it is not immediately made so by the power of God stirring up the heart to receive it and obey it. It is the power of God that makes it effectual; just as much the power of God that begets a lively faith in the heart of a sinner, as it was the power of God that made man out of the ground. The one is as much God's creation as the other, and so the latter is often called in the New Testament. We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus.'* The new man after God is created in righteousness. Now when God manifests his power in renewing and quickening the dead hearts of sinners through the Gospel, when it is his own work, when hereby he declares the Gospel to be from himself, and does in so wonderful a manner own and honour it, ought we to be ashamed of that Gospel which God so gloriously sets his mark upon as his? The Gospel, thus made alive by the power of God, is his witness of himself among fallen men, and ought to be revered wherever it comes, or however mean the subject be in whom it appears. What shall we say then, if, while some despise, others are ashamed of the work of God? a work so condescending in the Majesty of heaven, a work so infinitely valuable in regard of us! It is the Gospel God owns, he owns nothing else by making it the means of holiness and salvation. There are many pretended schemes of religion, but God bears witness to none of them, by none of them doth he work to convert and save a soul; this honour he reserves for his own contrivance, the Gospel, which alone he makes effectual to the saving of those who believe. It was in these views that our Apostle so greatly boasted in the Gospel. And whoever sees as he did, that it is God who gives effect to the preaching of it, exerting his power upon the hearts of sinners to awaken them out of their natural state of sin, convincing them of their misery, and of his mercy in Jesus Christ, conforming them to his mind and image, and enabling them, in the spirit of meekness, humility, zeal, and charity, to lead a heavenly life upon earth, will, no more than St. Paul, be ashamed of the Gospel of Christ.

From the two considerations proposed to us in this second head, we may learn these two things for practice.

First. We may see here the reason of being ashamed of the + Col. iii. 10.

* Ephes. ii. 10.

Gospel to lie in this, that we do not as we ought steadfastly believe it to be the means and only means of salvation, and that it is effectually made so by the power and operation of God. The world of mankind slights the Gospel because otherwise engaged, yea, and dislikes the Gospel because all its proposals are of a spiritual nature; insensible of their danger without it, they have never made account of its offers of pardon; and, in love with sin, they have not relished its precepts of holiness. Others, brought to some sight of their want of the Gospel, have never been made certainly to believe its truth, nor clearly to behold its glory, and so have wanted a purpose of heart to renounce the world, and, having stopped short, have been kept back by a shame of the Gospel of Christ from the profession and practice of it. Wherefore,

Secondly. If you will get above this sinful shame of the Gospel, own it, live it, recommend and encourage it in the face of the world, and get more above the inward shame of it also; there is but this one way to such desirable liberty, that we steadfastly believe it. What made our Apostle not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ? He tells us that it was this only, that he was fully assured it was the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. We must grow in our belief of it and acquaintance with it; be sensible we do not believe it enough, or know sufficiently its glories, while we are yet any way ashamed of it; and must search deeper into the mysteries of that noble work of God, by which himself is glorified and sinners saved. Look upon it in all its sufficiency of salvation, consider it as the only means whereby yourself may be saved, endeavour it may have a more effectual abiding and transforming influence upon your heart, especially see that God in almighty power bears witness to it by word and deed as a scheme contrived before the worlds were made, and to have its full effect when they shall be no more; and, as you advance into this certain knowledge of the Gospel, you will not be ashamed of it, but in life and death it will be all your desire and all your boast, as the power of God unto salvation to every one that

SERMON LI.

HEBREWS ii. 3.

How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?

You sons and daughters of fallen Adam; you mortal men, whose days are numbering out, who are quickly to return to the dust out of which you were taken, yet whose existence must be as the days of heaven; you all are soon to undergo an important change. You know your time is short, you are departing, passing over the stage, and shortly to disappear, your place here to know you again no more for ever. The world then what a bubble! the gaieties and enjoyments of it what a cheat! the supports of it what a broken reed! the comforts of it what a vexation! the honours of it what a vanity! the wealth of it what a bauble! This death will demonstrate against all who gainsay it; death, that closes the eyes on every earthly thing, and opens them to another, a new, a spiritual, an eternal scene. O what a

