SERMON XI.

St. JOHN XV. 5.

-For without me, ye can do nothing.

UR Saviour, in the former part of the verse, having told his disciples, That he was the vine, and that they were only branches;-intimating, in what a degree their good fruits, as well as the success of all their endeavours, were to depend upon his communications with them; -he closes the illustration with the inference from it, in the words of the text,-For without me, ye can do nothing. -In the 11th chapter to the Romans, where the manner is explained in which a christian stands by faith, there is a like illustration made use of, and probably with an eye to this, -where St. Paul instructs us, that a good man stands as the branch of a wild olive does, when it is grafted into a good olive tree;

Z

and that is, it flourishes not through its own virtue, but in virtue of the root, and such a root as is naturally not its own.

It is very remarkable in that passage,-that the apostle call a bad man a wild olive tree; -not barely a branch, (as in the other cafe) but a tree, which having a root of its own, supports itself, and stands in its own strength, and brings forth its own fruit.-And so does every bad man in respect of the wild and four fruit of a vicious and corrupt heart.-According to the resemblance, -if the apostle intended it, he is a tree, -has a root of his own,and fruitfulness, such as it is, with a power to bring it forth without help. But in respect of religion, and the moral improvements of virtue and goodness, - the apostle calls us, and reason tells us, we are no more than a branch; and all our fruitfulness, and all our fupport, -depend so much upon the influence and communications of God, that without him we can do nothing, as our Saviour declares in the text. There is scarce any point in our religion wherein men have run into such violent extremes as in the senses given to this, and

fuch like declarations in Scripture, of our fufficiency being of God;-fome understanding them so, as to leave no meaning at all in them;-others, too much-the one interpreting the gifts and influences of the Spirit, so as to destroy the truth of all fuch promises and declarations in the gofpel;- the other carrying their notions of them fo high, as to destroy the reason of the gofpel itself, and render the christian religion, which consists of fober and consistent doctrines, -the most intoxicated, the most wild and unintelligible institution that ever was in the world.

This being premised, I know not how I can more seasonably engage your attention this day, than by a short examination of each of these errors;-in doing which, as I shall take fome pains to reduce both the extremes of them to reason, it will necessarily lead me, at the fame time, to mark the safe and true doctrine of our church, concerning the promised influences and operations of the spirit of God upon our hearts; -which, however depreciated through the first mistake, or boafted of beyond meafure through the second, muft nevertheless be so limited and understood, as, on one hand, to make the gospel of Chrift confistent with itself, and, on the other, to make it consistent with reafon and common fenfe.

If we confider the many express declarations, wherein our Saviour tell his followers, before his crucifixion, -That God would fend his spirit the comforter amongst them, to supply his place in their hearts; and, as in the text, that without him they could do nothing: if we conceive them as spoken to his difciples with an immediate view to the emergencies they were under, from their natural incapacities of finishing the great work he had left them, and building upon that large foundation he had laid, without fome extraordinary help and guidance to carry them through, -no one can dispute that evidence and confirmation which was after given of its truth; as our Lord's disciples were illiterate men, confequently unskilled in the arts and acquired ways of perfuafion. - Unless this want had been fupplied, -the first obstacle in their labours must have discouraged and put an end