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or true respect to Christ, or any love to your duty, or any spirit of obedience, or from the influence of any manner of real respect, or tendency in your heart, towards any thing that is good, or from any other principle than such as is in the hearts of devils, and would make them have the same sort of willingness in the same circumstances. It is therefore evident, that there can be no goodness in that woulding to be willing to come to Christ: And that which has no goodness cannot be an excuse for any badness. If there be no good in it, then it signifies nothing, and weighs nothing, when put into the scales to counterbalance that which is bad.

Sinners therefore spend their time in foolish arguing and objecting, making much of that which is good for nothing, making those excuses that be not worth offering. It is in vain to keep making objections: You stand justly condemned: The blame lies all at your door: Thrust it off from you as often as you will, it will return upon you: Sew fig leaves as you will, your nakedness will appear: You continue wilfully and wickedly rejecting Jesus Christ, and will not have him for your Saviour, and therefore it is sottish madness in you to charge Christ with injustice that he does not save you.

Here is the sin of unbelief! Thus the guilt of that great sin lies upon you! If you never had thus treated a Saviour, you might most justly have been damned to all eternity: It would but be exactly agreeable to your treatment of God. But besides this, when God, notwithstanding, has offered you his own dear Son, to save you from this endless misery you had deserved, and not only so, but to make you happy eternally in the enjoyment of himself, you refused him, and would not have him for your Saviour, and still refuse to comply with the offers of the gospel; what can render any person more inex cusable? If you should now perish forever, what can you have to say?

Hereby the justice of God in your destruction appears in two respects.

1. It is more abundantly manifest that it is just that you should be destroyed. Justice never appears so conspicuous VOL. VII.

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as it does after refused and abused mercy. Justice in damnątion appears abundantly the more clear and bright, after a wilful rejection of offered salvation. What can an offended prince do more than freely offer pardon to a condemned malefactor? And if he refuses to accept of it, will any one say that his execution is unjust?

2. God's justice will appear in your greater destruction. Besides the guilt that you would have had if a Saviour never had been offered, you bring that great additional guilt upon you, of most ungratefully refusing offered deliverance. What more base and vile treatment of God can there be, than for you, when justly condemned to eternal misery, and ready to be executed, and God graciously sends his own Son, who comes and knocks at your door with a pardon in his hand, and not only a pardon, but a deed of eternal glory; I say, what can be worse, than for you, out of dislike and enmity against God and his Son, to refuse to accept those benefits at his hands! How justly may the anger of God be greatly incensed and increased by it! When a sinner thus ungratefully rejects mercy, his last error is worse than the first; this is more heinous than all his former rebellion, and may justly bring down more. fearful wrath upon him.

The heinousness of this sin of rejecting a Saviour espe cially appears in two things,

1. The greatness of the benefits offered; which appears in the greatness of the deliverance, which is from inexpressi-. ble degrees of corruption and wickedness of heart and life,, the least degree of which is infinitely evil; and from misery that is everlasting; and in the greatness and glory of the inheritance purchased and offered, Heb. ii. 3. “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?"

2. The wonderfulness of the way in which these benefits are procured and offered. That God should lay help on his own Son, when our case was so deplorable that help could be had in no mere creature; and that he should undertake for us, and should come into the world, and take upon him our nature, and should not only appear in a low state of life, but

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should die such a death, and endure such torments and contempt for sinners while enemies how wonderful is it! And what tongue or pen can set forth the greatness of the ingratitude, baseness, and perverseness that there is in it, when a perishing sinner that is in the most extreme necessity of salvation, rejects it, after it is procured in such a way as this! That so glorious a person should be thus treated, and that when he comes on so gracious an errand! That he should stand so long offering himself, and calling, and inviting, as he has done to many of you, and all to no purpose, but all the while be set at nought! Surely you might justly be cast into hell without one more offer of a Saviour! Yea, and thrust down into the lowest hell! Herein you have exceeded the very devils; for they never rejected the offers of such glori. ous mercy; no, nor of any mercy át all. This will be the distinguishing condemnation of gospel sinners, John iii. 18. "He that believeth not, is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God."

