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their obstinacy and ingratitude, I gave them up unto their own hearts lusts, and they walked in their own counsels.

Behold the just and extreme judgment of God upon incorrigible sinners, when he has tried all the methods of doctrine and discipline, correction and love, but in vain. Just is it therefore with God to leave those to themselves who have so ungratefully forsaken him; and dreadful is the condition of those who are so given up to their own hearts lusts, and suffered to walk in their own counsels.

I shall endeavour to engage your attention, whilst I pursue this subject in the following

manner.

First, I shall lay before you the necessity of God's assisting grace, in order to man's obedience.

Secondly, That nevertheless this grace is not always effectual.

Thirdly, The justice of God in withdrawing the slightest offers of it.

Fourthly, The wretched condition of those from whom it is withdrawn.

And then I shall conclude with a short application.

I am in the first place, then to lay before you the necessity of God's assisting grace, in order to man's obedience.

All men in all ages have been sensible of the gr. at proneness of human nature to evil; and the renowned philosophers of the heathen world, who studied nature much, and understood it well, were at a loss for the reason of that wrong

bias in mankind; and could not trace out the pernicious principle upon which to charge such universal depravity: yet too well they knew that so it was it fact. Accordingly, we hear them loudly and passionately lamenting the fatal untractableness of the soul to virtue; the hanging of her wings, and the drooping of her noblest faculties.

We have many instances of the greatest men failing, even in those virtues, in the exercise of which they were remarkably distinguished.

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Look into the Book of Life: there you will meet with Abraham's distrust in God; the peevish anger of Moses; the patience of Job; and to give you the most pregnant uncontrolable example of this sad truth, the stout and resolved St. Peter sunk into a coward, and denied his master. Who could have enter tained more elevated thoughts of his own strength, and after all more shamefully betrayed his own weakness. If Adam, whom we are told God made upright, and created him after his own image, was no sooner left into the hands of his own counsel, but fell from his original righteousness, it can be no reflection to affirm, that man, now impotent and corrupt, is incapable of directing his own way. For, O Lord God! What is man destitute of thy assistance? The load of natural corruption lies heavy upon him, and presses him down. With Peter he begins to sink, and must inevitably perish without thy favourable interposition. In his best estate, under the greatest order and regularity of his faculties, he must take up that

complaint of St. Paul, and say, I see a law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin. So that to be left to our own strength to perform an acceptable obedience, iș, in effect, the same as to be left under an utter impossibility of performing it but, our sufficiency is of God, To him we owe the first disposition and tens dency towards good; not only the execution of the hand, but the preparation of the heart is from the Lord. He stretches himself over our dead souls, as the prophet upon the widow's son, to recover spiritual warmth and life in them. He gives birth to every good thought; encourages that thought into act, and rewards that act with complacency.

Cease, then, ye advocates for natnre, to deck and adorn her with the spoils of grace.

How these secret assistances are conveyed to us, and the manner of their operation, we cannot perfectly comprehend. Neither can we explain how the dew of heaven impregnates the earth and makes it fruitful. But as the drops of rain come down from heaven in their season to water the furrows of the earth, and cause the little vallies thereof to laugh and sing, so may the dew of God's heavenly blessing descend upon us: may it soften our hearts, and prepare them for growth and improvement under its gracious influences; and may our obedience and thankfulness return up thither, as the smell of a field which the lord hath blessed.

Indeed, the communication of God's Spirit

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with the hidden man of the heart, is, in the ordinary methods of its acting, so gentle and imperceptible, that what is transacted there might seem to be the sole result of our reason and better choice; did not experience as well as scripture abundantly testify, that in ourselves, e. in our flesh dwelleth no good thing: so that we are obliged, in reason and justice, to write upon every good action which we perform that confession of St. Paul: Not I, but the grace of God that is in me.

But however weak and unequal we may prove in the fight between the flesh and the spirit, yet we may be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might, who spoiled principalities and powers, and made a shew of them openly; leading them as so many pinioned captives after the chariot of his cross.

But if the supernatural assistances of God's grace are so necessary to man's obedience, and withal so powerful in their operation, it may be asked, how comes it to pass that they are not always effectual? The answer to this question was the second thing proposed.

That all things are alike to an omnipotent Being; and that the spirit of God can work so forceably as to make all opposition fall before it, must be granted. But we have no reason to infer from thence, that this Almighty Being acts to the utmost stretch and extent of his power.

He was pleased once to create man at full stature; is there any reason that he should always do so? He converted St. Paul in a most

miraculous manner; has any man a right to hope for the like favour? Frequent instances of such overpowering grace we must not expect to meet with; because, to invert the nature of things, to break through the fundamental laws of the creation, though it may serve to demonstrate the power of the Almighty, yet, with reverence be it spoken, it does not equally commend his wisdom. But, manifold as the works of God are, in wisdom hath he made them all.

And since it was agreeable to his wisdom that man should be furnished with a principle to discern between good and evil, and a liberty of acting in pursuance of that principle, unless God should alter our nature, pluck out the essentials of a man, and make him another creature, he cannot deal with us otherwise than as voluntary agents, in a manner suitable to our faculties: by persuasion, not constraint; by exercising our powers, not over-ruling them; in such a way and by such methods as may improve human nature, not supersede and destroy it. Therefore, though the grace of God be mighty, it is not violent to compel; though strong, it is not irresistible: it demands a ready entertainment, and when we perform our part, the end is answered. For, as Mary was the mother of Christ, so the Christian soul must be the parent of its divine productions.

Whereas, if a man will obstinately hold out against the means of grace'; abuse and resist the holy Spirit, and refuse to be overcome, those gracious assistances may, in the event,

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