he will give you his spirit; and if you have his spirit you cannot be reprobates: you will find his spirit to be quickening and refreshing; not like the spirit of the world, a spirit of reproach, envy, and all uncharitableness.

Most of your own experiences will confirm the truth hereof; for are not you reproached and flandered, and does not the world say all manner of evil against you, merely because you follow JESUS CHRIST; because you will not go to the same excess of riot with them? While they are singing the fongs of the drunkard, you are singing psalms and hymns: while they -are at a playhouse, you are hearing a fermon: while they are drinking, revelling and mispending their precious time, and haftening on their own destruction, you are reading, praying, meditating, and working out your falvation with fear and trembling. This is matter enough for a world to reproach you, you are not polite and fashionable enough for them. If you will live godly, you must suffer persecution; you must not expect to go through this world without being perfecuted and reviled. If you were of the world, the world would love you; for it always loves its own; but if you are not of the world, it will hate you, it has done so in all ages, it never loved any but those who were pleased with its vanities and allurements. It has been the death of many a lover of JESUS, merely because they have loved him: And, therefore, my brethren, do not be surprized if you meet with a fiery trial, for all those things will be a means of sending you to your mafter the fooner.

:

:

The fpirit of the world is hatred; that of CHRIST is love: the spirit of the world is vexation; that of CHRIST is pleasure: the spirit of the world is forrow; that of CHRIST is joy: the spirit of the world is evil, and that of CHRIST is good: the spirit of the world will never fatisfy us, but CHRIST'S fpirit is all fatisfaction: the spirit of the world is misery; that of CHRIST is eafe. In one word, the spirit of the world has nothing lasting; but the spirit of CHRIST is durable, and will last through an eternity of ages: the spirit of CHRIST will remove every difficulty, fatisfy every doubt,

and

:

and be a means of bringing you to himself, to live with him fot ever and ever.

From the words of my text, I shall shew you,

I. The neceffity of receiving the spirit of CHRIST.

II. Who CHRIST is, whose spirit you are to receives • And then

Shall conclude with an exhortation to all of you, high and low, rich and poor, to come unto the LORD JESUS CHRIST and to beg that you may receive his spirit, so that you may not be reprobates.

First, I am to shew you the necessity there is of receiving the spirit of CHRIST.

And here, my brethren, it will be necessary to confider you as in your first state; that is, when God first created Adam, and placed him in the garden of Eden, and gave him a privilege of eating of all the trees in the garden, except the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which flood in the midst thereof. Our first parents had not been long in this state of innocence, before they fell from it, they broke the divine commands, and involved all their pofterity in guilt; for as Adam was our representative, so we were to stand or fall in him; and as he was our foederal head, his falling involved all our race under the power of death, for death came into the world by fin; and we all became liable to the eternal punishment due from GOD, for man's disobedience to the divine command.

Now as man had finned, and a fatisfaction was demanded, it was impoffible for a finite creature to fatisfy him, who was a God of fo strict purity as not to behold iniquity: And man by the justice of God would have been fent down into the pit, which was prepared of old for the devil and his angels; but when justice was going to pass the irrevocable sentence, then the LORD JESUS CHRIST came and offered himself a ranfom

VOL. VI.

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a ransom for poor finners. Here was admirable condescension of the LORD JESUS CHRIST! that he who was in the bosom of his father, should come down from all that glory, to die for such rebels as you and I are, who if it lay in our power, would pull the Almighty from his throne: Now can you think that if there was no need of CHRIST's death, can you think that if there could have been any other ransom found, whereby poor finners might have been saved, GOD would not have spared his only begotten Son, and not have delivered him up for all that believe in him?

