Thus have I illustrated the doctrine of my text, and taken notice of some of the principal means by which the Son of God hath hitherto conducted the war against Satan, and shall finally destroy the works of the devil. And now, in the review of all that hath been said, let us, in the

You

wrath of God, like a stream of brimstone, | ready received the mortal wound, and ere doth kindle and inflame, the smoke where- long shall be cast down and trampled unof ascendeth for ever and ever. der his feet. And will not this inspire you with courage and fortitude? fight under a General whom Satan feareth; and though he uses every artifice to make others unbelievers, yet he himself believes and trembles. Remember the battles and victories of your Redeemer; consider the virtue of his blood, and the efficacy of his 1st place, Praise and magnify our great Spirit. Let faith behold him in his predeliverer, who came into the world upon sent exaltation at the Father's right so merciful an errand. "O the height hand, pleading your cause, and observing and depth, the breadth and the length of your conduct, covering your heads and the love of Christ!" It might justly healing your wounds, while he prepares have been feared, that if the Son of God for you those crowns of glory that shall was to visit this earth, it would have been never fade away; and then cry out with for a very different end, even to display the apostle in holy triumph, "If God be the glory of divine justice, by executing for us, who shall be against us? Who vengeance upon those ungrateful creatures shall separate us from the love of God? who had risen up in rebellion against the Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecuGod that made them. But behold, and tion, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or wonder! He came to save, and not to sword? Nay, in all those things we are destroy: "For God sent not his Son into more than conquerors, through him that the world to condemn the world, but that loved us. Be bold, O Christians! in the world through him might be saved." the cause of righteousness. Let the Nay, he came to destroy those enemies wicked blush; they have reason to do so, who had vanquished us, and to rescue us their work is base, and their wages deadly. out of their hands. (C Lord, what is man, But surely the disciples of Jesus have no that thou art mindful of him?" My cause to be ashamed, whether they conbrethren, however coldly we may think or sider the nature of their service, or the talk of these matters, angels, whom they reward that attends it. And what a reless concern, contemplate them with ec- proach is it, that the slaves of Satan stasy. They shouted for joy when the should act more vigorously for their mas world was made, but they raise a higher ter than we do for ours! Their cause is note to celebrate the redemption of man- not only bad in itself, but desperate too, kind. And shall men be silent while as to any prospect of success; whereas angels sing? O let us contend with those the interest for which we contend is so blessed spirits in the praises of our own just and honorable, that the very attemptRedeemer. He is their Lord, but he is ing to support it is glorious; and unless our Saviour. Let our souls, and all that we were to suppose that Omnipotence is within us, be stirred up to bless him, may become weak, and the Creator be and let us, even at this distance, begin overmatched by the workmanship of his that grateful, triumphant song, "Unto own hands, we are sure of victory. What him that loved us, and washed us from then should we fear? Be strong, O beour sins in his own blood, and hath made lievers! and of good courage. You fight us kings and priests unto God and his the battles of the Lord of Hosts, and Father, to him be glory and dominion for greater is he that is with you than all ever and ever." that can be against you. Say not that you are the sons of the Most High, and born from above, unless you can prove your descent, by daring to be holy in spite of devils and men. be hot, but it cannot last long. Death will soon come, and tell you that your warfare

2dly. This doctrine yields the strongest consolation to every sincere Christian. He is engaged in a cause that must prevail; he follows a leader whom no might can withstand; he contends with a subdued and vanquished foe, who hath al

The battle may

is accomplished; and angels, who now selves; if God peradventure will give minister to you with joy, will carry you them repentance to the acknowledging of home in triumph to your Father's house; the truth; and that they may recover and the Redeemer, by whose blood and themselves out of the snare of the devil, Spirit you overcome, will put the crown who are taken captive by him at his will." upon your heads, and "grant unto you to sit with him in his throne, even as he also overcame, and is set down with the Father in his throne.”

inscribed, not to unbelieving Jews or not always prove an insurmountable bar Gentiles, but to saints in Christ Jesus; in the way to any office, civil or military, to men who had been converted to the which the person is otherwise qualified to Christian faith, as we learn from the fore-fill, or hath interest to obtain; and theregoing part of the chapter. And it is ma- fore, though the mere profession of Christerial to observe, that as Christianity had tianity be not attended with any temporal been treated with peculiar indignity at inconveniences, yet as the want of such Philippi, where Paul and his companion Silas were, by order of the magistrates, publicly scourged and cast into prison, therefore the profession of the gospel, in such a place, was justly entitled to the most favorable construction: for nothing less than a deep conviction of its truth and excellence could be supposed to have induced any inhabitant of that city to profess a religion that inevitably exposed him to those contemptuous, as well as painful sufferings, which a generous and feeling mind would of all others most anxiously wish to avoid.

