equals, than to you; but you have shown a greater respect to those that are infinitely inferior to God than to him. You have shown a greater regard to wicked men than to God; you have honored them more, loved them better, and adhered to them rather than to him. Yea, you have honored the devil, in many respects, more than God: You have chosen his will and his interest; rather than God's will, and his glory: You have chosen a little worldly pelf, rather than God: You have set more by a vile lust than by him: You have chosen these things, and rejected God: You have set your hearts on these things, and cast God behind your back: And where is the injustice if God is pleased to shew greater respect to others than to you, or if he chooses others and rejects you? You have shown great respect to vile and worthless things, and no respect to God's glory; and why may not God set his love on others, and have no respect to your happiness? You have shewn great respect to others and not to God, that you are laid under infinite obligations to respect above all; and why may not God shew respect to others, and not to you, that never have laid him under the least obligation?

And will you not be ashamed, notwithstanding all these things, still to open your mouth, to object and cavil about the decrees of God, and other things that you cannot fully understand! Let the decrees of God be what they will, that alters not the case as to your liberty, any more than if God had only foreknown. And why is God to blame for decreeing things? How unbecoming an infinitely wise Being would it have been to have made a world, and let things run at random, without disposing events, or foreordering how they should come to pass? And what is that to you, how God has foreordered things, as long as your constant experience teaches you, that that does not hinder your liberty, or your doing what you choose to do, This you know, and your daily practice and behavior amongst men declares that you are fully sensible of it, with respect to yourself and others: And still to object, because there are some things in God's dispensations above your understanding, is exceeding unreasonable. Your own conscience charges you

with great guilt, and with those things that have been mention ed, let the secret things of God be what they will. Your conscience charges you with those vile dispositions, and that base behavior towards God, that you would at any time most highly resent in your neighbor towards you, and that not a whit the less for any concern those secret counsels and mysterious dispensations of God may have in the matter. It is in vain for you to exalt yourself against an infinitely great, and holy, and just God. If you continue in it, it will be to your eternal shame and confusion, when hereafter you shall see at whose door all the blame of your misery lies.

I will finish what I have to say to natural men in the appli cation of this doctrine with a caution not to improve the doc trine to discouragement. For though it would be righteous in God forever to cast you off, and destroy you, yet it will also be just in God to save you, in and through Christ, who has made complete satisfaction for all sin. Rom. iii. 25, 26, "Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation, through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness, that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." Yea, God may, through this Mediator, not only justly, but honora bly shew you mercy. The blood of Christ is so precious, that it is fully sufficient to pay that debt that you have contracted; and perfectly to vindicate the divine Majesty from all that dishonor that has been cast upon it, by those many great sins of yours that have been mentioned. It was as great, and indeed a much greater thing, for Christ to die, than it would have been for and all mankind to have burnt in hell to all eternity. Of such dignity and excellency is Christ in the eyes of God, that, seeing he has suffered so much for poor sinners, God is willing to be at peace with them, however vile and unworthy they have been, and on how many accounts soever the punishment would be just. So that you need not be at all discouraged from seeking mercy, for there is enough in Christ.

you

Indeed it would not become the glory of God's majesty to shew mercy to you that have been so sinful and vile a creature, for any thing that you have done, for such worthless and despicable things as your prayers, and other religious performances; it would be very dishonorable and unworthy of God so to do, and it is in vain to expect it: He will shew mercy only on Christ's account, and that, according to his sovereign pleasure, on whom he pleases, when he pleases, and in what manner he pleases. You cannot bring him under the obligation by your works; do what you will, he will not look on himself obliged. But if it be his pleasure, he can honorably shew mercy through Christ to any sinner of you all, not one in this congregation excepted.

Therefore here is encouragement for you still to seek and wait, notwithstanding all your wickedness; agreeably to Samuel's speech to the children of Israel, when they were terrified with the thunder and rain that God sent, and their guilt stared them in the face, 1 Sam. xii. 20. “Fear not; ye have done all this wickedness; yet turn not aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your hearts."

I would conclude this discourse by improving the doctrine, in the second place, very briefly to put the godly in mind of the wonderfulness of the grace of God towards them. For such were some of you.....The case was just so with you as you have heard; you had such a wicked heart, you lived such a wicked life, and it would have been most just with God for ever to have cast you off: But he has had mercy upon you; he hath made his glorious grace appear in your everlasting salvation. You have behaved yourself so as you have heard towards God: You had no love to God; but yet he has exercised unspeakable love to you: You have contemned God, and set light by him; but so great a value has God's grace set on you and your happiness, that you have been redeemed at the price of the blood of his own Son: You chose to be with Satan in his service; but yet God hath made you a joint heir with Christ of his glory. You was ungrateful for past mer. cies; but yet God not only continued those mercies, but be

stowed unspeakably greater mercies upon you: You refused to hear when God called; but yet God heard you when you called: You abused the infiniteness of God's mercy to encourage yourself in sin against God; but yet God has manifested the infiniteness of that mercy, in the exercises of it towards you: You have rejected Christ, and set him at nought; and yet he is become your Saviour: You have neglected your own salvation; but God has not neglected it: You have destroyed yourself; but yet in God has been your help. God has magnified his free grace towards you, and not to others; because he has chosen you, and it hath pleased him to set his love upon you.

O! what cause is here for praise? What obligations are upon you to bless the Lord, who hath dealt bountifully with you, and to magnify his holy name? What cause to praise him in humility to walk humbly before God; and to be conformed to that in Ezek. xvi. 63: “That thou mayest remember and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more, because of thy shame, when I am pacified towards thee for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord God!" You should never open your mouth in boasting, or selfjustification: You should lie the lower before God for his mercy to you. But you have reason, the more abundantly for your past sins, to open your mouth in God's praises, that they may be continually in your mouth, both here and to all eternity, for his rich, unspeakable, and sovereign mercy to you, whereby he, and he alone, hath made you to differ from others,

SERMON IX.

The future Punishment of the Wicked unavoidable and intolerable.

CAN THINE HEART ENDURE, OR CAN THINE HANDS BE STRONG IN THE DAYS THAT I SHALL DEAL WITH THEE?

3 THE LORd have sPOKEN IT, AND WILL DO IT.

IN the former part of this chapter, we have a dreadful

catalogue of the sins of Jerusalem; as you may see from the first to the thirteenth verse. In the thirteenth, which is the verse preceeding the text, God manifests his great displeasure and fearful wrath against them for those their iniquities. "Behold, I have smitten mine hand at thy dishonest gain which thou hast made, and at thy blood which hath been in the midst of thee." The expression of God's smiting his hand, signifies the greatness of his anger, and his preparing himself, as it were to execute wrath answerable to their heinous crimes. It is an allusion to what we sometimes see in men when they are surprised, by seeing or hearing of some horrid offence, or most intolerable injury, which very much stirs their spirits, and animates them with high resentment; on such an occasion they will rise up in wrath and smite their hands together, as an expression of the heat of their indignation, and full resolution to be avenged on those who have committed the injury; as in chap. xxi. 17, "I will also smite * Dated April 1741.