sight presents itself to the soul the very moment it leaves the body! Who can conceive what it shall be to go into that new state, where every visible thing shall be no longer seen, neither man, nor beast, nor house, nor sun, nor earth, to be met with? A world of spirits, nothing but spirits! How will all things then appear! What a glorious object the blessed God to the saint; how terrible to the sinner! Heaven, how lovely to the one; hell, how dreadful to the other! But whither am I carrying you? To views great, awful, and interesting indeed. Who can think of them without astonishment? Yet they ought to be thought of. It is the true business of life to think of them; to think of ourselves as men ready to die, and whose work is to work out salvation while we live; to think of our latter end, and of the eternal things that are hastening upon us, that we may not lose ourselves, our eternal selves, in pursuing the vain, deceitful, gratifications of time. I am sure God has

thought of them for us graciously, and provided a most glorious salvation for us, which he would have the object of our thought and care, that, whenever we depart hence, we may be happy to all eternity. To enforce this salvation upon you, to plead with you by the greatness of it, and by the danger of neglecting it, is my present design from the words read. How shall we

escape, if we neglect so great salvation? In which words these three things are manifestly contained :

First. The greatness of Gospel salvation.

Secondly. That we are too apt to neglect it.
Thirdly. The danger of so doing.

First.-Consider the greatness of this Gospel salvation: in every view of it great. Its end, subject, means, fulness, considered, a great salvation.

Its end great: namely, the manifestation of God's grace and love. The end of all God's doings is his own glory, the ascertaining his rights, and displaying his perfections. So his own glory was the great end of salvation wrought by the Redeemer; he meant to vindicate his sovereignty, to magnify his justice and holiness, to illustrate his wisdom and power, and to manifest his infinite good will. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace,* or that the praise of his grace might be magnified. The end of his adopting us through Christ is, that angels and men might glorify his grace. Our Apostle was commissioned to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ, and let all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery which from the beginning of the world had been hid in God: to the intent that now (not to men only, but even) unto the principalities and powers (angelical) might be known (and magnified) by (his dispensations to) the church the manifold wisdom of God.'+ This was a great end, and gives a wonderful importance to the vast transaction of man's salvation. Indeed God's other perfections were magnified by this scheme, but the main design was to do honour to his grace and love. The work of creation displays and glorifies God's power, that of providence his wisdom, and that of vengeance on sinners his justice; but that of redemption puts Ephes. i. 3, 5, 6. † iii. 8, 9, 10.

them all together, illustriously sets forth his justice, wisdom, and power; while its principal aim is the manifestation of God's infinite love. And is not that salvation great, which is designed for so great an end, the greatest end that can be, the maintaining God's peculiar glory, and devised by himself for so great a purpose?

Again, First." The greatness of this salvation appears from the subject of it," man. Consider man in a natural state, his nature sunk into apostasy, destitute of every tendency towards God, yea, disposed to hate him, to hate his being and all his perfections, to hate his dominion and law, to hate his providence and presence; and possessed with all manner of sinful tendencies on the contrary part, having in his fallen nature the seeds of all manner of sensuality, and every kind of spiritual filthiness; pride, conceit, disobedience, self-will; and, because thus depraved, guilty of treason against the Most High, and under the irreversible sentence of the Divine curse: yea, by nature also blind and ignorant, yet averse to be taught; hardened and senseless, therefore careless about recovery; weak and helpless, yet unwilling to be succoured: withal a subject to Satan's kingdom, open to all his devices, and living in the midst of everything pleasing to the natural heart. To avert the eternal wrath such a sinner deserves, and which the righteous God will not otherwise in any degree remit, by making ample satisfaction to infinite justice; to effect a perfect reconciliation for such a sinner with the most holy God; to rectify corrupt nature, and fashion again man's soul to the temper of a creature, and the constitution of a servant, and that in full opposition to man's natural lords, the devil, the world, and the flesh; to perfect this work day by day, in contradiction to our strange obstinacy, wilfulness, heedlessness, forgetfulness, and sloth, till the entire image of God be completed, and sinful nature utterly destroyed; to spiritualize the body too as well as the soul, to make this mortal immortal, this corruptible incorruptible, this dishonourable glorious, this weakness power, this animal spiritual; to defeat sin and death, and hell and devils; so as that, in the day of redemption (to say the least), he who was once a sinner shall appear as if he had never sinned, holy as if he had never been corrupted, alive as if he had never been mortal, respected by the