those laws were, for violating which he suffers. He will recollect the mighty assisting power which he once despised. Thou! thou wilt recollect the sage advice, that was given thee. Thou! this sermon, which I have been addressing to thee. Thou! thine education. Thou! the voice of the holy Spirit, that urged thee to change thy life. O Israel! thou hast destroyed thyself! Hos. xiii. 9. This, this is the excrutiating reflection of a nominal Christian condemned by divine justice to everlasting flames. Such a Christian suffering the vengeance of eternal fire will incessantly be his own tormentor. He will say to himself, I am the author of my own destruction! I might have been saved! I, I alone, condemned myself to everlasting confinement in these dungeons of horror to which I am now consigned.

3. Finally, We shall be judged as having lived under an economy of mercy. What can be more capable at once, of comforting a good man against an excessive fear of judgment, and of arousing a bad man from his fatal security?

All the sentiments of benevolence that you can expect in an equitable judge; we say more, all the sentiments of tenderness, which you can expect in a sincere friend; we say more still, all the sentiments of pity, compassion, and love, that can be expected in a tender parent, you will find in the person of the judge, who will pronounce your eternal doom.

Let us not elevate our passions into virtues. Fear of the judgments of God, which carried to a certain degree is a virtue, becomes a condemnable passion, at least a frailty that ought to be opposed, when it

exceeds due bounds. Do you render an acceptable homage to Almighty God, think you, by doubting his mercy, the most lovely ray of his glory? Do you render a proper homage to God, think you, by considering him as a tyrant? Do you think you render homage to the Deity by doubting his most express and sacred promises? Do you believe you pay an acceptable tribute to God by professing to think, that he will take pleasure in eternally tormenting a poor creature, who used all his efforts to please him; who mourned so often over his own defects; who shed the bitterest tears over the disorders of his life; and who for the whole world, (had the whole world been at his disposal,) would not have again offended a God, whose laws he always revered, even while he was so weak as to break them?

But this thought that Christians shall be judged by an economy of mercy; this very thought, so full of consolation to good men, will drive the wicked to the deepest despair. The mercy of God in the gospel hath certain bounds, and we ought to consider it, as it really is, connected with the other perfections of his nature. Whenever we place it in a view incongruous with the other perfections of the Supreme Being, we make it inconsistent with itself. Now this is done, when it is applied to one class of sinners. I repeat it again, it is this that fills up the bad man's measure of despair.

Miserable wretch! how canst thou be saved, if the fountain opened to the house of David be shut against thee? if that love, which created the world, if that love which inclined the Son of God, (the brightness

of the Father's glory, and the express image of his person,) to clothe himself with mortal flesh, and to expire on a cross; if this love be not sufficient to save thee, if this love be slighted by thee, by what means must thou be wrought on, or in what way must thou be saved? And if the Redeemer of the world condemn thee, to what judge canst thou flee for absolution?

Let us, my dear brethren, incessantly revolve in our minds these ideas of death and judgment. Let us use them to calm those excessive fears, which the necessity of dying, and being judged, sometimes excites in our souls.

But excessive fear is not the usual sin of this congregation. Our usual sins are indolence, carnal security, sleeping life away on the brink of an abyss, flames above our heads, and hell beneath our feet.

Let us quit this miserable station. Happy is the man that feareth alway! Prov. xxviii. 14. Happy the man, who in every temptation by which he is annoyed, in a world where all things seem to conspire to involve us in endless destruction: happy the man, who in all his trials knows how to derive consolation from this seemingly terrible truth, "It is appointed unto men once to die: but after this the judgment !" To God be honour and glory for ever. Amen.

SERMON XII.

Heaven.

1 JOHN iii. 2.

We know, that when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.

ONE of the most beautiful ideas that can be formed of the gospel, is that which represents it as imparting to a Christian the attributes of God. St. Peter and St. Paul both express themselves in a manner truly sublime and emphatical on this subject. The first of these holy men says, the end of the promises of God is to make us partakers of the divine nature, 2 Epist. i. 4. The second assures us, that all Christians beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord, 2 Cor. iii. 18. If we believe some critics, the original terms may be rendered, we all become as mirrors. A mirror, placed over against a luminous object, reflects its rays, and returns its image. This is agreeable to Christian experience under the gospel. Good men, attentive to the divine attributes, bowing like the seraphims, toward the mystical ark, placed opposite to the Supreme Being, meet with nothing to intercept his rays; and, reflecting in their turn this