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turn from the power of Satan unto God, or we can have no inheritance among them that are fanctified in Christ Jesus. Moreover, this profeffion ought also to excite in all true believers the higheft gratitude to God, who hath admitted them to fellowship with himself, made them partakers of the divine nature, and chofen them for the places of his abode, and manfions of eternal blifs. Befides, this profeffion ought also to inflame all true believers with the highest affection towards one another: for, if it be natural to have a brotherly love for our brothers and fifters according to the flesh, how much more ought we to have the highest affection for those who are joined to us by a much nobler relation, who are born again by the fame spiritual birth with us, and live the fame fpiritual life, and are endued with the gracious influences of the fame Holy Spirit? and therefore, if we ought to do good to all men, furely much more fo to them who are of the fame houfhold of faith, faints or members of the fame communion, and partakers of the fame privileges, advantages, and promises with ourselves.

III. In the tenth ARTICLE of our chriftian faith we conOf the for- fefs a belief in the forgiveness of fins: It will theregiveness of fore be neceffary to inquire into the nature of fin; fins. which confifts in a man's fuffering himself to be drawn away by the enticement of fome appetite, paffion, or intereft, to do what he is fenfible is not, in itself, What fin is. fit and right; to do what his mind feels to be contrary to the law of God, made known to him either by reafon or revelation; contrary to piety or godliness; contrary to fobriety or temperance; contrary to truth, juftice, equity, or charity. Hence fin, in its own nature, even feparate from the confideration of its being an obftinate disobeying the revealed will of God, is in itself utterly unreasonable and inexcufable: It is acting in oppofition to the known reason and proportion of things, contrary to that eternal order and equity which God hath established in the original conftitution of nature; oppofite to the light of reafon, the dictates of confcience, the unprejudiced judgment of our own minds, the agreeing opinion of all wife and good men, nay and even of bad men themselves too; contrary to all our natural notions

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Forgiveness

and apprehenfions of the attributes and will of God; deftructive to the public welfare and happiness of mankind, the health of our own bodies, the peace of our minds, and the fupport of our good name and reputation amongst wise and reasonable men: It is a fubjecting our reafon to vile affections, to inordinate and brutish,appetites, to disorderly and ungoverned paffions; which becomes a guilt, or a debt, to fuffer fuch punishment as the iniquity of the offence deferves in justice from the lawgiver, which punishment could never be forgiven but through the fatisfaction of Chrift. And That our fins are forgiven on account of this fatisfaction offered by Chrift is plainly proved from those many texts of scripture which relate to this mat- through ter, and tell us, that without shedding of blood Christ. there is no remiffion; and that in the end of the world Chrift once appeared to put away fin by the facrifice of himself; that by his stripes we are healed; that his blood was shed for many for the remiffion of fin: that we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of fin, according to the riches of his grace: neither can this be any way inconfiftent with those scriptures which make the love of God to men the inducement of his fending Chrift into the world: he loved and pitied them, as his creatures, and in mifery; and was offended with them, as finners; and it was a mercy worthy himself to find for them a facrifice equal to his infinite justice and holiness. Therefore

The great confolation of a chriftian centers in the affurance that our fins are blotted out by the merits Is a chriof Chrift; for all have finned, and come fhort of flian's com the glory of God: nay God hath concluded all fort. under fin; and unless he himself had fhewn us a way to happinefs, we must for ever have remained under perplexities from the sense of our guilt, and fearsof divinewrath. On the contrary, this doctrine of forgiveness of fins gives all believers the highest comfort and the greatest fenfe of the goodnefs of God, who has thus reconciled mercy to justice, and freely has released thofe debts we should never have been able to have paid to the offended Deity. And we should by thefe confiderations be inflamed with the moft exalted love

