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4. There's a Love to carnal Eafe and worldly SER M. Reputation; a Delight in the Praise of Men.

5. There's a falfe ungodly Charity, a strange Fire that proceeds not from the Lord: A Charity that gives up the Honour of Religion, meerly because we will not be at the Pains to defend it.

6. There's the Pride of a wrangling Humour ; as if the Church of Christ was only a Stage of Battle, and his Name no more than an Engine of Reputation.

7. Above all there's an Indifference or Chilncfs of Conscience to the great Doctrines of Godlinefs, they lose their own nourishing Quality, and turn all into Phlegm and Choler.

8. There's an Infenfibility of the Need we are under to be taught of God, enlightened with the Spirit of Truth, and trained up in what we have attained to.

These are the Things that make us waver, either in the Faith itself that is revealed to us, or in the Profeffion that fhould hold forth the Word of Life. You will eafily fee upon them all; that when Religion comes to be our own Concern, when it is experimental, practical, and inward, when the Heart is established with Grace, when we receive the love of the Truth in order to be saved, then are we rooted and grounded in the Faith, and not moved away from the Hope of the Gospel.

1. One Principle that keeps us wavering, is, a Conceit of fome Capacity in ourselves to make greater Difcoveries in the divine Nature. This is what they who feared the Lord have never dared to attempt; or if they did, they foon came out of it with Shame and Sorrow.

How

X.

SERM.

2.

X.

How vain is it to fet about any curious fearching into the Being of God? To speak of his Nature with a Refèmblance to our own? We Pf. xcvii. know that Clouds and Darknefs are round about him. Job is accufed of preffing too deep with thefe Enquiries; though he feems to examine no farther than into the Windings of Providence : He faid nothing fo grofs about the Perfections of the Deity, as all our Scheme-makers have done. But it's plain he took a length of Imagination that did not become him. I ground this not only on the Complaint of his Friends, but chiefly on his own Confeffion. God has charged him with darkening Counsel by Words without Knowledge, xxxviii. 2. and he charges himself with uttering Things that be knew not, Things too wonderful for him that he understood not. He comes out of his Freethinking with the Blufhes and Pains of a Penitent, behold I am vile, what fhall I anfwer, I will lay my Hand upon my Mouth, once have I fpoken, but I will not answer, yea twice, but I will proceed no farther. He afcribes it to God as a Prerogative, I know that thou canst do every Thing, and that no Counfel can be with-bolden from thee.

Job

xlii. 3.

22.

The Pfalmift wanted to have clear Ideas of the divine Conduct; and, no doubt of it, during the Operation of his Fancy he thought himfelf wife and humble: But afterwards he calls it all Folly and Ignorance, and fays he was no better Pf. lxxiii. than a Beaft. He attempted to know it, but it was too painful for him. He gets more by one Hour in the Sanctuary, than by all his Speculations in the Clofet. Agur fpeaks with an Indig nation at himfelf, furely I am more brutish than any Man, and have not the Understanding of a Man. I neither learned Wifdom, nor have the Knowledge of the Holy, and by the particular In

Prov. xxx.

2, 3, 4

I

vifibles

X.

vifibles of God that he mentions afterwards, we SERM. may suppose what Subjects he had been dabbling with, who has afcended into Heaven or defcended? Who has gathered the Wind in his Fifts? Who has bound the Waters in a Garment? Who has established the Ends of the Earth? What is his Name, and what is his Son's Name, if thou canst tell.

Solomon faid he would be wife, but it was far from him: That which is exceeding deep, who can find it out? The Apostle Paul, when he was caught up to the third Heaven, heard Things there which he never heard upon Earth; but they were both unlawful and impoffible to be ut- 2 Cor. xii. tered in any other Place. Touching the Almighty we cannot find him out.

