harmony or fitness between the conduct of God and his relations to men. Perhaps I may be asked for the proofs of this principle, the ground of my whole system; for if the principle be doubtful, the whole system is hy pothetical, and if it be false the system falls of itself. I answer, my brethren, that we have as strong and demonstrative evidence of the holiness of God as it is possible for finite creatures to have of the attributes of an infinite Being. We may derive sound notions of the conduct of God from three different sources, each of which will prove that a perfect harmony subsists between the conduct of God and bis relations to us, and all together will fully convince us that God possesses in the most eminent degree such a holiness as we have described.

1. We shall be fully convinced that God possesses this holiness if we regulate our ideas of his conduct by our notion of his nature. Let me beg leave to remark, to those who have been accustomed to argue, that I do not mean here an imaginary notion of God, like that which some divines and some philosophers have laid down as the ground of their arguments. They begin by supposing a perfect being then they examine what agrees with a perfect being: and that they attribute to God. This is their argument: Holiness is an attribute of a perfect being God is a perfect being; therefore holiness is an attribute of God. We do not at present use this method. I suppose myself suddenly placed in this world, surrounded with a variety of creatures. I do not suppose that there is a holy Supreme Being: but I inquire whether there be one; and in this manner I obtain a full demonstration. My knowledge of creatures produces the notion of a Creator. My notion of a Creator is complex, and includes in it the ideas of a grand, infinite, almighty Being. But the notion of a Being, who is grand, infinite, and almighty, includes in it, I think, the idea of a holy Being. At least, I cannot perceive, in this Being, any of the principles that tempt men to violate the laws of order. Men sometimes transgress the laws of order through ignorance: but the grand, the mighty, the infinite Being thoroughly understands the harmony that ought to subsist between the laws of order and the most difficult and most complicated action. Men sometimes violate the laws of order because the solicitations of their senses prevail over the rational deliberations of their minds: but the great, the powerful, the infinite Being is not subject to a revolution of animal spirits, an irregular motion of blood, or an inundation of bodily humours. Men sometimes violate the laws of order because they are seduced by a present and sensible interest: but this principle of a violation of the laws of order can have no place in God. The great, the mighty, the infinite Being can have no interest in deceiving such contemptible creatures as we. If then we judge of the conduct of God by the idea that we are obliged to form of his nature, we shall be convinced of his perfect holiness.

2. We may be convinced of the holiness of God by the testimony that God himself has given of his attributes. The testimony that God has given of himself is the most credible

testimony that we can obtain. And how does he represent himself in the Holy Scriptures? He describes himself every where as a holy Being, and as a pattern of holiness to us. He describes himself surrounded with happy spirits, who perpetually cry, 'Holy, holy, holy, Lord of hosts.'

3. God will appear supremely holy to you if ye judge by his works. Behold the works of nature, they proclaim the perfect holiness of God. Consult that work of nature, your own heart that heart, all corrupt as it is, yet retains some faint traces of the holiness of God, who created it; so that in spite of its natural depravity, it still does homage to virtue it resembles a palace, which, having been at first built with magnificence and art, has been miserably plundered and destroyed, but which yet retains, amidst all its ruins, some vestiges of its ancient grandeur. Behold society, that work of Providence publishes the supreme holiness of God. God has so formed society that it is happy or miserable in the same proportion as it practises, or neglects virtue. Above all, behold the work of religion. What say the precepts, the precedents, the penalties of religion? More especially, what says the grand mystery of religion, that mystery which is the scope, the substance, the end of all the other mysteries of religion, I mean the mys tery of the cross? Does it not declare that God is supremely holy?

We have seen then in what respects holiness belongs to God, and by pursuing the same principles, we may discover in what res pects it belongs to men. Consider the circumstances in which men are placed, and what relation they bear to other beings: consider what harmony there ought to be between the conduct of men and their relations: and ye will form a just notion of the holiness that men are commanded to practise. There is the relation of a subject to his prince, and the subject's submission is the harmony of that relation: in this respect it is the holiness of a man to submit to his prince. There is the relation of a child to his parent, and there is a harmony between the conduct and the relation of the child when he loves and obeys his parent: Love and obedience to the parent constitute the holiness of the child.

