divine faw, and a departure from God. It is not every concern that is repentance, nor every sorrow which is of godly sort. Ma ny, by a few remonstrances of conscience, reflections of mind, some prayers and goings to church: Oh, what penitents they feel themselves; how reformed and exalted to the favor of God. And upon this flimsy ground, they hope they have passed through the whole process of conviction and conversion, while their ex ercises set them perhaps at a greater distance from true repentance, than when they began. These things may be stiled sor row and mourning for sin, while they are only the anguish of a proud and unhumbled heart. A guilty conscience creates horror, pain and dreadful anxiety; but genuine repentance softens and melts the heart.

True repentance, passing by theoretic disquisitions, is an hearty concern and sorrow for sin as offensive to God, a transgression of the law, and ruinous to the soul. This, I conceive, a very simple description, reduced to the lowest experiences, and to the feeblest understanding. A minister, when he speaks plainly, must speak to the mind, experience, and conscience of the weak and unlearned; and surely the strong in mind, the learned and the self-sufficient great, where real ignorance of religion exceedingly abounds, dares not but understand..

Every one in these days of light, will readily acknowledge, it is not every concern, even on account of sin, that can denomi nate a person truly penitent, or constitute a penitential sorrow, which is, by divine constitution, connected with eternal life.-Poor proud mortals, ignorant, and the more ignorant pretenders to knowledge, if they have felt some small remonstrances of conscience, and a little remorse for having sinned, they directly conclude they have repented bitterly, are in favor with God, and none such penitents as they are. These unhappy and deluded Creatures, will repent of their repentance, when death and eternity shall detect their fatal mistake. Be not deceived, my

brethrem; the mere apprehensions of a yawning gulf, with whate ever terrors they may be accompanied, are not repentance. Crying Lord, Lord, when sinking to hell, can be of no avail.What if your concern may be as deep as Cain's, as dreadful as Judas's, and as intolerable as Spira's, all this may be without gospel feelings and regret. Some, perhaps, may have experienced greater anguish, torment, terror and horror, than any thing true penitents can express. Lay down this as an axiom, delusive repentance is ever attended with pride, confidence and self-conceit; whereas the concomitants of a saving repentance are meekness, humility, and diffidence in regard to their experiences. Every general rule must admit exceptions. But your bold, forward, impudent and talking penitents, rarely turn out well-whereas your modest, diffident, backward and fearful penitents, often make good christians. The former are frequently plagues of the church, when the latter is its comfort, credit and joy. Therefore, the one may be called a genuine and secret mourning for sin; while the other is only a boasting show of horror, despair, and wild consolation.

The sorrow of true penitents is not confined to some acts of impiety, but extends to the very temper and spirit of their heart. He mourns for his disaffection to God, and his love of sin.— Seeming penitents, all their distress is for overt acts of transgression, and some external abominations. Alas! says the sincere penitent, has the blessed and glorious God been treated by me, a worm, a vile worm of the dust, with such unworthy neglect, and base contempt. Thus the exercise of true repentance are delineated in the scriptures: "They loath themselves, smite 66 upon the thigh, are ashamed, lift not up their faces, are con"founded," &c.

Repentance involves in its nature, a new disposition to return to God, humbles himself in his presence, resigns himself into his hands, to be disposed of according to infinite wisdom, justice,

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and goodness. However pungent the seeming sorrow may be for sin, if it does not imply such an alteration of mind, it is not genuine and evangelical.. Real repentance is attended with an addictedness of spirit to please God and walk with him. It returns to God with fear and trembling, a relinquishment of all its past follies, and a resolution of heart to do no more so wickedly. A profession of religion is no more an external compliment or piece of solemn ceremony, but it is the expression of the internal feeling and sentiment of the heart. His language is, “O Lord, "I have sinned and rebelled against thee; I loath and abhor my"self; but now I return to thee, bow down to thy will, and "I will in future make mention of thy name, and the remem "brance of it forever."

The only things I can tarry to mark as evidences of gospel repentance, are these three. They have in a general measure been considered, and only a slight variation must suffice for the present. But even these will be a support and comfort to the attentive and recollecting christian...

