law is holy, just, and good; but I am carnal, sold under sin. O wretched man that I am! Rom. vii. 14. 24.

And what are the grounds of your love to God, and from what motives is it that you are influenced to love him? Does God, indeed, appear infinitely great, glorious, and amiable in being what he is? And do you love him because he is just such an one? Do you love to meditate his incomprehensibly glorious perfections, and wonder and adore? Are you glad that he knows all things, and can do every thing? Are the various manifestations of divine wisdom, in the moral government of the world, glorious in your eyes? Does it suit your heart that God governs the world as he does? Do you love that the pride of all flesh should be brought low, and the Lord alone be exalted? Are you glad that God loves righteousness and hates iniquity as he does; and do you heartily approve the strictness of his law in the matter of your duty, and the severity thereof against the least sin? And are you sweetly sensible of the infinite goodness of God, and of his truth and faithfulness? And does God appear infinitely glorious because he is just what he is? And is this the primary foundation of your love? In a word, do you see him as the great Creator, Preserver, and Governor of the world; as the Redeemer, Sanctifier, and Saviour of his people, as he has thus revealed himself, by his word, and in his works; and do you love him for being what he is? And do you also feel the powerful influence of those superadded obligations you are under to love him? In other cases, when we love any thing, we know why we love it: so, also, do believers know why they love the Lord their God.

And does it not appear to you infinitely reasonable that you should love God with all your heart; that you should be wholly his, and wholly for him, and make him your all, while you behold his infinite glory; his complete all-sufficiency; his original, entire right to you, and absolute authority over you? And does not his law, in requiring you to do so, appear to be infinitely right, perfectly holy, just, and good; worthy to stand in full force for ever, unabated and unaltered? And do you not see that the least want of conformity to this law, or transgression of it, is infinitely vile, and that a perfect conformity thereto deserves no thanks? And do you not feel yourself wholly to blame for your not being altogether suci as the law requires? Hypocrites are generally very ignorant of the law, in its true meaning and strictness; and so are ignorant of their want of conformity unto it, and of their inward contrariety to it, Rom. vii. 8, 9.; for otherwise all hypocrites would know certainly that they have no grace. But yet hypocrites, at least many of them, know something about the law, and their want of conformity to it, and something about their inward contrariety to it; and hence may complain of the blindness of their minds, the deadness of their hearts, and of their pride and worldliness: but no hypocrite is heartily sensible that the law is holy, just, and good in requiring perfection; and that he himself is entirely to blame for not being perfectly holy, and that the fault is wholly his. Some will say, " I desire to love God, and to aim at his glory, and do my duty; but no man is, or can be perfect: and God does not require more of us than we can do." And so they think themselves excusable, and are not sensible that it is infinitely vile in them not to love God with all their hearts. Others will say, "I can do nothing of myself: it is Christ that must do all. I desire to love God, but I cannot. It is the spirit that must fill my heart with love, and God is the sovereign dispenser of his grace; so that, if I am dead, and dull, and senseless, and stupid, I cannot help it." And so they also think themselves excusable, and are not sensible that it is infinitely vile in them not to love God with all their hearts. But now, how stands the case with you? Have you any secret way of excusing yourself? Or do you see that the law is holy, just, and good, and that you only are to blame, wholly to blame, and altogether without excuse; yea, and exceedingly vile, for all your blindness and deadness, and for every thing wherein you are not just what the law requires you to be? It is this which makes believers sensible of their desert of damnation, all their lives long, and loathe and abhor themselves before the Lord: and it is this which causes them more and more to see their need of Christ and free grace, and admire and prize the glorious gospel. O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me? I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Rom. vii. 24, 25.

And do you begin to be of a disposition really to love your neighbour as yourself? Are your affections under the government of a spirit of disinterested impartiality, so that you are disposed to value yourself only for those properties in you that are good and excellent, and only in proportion to their worth and excellence; and, by this rule, to esteem your neighbours, your friends, and your foes, and all men? And do you hate a contrary disposition in you? And is your heart full of love, and kindness, and benevolence, wishing well to all, seeking the good of all, and even grieved when your enemies are in adversity?

And to conclude: Does love to God and to your neighbour govern you in your thoughts, affections, and actions, and daily influence you to live to God, and do good in the world; so that now you are not your own, but given up to God, to do his will, seeking his glory? A holy life does as naturally proceed from a holy heart, as a stream does from a living fountain.

