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us but what is evil continually; ceaseless, numberless works of darkness, in thought, word, or deed, as many as the days, hours, and minutes of our lives have been? What! my dear friends, will any one of us be hardy enough to appear under these circumstances before Christ's judgment-seat, where nothing can be hid, and all will be laid open? Yet remember there we must all come, whether we will or no. God will have it so, and who can prevent it? To be plain, I am grieved at heart for many, very many of you, to think how you will make your appearance before Christ's judgment-seat. You have no works to speak there for your belonging to Christ; I can see none. I see works of various kinds that prove you do not belong to him. If a life of pleasure, idleness, company-keeping, indulgence, drunkenness, pride, covetousness, would recommend you to the favour of the Judge, few would be better received than numbers of you. In the name of God, my friends, when you know, this moment, in your own consciences, that if, as you have been and are, you should be called to judgment, you would be as surely cast into hell as if you were already scorching in those dreadful flames, why will you live at such a rate? Well, we shall be all before the judgment-seat of Christ together. There the controversy between me, persuading you by the terrors of the Lord, and you, determined to abide in your sins, will be decided. There it will appear whether your blood will be upon your own heads for your obstinate impenitency, or upon mine for not giving you warning. Christ will certainly either acquit or condemn me on this account; and if I should be acquitted herein, what will become of you? I tremble to think how so many words of mine will be brought up against you on that day. What will you say? what will you answer? how will you excuse yourselves? O, sirs, if you will not be prevailed upon, you will with eternal self-reproach curse the day that you knew me, or heard one word from my mouth! Why, why, why will you die with so aggravated a destruction? O think of the

judgment; think of it, and you will not be able to hold it out against your own souls! May the Lord incline you to do so; may he cause this word to sink deep into your hearts; may he show you all your danger; and with an outstretched arm

bring you out of the hands of the devil, and translate you into the glorious kingdom of his dear Son, to his own glory, and your unspeakable happiness in the day of the appearance of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ! Even so, most mighty God, and most merciful Father, for the same Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.

FOUR SERMONS

ON THE

LAST PART OF THE CREED.

BY THE REV. JOHN LAWSON.

SERMON I.

ST. JOHN xiv. 26.

But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

HAVING already spoken of faith in God the Father, and God the Son, and shown their distinct offices in the Christian scheme of salvation, we come now to speak of faith in God the Holy Ghost. The words of the Creed are these, “I believe in the Holy Ghost."

I am first to open the meaning. Perhaps it may not be unnecessary to inform some of you, that Ghost is but another word for Spirit: he is called holy, because his office is to sanctify and make holy the hearts of men: he is truly God; which the following scriptures testify, viz. "Why hath Satan filled thine heart, that thou shouldest lie unto the Holy Ghost? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God." "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all." "Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." These two last likewise prove him to be a distinct person. The Holy Ghost had his proper office in our redemption, viz. by sanctifying Christ as man, and acting all grace and power in him. His office is to

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sanctify; that is, first, by the word, ordinarily or otherwise to awaken for though Christ has, by his obedience unto death, made abundant provision for the glory of God and the salvation of apostate man, (as has been shown in the former discourses on the Creed,) yet we have certainly neither part nor lot in the matter, so long as we continue carnal and unawakened; so far from it, that every soul that is unawakened to a sense of its infinite guilt and misery in sin, is still lying buried in the ruins of the fall; exposed to the curse of a broken law, under the wrath of Almighty God, in the sure road to eternal death! And, therefore, all that Christ has done and suffered for us must, to be made available to our final salvation, be applied by the Spirit to our hearts; and his first step in this work is, through the word, to awaken us out of that sleep of eternal death, in which we all lie by nature. He sets the law home upon our consciences, opens our eyes to a sight of its infinite purity and perfection; sounds its tremendous curses in our ears, alarms us under a sense of our condemned, lost estate, makes us sensible that all our own righteousnesses are as filthy rags, and we as an unclean thing; shows us that for anything we can do, we must remain monuments of divine vengeance to all eternity! This is what our Saviour means, when he says, in the 16th chapter of St. John, "I will send the Holy Ghost unto you, and he shall convince the world of sin." He particularly convinces those that he takes in hand of the great sin of unbelief. In their natural state, they fondly imagined they were as good believers as any in the world; but when the Holy Ghost comes, he undeceives them, he convinces them that they believe nothing as they ought they find to their astonishment and confusion, that they are possessed of unbelieving, insensible, atheistic hearts; consequently that the curses of the law hang over their guilty heads. Thus he humbles and abases them; brings them to a penitent sense of their misery and helplessness, strips them of all self-dependance, forces them to acknowledge that his sentence against them is just and righteous; and excites in them such an earnest, trembling concern for their souls, that they would give ten thousand worlds for a solid ground of hope towards God. Observe, I say this is the first work of the Holy Ghost upon the human heart. And then, secondly, he begets in the truly humbled,

penitent heart, faith in Jesus. Having enlightened the soul with a sight of the infinite holiness and majesty of God, the infinite evil and damnableness of all sin, the purity and spirituality of the precepts, together with the penalties of the law; the apostasy and corruption of his heart and nature, and his own utter inability either to restore God's glory, or to rescue himself from the jaws of death and hell; I say, the Holy Ghost having thus prepared the soul, then discovers to it the suitableness, excellency, and glory of Christ and his salvation: he gives the man new views of Christ's person, incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension into heaven, and intercession before the throne: he enables him to see a beauty and glory in Christ's mediatorial work, which he had before no more idea of than a man born blind has of colours; particularly he shows him, that such is the merit of Christ's blood and righteousness, that it at once reflects the highest honour on all the perfections of God; conquers death and hell, and opens the kingdom of heaven to all believers. In consequence of this, he encourages and enables him to cast his soul on this foundation; he enables him also to exercise faith in the atoning blood of the incarnate God, and to lay hold on his spotless everlasting righteousness; he shows him that this is sufficient to purge away all his guilt, reinstate him in God's forfeited favour, and furnish him with a title to eternal life and glory. Precisely in this view, Christ says to his disciples in the 15th chapter of St. John, "When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me." And again, in the 16th chapter, "He will guide you into all truth." "He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you."-And then, the Holy Ghost, having thus wrought penitence and faith in the heart, thirdly, he turns it from dead works to God, he works a new creation in the man's soul, he gives him an enlightened understanding, a renewed will, and heavenly affections, he is made a new creature in Christ Jesus, by the power of the Holy Ghost then the same divine Spirit carries on the work in his heart, by helping his prayers, comforting him in his troubles, strengthening his weakness, confounding his spiritual enemies; illuminating his steps, governing his soul, and making him meet

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