The main design of them is to represent the inseparable connection between Christian duties and privileges, wherein the essence of our religion consists. The gospel is not a naked, unconditionate offer of pardon and eternal life in flivour of sinners, but upon most convenient terms, for the glory of God and the good of men, and enforced by the strongest obligations upon them to receive humbly and thankfully those benefits. The promises are attended with commands to repent, believe, and persevere in the uniform practice of obedience. The Son of God came into the world, not to make God less holy, but to make us holy, that we might please and enjoy him; not to vacate our duty, and free us from the law as the rule of obedience, for that is both impossible and would be most infamous and reproachful to our Saviour. To challenge such an exemption in point of right, is to make ourselves gods ; to usurp it in point of fact is to make our- selves devils. But his end was to enable and induce us to return to God, as our rightful Lord and proper felicity, from whom we rebelliously and miserably fell by our disobedience, in seeking for happiness out of him. Accordingly the gospel is called ' the law of faith/ as it commands those duties upon the motives of eternal hopes
176 I'REFACE.
and fears, and as it will justify or condemn men with respect to their obedience or disobedience, Avhich is the proper character of a Law. These things are managed in the following sermons in that convincing, persuasive manner as makes them very necessary for these times, when some that aspired to an extraordinary height in religion, and esteemed themselves the favourites of heaven, yet Avoefully neglected the duties of the lower hemisphere, as righteousness, truth, and honesty ; and when carnal Christians are so numerous, that despise serious godliness as solenm hypocrisy, and live in an open violation of Christ's precepts, yet j)resume to be saved by him. Though no age has been more enlightened with the knowledge of holy truths, yet none was ever more averse from obeying them.
1 shall only add further, that they commend to our ardent affec- tions and endeavours true holiness, as distinguished from the most refined unregenerate morality. The doctor saw the absolute necessity of this, and speaks with great jealousy of those Avho seem in their dis- courses to make it their highest aim to improve and cultivate some moral virtues, as justice, temperance, benignity, <fec., by philosophic helps, representing them as becoming the dignity of the human nature, as agreeable to reason, as beneficial to societies, and but tran- siently speak of the supernatural operation of the Holy Spirit, that is as requisite to free the soul from the chains of sin as to release the body at the last day from the bands of death ; that seldom preach of evangelical graces, faith in the Eedecmer, love to God for his admirable mercy in our salvation, zeal for his glor}^, humility in ascribing all that we can return in grateful obedience to the most free and i)ower- ful grace of God in Christ, which are the vital princi})lcs of good works, and derive the noblest forms to all virtues. Indeed, men may be composed and considerate in their words and actions, may abstain from gross enormities, and do many praiseworthy actions by the rules of moral prudence; yet, without the infusion of divine grace to cleanse their stained natures, to renew them according to the image of God shining in the gospel, to act them from motives superior to all that moral wisdom propounds, all their virtues, of what elevation soever, though in a heroic degree, cannot make them real saints. As the plant animal has a faint resemblance of the sensitive life, but remains in the lower rank of vegetables, so these have a shadow, an appear- ance of the life of God, but continue in the corrupt state of nature. And the difference is greater between sanctifying saving graces wrought by the special power of the Spirit, with the holy operations flowing from them, and the virtuous habits and actions that are the efi'ects of moral counsel and constancy, than between true pearls produced by the celestial beams of the sun, and counterfeit ones formed by the smoky heat of the fire. In short, the Lord Jesus, our Saviour and Judge, who purchased the heavenly glor}', and has sole power to give the actual possession of it, assures us that ' unless a man be born of the Spirit, he can never enter into the kingdom of God.' The supernatural birth entitles to the supernatural inheritance. Without this, how fiiir and specious soever the conversation of men appears, they must expect no other privilege at last but a cooler place in hell ; and the coolest there is intolerable. W. BATES.
SERMON I.
Blessed is he iv?tose transgression is forgiven, loliose sin is covered. Blessed is tJie man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile J — Ps. XXXII. 1, 2.
The title of this psalm is ' A psalm of instruction,' and so called be- cause David was willing to show them the way to happiness from his own experience. Surely no lesson is so needful to be learned as this. We all would be happy: the good and bad, that do so seldom agree in anything, yet agree in this, a desire to be happy. Now, happy we cannot be but in God, who is the only, immutable, eternal, and all- sufficient good, which satisfies and fills up all the capacities and desires of our souls. And we are debarred from access to him by sin, which hath made a breach and separation between him and us, and till that be taken away there can be no converse, and sin can only be taken away by God's pardon upon Christ's satisfaction. God's pardon is clearly asserted in my text, but Christ's satisfaction and righteousness must be supplied out of other scriptures, as that 2 Cor. v. 19, ' God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them.' Where the apostle clearly shows that not im- l)uting transgressions is the effect of God's grace in Christ. And we do no wrong to this text to take it in here; for the apostle, citing this scrip- ture Eom. iv. 6, 7, tells us, that ' David describeth the blessedness of the man unto whom the Lord imputeth righteousness without works, when he saith. Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, whose sin is covered ; blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.'