In repentance, there opens a view of the wonders of God, mercy and grace; the holiness and beauty of the divine law and government, and the inexpressible deformity of sin. Once he viewed God as a dreadful, unjust and austere being. His mind, his conceptions are new altered, that every branch of the divine character is now reversed, that all God appears in a different light. He entertained before, a wrong and ill impression of God; had imbibed strong prejudices against his real character and his ser vice. His feelings were that he was a tyrant, and his laws beyond the power of rational obedience. But repentance changes all his apprehensions of God and his whole administration. He is now all amiable and glorious; his laws the perfection of right government, and no threatened punishment is severe or unjust. Proper discoveries of God and his law, strike death into the soul. Under just convictions, it cries, "I am a dead man." Legal

repentance differs from evangelical, in its very essence; the lat ter is a turning from sin, under a discovery of the perfections of Jehovah, the holiness of his law, and the justice of its penalty; the former contains only some relentings for the dreadful consequences of sin.

The real penitent abhors sin, and forsakes it from a sense of its intrinsic evil and turpitude; the other, through fear and horror of its punitive evils and consequences. The former considers sin as the stain of his nature, the pollution and destruction of his immortal spirit; and breathings arise in his soul for victory over his corruptions, and to be restored to a conformity to God. Not so the false, deceived and partial penitent. His cry is, "Let me be delivered from hell and punishment; and O that may never lift up my eyes in torment."

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The obvious characteristic difference between true and deceiv ed penitents is, the one turns from sin, and abhors it because of its infinite vileness, and a respecful view of purity, righteousness and holiness; and the other, from a consideration of its tremendous and damning consequences. The plain fact is, the one hates sin-and the other, a dread is awakened in his mind, and fills his soul at the events.

Evangelical repentance dries not up the fountains of tears and distress, whereas legal repentance, like a land flood, soon runs by. The former is a flowing stream, arising from a source that lives the other is without foundation, and whatever noise it may make, its bubbling is soon over. Real repentance is a spring of ingenuous sorrow, and nothing is heard but the strains, the tender strains of self condemnation. The Bitterness of sin invigorates his grief, and fixes the resolution in his soul to main tain an everlasting war against sin.

The most learned lectures upon the nature, rebellion, ingratitude, and disaffection of sin, will never bring a sinner to true re

pentance, reduce him to proper humiliation before God—but a spiritual illumination instantly fills him with shame and selfabhorrence. As the great commandment of the law is to love God with a supreme affection, so a sense of the vileness of disaffection to the divine character, in a peculiar manner, melts and dissolves the heart, into all the wailings of penetential woe.Under a view of sin, in a loveliness of the divine perfections, St. Paul himself seems to be nonplussed for language to express the hatefulness, deformity and evil of sin. Hence, as nothing could be found in nature more odious than sin, all the universe can produce nothing more base, he is obliged to take his description from sin itself, and pronounce "sin to be exceeding sinful." All the modern phrases of vileness, odiousness, turpitude, and even the word infinite, which some appear fond of, in a new ap plication, to exhibit its evil, the idea they give is feeble and weak in comparison of the Apostles. He derives his description from the nature of sin itself, that it is exceeding, or beyond all measure and conception sinful; it is such an hyperbolical evil, that all nature and language, in all their variant and exuberant illus trations, fail and sink into weakness in the description. How then can sinners sufficiently repent? All contrition and brokenness of heart is nothing. Some have supposed that if repentance. could enter into heaven, eternity would be exhausted, before the sorrows of the saints could be expended.

Having given you a brief view of repentance, not as a matter of speculation, but of experience and practice, as a pre-requisite to the fruition of God, and eternal felicity. The reason of things, the nature of the relation between a sinful creature and its Creator, and the whole of divine revelation unite with irreristable force in the declaration of the absolute necessity of repentance, previous to their being participants of everlasting life.

The subject must conclude with a short examination of our selves, interspersed with some suitable reflections and observa

tions.