I. Shewing how and by what means God seals up a sinner to perdition. There are three ways by which God usually does this:

1. By withholding the virtue and power of his ordinances, 500. 2. By restraining the convincing power of his providences, 501. And there are three sorts of providence instanced, in which God often speaks convincingly. 1st, In a general, common calamity, 502. 2dly, By particular, personal, and distinguishing judgments, 503. 3dly, By signal, unexpected deliverances, 505.

3. By delivering up a sinner to a stupidity or searedness of conscience, 506.

II. Shewing what sort of obstinate sinners those are that God deals with in this manner: which are, 1st, Such as sin against clear and notable warnings from God, 508. 2dly, Such as sin against special renewed vows and promises of obedience made to God, 510. III. Answering and resolving two questions that may arise from the foregoing particulars :

1. Whether the purpose of God passed upon an obstinate sinner (here expressed by God's swearing against him) be absolutely irrevocable? Concerning which it is affirmed that the Scripture is full and clear for it, 511.

2. Whether a man may know such a purpose to have passed upon him antecedently to its execution? In answer to which, from a consideration of the ordinary ways by which God imparts his will to men, namely, 1st, By his word, 513, 514. 2dly, By men's collection of it from its effects, 514. It is affirmed, that no man in this life can pass any certain judgment concerning the will of God in reference to his own final estate, 515. But here is observed a wide difference between the purpose of God hitherto discoursed of, and that which the schools call God's decree of reprobation. 1st, Because that decree is said to commence upon God's good pleasure and sovereign will, but this purpose upon the provocation of the sinner. 2dly, Because that decree is said to be from all eternity; but this purpose is taken up after some signal provocation, 515. from all which,

IV. We are exhorted to beware of sinning under sin-aggravating circumstances, 516. and shewn the danger of dallying with and venturing upon the Almighty, by a daring continuance in a course of sin, 518.

SERMON XXXII.

PSALM XIV. 1.

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. P. 520.

In the words we have two particulars, wherein we may consider, I. An assertion made, There is no God.

1. The thing asserted, which may be understood, 1st, Of an absolute removal of the divine being and existence, 521. or, 2dly, Of a removal of God's providence, by which he governs and takes account of all the particular affairs of the world, and more especially of the lives and actions of men, 521.

2. The manner of the assertion, The fool hath said in his heart, it wears the badge of guilt, privacy, and darkness, 521.

By the fool's saying in his heart, There is no God, may be implied, 1. An inward wishing that there was no God, 522.

2. His seeking out arguments to persuade himself that there is none, 523.

3. Not only a seeking for reasons and arguments, but also a marvellous readiness to acquiesce in any seeming probability or appearance of reason, that may make for his opinion, 525.

4. Another way, different from all the former: for a man to place his sole dependence, as to his chief good and happiness, on any thing besides God, is (as we may so speak) virtually and by consequence for him to say in his heart, There is no God, 526.

II. The second particular considered is, the person who made this assertion, the fool, whose folly will appear from these following

reasons:

1. That in making and holding this assertion, he contradicts the general judgment and notion of mankind, 527, 528.

2. That he lays aside a principle easy and suitable to reason, and substitutes in the room of it one strange and harsh, and at the best highly improbable, 528.

3. His folly appears from the causes and motives inducing him to take up this opinion, which, amongst others, are, 1st, Great impiety, and disquiet of conscience consequent thereupon. 2dly, Great ignorance of nature and natural causes, 530, 531.

4. From those cases in which such persons begin to doubt and waver, and fly off from their opinion, instanced, 1st, In the time of some great and imminent danger, 531. 2dly, In the time of approaching death, 531.

The modern and more thorough paced sinners affect a superiority in villainy above their ancestors; therefore this discourse against atheism is supposed to be of some use; and if so, the most proper use is, to give every one of us a view and prospect into his own heart and such as are willing to watch over that, so as to prevent this monstrous birth, are advised to beware,

::

1. Of great and crying sins, such as make the conscience raw and sick, 533.

2. Of discontents about the cross passages of God's providence towards them, 533.

3. Of devoting themselves to pleasure and sensuality; there being nothing in the world that casts God out of the heart like it, 533.

SERMON XXXIII.

PREACHED ON THE 29th OF MAY, AT WESTMINSTER-ABBEY.
PSALM CVI. 7.

Our fathers understood not thy wonders in Egypt; they remembered not the multitude of thy mercies; but provoked him at the sea, even at the Red sea. P. 535.

