Person cannot but have a certain Boldness, and a kind of Claim to the Favours of Providence, whose Heart is continually telling him, that he does, as he should do; and that his Confcience having been all along his Director, cannot, in the Issue, prove his Accuser. But that all Things, whether he looks forwards or backwards, upon what is past or what is to come, shall concurr in affuring him, that his great Judge has no other Sentence to pass upon him, but to set a Crown of Glory upon his Head, and receive him with an Euge, bone serve! Enter thou into the Joy of thy Lord. And if, being thus inspired and anointed with such supporting Expectations, he should yet chance utterly to fink, as to all his Concerns and Interests here below, yet having thus broke through them all to difcharge his Duty, the very Sense of his having done so shall strengthen his Heart, and bear up his Spirits, though the whole World were in Arms against him, or in a Flame about him; fo that he shall be able, from his own Experience, to feal to the Truth of that seeming Paradox of the Apostle in Rom. viii. 36, 37. that Perfons, thus assisted from above, even in Tribulations, Distress, Persecution, Famine, Nakedness, (the known Badges of Primitive Christianity) nay, in their being killed all the Day long, and accounted as Sheep for the

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the Slaughter, shall yet, under these very Maffacres, become more than Conquerors, through that God, who makes those, who fight under his Banners, triumph more glorioufly in lofing their Blood for him, than their mightiest and most insulting Enemies do or can in their Shedding of it. For if a Man falls a Sacrifice to God, his Conscience, or his Country, it is not material by what Hand he falls: God accepts the Martyr, whosoever is the Executioner. And so long as there is another World to reward and punish, no Man's Doom can be certainly pronounced from any thing, that befalls him in this.

And now at length, to come to a Clofe of what we have been hitherto discourfing of, we have shewn the Darkness and Intricacy of the Ways of Providence; and we have shewn also, what incompetent Judges, and yet what confident Interpreters Men are generally of them; from all which what can so naturally result, and so justly be inferred, as the severeft Reprimands of the Blindness and Boldness (Qualities seldom found afunder) of the saucy Defcants of the World concerning these Matters? For what do they else, but in effect, arraign even Providence itself? fummon Omniscience before the Bar of Ignorance ? and in a word, put a pitiful Mortal to fit in Judgment upon his Maker? The Text, I am fure, positively positively declares, that the Works of God are past finding out; and if so, is it not the height of Absurdity, as well as Arrogance, to prefume, either from Divinity, or Philosophy, to affign any other Reason of the Works themselves, but the sole Will of the Agent? or to pretend to give an Account of that, which we ourselves own to be unaccountable? Common Sense certainly must needs see, and explode the Grossness of the Contradiction; and convince us, that in things so transcendently above our highest and most raised Speculations, the only rational and safe Rule for us to proceed by, will be to make them rather matter of Admiration than of Argument, still remembring that, next to a direct Violation of God's revealed Will, is a bold Intrusion into his Secret.

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Now to the infinitely wise Governor of all Things, adorable in his Counsels, and stupendous in his Works, but effentially just and holy in both, be rendered and ascribed (as it is most due) all Praise, Might, Majesty and Dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.on

A SERMON on Rom. VIII. 14:

DISCOURSE I.

ROMANS VIII. 14. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, are the Sons of God.

HERE is that known Averseness T in the Nature of Man (as now it stands) to all Acts of Vertue (efpecially fuch as are of an higher Strain) and withall that deplorable Impotence and Inability to go through with them, whensoever it undertakes them, that not only in the Christian, but also in all other Religions, Men have found it necessary, in every great Acti

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on, to engage some other Agent and Principle besides the Man himself. So that amongst the Heathens, who acknowledged a Plurality of Gods, you will hardly find any noble or heroick Achievement done by any of them, but you will find some one or other of their Gods made a Coadjutor in the Cafe. Thus Homer brings in Diomedes and Ulyffes, affifted by Mars and Pallas, (one notable for Acts of Valour, and the other for those of Counsel and Wisdom) and the like is faid of many others. All which was but a kind of tacit Acknowledgment of that Weakness and Decay upon Man's Nature, which has been ever since the Fall. For they found (it seems) within themselves an Experience of the Thing itself, though they could give no Account of its Cause. And accordingly, being ignorant of the Source of the Malady, it could not be expected but that they should be as much out in the Remedies they applied for Relief against it. Only thus much is deducible from the whole Matter, that they clearly saw themselves concerned to do many worthy Things, which they found themselves wholly unable to do, without the Help of Divine Power, or at least some Power much

superior to their own.

Now what these ignorant Heathens blun

dered about, touching this great Debilitation

of