them con

m Matt. vi. 23.
n Luke xiii. 3.

o Heb. xii. 14.
r Rom. ii. 6—11.

tinually haunt your souls, (if I may so speak,) and never suffer you to be at rest, till you have resolved upon a holy life, and engaged yourselves in it. And then happy, thrice happy, shall you be; and after you have sown to yourselves in righteousness, a glorious harvest shall you reap from the mercy of God. And this leads me to the second observation from my text, which I shall briefly despatch, and so conclude.

Observ. 2. When we have sown in righteousness, that is, done righteous works, we must not plead any merit of our own. in having so done; but must look for the reward of our righteousness, only from the free grace and mercy of God.

"Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy." The reward of the righteous man, is every where in Scripture pronounced to be a reward of grace and mercy. The words of the second commandment are observable, "shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me, and keep My commandments." They that love God and keep His commandments, all the reward they can hope for is, that God should shew mercy unto them. And there is a great deal of congruity, though they seem strange, in the words of David; "Unto Thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy: for Thou renderest to every man according to his work." That God rendereth to every man, that is, every righteous man, according to his work, is an act of His mercy. Nehemiah reckons up many great and noble works that he had done for the honour and service of God; but, that you may see he boasted not in all this, that he had no conceit of any merit in himself, observe how humbly towards the conclusion of the chapter, he supplicates for mercy, and such mercy, as whereby God would spare him, that is, not punish him. "Remember me, O my God, concerning this also, and spare me according to the greatness of Thy mercy." He counts it greatness of mercy to be spared by God, after all his great good works. In like manner St. Paul, after he had mentioned the frequent acts of charity that Onesiphorus had exercised towards him, prays that God would reward them, in this style; "The Lord grant unto him that he may find mercy of the Lord in that dayt."

Psalm lxii. 12.

r Chap. xiii.

. Ver. 22.

t 2 Tim. i. 16-18.

There are two reasons suggested in the text itself, that utterly destroy all conceit of the merit of our righteousness.

1. By our righteousness we give nothing to God; He reaps no advantage from it to Himself. If we sow in righteousness, we sow to ourselves, and the harvest of this righteousness we ourselves reap. "Sow to yourselves, reap ye." "My goodness," saith the Psalmist, "extends not to Thee, but to the saints that are in the earth"." As if he had said, I may and will do good to Thy saints, but I can do no good to Thee; for I receive all the good I have, or do, from Thee. Indeed, if we are wicked, we hurt not God, but ourselves; and if we are righteous, the benefit is to ourselves, and not to Him. Whatsoever we crawling worms do here on earth, God sits still upon the circle of the heavens, the same perfect, unchangeable, blessed, and happy God, for ever and ever. Only He is pleased out of His infinite condescension, to look down from heaven, upon those little things we do here out of a hearty desire to glorify Him; and in His abundant mercy He will plentifully reward them. We may challenge all who lay such stress upon merit, to answer St. Paul's question, "Who hath first given to Him," that is, God, "and it shall be recompensed to him again?"

2. The other reason against all merit of our good works, suggested in the very text, is this: there is no just proportion between our works of righteousness, and the reward of them. Our good works are but a few seeds; but the reward is a harvest. "Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy." The words in the Hebrew are emphatical, "reap" " lephi chesed, "according to the measure of mercy." For lephi and kephi, are in Scripture used to signify the measure or proportion of a thing. Thus, "Every man gathered" lephi o kelo, "according to the measure of his eating"." The sense therefore is: He that sows in righteousness shall reap and receive his reward, not according to the small proportion of the seeds of righteousness that he hath sown, but according to the measure of the Divine mercy and goodness, which useth superabundantly to remunerate man's slender performances. And, accordingly, the learned Drusius thus paraphraseth the

u Psalm xvi. 2, 3.

* Rom. xi. 35.

y Exod. xvi. 21.

words: "in," or according to, "mercy;" benigna, ac pleniore mensura, quam seminastis, “in a bountiful and fuller measure than you have sown." As in a good and plentiful year, the harvest or crop that is reaped vastly exceeds the seed sown, every grain yielding many more; so, and much more, it is here. What poor slender seeds of righteousness do we sow! But O the vast crop and harvest of glory, that shall, through the mercy of God, spring and rise out of those seeds! It shall be so great, that when we come to reap it, we ourselves shall stand amazed at it.

To conclude, therefore; he that hath sown the seeds of righteousness most plentifully, must look for his harvest of glory only from the mercy of God. He that is richest in good works, must sue for heaven in the quality of a poor worthless creature, that needs infinite mercy to bring him thither; mercy to pardon his sins antecedent to his good works; mercy to forgive the sins and defects in his works; mercy to advance his works (being, though supposed never so perfect, yet finite and temporary) to the possibility of attaining an infinite and endless reward. He must confess with St. Paul, that "eternal life is the gift of God through Jesus Christ"." That it is the rich purchase of Christ's most precious blood, by which alone a covenant of eternal life was established upon the gracious condition of "faith working by love;" that it was the grace of the Divine Spirit, promised in the same covenant, that prevented him, and cooperated with him, and continually assisted and followed him, in all his good works; and, consequently, that though his crown of glory be "a crown of righteousness," that is, of God's righteousness, whereby He is obliged to make good His own covenant; yet that it is "a crown of mercy too," because that covenant itself was a covenant of infinite grace and

mercy.

And if the best of men, after all the good works they have done, or can do, need mercy, infinite mercy, to save them; what a miserable condition are they in, who have no good works at all to shew; but, on the contrary, a large catalogue of wicked works, unrepented of, to account for? We may say in this sense with St. Peter; "If the righteous scarcely be saved, where

z Rom. vi. 23.