The resemblance between the transactions of Providence with the children of Israel in their redemption from Egypt, and with ourselves in the restoration of the royal family, being briefly considered, 535. to shew how like we are to them for their miraculous ingratitude, we must observe three things in the text:

I. The unworthy and ungrateful deportment of the Israelites towards God upon a most signal mercy and deliverance; they provoked him; which expression seems to import an insolent, daring resolution to offend; and, as it relates to God, strikes at him in a threefold respect:

1. It rises up against his power and prerogative, 537.

2. It imports an abuse of his goodness, 538.

3. It is an affront upon his longsuffering and his patience, 539. II. The second thing to be observed is, the aggravation of this deportment from the nature and circumstance of the deliverance, They provoked him at the sea, even at the Red sea. The baseness and ingratitude of which God casts in their teeth, by confronting it with the glorious deliverance he vouchsafed them; a deliverance ennobled with these four qualifications: 1st, Its greatness, 540. 2dly, Its unexpectedness. 541. 3dly, The eminent seasonableness of it, 544. 4thly, Its absolute undeservedness, 546. Our case is

severally shewn in the above particulars to be parallel to that of the Israelites, and likewise in the return made to God for his goodness.

III. The third thing observable is, the cause of this misbehaviour, They understood not thy wonders in Egypt. Now in every wonderful passage of Providence two things are to be considered, 548.

1. The author by whom it is done, 549.

2. The end for which it is done: neither of these, in the cases before us, were understood by the Israelites, nor have been attended to by us as they ought to have been, 549.

SERMON XXXIV.

MATTH. Xvii. 21.

Howbeit, this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting. P. 551.

It was a general received command, and an acknowledged rule of practice in all ages and places of the Christian world, that we are to hear the church; which, being acted by the immediate guidance of the Holy Ghost, hath set apart the time of our Saviour's fasting in the wilderness, to be solemnized with the anniversary exercise of abstinence, for the subduing the flesh and quickening the spirit, 551.

As for the words, among other expositions, they are more judiciously interpreted of an evil spirit having had long and inveterate possession of the party out of whom it was cast, and the sense of them, as improvable into a standing, perpetual precept, is this; that there are some vices which, partly by our temper and constitution, partly by habit and inveterate continuance, have so firm an hold of us, that they cannot be throughly dispossessed but with the greatest ardour and constancy of prayer, joined with the harshest severities of mortification, 553.

In the text are two parts:

1st, An intimation of a peculiar duty, prayer and fasting.

2dly, The end and design of it, which is to eject and dispossess the unclean spirit. The entire discussion is managed in three particulars :

I. In taking a survey of the extent of this text, 554.

This duty of fasting admits of several kinds and degrees: The 1st kind is of constant, universal exercise; universal, both because it obliges at all times, and extends to all persons, 554. The 2d, is a fast of a total abstinence, when for some time we wholly abstain from all bodily repasts, 556. The 3d, is an abstinence from bodily refreshments in respect of a certain sort or degree, and that under

took for some space of time, 557. This head is closed with a caution, that the observation of fasting in this solemn season should be so strict, as not to bend to any man's luxury; so dispensable, as not to grate upon his infirmity of body, 560.

II. In shewing what are the qualifications that must render this duty of fasting acceptable to God, and efficacious to ourselves, 562. There are four conditions or properties, a joint concurrence of all which is a necessary qualification of it for this great purpose. 1st, That it is to be used, not as a duty either necessary or valuable in itself, but only as an instrument, 562. 2d, That it be done with a hearty detestation of the body of sin, for the weakening of which it is designed, 566. 3d, That it be quickened and enlivened with prayer, 567. 4th, That it be attended with alms and works of charity, 569.

III. In shewing how this duty of fasting comes to have such an influence in dispossessing the evil spirit, and subduing our corruptions, 570.

It does not effect this, either, 1st, by any causal force naturally inherent in itself, 570. neither, 2dly, by way of merit, as procuring and engaging the help of that grace that does effect it, 571. But it receives this great virtue, 1st, From divine institution, 571. 2dly, By being a direct defiance to that disposition of body and mind, upon which especially the devil works, 571. But when we have taken all these courses to eject the evil spirit, we must remember that it is to be the work of God himself, whom the blessed spirits adore, and whom the evil obey, 572.

SERMONS XXXV. XXXVI.

REVEL. ii. 16.

Repent; or I will come unto thee quickly, and fight against them with the sword of my mouth. P. 574.

It is wonderful upon what ground a rational, discerning man can satisfy and speak peace to his conscience, in the very career of those sins, which, by his own confession, lead him to assured perdition, 574. One would think that the cause of it must of necessity be one of these three :

1st, That he is ignorant of the curse attending his sin, 575. Which cannot be here the cause.

2dly, that he may know the curse, and yet not believe it, 575.