But alas! what can a little charity to the poor do toward the reconciliation of a God to an offending creature. Is there any force in this reasoning, because I do a kindness for a fellowworm, therefore my Maker must love me, and forgive me all affronts against him? Or because I have given to the service of God, some of those worldly good things which he first bestowed upon me, therefore he must pardon all my former iniquities, he must receive me for ever into his favour, and confer upon me the riches of glory and the inheritance of the saints in light? How weak and ignorant are these reasonings? And yet how many have been ready to lay the stress of their hopes upon them, having nothing else within their view to trust in?

3. "Forms and observances of religious worship," are another vain pillar upon which sinners lean and support themselves. This is a most common and powerful deceit. How many thousands are there, that by daily attendance upon solemnities of worship and coming up to the house of God, hope at last to come to the arms of the Father with acceptance ? And especially if they have practised secret devotion too, in the common rounds and forms of it, and have frequently bowed their knees to God in their retirements, and their hope has risen high; and though they have not arrived at a thorough change of heart, and sincere love to God, yet they will presume upon his acceptance without any great concern about the salvation of Jesus Christ. But let me ask such sort of candidates for heaven and happiness, whether a formal round of duties and services, without the heart and soul in them, without sincere love to God and delight in him, can so far please the blessed God, as to persuade him to neglect all the righteous demands of his governing justice for past crimes? Or if your hearts are sometimes engaged in these solemnities, is this sufficient to cancel all former transgressions? Besides, if you have no Mediator, who shall introduce such a sinner, or his duties, into the presence of God with acceptance? May he not justly drive us with all our solemn formalities, afar from his seat, since we neglect the only hope set before us, that is, the name of his Son, without which no man shall come to be accepted of the Father. John xiv. 6. No man cometh to the

Father but by me.

4. The last thing I mention, on which some persons are prone to depend, in order to obtain divine favour and forgiveness, is "a course of outward reformation, and some vows and some endeavours after better obedience:" But I would endeavour in these few particulars, to discover the vanity of all hopes of this kind.

1. Our duties of obedience are very imperfect: They do. not in any degree answer the strict demands of the law and

justice of God; and the best of them are so defective. that they can never claim or pretend to any merit in the, since they do not come up to answer the requirements of God in his general rule of government. 2.-Our obedience of to-day cannot wipe away or cancel the crimes of yesterday or our past life These crimes stand like high and unpassable mountains in the way betwixt God and us: Paying a new debt never wipes off old scores among men, and why should we imagine it will do so before the throne of God? 3.-Were our duties perfect, yet it is not only a guilty, but a worthless creature, a mere polluted worm performs them; and the eternal favour of an offended God is not to be purchased for rebels at so cheap a rate. 4-It is true, it is by duties of worship we must draw near unto God, and by the acts of our mind and will, by knowledge, assent, faith, trust, hope, prayer and repentance, we must come to God; but it is still by and through the mediation and interest of Jesus the Son, that these acts of the soul must be addressed to the Father. These considered alone in themselves, are not prescribed in my text as the way itself, for Christ is the way, the truth and the life: He is the only true and living way to God: These actions performed with a due regard to Christ, are properly our walking in the way which God hath appointed; but if we have no regard to Christ in these actions, we are not walking in God's way, nor can we raise any solid hope that we shall arrive at his gracious presence, while we neglect or refuse the only way which God has ordained.

Perhaps some more intelligent or more conceited hearers may cry out here, Why are these rudiments and plain principles of christianity preached to us? Surely we know better, and understand more of the gospel of Christ, than to make such discourses necessary for us to attend them? I answer,

I. However learned some may be in these truths, yet perhaps there may be others coming continually into our assemblies, who know little enough either of the law or the gospel; and they had need of the doctrines of their own guilt and misery, and danger, to be spoken in very plain and clear language to them, before they will hearken and stand still, and consider their own circumstances, and their peril: And the nature of man when under the awakenings of conscience, is so prone to take hold of every false and feeble refuge, and to venture their eternal hopes upon them, that it is very necessary to speak these things often, and to represent them in the clearest light, in order to caution sinners against building their hopes on the sand, and resting all their expectation of the favour of God and happiness, upon some feeble foundation which will not bear them. It is not the wise and the learned that I pretend to instruct; but it is a pity any poor soul, even of the lowest ranks of mankind, should abide

ignorant of these important concerns, and should perish in such a land of light, and for want of christian knowledge.

II. Let us search diligently our own hearts: Have we all attained and kept up such a due sense of our danger without Christ as we should have? Are we never inclined to depend on self-righteousness at all? Are we never under any temptation to indulge this false hope? Some pious souls have complained of this temptation, and corrupt nature is very ready in the best of christians, to build up some parts of their own righteousness as their sufficient refuge, and sometimes to put it in place of the perfect mediation and atonement of the blessed Jesus.

III. However the case be now with us, and if we have truly got the victory over all temptations of this kind, yet it is very proper to remember what once we were, and reflect upon what false hopes we once were ready to build on, and to bless the Holy Spirit of light and grace, that hath discovered our mistakes unto us, that has turned our feet from every dangerous hope, and led us to the Father by the true and living way Christ Jesus. Let this thought also call us to mourn over the souls of men, even the greatest part of our fellow-creatures, inhabitants of this world, who are made of the same flesh and blood as we are, and who, through gross ignorance, are ever practising some foolish methods of pacifying God for past sins, and aiming at his favour and happiness in such ways as will never attain their end. O come, Lord Jesus, and spread thy light and thy truth through the dark nations, and scatter all the remaining mists and darknesses that lie upon countries which have only the name of Christ, and some of the forms of his religion among them. Thousands there are, even in Europe, who neither know the gospel in truth, nor come to God by this mediator: They live not by the faith of the Son of God, nor have just reason, according to the gospel, to expect divine favour and forgiveness. Blessed God, enlighten the thousands of dark and wretched mankind, and lead them in thy appointed way to happiness.

