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feel their need of him. He must increase, and Moses shall decrease; though he hath in every city those that preach him, the servant shall not share his Master's glory, nor stand in competition with him. When we get upon the holy mount, Moses and Elias are sure to withdraw; but the former will accuse us all the time we are in the wilderness, for it is the rebellious that dwell in a dry land. There are few that go from Jerusalem to Jericho but what fall among thieves: their great light and swelling words are wonderously enchanting to those who live only upon their inward joys; the former is a wandering star, and the latter a tinkling cymbal, and it is no unusual thing to see a child catch at a lighted candle, and be charmed with the sound of a fiddle. Such are pimps for Satan. We, like fools, give up ourselves to their guidance, viewing them as eyes to the blind, feet to the lame, and as hands to the paralytic; but when these offend, we must cut off these feet, pluck out these right eyes, and cast these offensive hands from us, and appear halt, lame, and maimed, rather than accompany them to hell-fire. Here we go mourning back again to the chief Shepherd, with only two fragments, for these are all that are taken out of the mouth of the lion, a leg and a piece of an ear. There is a grain of faith left for Jesus, and a little attention to what he shall be pleased to say to us, and that is all that is perceptible, and sometimes hardly that. Congregations of hypocrites and heretics

are the devil's brothels, and the work of these fiddlers is to procure fresh provisions, and no morsel so sweet as the poor man's ewe-lamb; they rejoice more at the wounding and laming a lamb of the Lord's fold, than they do in the slaughter of a thousand goats, or ten thousand bulls of Bashan.

There is, my son, a twofold repentance; the one legal, the other evangelical. Judas had the former, the prodigal the latter. The first is forced, or extorted, when the wrath of God and the guilt of men meet together in the sinner's conscience; this is attended with no hatred to sin, but to the punishment; it is always attended with self-pity and enmity against God; this may be seen in a sullen, desperate wretch going to the gallows; the law works no other than this. Evangelical repentance springs from the joyful meeting of the Saviour's dying love and man's misery in the sinner's heart, and is the blessed effect of pardon, peace, and reconciliation; this is attended with an hatred to sin and self, and a loving, sympathizing with, and mourning over, the Son of God in his dolorous sufferings for sinful worms like us; this is not extorted, but poured forth, and the more the love of Jesus operates, the more it flows; this is repentance unto life, for the living God is the object of it, and he is alive from the dead that exercises it: and something like it may be seen in a young seduced transgressor, who hath received his sentence, and who faints away at the

sight of the fatal tree, and little better than half dead when the cap is drawn over his face; but, to his astonishment, his pardon is proclaimed while the halter is about his neck. The former sight drank up his spirits, but his pardon dissolves him quite. But what is this, when compared to a soul in the fearful hands of the living God, and who receives his pardon over the belly of hell, and is at once plucked as a brand from the burning, and wrapped up in the bosom of divine and everlasting love? Let the sons of God rehearse these his mighty acts in the places of drawing water, when the streams from the wells of salvation overflow all their banks, and the glorious God appears to be a place of broad rivers and streams wherein shall go no galley with oars.

No fruitfulness, my son, wilt thou ever find, but by virtue of union with the living Vine. In him is our fruit found; the closer we cleave to him, the more virtue comes from him; and the more we receive from his fulness, the more we shall savour of his name. All his garments smell of myrrh, aloes, and cassia; abide under his skirt, and thou shalt be a sweet savour of Christ to them that love him, and a sweet savour of God in Christ to them that hate him. The Holy Spirit is a sweet leader, and an inward dictator: observe the inclinations which he gives to prayer, and obey them; likewise the aid and assistance that he grants to us while engaged in it: the passages he brings for us to plead, the arguments he gives

us to use; the fervour, the faith, the expectation also, as well as the enlargement of heart, the boldness, the nearness of access, the freedom and familiarity; in all these things he helps our infirmities, and makes sensible intercession for us, according to the will of God: besides the melting and humbling sensations, the powerful motions of love, the sight that he gives us of our wants, and of the fulness of Christ to supply them; the various views that he gives us of his sufferings, and the discoveries he gives us of the mysteries of his kingdom; the future views and sweet thoughts which his wonderful operations produce in the heaven-born soul. He that is led by this infallible guide is a child of God; therefore what he dictates observe, what he points out do, and where he leads go: "And he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting."

Beware also of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy; and let them not entangle thee with the yoke of bondage. The spirit of bondage is nothing else but the wrath of God: the law worketh wrath, and nothing else; it can curse us to death, and that is all. And when they tell you that we are delivered from the curse, but are under the precept, tell them the law is not divided. He that labours to keep the precept is under the sentence; "As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse;" and he that goes to it, Christ shall profit him nothing; he is inverting the order of God, and frustrating

his grace: he that toils at the precept of the law rejects the Saviour's active obedience as insufficient, and he that relies upon his own performances despises his blood. And when they tell you we are under the law to Christ, ask them what law; and if they say the moral law, tell them that is not the new covenant, that is not the law God writes on the mind and puts in the heart by his Spirit; for God ministers not the Spirit by the works of the law. The law of faith and the Spirit always go together: "The day you believed, you were sealed with the holy Spirit of promise." The isles are to wait for the Saviour's law, and his testimony is to be bound up, and his law sealed, among his disciples; to this law and testimony we are to go, and if they speak not according to this word of life, there is no light in them; we are under the law of faith to Christ, and God ministers the Spirit by the hearing of faith. Their last refuge is, that the law in the hand of Christ is the believer's rule of life; but tell them that the moral law is not the Saviour's sceptre, that it is not the rod of his strength that came out of Zion, that came from Sinai. Nor is the law the strength of grace, but the strength of sin; for, “The strength of sin is the law." The rod of the Lord's strength is his gospel, which is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; with this he smites the earth, and with the breath of his lips he slays the wicked, by making his servants, who are ministers of the

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