Mingle therefore caution with your zeal, and self-diffidence with all your firmness and resolution.

PART II.

WE have seen the Christian fainting amidst the fatigues of his warfare. And we are now to view him,

SECONDLY, Resuming his wonted courage, and in the strength of divine grace, resolving to pursue. "He will not ignominiously submit. No. He will keep the field-maintain the conflict-push the victory." A brave resolution this! A resolution to which he feels himself impelled by gratitude, duty and interest. He considers what will be the consequence of yielding on the one hand, and of pursuing on the other. In order therefore to animate you, Christians, to perseverance, let me represent to you these consequences in all their solemnity and importance.

I. What will be the effect, should you throw down your arms, yield to the enemy, and apostatize from your profesion?

I am satisfied indeed, that he who is well affected to the cause of Christ, and engages in it upon right principles, will be victorious. Of this we may be assured, not only from the nature. of religion itself, which is described as a well of water springing up unto everlasting life a, as the anointing which abideth in them that have received it, and as seed which remaineth in him who is born of Godb; but likewise from many clear and express promises to that purpose, which I must not stay here to recite. Yet it is very observable, that the Christian is frequently so addressed, exhorted and reasoned with in the Bible as if the event of his profession were doubtful. Let us fear, lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it c. Brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure; for if ye do these things, ye shall never fail d. And the apostle, having exhorted the Corinthians so to run as that they might obtain, thus speaks concerning himself: I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection; lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a cast-away e. Now, though the event is well known to God,

a John iv. 14. d 2 Pet. i. 10.

1 John ii. 27.; iii. 9. e 1 Cor. ix, 24, 27.

c Heb. iv. 1.

and he will most certainly fulfil the unalterable promises of his grace; yet there is the greatest propriety in these admonitions and cautions. For since God deals with us as reasonable creatures, and since it is unquestionably our duty to persevere; addresses of this sort are the fittest means to quicken us to diligence and watchfulness, and so to subserve the great end which infinite wisdom and mercy propose, even our everlasting salvation: The utility also of these general exhortations, clearly appears from a reflection, that men are prone to deceive themselves as to their state towards God, and that the characters of good and bad are too often blended under a profession of religion. I am fully justified therefore, by the example of Scripture, and that founded on the truest reason, in warning the Christian of the dreadful consequences of apostacy, and so urging him to perseverance. Consider then,

1. That if you are so unhappy as to yield, you will lose the advantages you have already gained. So says the apostle John, Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward a. He who has been any time engaged in this warfare, must needs have reaped some of the fruits of it. And how sad! to struggle, and then yield; to get the victory in a few instances, and through weariness and inconstancy to lose the benefit resulting from it. Some there are of this character, who having set their hand to the plough, look back. Nor is their condition to be enough lamented! With at least an appearance of zeal and resolution, they commenced the disciples of Jesus, and for a while gave fair and promising hopes to those around them, that they would shine with distinguished lustre in the rank they filled. Advantages they had gained. They had reformed their lives, shook off their former vain company, got the better of some ill habits, assumed the venerable name of Christians, and perhaps endured reproach for the sake of religion. But alas! they grew weary, they de-. sisted, they gave up. And such was the sad issue of all their faint struggles, their heartless prayers, their partial reformations. O what pity! Ye did run well, we may say to such, in the language of the apostle, who did hinder? Where is the blessedness ye spake of? are ye so foolish? having begun in the spirit,

a. 2 John 8.

are ye now made perfect by the flesh? Have ye suffered so many things in vain a?

Now their conduct, lamentable as it is, may be improved by the real Christian to his own unspeakable advantage. Look back on your past engagements, and say, Whether you can find it in your heart to renounce them? Call to mind what you have endured, and what you have enjoyed, and ask yourself, Whether you can be content to lose the things you have thus wrought, and not to receive a full reward? You are perhaps, at present, borne down with doubts, and fears, and sorrows. But will you, after the many cries and tears you have poured out to Heaven, after the many vows and resolutions you have formed, after the many attacks you have sustained from stubborn and powerful corruptions, and after the many signal victories you have won; will you, I say, after all give up? If so, you have prayed in vain, you have fought in vain, you have suffered in vain, you have conquered in vain. But it is farther to be remembered,

2. That if you do not pursue, you will not only lose the advantages you have gained, but you will be overcome. And what so much to be dreaded as a defeat, a total defeat, a defeat in such a cause as this, and which draws after it consequences, the most important and alarming? Here shame and misery present themselves to our view. Nor let us hastily dismiss them from our attention. Give them a place, Christian, at least for a while, in your most serious thoughts. I speak to him who, instead of renewing the fight, parlies with temptation; who, instead of enduring hardness as a good soldier of Christ, is unhappily sunk into a careless, neutral, indolent state.

