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not to the throne of grace, without carrying me upon your heart; for you know not what influence your prayers may have. As for you, my dear brethren, God knows my heart, I continually bear you on my mind, when I go in and out before the LORD; and it is my earnest defire, you may not perish for lack of knowledge, but that he would send out more minifters to water what his own right-hand hath planted. May the Antient of Days come forth upon his white horse, and may all opposition fall to the ground. As we have begun to bruise the ferpent's head, we must expect he will bruise our heel. The devil will not let his kingdom fall without raging horribly. He will not suffer the minifters of CHRIST to go on, without bringing his power to stop them. But fear not, my dear brethren, David, though a stripling, encountered the great Goliah; and if we pray, God will give us strength against all our spiritual enemies. Shew your faith by your works. Give the world the lye. Press forward. Do not stop, do not linger in your journey, but strive for the mark set before you. Fight the good fight of faith, and God will give you spiritual mercies. I hope we shall all meet at the right-hand of GOD. Strive, strive to enter in at the strait gate, that we may be borne to Abraham's bosom, where sin and forrow shall cease. No scoffer will be there, but we shall see JESUS, who died for us; and not only fee him, but live with him for ever.

Which God, of his infinite mercy, &c.

SERMON

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SERMONX.

A Preservative against unsettled Notions, and want of Principles, in regard to Righteoufness and Christian Perfection.

Being a more particular Answer to Doctor Trapp's Four Sermons upon the same Text.

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To all the True Members of Christ's Holy Church.

Dear Fellow Christians,

THE

HE great, and indeed the only motive which prompted me to publish this fermon, was the defire of providing for your security from error, at a time when the deviators: from, and false pretenders to truth, are so numerous, that the most discerning find it a matter of the greatest difficulty to avoid being led astray by one or by other into downright falfhood. There is no running divisions upon truth; like a mathematical point, it will neither admit of fubtraction nor addition: And as it is indivisible in its nature, there is no splitting the difference, where truth is concerned. Irreligion and enthusiasm are diametrical opposites, and true piety between both, like the center of an infinite line, is at an equal infinite distance from the one and the other, and therefore can never admit of a coalition with either. The one erring by defect, the other by excess. But whether we err by defect, or excess, is of little importance, if we are equally wide of the mark, as we certainly are in either cafe. For whatever is less than truth, cannot be truth; and whatever is more than true must be false.

Wherefore,

Wherefore, as the whole of this great nation seems now more than ever in danger of being hurried into one or the other of these equally pernicious extremes, irreligion or fanaticism, I thought myself more than ordinarily obliged to rouze your, perhaps, drowsy vigilance, by warning you of the nearness of your peril; cautioning you from leaning towards either fide, though but to peep at the slippery precipice; and stepping between you and error, before it comes nigh enough to grapple with you. The happy medium of true christian piety, in which it has pleased the mercy of God to establish you, is built on a firm rock; " and the gates of hell shall never prevail against it." While then you stand steadily upright in the fulness of the faith, falfhood and sin shall labour in vain to approach you; whereas, the least familiarity with error, will make you giddy, and if once you stagger in principles, your ruin is almost inevitable.

But now I have cautioned you of the danger you are in from the enemies who threaten your fubversion, I hope your own watchfulness will be sufficient to guard you from any surprise. And from their own assaults you have nothing to fear, since while you persist in the firm resolution, through God's grace, to keep them out, irreligion and enthusiasm, falfhood and vice, impiety and false piety, will combine in vain to force an entrance into your hearts.

Take then, my dearly beloved fellow-members of CHRIST'S myftical body, take the friendly caution I give you in good part, and endeavour to profit by it: attend wholly to the faving truths I here deliver to you, and be perfuaded, that they are uttered by one who has your eternal salvation as much at heart as his own.

"And thou, O LORD JESUS CHRIST, fountain of all truth, " whence all wisdom flows, open the understandings of "thy people to the light of thy true faith, and touch their "hearts with thy grace, that they may both be able to see, " and willing to perform what thou requirest of them. " Drive away from us every cloud of error and perverfity; " guard us alike from irreligion and false pretenfions to "piety; and lead us on perpetually towards that perfec

tion to which thou hast taught us to aspire; that keep" ing us here in a constant imitation of thee, and peace" ful " ful union with each other, thou mayest at length bring " us to that everlasting glory, which thou hast promised " to all fuch as shall endeavour to be perfect, even as the "Father who is in heaven is perfect, who with thee and "the Holy Ghost lives and reigns one Gop, world with" out end! Amen, Amen.

Be not righteous over-much, neither make thyself over. wife: Wby shouldest thou destroy thyself?

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IGHTEOUS over-much! may one say; Is there any danger of that? Is it even possible? Can we be too good? If we give any credit to the express word of God, we cannot be too good, we cannot be righteous over-much. The injunction given by God to Abraham is very ftrong: "Walk before me, and be thou perfect." The same he again lays upon all Ifrael, in the eighteenth of Deuteronomy: "Thou shalt be perfect, and without blemish, with the Lord thy GOD." And left any should think to excuse themselves from this obligation, by saying, it ceased when the old law was abolished, our blessed Saviour ratified and explained it: "Be ye, therefore, perfect, even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect." So that until our perfection surpaffes that of our heavenly Father, we can never be too good nor righteous over-much; and as it is impossible we should ever furpass, or even come up to him in the perfection of goodness and righteousness, it follows in course that we never can be good or righteous in excefs. Nevertheless Doctor Trapp has found out that we may be righteous over-much, and has taken no small pains, with much agitation of spirit, to prove that it is a great folly and weakness, nay, a great fin. "O LORD! rebuke thou his spirit, and grant that this false doctrine may not be publithed to his confufion in the day of judgment!"

But if what this hasty, this deluded man advances had been true, could there be any occafion, however, of warning against it in these times, "when the danger (as he himself to his con" fufion " fufion owns) is on the contrary extreme; when all manner " of vice and wickedness abounds to a degree almost unheard " of?" I answer for the present, that "there must be herefies amongst you, that they who are approved may be made manifeft."

However, this earthly-minded minister of a new gospel, has taken a text which feems to favour his naughty purpose, of weaning the well-disposed little ones of CHRIST from that per-.. fect purity of heart and spirit, which is necessary to all such as mean to live to our LORD JESUS. O LORD, what shall become of thy flock, when their shepherds betray them into the hands of the ravenous wolf! when a minifter of thy word perverts it to overthrow thy kingdom, and to destroy fcripture with fcripture!

Solomon, in the perfon of a desponding, ignorant, indolent liver, says to the man of righteousness: "Be not righteous overmuch, neither make thyself overwise: Why shouldest thou destroy thyself?" But must my angry, over-fighted brother Trapp, therefore, perfonate a character so unbecoming his function, merely to overthrow the express injunction of the LORD to us; which obliges us never to give over pursuing and thirsting after the perfect righteousness of CHRIST, until we reft in him? Father, forgive him, for he knows not what he fays!

What advantage might not fatan gain over the elect, if the false construction, put upon this text by that unfeeing teacher, should prevail! Yet though he blushes not to affift fatan to bruise our heel, I shall endeavour to bruise the heads of both, by thewing,

I. Fix, The genuine sense of the text in queftion.

II. The character of the perfons, who are to be supposed fpeaking here: And

III. The character of the perices ipoken to.

From whence will naturally reft's these con equences.

Fort, That the Doctor was grede LORD grant he was not maliciously, winery seen on this texty:

Secondly,

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