when the last state of men becomes worse than their first; because they return to the practice of those evils which they had once renounced, against which they had formed strong resolutions, and made many vows. Their attainments are a great aggravation of their guilt. They are in equal danger either of falling under tormenting perplexities or despair, or, what is no better than despair, of sinking into absolute indifference about their salvation, or into downright infidelity.

The apostle speaks of a danger of apos tasy which renders men's condition utterly hopeless, Heb. vi. Although we have reason to think that the sin which he speaks of in that place is uncommon, yet the passage is an useful and necessary warning against apostasy of any kind. We must keep ourselves at the utmost distance from those sins which prove fatal to all who fall into them. We cannot convert ourselves, we cannot do any thing that can insure our conversion; but we have it in our power to make our condition a great deal worse. We gave ourselves many deadly wounds before we were awakened to a serious concern about our salvation. We can make no excuse for the sins of that period of life; but the sins into which we fall after God has been dealing with our consciences by his word and Spirit, are doubly inexcusable. Why should we rush, with our eyes open, upon the thick bosses of God's

buckler?

Why should we vex that Holy Spirit, by whose grace alone we can be translated into the kingdom of God's dear Son?

Moses, in the book of Deuteronomy, addresses discourses full of heavenly eloquence to a people to whom he says, that "God had not given them eyes to see, nor ears to hear; and yet he says that they had "cleaved to the Lord their God," Deut. xxix. 4. iv. 3, 4. Some of them, it is certain, were partakers of the converting grace of God; but great multitudes were still in a state of blindness. Yet he speaks of all of them as of persons that had cleaved to God in oppositon to idols. "Ye have seen what the Lord did because of Baal Peor; for all the men that followed Baal Peor, the Lord thy God hath destroyed from among you. But ye that did cleave to the Lord your God are alive, every one of you this day." Moses observes to them, and calls them to observe, what difference God had made between those who clave to Baal Peor, and those who clave to the God of Israel, and earnestly exhorts them to keep themselves for all time coming from idols of every kind. This exhortation he enforces by arguments that might be expected to make a forcible impression, not only upon those few who had eyes to see, and ears to hear, those things which belonged to their eternal welfare, but upon all who were not enemies to their present as well as future welfare, Deut. iv

We cannot keep ourselves from any sin, unless we are preserved by the restraining grace ofod, and he bestows much restraining grace upon those who partake not of his sanctifying grace. Unregenerate persons may be kept from evils into which real saints are suffered to fall. Many unconverted persons never committed adultery or murder in their lives, although David was permitted to commit both, and certainly in the general course of his life, was more chaste and humane than the proudest of those boasters, who thank God that they are not as other men, not impure and sensual, but sober and beneficent.

It is by means suited to human nature, and to that particular condition in which men are, that od preserves them from sin. He preserves unregenerate men from sin by means of their consciences, and of those other principles of conduct by which their lives are governed. Thus Joash, king of Judah, was preserved from idolatry all the days of Jehoiada, by his reverence for that holy man, and by means of those motives by which Jehoiada enforced his instructions. And we may warrantably pray that God would enforce upon our minds those motives which his own word suggests for keeping us from sin. Although we are by no means to satisfy ourselves with these favors of restraining grace, which are no signs of God's special

G

love, yet we are to account it a great mercy that he hath kept us from so many evils into which our corrupt lusts would have drawn us. And we are to pray that God would still keep us from every evil thing, and powerfully impress upon our hearts those arguments by which we may be kept from the evils that we ought to abhor. At the same time it is to be remembered, that the object of our requests must not be limited to restraining grace. When our Lord teaches us to say, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil," he enjoins us to pray both for restraining and sanctifying grace. We are not delivered from evil, or from the evil one, although we are kept from particular sins, if we are not set free from the law of sin and death. And although we are set free from the law of sin and death, we may be suffered, like Peter, to fall by temptation into great evils.

The prayers and endeavors of unregenerate persons against sin, must be very defective in their principle. We ought not only to refrain from sin, but to abhor it; not only to discontinue the practices by which we have provoked God, but to crucify the flesh, with its affections and lusts; to pray for deliverance from it, not merely because it is destructive to ourselves, but because it is dishonorable to God. But if he is not a good man who does not abhor evil, what

must he be who commits uncleanness with greediness? What extreme madness has taken possession of the hearts of those whom neither love to God, nor love to themselves, can restrain from the wilful gratification of their lusts?

6. Beware of sinking into despondency when sin has prevailed against you.

Offensive as the workings of sin must be to God, when he is calling aloud to you by the voice of your consciences to turn away from all iniquity, yet who could be saved if they were unpardonable? Paul himself confesses, that when he was under the severe discipline of the law, "sin wrought in him all manner of concupiscence." It is the gospel alone that can reconcile our hearts to the law; and while we are uninfluenced by that love which is the fruit of faith, sin will find "occasion by the commandment to deceive us and slay us."

But wilful relapses into those sins of which you have seen the danger, will most of all disquiet your consciences, whether they are spiritual or external acts of sin. If you have not only felt vain or vile thoughts spring up in your minds, but indulged them in sinful imaginations to the gratification of your corrupt inclinations; if you have not only admitted, but harbored with delight, those. thoughts which evidently spring from an inordinate attachment to the lusts of the flesh,