another? You will not object to this, you Church of England men, will you? Then why have you god-fathers and godmothers to promise for you? Why have we members of parliament to be the heads of the people, and what the parliament does, the people do; you have constituted them your heads and representatives, you must stand and fall by them; so if you are bound for a person you must stand and fall with him, must not you? I remember one of the ministers that preached the morning exercises, when most, if not all the churches in this city, were filled with gospel preachers, till on Bartholomew-day, near two thousand five hundred of them in the whole were turned out, and the other ministers that did not preach the gospel continued till the plague came, and then ran away, and left the pulpits to those that were turned out, who were willing to go into them, though they expected the plague would seize them in preaching Christ there; one of those ministers says, suppose God had chose all that were to be created, and to proceed from the loins of Adam, had been present, and that he should have said to them, I have been seven days employed in preparing the whole creation; I have made a garden, and will have one chose by you to dwell in it, as my vicegerent, and your representative here below, here is Adam, the father of you all, whom I have blessed with a partner, and that is bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh, a creature like himself; all that I desire of your head and representative is, that he abstains from yonder tree, of every other tree in the garden he may freely eat except that; this I ordain as a test of his obedience, to see whether it is fulfilled, and you shall all stand or fall by this; who shall be the man? Would they not all say, our first parent to be sure. O there is not a single man but would have chosen Adam to be their representative, they would rather stand and fall by him than by any body else; now pray why should we quarrel with him for acting in the manner we ourselves should have done, had we been in his situation? God, saith the apostle, included all under sin. What is sin but a breach, that is, a transgression of the law; the wages of sin is death; every transgression of the law incurs damnation. Have we eaten of the forbidden fruit? We must die, we are legally dead; and there is not a little child in the world that is not. It is enough to make the parents pray night and day for their children; there is not a child born but, to use the words of our own church, brings in with it corruption, which renders it liable to the wrath of God for ever. Then, say some, it is true what I have heard say of you, that there are little children in hell a span long. I never had such a thought in my life; I never believed that any infants, black or white,

were damned in hell. I think a poor child though it is born in a state of original sin, and I have often thought that is the reason why little children are seized with such terrible disorders as often carry them out of the world, with ten times more agony than parents feel; a great proof of man's offence. We see a poor little infant soon after it is born, in two or three months taken with fits, lie screaming and struggling, while the distressed parents are breaking their hearts, and wishing, though they love it dearly, that God would take it out of its pain. Is not this a strong proof that man is fallen from God? else who can tell what God designs hereby however, I verily believe that by his grace he fits them for heaven. We have broken God's law, and are liable to eternal condemnation; we are therefore legally dead, every one of us without distinction; we are all upon a level, from the greatest king in the world, who has it in his power to write death or life upon the poor condemned malefactors; bring him to the bar of God's holy law, and it will tell him there, thou art the malefactor in the sight of God, thou thyself, and thus God is glorified. It is not greatness of station, nor external differences, that make a difference in the internal state of the soul. A nobleman may come with his star and garter to the king's bar, and be tried by his peers at Westminster-hall, and may be attended from the Tower by some of the king's officers, but whether a nobleman be tried at Westminster-hall, or a criminal in rags at the Old Bailey, the law must be executed upon both. This is our state towards God; we have lived in trespasses and sins; are legally dead now; is that all? Dr. Taylor, of Norwich, says, that all the loss we have had by the fall is, that our misery is temporary. Alas! alas! when Arminians talk of the fall, you will find very few of them have courage enough to stab themselves. Conscience makes them cowards; they have lost all by Adam's fall. What death have we suffered, not only legally, but spiritually dead; what do I mean by that? Why, that we are deprived of that life of God in which we originally stood. Have you ever seen any body die? I have. Have you ever seen one of your friends die? Have you ever stole into the room, and looked but once at the dear object of your love, the partner of your life? But wait till the next day, and especially in the summer season, and see how changed! The last object I saw, put me in mind of the fall I saw nature in. O what a change! the glory is departed!

But besides this legal death, there is a spiritual death, and the consequence of that is eternal death; if I die in that state I must die for ever; that is, I must be a creature living eternally banished from God: if I be annihilated when I die,

then, indeed, temporal death is all; but it is not so, I am to live in another world; the wisest man upon earth tells us that there is a future state; and therefore by legal and spiritual death, I am liable to death eternal. I have the longer insisted on this because it is impossible to know, or to value that life that Jesus Christ came into the world to impart to us and procure for us, without considering the nature of the death he delivers us from.

