of providence. While men's hearts blame him for their sins, they can never love him aright for his mercies, particularly for his greatest mercy, which is deliverance from sin and its fruits: whereas, on the other hand, to entertain just thoughts of God and of ourselves, (that is, to take all the blame of our sin and misery to ourselves,) and to acknowledge sincerely that he is perfectly free from it, is the way, through God's grace, to such gratitude to him for his unspeakable gift, as makes the most rational and happiest disposition of mind that redeemed sinners are capable of.

It is worth the observing here, that many who are prejudiced against revealed religion, acknowledge that natural religion is very plain and rational. It is evident the difficulties against the apostle's doctrine are difficulties of natural religion. It is not the Scripture only that tells us we are sinful, guilty, corrupt creatures experience tells it, and reason teaches us that an infinitely perfect God must be perfectly free, both from the blame of our sin and the misery which it tends to experience and reason teach us, that we are sinners and deserve punishment; it is the gospel that teaches us the remedy. It is unreasonable to make the difficulties of natural religion prejudices against revealed religion: the subject insisted on serves to give a right impression of both, by giving a just view of God's actions and of those of his creatures. If that view of them were familiar to us, through God's grace, the love of his creatures, instead of hindering our love to him, would be a help This would be a happy stratagem for turning those earthly things, which corruption makes our

to it.

enemies, to be really our friends: all the pleasures in these streams would make us love the fountain; and all the trouble in them would make us long for him, long for that unmixed, unqualified bliss, where there is no more need of temperance, because there is no possibility of excess; where desire will not be checked, nor enjoyment restrained; where our joys will have none of that alloy that always cleaves to our joys here; where our honour will be without envy, our friendship without strife, our riches without care, our pleasures without mixture, without interruption, and, which crowns all, without end.

SERMON. II.

GLORYING IN THE CROSS OF CHRIST.

"But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world."-Gal. vi. 14.

It is an old and useful observation, that many of the most excellent objects in the world, are objects whose excellency does not appear at first view; as, on the other hand, many things of little value appear more excellent at first than a narrower view discovers them to be. There are some things we admire because we do not know them, and the more we know them, the less we admire them; there are other things we despise through ignorance, because it requires pains and application to discover their beauty and excellency.

This holds true in nothing more than in that glorious despised object mentioned in the text. There is nothing the world is more divided about in its opinion than this. To the one part it is altogether contemptible; to the other it is altogether glorious. The one part of the world wonders what attractives others find in it; and the other part wonders how the rest of the world are so stupid as not to see them; and are amazed at the blindness of others, and their own former blindness.

It is said of the famous reformer Melancthon, when he first saw the glory of this object at his conversion, he imagined he could easily, by plain persuasion, convince others of it: that the matter being so plain, and the evidence so strong, he did not see how, on a fair representation, any could stand out against it. But upon trial he was forced to express himself with regret, that old Adam was too strong for young Melancthon, and that human corruption was too strong for human persuasion, without divine grace.

The true use we should make of this is certainly to apply for that enlightening grace to ourselves, which the apostle Paul prays for in the behalf of the Ephesians, "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ may give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him." But as here, and in other cases, prayers and means should be joined together, so one of the principal means of right knowledge of the principal object of our faith, and ground of our hope, is to meditate on the glory of that object, asserted so strongly in this text, and that by one who formerly had as diminishing thoughts of it as any of its enemies can have. 70) sil1 287 62010 91. ¿

In the verses preceding the text, the apostle tells the Galatians what some false teachers among them gloried in; here he tells what he gloried in himself. They gloried in the old ceremonies of the Jewish law, which were but shadows; he gloried in the cross of Christ, the substance. He knew it was an affront to the substance, to continue these shadows in their former force after the substance itself appeared: therefore he regrets that practice with zeal, and at the same

time confines his own glorying to that blessed object which the shadows were designed to signify. "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Christ," &c.

Here the apostle showeth us, both his high esteem of the cross of Christ, and the powerful influence of it upon his mind. The cross of Christ signifies in Scripture sometimes our sufferings for Christ, sometimes his suffering for us. As the latter is the chief and most natural sense of the words, so there is reason to think that it is the sense of the apostle here. This is the sense of the same expression in the 12th verse of this chapter, which speaks of persecution (that is, our suffering) for the cross of Christ, that is, the doctrine of Christ's cross. Besides, it is certain that it is not our sufferings, but Christ's sufferings, which we are chiefly to glory in, to the exclusion of other things; and it is not the former chiefly, but the latter, that mortifies our corruptions, and crucifies the world to us.

The cross of Christ may signify here, not only his death, but the whole of his humiliation, or all the sufferings of his life and death; of which sufferings the cross was the consummation. The apostle, both here and elsewhere, mentions the cross, to remind us of the manner of his death, and to strengthen in our minds those impressions which the condescension of that death had made, or ought to have made in them. That the Author of liberty should suffer the death of a slave; the fountain of honour, the height of disgrace; that the punishments which were wont to be inflicted upon the meanest persons for the highest offences, should be inflicted on the greatest