in fervent prayer. Can you, O chriftian, be cool and indifferent, be dull and careless, when the world, the flesh, and the devil, are your implacable and unwearied oppofers? Dare you indulge yourself in carnal delights, or in a flothful profeffion, while the enemies of your peace and falvation are ever active and bufy in feeking to compass your fall, your difgrace, and if poffible your eternal ruin? Awake thou that fleepeft! Mistake not the field of battle for a bed of reft. Be fober; be vigilant.

Are there, notwithstanding the believer's weaknefs and the power of his enemies, fuch ftrong af furances given of his perfeverance, complete victory and final happiness? then, though with fear and trembling he should often reflect on his own infufficiency, he may rely on a faithful God, as his unerring guide and invincible guard, with confidence and joy. The remembrance of that, will be a conftant motive to humility and watchfulness. The exercise of this, will maintain peace and confolation of foul; will be an inexhaustible source of praise, in spite of all the attempts of inveterate malice in his moft enraged foes. For the Almighty says, Fear not: I am thy fhield, for ever to defend thee; and thy exceeding great reward, to render thee completely happy. While the eternal God is his refuge, and everlasting arms his fupport, there is no occafion to fear. If God be for us, who can be against us?-When the gates of hell and the powers of earth united affail the believer, menacing deftruction to both body and foul; then the name, the promises, the oath, and the attributes of Jehovah are a ftrong tower, an impregnable fortrefs: and confcious of his own inability to refift the enemy, he runneth into it, and is jafe from every attack, how

ever crafty or violent, The righteous man, the real christian, dwelleth on high, out of the reach of every evil. His place of defence is the munitions of rocks ; immoveable, as their folid foundations; inacceffible, as their lofty ridges. Nor fhall the favoured inhabitants of this everlasting fortrefs, ever be obliged to furrender for want of provifions. A fulness of living bread, and streams of living, water, are united with invincible ftrength. For, it is added, Bread fhall be given him, and his waters shall be sure. He hall want neither nourishment, nor protection; outward defence, nor inward comfort. Happy, then, thrice happy they that are under the Reign of Grace! Every attribute of Deity is engaged to promote their felicity. All the eternal counfels terminate in their favour; and Providence, in the whole course of events refpecting them, has a special regard to their advantage. Thus divine grace appears and reigns in the perfeverance of true believers. For grace provides the means neceffary to it; grace applies them; and omnipotent grace crowns them with fuccefs, to its own eternal honour and praife.

CHA P. XI.

Concerning the Perfon of Christ, by whom Grace reigns

THE perfon of Christ, considered in connec

tion with his work, is a copious and exalted. fubject; infinitely deferving our most attentive re-, gards. For his perfon is dignified with every excellency, divine and human; and his work includes every requifite for the complete falvation of our{ guilty fouls.

The conftitution of our Mediator's wonderful, perfon was an effect of infinite wisdom, and a ma-i nifestation of boundless grace. The hypoftatical union of his divine and human nature, is a fact of the laft importance to our hope of eternal hap, pinefs. For, by the perfonal union of thefe two natures, he is rendered capable of performing, the work of a Mediator between God and man. If he had not poffeffed a nature inferior to that which is divine, he could neither have, performed the obedience e required, nor have fuffered the penalty threatened by the holy law; both. which were abfolutely neceflary to the falvation of finners.

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Nor was it fufficient merely to affume a created nature; for it was to be that which is common to men. The law being given to man, the obedience required by it, as the condition of life, was to be performed by man, a real, though finlefs man. Because the wifdom and equity of the fupreme Legif

lator

lator could not have appeared in giving a law to our fpecies, if it had never, fo much as in one inftance, been honoured with perfect obedience by any in our nature. As man was become a tranfgreffor of the law, under its curfe, and bound to fuffer eternal mifery; it was neceffary that he who should undertake his deliverance, by vicarious fufferings, should be himself a man. It would not have appeared agreeable, that a different nature from that which finned fhould have fuffered for fin. Had it pleafed the infinite Sovereign to have faved the angels that fell, with reverence we may suppose, that it would have appeared fuitable to divine wisdom, that their de liverer fhould have affumed the angelic nature. But as man, having lost his happiness, was the creature to be redeemed; and as humanity, having loft its excellence, was the nature to be restored; it was neceffary that redemption, and this restoration, fhould be effected in the human nature. For as by the difobedience of one man, many were made finners, brought under condemnation, and liable to eternal death; even fo, by the obedience of one man, Jefus Chrift, must many be made righteous; be delivered from condemnation, and accepted to everlasting life.

It was neceffary also that the human nature of Chrift, in which he was to accomplish our deliverance, fhould be derived from the common root and fountain of it in our first parents. For it does not appear fuitable to answer the various purposes defigned by the affumption of our nature, that it fhould be created immediately out of nothing; nor yet that his body fhould be formed out of the duft, like that of the first man. Because, on that fuppofition, there would not have been any fuch aliance between him and us, as to lay a foundation for our hope of falva

tion

man.

tion by his undertaking, It was neceffary that he who fhould fuftain the character and perform the work of a Redeemer, fhould be our Goel or near kinfman; one to whom the right of redemption be longed*. So it was declared in the first promise; The feed of the woman, no other, shall bruife the ferpent's head. He was not only to affume the nature of man, but to partake of it by being made of a wan Thus he became our kinsman, and our bro, ther. According to that saying, both he that fan&tifieth, and they who are fanctified, are all of one nature: for which caufe, He is not afbamed to call them brethrens,Amazing condefcenfion this! That the fon of the Highest should become the child of a virgin; that the God of nature should become the feed of her who, with a bold, prefumptuous hand, plucked the fatal fruit which entailed death on all our fpecies; that He whom Angels adore fhould appear in our nature when funk in ruin, that he might obey, and bleed, and die, for our deliverance; what words can exprefs, what heart can conceive, the depth of that condefcenfion, and the riches of that grace, which appear in fuch a procedure !

It was abfolutely neceffary, notwithstanding, that the nature in which the work of redemption was to be performed, fhould not be fo deprived from its original fountain as to be tainted with fin; or partake, in any degree, of that moral defilement, in which every child of Adam is conceived and born. It behoved us to have fuch an highprieft, as was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from finners; for as a priest, he was to atone for our fins and ran fom our fouls, If the human nature of Chrift had

* Lev. xxv. 48, 49. Ruth ii, 20. and iii. 9. § Heb. ii, 11.

Margin.

partook