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beg leave to mention in what fenfe it appears to me to be fo. Believing is the gift of God's grace, as cultivating the root of a rare flower given you, or raifing a crop of corn in your field, is the gift of God's providence-Believing is the gift of the God of GRACE, as breathing, moving, and eating, are the gifts of the God of NATURE. He gives me lungs and air, that I may breathe; he gives me life and mufcles, that I may move; he beftows upon me food and a mouth, that I may eat; and when I have no ftomach, he gives me common fenfe to fee, I muft die or force myself to take fome nourishment or fome medicine: but he neither breathes, moves, nor eats for me; nay, when I think proper, I can accelerate my breathing, motion, and eating and if I please I may even faft, lie down, or hang myself, and by that means put an end to my eating, moving and breathing. Again, Faith is the gift of God to a believer, as the prince of Wales is the gift of God to the queen: She bore him herself by the bleffing of God upon her free marriage with the king, and by the wonders of providence, which capacitated her freely to become a royal mother.Once more, Faith is the gift of God to believers as fight is to you. The Parent of good freely gives you the light of the fun, and organs proper to receive it : he places you in a world, where that light vifits you daily he apprizes you, that fight is conducive to your fafety, pleafure, and profit: and every thing around you bids you use your eyes and fee: nevertheless you may not only drop your curtains, and extinguish your candle, but clofe your eyes alfo. This is exactly the cafe with regard to Faith. Free grace removes (in part) the total blindnefs which Adam's fall brought upon us Free grace gently fends us fome beams of truth, which is the light of the fun of righteousness; it difpofes the eyes of our understanding to fee hofe beams; it excites us various ways to welcome them; it bleffes us with many, perhaps with all the means of faith, fuch as opportunities to hear, read, enquire; and power to confider, affent, confent, re

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folve and re-refolve to believe the truth. But, after all, believing is as much our own act as seeing: We may in general do, fufpend, or omit the act of faich ; efpecially when that act is not yet become habitual, and when the glaring light, that fometimes accompanies the revelation of the truth, is abated. Nay, we may imitate Pharaoh, Judas, and all reprobates: we may do by the eye of our faith, what fome report, Democritus did by his bodily eyes. Being tired of feeing the follies of mankind, to rid himself of that disagreeable fight he put his eyes out: We may be fo averfe from the light, which enlightens every man that comes into the world, we may fo dread it because our works are evil, as to exemplify, like the pharifees, fach awful declarations as thefe: Their eyes have they closed, left they should fee, &c. — wherefore God gave them up to a reprobate mind, and they were blinded.

When St. Paul fays, that chriftians believe according to the working of Ged's mighty power, which he wrought in Chrift, when he raised him from the dead ; he chiefly alludes to the refurrection of Chrift, and the out-pouring of the Holy Ghoft; the former of thefe wonders being the great object of the chriftian faith, and the latter difplaying the great priviledge of the chriftian difpenfation. To fuppofe therefore, that no body favingly believes, who does not believe according to an actual, overwhelming difplay of God's almighty power, is as unfcriptural as to maintain, that God's people no longer believe, than he actually repeats the wonders of Eafter-day, and of the day of Pentecoft. Is it not clear, that the apoftle had no fuch notions, when he wrote to the Corinthians? I declare unto you the gospel, which I preached unto you, which you have received, wherein ye ftand; by which alfo ye are faved, if ye keep in memory—(if ye hold faft, as the original means) what I preached unto you, unless ye have BELIEVED in vain. For I declared unto you, &c. that Chrift died for our fins, that he was buried, and that he rofe again according to the fcriptures, &c. Lowe preach, and so ye believed. Again, how plain is

the

the account, that our Lord and his forerunner give us of faith and unbelief! Verily we speak that we do know, and teftify that we have seen, and ye receive not our witness-What he (Chrift) hath feen and heard, that he teftifieth, and no man (comparatively) receiveth his reftimony: but he that hath received his teftimony, hath jet to his feal that God is true. This is as intelligible as the following lines of the 22d hymn in the Rev. Mr. Madan's collection :

Ye need NOT ONE be left behind,
For God hath bidden ALL mankind.
Do not begin to make excufe:

Ah! do not ye his grace refuse, &c.
Ye who believe his record true,
Shall fup with him and he with you;
"Come to the feaft, be fav'd from sin,
For Jefus waits to take you in.
This is the time, no more delay,
This is the glorious gofpel-day;
Come in this moment at his call,

And live for him who died for all.

