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SERMON XI.

St. JOHN XV. 5.

-For without me, ye can do nothing.

UR Saviour, in the former part of the verfe, having told his difciples,-That he was the vine, and that they were only branches;-intimating, in what a degree their good fruits, as well as the fuccefs of all their endeavours, were to depend upon his communications with them;-he clofes the illuftration with the inference from it, in the words of the text,-For without me, ye can do nothing. -In the 11th chapter to the Romans, where the manner is explained in which a chriftian ftands by faith,-there is a like illustration made ufe of, and probably with an eye to this, -where St. Paul inftructs us,-that a good man ftands as the branch of a wild olive does, when it is grafted into a good olive tree;

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and that is, it flourishes not through its own virtue, but in virtue of the root,—and fuch a root as is naturally not its own.

It is very remarkable in that paffage,—that the apostle call a bad man a wild olive tree; -not barely a branch, (as in the other cafe) but a tree, which having a root of its own, fupports itself, and stands in its own strength, and brings forth its own fruit.-And fo does every bad man in refpect of the wild and four fruit of a vicious and corrupt heart.-According to the resemblance,-if the apostle intended it, he is a tree,-has a root of his own, and fruitfulness, fuch as it is, with a power to bring it forth without help. But in respect of religion, and the moral improvements of virtue and goodness,-the apoftle calls us, and reafon tells us, we are no more than a branch; and all our fruitfulness, and all our fupport, -depend fo much upon the influence and communications of God,-that without him we can do nothing,-as our Saviour declares in the text. There is fcarce any point in our religion wherein men have run into fuch violent extremes as in the fenfes given to this, and

fuch like declarations in Scripture,-of our fufficiency being of God;-fome understanding them fo, as to leave no meaning at all in them;-others,-too much :-the one interpreting the gifts and influences of the Spirit, fo as to deftroy the truth of all fuch promifes and declarations in the gofpel;- the other carrying their notions of them fo high, as to destroy the reason of the gofpel itself,-and render the christian religion, which consists of fober and confiftent doctrines,-the most intoxicated,—the most wild and unintelligible inftitution that ever was in the world.

This being premised, I know not how I can more seasonably engage your attention this day, than by a fhort examination of each of thefe errors;-in doing which, as I fhall take fome pains to reduce both the extremes of them to reafon,-it will neceffarily lead me, at the fame time, to mark the safe and true doctrine of our church, concerning the promised influences and operations of the spirit of God upon our hearts;—which, however depreciated through the firft mistake,-or boafted of beyond meafure through the fecond,-muft ne

vertheless be fo limited and understood,—as, on one hand, to make the gospel of Christ confiftent with itself, and, on the other, to make it confiftent with reafon and common fenfe.

If we confider the many express declarations, wherein our Saviour tell his followers, before his crucifixion,-That God would fend his spirit the comforter amongst them, to fupply his place in their hearts;—and, as in the text, that without him they could do nothing:-if we conceive them as spoken to his difciples with an immediate view to the emergencies they were under, from their natural incapacities of finishing the great work he had left them, and building upon that large foundation he had laid,-without fome extraordinary help and guidance to carry them through, -no one can difpute that evidence and confirmation which was after given of its truth; as our Lord's difciples were illiterate men, confequently unskilled in the arts and acquired ways of perfuafion.-Unless this want had been fupplied, the first obstacle in their la bours must have difcouraged and put an end

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