severe reproofs to the haughty rabbis or learned of that time, and his loud call to repentance, were admirably fitted to humble the pride of the doctors, and raise the spirit of common sense among the lower sort of people, which Isaiah figuratively expresses by sinking the mountains, and exalting the valleys; and by these means contributed to level the way for Christ and his religion throughout the world. Too high or too low an opinion of our own understandings, in regard to any branch of knowledge, especially the former, are great hinderances to the attainment of it. Vanity persuades us to think we know, when we know nothing; and too great diffidence in our own capacities is apt to sink us into a despair of knowing such things as we might otherwise easily become masters of. The former begets infidelity; and the latter, ignorance and superstition, while it makes us liable to be imposed upon by others.

Now, dearly beloved, taking the word of God for your guide, draw near to Christ himself. But before you can do this to the good purpose intended, your common sense must convince you, that you ought to know yourselves, and to know him you are going to for instruction and direction, that you may the better judge of your own wants, and his power to supply them. In order here to avoid mistakes, and form a competent judgment of both, I say again, let us set out with a few preparatory inquiries, and draw somewhat closer to these two most necessary articles of knowledge. Were it your wish to learn some trade, or how to cast up an account in figures, you must first be sensible, that know neither of these arts, and that the person you you apply to for the knowledge of either, is himself sufficiently acquainted with that knowledge you stand in need of. You cannot come to Christ without at least beginning to humble yourselves with some sense of your ignorance and vileness; cannot come to so lowly a master, to the world's eye in so abject a rank of life; if you are still wise in your own conceit, you can have nothing to do with him, nor will he have any thing to say to you. Again, you cannot come to Christ, if you are not, in some degree, tired of the disappointing lusts of the flesh, as well as mortified in regard to the pride of life. These two, pride and lust, are the leading sins of mankind. Pride cannot be kept up, nor the lust of pleasure

supplied, without wealth. Wealth, sufficient for the cravings of these insatiable masters, is not to be had but by avarice, nor avarice to be glutted, but by oppression and fraud, by cruelty, iniquity, perjury of the most horrible kinds and degrees. If you come to Christ, at all sensible of these things, he will throw such light upon your understandings and hearts, as to raise an utter abhorrence of them, and an ardent love of his cross in preference to them; and great indeed must that light be, which can shine in upon minds considerably clouded by either or both these causes of utter darkness. These two, pride and lust, are the mortal disorders, under which you ought to groan, and whereof no physician but Christ can cure you. He himself appeals to that common sense he gave you, when he sent you into being, or rather, to that little share of it which pride and lust have left you, in these words, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear; Go and tell John, what you do hear and see,' appealing to his doctrines and miracles; Why of yourselves judge ye not what is right?' The whole manner and form of Christ's religion is an appeal to common sense, whereof he knows you possess so little, that he only calls upon you to hear that you may grow wise; to see, that you may believe; to judge in matters most plain and easy, that you may know how to be saved from sin and misery, and attain to everlasting happiness. The moment you begin to think of yourselves as he does, and find yourselves fools, you enter the road to wisdom. If you can but hear, see, and prefer good to evil, and heaven to hell, you must be his disciples. Pride and lust, the two teachers of unbelief, that mother and nurse of wickedness, employ all their arts and delusions to make you think you want no religious teacher, either God or man. Whether you do or not, you can never solidly judge, till you know somewhat of yourselves and of Christ. To aid you in forming that judgment, this appeal is made. Are you deaf? Are you blind? Have you not even a small degree of that sense for God, for religion, for your soul, which you possess in so large a measure for your body and your worldly affairs? Now, as to the knowledge of yourselves, give me leave to ask you, Do you not find you are both vain and ignorant creatures, vain of your own understandings, and ignorant, in this instance, of the thing to be un

derstood? Do you yet know whether you are going upward through religious knowledge to happiness, or blindly downward, through wickedness to misery? Do you know how great is the strength of your corrupt affections and passions; of your inveterate habits; and of the power which the things of this world have over those affections, passions, and habits? Have you keenly considered what is the punishment of sin, and what the reward of righteousness? or how sin may be subdued in you, and how righteousness may be obtained? Do you know and consider that you have not a moment to live, unless the Disposer of life and death shall please to afford it you; and that, whether he will or not, he hath never told you? Do you rightly consider what your condition to all eternity shall be, in case he should now remove you from this world? Are you able, of yourselves, to believe, repent, and reform the corruptions of your nature, so as that the All-seeing God may behold in you a new and holy creature? If you cannot satisfy yourselves by your answers to the questions of this self-examination, what does common sense tell you must be done? Consult it fairly with both understanding and heart, and you will hear it crying aloud, Renounce yourselves; humble yourselves; abhor the fleshly pleasures that have polluted, and the worldly views that have misled your weak and improvident nature to the grievous offence of God, and mortal gratification of his and your own enemy. In doing this, in thus humbling, afflicting, and rousing yourselves, fly to Christ. You are now a fit disciple for this best of all masters, whose service is perfect freedom and happiness. But first know who he is, that is to redeem you, and who that Holy Spirit is, who is to create you anew, and sanctify you to a true and faithful service of God, and, which is the same thing, to your own eternal salvation. A most careful comparison of God's goodness with your own unworthiness and wickedness, pursued by deep meditations on both, often repeated, and long continued, and still set face to face in your hearts, is the only road to true repentance, and to a warm and lasting love of God. If you can by this method (and it is indeed the only true one) find the way to a thorough distrust of yourselves, with a lively and lasting love of God, the great work of his glory in your salvation will be happily accomplished. The