Two things have chiefly given room to our miftakes, refpecting the ftrange impoffibility of believing : The first is our confounding the truths, which characterize the feveral gofpel-difpenfations. We fee, for example, that a poor befotted drunkard, an overreaching greedy tradefman, a rich fceptical epicure, and a proud ambitious courtier, have no more taste for the gofpel of Chrift, than a horfe and a mule have for the high-feafoned dishes that crown a royal table. An immenfe guiph is fixed between them, and the chriftian faith. In their prefent flate they can no more believe in Chrift, than an unborn infant can become a man without paffing thro' infancy and youth. But, altho' they cannot yet believe in Chrift, may they not believe in God according to the import of our Lord's words, Ye believe IN GOD, believe aljo IN ME? If the pharifees COULD NOT believe IN CHRIST, it was not

because

I

s name,

because God never gave them a power equal to that
which created the world; but, because they were
practical atheists, who actually rejected the morning
light of the jewish dispensation, and by that means ab-
folutely unfitted themselves for the meridian light of the
chriftian difpenfation. This is evident from our Lord's
own words: I know you, that ye have not the love of God,
or a regard for God in you. come in Father's
my
and ye receive me not, tho' you might do it; for, if
another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.
How can YE BELIEVE, who receive honour one of ano-
ther? &c. There is one that accufeth you, even Mofes, in
whom ye truft. For, had ye believed Moses, and sub-
mitted to his difpenfation, ye would have believed ME,
and fubmitted to my gofpel. But if ye believe not HIS
WRITINGS, how fhall ye believe MY WORDS?

The fecond cause of our mistake about the impoffibility of believing now, is the confounding of faith with its fruits and rewards; which naturally leads us to think, that we cannot believe, or that our faith is vain, till those rewards and fruits appear. But is not this being ingenious to make the worst of things? Had Abraham no faith in God's promife, till Ifaac was born? Was Sarah a damnable unbeliever, till she felt the long-expected fruit of her womb ftir there?' Had the woman of Canaan no faith, till our Lord granted her request, and cried out, O woman great is thy faith, let it be done unto thee even as thou wilt? Was the centurion an infidel, till Chrift marveled at his faith, and declared, he had not found fuch faith no not in Ifrael? Was Peter faithlefs, till his master said, Bleffed art thou Simon bar Jonah? &c. Did the weeping penitent begin to believe only when Chrift faid to her, Go in peace, thy faith hath faved thee? And had the apostles no faith in the promife of the Father, till their heads were actually crowned with celeftial fire ? Should we not diftinguish between OUR fealing the truth of our difpenfation with the feal of our faith, according to our prefent light and ability; and between GOD's fealing the truth of our faith with the feal of his

0.3

power,

of this truth, will make way for their receiving the higher truths, that ftand between them and the top of the mysterious ladder of truth. I grant, it is impoffi ble they fhould leap at once to the middle, much less to the highest round of that ladder; but if the foot of it is upon earth, in the very nature of things, the loweft ftep is within their reach, and by laying hold of it, they may go on from faith to faith, till they ftand firm even in the chriftian faith; if distinguishing grace has elected them to hear the chriftian golpel. The most fudden converfions imply this gradual tranfition. As in the very nature of things, when the spirit of the Lord caught away Philip from the Eunuch, and tranfported him to Azotus, he made Philip's body rapidly measure all the distance between the wilderness of Gaza and Azotus fo, when he helped the Philippian jailor from the gates of hell to the gates of heaven in one night, he made him rapidly país thro' the fear of God, the dread of his juftice, and the pangs of penitential desires after salvation, before he entered into the joyous reft, that remains for those that heartily believe in Chrift. Nor is this quick, tho' gradual, tranfition from midnight darkness to noon-day light, an unintelligible mystery; fince we are witneffes of a fimilar event every revolving day. The vegetable and the animal world help us likewife to understand the nature of fudden converfions. Every philofopher knows, that a mushroom paffes thro' almost as many ftages of the vegetative life in fix hours, as an oak does in two hundred and those animalcula that frifk into life in the morning of a fummer's day, propagate their fpecies at noon, are old at four o'clock, and dead at fix, meafure the length of animal life as really, as Methatelah did in his millennium.

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