not, nor is this the thing contended for, but simply that they should labour and fill up all the hours of their time by employing themselves usefully for the public; and there are superior and more noble employments in which this labour may be sufficiently exerted. For is any one so rich or high as to be above the labour of doing good to a whole neighbourhood, of composing differences, studying the customs of his country, reading histories, and learning such arts as may render him both eminent and useful, serviceable to the public both in peace and war.

If it be answered, that he stands in need of none of all these, as being already abundantly supplied with all the plenties and supports of life: to this also I rejoin, that they are not only a man's own personal needs, but the general needs of society, that command a supply and relief from his labour; add to this also, in the second place, that the obligation to labour, lying upon men, is not founded upon their needs and necessities, but upon God's command, as its proper reason; which command he has laid universally and impartially upon all; and he that excuses himself from all labour, the common lot of mankind, by loading it with the odious name of servility, should do well to consider whether the custom of a place, the vogue of his dependants, and his own little arts of evasion, will be able to bear him out in so broad a contempt of an express command; and to rescue him from that thundering sentence leveled so directly at him in Matt. xxv. 30, Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

2. Correspondent to a Christian's other, that is, his spiritual capacity, he has also a spiritual calling or profession; and the work that this engages him to, is that grand one of working out his salvation; a work that a life is too little for, had a man any thing more than a life to bestow upon it; a work that runs out into eternity, and upon which depends the wo or welfare of an immortal soul.

Now this work is threefold:

1. To make our peace with God.

2. To get our sins mortified.

3. To get our hearts purified with the contrary graces. 1. And first, for the first of these, the making our peace with God. We know how tedious a work it is to reconcile or appease a potent enemy amongst men; frequent addresses must be made, great and irksome submissions must be digested. Days must be spent in attending, and nights in projecting how to assuage, and qualify, and remove the swelling disgust, and recover a place in that breast that has been boiling with rancour and enmity, and designs of mischiefs. Many years perhaps go over a man's head, before he gets any ground upon such an one, if, peradventure, he succeeds at last; so hard, so troublesome, and discouraging a task it is, to win back a lost affection. Now every man must know, that, upon his very first coming into the world, he has this huge task upon him, to appease and pacify a great enemy; an enemy so much the harder to be pacified, because once a friend. This enemy is God, and therefore his enmities must be commensurate to his person, that is, infinite and unlimited. And it has this property also, that it is an enmity not commencing upon a mere grudge, but upon an injurious violation of his justice, and consequently not to be laid down without satisfaction. This satisfaction was to be infinite, and so impossible to be exhibited by a finite nature. The case being thus, Christ, the eternal Son of that offended God, was pleased to offer himself as a surety and a ransom in our behalf; so as to answer and satisfy all the demands of offended justice.

A satisfaction therefore there is made for us, but so made, that there are conditions required on our parts, before there can be any application of it to our persons; and if these conditions are not reached, we may die with pardons in our Bibles, but not at all belonging to us. Now these conditions are faith and repentance; words quickly uttered, but things not so easily effected. There must pass such a change upon our natures, such a renovation of the very spirit of our minds, as may amount to the verification of this of us, that we are new creatures. The new creature is the subject of justification. And being once justified, the apostle tells us, Rom. v. 1, we have peace with God.

But how is it possible to establish a peace between natures of the widest distance and the fiercest opposition? such as is the most holy, pure, and just nature of God, and the nature of man, polluted and envenomed by original corruption. Can fire and stubble strike a league together, and be friends? Can guilt and justice unite and embrace? No, nothing of any reconcilement was to be expected, till such time as repentance should cleanse this Augean stable, and the Spirit of God infuse into the soul a new principle called faith; which principle shall really translate a man into another family, advance him to the privilege of adoption, and so make him a son and an heir to the God of heaven, by the merits of the second Adam, who was an outlaw and a traitor by the first.

2. The second work that we are to do, is to get our sins mortified. For after we are transplanted from the state of nature into a state of grace, we are not presently to think that our work is wholly done. For after the Israelites were possessed of Canaan, they had many of the Amorites and other enemies to conquer and drive out before them. Every man has corrupt, sinful habits that have overspread, and, as it were, engarrisoned themselves in the most inward parts of his soul; habits deeply fixed, and not easily dispossessed. These are the adversaries that he is to encounter and to wage war with ; adversaries that have all the advantages against him imaginable; such as he must make his way to through his own heart, and open his bosom, that the weapon may reach them.