The principal relation of man is that which he bears to God. Man stands in the relation of a creature to God, who is his Creator; and the conduct of a creature is in harmony with his relation when the will of his Creator is the rule of his actions: the revealed will of God then must regulate the will of man. Order requires us to submit ourselves to him of whom we have received all that we enjoy all our enjoyments come from God; from him we derive life, motion, and existence,' Acts xvii. 28. It is imposible then to resist his will without violating the laws of order. Our future prospects, as well as our present enjoy. ments, proceed from God: our own interest demands then, that we should submit to his will, in order to a participation of future favours, which are the objects of our present hopes.

We have seen then in what respects holiness belongs to God, and in what respects it belongs to men. But although holiness does

not belong, in the same sense, and in every respect, to beings so different as God and man, yet the holiness of God ought to be both a reason and a rule for the holiness of man. Ye shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. This is our third part, and with this we shall conclude the discourse.

III. The holiness of God, we say, is both a rule and a reason for the holiness of man. The words of the text include both these ideas, and will bear either sense. They may be rendered, Be ye holy as I am holy' and, according to this translation, the holiness of God is a rule or a model of ours. Or, they may be rendered, Ye shall be holy, because I am holy' and, according to this, the holiness of God is a reason or a motive of our holiness. It is not necessary now to inquire which of these two interpretations is the best. Let us unite both. Let us make the holiness of God the pattern of our holiness: and let us also make it the motive of ours.

1. Let us make the holiness of God the model of ours. 'The holiness of God is complete in its parts.' He has all virtues, or rather he has one virtue that includes all others that is, the love of order. : He is equally just in his laws, true in his language, his promises are faithful, and his thoughts are right. Let this holiness be our pattern, Be ye holy as God is holy.' Let us not confine ourselves to one single virtue. Let us incorporate them all into our system. Let us have an assortment of Christian graces. Let us be, if I may express myself so, complete Christians. Let us add to our faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity,' 2 Pet. i. 5–7.

2. The holiness of God is infinite in itself. Nothing can confine its activity. Let this be our model, as far as a finite creature can imitate an infinite Being. Let us not rest in a narrow sphere of virtue, but let us carry every virtue to its most eminent degree of attainment. Let us every day make some new progress. Let us reckon all that we have done nothing, while there remains any thing more to do. Let each of us say with St.Paul, 'I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark,' Phil. iii. 13.

3. The holiness of God is pure in its motives. He fears nothing, he hopes for nothing; yet he is holy. He knows, he loves, he pursues holiness. This is the whole system of his morality. Let this be our pattern. We do not mean to exclude the grand motives of hope and fear, which religion has sanctified, and which have such a mighty influence over beings capable of happiness or misery. But yet, let not our inclinations to virtue necessarily depend on a display of the horrors of hell, or the happiness of heaven. Disinterestedness of virtue is the character of true magnanimity, and Christian heroism. Let us esteem it a pleasure to obey the laws of order. Let us account it a pleasure to be generous, beneficent, and communicative. Let us lend,'

agreeably to the maxim of Jesus Christ, hoping for nothing again,' Luke vi. 35; and, in imitation of his example, let us lay down our lives for the brethren,' 1 John iii. 16.