This, my brethren, I think proves to a demonstration, that it was necessary for CHRIST to die: But consider, it will be of no service to know that CHRIST died for finners, if you do not accept of his spirit, that you may be sanctified, and fitted for the reception of that JESUS, who died for all those who believe in him. The fin of your nature, your original fin, is sufficient to fink you into torments, of which there will be no end; therefore unless you receive the spirit of CHRIST you are reprobates, and you cannot be faved: Nothing short of the blood of JESUS applied to your souls, will make you happy to all eternity: Then, feeing this is so absolutely necessary, that you cannot be saved without having received the spirit of CHRIST, but that ye are reprobates, do not rest contented 'till you have good hopes, through grace, that the good work is begun in your fouls; that you have received a pardon for your fins; that CHRIST came down from heaven, died, and made fatisfaction for your fins. Don't flatter yourselves that a little morality will be fufficient to save you; that going to church, or prayers, and facrament, and doing all the duties of religion in an external manner, will ever carry you to heaven; no, you must have grace in your hearts; there must be a change of the whole man.

You must be born again, and become new creatures, and have the fpirit of CHRIST within you: And until you have that spirit of CHRIST, however you may think to the contrary, and please yourselves in your own imagination, I fay, you are no better than reprobates. You may content yourfelyes

5

selves with leading civil, outward decent lives, but what will that avail you, unless you have the spirit of the LORD JESUS CHRIST in your hearts: His kingdom must be set up in your fouls; there must be the life of GOD in the foul of man, else you belong not to the LORD JESUS CHRIST; and until you belong to him, you are reprobates.

This may feem as enthusiasm to some of you, but if it is so, it is what the apostle Paul taught; and therefore, my brethren, they are the words of truth. I beseech you, in the mercies of GOD in CHRIST JESUS, not to despise these words, as if they do not concern you, but were only calculated for the first ages of chriftianity, and, therefore, of no fignification: If you think thus, you are wronging your own souls; for whatever is written, was written for you in these times, as well as for the chriftians in the first ages of the church.

For the case stands thus between God and man: God, at first, made man upright, or, as the sacred penman expresses it, " In the image of God made he man;" his foul was the very copy, the transcript of the divine nature. He who had, by his almighty power, spoken the world into being, breathed into man the breath of spiritual life; and his foul became adorned with purity and perfection. This was the finishing stroke of the creation; the perfection both of the moral and material world; and it so resembled the divine Original, that GOD could not but rejoice and take pleasure in his own likeness : Therefore, we read, that when God had finished the inanimate and brutish part of the creation, " he looked, and behold it was good." But when that lovely, god-like creature man was made, " behold it was very good."

Happy, unspeakably happy, to be thus partaker of a divine Nature; and thus man might have continued still, had he continued holy; but GOD placed him in a state of probation, with a free grant to eat of every tree in the garden, except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The day he did eat thereof he was not only to become subject to temporal, but spiritual death; and so lose that divine image, that spiritual

happy man, being feduced by the devil, did se sorbidden fruit, and thereby became liable to that which the excinal God had pronounced on him for his Mine one. And we read, that foon after Adam was fallen,

hat he was naked; naked, not only as to

naked and deftitute of those divine graces

iny and d order then fell upon this world, now fpring up and overspread tay sont peor emblems, lifeless representations of and rebellion which sprung up in, and overunitetead of man, immediately after the fall. He www the temper of a beaft and devil.

14 this dreadful and difordered condition are all of us tt into the world: We are told, my brethren, that w had a fon in his own likeness," or with the fame nature which he himself had funk into, after eating thet bieden fruit: And experience, as well as fcripture, we are altogether born in fin, and, therefore, proves, that Sapable, whilft in fuch a state, to have communion with

Gov.

un

For as light cannot have communion with darkness, fo Gop can have no communion with fuch polluted fons of B. Here, here, appears the great and glorious end, why CHRIST was manifest in the flesh, to put an end to these ditorders, and to restore us unto the favour of GOD. He came down from heaven and shed his precious blood upon the crofs, to fatisfy the divine justice of his Father, for our fins, and fo, he purchased this Holy Ghost, who must once more re-stamp the divine image on our hearts, and make us capable of living with, and enjoying of GOD. We must be renewed by the spirit of Gon; he must dwell in us before we can be new creatures, and be freed from a reprobate spirit: the fpirit

I