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you have tranfgreffed, in numberless inftances. What day has paffed without your having done, either in thought, or in word, or in action, that which you ought not to have done; and without your having left undone that which you ought to have done? Were the very best of you to examine fairly the very beft of your works, you would find them to have been fo imperfect; to have fallen fo far below the ftandard towards which a higher meafure of antecedent holiness would have advanced them; to have been fo far from proceeding from truly Christian motives, and from those only; to have been fo ftained in part, either in the intention, or in the execution, or in both, with various degrees of guilt; that you would tremble at the thought of producing them as pure, as examples of perfect obedience before God. Before him we all ftand condemned finners. From the law it is impoffible to derive forgiveness. If we are faved, we must be faved by one able to make an atonement. We must be faved by unmerited grace through a Redeemer. We muft receive falvation as a free gift through faith in Jefus Chrift the Son of the Moft High. Renounce then, unrefervedly renounce, all presumptuous ideas of merit in yourselves. Look to the cross on which the promised

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promised Redeemer died, and to that only. Present yourselves as fuppliants for mercy through faith in his atoning blood. It is only by his atoning blood that your fins can be washed away. It is only by faith that the fruits and merits of the death of Chrift can be received and applied to the benefit of your foul. But remember that, if you wish Chrift to be your Saviour, you must receive him as your Master. If you defire a juftifying faith, it must be a living faith. It must be a faith wrought by the Holy Ghoft. faith which governs the heart. It must be a faith which worketh by love. It must be a faith, which labours after univerfal holiness. You must give up yourselves wholly to Chrift. You must make it your conftant object, and your fupreme delight, to obey all the commandments of your Lord; to walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit; to have your heart filled with Chriftian tempers, and impelled and controlled by Chriftian motives. These bleffings are in no degree to be attained by your own ftrength. They are entirely the gifts of the Spirit of God. But Chrift, by his death, has purchased them for all who feek them through him. If you feek them by daily and fervent prayer, offered in his name and grounded on his merits; if, in proportion

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Portion to the grace which he has vouchsafed, you conftantly ftrive to act as his faithful fervants; he will beftow them in larger and larger abundance upon you. Then will he acknowledge you for his own at the laft day: and while he commands the wicked, who remain under the curfe of the law, to depart into everlasting fire; will address to you the unchangeable benediction, " Come, ye bleffed "of my Father: inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the "world."

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SERMON III.

On the Nature and Efficacy of Divine Grace.

2 COR. xii. 9.

And He faid unto me, "My Grace is fufficient "for thee: for my Strength is made perfect "in Weakness."

FOR the accomplishment of any useful defign, it appears neceffary that all inferior inftruments should be fubjected to one fuperintending power. In the ftructures of human mechanism, however numerous, however complicated may be the contrivances by which the ultimate object is purfued; fome main-fpring, fome mafter-wheel, fome ruling force, fome preponderating weight, actuates and controls all the fubordinate parts, and gives motion and efficacy to the whole. It

is thus, if we may prefume to connect toge ther by any femblance of comparison the labours of terreftrial feeblenefs and ignorance with the operations of infinite perfection; that the divine wisdom conducts its plans to their appointed fuccefs. Earth and air, cold and heat, clouds and funshine, the interchange of day and night, the gradual viciffitudes of feafons, and all the principles of vegetation by which food is produced and ripened for mankind; these are all but means governed and directed by the providence of God. Youth and age, health and ficknefs, affluence and poverty, profperity and distress: thefe and all other fecondary causes through which falvation is vouchfafed to man, are all but inftruments in the hands of the First Cause: these are all but miniftering agents fubfervient to the fway of the grace of Chrift.

Never perhaps was the power of divine grace more gloriously displayed than in its effects wrought through the inftrumentality of St Paul! Never perhaps among all the children of Adam did it form to itfelf a more able, or a more willing minister! This great inftructor of the Gentiles, in vindicating his character and his apoftolical authority against the infinuations of falfe teachers among the Corinthians, was led to fpecify, among other

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