Now let us attend to what our Lord says::- Ye will not come to me that ye may have life. In the tenth chapter he says, I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. Now what life is that? To be sure, the life which a malefactor wants, who is tried by a jury; why, he wants to have the chain taken off'; what do you and I want? for we may want to eternity if we plead our innocence; there is not one of us but must plead guilty before God; well, what must I do? Why, if ever I have life, I must be acquitted; something must pronounce me not guilty; my conscience says, guilty; why, then Jesus Christ came that we might have a legal life, that we might be acquitted from all that condemnation which we are under by our breaking his law; so far the remedy answers to the disease; but the remedy would not be extensive enough if that was all; therefore, it was an excellent answer a poor woman made at the Old Bailey, which I heard twenty years ago: she was brought sick to the bar to receive a pardon; the judge said, Woman, his majesty has given you a pardon. My lord, says she, I thank his majesty for a pardon, and you for pronouncing it, but that is not all I want; what my poor soul wants is, a pardon from Jesus Christ; what signifies a pardon from a judge, if I have a disease in me that will kill me? whether I am pardoned or not, I must have my disease cured, that the pardon may do me good. I thought it a strange plea of a man, a captain of a ship, that I heard tried some years ago for throwing a poor negro overboard; he asked the surgeon, do you think that the child will die? Sir, said he, it will not live above an hour; then, says he, you may let it down now. O, says the judge, you have murdered the child. I must have a pardon from my God, or I am damned; and if I have lost the divine image, which was the original dignity of man, I shall never get to glory without the restoration of that image. I have lost by my sin. Spiritual life in the heart, is that which comes from Jesus Christ, and this is the life of God in the soul of man; it is not a metaphorical but a real thing, a resurrection to life by the power of Christ, who is the resurrection and the life, so there is a connection between

a legal and a spiritual life; the type and antitype answers as face answers to face in water: thus as all in Adam have died, so all in Jesus Christ, the second Adam, are made alive. We are apt to think that such a one, and such a one, were sound christians and are gone to heaven, but there is a great deal of false charity in the world; without this life we are all undone.

Now, my brethren, if this is the case, how must I have my life in glory! How must a dead creature be a christian? How must a sinner that is spiritually dead have divine life? and how must a creature, every moment liable to death eternal, be made eternally alive? Can any body answer that question? Will reason tell me? No; will philosophy help me? No; for if the world by wisdom knew not God, surely, the world by wisdom knows not how to turn to God; therefore, you will find the greatest scholars the greatest fools, proudest deists, and most scornful atheists; for knowledge puffeth up; and if bare knowledge makes a christian, the devil must be very good, he is the most knowing, and yet the most wicked. The only way to get this life restored is, to come to Jesus Christ; ye will not come unto me, saith our text, that ye may have life; implying, that without coming to him they cannot have life: there is no other name given under heaven whereby we can be saved, but that of Jesus Christ. I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord. In order to have this life, we must come to Christ for it. I hope you do not think coming to Christ, means coming to see his person; that can never be; for our Lord talks of coming to him when he himself was the preacher, and they were all about him; though so many round him, yet there was but one that touched him. A great many people say, if Christ was here, how would I caress him! I would let him in! when, perhaps, at the same time, turn out one of his members. Would you like to see Jesus Christ with a parcel of boys and girls running before him, a parcel of poor fishermen with him, and Mary Magdalen, with a mob of poor people and publicans following him? We have the same spirit the people had then; we should hoot at him and despise him, as the pharisees did. A great many people think coming to Christ is to come to the sacrament; you know very well I love that privilege; and one of the greatest afflictions I have is, that my health will not permit me to attend all the ordinances; but thousands come to ordinances that have no view of the God of ordinances in them; therefore you will find, that in all our public places it is as much the fashion to go to public worship about eleven o'clock, as any where else. They are not up time enough to their matins; they go and say, we

thank God, who has brought us to the beginning of this day, and that when perhaps the clock strikes twelve, and they just up; thus people go to church as to a play, to see and be seen, and as soon as they go out of church, they ask where they are to go next, and what party? Thousands go to church, or to meeting, and sacrament, and do not come to Christ, come and like this preaching; and numbers who are called fools for following us, eat the fragments that are left, that hear preaching, eat the fish and the loaves, and are only feasting upon shadows, and not upon Christ: this would make us extremely careful to examine whether we ever came to Christ or no. A great moral preacher says of our preaching, when all their stock is out, then they cry come, come, come, and that is the burden of their song, say they; and I hope that will be the burden of our song till Christ says, Come ye blessed of my Father. What would you have us say? O, say you, bid a man do and live, so we will; and in the same sense Christ in the gospel says, thou art dead; what shall I do, says the man, to inherit eternal life? Thou knowest our Lord said to him, keep the law. Our Lord always spoke to the people in their own language; that is, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart; he began with morality at the right place; we begin at the fifth commandment. The great morality, says Dr. Young, is beginning with the love of God. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: thou hast answered right, says he, do this, and thou shalt live. Whoever loves the Lord God as he ought to do, with all his soul and strength, shall certainly live; but our Lord takes pains to convince him of his ignorance and folly; says he, who is my neighbor? As to the love of God, he had no thought of that. Thus we deceive our own souls, till Jesus Christ opens our eyes. What must we come to Christ for? To be acquitted; come to his blood to be pardoned; you must believe on him, not only with a bare speculative belief, that the devil has, and all the damned in hell, but to have his blood applied and brought home to the soul, we must come to him as the author and finisher of our faith. Did not you just now say, I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life; and the form of baptism is in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; it means, baptize them into the nature of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and I remember about three or four and thirty years ago, a friend mentioned that word in private conversation to me; we translate it, we believe in God, said he; we should translate it, we believe it in God, for we never do till God has put his faith in us; then we have in our souls a new life in Christ, then we live a life of faith; the life I now live is by faith in the Son