1178.] God'S Notice Of Penitents. 157

If the drooping sinner were permitted to dictate what God should say to him, could he devise any thing more calculated to comfort and refresh the soul ? My dear brethren, behold your God undertaking for you, not merely to bring you to heaven, (for that would be a small matter, if you were not made holy,) but to deliver you from all your sins. Hear his gracious words, as they are recorded by Ezekiel ; " From all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you : a new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you ; and I will cause you to keep my statutes and my judgments to do them." Hear again what he says to the same purpose by Jeremiah ; " I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not depart from them to do them good ; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me : yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant them in this land assuredly with my whole heart and with my whole soul." Is it possible for God to express more earnest- ness in your cause, or a more full determination to preserve you in spite of all your in-dwelling corruptions ; or rather, I should say, to deliver you from them ? O ! lift up your heads, ye drooping penitents, for your redemption draweth nigh : only commit yourselves into the hands of a faithful God and a loving Saviour : there is a fulness of all that you can want treasured up in Jesus ; and out of his fulness ye may all receive, grace for grace. He is the Vine, from whom you must receive sap and nourishment continually ; " As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine ; no more can ye, except ye abide in him : separate from him ye can do nothing : but if ye abide in him, ye shall bring forth much fruit ;" yea, ye may " do all things, through Christ strengthening you." However inveterate therefore your corruptions be, fear not, but look unto Christ : instead of being terrified, as though they were invincible, let the sight of them remind you what great things the Saviour has undertaken for you : instead of despairing on account of your own weakness, rather learn to glory in it, as the means of displaying your Saviour's strength. Do not mis- understand me, as though I would have you glory in sin : God forbid ! sin is, and ought to be, your shame and aversion : but I say again, your inability to any thing that is good ought not to discourage you, because the Apostle says, " When you are weak, then are you strong :" and therefore, while you lament your sins, you may at the same time " glory in your weakness, that the power of Christ may rest upon you." Your extremity shall assuredly be the season of God's interposition : " In the mount of difficulty the Lord shall be seen ;" according as it is written in Deut. xxxii. 36. " The Lord shall judge his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none shut up or left."]