of true believers, and would know how far you are gone in receiving Jesus as the Christ of God. You may know it two

ways.

1. By the honour and reverence you pay him, considered as bearing God's authority towards you, that is, as being consecrated by God to be a Prophet, Priest, and King unto you. How far do you reverence God's authority in the offices of Jesus? I will tell you how far. It is just as far as you hear him speaking to you with an humble, meek, attentive, and teachable spirit; just as far as you dare not question his merits, and dare not trust on your own; just as far as you find his commands to be decisive, and submitted to without gainsaying, at all events. For, as the unbeliever shows his irreverence of God's authority in the person of the Anointed, by paying him no regard in the offices, so, you may be sure, the more you do the contrary, the more your soul is brought into a submissive and lowly estate before him, so much the more you honour him, as the sealed of the Father. Then,

2.-You may also know your measure herein by the use you make of Jesus, considered as qualified to be a Prophet, Priest, and King to you. The more diligent you are in hearkening to the words of his mouth, keeping them in your heart, pondering upon them, and waiting, in all prayer, for his Spirit to enlighten you in the knowledge of them; the more frequent, ready, and confident you are in applying to his obedience and intercession under the sight of all your sins; the more resolute and constant you are in suing for his grace to keep you in temptations, to rid you from corruptions, to subdue in you the whole body of sin, to maintain and increase in you the blessed graces of Faith, Hope, and Charity; so much the more you evidently receive him, as qualified by God to be a Prophet, Priest, and King towards you. There is no disputing so plain a thing on one side or other. It is our practice must show our progress. In the measure we thus use Christ we receive him in his offices. And let us beware that neither Satan be allowed to make us deny a plain matter of fact on one side, nor self-flattery prevail with us to believe a lie on the other.

And now, my friends, we see how the matter stands with us, in respect of Christ's unction. As our case is, let us take en

couragement to come unto Jesus, they who are far off, and they who are nigh, from this comfortable and delightful thought, that he is Christ, the Anointed of God, the commissioned and qualified Prophet, and Priest, and King. Sirs, in these offices there

not one case of any poor

is full supply of all our wants; there is sinner that is not here provided for. I defy, in the name of Jesus, Guilt to make any charge, Unbelief to raise any objections, the Habit of Sin to set up any claim, the Law to denounce any sentence, Death, Judgment, and Hell together, to present any terrors which Jesus is not able to remove. O, my brethren! it was even because we were thus guilty, sinful, miserable, ignorant, helpless, that Jesus was anointed to be a Saviour. What stands in our way to glory? It is guilt, it is sin, it is blindness, it is Satan. Why, here is the Christ, the constituted, the qualified Prophet, Priest, and King; and therefore anointed, because we needed such an one. What! mean we then to loiter? Who can be against us? God is for us; it is manifest our Christ is a complete Saviour. Let not then your hands hang down in any case. Come to the Saviour, the Anointed of the Lord. Why will ye stand off from him, who is come to save you? What! because ye have long resisted and refused to obey him? What! because ye are very guilty? What! because Satan has long had dominion over you? Still I say, Come, for Jesus is Christ. And O what a comfort to every believing soul, that God has thus commissioned and qualified Jesus! such a Mediator between God and man; so appointed of the Father; so furnished by the Spirit; such a Teacher, King, and Priest! Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we know and are sure that thou art Christ. O how joyfully should we say these words of Peter! How confident should our faith be, when we say, one before another, I believe in Jesus the Christ!

SERMON XV.

ACTS xvi. 30, 31.

What must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.

IN explaining the second branch of the Creed, we have already considered what it is to believe in Jesus; and have begun to illustrate the grounds upon which our firm confidence in him, as our all-sufficient Saviour, is fixed, and stands unshaken; to wit, in the first place, because he is Christ, anointed to this work by the Father. The second thing upon which we build our faith in Jesus, as our sufficient Saviour, comes now to be spoken to, in opening the words that follow, His only Son.

