deceitful heart, and the suggestions of an evil world, cost you many a pang. Yet though sometimes foiled, you were enabled to rise again, and to bring forth fruit with patience. So much experimental godliness, as you have thus gained, though but little in quantity, is yet so precious in its nature, and so infinitely valuable, that surely you ought not to lose it for the sake of what you blush to own the trifles of the world. And yet many do put themselves into great danger of losing this treasure, through various causes which I am now to consider.

2. The causes are various, through the various circumstances, tempers, and situations of different persons; but indwelling sin, aided by the crafts of Satan, operates upon all. Is it not so, brethren, that some of you who once were thriving in God's ways are now grown sickly? That you have lost, in a great measure, your zeal, your love, your desire to promote the cause of Christ in the world, and have not now either that communion with Christ in your souls which you once had, or that desire for it? You are conscious that your relish for godly discourse is abated, and if through the week you are full of the world, it can scarcely be kept out of your hearts and heads on the Lord's day. You have not now that earnest and steady spirit of prayer you once had. Your love of the brethren is grown cold, and the breaches and declensions in the church of Christ afflict you not, as in times past. You are more retired into self, or, at least, carry your affections very little beyond your own family. These are all symptoms of a declining state in religion, where they are habitual. And if you have had them for years, and do not set yourselves earnestly

to cure them, it is a sign they are very strong upon you. The case is worse when you can even vindicate them, or encourage yourselves under them from a notion of God's grace in Christ. You are then far advanced in the evil indeed, and are sunk very dangerously. It was never meant that God's everlasting love to his church, and his care of his elect, should lessen their diligence in striving against sin, but increase it.

Some, indeed, have so completely lost the little religion they once professed, by a plainly lewd, or drunken, or worldly conduct, that there needs no proof of it, but what they give from their own daily conduct. With others, though the decline is not so visible, yet any one may see it who considers what they once were. They themselves, though sensible of it, are not so careful nor so vigorous in their endeavours for a recovery as they ought.

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Among the causes of such declensions, the love of ease and a slothful temper is a principal one. christian life, whatever some may think, requires the labour of the whole man. He that would serve God, indeed, must not think of serving him without labour and pains. If men are not on their guard, they are apt, through the impatience of constant work, to give way to the love of ease, and then sin and Satan get an unhappy advantage over them. Pride and self-conceit lead others astray. They grow too wise for their teachers. They dispute and argue, little sensible of their own ignorance, and often land in some soul-destroying heresy. Unsound views of the doctrines of grace cause them to live presumptuously, and hide from their own eyes both the evil and danger of sin. With others a rugged, bitter, or impatient temper is indulged and encouraged. Such characters are exposed to the suggestions of Satan, who will fill them with prejudices against even the best men, and narrow their minds so completely, that they shall lose the best advantages for growth in grace. With others the child-like simplicity of taste, in divine things, is gradually lost, and their soul contracts a leanness from the want of it. But the most common cause is the love of this present world, which eats out the love of God, and makes dreadful ravages on many souls.

Having thus spoken to your cases, so far as I could, from observation and experience, let me desire your attention to what should be most important to us, the means of curing these evils. And here I must repeat our Saviour's words, "What I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch." Consider, brethren, what great things God has done for you in bringing you to know yourselves and the way of salvation by Jesus Christ, and what an endless, inexhaustible fund of bliss he has prepared for you. If a merchant, who has with much care, diligence, and frugality amassed a considerable fortune, considers what care is requisite, not only to improve it and transmit it to his children after him, but also to preserve it, that he may not by foolish extravagance and imprudent thoughtlessness lose what he has gained, much more should you be zealous to preserve and augment the heavenly treasure already acquired. Shall peace and communion with God, the fruit of so much self-denial and diligence, be lost? Shall Satan triumph over you at last, and

say, "there, there, so would I have it?" And shall all this be lost for want of that care and diligence which are necessary to preserve it? Have you any thing else to gain that can be equivalent to so vast a loss? Is real happiness to be attained in any other way? Having the light shining upon your path, and the experience of so much goodness of God already, will you faint by the way, and slacken your pursuit of godliness on account of the difficulties which you have to encounter? In all these difficulties you have the promise of the divine aid, step by step.

Consider these things often, and be stirred up to vigilant attention. Watch over your besetting sins and peculiar temptations. You should know what these things are by experience. Avoid them; guard carefully against those things which you know by experience impede your progress, and pray daily and constantly in secret. Let no business, however urgent and importunate, prevail with you to neglect this. If you do not cultivate an intercourse with God through Christ, in this his appointed way, you must wither, and all your graces must pine and languish. Repent and do the first works. What were those works in which you were diligently employed, when the Lord was with you, and caused his face to shine on you? You were " fervent in spirit, serving the Lord," distributed to the necessities of the saints, opened your heart and hand for the relief of the needy, attended the means of grace carefully, promoted brotherly love among the people of God, mortified your corrupt affections, and forgetting things behind, were always reaching forward to things before.

It was in this way, striving to "give all diligence to make your calling and election sure," that you once laboured. In this way you must go on; and that you may find food and strength to carry you forward, let no day pass without some diligent searching of the word of God. Stir up in your minds the exceeding great and precious promises of the gospel. You will find the need of them, when your mind is dulled by temptations, your conscience oppressed with guilt, and your understandings darkened by the sloth, stupidity, and blindness of corrupted nature. Times will occur when it will seem impossible for you to overcome the difficulties that stand in your way. Your own strength and resolution will fail, and all the resources of natural reason will be found far too weak to fight against sin, the world, and the devil. Labour, again, to obtain from the effectual grace of God an enlivening sense of the precious doctrines of salvation. You still have need to learn, that justification before God is by faith, and not by works; through the righteousness that is in Jesus, and not through your own. This great truth you still have to learn afresh, and as it were for the first time; and that the things which are impossible with men are possible with God. When you are enabled to lay hold on God's covenant through Jesus afresh, and to rejoice in hope of the glory of God, it will be your wisdom to learn, by a diligent perusal of the word of God, and as an antidote against your doubts, and fears, that "the Lord knoweth them that are his," that he has chosen you in Christ, and will be with you even to the end; that he has not left you to stand or fall by your own management, but that you are kept by the