duty towards God is summed up in that excellent body of Divinity, the catechism of our church. "Our duty towards God is to believe " in Him, to fear Him, and to love Him with "all our hearts, with all our minds, with all our "souls, and with all our strength," &c. All our faculties and powers, both of body and mind, should be intirely devoted to Him, without any reserve or limitation, and this in every moment we live. But this "we have left undone," more or less, through every moment of our whole existence. "Our duty towards "our neighbour is to love him as ourselves, and "to do to all men as we would they should do "unto us." Where is the perfect man? There is no such character in this our fallen world. But our iniquity has not been confined to omission; for "we have done those things which

we ought not to have done." Our conduct is marked not merely with negative, but also with positive evil. We ought not to have set up idols in our hearts; but we have "loved and "served the creature more than the Creator." The holy name of God ought never to have passed irreverently over our lips, nor even an idea of Him to have arisen in our hearts without holy awe and supreme regard. Not a moment of His sabbath should ever have been unoccupied by sacred and grateful meditations on His love, and by delight in His service. It would be easy to extend the catalogue of our transgressions to the second table; but a further enlargement on the subject would swell the present essay beyond its intended limits.

The conclusion of the confessional part of the form which we are here considering, is concise, but very comprehensive. "There is

19

"no health" (i. e. no spiritual health) "in us.' How sad would be the state of the body, if wholly destitute of health! Behold that wretchedobject! The unhappy person, to whom your attention is requested, has fallen down a tremendous precipice. He has not only broken his legs and arms, though that were terrible, but he has shattered every bone in his poor mangled carcase. Your heart bleeds for him; and well it may. If his fall had not stunned him, so as to produce a temporary delirium, he would fill the air with lamentation, and mourning, and woe. O sinner, thou art the man! A complication of diseases, though but of two or three, is grievous: but what would be the situation of a man who laboured under all the diseases at once to which human nature is subject. This is the state of the soul of man: "there is no health in it." The understanding is darkened; the will is perverted; the affections are carnalized; the conscience is defiled. "From "the sole of the feet, even unto the head, there " is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises "and putrifying sores."

*

If we have felt the truth of the preceding confession, we shall heartily join in saying, "But Thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, "miserable offenders!" If a recollection of our offences has made us miserable, whither shall We go for relief from our burden? "Thousands "of rams, and ten thousands of rivers of oil; "our first-born given for our transgression, the "fruit of our bodies for the sin of our souls;' would be insufficient to obliterate one single offence. We have deserved all the threatened

* Isai. i. 6.

punishment, and must acknowledge that God would be justified in our eternal condemnation. But the question returns upon us-To whom shall we go? An attempt at concealment or resistance would be equally the fruit of folly. To our offended Lord, therefore, we must make confession. But what plea shall we employ in order to deprecate His wrath? Shall we promise future amendment? This we cannot do; and, if we could, it would not avail to the annihilation ⚫ of past criminality. There is no way left but to throw ourselves upon His "mercy." If He pardon us, it will be such an act of grace as none but God could perform.

We must utterly despair, when a discovery is made to us of our fallen, guilty, polluted, and helpless state, were not that discovery accompanied by a revelation of God's mercy in Jesus Christ. But this encourages us to hope, and excites us to cry, "Spare Thou them, O "God, which confess their faults!" To a criminal who has forfeited his life, it is a great favour if that life be spared: how much greater to a sinner, who perceives that he has merited the damnation of hell, to be plucked as a brand from the everlasting burnings! But such are the riches of the grace of God in Christ, that we are emboldened to ask for more than mere

exemption from punishment. The Gospel affords us reason to believe, that we do not conceive too largely of Divine mercy, when we add," Restore Thou them that are penitent!" A restoration to the Divine favour and the Divine image is essential to the happiness of the awakened mind. The language of Absalom is also that of the penitent sinner, "Let me

"see the King's face!"* The first dawn of hope in God's mercy through Christ begets love; and love can be contented with nothing short of an intire reconciliation. The deeper our search into this unfathomable mine, the riches of the grace of God, the firmer the foundation appears on which we build our hopes. For what we ask is " according to God's "promises declared unto mankind in Christ "Jesus our Lord." Christ has merited for us all that we want; and "for His sake" God has promised to bestow it on us.

Every one who has heartily joined in the preceding confession of sin and deprecation of the anger of God, at the same time that he desires deliverance from guilt and punishment, will feel a strong solicitude to be saved from the dominion of those sins, which have hitherto reigned over him and are now become his plague and torment. Our confessions are insincere, and our supplications are a mockery of God, unless they are accompanied with an anxious desire after Divine grace, that we may conform our future lives to His holy law. this desire really prevail in our minds, we feel likewise our own imbecility to do the will of God; and then, filled with this ardent longing after holiness, and possessed at the same time with a full conviction that we must be indebted to Almighty power for our sanctification, as well as to Divine mercy for our justification, we shall come before the throne and say, "Grant, "O most merciful Father, for Christ's sake, that we may hereafter live a Godly, righteous, and

*2 Sam. xiv. 32.

If

"sober life, to the glory of Thy holy name. "Amen."

The description of a Christian's life, which our church here exhibits to our view, is quoted from the lively oracles of God. St. Paul informs us, "that the grace of God which bringeth "salvation hath appeared to all men; teaching "us that, denying ungodliness and worldly "lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and Godly in this present world." * It has been said, that the doctrines of grace lead to licentiousness of conduct. This objection to the truth is as old as the days of the Apostles: for even St. Paul, in the course of his ministry, found some unhappy persons, who drew a perverse conclusion from the evangelic premises he laid down; which occasioned his asking with holy indignation, "Shall we continue in sin, "that grace may abound? God forbid."† And again," Do we then make void the law through "faith? God forbid; yea we establish the law," our doctrines make full provision for its honour. If such an objection was started in the days of primitive Christianity, when a practice eminently holy usually attended a profession of these doctrines, it is no wonder that it should still continue to be made in our own day, when a profession of the true faith is attended with none of those painful consequences to which the friends of the gospel, during the first centuries of its promulgation, were sure to expose themselves. "The grace of God," however, continues the same; and the effects which it produces, so far as the belief of it prevails in the heart, are also the same. Objectors to the Scripture

* Titus ii. 11, 12..

† Rom. vi. 1.

Rom. iii. 31.