The sharpest, the most afflicting, and yet the most concerning part of a Christian's duty, is the mortification of his sin. For it is, as it were, a man's weeding of his heart; he shall find it a growing evil; an evil, that, by a cursed fertility, will sprout out after the cutting. For scarce any weed is fetched up at once; the gardener's hand and hook must be continually watching over it; and he accounts his ground preserved, if it is not overrun.

Let a man make experiment in any one vice; only let it be such an one as is agreeable and incident to the several ages of man; as for instance, be it pride for the extirpation of which, we will suppose a man, by the influences of a preventSOUTH, VOL. VI.

D

ing grace, very early in his attempts against it, and laying the axe to the root of this towering vice in his very youth. Yet, does it fall before him suddenly and easily? does the first foil or blow make him victorious, and enable him to set his foot upon the neck of his conquered enemy? No, there are many vicissitudes in the combat; sometimes he seems to get that under, sometimes that seems to be above him. And what through the strength of its hold, and the treachery of its working, a man finds enough to exercise and humble his old age; and perhaps, after all his conflicts with it, goes out of the world only with this half-trophy, (enough indeed to save him,) that he was not overcome.

Now what I say of this is equally true of all other vices; and he that has a voluptuous, an intemperate, or a covetous heart to deal with, will find work enough laid out for him for this life. And let him beware that he ply his spiritual warfare so, that after forty, fifty, or threescore years, his vice is not as lively in his aged bones, and under his hoary hairs, as ever it was; and he die a decrepit, aged sinner, but yet in the youth and vigour of his sin.

3. The third work incumbent upon every man from his Christian calling, is to get his heart purified and replenished with the proper graces and virtues of a Christian. Christianity ends not in negatives. No man clears his garden of weeds, but in order to the planting of flowers or useful herbs in their room. God calls upon us to dispossess our corruptions, but it is for the reception of new inhabitants. A room may be clean, and yet empty; but it is not enough that our hearts be swept, unless they be also garnished; and that we lay aside our pride, our luxury, our covetousness, unless humility, temperance, and liberality, rise up and shine in their places. The design of religion would be very poor and short, should it look no further than only to keep men from being swine, and goats, and tigers, without improving the principles of humanity into positive and higher perfections. The soul may be cleansed from all blots, and yet still be left but a blank.

But Christianity, that is of a thriving, aspiring nature, requires us to proceed from grace to grace; to virtue adding

patience, to patience temperance, to temperance meekness, to meekness brotherly kindness, and the like; thus ascending by degrees, till at length the top of the ladder reaches heaven, and conveys the soul so qualified into the mansions of glory.

I shewed before the difficulty of mortification, and we are not to think that it is at all less difficult to make a depraved heart virtuous, to force the soil of an ill temper, and, as it were, to graft virtuous habits upon the stock of a vicious nature. We see those that learn a trade, and the habit of any mechanic art, must yet bestow time and toil in the acquiring of it; though perhaps they have also a natural propensity to the art they are in pursuit of. Which being so, with how much more difficulty may we imagine a man to get humility or heavenly-mindedness, while all the appetites, and the very nerves of his soul, strive against it, and endeavour to pull down as fast as he can build up.

True it is therefore, that there is not one virtue that is produced in the soul of fallen man, but is infused into it by the operation of God's Spirit. And if any one should hereupon except, first, To what purpose then is our endeavour in this matter, if the Spirit of God works all? And secondly, Whence is it that these virtues are not in an instant conveyed into the heart in their full perfection, but appear and shew themselves only gradually, and by certain steps and increases?

To both these doubts this one answer will give full satisfaction, namely, that habits, though they are infused, do yet come after the manner of such as are acquired. Though our working produces not those habits, yet the Spirit infuses them into us while we are working; and that in those gradual proportions, that in the whole action it still maintains an imitation of the course of nature, that passes from less profit to more, till at length it arrives at the utmost perfection that it first intended.

And thus I have finished the first proposition, and shewn that there is a work appointed to every man, to be performed by him while he lives in the world; as also the several parts of that work. I come now,