he will give you his fpirit; and if you have his fpirit you cannot be reprobates: you will find his fpirit to be quickening and refreshing; not like the spirit of the world, a fpirit of reproach, envy, and all uncharitableness.

Moft of your own experiences will confirm the truth hereof; for are not you reproached and flandered, and does not the world fay all manner of evil against you, merely because you follow JESUS CHRIST; because you will not go to the fame excess of riot with them? While they are finging the songs of the drunkard, you are finging pfalms and hymns: while they ~are at a playhouse, you are hearing a fermon: while they are drinking, revelling and mifpending their precious time, and baftening on their own deftruction, you are reading, praying, meditating, and working out your-falvation with fear and trembling. This is matter enough for a world to reproach you; you are not polite and fashionable enough for them. If you will live godly, you must fuffer perfecution; you must not expect to go through this world without being perfecuted and reviled. If you were of the world, the world would love you; for it always loves its own; but if you are not of the world, it will hate you; it has done fo in all ages, it never loved any but those who were pleafed with its vanities and allurements. It has been the death of many a lover of JESUS, merely because they have loved him; And, therefore, my brethren, do not be furprized if you meet with a fiery trial, for all those things will be a means of fending you to your mafter the fooner.

The fpirit of the world is hatred; that of CHRIST is love; the fpirit of the world is vexation; that of CHRIST is pleasure the fpirit of the world is forrow; that of CHRIST is joy the fpirit of the world is evil, and that of CHRIST is good: the fpirit. of the world will never fatisfy us, but CHRIST'S fpirit is all fatisfaction; the fpirit of the world is mifery; that of CHRIST is eafe. In one word, the spirit of the world has nothing lafting; but the fpirit of CHRIST is durable, and will last through an eternity of ages: the fpirit of CHRIST will remove every difficulty, fatisfy every doubt,

and.

and be a means of bringing you to himself, to live with him for ever and ever.

From the words of my text, I fhall fhew you,

I. The neceffity of receiving the spirit of CHRIST.

II. Who CHRIST is, whofe fpirit you are to receive. And then

Shall conclude with an exhortation to all of you, high and tow, rich and poor, to come unto the LORD JESUS CHRIST, and to beg that you may receive his fpirit, so that you may not be reprobates.

First, I am to fhew you the neceffity there is of receiving the fpirit of CHRIST.

And here, my brethren, it will be neceffary to confider you as in your first state; that is, when GOD first created Adam, and placed him in the garden of Eden, and gave him a privilege of eating of all the trees in the garden, except the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which flood in the midft thereof, Our firft parents had not been long in this ftate of innocence, before they fell from it, they broke the divine commands, and Involved all their pofterity in guilt; for as Adam was our reprefentative, fo we were to ftand or fall in him; and as he was our foederal head, his falling involved all our race under the power of death, for death came into the world by fin; and we all became liable to the eternal punifhment due from GOD, for man's difobedience to the divine command.

Now as man had finned, and a fatisfaction was demanded, it was impoffible for a finite creature to fatisfy him, who was a GoD of fo ftrict purity as not to behold iniquity: And man by the juftice of God would have been fent down into the pit, which was prepared of old for the devil and his angels; but when juftice was going to pass the irrevocable fentence, then the LORD JESUS CHRIST came and offered himself VOL. VI. a ranfom

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a ransom for poor finners. Here was admirable condescension of the LORD JESUS CHRIST! that he who was in the bosom of his father, should come down from all that glory, to die for fuch rebels as you and I are, who if it lay in our power, would pull the Almighty from his throne: Now can you think that if there was no need of CHRIST's death, can you think that if there could have been any other ranfom found, whereby poor finners might have been faved, GOD would not have spared his only begotten Son, and not have delivered him up for all that believe in him?

