not to understand also that that there is a peculiar presumptuousness and unthankfulness, and breach of trust and stewardship, attaching itself to every offence or wilful neglect of which we are guilty; and that we cannot sin without turning grace into lasciviousness, and going contrary, as far as in us lies, to the purposes of One who never can be counteracted save to the proportionate damage of his creatures, because he wills nothing but good, and ever designs to bless. This may suffice, I hope, to show that peculiar mercies are very awful things, and that we are specially concerned in this doctrine, and have need seriously to consider it.

II. I have now to ask your attention to what appears suitable for exhortation and direction in consequence.

If what has been said be true, there are clearly two habits, which, in order to the due discharge of your duty, and the saving of your souls alive, you have need to acquire and persevere in, God's holy Spirit helping you. It behoveth you, I mean, in the first place, to give yourselves much to the explicit and serious consideration of God's mercies bestowed upon you; and, in the second place, to rejoice over them with fear and trembling.

i. It is a very common error, I believe, with

VOL. III.

E

persons honest in the main, that whilst they are special and particular in the confession of their sins, they are much less so in the commemoration of God's mercies. But if But if you had no other end in view than to understand your own errors, and attain to that true and humbling sight of your exceeding sinfulness which you are striving after, it is only to be done by having God's goodness to compare with your own iniquity; just as true views of divine love are only to be acquired by those who have due perceptions of their own unworthiness. And besides this, if your own sin be a fruitful and edifying subject of meditation, God's goodness must be the same much more.

Then I say, first, give yourselves often and seriously to the explicit consideration of God's mercies bestowed upon you; so, I mean, as to have abiding upon your minds continually an affecting recollection of the number and variety, and vastness and fulness, and freedom and excellency, and heightening circumstances of his benefits, whether temporal or spiritual, whether those of which you are partakers in common with the universal church, or those which are most special and personal to yourselves or your households. And, "O how great is the sum of them!"

1. Thou art not a clod of earth; whosoever

thou art that listenest to me, God hath breathed into thy nostrils the breath of life, and made thee a living soul-made thee capable, moreover, of knowing himself and serving him, and conversing with him and enjoying him; yea, of dwelling with him for ever and ever. For God hath not "appointed thee unto wrath, but to obtain eternal life through Jesus Christ." And though thy life which now is, is indeed a state of trial and of discipline, it is with every needful advantage for passing safely through the trial to thy final destiny; because thy "help standeth in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth."

Why, then, art thou not to account thy very being a blessing? For whose fault is it, if it does not prove so? And why is not every day of life not only a day of grace, but in itself, as it passes, a happy day-a day of rejoicing in hope at least? For is it not thy privilege to spend every day under the eye and under the care of God? And doth he "cover himself with a cloud, that thy prayer should not pass through?" When is he absent, or when art thou forbidden to call upon him? What hast thou to do, but to live for the purposes for which life was given thee, and to rejoice in the Lord alway? What hast thou need to say under any circumstances, but "My soul, wait thou still upon God?" And so saying, how shouldest thou be destitute? It

is true, few think of these things in this manuer. It is true, that even such a one as holy Job for once cursed his birth; but he was wrong and so are you, if you do not, under the conditions you receive it, esteem every hour of life a benefit.

2. Again: The author of thy life-Is he not thy preserver also? Thou wast born in sin, yet thou wast not cast away in the day that thou wast born. Here thou art still in the land of hope, in the way of salvation. But how cometh it? Hast thou had knowledge of thine own to perceive the dangers by which, from thy cradle to this hour, thou hast been perpetually environed? Or swiftness of thine own to flee from them, or courage of thine own to withstand them, or wisdom to escape, or power to resist them? Or hast thou had merit to deserve protection from them? Hath there been anything in thee worthy to interest thy God on thy behalf? Hast thou so improved thy talents or thine opportunities, that they should be thus continued to thee? Or hast thou not rather tempted the Lord God, and turned his mercies against himself, and grieved his Spirit, and been at work, by thy manifold sins, to weary out his forbearance, and to overcome good with evil? Yet "thou art not consumed." Yet thy privileges and opportunities are the same. Why should

not the light of this day, and thy safe arrival at this period, be God's witness to thy soul—that he is worthy to be praised, and that so thou art in yet another instance become his debtor? And,

3. Is it, let me further ask, in a prison or in a wilderness that thy lot is cast? Or is not the earth full everywhere of the goodness of the Lord? And whose air dost thou breathe? whose light dost thou behold? whose fire warms thee? whose food sustains thee? whose garments cover thee? The fair fields, the skies, the earth, the trees, the beauties of nature upon which thou gazest, and thy very power to gaze upon them, and the very perceptions which thou hast of the beauty and excellency which is in them--whose are they all-both the heavens which declare the glory of God, and "the hearing ear, and the seeing eye," by which thou dost understand their testimony? And whither canst thou go either from God's presence, or from the manifestations of his bounty to thyself? Wilt thou then shut thine eyes, and stop thine ears, and harden thine heart, instead of seeing God in everything, and tasting evermore, as thou mightest, that the Lord is gracious? Are his mercies to go unacknowledged, or not to be borne in mind, because they are common, because they are constant; when indeed these very circumstances are the chief commendation of them? Is the day