That outward smoothness of your carriage towards Christ, that appearance of respect to him in your looks, your speeches and gestures, do not argue but that you set him at nought in your heart. There may be much of these outward shews of respect, and yet you be like Judas, that betrayed the Son of man with a kiss; and like those mockers that bowed the knee before him, and at the same time spit in his face.

III. If God should forever cast you off and destroy you, it would be agreeable to your treatment of others; it would be no other than what would be exactly answerable to your behav ior towards your fellow creatures, that have the same human nature, and are naturally in the same circumstances with you, and that you ought to love as yourself. And that appears especially in two things,

1. You have many of you been opposite in your spirit to the salvation of others. There are several ways that natural men manifesta spirit of opposition against the salvation of otheg souls. It sometimes appears by a fear that their compan

ions, acquaintance, and equals, will obtain mercy, and so bea come unspeakably happier than they, It is sometimes manifested by an uneasiness at the news of others' having hopefully obtained. It appears when persons envy others for it, and dislike them the more, and disrelish their talk, and avoid their company, and cannot bear to hear their religious discourse, and especially to receive warnings and counsels from them. And it oftentimes appears by their backwardness to entertain charitable thoughts of them, and their being difficultly brought to believe that it is really so, that they have obtained mercy, and a forwardness to listen to any thing that seems to contradict it. The devil hated to own Job's sincerity, Job i. 7. &c. and chap. ii. verses 3, 4, 5. There appears very often much of this spirit of the devil in natural men. Sometimes they are ready to make a ridicule of others' pretended godliness: They speak of the ground of others' hopes, as the enemies of the Jews did of the wall that they built. Neh. iv. 5. “Now Tobiah the Amonite was by him, and he said, That which they build, if a fox go up, he shall even break down their stone wall. There are many that join with Sanballat and Tobiah, and are of the same spirit with them. There always was, and always will be, an enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, It appeared in Cain, who hated his brother, because he was more acceptable to God than himself; and it appears still in these times, and in this place. There are many that are like the elder brother, who could not bear it that the prodigal, when he returned, should be received with such joy and good entertainment, and was put into a fret by it, both against his brother that had returned, and his father that made him so welcome, Luke xv.

Thus have many of you been opposite to the salvation of others, that stand in as great necessity of it as you. You have been against their being delivered from everlasting misery, that can bear it no better than you, not because their salvation would do you any hurt, or their damnation help you, any otherwise than as it would gratify that vile spirit that is so much like the spirit of the devil, who, because he is misera

ble himself, is unwilling that others should be happy. How just therefore is it that God should be opposite to your salvation?

If you have so little love or mercy in you as to begrudge your neighbor's salvation, whom you have no cause to inte, but the law of God and nature requires you to love; why is God bound to exercise such infinite love and mercy to you, as to save you at the price of his own blood, that he is no way bound to love, but that have deserved his hatred a thousand and a thousand times? You are not willing that others should be converted, that have behaved themselves injuriously toward you; and yet, will you count it hard if God does not bestow converting grace upon you that have deserved ten thousané times as ill of God, as any of your neighbors Lave of you You are opposite to God's shewing mercy to these, and toose that you think have been vicious persons, and are very nowor thy of such mercy. Is others' utworuest a just reuson why God should not bestow mercy on them? And yet was God be hard, if, notwithstanding all your unwortadaste, sad the abominableness of your spirit and practice in his saght be some not show you mercy? You would have Gud bestow open on you, and upbraid not; but yet, when he suews morey 19 others, you are ready to upbraid as soon as you bear of its you immediately are thinking with yourself now is they have s haved themselves; and it may be your mottos ou Úás maxmou are open, enumerating and aggravating the sea they have been guilty of. You would have God bury all your fou1t, aud wholly blot out all your transgressions; but yet if he bestows mercy on others, it may be you will uke unt occation to neka up all their old faults that you can think of. You do sack, saavutta reflect on and condemn yourself for your bitenens vas wujud spirit towards others, in your oppod ́ion y dos meng you do not quarrel with yourtell, and contenu yoursel for this; but yet you, to your heart, will quintei vita, kast, mod condemn him, and fret at his dispensation. www you think he seems opposite to shewing metly to you one would dink

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