4. The holiness of God is uniform in its action. No appearance deceives him, no temptation shakes him, nothing dazzles or diverts him. Let this be our example. Let us not be every day changing our religion and morality. Let not our ideas depend on the motion of our animal spirits, the circulation of our blood, or the irregular course of the hu mours of our bodies. Let us not be Christians at church only, on our solemn festivals alone, or at the approach of death. Let our conduct be uniform and firm, and let us say, with the prophet, even in our greatest trials, 'Yet God is good to Israel, Ps. lxiii. 1. However it be, I will endeavour to be as humble on the pinnacle of grandeur, as if Providence had placed me in the lowest and meanest post. I will be as moderate, when all the objects of my wishes are within my reach, as if I could not afford to procure them. I will be as ready to acquiesce in the supreme will of God, if he conduct me through various adversities, and through the valley of the shadow of death,' as if he led me through prosperities, and filled me with delights. Thus the holiness of God must be the model of ours: Be ye holy as I am holy.'

But the holiness of God must also be the reason or motive of ours; and we must be holy because God is holy: Ye shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.'

We groan under the disorders of our nature, we lament the loss of that blessed but short state of innocence, in which the first man was created, and which we wish to recover: We must be holy then, for the Lord our God is holy.' The beauty and blessedness of man in his primitive state consisted in his immediate creation by the hand of God, and in the bearing of his Creator's image, which was impressed, in a most lively manner, upon his mind. Sin has defaced that image, and our happiness consists in its res toration: that is, in our being renewed after the image of him who created us,' Col. iii. 10.

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We wish to enjoy the favour of God: we must be holy then, because the Lord our God is holy. They are our iniquities that have separated between us and our God' Isa. lix. 2. And it is holiness that must conciliate a communion which our sins have interrupted.

We tremble to see all nature at war with us, and wish to be reconciled to all the exterior objects that conspire to torment us; we must be holy then, because the Lord our God is holy. Sin is a hateful object to a holy God. Sin has armed every creature against man. Sin has thrown all nature into confusion. Sin, by disconcerting the mind, has destroyed the body. It is sin that has brought death into the world, and 'sin is the sting of death.'

We wish to be reconciled to ourselves, and to possess that inward peace and tranquillity, without which no exterior objects can make

us happy we must be holy then, because the Lord our God is holy. We have remarked. in this discourse, that God, who is an independent Being, loves virtue for its own sake, independent of the rewards that accompany and follow it. Nevertheless, it is very certain that the felicity of God is inseparable from his holiness. God is the happy God, because he is the holy God. God, in the contemplation of his own excellencies, has an inexhaustible source of felicity. Were it possible for God not to be supremely holy, it would be possible for God not to be supremely happy. Yes, God, all glorious and supreme as he is, would be miserable, if he were subject, like unholy spirits, to the turbulent commotions of envy or hatred, treachery or deceit. From such passions would arise odious vapours, which would gather into thick clouds, and, by obscuring his glory, impair his felicity. Even heaven would afford but imperfect pleasure, if those infernal furies could there kindle their unhallowed flames. The same reasoning holds good on earth; for, it implies a contradiction, to affirm that we can be happy, while the operations of our minds clash with one another: and it is equally absurd, to suppose that the almighty God can terminate the fatal war, the tragical field of which is the human heart, without the re-establishment of the dominion of hoIiness.

We desire to experience the most close and tender communion with God, next Lord's day, in receiving the holy sacrament: Let us be holy then, because the Lord our God is holy. This august ceremony may be considered in several points of view: and one of them deserves a peculiar attention. The table of the Lord's Supper has been compared, by some, to that which was formerly set, by the command of God, in the holy place: I mean, the table of 'show-bread,' or 'bread of the presence, Ex. xxv. 30. God commanded Moses to set twelve loaves upon the table, to change them every sabbath, and to give those that were taken away to the priests, who were to eat them in the holy place,' Lev. xxiv. 6, &c. What was the end of these ceremonial institutions? The tabernacle at first was considered as the tent, and the temple afterward as the palace of the Deity, who dwelt among the Israelites. In the palace of God, it was natural to expect a table for the use of him and his attendants. This was one of the most glorious privileges that the Israelites enjoyed, and one of the most august symbols of the presence of God among them. God and all the people of Israel, in the persons of their ministers, were accounted to eat the same bread. The heathens, stricken with the beauty of these ideas, incorporated them into their theology. They adopted the thought, and set in their temples tables consecrated to their gods. The prophet Isaiah reproaches the Jews with forsaking the Lord, forgetting his holy mountain and preparing a table for the host of heaven, Isa. lxv. 2. And Ezekiel reckons among the virtues of a just man, that he had 'not eaten upon the mountains,' Ez. xviii. 6. It was upon tables of this kind that idolaters sometimes ate the remainder of those victims which they had sacrificed to their gods. This

