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tive that they can never claim or pretend to any merit in them, since they do not come up to answer the requirements of God in his general rule of government.

2. Our obedience of to-day cannot wipe away or cancel the crimes of yesterday or our past life: These crimes stand like high and unpassable mountains in the way betwixt God and us: Paying a new debt never wipes off old scores among men, and why should we imagine it will do so before the throne of God?

3. Were our duties perfect, yet it is not only a guilty, but a worthless creature, a mere polluted worm performs them; and the eternal favour of an offended God is not to be purchased for rebels at so cheap a rate.

4. It is true, it is by duties of worship we must draw near unto God, and by the acts of our mind and will, by knowledge, assent, faith, trust, hope, prayer and repentance, we must come to God; but it is still by and through the mediation and interest of Jesus the Son, that these acts of the soul must be addressed to the Father. These considered alone in themselves, are not prescribed in my text as the way itself, for Christ is the way, the truth, and the life: He is the only true and living way to God: These actions performed with a due regard to Christ, are properly our walking in the way which God hath appointed; but if we have no regard to Christ in these actions, we are not walking in God's way, nor can we raise any solid hope that we shall arrive at his gracious presence, while we neglect or refuse the only way which God has ordained.

Perhaps some more intelligent or more conceited hearers may cry out here, why are these rudiments and plain principles of christianity preached to us? Surely we know better, and understand more of the gospel of Christ, than to make such discourses necessary for us to attend them. I answer,

Answer I. However learned some may be in these truths, yet perhaps there may be others coming continually into our assemblies, who know little enough either of the law or gospel; and they had need of the doctrines of their own guilt and misery, and danger to be spoken in very plain and clear language to them, before they will hearken and stand still, and consider their own circumstances, and their peril: And the nature of man when under the awakenings of conscience, is so prone to take hold of every false and feeble refuge, and to venture their eternal hopes upon them, that it is very necessary to speak these things often, and to represent them in the clearest light, in order to caution sinners against building their hopes on the sand, and resting all their expectation of the favour of God and happiness, upon some feeble foundation which will not bear them. It is not the wise and the learned that I pretend to instruct; but it is pity any poor soul, even of the lowest ranks of mankind, should abide ignorant of these important concerns, and should perish in such a land of light, and for want of christian knowledge.

Answer II. Let us search diligently our own hearts: Have we all attained and kept up such a due sense of our danger without Christ as we should have? Are we never inclined to depend on self-righteousness at all? Are we never under any temptation to indulge this false hope? Some pious souls have complained of this temptation, and corrupt nature is very ready in the best of christians, to build up some parts of their own righteousness as their sufficient refuge, and sometimes to put it in place of the perfect mediation and atonement of the blessed Jesus.

Answer III. However the case be now with us, and if we have truly got the victory

over all temptations of this kind, yet it is very proper to remember what once we were, and reflect upon what false hopes we once were ready to build on, and to bless the Holy Spirit of light and grace, that hath discovered our mistakes unto us, that has turned our feet from every dangerous hope, and led us to the Father by the true and living way Christ Jesus. Let this thought also call us to mourn over the souls of men, even the greatest part of our fellow-creatures, inhabitants of this world, who are made of the same flesh and blood as we are, and who, through gross ignorance, are ever practising some foolish methods of pacifying God for past sins, and aiming at his favour and happiness in such ways as will never attain their end. O come, Lord Jesus, and spread thy light and thy truth through the dark nations, and scatter all the remaining mists and darknesses that lie upon countries which have only the name of Christ, and some of the forms of his religion among them. Thousands there are, even in Europe, who neither know the gospel in truth, nor come to God by this Mediator: They live not by the faith of the Son of God, nor have just reason, according to the gospel, to expect divine favour and forgiveness. Blessed God, enlighten the thousands of dark and wretched mankind, and lead them in thy appointed way to happiness.

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The next essay will shew us a plain and easy account of faith in Christ, or of coming to God by Christ, I acknowledge I have been sometimes uneasy and ashamed to hear a divine of the protestant church tell his people, that faith in Christ is a mysterious thing, and it is not to be well known, or clearly conceived in itself, but it may be much better conceived by its effects, therefore, saith he, I proceed, instead of speaking of faith itself, to give you an account of the fruits and effects of it.

