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you have never found the want of him, and therefore could never receive him to be your Saviour. And I beseech you, sirs, consider what a wrong you must have been doing to your own souls. What! not so much as to inquire whether you were a fallen creature or not? In so many years to make no search whether you wanted not salvation? and so to suffer the Lord of glory to stand waiting upon you with the offer of salvation, without paying him the least regard? How can you answer this to yourself? Sure I am, if you have not lost your reason, you cannot acquit yourself to your own conscience. And the reflection cannot sit easy upon you, that, if there be salvation in Christ, however much you need it, you have no part therein, through your own shameful negligence of looking into yourself, and searching after the deplorable circumstances of our fallen state. But some of you are saying, "I know I am a corrupted creature; I confess myself by nature a child of wrath; I own the loss of the image of God which I suffered in Adam." To you, therefore, I propose for inquiry,

Secondly. Whether you are keeping the baptismal vow? For, if you are not, your case is not a jot mended, however exactly you may know both your lost estate by nature, and that there is free and full salvation in Jesus Christ. The point is, whether or no you have closed with and accepted that salvation; which acceptance has been fully shown to be no other thing than being in the practice of the baptismal vow. If you are living in sin, or not seeking to apply unto yourself the merits of Christ for your pardon and acceptance with God, or not endeavouring in your whole conduct to serve and please God, it is plain you have not accepted the offered salvation, and are still in your natural state. Now therefore look to yourself. If you are the person I am now intending, one that has knowledge, and knowledge only concerning man's misery and Christ's salvation, your case is this you know that you are a fallen creature, sensual, earthly, and devilish by nature, and you know that there is deliverance from the dominion of sin in Christ, yet sin hath full dominion over you. Either you are wholly led away in your heart and conduct by the love of pleasure, of indulgence, of sloth, and worldly ease; or you are under the power of covetousness, your mind carking and caring for the things of the

world, never satisfied, and ever intent upon the main point of being something in life through your wealth; or you are under the direction of worldly esteem, not daring to be better than is consistent with keeping your reputation among your neighbours; or you are of an unhumbled spirit; wayward, you must have your own way, and are angry whether God or man thwart you; proud, you are lifted up by whatever seems to distinguish you from others. These and the like are your ruling tempers. Now, if all or any of this be your case, you cannot say that in practice you are renouncing the devil, the world, and the flesh, or have partaken of Christ's salvation from the dominion of sin. So in this respect it is plain you are still in your natural state. Then, again, you have a knowledge in your head that you are a guilty creature, and that there is perfect reconciliation in Christ; but you have made no use of, you have received no benefit from, this knowledge; you are not humbled and alarmed at the sight of your condition; you have no sense of the value of the reconciliation; you have not drawn nigh to the throne of grace by the blood of the atonement; your heart is not sprinkled from an evil conscience by it; you are not filled, you are not so much as acquainted with what is meant by peace in believing; all that you know of this important matter is but as the knowledge of a foreign tale, in which you have no concern. See, then, if the guilt of all your sins does not yet lie upon you. Finally, you know that to be brought to the love and practice of God's commandments is a principal part of Christ's salvation, and of your want by nature. But with any love of God's law in your heart you are perfectly unacquainted; neither can you say, that to walk therein is your main, your grand, your ruling, nay, that it is in any measure your real, deliberate, concern. What! are you striving every day to walk with God, watchful over your conduct, that nothing you do may displease or dishonour him, studying above all things how you may please him, and how you may every day abound therein more and more; and calling ardently and constantly for his grace to enable you to do so? Alas! you know this is not the employment of your ordinary thoughts and desires; other things, as I have said, of various kinds, perpetually take you up: God has not the sway and rule within. Of pleasing him you think but little. You do not ask

whether what you do be agreeable to his mind or not. You live in needless temptations. Your ordinary course is forgetfulness of God, and to do what he bids you is far from being the settled design of your life. I beseech you, therefore, are you, or can you desire to be thought, God's servant? Your conscience testifies you are not, and therefore acknowledges that Christ has not circumcised your heart to love and serve the Lord your God. Brethren, let us not be deceived: let not our knowledge deceive

us.