they called eating with gods; and Homer introduces Alcinous saying, 'The gods visit us, when we sacrifice hecatombs, and sit down with us at the same table.'

This is one of the most beautiful notions, under which we can consider the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. There we eat with God. God sits down with us at the same table, and, so causes us to experience the meaning of this promise, Behold, I stand at the door, and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me,' Rev. iii. 20. But what do such close connexions with a holy God require of us? They require us to be holy. They cry to us, as the voice cried to Moses from the midst of the burning bush, 'Draw not nigh hither; put off thy shoes from off thy feet; for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground," Ex.

iii. 5.

God is supremely holy God supremely loves order. Order requires you to leave vengeance to God, to pardon your bitterest and most professed enemies; and, what is more difficult still, order requires you to pardon your most subtle and secret foes. Would ye approach the table of a holy God gnawn with a spirit of animosity, hatred, or vengeance?

God is supremely holy: God supremely loves order. Order requires you to dedicate a part of those blessings to charity, with which Providence has intrusted you; to retrench the superfluities of your tables, in order to enable you to assist the starving and dying poor. Would ye approach the table of a holy God with hearts hardened with indifference to that poor man whom God has commanded you to love as yourselves.

God is supremely holy God supremely loves order. Order requires you to be affected with the tokens of divine love. All are displayed at the Lord's table. There the bloody history of your Redeemer's sufferings is again exhibited to view. There the blood, that Christ the victim shed for your crimes, flows afresh. There God recounts all the

mysteries of the cross. Would ye approach that table cold and languishing? Would ye approach that table without returning to Jesus Christ love for love, and tenderness for tenderness? Would ye approach that table void of every sentiment and emotion, which the venerable symbols of the love of God must needs produce in every honest heart? Ah! my brethren, were ye to approach the table of Jesus Christ without these dispositions, ye would come, not like St. John, or St. Peter, but like Judas. This would not be to receive an earnest of salvation, but to eat and drink your own damnation,' 1 Cor. xi. 29. This would not be to receive the body of Jesus Christ: this would be to surrender yourselves

to Satan.

I can hardly allow myself to entertain such melancholy thoughts. Come to the table of Jesus Christ, and enter into a closer communion with a holy God. Come and devote yourselves entirely to the service of a holy God. Come and arrange the operations of your minds by the perfections of a holy God. Come and diminish the grief that ye feel, because, in spite of all your endeavours to be

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This character of imperfection, essential to all creatures, is the ground of those prohibitions that we meet with in the Holy Scriptures, in regard to the objects of our trust. Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth, in that very day his thoughts perish,' Psalm cxlvi. 3, 4. Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm,' Jer. xvii. 5. Why? Because it is not safe to confide in man, unless he have such a harmony of attributes, as we have just now described; and because no man has such a harmony. His power may assist you, but, unless he have wisdom to direct his power, the very means that he would use to make you happy, would make you miserable. Even his would not harmonize with itself in regard to you, if it were sufficient to supply your wants to-day, but not to-morrow. That man, that prince, that mortal, to whom thou givest the superb titles of Potentate, Monarch, Arbiter of peace, and Arbiter of war; that mortal, who is alive to-day, will die to-morrow; the breath that animates him will evaporate, he will return to his earth,' and all his kind regards for thee will vanish with him.

power

But the perfections of God are in perfect harmony. This truth shall guide us through this discourse, and shall arrange its parts: and this is the likeliest way that we can think of, to preserve the dignity of our subject, to avoid its numerous difficulties, to preclude such fatal inferences as our weak and wicked passions have been too well accustomed to draw from the subject, and to verify the prophet's proposition in its noblest meaning, Like as a father pitieth his children, so doth the Lord pity them that fear him.'