As though there was any thing in the affairs of human life, in reason, or in religion, clearer than this notion, viz. Upon a sight and sense of our sins and dangers, and our weakness to help ourselves, to commit ourselves into the hands of Christ, by a humble act of trust or dependence on him, complying with his appointed methods of relief in the gospel.

It is but as a man sensible of his sickness applies himself to a wise and knowing physician, and gives himself up to him, and trusts himself in his hands to relieve him, complying with the remedies appointed in order to his cure: which I hope will appear very plain in the following essay.

ESSAY V.

A PLAIN AND EASY ACCOUNT OF A SINNER'S COMING TO GOD BY JESUS CHRIST, OR OF SAVING FAITH IN CHRIST JESUS.

JOHN XIV. 6.

NO MAN COMETH UNTO THE FATHER BUT BY ME.

INNOCENT man in the day of his creation had a liberty of drawing near to God his Maker, and of delightful converse with him in a more immediate manner; but man having fallen from God, and become guilty in his person, and sinful in his nature, dwells in this world afar off from God; and yet sometimes would attempt to approach him, and obtain his favour again merely by his own powers and performances; as though the goodness of God would receive him again into his presence, and into his love in the same manner as before. Sinful mankind have been often trying to make their way to God in and of themselves: Thence arise those various mistaken grounds of hope, of which we have given an account in the former discourse: But the blessed God has sufficiently informed us in the word of his gospel, that it is in vain for us to hope to draw near to God, our offended sovereign, without a Mediator; and there is but one Mediator of God's appointment between God and man, and that is the man Christ Jesus; 1 Tim. ii. 5. and no man cometh unto the Father but by him; John xiv. 6.

Now in order to explain what it is for sinners to come to God the Father by Jesus Christ, let us consider that all saving approaches of the creature unto God, depend on God's approaches to the creature: He first draws us by his grace, and then we follow. Jer. xxxi. 3. I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee. 1 John iv. 19. If we love him, it is because he loved us first. If our souls are set a moving towards him, it is because his heart, his pity and his love moved first towards us. In the reconciliation of God and his sinful creatures, there must be a mutual approach, and a mutual nearness; but it must be remembered, that the sinners coming nigh to God, is but an echo or answer to the merciful voice of God coming nigh to him: And the same method in which we may suppose the great God to draw near to sinners, the same steps should we take in drawing near to God. It must be granted, indeed, that all the acts of God are eternal, and his decrees have no order of succession as they are in him: The eternal mind conceives the ends and beginnings of all things at once; but there are many expressions in scripture which condescend to our frailty, and teach us to conceive of the infinite and eternal things of God by way of time and succession, that we may obtain a fuller and clearer understanding of them; for no created mind is capacious enough to grasp all the divine decrees in one single thought, as that God does who formed them.

It should be observed also, that though the actions of the soul of man are generally produced in a successive way, yet sometimes two or three of these acts are so swift in

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their succession, and so nearly simultaneous, or at the same moment that they are blended together, or are so interwoven in many cases, that it is hard to say which is first, and which is last: And many times also, in one and the same act of the soul, there are such different views and designs concurring, as may make it look like two or three distinct actions: So returning to God by Jesus Christ includes in it both repentance, with all the acts contained therein, as well as faith, with all its subordinate motions: It is repentance as it is a return to God; it is faith as Jesus Christ is the medium of this return. I put in this caution here, only to shew, that we are not to expect every single sinner that returns to God by Jesus Christ, must have all these particular motions of the soul, or all these transactions sensibly passing through his mind, and that in the same order as is here represented; yet the representation of these things in some rational order, may greatly help the conception of the whole, and give persons somewhat of a more clear and more distinct idea of it.

Let us then here take a survey of those " several steps, whereby God may be supposed to draw near to fallen man, in order to his recovery, and thereby we shall learn what corresponding steps sinners must take, in order to their coming to God."

· I.

I. The blessed God surveying his lower creation, beheld all mankind as creatures in general fallen from his image and his love, and at a wide and dreadful distance from their Creator. Compare Psalm xiv. 2, 3. with Rom. iii. 9-12. The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand and seek God: They are all gone aside, they are altogether become filthy; there is none that doth good, no, not one. This text of the psalmist is cited by the apostle in Rom. iii. 9-12. to prove that all mankind is afar off from God by nature; and therefore I may justly use this scripture, to prove that God beheld us in this fallen estate; he saw us lie under the righteous condemnation of his broken law, justly exposed to misery, and deserving his indignation and wrath, under a sentence of death, and yet still going farther from him without his fear or his love.