Dread of shame is a powerful incentive to action. It is so with every brave and ingenuous mind. And if to conquer is glorious b, to be conquered, especially in the cause you are engaged, and in the situation you are placed, must be base and ignominious to the last degree. The triumphs of Satan! the triumphs of the world! the triumphs of inbred lusts and passions ! how ungrateful, how mortifying, how insufferable in the ear of him, who hath conceived a sovereign contempt for these enemies of God and man! and who hath long since judged their usurpaa Gal. v. 7. iv. 15. iii. 3, 4. 6 Kaλòv Tò vinãv. Eurip. VOL. I.

Z

tion and dominion, the most abject and wretched yoke, that can possibly be imposed on an immortal mind! And yet these taunts, these reproaches you must endure, if you submit. To this purpose our Saviour speaks under a different metaphor, If a man lay the foundation of a building, and is not able to finish it, they that behold it will begin to mock him, saying, this man began to build, and was not able to finish a.-Consider likewise, Christian, the dishonour which such a base submission may reflect, through the perverse reasonings of wicked men, on the noble cause you have asserted, on the generous Captain under whose banner you fight, and on the brave company in which you are enrolled. A thought this which cannot but sensibly touch his heart, who enters into the genuine spirit of religion, and feels an unconquerable attachment to Christ, and to his fellow-disciples. It is a striking passage of one of the ancient fathers, who, in order to rouse Christians from their sloth, and to animate them in their warfare, represents Satan as thus contrasting the services of his disciples, to those of Christ's disciples, and so upbraiding him with the baseness and perfidy of such who call themselves Christians. "For those, O Christ, whom thou seest with me, I have not been buffeted, scourged or crucified; I have not shed my blood for them, nor redeemed them, though they are my family, at the expence of my passion and death: no, nor do I promise them a heavenly kingdom, or, having restored to them immortality, invite them back again to paradise. And yet they present me gifts exceeding great and precious, and acquired with much pains and labour. Shew me now, O Christ, any of thy disciples, who, though they are instructed by thy precepts, and shall receive for earthly, heavenly things, have yet the gratitude to make thee such expensive returns as these. With these my terrene and perishing gifts (meaning the spectacula or public shews frequent at that time) no one is fed, or clothed, or comforted; they all perish in the idle vanity of deceiving pleasures, between the madness of him who exhibits, and of those who behold them. Thou promisest eternal life to them that serve thee; and yet thy servants, whom thou wilt thus honour with divine and heavenly rewards, scarcely equal mine, who amidst all their labour perish. O! my dear brethren, adds the pious

a Luke xiv. 29, 30.

Father, what shall we answer to these things a?"-Surely then, if the not having served Christ with that zeal and attention which his generosity and love demand, is a just occasion of shame and sorrow; disgrace and infamy must be the lot of him who absolutely deserts the service of such a Master, and enlists again under the banner of Satan.

Nor is reproach and shame the only effect of such conduct: it must, it will be followed with misery, both in this life, and in that which is to come. Doubtless there is some kind of pleasure which wicked men feel in the indulgence of their lusts; but is that pleasure capable of proving a temptation to you, Christian, to renounce your allegiance to Christ-you who have known what the opposite pleasures mean? Or, if it may be supposed for a moment to shake your resolution, does it not lose all its force, when you come to reflect on the perplexity, guilt and horror it draws after it? Can you think calmly of being reduced to your former state of vassalage and slavery, or of being treated with far greater indignity and cruelty, than Pharaoh treated the Israelites, or Nebuchadnezzar the Jewish prince? Can you be content not only to be spoiled of all your wealth, and stripped of your royal raiment, but to have your eyes put out, your feet bound with fetters of brass, and a loathsome dungeon appointed you for your residence? yet such must be your hard lot if you submit. If sin and Satan, and the world triumph, it must be at the expence of truth, honour, peace, and every thing that is dear to you. Reason must be dethroned, the judgment perverted, the conscience enslaved, and the passions, all of them, led away into the most painful and wretched servitude. And can you submit to these miseries? Be it so that you are greatly dejected and borne down with past fatigues, the want of present refreshment, and doubtful apprehensions as to the issue of the combat. Yet even this state is preferable to that of a slave. If you tamely surrender yourself into the hands of your enemies, you will be held faster in the chains of captivity than ever; you will contract guilt upon your conscience, which will either sooner or later become intolerable; and the end will be ruin, total irrecoverable ruin. When the unclean spirit,' says our Saviour, is gone out of a man, he walketh a Cyprian. Edit. Oxon. p. 206.