You see, whatever knowledge a man has of himself, and of Jesus Christ, yet, if he be not in the practice of the baptismal vow, he has not accepted Christ's offer, therefore is no true Christian; and consequently is in his natural state of sin and wrath. A state which, however terrible it be to all that are in it, is peculiarly so to such as know their Master's will and do it not. But,

Thirdly. You are really, though imperfectly, walking in the baptismal vow. Sin has not dominion over you; you have come as an undone sinner to Christ, and taken him for your Saviour, and are determined also not to part with him, though you suffer the loss of all things; to please God and serve him is your main desire and aim you are therefore in a present state of salvation; for you have heard it made apparent, that to be in the practice of the baptismal vow, and to receive Christ in his whole salvation, are exactly the same thing. And you are in the practice of this your vow; for are you not fighting daily against sin, opposing the body of sin in you, and never lying down under its dominion, though it sometimes gain advantage of you? Are not your eyes upon Jesus for pardon and acceptance with your injured God? Have you not taken, and do you not continually take, refuge in his blood from the accusations of conscience and dread of the law? And your business, is it not through a supply of the spirit of the same Jesus, to live a godly life, desiring to be conformed to God's revealed mind, and making that, and not your own inclinations, nor the humours of others, the measure of your conduct? This you cannot deny, and this you ought to own to the glory of that grace by which you thus stand and walk in the midst of so many enemies and temptations, and cumbered as you are with flesh and blood. I say you ought to own it to the glory of God, and to your own comfort and en

couragement. And if you are thus walking, I see not the least cause you have to suspect your being passed from death unto life, although I know also the devil will be persuading you to the contrary. Give him no heed; tell him you know his character, that he is the accuser of the brethren; and you know his doom too, that he shall as such be cast down, Rev. xii. 10. Insist upon it against him, that by nature sin had the whole power of you, but now, though it lives, it doth not reign; that you are sure this could not be through any power of your own, any more than a dead body can raise itself out of the grave. Insist, that once you were dead, but now you are alive, for you find spiritual life in you, you feel the motions, the desires, the longings, the resolves of one whose soul lives, and you are sure it is not your natural self which doth this, but Christ who liveth in you. And if you are charged with in-dwelling sin and imperfection, acknowledge it, but avouch the righteousness of Christ, and insist, notwithstanding, that you are accepted in the well-beloved. You, brethren, are the very children of God in Christ Jesus. God hath called, justified, and sanctified you, and you are in the way to glory. You ought to be sensible of the inestimable gift you have received, to value the noble honour you are admitted to, to boast of the high privileges you enjoy in Christ Jesus. Ah, sirs! a very little time will show the world how blessed you are: the day of the Lord will show it. When Jesus comes with power and glory in the clouds, the whole world shall own that “ ye are the blessed of the Lord who made heaven and earth." Then sinners of every degree, then malignant devils shall own it to their confusion, "when Christ shall be glorified in his saints, and honoured in all them that believe." Be of good comfort, therefore, "be strong, acquit you like men;" hold fast the beginning of your confidence steadfast unto the end, for God will bruise Satan under your feet shortly. O be sensible how great things the Lord hath done for your souls!

SERMON IV.

ACTS xvi. 30.

What must I do to be saved?

OUR last Discourse on the Church Catechism related to the necessity of the baptismal vow in all the parts of it, which necessity was seen to lie in our fallen and lost estate by nature, from which the actual renunciation, faith, and obedience spoken of in the vow, is a present, true, and real deliverance.

The way, therefore, is now opened to a particular examination. of the three distinct parts of it. The first of them is the renunciation of "the devil and all his works, the pomps and vanities of this wicked world, and all the sinful lusts of the flesh." Which renunciation you see also hath its three parts; each of which must be separately considered. And it will be proper to introduce this particular explanation by observing (for the better understanding the whole of it, and that the renunciation itself may be seen at once in a comprehensive view), that by and since the fall there is a principle of sin in the nature of man, which I cannot better describe than by calling it a principle of carnal independency, by which man (as the devils did before him) withdraws himself from dependence on God, and sets up for his own master, and to be happy as well as he can without God. Now man thus set up for himself, and determined by his fallen nature to have nothing to do with God, and to seek his happiness not in God, finds himself in a world which he looks upon as his own, and to which he entirely gives himself up, seeking in the things of it to gratify his proud independent spirit, and to please his carnal inclinations. Into this state of carnal independency he was originally led through the malicious artifice of the devil, who, having seduced him into this apostasy, and thus fixed him

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