who are we, that we should be more merciful than God? Or rather, how can we imagine it is mercy, to avoid speaking of the appointment of infinite wisdom, for the punishment of impenitent sinners? What mercy were that Sirs, to avoid to mention these terrors to you, and to neglect to warn you of them, because they are great? which is indeed the very reason why the Scripture thus pathetically describes them.

Away therefore with this foolish, this treacher ous compassion, which chooses rather to leave men to be consumed, than to disturb their slumbers ! Think, Sirs, of that wretched glutton, whom Christ describes as lifting up his eyes in hell, being in torments; secing the regions of the blessed at an unapproachable distance, and begging in vain that one drop of water might be sent to cool his tongue, amidst all the raging thirst with which he was tormented in this flame (1). Regard it attentively; for as God lives, and as your soul lives, if you continue in an unrenewed state, you see in that wretch the very image and representation of yourselves. Yes, sinners, I testify it to you this day, that intolerable as it seems, it will on that supposition be your own certain fate; or to speak much more properly, your righteous but inevitable doom. Heaven and earth will desert you in that dreadful hour: or if the inhabitants of both were to join to intercede for you, it would be in vain. Sentence will be past, and execution done: Hell will open its mouth to receive you, and shut it again forever to enclose you, with thousands, and ten

她

(1) Luke xvi. 23, 24.

thousands more, among whom you will not find one to comfort you, but every one ready to afflict you. Then shall you know the value which God sets upon his heavenly kingdom, by the judgments he inflicts upon you for neglecting and despising it; and then shall you know the importance of being born again, that only means by which Hell can be avoided, and Heaven secured.

And let me farther add, that conviction will quickly come in this terrible way, if you are not now prevailed upon to consider these things; things which, if you have the least regard to the word of God, you cannot but potionally believe. De not then go about to annihilate, as it were, these prospects to your mind, by placing them at a long distance, The distance is not so great as to deserve a men tion: The patience of God will not wait upon you for thousands, or even hundreds of years; you have a few mortal days, in which to consider of the mat ter; or rather, you have the present moment to con şider of it. And if you improve the opportunity, it is well; but if not, the just and uniform methods of the divine administration shall proceed, though it should be to your ruin. God has vindicated the honors of his violated law, and despised gospel, upon millions, who with the rebel-angels, by whom they have been seduced, are even now reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day (1); and he will as surely vindicate them upon you. If you do not repent, if you (1) Jude, verse

are not regenerate, you shall all likewise perish (1), and not one of you shall escape.

And thus I close this copious and important argument: this argument, in which life and death, salvation and damnation are concerned. View it, my friends, in all its connexion, and see in what part of it the chain can be broken. Will you say, that without regeneration you can secure an interest in the kingdom of heaven, though the constitution of heaven oppose it, and all the declarations of God's word stand directly against it; and though nature itself proclaim, and conscience testify your incapacity to enjoy it? Or will you say, that being excluded from it, you shall suffer no considerable damage, though you lose so glorious a state, the noblest preparation of Divine love, the purchase of redeeming blood, and the end of the Spirit's operation on the soul; though you ever remain sensible of your loss, and be consigned over to dwell in that flaming pris on, which God has prepared for the devil and his angels, and where all the terrors of his righteous judgments are made known?

But if you are indeed inwardly convinced of the truth and importance of these things, and will go an way, and act as before, without any regard to them, I can say no more. The reason of man, and the word of God can point out no stronger arguments, than an infinite good on the one hand, and an infinite evil on the other.

Hear, therefore, Oh heavens, and give ear, O earth! and let angels and devils join their astonishment; (1) Luke xiii. 3.

that creatures, who would strenuously contend, and warmly exert themselves, I will not say merely for an earthly kingdom, but in an affair where only a few pounds, or perhaps a few shillings or pence were concerned, are indifferent here, where, by their own confession, a happy or miserable eternity is in question. For indifferent, I fear, some of you are and will continue. I have represented these things in the integrity of my heart, as in the sight of God, not in artful forms of speech, but in the genuine language, which the strong emotions of my own soul, in the views of them, most naturally dietated. Yet I think it not at all improbable, that some of you, and some perhaps who do not now im agine it, will, as soon as you return home, divert your thoughts and discourses to other objects; and may perhaps, as heretofore, lie down upon your beds without spending one quarter of an hour, or even one serious minute, in lamenting your miserable state before God, and seeking that help and delive rance which his grace alone can give. But if you thus lie down, make, if you can, a covenant with death, that it may not break in upon your slumbers; and an agreement with hell (1), that before the return of the morning, it may not flash in upon your careless souls another kind of conviction, than they will now receive from the voice of reason and the word of God.

(1) Isa. xxviii. 15.

OF THE NECESSITY OF DIVINE INFLUENCES TO PRODUCE REGENERATION IN THE SOUL.

TITUS 111. 5, 6.

Not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; which he shed on us abundantly, through Jesus Christ our Saviour.

IF my business were to explain and illustrate this Scripture at large, it would yield an ample field for accurate criticism and useful discourse, and more especially would lead us into a variety of practical remarks, on which it would be pleasant to dilate in our meditations. It evidently implies, "that those, who are the saved of the Lord, are brought to the practice of good works;" without which faith is dead (1), and all pretences to a saving change are not only vain, but insolent. Yet it plainly testifies to us, "that our salvation, and acceptance with God, is not to be ascribed to these, but to the Divine mercy; which mercy operates hy sanctifying our hearts, through the renewing influence of the Holy Spirit:" And "that there is an abundant effusion of this Spirit under the Gospel," which is therefore, with great propriety, called the ministration of the Spirit(2), and the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus(3).

But I must necessarily, in pursuance of my general scheme, wave several of these remarks, that I (1) James ii. 17. (2) 2 Cor. iii. 3. (3) Rom, viii, 2 Q