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to confirm our title to the heavenly inheri-SERM. tance, and increase our confidence, by cul- VIII. tivating all religious and good difpofitions, and adding to our faith all the chriftian virtues; still study to make ourselves more perfect in love, and let it abound more and more in knowledge and in all judgment, being fincere and without offence, filled with the fruits of righteousness. Other foundation of hope can no man lay. 'Tis true, finners have invented others, when their hearts could not help enquiring wherewith they Should approach the Lord, and bow to the high God; fuperftition founded on wrong notions of the Deity and his moral government, has led them to come with rams, and with oil, and the fruit of their bodies to attone for their fins; but the scripture has instructed us to do what is morally good, as the fure way to happiness and peace; to do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. Even christians themselves have been weak, or rather perverse enough to substitute something else in the room of perfect love, and a self approving mind, as the ground of their confidence. Some trust in the truth of their religious opinions, others in the regular performance of folemn instituted services; than

SERM. which nothing can be more unaccountable, VIII. confidering how fully fuch pretences are dif

approved by plain reason, and the current of the scripture declarations. Others abuse the doctrine of Christ's facrifice, and of faith in his blood, by putting it in the place of a good confcience for giving us boldness in the judgment. But certainly to hope in Chrift for obtaining the favour of God, while men continue in their tranfgreffions, is to make him the minister of fin, and to make void the divine law, which he came not to destroy but to fulfil. Confider his own decifion of this point, Matt. vii. 24. Whofoever heareth these sayings of mine and doth them, I will liken him to a wise man, who built his house upon a Rock; and the rain defcended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell not, for, it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these fayings of mine and doth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man who built his house upon the fand; and the rain defcended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.

SER

SERMON IX.

Loving CHRIST above all, the Character of his true Disciples.

Matth. x. 37.

He that loveth Father or Mother more than me, is not worthy of me. And be that loveth Son or Daughter more than me, is not worthy of me.

T

HE chapter of which my text is aSERM. part, contains the first and so- IX.

lemn charge which our Saviour gave his apostles when he sent them forth to preach the gospel. As that was a very arduous undertaking, and consequences of the greatest moment depended upon it, to the service of God, and the good of mankind, it was necessary they should be well instructed how to behave themselves in it. And because they were to meet with such opposition from the ignorance and prejudices of men, as could not be conquered by

the

4

SERM. the meer force of plain reason and perfuaIX. fion, therefore were they furnished with ex

traordinary powers to do such miracles as might engage the most stupid to attend to their doctrine. Their master instructs them how to conduct themselves in the exercise of those powers, and in general to regulate their whole deportment with prudence and fimplicity, fo as they might give no offence, but with unblemish'd characters fuccessfully pursue the great design of their miffion. One article relating to this embafsy was of the last moment, and it is very largely insisted on. The apostles were to suffer grievous perfecution, being fent out as sheep among wolves, men of savage and barbarous tempers, inflamed with a superstious paffionate zeal, who would, without regard to their innocence, treat them with cruelty and rage.

Their Lord endeavours to fortify their minds against that event, arguing from a variety of topics for equanimity and patience under all their fufferings : Such as, that he had fubmitted himself to the same state, and furely then they had no reason to repine, nor to hope for an exemption from it. For “ the "disciple is not above his master, nor the "fervant

“ fervant above his Lord." That in spite SERM. of all oppofition their cause should triumph, IX. and themselves with it be in high reputation and esteem, when their enemies should be covered with shame. That they were under the special care and protection of divine providence, which orders all things wifely for the best: And that there is a time coming when a refolved adherence to the cause of truth and pure religion shall be glorioufly rewarded, and the defertion of that cause, through the fear of fuffering perfecution and contempt from men, and the prevailing love of this world, shall be punished as it deserves. Lastly, our Saviour deduces the patient enduring of afflictions, even when attended with the most bitter circumftances, such as lofing the friendship and incurring the utmost displeasure of our nearest and dearest relations: I say, he deduces it from the common obligations of chriftianity. Suppofing the cafe to be just as he states it in the verses preceding the text, that the gofpel does not produce the proper and genuine fruit to which by its own nature it tends, which is peace and charity among men, but that on the contrary it becomes the occafion of hatred and quarrels, so far that a man's nearest friends