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thy crimes and condemnation. Hadft thou a friend that loved thee in the world; how will it rend his bofom to fee thee thus appalled with fear, and finking under thy load of guilt? Hadft thou a parent that trained thee in the ways of early piety, and watched over thy infant days with a tender and fleepless folicitude; what a heart rending stroke will it be to hear that dreadful fentence pronounced upon thee," go, thou curfed child, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and "his angels." Finally, haft thou any feeling for thyself? Think, O think, what it will be to enter into all the torments of hell, to dwell with everlasting burnings, with the worm that never dieth, amidst the blackness of darkness for evermore; to be feparated from God and happinefs, to be excluded from every ray of hope, to feel the stinging reproaches of conscious guilt, and the agonizing pangs of a mifpent life, the abused mer cies of heaven, and the never ending tor ments of the fire that cannot be quenched,

Since then it depends upon ourselves, whether the refurrection from the dead fhall be a bleffing or a curfe; fince it is in our own

choice,

choice, whether we will rife to life or death eternal; let us chuse life, that both we and our feed may live. All has been done for us that could be done by the mercy of heaven: what remains therefore must be done for ourfelves. The unhappy rich man thought that his five brethren, though they were deaf to the voice of Mofes and the prophets, yet would repent, if one went unto them from the dead. Even that last and greatest perfuafive to repentance has been vouchfafed to us. If therefore we repent not, utterly hopelefs and inexcufable must be our condition; we can have nothing to look for but fiery indignation. Let us therefore wifely determine to crucify the old man, and utterly abolish the whole body of fin. Let us awake to righteousness, and fin not. Let us feek those things which are above, where Christ fitteth on the right hand of God. Let us be ftedfaft, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord; forafmuch as we know that our labour is not in vain in the Lord: For if we believe that Jefus died and rofe again, even so them also which sleep in Jefus will God bring with him; and when Christ, who is our life, fhall appear, then shall we also appear together with him in glory.

SER

SERMON XXX.

EPHESIANS ii. 8, 9.

By grace are ye faved, through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God: not of works, left any man fhould boast.

all the unhappy divifions, which have

OF which have

torn and distracted the bofom of the Christian church, from the days of the Apoftles down to the present times, none seems to have been supported with greater warmth or carried to greater lengths than the dispute→ "whether to God's grace and faith in Christ, "or to our own works we must be indebted "for falvation."

The zealous afferters of grace maintain, that fince we can do nothing of ourselves, we fhould

fhould leave all to God, and not endeavour to

do any thing: for fince every gift of God must be perfect, grace, being the gift of God, must be perfect too, and therefore must be left to perform its perfect work in us. So that, according to them, to allow any thing to the natural powers of man, or to attempt to please God by our actions, is the highest pitch of prefumption, is the making God's grace fubfervient to human reason, and fuppofing the power of the Almighty not fuffici

ent of itself to fave us, without our affistance in the work. The ftrenuous advocates of good works, on the other hand, infist, that man is a free agent; that to fuppofe him not indued with a liberty of action is to take away all diftinction between virtue and vice;" fince no man can be denominated good or bad for doing what he was under an abfolute neceffity to do; that to conceive a person impelled to do a right action by any other influence than that of his own reason, is in effect to render that reason, which God hath given him, ufelefs, and to make him literally righteous with righteoufnefs not his own.

Thus