your hand; but why will you give Chrift the lye, who fays, Without me ye can do nothing? And if that be a truth, O how fweet is it to have a heart engaged to him, that has engaged to do all! You may know from your experience, how fad a thing it is to take any part of the engagement upon yourfelf alone, and on your own head: For it never abides a touch; and when you break your engagement, then you are quite difpirited, as if the covenant of grace were broken; and thus you turn your covenant of duties to God's covenant of grace, and fo the covenant of grace to a covenant of works and in that cafe, no wonder that you find the law a hard and heavy tafk-mafter. But the covenant of grace is Chrift's engaging to do all: It is not a bargain that God is making with you, for he will not make a bargain with fuch as you. God knows you are a bargain-breaker; but it is a bargain made with Chrift, wherein Chrift hath engaged to God to do all for you, because you can do nothing: And now he courts your heart to fall in with this device of glorious and free grace. ; 3dly, Confider who it is that is courting your heart. It is he to whom the heart of God is engaged; Behold my fervant whom I uphold, mine elect in whom my foul delighteth. God's heart was engaged to Chrift from eternity, not only becaufe he was his eternal Son, but also because he engaged his heart to approach to him on your account. God's heart is fo much engaged to him for that very reafon, that he declares three times, with an audible voice from heaven, This is my beloved in whom I am well pleased; and all that he feeks is that you be well pleafed too. And O you are ill to please, if that which pleafes God, will not please you; and Bb 2 your your heart is ill placed, if it be not engaged to him to whom God's heart is engaged. God the Father put him upon this work, out of good-will to you; he caufed him to approach on your account; and he is pleased with his engagement and approach; and nothing in the world will please God fo much, nor make him take fo much pleasure in you, as your being well pleafed with Chrift and his undertaking, fo as to find your heart engaged to him for it: For then you will please him more than ever your fins difpleafed him; and you will honour him more than ever your fins difhonoured him: Yea, then he will get full fatisfaction for all your fins because that glorious engager, whom you close with, hath fully contented his heart; and fo you will fatisfy his juftice more than your eternal damnation in hell could do. O the heart of God is engaged to him, and the hearts of angels are engaged to him, and the hearts of all the redeemed are engaged to him: O fhall all hearts be engaged to him but yours! O there would be a joy in heaven, and it would be a day of the gladnefs of Chrift's heart, and it would give a glad heart to God, angels and faints, if your hearts were engaged to Chrift. ; 4thly, Confider whofe heart he is courting: You perhaps think, furely it will be fome very good heart that will please him. Indeed I know none that have a good heart by nature; and you that think you have a good heart to God, do but deceive yourselves: But O he is even courting the love of that heart that is full of enmity against him; his love is feeking to break your enmity this day. What fort of a heart have you, my friends? Be what fort of a heart it will, he is feeking it; My Son, give me thy heart. Is it a wicked heart, and a wandring wandring heart, an unbelieving heart, a deceitful heart? Is it the heart of a Manaffeh in compact with Satan? Is it the heart of a Mary Magdalene, out of whom were caft feven devils? Is it the worst heart in all the world, and the worst heart that ever was in the world, a hard heart, a ftout heart, a ftony heart, a heart full of hell, and a heart like the devil? It is even the heart that he is feeking and courting this day: He engages to give you a new heart and a new fpirit; and if you fign his engagement with your heart, faying, content, Lord; he will make your heart to his mind by degrees, and your heart fhall be according to his heart. What, fay you, is that poffible, that he is courting fuch a heart as mine? Would it not be prefumption for fuch an one as me, vile, filthy, black and ugly me, to expect fo much good at the hand of fuch an one as Chrift? What, man? when God calls, is it prefumption in you to anfwer his call? No, it is the greatest prefumption in the world to fit his call, and refuse his kind embraces, when he offers to take you into his very heart. When Chrift offered to wash Peter's feet, O did it not ill become him to fay, Lord, thou shalt never wash my feet? John xiii. 8. Be your feet never fo foul, and your heart never fo black, you have the more need to Jet Christ wash you. 5thly, Confider, that the prefent opportunity is a fpecial feafon of letting out your heart upon him, when he is coming fo near to you in this work. It is a dangerous thing to mifs the tide when it is flowing. Some of your friends and neighbours are in eternity, fince the laft communion here; and you may never hear another action-fermon all life: And tho' you may hear other fermons, yet your it is but now and then that the wind blows, and that the fpirit breathes; and it is dangerous to refift the motions that would blow you into the happy harbour of Chrift's engaged heart: If there be a gale of heaven just now blowing, yet it may be over before an hour be paft. O fhall not your heart be engaged unto Chrift! What if death approach to you, and cut the thread of your life in two? O you would be more miferable than the devil to all eternity; for he never had fuch an offer as this. Death is approaching, judgment is approaching, eternity is approaching, and yet your heart not approaching to Chrift; wo is me, what will come of you! 6thly, Confider, that Chrift hath fulfilled his engagement to the Father for you, by bringing in everlasting righteoufnefs; and God hath accepted it, and is well-pleafed with it as the condition of the covenant, and all the promises thereof: And, upon this account, the promife is made to you, as follows immediately upon the text, I will be your God, and ye shall be my people. I WILL, and ye SHALL, is the tenor of the promife; because Chrift hath fulfilled the condition of it, fo as you have nothing to do, but to fay with the heart, Thy will be done. And if your heart be engaged to him, and made willing, the God who commends Chrift fo highly to you in the words of the text, will turn it over to your commendation, faying, Who is this that engaged, &c. Now, fay not, that you want fuch and fuch qualifications and conditions requifite in thefe that give their heart and hand to the Son of God; if your heart ftand off from him on this account, it argues a heart in league with the law as a covenant of works, which is but a black bargain now, now, for any of the fallen race of Adam; but the better teftament is a better bargain, where Chrift hath engaged for all fully, and you are only to take all freely; and never a good qualification will you have acceptable to God, till your heart be engaged to him whofe heart was engaged to give all. If your heart be not thus engaged to Chrift, to be obliged and indebted to him for all, then, tho' you had a thousand times more qualifications than you would be at, yet you fhall go to hell with them, and perifh eternally: And if your heart be once engaged to Chrift, then, tho' you had ten thousand good qualifications, you will count them all but dung for the excellency of the knowledge of Chrift, as Paul did. It is faid of the creditor, concerning his two debtors, Luke vii. 42. When they had nothing to pay, be frankly forgave them all. So long as you think you have fomething to pay your own debt, or hope that you fhall have fomething to make payment with, you are not in God's way of forgiveness; but when you have nothing to pay, not a penny in your purse, either to pay your debt of obedience and fatisfaction to the law as a covenant, or your debt of duty to the law as a rule, and áre content to take a cautioner, then he frankly forgives all. And fo the best qualification is for you to see that you have nothing, no money nor moneyworth, that you may be obliged to Chrift for all. What fay you, Man? Is your heart engaged to him? I think fo, may fome fay; but it may be only a flash, because I have a deceitful heart. Why, Man, be your heart never fo deceitful, yet if there be fuch a heart-warming in your breast, as makes you subscribe to his engagement to do all for you, and to make you holy as well as happy, and to free Bb 4 you |