with him. Even the Apostles themselves were evi- dently stumbled at it ; insomuch, that our Lord, with a mixture of surprise and pity, asked them, " Will ye also go away?" The answer which St. Peter gave him, in the name of all the rest, will lead me to shew you the grounds of a Christiaiis adherence to Christ. He determinately cleaves to Christ,
I. Because there is salvation for him in no other —
[We may conceive the Apostle speaking to this effect: " Lord, to whom shall we go? We are seeking after salva- tion : we are desiring to obtain peace with God : we want to find rest for our souls. Whither can we go for any of these things ?"
Now, in like manner, may every Christian say, ' To whom shall I go, to remove the burthen of my sins ? If I go to the world, it may dissipate my thoughts for a moment ; but it can bring no solid peace to my soul. Its cares, its pleasures, its company, can do nothing towards healing the pangs, or silencing the accusations, of a guilty conscience : they may suspend,butcan never remove, my sorrows : or rather, if they cause me to forget my sins for a little time, it is only that they may press upon me afterwards with an accumulated weight, and leave me a more awful prey to guilt and shame and misery. If I go to the Laiv, and seek to pacify my mind by an obedience to its commands, I find no success. I feel a consciousness that I can never atone for the sins I have already committed : I am sensible, too, that, in spite of all my endeavours, I cannot fulfil its demands : I come short in every thing I do : and I hear it thundering out its anathemas against me ; saying, " Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them." I perceive that I can never establish such a righteousness as shall avail for my acceptance before God. I am therefore shut up to that way of salvation which thou, my Lord, hast revealed. Nothing but fear or terror haunts me, whether I endeavour to forget my sins, or to make an atonement for them : and I can find none but Jesus that can afford me the desired relief.']
A further ground on which a Christian adheres to Christ is,
II. Because he is both able and willing to save —
[" Thou hast the words of eternal life," said this blessed Apostle. The preceding discourse alone abundantly warranted this assertion : for, in it, Jesus had declared, in the strongest terms, that " he would give eternal life a ;" that "whosoever
a ver. 27.