Compassion, and prudence, and charity may restrain you from censuring with severity the enemies of the faith; may dispose you to overlook, or to soften at least, the alarming denunciations of the Gospel, in which they are concerned. But for YOURSELVES, who have given your names to Christ, and have hope in him only; who know the wonders of mercy that have been wrought for you, and were finally completed on that cross, which is your trust and consolation, your pride and glory, it is almost needless to say what your interest, and what your obligation is, to observe, respect, and reverence the dispensation of the Gospel. Ye are self-condemned, if ye slight this Law: ye are ungrateful, up to all the possibilities of guilt, if ye make light of it: ye are undone for ever, if ye neglect so great Salvation.

What allowances it may please God to make for the prejudices, the passions, the slights, the blasphemies of unthinking and careless men, who have never embraced the faith of Jesus, it may not, perhaps, concern you to inquire. But ye know, that ye are responsible to that Law, which ye profess, and to that master, whom ye serve; that to you, indifference is infidelity; and disobedience, treason;

that wilful unrepented sin in a Christian is without hope, as without excuse, shuts him out from all the rewards, and exposes him, even with his own full consent to all the punishments of the Gospel.

3

In a word, as their joy is great in believing, who obey the Gospel of Christ; so the guilt and the terror is proportionably great, to disobedient believers. For, dreadful as unbelief may prove in the issue to such as, through their own fault, have not come to the knowledge of Christ, Belief, without obedience, is more dreadful still. I have an apostle's warrant for this assertion. For it had been better for us not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after we have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto us.

q 2 Peter ii. 21.

SERMON VI.

PREACHED NOVEMBER 16, 1766.

St. JOHN, xiv. 8.

Philip saith to him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us.

OUR Lord, being now about to depart out of the world, prepares his disciples for this unwelcome event by many consolations and instructions. He acquaints them, more particularly than he had hitherto done, with his own personal dignity. He tells them, that, as they believed in God, they were also to believe in him; and that, although he should

r St. John, xiii, 1.

s Ch. xiv. 1.

shortly leave them, it was only to remove from Earth to Heaven, to his Father's house, where he should more than ever be mindful of their concerns, and whither I go, says he, to prepare a place for yout. And, to impress this belief (so necessary for their future support under his own, and their approaching sufferings) the more strongly upon them, He declares, in the most authoritative manner, that he, only, was the Way, the Truth, and the Life; and that no man could come to the Father, but by him". Nay, to shew them how great his interest was, and how close his union, with the Father, he even adds, If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also; and from henceforth, continues he, ye know him, and have seen him*.

This last declaration seemed so strange to his disciples, who had no notion of seeing the Father in our Lord's suffering state, or indeed through any other medium, than that of those triumphant honours, which their carnal expectations had destined to him, that one of them, the Apostle Philip, saith to him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. As

if he had said, “We know thee to be a person " of great holiness, and have seen many won"derful things done by thee; so that we can"not doubt but that thou art a prophet sent "from God, for some great end and purpose "of his providence. But if thy pretensions

go so far as to require us to believe in Thee, "as in the Father; if we are to conceive "of Thee, as the only Life of the world; of « so great authority with God, as to procure "mansions in heaven for thy disciples; nay, "of so great dignity in thine own person, as "to challenge the closest union and communi"cation with the eternal Father; if, ndeed,

we are to believe such great things of thee, "it is but reasonable, as thou sayest, that, in "knowing and seeing thee, we also know and 66 see the Father; that we have the clearest " and most unquestioned proofs of thy divinity. "Shew us, then, the Father; make us see the glorious symbols of his presence; present us "with such irresistible demonstrations of his power and greatness, as were vouchsafed to "our Fathers, at the giving of the Law; such, "as strike conviction on the senses, and over"rule all doubt and distrust in so high a 66 matter; shew us, I say, the Father, in this sense, and it sufficeth to our persuasion and firm belief in thee."

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