my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world."

Be it, then, our steadfast care to live as we pray; to restrain all sinful desires and actions; to set our affections on things above; to have regard to the manners of that holy society to which we belong-the city of the New Jerusalem-the Church of the living God enrolled in heaven. By God's goodness we are now members of his militant, suffering Church here on earth. Our faith and hope is, that if we live as that Church directs, and pass the time of our sojourning here in the fear of God, we shall, when the resurrection is past, be made partakers of the glory and blessedness of his Church triumphant in heaven, through the power and merit of him who is the resurrection and the life, Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. Amen.

DISCOURSE XXII.

MERCY AND JUDGMENT.

ROM. ix. 18.

Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and

whom he will he hardeneth.

THIS text being often misunderstood, at least misin

terpreted, I have thought it best to endeavour to point out its sense and meaning, according to the apostle's discourse in which it occurs.

The instance of Pharaoh, in this chapter, is introduced by St. Paul, to illustrate the justice of God in rejecting the Jews from being his covenanted people, and consigning them over to punishment,. on account of their impenitency and hardness of heart, and calling in the Gentiles to be heirs of the promises made to Abraham.

The Jewish converts to Christianity strongly insisted that the Gentiles who embraced the faith of Christ, should submit also to circumcision and the observance of the law of Moses. This they did from the opinion of its necessity, in order to obtain righteousness, that is, justification, or the remission of sins from God, which they supposed was confined to the Mosaic law. This, indeed, seems to have been the chief stumbling-block of the Jews, and the principal reason of their generally rejecting the gospel. However willing they may have been that the Gentile converts should, as Christians, be admitted to equal privileges with themselves, they could not bear that they should be exempt from the ceremonial law which they supposed was

necessary for them to observe, because God had made it necessary to salvation.

Not only to ward off the ill effects of this opinion, but entirely to root it out, seems to have been the design of St. Paul, in writing his epistle to the Jewish Christians at Rome. In it he goes to the bottom of the matter, and endeavours to convince both Jews and Gentiles, that righteousness, justification, remission of sins, that is, freedom, or exemption from punishment on account of sin, could not be obtained by the Jews through the law of Moses, because that law denounced a curse against every one who continued not in all things written in it, to do them; and because they had all been sinners against it, doing those things which it prohibited, and so were liable to the curse denounced by it: nor could the Gentiles be free from punishment by the law, or light of nature under which they lived; because they had broken it by their idolatry, and other grievous crimes and immoralities, and were, on that account, condemned of their own consciences.

They must, therefore, both Jews and Gentiles, embrace the gospel, become Christians, and rely on the atonement and satisfaction of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins. And, having received the gospel which promised forgiveness of sins and eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ, the Gentile must not despise the Jew on account of his attachment to the law; nor ought the Jew to require obedience from the Gentile, nor consider himself as obliged to obey it.

To this account of the method of obtaining remission of sins, the Jews would object, that they were Abraham's seed, to whom the promises of God were made; and that it was absurd to suppose that God would exclude them from the blessings promised-implying forgiveness of sins, and acceptance with God, because they were sinners; and, accept the converted Gentiles, who were not included in the promises, to all the blessings of them, though they were also sinners against God.

To pursue his argument, it became necessary for the apostle to assert that God had rejected the nation of the

Jews from being any longer his covenanted people, on account of the hardness of their hearts, and untractable disposition. In answering the objection, he assigns the reason of this dispensation of God.

The objection consists of two parts, which he answers distinctly. He first distinguisheth between the seed, children, posterity of Abraham according to the promise, and according to the flesh. Ishmael was Abraham's first-born son; born after the promise of Canaan was made to him, and entered into the covenant of circumcision at its first institution yet Isaac, at that time not born, inherited the promise; for God said, "My covenant will I establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear unto thee." And that the Jews might not object to this instance, as though Ishmael had offended God, and was excluded for his wickedness, St. Paul adds the further instance of Jacob and Esau, twin children of Isaac, and, consequently, children of the same mother; neither of whom could be suspected of having offended God, for they were not yet born into the world, and could have done neither good nor evil: yet God preferred Jacob to be heir of the promise before Esau. All the natural children of Abraham were not, therefore, the children to whom the promise belonged, for they inherited it not.

As to the children of Jacob, to whom the other part of the objection relates: To reject them, and call in the converted Gentiles to inherit the blessings which had belonged to them, was, according to the judgment of God, a punishment for their infidelity and opposition to the strong and clear evidence which had been before them, both from scripture and miracles-that Jesus was Messiah, the Son of God. By resisting this evidence, and refusing to be convinced by it, they had rendered themselves like Pharaoh, hard in heart, and obstinate against the truth, deservedly obnoxious to punishment, and incapable of being benefited by the blessings promised to Abraham. For,

By the children of Abraham cannot be meant his natural descendants; for then Ishmael, and Esau, and the children of Ketura, would not have been excluded, but the

children of his faith-they who believed and obeyed God as he did. And if the Gentiles deserved this character, through their faith in Christ, "who is over all, God blessed for ever," they in truth, are Abraham's seed, and the heirs of the promises made to him, which the unbelieving Jews now unjustly claimed, and from which they are justly rejected by the righteous judgment of God.

With God there can be no unrighteousness; and this procedure with the Jews, rejecting them for their unbelief and impenitency, was perfectly agreeable to the declaration he had formerly made to Moses; I " will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy. (Exod. xxxiii. 19.)

Let it be remembered, that this declaration of God was made to Moses concerning the Israelites, who had fallen into idolatry in the matter of the golden calf, and had made themselves naked by their sin; that is, had deprived themselves of the divine presence and protectionhad broken and cancelled the covenant of their God, insomuch that he threatened to consume them in a moment. But, on the intercession of Moses, he again took them so far into favour as to promise to go with them, and conduct them to the land he had given them. On this occasion he proclaimed it to be a principal part of his glory to distri bute mercy and judgment to offenders, according to his own good pleasure. No more, therefore, was done by God for the idolatrous Gentiles, in receiving them into his Church, that is, making them his covenanted people, upon their conversion to Christianity, than had been formerly done for the idolatrous Jews, in taking them again to be his people, after the sin of the golden calf.

The principle on which this reasoning is founded could not be controverted by the Jews. It was drawn from a text of their own Scripture; from the solemn declaration of the Lord God of the Hebrews himself, and made on a very solemn occasion. The application, too, was fair and pertinent, and fully justifies the Apostle in the inference he draws from it: "So, then, it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy;"