religion, but begin where you should, in earnest endeavours after a new heart and life, in the use of the means appointed for that end.

But there are fome of you perhaps, who may take encouragement from hence, and think you are fafe, because you have not been guilty of profaning this folemn inftitution. You are confcious you are not prepared, and therefore must contentedly ftay away. There are, no doubt, fundry of you who have lived in this neglect all your lives. I have a few things to say to you, and I pray you to apply them to yourfelves.

1. Confider what it is you fay, when you declare you are unfit for this ordinance. There are some that seem to make a merit of it, that they stay away from a sense of their want of preparation. But what is this want? It is the want of all love to God, of faith in Chrift, of repentance for fin; it is the want of holiness of heart and life, and every good thing; it is to be without pardon, without a title to heaven, without any interest in the righteousness of Christ ; it is to be a flave to fin and Satan, an heir of hell, a poor perifhing creature, liable every moment to be cut off, and fink under the weight of divine vengeance: this is your cafe if you are unfit for this ordinance. Nothing but fuch things as I have mentioned can render you unfit. And is this a fafe case? Can you contentedly reft in it? Alas! is their fo much merit in neglecting to remember Chrift in this institution, as will render your cafe fafe, and indemnify you? Muft you not be fhocked at the thought?

2. Are you ufing all proper means to obtain preparation, with the utmoft diligence and earneftness? Or are you inactive and unconcerned about it? If fo, it is plain you love to be unprepared; you take pleafure in being difqualified to remember the Lord Jefus. And while you are careless about this you are virtually careless what will become of you, careless whether heaven or hell will be the place of your everlaft

ing refidence and O! what will be the end of fuch a courfe! and how terrible is your guilt!

3. Is it nothing to you that you have lived fo many years in the world without affectionately commemorating that Saviour who died for you, without devoting yourselves to God, confenting to his covenant, and joining yourselves with his people? O! is there no guilt in all this? No guilt in fuffering fo many opportunities of attending upon this ordinance to pass by neglected? what can be a more aggravated wickedness?

4. This neglect clearly proves that you have no regard for Jefus Chrift. You do perhaps infift upon it that you love him. But he himself has left a test of your love: If ye love me, keep my commandments. Now this brings the matter to a fhort iffue. There is no command in the whole Bible more plain than that of remembering him in this ordinance. This you know in your confciences. And yet you have lived in the wilful neglect of this known, eafy, dying command of Jefus. With what face then can you pretend that you love him? Your love is reprobated, and will not stand the test.

5. Let me remind you of what I obferved before, that, by the neglect of this ordinance, you practically renounce your baptifm. You are now of age to act for yourselves, and you have not approved of the act of your parents by ratifying it in you own perfon, therefore you abjure it; you renounce the bleffed Trinity, in whofe name you were baptized, and to whom you were dovoted; and you give yourselves back to an horrible trinity of another kind, to the world, to fin, and the devil. And are you indeed willing to have no more to do with the God that made you, and with Jefus of Nazareth? Pause and think before you agree to fuch a dreadful renunciation. But alas! you have agreed to it already, by refufing to renew your early dedication in your own perfons. Therefore the best you can now do is to

recall

recall your renunciation, and immediately acknowledge the act of your parents as your own.

I would inculcate this particularly on young people. You that are eight or ten years old, or more, you have fenfe enough to act for yourselves in fo plain a cafe. And what are you refolved upon? Will you be Chrift's or Satan's? you cannot avoid choofing one or the other for your mafter; for not pofitively choofing Chrift, is virtually choofing the devil for your lord, and hell for your home. If you do ftand to the act of your parents in dedicating you to God, come make it your own at his table. Such young guests would be an ornament to it: and O! that we may early fee you there properly prepared!

6. Do not think that by this neglect you keep yourselves from being under obligations to be holy, and that you are at liberty to live as you lift. Your obligations do not depend upon your confent. You were born the fervants of God, and you will continue under obligations to be fuch in fpite of you. Is he not the moft excellent of beings, your Creator, your Lawgiver, your Preferver, your Redeemer ? And do these things infer no obligation upon you ? have you not alfo in fickness or under horror of confcience made vows and refolutions in your own perfons? And are you free to fin ftill? The truth of the cafe is, Do what you will, you are under the ftrongest obligations to God, and you cannot shake them off; and if you will not observe these obligations to duty, you must submit for ever to your indifpenfable obligation to punishment. And he will make you know that he has a right to punish you, you will not acknowledge his right to your obedience.

if

7. What avails it that you can avoid the Lord's table when you cannot poffibly fhun death, or avoid his tribunal? Here try all your art, and you will find it in vain. And if you are not prepared for this ordinance of worship in the church on earth, much less

-are

are you prepared for thofe more exalted forms of worship in the church in heaven! what then will become of you?

In fhort, it is a national fin in our country, that the table of the Lord is contemptible; that men who call themselves chriftians live in the wilful neglect of that ordinance which was appointed by him, whom they acknowledge as the Founder of their religion, to be a memorial of himself. Alas! the very memory of Chrift is almoft loft among us. Shall I not vifit for thefe things? faith the Lord. Shall not my foul be avenged on fuch a nation as this? Jer. v. 9.

Perhaps fome of you will fay, You shut us up in a ftrange dilemma indeed. If we come unprepared, we fin; and if we stay away we fin: and what then fhall we do?' My brethren, I thus fhut you up, on purpose that you may fee what a wretched cafe you are in, and that there is no fafety for you while you continue in it. You are fhut up under a neceffity of finning, and the best choice in fuch a condition can be only the leffer evil; though even that is extremely aggravated. Whether you come or ftay away, you grievoufly fin: it is all fin, peril, ruin, and mifery all through: you should neither come unprepared, nor stay away unprepared; that is, you should not be unprepared at all. Your want of preparation is in itself a complication of wickedness; and whatever you do in that state, you are neither fafe nor in the way of duty it is altogether a state of fin and danger. The only way of fafety and duty is to feek for preparation immediately, and with the utmoft earneftness, and then to come to the Lord's fupper. And O! let me fet all this congregation upon this work before we part to-day, and make it the business of this week. You have spent many a week about things of lefs importance, and will you refuse one to this great work? Now fet about it; now begin to look into the state of your neglected fouls; now recollect your fins; look in upon your depraved hearts; look

back

back upon a miferable mif-fpent life; look forward to death, eternity, and the divine tribunal juft before you; look to Jefus in the agonies of crucifixion on Mount Calvary; and O! look up to God in earnest prayer for his mercy. Let these things follow you home to your houfes; let them dwell upon your hearts night and day. Do not laugh, or talk, or trifle them away; for O! they will rebound upon you with overwhelming weight at laft, if you now turn them off. O! that God may prepare a people for himself in this poor place! O! that He would vifit this barren spot with the fhowers of divine grace! And may he prepare our hearts for the rich entertainment before us! Amen.

SERMON

MON XXXIII.

THE NATURE AND BLESSEDNESS OF SONSHIP WITH GOD.

1 JOHN iii. 1, 2. Behold what manner of love the Father bath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the fons of God: therefore the world knows us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the Sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that when he fhall appear, we shall be like him; for we fhall fee him as he is.

HOUGH the fchemes of divine Providence run

TH

on with the most confummate harmony, and will at last terminate in the wifeft ends, yet, to the undifcerning eyes of mortals, confufion reigns thro' this world, and nothing appears, in this infant ftate of things, in that light in which eternity, the ftate

of