God sets upon his heavenly kingdom, by the judgments he inflicts upon you for neglecting and despising it; and then shall you know the importance of being born again, that only means by which hell can be avoided, and heaven secured.

And let me further add, that conviction will quickly come in this terrible way, if you are not now prevailed upon to consider these things; things which, if you have the least regard to the word of God, you cannot but notionally believe. Do not then go about to annihilate, as it were, these prospects to your mind, by placing them at a long disThe distance is not so great as to deserve

tance.

being mentioned. The patience of God will not wait upon you for thousands, or even hundreds of years. You have a few mortal days in which to consider of the matter; or rather, you have the present moment to consider of it. And if you improve the opportunity, it is well; but if not, the just and uniform methods of the divine administration shall proceed, though it should be to your ruin. God has vindicated the honours of his violated law and despised gospel upon millions, who, with the rebel angels, by whom they have been seduced, are, even now, "reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day;" and he will as surely vindicate them upon you. "If you do not repent," if you are not regenerate, you shall all likewise perish," and not one of you shall escape. And thus I close this copious and important argument; this argument in which life and death, salvation and damnation, are concerned. View it, my friends, in all its connections, and see in what

part of it the chain can be broken. Will you say, that without regeneration you can secure an interest in the kingdom of heaven, though the constitution of heaven oppose it, and all the declarations of God's word stand directly against it; and though nature itself reclaim, and conscience testify your incapacity to enjoy it? Or will you say, that being excluded from it, you shall suffer no considerable damage, though you lose so glorious a state, the noblest preparation of divine love, the purchase of redeeming blood, and the end of the Spirit's operation on the soul; though you ever remain sensible of your loss, and be consigned over to dwell in that flaming prison, which God has prepared for the devil and his angels, and where all the terrors of his righteous judgments are made known?

But if you are indeed inwardly convinced of the truth and importance of these things, and will go away, and act as before, without any regard to them, I can say no more. The reason of man, and the word of God, can point out no stronger arguments than an infinite good on the one hand, and an infinite evil on the other.

Hear, therefore, O heavens, and give ear, O earth! and let angels and devils join their astonishment! that creatures who would strenuously contend, and warmly exert themselves, I will not say merely for an earthly kingdom, but in an affair. where only a few pounds, or perhaps a few shillings or pence were concerned, are indifferent here, where, by their own confession, a happy or miserable ETERNITY is in question! For indifferent, I fear, some of you are, and will continue.

I have repre

sented these things in the integrity of my heart, as in the sight of God; not in artful forms of speech, but in the genuine language which the strong emotions of my own soul, in the views of them, naturally dictated. Yet I think it not at all improbable that some of you, and some, perhaps, who do not now imagine it, will, as soon as you return home, divert your thoughts and discourses to other objects; and may, perhaps, as heretofore, lie down upon your beds, without spending one quarter of an hour, or even one serious minute, in lamenting your miserable state before God, and seeking that help and deliverance which his grace alone can give. But if you thus lie down, make, if you can, a covenant with death, that it may not break in upon your slumbers; and an agreement with hell, that before the return of the morning, it may not flash in upon your careless souls another kind of conviction, than they will now receive from the voice of reason and the word of God.

SERMON VII.

OF THE NECESSITY OF DIVINE INFLUENCES TO PRODUCE REGENERATION IN THE SOUL.

TITUS iii. 5, 6.

"Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; which he shed on us abundantly, through Jesus Christ our Saviour."

Ir my business were to explain, and illustrate this scripture at large, it would yield an ample field for accurate criticism and useful, discourse, and more especially would lead us into a variety of practical remarks, on which it would be pleasant to dilate in our meditations. It evidently implies, that those who are the saved of the Lord are brought to the practice of good works,' without which faith is dead, and all pretences to a saving change are not only vain, but insolent, Yet it plainly testifies to us, 'that our salvation and acceptance with God is not to be ascribed to these, but to the divine mercy; which mercy operates by sanctifying our hearts, through the renewing influence of the Holy Spirit;' and that there is an abundant effusion of this Spirit under the gospel," which is, therefore, with great propriety, called "the ministration of the Sprit," and "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus."

But I must necessarily, in pursuance of my gene

ral scheme, waive several of these remarks, that I may leave myself room to insist on the grand topic I intend from the words.

I have already shown you who may be said to be in an unregenerate state: I have also described the change which regeneration makes in the soul; and have largely shown you, in the three last discourses, the absolute necessity and importance of it. And

now I proceed,

Fourthly, To show the necessity there is of the agency of the divine power, in order to produce this great and important change.

This is strongly implied in the words of the text; in which the Apostle, speaking of the method God has been pleased to take for the display of his goodness, in the salvation and happiness of fallen men, gives thus this affecting view of it,that it is "not by works of righteousness which we," (that is, any of us Christians,)" have done, but according to his free grace and mercy, that he has saved us, by the washing," or, as might be rendered, the laver "of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost."

I shall be ready to acknowledge, with the generality of ancient and modern interpreters, that baptism may probably here be called the laver of regeneration: God having appointed, that as new-born children are washed, so they, who, by the influences of his grace on their hearts, are born again, should, in token of their repentance for the sins of their past life, be washed with baptismal water, supposing (which was here apparently the case in this early age of Christianity,) they had not received that ordinance in their infancy. Nevertheless, lest any should