good Being never did, never will, destroy an humble soul that loves him. All things,' whether health or sickness, riches or poverty, life or death, work together for good to him that loves God.' Let this noble pursuit call in your common sense, guided by Christian faith, and aided by the Holy Spirit, from a trifling and ensnaring world, to this one great thing needful. If the hunters after wordly pomp, or fleshly pleasure, wherein they shew their sort of wisdom, should call you fools, enjoy the sneer, and know, that their wisdom is foolishness with God;' and your folly, as they call it, the only wisdom in his sight, who alone perfectly knows what true wisdom is. Christ is come to teach you the knowledge of himself and his religion, by his last will and testament.

Know, then, that this master is not only your Redeemer, but your God and Maker, John i. 1-3; that he is God over all, blessed for ever,' Rom. ix. 5; and that the Holy Ghost is God, the eternal Spirit,' Heb. ix. 14; that God, who dwelling in you,' makes you, 1 Cor. iii. 36, and even your body,' 1 Cor. vi. 19, his temple.' Now there is but one only God,' Exod. xx. 3. 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me' (in my sight), Isa. xlv. 5. 'I am the Lord, and there is none else; no God besides me. To us (Christians) there is but one God,' 1 Cor. viii. 6, who is the Father, who is the Son, and who is the Holy Ghost; into whose name we are baptized. There are no sentences in the world more easily understood, than these wherein the doctrine of of the Holy Trinity is contained. Your common sense is perfectly well acquainted with their meaning, and cannot but see the proof of each in the word of God; and as you neither can, nor are required to believe any thing, but so far as you understand it, so your common sense forbids you to look, or attempt to look, farther into this, or any other knowable truth, than you are enabled by the faculties God hath given you. The highest angels of light cannot account for the mysterious part of this doctrine; nor can you, for any one thing in yourself, or in the world around you; cannot at all tell how you bend your finger or roll your eye. Hence you may learn to think with a due degree of lowliness concerning your understanding. If your short line of understanding cannot dive into things so very familiar, and seem

He that

ingly so shallow, how shall it fathom the incomprehensible, or rise up to reach the infinite? Christ says, Before Abraham was, I am,' John viii. 58, I and my Father are one being;' for so it is in the original, John x. 30. hath seen me, hath seen the Father,' John xiv. 9. . I am the first and the last,' Rev. i. 11. Common sense tells you that he who says these things of himself, must be either the one only God, or a most impious impostor. Here is no medium. The Holy Ghost, Heb. ix. 14, calls himself' the eternal Spirit; for it is he who speaks every where throughout the Scriptures; and we know there is no being eternal, but the one only God. It is he that says, he 'makes your body his temple,' 1 Cor. vi. 19; and you know that nothing but the indwelling of God can make a temple. He himself tells you, that all these Scriptures are given by inspiration of God,' 2 Tim. iii. 16; and you know that the Holy Ghost is the inspirer; nay, that it was by him that Christ himself wrought all his miracles, Matt. xii. 28. This Spirit searcheth all things; yea the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God,' 1 Cor. ii. 10, 11. He is our guide into all truth;' our guide to Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life,' John xvi. 13; xiv. 6. We have our Christian faith by this Spirit, 1 Cor. xii. 9; that faith, without which it is impossible to please God,' Heb. ii. 11; through which 'we are saved by grace,' Eph. ii. 1. It is impossible common sense should believe that these things, and many others to the same purpose and effect, should have been said to us by Christ and the Holy Ghost, without intending that we should consider ourselves as redeemed, sanctified, and saved by them, which neither of them could ever possibly have done for us without being the true and only God, nor have said he did, if he did not, without being a gross deceiver. What greater curse is conceivable, than being without redemption and salvation? And did God give us being, and any thing less than God redeem or save us? No, God alone could do either; and therefore to God alone our gratitude and love are due. It is God alone, into whose name we are baptized. It is God alone who created us; God alone who redeems us; God alone who destroys in us the old sinful