Let us bring this Obfervation to the great Doctrine of Baptifm, the Profeffion of Faith that we made when our Bodies were washed with pure Water. The Form of Words then ufed was of our Lord's appointing; we have no Authority to make them more or lefs. The Senfe of them is fo eafy and unincumbered, that he thought them fufficient to tell both Jews and Greeks, what Faith we are baptized into. If there was never another Sentence in the Bible, that declared who the Chriftian's God is, every one that hears his Confeffion will understand it, though the whole World of Infidels will condemn it.

By this Form we learn that the Lord is one, and his Name one, in all the Earth. We are baptized into no more than a fingle Name.

'Tis alfo plainly faid, that there are Three, neither more nor fewer that are known by this Name, and adored in this Ordinance.

These three, by their perfonal Titles of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are perfonally di

ftinet.

4.

Job

xxxvii. 23.

SER M. ftinet. They are not spoke of as Attributes, Powers, or Properties; and yet,

X.

They are equal in the Revelation made to us, and the Surrender made by us.

This is the Account that the great God has been pleased to give us of himself. And all that we have to do, is to examine whether he has done fo or no. If he has given us an Explication, let us have it; if he has not, let us wave it, he has told us as much of his Nature as he defigned we should know; and will, by no Means, fuffer us to become fo vain in our Imaginations with the Bible as the Heathen have been without it.

People that talk of " the divine Nature's being communicated from one Perfon to another "in fome unknown Moment of Eternity," are ftretching themselves beyond the Measure of the Line. The Perfections of God are peculiar to himself, not one of them given to any other. 2 Sam. ii. There's none holy as the Lord, for there is none befides thee, neither is there any Rock like unto our God. See now, fays he, that I, even I am, and there is no God with me. To whom will ye liken God, and what Likenefs will ye compare to him! There is none good but one, and that is 1 Tim. vi. God. He only has Immortality.

2.

Deut.
xxxii. 39.

If. xl. 18.
Matt. uix.

17.

I

16.

It's easy to show that the old musty Schemes which are revived in this projecting Age, are only fo many high Thoughts and carnal Imaginations; fo many Gueffes in the Dark, at Things that we never heard. If this is Wisdom it's being wife above what is written. The Arians tell us, that though the Son is both above and before the Creation, yet there was a Time when be was not; that he was not in the Beginning, but after the Beginning; that the Father produced him by a voluntary Act. And to fhow how much their foolish Heart is darkened, they keep ramb

rambling on, and fay that the Father and Son SERM. together made the Spirit; though of his Original X. the Scripture has not faid a Word, fo that their Scheme may be called the Book of the Generation of the Son and Spirit. Heathen Authors can give us the Genealogy of their Gods, but after the glorious Gospel of Chrift is committed to us,

I thought we should never have taken up the Pf. xvi. 7. very Names of derived and originated Deities in- Jer. x. i. to our Lips. The Gods that have not made the Heavens and the Earth, even they fhall perish from the Earth, and from under thefe Heavens.

The other Scheme that condemns the Arian for talking of any Time when the Son was not; yet dares, with the fame Confidence, to make a Partition of the Deity; they are bounding what the Scripture has called infinite. They allow him to be eternal, and yet derived; to have received a Beginning, and yet always to have had it; to have proper Deity without Independance, divine Perfections, and yet not abfolute Sovereignty; that he has Divinity in some of its Diftinctions, and yet not with all its Effentials; that is, they will pretend to adjust the Rights of Empire between Father and Son: But where has the most High called them thus to divide the Inheritance of unfearchable Glory? May it not be said, vain Man would be wife?

Though no Man can teach the Spirit of the Lord what he fhall do, yet here's a Generation that venture to tell him what he shall have. They will rush into the Light wherein he dwells, a Light to which none can approach. We know no farther what he is than as he himself has told us. And fhall we prefume to tell him the Period, Bounds, and Extent of his Nature? And indeed the very Language of all these Schemes lets us fee that the Authors are not employed in

declaring

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