In order to the explication of this point, it is altogether needful to observe, that the divinity of our Lord is not a matter of speculation, or a mere doctrinal position, but that on which the sufficiency of Jesus as a Saviour does most eminently depend. If a Saviour be wanted, it is necessary that the person who undertakes the work should be fit for it; nor can any, who are truly sensible of the want of salvation in this fallen state of ours, possibly betrust themselves to one that offers it to them, until they be surely convinced, on good grounds, that he is able to give it them. If the Saviour be insufficient, the attempt fails; and unless the sinner be persuaded of the Saviour's sufficiency, he cannot depend upon him. You see therefore how far the point before us is from being a speculation; that the inquiry into the truth of it should be entered into with the concern which its importance to our souls gives it; and that they who, incompetently sensible of the want of a Saviour, do address themselves to search thereinto, must necessarily either receive it as a mere notion, or reject it as absurd and impossible. The person who is really sensible of his fallen sinful estate, and

duly concerned about being set at liberty from the alarming apprehensions which it has begotten in him respecting a future world, is the only one that can profitably inquire into this mysterious truth," that Jesus is the Son of God;" and it is his belief of that which can alone support him in his present circumstances with confidence, hope, and peace. If Jesus be the only-begotten of the Father, his mediatorial sufficiencies cannot be questioned, and he must needs be able to save to the uttermost. It remains only that the self-condemned sinner be satisfied he is so; and when he has assuredly learnt this, not from man, but from that word which he is incontestably convinced is God's, he grows easy, and without the least hesitation of heart cries out, "Truly in the Lord have I righteousness. Now I know, and am sure, that all who believe in thee shall not perish, but have everlasting life."

To come therefore to the plain force of this expression, as it stands here in the Creed, which amounts to this, "I believe in Jesus because he is the only Son of the Father." And when I say this, I intend these three things:

First.-That I verily believe him to be the only Son of the

Father.

Secondly. That since I know him to be so, I cannot doubt of his power to save.

Thirdly.—And that therefore I do both confidently rely upon him, and also humbly yield myself up unto him to be saved by him in all respects.

First.-I verily believe him to be the only Son of the Father. And for this I have the plainest evidences, and such as give me the fullest satisfaction, however the co-existence of the three Persons in the one undivided divine Essence is above my comprehension, and however mysterious is the generation of this only-begotten Son from all eternity of the Father. For I find him continually called in Scripture the Son, the only-begotten Son, the Son of God, the only-begotten of the Father; and I am taught to understand these expressions in the most proper and simple sense, by very many other expressions which distinguish him from all others that are called sons, and plainly style him God; declaring, that "he was in the beginning with God, and was God; that he was in the form of God; that he is the

true God;" and setting him out as the object of faith and worship, together with the Father and the Holy Ghost. In conformity with which accounts of his divine nature, I find both the works and perfections of divinity ascribed to this only-begotten Son, who is expressly said to be the Creator of all things; inasmuch as "the world was made by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made;" to be the Preserver of all things, forasmuch as "it is he who is upholding all things by the word of his power;" to be the living God, "in him was life;" to be omnipotent, seeing, "whatsoever things the Father doth," the same doth the Son likewise; to be omnipresent, for, "where two or three are met together in my name, there," says he, "am I in the midst of them;" to be, finally, a searcher of hearts; for "he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man, for he knew what was in man :" and more expressly does he assert of himself, "I am he who searcheth the reins and the heart, and I will give unto every one according to their works," Rev. xi. 23. Finding therefore these works and properties ascribed unto him, which I know, nevertheless, to be peculiar to God, I am further determined in what sense I am to take those expressions, which speak of him as the only-begotten of the Father, and as God; not the same Person with the Father, for then there would be neither Father nor Son; and yet I see evidently of the same essence and perfections with him; so that, unless I should say there are two Gods, I cannot deny him and the Father to be one. Nor do I find anything to lessen my belief of his being the proper and eternal Son of God, when I consider him, in his office-capacity of Redeemer, assuming our nature, and thereby becoming Jesus. On the contrary, I see him putting forth such acts of divinity, even in his estate of humiliation, as sufficiently testify to his being the Son of God. Struck with the incontestable evidence, one could not help crying out, "Rabbi, thou art the Son of God!" and another, "My Lord and my God!" and two others, in the name of all, "We know and are sure that thou art Christ the Son of the living God."-" And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." I see him manifested to be the Son of God, by all the riches of wisdom and knowledge that shone forth in him; by his mighty