am clean, I am quite upright, I have never offended in thought, word, or deed. For what has a finner to fave him from deftruction? Without Shedding of blood, there is no remiffion. Does he rest his plea upon the weakness of nature ? The law was intended to guard against the weakness of nature, and to plead this is to plead your guilt as your juftification? Do you rely on GOD's mercy? If you reject his gospel promises, you have nothing but loose floating ideas of his goodness for fupport. You fee almost as marks of his feverity, as of his goodnefs about you. The food, which nourishes you, is often your disease; the air, you breathe, often brings plagues; the fanning breeze often becomes a hurricane; the fun, that cherishes you, often scorches and destroys; the fostering dews, often becoming torrents, drown your fields, and fweep away the labours of the year. There is no ele

your

many

ment,

ment, ever fo neceffary to human life, which is not frequently the inftrument of pain, and mischief. If a thoughtful man, therefore, would rife into a firm and comfortable perfuafion of Divine goodness, he must contemplate it in the unfullied mirror of revelation.

EVERY method, that finful man can ufe, to procure comfort to himself independent of Gospel Mercy, is unfatiffactory and delufive. Groffer fouls go, and feek a partial fort of peace to themfelves amidst the ftupefaction of riot, and the thoughtless diffipation of amusement. Alas! confcience will only awake from this unnatural fleep with greater horror, and, in the short intervals of serious thought allowed it, exert keener and more tormenting reflections. Others endeavour to entrench themselves in impenitence, and to harden themselves in unbelief, and with a kind of fear and trembling to perfuade them

L4

themselves that religion is but hypocrify, and virtue a mere name. Alas! this is but a temporary delufion, adapted only to the feafon of focial mirth, and gay prosperity; the evil day diffipates their falfe confidence, and leaves them to the angry convictions of awakened reafon and conscience. Or if they can carry on the deception to the laft, their opinions cannot alter the nature of things: poifon, which has often been taken inadvertently, yet never has been known, in compaffion to human errors, to fufpend the malignity of its effects.

OTHERS again, who are caft in a happier mould, content themselves with the practice of fuch partial fuperficial virtues as conftitution or profeffion renders agreeable to them; they are sober, because their health for bids intemperance; liberal from meer compaffion or a view to public applaufe; juft, for fear of human punishment and shame. But, at the

fame

fame time, feeing all men have their failings, they, not diftinguishing between failings and vices, live very contented and eafy in wicked habits more agreeable to their taste and complexion. Alas! this too is a falfe confidence. Whofoever uses proper reflection must know, that nothing under univerfal obedience answers the purpofes of law.

THE chriftian lives as perfectly as he can; he endeavours to improve upon himself in the regular ufe of the means of grace appointed by Chrift. Thus, having an all-fufficient facrifice to rely upon, his repentance has the merit of innocence, his fincerity the merit of perfection. His confcience has nothing to upbraid him with: he lives as well as he can. His infirmities give him no anxiety the author of his falvation has promised to purify him to that holiness, which GOD can view without abhorrence. He is difquieted with no doubts, diftreffed

diftreffed with no fears, under a sense of errors against clear knowledge: GOD has given him his express promise of accepting his imperfect fincere fervices. He is afflicted by no evils: evils he knows are for his moral improvement, and his Divine pattern, his Saviour, has taught him to bear the evils of the world with patience, to defpife its idle glare with magnanimity, and to go about doing good, in dependence upon a future reward.

III. MEN know not what they say, when they talk of leading good and comfortable lives in defiance or in neglect of the graces of the chriftian covenant. Though the heathens, though the well-difpofed, I should say, among them, enjoy the general mercies of redemption; yet the cafe is very different with us in our prefent circumstances. The unconscious unreflecting beafts of the field, for instance,

enjoy the