Would ye form a just notion of the goodness of God, (for the original term that our translators have rendered pity, is equivocal, and is used in this vague sense in the Holy Scriptures.) Would ye form a just notion of the goodness of God? Then, conceive a perfection that is always in harmony with,

I. The spirituality of his essence.

II. The inconceivableness of his nature.
III. The holiness of his designs.
IV. The independence of his principles.
V. The immutability of his will.

VI. The efficacy of his power. But, above all,

VII. With the veracity of his word.

I. The goodness of God must agree with the spirituality of his essence. Compassion, among men, is that mechanical emotion which is produced in them by the sight of distressed objects. I allow that the wisdom of the Creator is very much displayed in aniting us together in such a manner. Ideas of fitness seldom make much impression on the bulk of mankind; it was necessary, therefore, to make sensibility supply the want of reflection, and, by a counter-blow, with which the miseries of a neighbour strike our feelmgs, to produce a disposition in us to relieve hima. Nature produces but few monsters who regale themselves on the sufferings of the wretched. Here or there has been a Phalaris, who has delighted his ears with the shrieks of a fellow-creature burning in a brazen bull:

and some, whose minds were filled with ideas of a religion more barbarous and inhuman than that of the Bacchanalians, have been pleased with tormenting those victims which they sacrificed, not to God the Father of mankind, but to him who is their murderer: but none, except people of these kinds, have been able to eradicate those emotions of pity with which a wise and compassionate God has formed them.

But this sensibility degenerates into folly, when it is not supported by ideas of order, and when mechanical emotions prevail over the rational dictates of the mind. It is a weakness, it is not a love worthy of an intelligent being, that inclines a tender mother to pull back the arm of him who is about to perform a violent, but a salutary operation on the child whom she loves. It is a weakness, it is not a love worthy of an intelligent being, that inclines a magistrate to pardon a criminal, whose preservation will be an inju ry to society, and the sparing of whose life will occasion a thousand tragical deaths.

This kind of weakness, that confounds a mechanical sensation with a rational and intelligent love, is the source of many of our misapprehensions about the manner in which God loves us, and in which we imagine he ought to love us. We cannot conceive the consistency of God's love in making us wise in a school of adversity, in exposing us to the vicissitudes and misfortunes of life, and in frequently abandoning his children to pains and regrets. It seems strange to us, that he should not be affected at hearing the groans of the damned, whose torments can only be assuaged by uttering blasphemies against him. Renounce these puerile ideas, and entertain more just notions of the Supreme Being. He has no body; he has no organs that can be shaken by the violence done to the organs of a malefactor; he has no fibres that can be stretched to form a unison with the fibres of your bodies, and which must be agitated by their motions. Love, in God, is in an intelligence, who sees what is, and who loves what may justly be accounted lovely; who judges by the nature of things, and not by sensations, of which he is gloriously incapable his love is in perfect harmony with the spirituality of his essence.

II. Our ideas of the goodness of God must agree with our notions of the inconceivableness of his nature. I oppose this reflection to the difficulties that have always been urged against the goodness of God. There are two sorts of these objections; one tends to limit the goodness of God, the other to carry it beyond its just bounds.

If God be supremely good, say some, how is it conceivable that he should suffer sin to enter the world, and with sin, all the evils that necessarily follow it? This is one difficulty which tends to carry the goodness of God beyond its just extent.

Is it conceivable, say others, that the great God, that God, who, according to the prophet, weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance,' Isa xl. 12; that God, who, measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with a span,' ver. 22; that God, who 'sitteth upon the