6. How do you stand affected as to the word and ordinances? What longing have you after them? What delight in them? With what design and defire do you attend upon them? 7. How are your hearts fuited to secret spiritual duties ? those that lie between God and your own fouls, and relate to the workings of the thoughts and affections. What inward grief and forrow have you upon account of fin? What humility in a sense of your vileness and corruption ? What defires have you after God? What exercise of love to him, trust and dependance upon him, care to please and keep up daily intimate communion with him, as one you have more to do with, than with all the world besides ? 8. How are you affected to Christ, the purchafer of grace, through whom it is bestow'd, and by whose spirit it is wrought? Such as are made partakers of saving grace cannot but adore and love him, have high thoughts of him, and bless God for him; remembering with thankfulness his aftonishing love, sufferings and death, and what they owe thereto; the prevalency of his interceffion, and what they have received therefrom, and further hope to do. O my foul, can I look upon myself as an heir of the grace of life, grace as leading up to glory, and shall not that Redeemer be infinitely dear to me, whose blood is the price of all ? 9. How are you affected to the faints? Doth the grace of God appearing in them, the image of God impressed upon them, recommend them to your love and esteem, how low or mean foever in the world? 10. What 10. What delight do you experience in God and his ways? viz. How do you stand affected towards heaven? Do your defires move upward, are your motions and operations directed that way? Do you think with pleasure of the perfect ftate and work which all there are advanced to; the holiness and happiness; the purity and glory that fill that world? Do you long, and breathe, and daily aspire, after perfect conformity to God, and perfect blessedness in him, so as never to be quiet or fatisfied with any thing elfe? This is fuitable to the temper and experience of faints. Our conversation is in heaven." Phil. iii. 20. And where the saving grace of God is bestowed, it will beget in the foul a tendency to the enjoyment of him in endless glory. Thus I have endeavoured to help you to understand your cafe; whether you have that grace which 'tis here proclaimed, the Lord will give, or are yet deftitute of it. Let me defire you to treat the matter with folemnity, like persons upon the brink of an everlasting world; to be tried and adjudged to the inheritance of the faints in light, or to utter darkness, as you are found in a state of grace or of fin. Set yourselves, therefore, in the prefence of God, with your Bibles before you, and beg of God to make you ferious and faithful, and by his convincing spirit, direct and enable you to bring. the matter to an issue. Let Let me only add a word by way of soliloquy. And is it plain, O my soul, that I am destitute of the divine grace, without a title to, or meetness for the heavenly glory? How deplorable is the state in which I have hitherto lived! And shall I any longer continue in it? Shall I not prefently arife and go to my Father, and owning my fin and misery, in the deepest humility, but with fupporting hope, cry for mercy ? O how reviving is it to hear, The Lord will give grace; grace which I want, and can never be happy without: That 'tis the Father of mercies with whom I have to do: That the Lord will give; he whose power and goodness are always the fame, and always infinite; able to cure and heal my foul; recover and bring me up, how low foever I am fallen, and willing to do fo. Observe, O my foul, how the proposal runs. The Lord will give, freely bestow, his grace, which I so greatly need, and can never deserve ? What comfort is here in every word, against my weakness and unworthiness? If the Lord will work, let me not question his power : If he will give with whom is the fountain of life, let me not diftrust his goodness. To him let me direct my eye, and the defires of my foul: At the footstool of his throne let me bow my knee: To him let me fend my earneft repeated prayers, and give him no rest, till I hear that joyful, reviving word drop from his lips, My grace is fufficient for thee: fufficient to pardon and purify, heal and save thy foul. And And do I thus pass into the number of those blessed ones, to whom the divine principle is communicated : I who was sometime darkness, am I made light in the Lord? fick, but am I now healed? dead, but now made alive? alienated from the love and life of God, now by grace restored to both! O my foul, what a change have I undergone! Shall I not adore, and bless God for this! Shall I not love, and trust, and delight in him! Omy God, "Whom have I in hea ven but thee; and there is none upon earth " that I defire befides thee." Because thy loving" kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise "thee." Bless the Lord, O my foul, and all " that is within me bless his holy name." Bless the Lord, &c. SERMON [29] SERMON III. God the All-fufficient Portion, and Choice of his Saints. PSALM LXXIII. 25, 26. Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I defire besides thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. saint, upon a HESE are the words of a serious survey of both worlds, fixing on God as his portion, or chief good. They express the sense of foul with which such an one first comes to God, and afterwards renews his covenant with him. The Lord's portion is his people, Deut. xxxii. 9. and he also is theirs: Their choice of him is hearty and particular. Lam. iii. "The Lord is my portion, faith my foul." And the text is expressive of the fatisfaction they have in him, such as they have in none else. 24. The |