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Now in correspondence with this view, which God has taken of the children of men, in their guilt and misery in general; we also, in order to our recovery, must be brought to see ourselves guilty and miserable, we must see ourselves destitute of the image and the love of God in our fallen state of nature, if ever we would return to him by Christ and grace.

God, who is essentially happy in being for ever near himself, and one with himself, has made the happiness of his creatures to depend on their being near to him, and their union with him; and he knows it is misery enough to be afar off from God: So must we be made deeply sensible of our wretchedness and misery in the loss of the favour and image of God, and in our dreadful state of distance and estrangedness from him. We must behold ourselves exposed to the wrath of God, and under sentence of just condemnation and death, because of sin. We must see it so as to feel it, and be affected with it at our heart; we must have such an impression of it made upon our souls, so as never to be satisfied to continue in such a state, and be restless in seeking some way of recovery, as I shall shew more particularly afterwards.

II. The great God surveying his own glorious perfections in himself, and the just rights of his government, taking a view also of the holiness, justice, and wisdom of his law, which sinful man had grievously dishonoured and affronted by disobedience; he

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did not think it proper for himself, as the supreme Governor of the world, to receive sinful creatures into his favour again, without some signal honour done to his broken law and his authority; as a sort of righteous recompence for the affront and dishonours done thereto by the offence of his creatures. It became the great God to make his law appear wise and just, by demanding such a reparation of the dishonour done to it.

But he found all mankind utterly incapable of making any such recompence, since all that they could do for time to come was but their known duty to their Creator, and none of their sufferings, short of destruction and eternal death, could make atonement or satisfaction for the sins that were past: And in this view of things the great God did, as it were, pronounce the recovery of his creature man, by all his own powers and capacities, altogether hopeless, and that his recovery must arise only from divine grace.

In correspondence to this view of things in the eye of God, we should also set before our own eyes the holiness, justice, and wisdom of the law of our Creator, in order to make ourselves deeply sensible of our great guilt, in breaking his law, and our desert of death by the transgression of it: We should also be made sensible in some measure of the right of his divine authority and government, to demand some satisfaction for our offences, before we be received into his favour again. The very workings of natural conscience under a sense of guilt, seem to be an impression from the God of nature on the mind of man, that sin deserves punishment, because the law of a God broken requires some reparation of honour.*

On this account we ought to reflect on ourselves as the more miserable and helpless, in our guilty state, because we are utterly incapable to make any atonement for our own sins, or to repair the dishonour that hath been done to God's holy law and his authority thereby. We must look upon our circumstances, therefore, as hopeless in ourselves, and acknowledge that all our hope is in the free grace and mercy of God. Every mouth must be stopped on this account, and all the world lie at the foot of God as guilty before him, as justly exposed to his indignation, and unable to procure his favour: Rom. iii. 19.

III. The great God saw it also impossible to bring sinners near to himself, and make them partakers of his favour and happiness, without a change of their corrupt natures, an entire alteration of their vicious affections, and an universal turn of heart from sin to God. In our present fallen and sinful state, God beheld our hearts so averse to all that is holy and divine, that we could never be fit for converse with him, or the enjoyment of him as a God of holiness, without being renewed after his image and likeness, and possessed of a sincere love to him.

And he also beheld these guilty sinful creatures utterly incapable of recovering

This is so universal in all ages among the considerate part of mankind, that the heathens themselves, in their own circumstances, thought a "nemesis" or vindictive indignation of God would attend on sinners. Acts xxviii. 4. They thought St. Paul was a murderer, and therefore vengeance followed him. And this set them upon various and foolish inventions, to make atonement for sin: Nor is it to be supposed, that the craft of priests alone could so easily and so universally have imposed on the nations their self-punishments, and their expensive sacrifices of atonement, if there had not been something in the natural consciences of mankind, which told them they wanted an atonement for sin. And in this respect the workings of natural conscience should be encouraged, and kept awake, and sensible of the wrath of God, which sin deserves, and that God will require some satisfaction to his injured law and government.

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