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of our heavenly Father, who has given his Son to die for us; this should raise in us the higheft gratitude to the bleffed Je fus, who became the Son of man, to make us the children of God; and fhould make us always remember that we are no longer our own, but are bought with a price, no lefs than the blood of Jefus. Yet Chrift delivers no man from the punishWhen it is ment of fin, who is not first delivered from the effectual. fervice and dominion of it: therefore no man who continues in the fervice and dominion of fin, can expect to be delivered from the punishment thereof. Chrift has indeed given himself a propitiatory facrifice, a full, perfect, and fufficient oblation for the fins of the world: but it is not that the whole world, or that any particular perfons, fhould abfolutely and unconditionally be thereby excufed from the punishment of fin; but that all those who, by true repentance, turn from fin, and become righteous, fhouldobtain remiffion and reconciliation with God: for he did not die that he might indulge men in fin, but that he might fave them from it. Chrift has indeed brought life and immortality to light, and opened an abundant entrance into the kingdom of God: but it is not that any unreformed and unrenewed nature should be made partaker of that fpiritual hap-piness, or be admitted to have a fhare in thofe pure and undefiled rewards; but that those who have broken off their fins by repentance, and their iniquities by righteoufnefs, should be entertained at the eternal fupper of the Lamb: For as impoffible as it is for God to ceafe to be holy, or for the purity of the divine nature to be reconciled to fin, fo impoffible it is for a wicked man to obtain remiffion whilft he continues wicked, or for a finner to be admitted into the kingdom of heaven. Be not deceived, faith St. Paul; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abufers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor cove-tous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners; that is, no unrighteous perfon, that continues in the practice of any known fin, shall inherit the kingdom of God, 1 Cor. vi. 2. Wherefore, as God has promised us the forgiveness of our fins on no other condition, but that of our fincere faith and repentance, and our forgiving the trefpaffes of our brethren against

against us, we must endeavour daily to die unto fin, that we may live unto God; and, as we expect forgiveness, we must be ready to forgive one another.

SUNDAY V. PART II.

IV. In the eleventh ARTICLE of our christian faith we profefs a belief in the refurrection of the body; Of the rewhich we must believe as a neceffary and infalli- furrection of ble truth; that as it is appointed for all men once the fame to die, fo it is alfo determined that all men should body. rife from death; a doctrine perfectly agreeable to right reafon, and toour natural notions of the attributes of God. The generality of the heathens of old, and the infidels why opposed of latter times, make this one of their great objec- by infidels tions against christianity upon the pretence of its impoffibility. The heathens think it contrary to the course of nature, that anything should return from a state of perfect corruption to its proper form, or that a body perfectly dead fhould be again restored to life. And it is true, that among the works of nature they could never obferve any action or operation that did or could produce fuch an effect; fo that by natural light we cannot difcover that God will raise the dead: for, that depending upon the will of God, it can be no otherways known than by his own declarations; yet this doctrine, when made known by revelation, evidently contains nothing in it contrary to right reafon. For we are to confi der the poffibility of things, not fo much depending upon the power of nature, as upon the power power of the God of nature. And whatever dark or imperfect notions the Jews, as well as Gentiles, had of a future ftate, it is certain that life and immortality is now brought to light by the Its certaingofpel; and we may reft affured, that tho', when y.

we die, our bodies fhall be laid in the cold chambers of the grave, and there become the food of worms, and moulder into dust and rottennefs; yet it will not be long before this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality. For God hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteoufnefs, by that man whom he hath ordained; wherefore he hath given afïurance

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unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead. A day wherein we must all appear before the judgment-feat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. And then all that are in their graves fhall hear his voice, and shall come forth: they that have done good, unto the refurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the refurrection of damnation. And it may be proved, by the Proved by creation of the world out of nothing, that it is alreason. together as easy for God to raise the body again after death, as to create and form it at firft; it being a lefs effect of power to raise a body when refolved into dust, or wherefoever dispersed and destroyed, than to make all things out of nothing by a single command.

I know there is a popular objection, which at first view In objec may carry fome difficulty in it against this article

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of our faith; as for example, How can bodies devoured by men-eaters, who live on human flesh; or bodies eaten by fishes, and turned to their nourishment, and those fishes eaten by men, and converted into the fubftance of their bodies; recover their own bodies at the refurrection of the dead?

Wherefore, to clear this difficulty, among many other Anfered fufficient proofs, it must be confidered, that the by reafon. body of man is no other than a fucceffive thing, continually lofing fomething of the matter it had before, and gaining new; fo that it is certain from experience, that men frequently change their bodies, and that the body aman hath at any time of his life is as much his own body, as that which he hath when death feparates body and foul. Therefore, if the matter of the body which a man had at any time of his life be raised, it is as much his own and the fame body as that which he had at his death; which does clearly folve the forementioned difficulty, fince any of those bodies he had at any time before he was eaten were as much his own as that which was eaten. Moreover, let it be confidered, that in like manner as in every grain of corn there is contained a small imperceptible feed, or natural faculty, which is itfelf the intire future blade and ear, and in due feafon, when all the reft

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