profession doth not exclude a man from any temporal advantages, and as neither the profession nor practice of Christianity can be said, in the ordinary course of things, to help any man forward in the line of worldly promotion; hence it follows, that every baptized person, who hath not openly renounced "the Lord that bought him," but still retains the name of Christian, and would complain of abuse and injury if his title to that appellation were either denied or called in question, must be considered as acting from the freest choice in the profession he makes; and can have no reason to be startled, far less to be offended, when we address him in the words of this holy apostle, Let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ. Should it be otherwise with any of us, the consequences are obvious; and upon every supposition we can make, must prove equally fatal to our

Surely, then, the apostle could have no reason to suspect, that a demand so moderate would either offend or surprise them: Let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ. You have embraced the faith of the gospel, and continue to make an open confession of it, without any allurements of a temporal nature, nay, in the face of the most ob-peace and to our honor. vious and alarming discouragements; and If we believe not the gospel, why do therefore, as there can be no room to call in question either your belief of its doctrines, or your regard to its laws, I may, without presumption, hope to obtain your consent, when I only exhort you to act a consistent and uniform part, by suiting your conversation to the religion you have chosen, and have the fortitude to avow.

It is true, and it ought to be gratefully acknowledged, that our present situation in these lands is very different from that of the ancient Philippians. Christianity, as reformed from the corruptions of Popery, is the established religion of our country so that if a man believe the gospel of Christ, he may, with the most perfect safety to his person and property, make as public a confession of his faith as he inclines. But it is equally true, that no man is compelled by the terrors of persecution to profess Christianity, if he do not believe it; nay, the profession of incredulity itself, if it break not forth into blasphemy, aggravated by sedition, doth

we profess it? To lie in any case is shameful, how great soever the temptation may be: but to lie deliberately, without any temptation at all, which, as I just now observed, is the present case; nay, to persist in that lie from day to day, when telling the truth could not hurt nor endanger any secular interest whatsoever, is a baseness the most superfluous, and consequently the most contemptible, that can possibly be imagined.

On the other hand, if we truly believe what we profess, what an odious as well as disgraceful appearance must we make, when our conversation is such as doth not become the gospel of Christ? By "holding the truth in unrighteousness," and counteracting the dictates of religion, and the conviction of our own minds, we expose ourselves to the lashes of that selfreproach which will not fail to occupy every lucid interval betwixt the tumultuous gratification of passion and appetite;. while at the same time, by continuing to

profess that gospel we counteract, we every day publish our shame and misery to the world around us, and virtually confess that we are guilty and self-condemned before all who have an opportunity of observing our conduct.

stance whereof the apostle hath elsewhere expressed in one short sentence, to wit, " That God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them," necessarily supposes, that man is in a state of distance So that the subject of my text is one and alienation from God, liable to punishof the most important that can employment in consequence of his apostasy; and our attention, as our practical regard to so perverted and enfeebled, that he hath this demand of the apostle is absolutely neither the disposition nor the ability to necessary to preserve the peace and purity do any thing that can be effectual for his of our own hearts, and to support that own recovery. character which the most profligate reverence, and which all who can discern real beauty and excellence will covet to possess; I mean the venerable character of an upright man.

It informs us, that "God, who spared not the angels that sinned, but hath reserved them in everlasting chains under darkness to the judgment of the great day," so pitied the human race, "that he Having thus prepared the way, by show- sent his only begotten Son into the world, ing, that the same charge which was pri- not to condemn the world, but that the marily addressed to the Philippians, may, world through him might be saved." The with strict justice and propriety, be ex- nature and dignity of this great Detended to us; let let us now proceed to liverer are thus described by an inspired examine, with attention and candor, the apostle: "In the beginning was the standard to which our conformity is en- Word, and the Word was with God, and joined; or, in other words, let us inquire the Word was God. All things were into that gospel of Christ to which our made by him and without him was not conversation, that is, the whole of our any thing made that was made." This external conduct, as expressing the in-"Word," adds he, "was made flesh, and ward temper of our hearts, ought to be suited.