Once you was darkness; but are you now light in the Lord! Once, as to right, spiritual views of God, your neighbour, or yourself; of this world or the next, you had none: you was blind; your understanding was darkened; and so your apprehensions, were wrong, and you loved your wrong apprehensions, and took pleasure in error, falsehood, and sin: and hated the light; hated truth and duty: once you was wholly devoid of the divine image, and destitute of all good; yea, and you was wholly averse from God, and full of all evil. And did you ever see and feel this to be your state? And have you, by divine grace, been recovered out of it? Have you been effectually taught that your light was darkness, and your knowledge ignorance, and been made sensible of the blindness of your mind? And have you learnt that all your seeming goodness was counterfeit, and that in you did dwell no good thing; yea, that your seeming goodness was real wickedness, in that your heart was in perfect contrariety to God and his law? Has divine light shined in your heart, and your native darkness, as well as contracted blindness, been dispelled from your soul; so that now your views of God; of your neighbour and yourself; of this world and the next, are right, and your apprehensions according to truth? And has the truth made you free? Do you now look upon God, in some measure, according to the capacity of a creature, as he does upon himself, when he takes upon him the character of most high GOD, supreme LORD, and sovereign GOVERNOR of the whole world, and says, I am the Lord: that is my name, and besides me there is no other God? And do you see it is infinitely fit that all the world should love, worship, and adore him? Do you now look upon your neighbours in some measure as God does, when he commands you to love them as yourself; and so see that it is perfectly right that you should? And do you look upon yourself, and every thing in this world, in some measure as God does, when he commands you to deny yourself, and forsake all things for his sake; and see that it is most fit and reasonable to die to yourself and to this world, and give up yourself to God, to love him, and live to him, and delight in him for ever? And do you understand that the things which are seen are temporal, and that the things which are unseen are eternal? And do all possible troubles in the ways of God, in some measure, appear only as light afflictions, which are but for a moment, and not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed? Do you thus know the truth; and has the truth made you free from your old servitude; and are you effectually influenced and governed by these views and apprehensions, and this sense of things, to bring forth fruit to God an hundred-fold, or sixty-fold, or at least thirty-fold? For divine knowledge is efficacious, and the holy and divine effects and fruits are always equal to the degree of knowledge. (1 John iii. 6.) And every branch which bringeth not forth fruit, is cut off and cast into the fire. Are you thus born again, and become a new creature, and learnt to live a new and divine life?

And is it not now most manifest to you that all this is so far from having been the product of nature, that all that is in nature, every natural propensity of the heart, has, from first to last, been utterly against the change, and made a constant and mighty resistance? And do you not plainly perceive, that, from first to last, the work has been begun and carried on by God himself?

And does it not appear to vou as the most astonishing good

ness in God, and owing to nothing but his sovereign free grace, that you have thus been called out of darkness into marvellous light; turned from the power of sin and Satan, to serve the living God? And do you not plainly see there is nothing but the same infinite goodness and free grace to move God to carry on and complete this work in your heart, and that so, if ever you get to heaven, the whole of your salvation, from first to last, will be absolutely and entirely to be attributed to free grace? And have you not hence learnt to live upon free grace, through Jesus Christ, for all things?

And do you not perceive that he, who has begun, does actually carry on the work of grace in your hearts? And that all the external dispensations of providence and internal influences of the spirit concur in their operation, to humble you, and wean you from the world, and embitter sin; to bring you nearer to God and to love him, and to live to him, and to live upon him; and to make you more serious; more spiritually-minded and heavenly-minded; more watchful and prayerful, and more loving, and kind, and tender-hearted, and obliging to all mankind, both friends and foes; and to make you daily attend upon the duties of your particular calling, and upon all the common business of life, as a servant of God, in singleness of heart, doing service to the Lord?

And although you was once dead in sin, and wholly without strength, yet do you not now feel that you are spiritually alive, and so put into a capacity for a spiritual activity, and that you are engaged to be active for God? Not that your sufficiency is of yourself, as once you thought it was: for you are not sufficient of yourself, as of yourself; but your sufficiency is of God. Yet do you not find that, through Christ's strengthening, you can do all things? And do you not from the heart hate the way of lazy, dead-hearted hypocrites, who sit still, and carelessly cry, "We can do nothing; it is Christ that must do all;" and, under a notion of not doing any thing in their own strength, gratify their laziness, and do nothing at all! Accursed laziness! Accursed hypocrisy! Do you not feel, I say, that you are put into a capacity for spiritual activity? And are you not engaged to be active for God?