That you may difcover lefs pepper, and more purity; lefs beat, and more holiness; that you may perform more good works, and fay lefs about them; that you may part with your tea-table ftories for heavenly tidings, and your old wives fables for Gospel doctrines; that you may found the Gospel trumpet more, and your own trumpet lefs-is the defire and prayer of him who frankly forgives you all that is past, and hopes to take patiently all that's to come.

WM, HUNTINGTON, S.S.

A WORD

A

WORD TO THE READER.

CHRISTIAN READER,

THOU

HOU art here prefented with another Difcourfe on the old Subject; which I believe will ever be the controverfy of Zion, as long as freeborn fons and bond-children are together. It began between Cain and Abel; it appeared in Noah's family; in Sarah and Hagar, Ishmael and Ifaac; 'between Efau and Jacob; between the Apoftles and the Jewish Scribes; and it will be ended when the lamp of the Law (Prov. vi. 23.) affords no oil to the foolish virgins, and when the lamp of Salvation will burn (Ifa. lxii. i.) to eternity in the hearts of the wife. If my Reader be one of Paul's "living epistles, "known and read of all men;" on the fleshly tables of whose heart the Spirit of the living God has written the laws of Faith, (Rom. iii. 27.) Truth, (Mal. ii. 6.) Love, (Rom. xiii. 10.) and Liberty, (James, i. 25.) he will know by happy experience what Paul means by the Law's being abolished, 2 Cor. iii. 13. He will feel and enjoy the blessed effects of it in his own experience,

experience; by finding revealed wrath, and his carnal enmity; legal bondage, and fervile fear; the dread of damnation, and a train of torments; the galling yoke of precept, and the terrifying fentence-abolifhed from his heart, blotted out in the Saviour's atonement, and banished from his foul by the wonderful operations of the Spirit of Love, which cafteth out allfear, and which is the fulfilling of the Law. Such a foul, once shut up in unbelief, and now enlarged by the Spirit of Liberty, will prize the Saviour's yoke, and understand the Apoftle's meaning, and none elfe. Such a foul is delivered from the destroying power of the Law of Sin, and from the penal power of the Law of Death: "Sin fhall not have dominion 66 over you; for you are not under the Law, but "under Grace." Nevertheless, we being born under the Law, and shut up under it, and being habituated to a legal way of working for life, we are prone to lean this way, when we lofe fight of our intereft in Chrift. This Satan is aware of. Hence it is that he has furnished the world and pestered the church from age to age with minifters to revile the Gospel, and cry up the Law; traducing the former as a licentious doctrine, and extolling the works of the latter as confummate holinefs: whofe work is to beguile the unstable, entangle the unwary, deceive the fimple, and call paffengers (back to the Law) who go right on their way. For my own part, I never knew a child of God yet, who stood fo faft in his li

berry

berty, as never to take a fecond trip to Horeb. Let any one fimple foul, in his first love, or in the fweeteft liberty, attend a legal orator, a man of much Scripture, parts, abilities, and fiery zeal, but one month, he fhall find himself zealously affected; and foon after, a falfe confidence fhall fpring up, and stand in the wisdom of man; a fiery zeal fhall influence him, to work in his own ftrength he goes; pride and felf-fufficiency follow upon it; the Spirit is grieved, and ceafes to operate as a Comforter; narrowness of heart enfues, and fenfible bondage follows—although, all this time, the poor foul may be ignorant, and never once fufpect the person that communicated his legal fetters to him. The Law genders to bondage, and we are prone to lean that way; and the effects of it are a ftraitened fpirit, and a gloomy countenance, flaming jealoufy, and inward anger and hatred at the happiness of those who abide in the fimplicity of Chrift, humble at his feet, and in comfortable union with him. A young Chriftian, juft crawled out of the hell, will not credit this; for fometimes fuch are wiser than the antient. The foolifh Galatians were wifer in this point than Paul the aged. But, before he has been twenty years in the fchool of Chrift, it is ten to one but he agrees with me.

Furthermore, that my Reader may not be blindfolded, confuled, and misled, by every person who in a pulpit pronounces the word Sanctification, I will endeavour to drop a few hints upon it.

When

When God appointed the feventh day to be a day of rest for his creatures, and appropriated it to his fervice, it was called fanctifying of it: And God blessed the feventh day, and fanctified it, Gen. ij. 3.

God's taking of the firft-born of Ifrael to himself, both of man and beast, when he flew the first-born of Egypt; and afterwards taking the Levites into his fervice, inftead of all the firft-born of Ifrael; is called fan&tifying them: "For all the first-born of the chil"dren of Ifrael are mine, both man and beaft-On "the day that I fmote the first-born in the land of Egypt, I fanctified them for myfelf; and I have "taken the Levites for all the firft-born of the chil"dren of Ifrael." Numb. viii. 17, 18.

The day of reft above-mentioned prefigured the Gospel day, in which the believer refts from impious rebellion and war with his Maker, from legal labour for life, and from the intolerable burden of fin; as well as an eternal reft from the indwelling of fin in heaven: as it is written, "Come unto me all ye that labour, "and are heavy laden, and I will give you reft."We that believe do enter into reft." And, with respect to the heavenly glory, Paul fays, "There "remains a rest to the people of God."

The first-born of beast being fanctified, was intended to point out the grand Sacrifice of Chrift, who is the firft-born of every creature, that in all things he might have the pre-eminence. The firft-born of Ifrael typified God's Elect, called the first-born, whofe names are written in heaven. These being exchanged

for