is beaten before you^ by thousands of sinners for your encouragement. You are not the first that ever adventured your souls in this path ' multitudes are gone before you, and that under as much guilt, fear, and discouragement as you that come after can pretend unto ; and not a man among them repulsed or discouraged : here they have found rest and peace to their weary souls, Heb. iv. 3. Acts xiii. 39. Here the greatest of sinners have been set forth for an ensample to you that should afterwards believe on his name, 1 Tim. i. 1.6. You see if you will not, others will joyfully accept the offers of Christ ; what discouragements have you that they had not ? Or what greater encoiu*agements had they which God hath not given you this day? therefore they shall be your judges,
8. Consider the great hazard of these precious seasons you now enjoy. Opportunity is the golden spot of time, but it is tempus labile^ a very slippery and uncertain thing : great and manifold are the hazards and contingencies attending it. Your life is immediately uncertain, your breath continually going in your nostrils ; and that which is every moment going, will be gone at last. The gospel is as imcertain as your life ; God hath made no such settlement of it, but that he may at pleasure remove it, and will certainly do so if we thus trifle under it ; it is but a candlestick, though a golden one. Rev. ii. 5. and that you all know is a moveable thing ; and not only your life, and the means of your eternal life, I mean the gos- pel, are uncertain things ; but even the motions and strivings of the Spirit with your souls are as uncertain as either. ^' Work out " your own * alvation with fear and trembling ; for it is God that " worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure," Phil. ii. 12, 13. That God now works ^vath you is matter of great encouragement to your work : but that he works at his own plea- sure, as a free arbitrary agent, who can cease when he pleases, and never give but one knock at your hearts more, should make you work with fear and trembling.
9. ThinJc what a fearful aggravation it will be both of your sin and misery^ to perish in the sight and presence of an offered remedy ; to sink into hell betwixt the out-stretched arms of a compassionate Redeemer^ that would have gathered you, but you woidd not.
Heathens, yea devils will upbraid you in hell for such unac- countable folly and desperate madness ; heathens will say, Alas, we had but the dim moon-light of nature, which did indeed dis- cover sin, but not Christ the remedy. Ah, had your preachers and your bibles been sent among us, how gladly would we have em- braced them! surely saith God to Ezekicl,' " had I sent thee to <=* them, they would have hearkened unto thee,'"* Ezek. iii. 5, 6. Matth. xi. i\. The very devils will upbraid you ; O if God had
sent a Mediator in our nature, we had never rejected him as you have done ; but he took not on him the nature of angels.
10. Lastly, How clear as well as sure, will your condemnation he in the great day, against zvhom suck a cloud of witnesses will appear ! O how manifest will the righteousness of God be ! men and angels ishall applaud the sentence, and your own consciences shall ac- knowledge the equity of it. You that are christless now, will be speechless then, Matth. xxii. 11, " Knowing therefore the terrors *' of the Lord, we persuade men," 2 Cor. v. 11. as one that trem- bles to think of being summoned as a witness against any of your souls. O that I might be your rejoicing, and you mine in the day of pur Lord Jesus Christ.
Rev. iii. SO. Behold [/] stand at the door, &c.
JH.AVING, in the former sermon, pondered Christ's soiemn preface to his earnest suit ; the next thing that comes under our consideration, is the person soliciting and pleading for admission into the hearts of sinners, which is Christ himself.
Behold [/] stand. The only difficulty here is rightly to appre* hend the manner of Christ's presence in gospel administrations ; for it is manifest the person of Christ was at this time in heaven : his bodily presence was removed from this lower world above sixty years before this epistle was written to the Laodiceans. John's ba- nishment into Patmos is by Eusebius, out of Irenaeus and Clemens Alexandrinus, placed in the fourteenth year of tjie emperor Domi- tian, and under his second persecution, which was about tJie ninety seventh year from the birth of Christ.
Yet here he saith, BeJwld I stand ; not my messengers and mi- nisters only, but I by my spiritual presence among you, I your sove- reign Lord and owner, who have all right and authority by crea- tion and redemption to possess and dispose of your souls : it is I that stands at the door and knocks, I by my Spirit, soliciting and moving by the ministry of men. You see none but men ; but believe it, I am really and truly, though spiritually and invisibly, present in all those administrations ; all those knocks, motions, and solicitations, are truly mine, they are my acts, and I own them, and so I would have you to conceive and apprehend them. Hence the second Note is this.
Doct. ^i That Sesus Christ is truly present with men in his ordl* nances., and hath to do with them, and they with him ; though he be not visible to their carnal eyes.
Thus runs the plx)mise ; " Where two or three areJ gathered to- « gether in my name, there am I in the midst of them,^ Mat. xviii^ 20, The middle place was the seat of the president in the Jewish assembhes, where he might equally hear and be heard of all. So will I be in the midst of the assemblies of the faithful, met together in my name and by my authority, to bless, guide, and protect them. Hence the church is called the place of his feet, Isaiah xvi. 13. a manifest allusion to the ark^ called God's footstool, Psal. xcix. 5. And agreeably hereunto, Christ is said to walk among the seven golden candlesticks. Rev. ii. 1. There are the spiritual walks of Christ, there his converses and communion with men : and this pre- sence of Christ was not the pecuhar privilege of the first churches, but is common to all the churches of the saints to the end of the world, as appears by that glorious promise so comfortably extended to the church from first to last; " Lo, I am with you always to the '< end of the world,"" Mat. xxii. ult. This promise is the ground and reason of all our faith, and expectations of benefit from ordi- nances ; and the subjects of it are not here considered personally but officially ; to you, and all that succeed you in the same work and office ; not to you only as extraordinary, but to all the succeeding ordinary standing officers in my church. As for the apostles, nei- ther their persons nor extraordinary office was to continue long, but this promise was to continue to the end of the world.