it felf: laws would want that force, com mon-wealths that bond or cement, converfation that confidence, and our poffeffions that fecurity which is neceffary to render them bleffings to us.

§. 3. A third fruit of Chriftian Liberty is that relation which it creates between God and us. We are no longer of the world, but are feparated and fanctified, devoted and dedicated to God. Thus St. Peter, 1 Epift. ii. 9. Ye are a chofen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people. And thus St. Paul, Rom. viii. 15, 16. Ye have not received the fpirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit it felf beareth witness with our fpirit, that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and jointbeirs with Chrift. God is our God; we are his people. He is our Father, and we are his children, we are ingrafted into his family. The confequence of this is, his dearly beloved and only begotten Son is our Advocate at his right-hand, the Propitiation for our fins, and Interceffor for us. His Spirit refides with us to comfort and afft us; his angels guard us, and minifter to us; for we are no longer the object of his wrath, but of his love and care. How does the apoftle triumph on this argument, Heb. xii.

18,

18, 19, &c. For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire; nor unto blackness and darkness, and tempeft, and the found of a trumpet, and the voice of words, which voice they who beard, intreated that the word should not be Spoken to them any more: (for they could not endure that which was commanded; and if fo much as a beaft touch the mountain it shall be ftoned, or thrust through with a dart: and fo terrible was the fight, that Mofes faid, I exceedingly fear and quake:) but ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerufalem; and to an innumerable company of angels; to the general affembly and church of the first-born, which are written in heaven; and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect and to Jefus, the Mediator of the new covenant; and to the blood of Sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel. And thus again, 1 Cor. iii. 2. Therefore let no man glory in men; for all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things prefent, or things to come; all are yours, and ye are Chrift's, and Chrift is God's. Thefe are great and glorious things. What dignity and eminence does this adoption raise us to? What bleffedness flows from communion and fellowship with God? What can we

I

want,

want, or what can we fear, when we have fo mighty an intereft in the Soveraign of heaven and earth; when all his divine Perfections are employed to promote and fecure our happiness? Now fure we may rejoice, now we may glory and triumph; for certainly all things muft work together for our good. But as fallen angels envied the happiness of new-created man; fo do apoftate and debauched men envy that of the godly. And one of these will be apt to say, hold, Sir, you run too faft; thefe glorious privileges are yet but in embryo, and all your happiness is yet but in the reverfion: notwithstanding all these big words, you must grant me that you are yet but in a state of probation; that you are to undergo hardships and difficulties, and to live upon the thin diet of hope and expectation: and fo I think I might take you down from heirs of God, to Jervants at the beft. Well, I will grant, that we yet live by faith, and wait for the hope of glory: nor will I at prefent contend about thofe pleasures that are but in the bud: I will for once quit all that preference both as to nobility and pleafure, which adoption and the full affurance of hope gives a godly man above a finner; and I will take the state of a child of God, to be as the objector would have it; I will fuppofe him to be under age till he come to

another

another life; and to differ nothing from a Jervant whilft he is fo, though he be heir of all. Yet after all, if I can prove that 'tis our duty to ferve God, it will be no contemptible fruit, no fmall commendation of liberty, that it enables us to do our duty. And that it is our duty to ferve God, is plain: for is it not fit that he, who made and still upholds the world, fhould govern it? ought we not to pay obedience to his laws, whofe infinite Perfections and immenfe beneficence inveft him with an abfolute and uncontroulable foveraignty over us? whom should we honour with our foul and body, but him who is the author of both? to whom should we devote and facrifice what we have, but to him from whom we received all? whofe praife fhould we fhew forth, but his who has called us out of darkness into his marvellous light? whom should we obey and adore, but him who has tranflated us out of bondage into liberty, out of the fervitude of fatan into the kingdom of his dear Son; having redeemed us by the blood of his Son from that wrath to which our fins had defervedly fubjected us? But this is not all; I fhall prove it not only to be our duty, but our honour and our happiness, to ferve God; even on the fuppofition on which the objection proceeds, and which I at prefent grant. 1. 'Tis our honour to ferve him whom an

gels

gels ferve, to whom all things in heaven and in earth do bow and obey. 'Tis the highest prerogative we can derive from grace or nature, to be capable of ferving him. His divine Perfections tranfcend the conceptions of inferiour creatures, and can be known, contemplated, and adored by none, but fuch as are made but a little lower than the angels; fuch as are endued, not only with the light of reason, but with a far brighter, that of the Spirit of God. This is indeed our utmost Perfection, and must be our utmost ambition: this alone makes us confiderable, who are in all other refpects but mean and contemptible; for we draw but a precarious and dependent breath; and the world we inhabit is a dark and tempeftuous one, full of folly and mifery. But even this will ferve for a further confirmation of what I further contend for. For being indigent and needy, ftanding at an infinite diftance from selfJufficiency, 'tis plain that what we cannot find within us, we must seek without us. Some all-fufficient good we must find out; fomething we must rest in, and repose our felves upon; and this will be our God, this we fhall ferve and adore. And what shall this be? fhall we ferve evil spirits? thefe are our avowed and inveterate enemies, and go about like a roaring lion feeking whom they may devour. Shall we ferve the good?

this