you, sirs, of that number, or of the number of those who, as the Scripture expresses it, have believed through grace? It is the question on which your eternal state will turn at last; and therefore you would do well to examine it now. And I would beseech you to endeavour to trace it in its production, and in its effects; or, in other words, to inquire how it has been introduced into your minds, and how it has wrought there. You may surely discover it in the one or in the other, if it be your prevailing character; and I hope many of you will be able to discover it in both.

(1.) Can you trace faith in its production and advance in your souls?

Do you recollect any time in which you had no thoughts of the Lord Jesus Christ, and no workings of affection towards him? And has there been any alteration in your minds in this respect? All true faith in Christ is founded on a conviction of sin, and of the misery to which you are exposed by it. Have you indeed been brought to this conviction? Have you heard, and, if I may be allowed the expression, have you felt yourselves condemned by the sentence of a righteous, a holy, yea, a merciful God? And have you, by that apprehension, been stirred up to cry for pardon and deliverance? You have heard of Christ under the character of a Saviour: but I put it to your consciences, have you seriously viewed him under that character? And, from a full persuasion of his correspondency, when considered in this view, to all the necessities of your case, and all the exigencies of your souls, have you entered into any treaty with him? Recollect it

seriously. Have you ever presented yourselves before God, with an humble and cordial regard to Christ? And do you know what it is, secretly and sincerely to repose your souls upon the merit of his obedience, and the efficacy of his blood, with humble. acknowledgment of your own guilt, with entire resignation of your own righteousness, as utterly unworthy of being mentioned before God, and with a cordial and joyful resolution to devote yourselves to his service as long as you have any being, and through time and eternity to testify your gratitude by a constant series of obedience?

If you can trace such a process of thought and experience as this, you have great reason to conclude, that you experimentally know what faith is, and that through faith you are in the way to salvation. Yet it is always to be remembered, that faith is to be shown by its works. Give me leave, therefore, farther to inquire,

(2.) Whether you can trace the genuine effects of it in your hearts and lives?

You believe in Christ: but has that faith in him produced a continued and habitual intercourse with him? I speak not of an intercourse absolutely uninterrupted; for that the present state of human life will not admit. But has it produced frequently repeated and direct acts of application to him, and converse with him? One can hardly imagine how it is possible for a true believer to suffer these to be long and often intermitted; especially to such a degree, that days, and weeks, and months should pass, as if all the business between Christ and his soul were quite finished, and he and his Lord were

parted by consent, till death, or some very urgent and extraordinary circumstance, renewed the interviews between them. I would ask farther, has this faith to which you pretend, produced a resemblance to Christ's example, and an obedience to his precepts, in the course of your lives? You know that true faith is operative; and you know, in the general, the genius and design of Christianity. I would demand of your consciences, how far you comply with it. Is your temper and conduct, in the main, such as, you well know, our Lord intended that the temper and conduct of his people should be? Is it devout and spiritual, just and charitable, sober aud temperate, humble and cautious? Is religion your care, and do you maintain a habitual watchfulness over yourselves, that your behaviour may be agreeable and honourable to your profession? Once more, are you ardently pursuing 'greater attainments in the Christian temper and life, so that you may be spoken of as hungering and thirsting after righteousness?'

If you can answer such inquiries as these in the affirmative, you have a great deal of reason to hope that faith is yours, and salvation is yours. But if you cannot so answer them, a confident assurance that you shall be saved, is so far from being faith, that it is presumption and folly, and, far from being any security to you, will only prove adding sin to sin. That confidence, by whatever name you may affect to call it, is indeed unbelief: unbelief of God's threatenings, while it vainly pretends to trust his promises: for he hath not more expressly said, that "he who believeth on the Son, hath everlasting life;"

than he has added, that "he who is disobedient to the Son, shall not see life." While sin reigns in your life, and thereby appears to reign in your heart, did you pretend a revelation from heaven as to the truth of your faith, every wise man would conclude that pretended revelation was a delusion; and that, how solemnly soever it might be ascribed to the Spirit of truth and holiness, it really proceeded from the father of lies.

Excuse the plainness with which fidelity to God, and to you, obliges me to speak on this head, and be assured, that it proceeds from a real concern to secure the honour of that glorious doctrine of Salvation by Grace, which I have now been labouring to establish, and the demonstration and improvement of which I shall further pursue in the ensuing dis

courses.

SERMON II.

FAITH IS THE GIFT OF GOD.

EPHESIANS ii. 8.

"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God."

In the works of nature, many of those things which, to a superficial eye, may appear as defects, will, on a careful inquiry, be found to be marks of consummate wisdom, and kind contrivance. And on the same principle, I confess, I have often thought there is reason to be thankful for the very inaccuracies of Scripture. The haste in which the apostle Paul was, by the multiplicity of his affairs, obliged to write, has given us an opportunity of viewing more of his heart in his Epistles, than we might perhaps have seen if he had frequently reviewed and corrected them. Those parentheses in particular, and those repetitions, which render the style less elegant, and the sense sometimes less conspicuous, do nevertheless show to greater advantage, how deeply those thoughts were impressed upon his mind, which he introduces in such a manner. And of this, the words which I have now been reading are an instance. In the course of his preceding argument, a few verses before, while he is telling the Ephesians, the God who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved them, even when they were