This, my brethren, I think proves to a demonstration, that it was neceffary for CHRIST to die: But confider, it will be of no fervice to know that CHRIST died for finners, if you do not accept of his fpirit, that you may be fanctified, and fitted for the reception of that JESUS, who died for all those who believe in him. The fin of your nature, your original fin, is fufficient to fink you into torments, of which there will be no end; therefore unless you receive the spirit of CHRIST you are reprobates, and you cannot be faved: Nothing fhort of the blood of JESUS applied to your fouls, will make you happy to all eternity: Then, feeing this is fo abfolutely neceffary, that you cannot be faved without having received the spirit of CHRIST, but that ye are reprobates, do not rest contented 'till you have good hopes, through grace, that the good work is begun in your fouls; that you have received a pardon for your fins; that CHRIST came down from heaven, died, and made fatisfaction for your fins. Don't flatter yourselves that a little morality will be fufficient to fave you; that going to church, or prayers, and facrament, and doing all the duties of religion in an external manner, will ever carry you to heaven; no, you must have grace in your hearts; there muft be a change of the whole man.

You must be born again, and become new creatures, and have the fpirit of CHRIST within you: And until you have that fpirit of CHRIST, however you may think to the contrary, and please yourselves in your own imagination, I fay, you are no better than reprobates. You may content yourfelves

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felves with leading civil, outward decent lives, but what will that avail you, unless you have the fpirit of the LORD JESUS CHRIST in your hearts: His kingdom muft be fet up in your fouls; there must be the life of GOD in the foul of man, elfe you belong not to the LORD JESUS CHRIST; and until you belong to him, you are reprobates.

This may feem as enthufiafm to fome of you, but if it is fo, it is what the apostle Paul taught; and therefore, my brethren, they are the words of truth. I beseech you, in the mercies of GOD in CHRIST JESUS, not to despise these words, as if they do not concern you, but were only calculated for the first ages of chriftianity, and, therefore, of no fignification: If you think thus, you are wronging your own fouls; for whatever is written, was written for you in these times, as well as for the chriftians in the firft ages of the church.

For the cafe ftands thus between GOD and man: GOD, at firft, made man upright, or, as the facred penman expreffes it, "In the image of God made he man ;" his foul was the very copy, the tranfcript of the divine nature. He who had, by his almighty power, fpoken the world into being, breathed into man the breath of fpiritual life; and his foul became adorned with purity and perfection. This was the finishing stroke of the creation; the perfection both of the moral and material world; and it so resembled the divine Original, that God could not but rejoice and take pleasure in his own likeness : Therefore, we read, that when GOD had finished the inanimate and brutish part of the creation," he looked, and behold it was good." But when that lovely, god-like creature man was made, behold it was very good."

Happy, unfpeakably happy, to be thus partaker of a divine Nature; and thus man might have continued ftill, had he continued holy; but GOD placed him in a state of probation, with a free grant to eat of every tree in the garden, except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The day, he did eat thereof he was not only to become subject to temporal, but fpiritual death; and fo lofe that divine image, that spiritual

life which GOD had breathed into him, and which was as much his happiness as his glory.

But man, unhappy man, being feduced by the devil, did eat of the forbidden fruit, and thereby became liable to that curfe which the eternal GOD had pronounced on him for his difobedience. And we read, that foon after Adam was fallen, he complained that he was naked; naked, not only as to his body, but naked and deftitute of thofe divine graces which before beautified his foul.

An unhappy mutiny and diforder then fell upon this world; those briars and thorns which now fpring up and overspread the earth, were but poor emblems, lifeless reprefentations of that confufion and rebellion which fprung up in, and overwhelmed, the foul of man, immediately after the fall. He now funk into the temper of a beast and devil.

In this dreadful and difordered condition are all of us brought into the world: We are told, my brethren, that "Adam had a fon in his own likeness," or with the fame corrupt nature which he himself had funk into, after eating the forbidden fruit: And experience, as well as fcripture, proves, that we are altogether born in fin, and, therefore, uncapable, whilft in fuch a state, to have communion with GOD.

For as light cannot have communion with darkness, fo GOD can have no communion with fuch polluted fons of Belial. Here, here, appears the great and glorious end, why CHRIST was manifeft in the flesh, to put an end to these diforders, and to restore us unto the favour of GOD. He came down from heaven and fhed his precious blood upon the cross, to fatisfy the divine juftice of his Father, for our fins * and fo, he purchafed this Holy Ghoft, who must once more re-flamp the divine image on our hearts, and make us capable of living with, and enjoying of GOD. We must be renewed by the fpirit of Gon; he muft dwell in us before we can be new creatures, and be freed from a reprobate fpirit: the

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fpirit