[Delightful reflection! Hear it, ye sinners of every de- scription : it is the declaration of the Most High God. You must turn indeed from your iniquities, and especially from your besetting sin, mourning over it, fighting against it, bringing it into subjection. You must also be doing all that God requires of you in his blessed word. You must flee to Christ for refuge from the wrath of an avenging God : you must trust altogether in his meritorious death and passion : you must renounce every other hope ; and must seek " to be found in Him, not having your own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith." You must also, in dependence on his Holy Spirit, endeavour to fulfil the whole will of God, and to " walk in every thing as Christ walked." And if indeed ye act thus, we declare, in the name of Almighty God, that " ye shall never perish, but shall have eternal life." As the foregoing charac- ters entertain too little fear, so you are apt to indulge too much ; and, because things have been ill, you are ready to suppose they never can be such as to warrant an expectation of the Divine favour. To remove these apprehensions, God repeats his gra- cious assertions respecting you, and declares that you, if you turn to him in the way before specified, " shall surely live ; you shall not die." Whatever your sins may have been, they shall all be blotted out as a morning cloud ; nor shall so much as one of them ever be remembered against you : though they may have been of a crimson dye, you shall, in the sight of God him- self, be white as snow. As the righteousness of the righteous shall never be remembered, when once he departs from it ; so neither shall the wickedness of the wicked, when once he turns from it. The present character of every individual is that which shall determine his eternal state.
One would think that such a procedure as this should not stand in any need of vindication : but men, notwithstanding the obvious and undoubted equity of it, will complain of it as unjust.]
In our text however it is,
II. Vindicated —
Inequality indeed there is in abundance on the part of men —
[Every description of sinners is chargeable with injustice towards God. The profane sinner accounts it very hard that his sins are to be visited with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord. What has he done that deserves such a sentence as this ? Why did God give him passions, if he is to be punished to all eternity for the indulgence of them ? and, supposing his conduct to be sinful, what proportion do the sins