The next essay will shew us a plain and easy account of faith in Christ, or of coming to God by Christ. I acknowledge, I have been sometimes uneasy and ashamed to bear a divine of the protestant church tell his people, that faith in Christ is a mysterious thing, and it is not to be well known, or clearly conceived in itself, but it may be much better conceived by its effects; therefore, saith he, I proceed, instead of speaking of faith itself, to give you an account of the fruits and effects of it. As though there was any thing in the affairs of human life, in reason, or in religion, clearer than this notion, viz. Upon a sight and sense of our sins and dangers, and our weakness to help ourselves, to commit ourselves into the hands of Christ, by a humble act of trust or dependence on him, complying with his appointed methods of relief in the gospel. It is but as a man sensible of his sickness applies himself to a wise and knowing physician, and gives himself up to him, and trusts himself in his hands to relieve him, complying with the remedies appointed in order to his cure; which I hope will appear very plain in the following Essay.

ESSAY V.

A Plain ayd Easy Account of a_Sinner's coming to God by Jesus Christ, or of saving Faith in Christ Jesus.

JOHN XV. 6.-No Man cometh unto the Father but by me.

INNOCENT man in the day of his creation had a liberty of drawing near to God his Maker, and of delightful converse with him in a more immediate manner; but man having fallen from God, and become guilty in his person, and sinful in his nature, dwells in this world afar off from God; and yet sometimes would attempt to approach, and obtain his favour again merely by his own powers and performances; as though the goodness of God would receive him again into his presence, and into his love in the same manner as before. Sinful mankind have been often trying to make their way to God in and of themselves : Thence arise those various mistaken grounds of hope, of which we have given an account in the former discourse: But the blessed God has sufficiently informed us in the word of his gospel, that is in vain for us to hope to draw near to God, our offended sovereign, without a Mediator; and there is but one Mediator; of God's appointment between God and man, and that is the man Christ Jesus; 1 Tim. ii. 5. and no man cometh unto the Father but by him; John xv. 6.

Now in order to explain what it is for sinners to come to God the Father by Jesus Christ, let us consider that all saving approaches of the creature unto God, depend on God's approaches to the creature: He first draws us by his grace, and then we follow. Jer. xxxi. 3. I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee. 1 John iv. 19. If we love him it is because he loved us first. If our souls are set a-moving towards him, it is because his heart, his pity and his love moved first towards us. In the reconciliation of God and his sinful creatures, there must be a mutual approach, and a mutual nearness; but it must be remembered, that the sinner's coming nigh to God, is but an echo or answer to the merciful voice of God coming nigh to him: And the same method in which we may suppose the great God to draw near to sinners, the same steps should we take in drawing near to God. It must be granted indeed, that all acts of God are eternal, and his decrees have no order of succession as they are in him: The eternal mind conceives the ends and beginnings of all things at once; but there are many expressions in scripture which conde

scend to our frailty, and teach us to conceive of the infinite and eternal things of God, by way of time and succession, that we may obtain a fuller and clearer understanding of them; for no created mind is capacious enough to grasp all the divine decrees in one single thought, as that God does who formed them.

It should be observed also, that though the actions of the soul of man are generally produced in a successive way, yet sometimes two or three of these acts are so swift in their succession, and so nearly simultaneous, or at the same moment that they are blended together, or are so interwoven in many cases, that it is hard to say, which is first, and which is last: And many times also, in one and the same act of the soul, there are such different views and designs concurring, as may make it look like two or three distinct actions: So returning to God by Jesus Christ, includes in it both repentance, with all the acts contained therein, as well as faith, with all its subordinate motions; it is repentance, as it is a return to God; it is faith, as Jesus Christ is the medium of this return. I put in this caution here, only to shew that we are not to expect every single sinner that returns to God by Jesus Christ, must have all these particular motions of the soul, or all these transactions sensibly passing through his mind, and that in the same order as is here represented; yet the representation of these things in some rational order, may greatly help the conception of the whole, and give persons somewhat of a more clear and more distinct idea of it.

Let us then here take a survey of those "several steps, whereby God may be supposed to draw near to fallen man, in order to his recovery, and thereby we shall learn what corresponding steps sinners must take, in order to their coming to God."

I. The blessed God surveying his lower creation, beheld all mankind as creatures in general fallen from his image and his love, and at a wide and dreadful distance from their Creator. Compare Ps. xiv. 2, 3. with Rom. iii. 9-12. "The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand and seek God: they are all gone, aside, they are altogether become filthy; there is none that doth good, no, not one. This text of the psalmist is cited by the apostle in Rom. iii. 9-12. to prove that all mankind is afar off from God by nature; and therefore I may justly use this scripture, to prove that God beheld us in this fallen state; he saw us lie under the righteous condemnation of his broken law, justly exposed to misery, and deserving his indignation and wrath, under a sentence of death, and yet still going farther from him without his fear or his love.

Now in correspondence with this view, which God has taken