as they can never be enough thankful for the inestimable benefit, they have received, so they can never be enough careful to retain, and to improve it. If we, who have once embraced the faith, revolt from it; or, while we make a shew of professing the faith, pollute ourselves again with those sins, from which we have been cleansed; nay, if we do not strive to purify our hearts and minds still more and more by the continual efficacy of a lively faith in Jesus; if, in any of these ways, we be in the number of those, who draw back unto perdition, what further sacrifice remains for us, or what hope have we in that, which has been already offered?

Judas himself, be it remembered, was washed among the other Disciples; yet he was not clean, for all that, nor had he any part with Jesus. What can this mean, but that something is to be done, on our part, when the Redeemer has done his? and that the permanent effect of this washing, as to any particular person, depends on his care to keep those robes white, which have been washed in the blood of the lambn ?

Rev, vii. 14.

The account, and the conclusion, of the whole matter, is plainly this-If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: but, if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, then have we fellowship with him, and HIS BLOOD CLEANSETH US FROM ALL SINo.

• 1 John vi. 7.

SERMON XI.

PREACHED JUNE 20, 1773.

MARK ix. 49.

For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt.

THIS is generally esteemed one of the most difficult passages in the four Gospels. I confess, I take no pleasure in commenting on such passages, especially in this place; because the comment only serves, for the most part, to gratify a learned curiosity, and is, otherwise, of small use.

But, when a difficult text of Scripture can be explained, and the sense, arising out of the

explanation, is edifying and important, then it falls properly within our province to exert our best pains upon it.

This I take to be the case of the difficulty before us, which therefore I shall beg leave to make the subject of the present discourse.

There are Two very different interpretations, of which the words are capable: and they shall both of them be laid before you, that ye may adopt either, as ye think fit; or even reject them both, if ye do not find them sufficiently supported.

To enable you to go along with me in what follows, and to judge of either interpretation, whether it be reasonable or not, it is necessary to call your attention to the preceding verses of this chapter, to which the text refers, and by which it is introduced.

Our blessed Lord (for the words, I am about to explain, are his) had been discoursing to his Disciples on offences, or scandals; that is, such instances of ill-conduct, such indulgences of any favourite and vicious inclination, as tended to obstruct the progress of the Gospel, and were likely to prevent either themselves,

or others, from embracing, or holding fast, the faith. Such offences, it was foreseen,

would come: but woe to that man (as we read in the parallel passage of St. Matthew's Gospel) by whom the offence cometh.

And, to give the greater effect to this salutary denunciation, our Saviour proceeds, in figurative, indeed, but very intelligible terms, to enforce the necessity of being on our guard against such offences, what pain soever it might cost us to subdue those passions, from which they were ready to spring. No virtue of selfdenial was too great to be attempted in such a cause. A hand, a foot, an eye, were to be cut off, or plucked out; that is, inclinations, as necessary and as dear to us, as those members of the body, were to be suppressed or rejected by us, rather than the woe, denounced against the indulgence of them, be incurred. This woe is, that the offenders should be cast into hell-fire, where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched and it is subjoined three times, in the same awful words, to so many instances of supposed criminal indulgence, in the case alledged; or rather, to one and the same species of ill-conduct, differently modified,

P Matt xviii. 7.