that if we renounce his church, we renounce that Spirit which we received by coming into his church; and, consequently, we renounce all that God can do for us; for all that God can do for us, must be done by and through his Spirit.

Hence appears the absurdity of the right so generally claimed by christian professors, of forming their own church, or of joining any party of people whom they shall please to call a church. Christ has but one church; and if we be not in his church, we are out of it; and, let our religion be ever so right and good in our estimation, it can have no warranted title to those privileges and bless-. ings, which are, by divine authority, annexed to the church of Christ.

God may look with pity on the misapprehensions of honest mistaken people; and we trust, and hope, and believe, he will not bring the errors of the head into judgment against them, where the heart is uncorrupt: Still, Christ has but one church, and all the contrivances of man cannot make another.

If we appoint a government of our own invention; or: have mistaken the government described in the new testament; our calling it the government of Christ's churchwill not make it so, If we set up a ministry by our own authority, and call our ministers Christ's ministers, it will confer no power from him upon them; and the sacraments they shall administer can be only our sacraments, and not Christ's. Should they preach, and what they preach be true, they have no commission from Christ, and preach not by his appointment. If we wish to receive the full benefit of the government, ministry, sacraments, and faith, which Christ hath appointed for us, we must have them according to his institution, or we have no right to apply to ourselves the gracious promises he hath made to his church-..that is, we must have them according to his own commission and authority exercised in his church.

The short of the matter is this; In the church of Christ, we have the government, faith, sacraments, wor

ship, and ministry or priesthood which are by divine authority: In the use of them, we can assuredly depend on the blessings which God hath annexed to them. To this church the Holy Spirit is given: As members of it, we receive his heavenly graces and influences, to conduct us to the hope of our calling---eternal life through Jesus the Redeemer. Out of the church, we are sure of none of these things (because, out of the church, God hath not promised them ;) but we are of the world...emphatically, of this wicked world, in which we live; which is in opposition to the church of God; the friendship of which is enmity with God."* Therefore, St. Paul writing to the Ephesians says, that before they were converted and brought into the church, they were aliens, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world.'t

In this church there may be hypocritical and corrupt members, even as there may be diseased and vitiated members in the natural body; therefore our Saviour compared his church to a net cast into the sea, which gathers good and bad fishes...to a field in which tares grow with the wheat. When the net is drawn to the shore, the fishes that are wholesome for food are reserved, and the bad ones thrown away; and when the harvest is gathered, the tares are separated from the wheat, and burned; so at the great harvest of the general judgment, the wicked shall be separated from the children of God in his church, and condemned with the evil world.

Most reasonable, therefore, is the direction the apostle hath given, in the beginning of the text, Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.' The unity of the Spirit can only be kept by keeping the unity of the church, which is the body animated by it. The disposition to do so will shew itself by continuing in the church, if, by God's grace, it is our happy lot to be already in it; or by coming into it with all sincerity of heart, if it be our misfortune hitherto to have kept ourselves out of it---submitting quietly and peaceably to its † Eph. ii. 12,

* James iv. 4.

Matt xiii. 25, &c. 47.

government-abiding in sacraments and worship with its ministers--- stedfastly holding the common faith once delivered to the saints---living in holiness and piety towards God, and in love and charity with all its members--and exercising good will and affection to all mankind.

་

The great bar to this conduct is a proud spirit---a high opinion of our own dignity, ability, knowledge; and more especially of our spiritual attainments. Such a person is above submission to any thing, but his own opinion; and that he claims the privilege of changing, as often as he pleases. For this reason, the author of the text recommends to the Ephesians, in the verse before it, lowliness and meekness, with long suffering,' and 'forbearing one another in love ;** because it is from the want of these amiable qualities, and from that only, that the one holy catholic church of Christ hath been so miserably rent and torn, as we see it is at this day: insomuch, that christian unity is little thought of, as if no mention had been ever made of it in the bible. Most ardently, most affectionately did the blessed Redeemer, just before he was betrayed, even at that very supper when he offered himself to the Almighty Father a willing victim for the sin of the world, pray for his apostles, and all those who should believe in him through their word, That they all might be one thereby fully justifying the holy author of the text, in using his name, in exhorting the Corinthian converts to christian unity: I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind, and in the same judgment.'‡

Remember, therefore, that as there is one body,' the holy catholic church of Christ; and one Spirit' which animates that body, even the Holy Spirit of God; one hope of your calling,' the hope of eternal life with God; 'one Lord,' Jesus Christ the head of the church; one faith,' on which it is founded; one baptism,' by which we are admitted into it; one God and Father of all, who † John xvii. 21.

* John xvii. 21.

1 Cor. i. 10.

is above all, and through all, and in you all; so christians, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another. '* They must, therefore, in all lowliness and meekness, endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,' that they may attain the end of their calling, eternal life; through Jesus Christ. Amen.

DISCOURSE IX.

THE DESCENT OF CHRIST INTO HELL.

ACTS ii. 25, 26, 27.

For David speaketh concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved. Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad: moreover also, my flesh shall rest in hope. Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thy holy One to see corruption.

THESE

HESE words are a quotation from the sixteenth Psalm, written by David, but on what particular occasion is not known. Whatever may have been the occasion, David could not have spoken personally of himself, but only prophetically in the character of Messiah; of whom he was an eminent type, and to whom alone the words are really applicable. That, in applying them to the resurrection of Christ, we do not misinterpret them, we have St. Peter's authority, in the text. After quoting the whole passage, he argues from it, in the following manner: David could not speak here in his own person; for, of him personally the words are not true. He died and was buried, and his sepulchre yet remaineth with us. But, as a prophet, he knew that God had declared with an oath, that Messiah, according to his human nature, should spring from him. He therefore speaks of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul should not be left in