Among the various particulars included in the gospel of Christ, the two following may be selected as the most distinguishing and comprehensive, namely,

I. The Doctrines we are taught to believe; and

Each of these particulars I shall examine apart; from whence we shall discover, with ease and certainty, what manner of conversation it is that may be said to become the gospel of Christ.

dwelt," or tabernacled, "among men. "He who was in the form of God, and thought it not robbery to be equal with God, made himself of no reputation, 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, II. The Laws we are commanded to even the death of the cross. This death obey. is uniformly represented by all the New Testament writings as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of men. Hence Christ is styled "the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." He is said to have borne our sins in his own body I. I BEGIN with the doctrines of the on the tree," and "to have made peace by gospel, or the truths we are taught to be- the blood of his cross; to have "been lieve. And without descending to the made sin for us, who knew no sin, that peculiar tenets, or modes of expression, we might be made the righteousness of by which Christians of any denomination God in him;" and "to have suffered, have chosen to distinguish themselves, I just for the unjust, that he might bring shall confine myself entirely to those cap- us to God." The apostle John calls him ital points, in which the sober and intel-"the propitiation for our sins;" and the ligent of almost every denomination will be found to agree.

Now the gospel, strictly so called, or that "word of reconciliation," the sub

the

author of this epistle, in another letter addressed to the Christians at Rome, (the principal aim whereof was to explain and vindicate this important doctrine) ex

pressly says, that "we are justified freely | forter, to heal their diseases, and to make by the grace of God, through the redemp- them "partakers of the divine nature; tion that is in Christ Jesus, whom God"to shed abroad the love of God in their hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sin; that he may be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus."

Once more, the gospel informs us, that this Jesus, "who died for our sins, rose again for our justification;" hereby giving the most authentic evidence, that he had finished his great undertaking, and was accepted by the Father in all that he taught, and acted, and suffered upon earth; "that he ascended up on high," as a triumphant conqueror, "leading captivity captive;" where, being constituted "head over all things for the church," he now sits enthroned at the right hand of God; from whence he shall once more descend to this earth, not in the form of a servant, but clothed with Majesty, and attended by all the holy angels, to gather to

hearts;" and to bring them with filial boldness to the throne of grace, where they shall obtain mercy, and find grace to help them in every time of need, till the divine life, which is begun on earth, shall The gospel doth every where present attain its full perfection in the kingdom him to our view, as a powerful, a suitable, of heaven, that undefiled and permanent yea, a necessary Saviour; so necessary, "inheritance, which is reserved for all that "there is not salvation in any other; "those who, being born of God, are kept by so powerful, that "he is able to save to his power through faith unto salvation." the uttermost all that come unto God by him ;" and so suited to the circumstances of fallen creatures, that they who are sunk into the most deplorable state of ignorance, guilt, pollution, and servitude, are rendered "complete in him," "who of God is made unto them wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." We are further taught, that faith in Christ, or a cordial acceptance of him, in the full extent of his character as Mediator, is the appointed means whereby we become interested in this all-sufficient Saviour. For "this is the command of God, that we believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ." "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; he that be-gether his elect, in whom he shall be glolieveth not the Son, shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." Which last expression plainly implies, that the sinner is previously under a sentence of condemnation; and that by rejecting the offered ransom, the sentence remains in full force, and his former guilt becomes still more aggravated by his ingratitude and obstinacy: whereas upon our believing in Christ Jesus, we forthwith obtain the remission of sins; for "the blood of Jesus cleanseth from all sin." And "being thus justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:" nay, we are adopted into the family of God: for "to as many as receive Christ, to them gives he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. Neither is this a mere honorary title; but they on whom it is conferred are actually enriched with all the privileges the title imports together with the dignity, they receive the nature of children. They are regenerated by grace; the Spirit is given to them, both as a sanctifier and a com

rified; while at the same time, as an awful and righteous Judge, he shall ́" take vengeance on them that know not God, and obey not his gospel; who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power.'

All who are acquainted with the Scriptures must be sensible, that in delivering this summary of Christian doctrine, Ĭ have done little more than repeated the words of the New Testament writers as they are translated into our own language; and therefore I may take it for granted, that those capital articles, to which many others might have been added, will readily be admitted to belong to the gospel of "Christ.

It remains, then, to be inquired, What influence the faith of these interesting truths ought in reason to have upon our temper and practice? or, in other words, what manner of conversation is suited to such belief?

That we may be qualified to judge with