trials of their grace are for their improvement of grace. Their peace has been therefore shaken, like a new planted tree that it may take deeper and faster root. Being thus strengthened in the faith, and having the peace of God ruling in their hearts, they can meditate upon this scripture, and turn it into a subject of prayer and praise.

Ó gracious God and Father, pardon my thoughts of thy love to me in Jesus. I was tempted, and ready to give way to unbelief: but the gracious provision made in thy word was the means of keeping me in the hour of temptation. O my God, make the word, in which thou hast caused me to put my trust, more precious to my soul. Open still more to me the fulness of it, and put me into happier possession of its promised blessings. I praise thee, I worship thee for revealing this promise by thy Spirit, and for applying it by his grace with comfort to my heart. I now set to my seal, that it is true. It is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation. Glory be to thee that I accept it, and enjoy the good promised in it. O Father of mercies, what am I that I should be made one of thy people, and should have thee for my God. This love passeth knowledge. O help me to understand more, give me to find more of thy covenant love. Make my heart one with thee. Lead me in thy one way, that I may fear thee for ever. And when temptations come, such as I have been in, grant they may bring me nearer to thee, and may be the means of my making use of what thou hast provided for me in thy Son's fulness. Olet thy good Spirit abide with me to establish my faith in thine everlasting covenant, that I may believe thou wilt never turn from me to do me good. Merciful God grant me this grace in every hour of need. Thou hast given me thy word for it, and therein thou hast enabled me to put my trust. On thy faithful promise I would depend, and on nothing in myself. Thou hast shewed me something of my heart, and I feel it is revolting and ready always to rebel against God; but thou hast undertaken to put thy fear into it, that it shall not depart

from thee: therefore into thy faithful hands I commit it. Keep me, my God, by thy mighty power through faith unto salvation. Amen, Amen.

upon

Happy trials! which have so good an issue, and bring forth such peaceable fruits. My brethren, account it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations, if they lead to the exercise of grace, and occasion fervent effectual prayer. The believer thus tried, learns by practice the necessity of being at peace with God, and of maintaining it in order to walk with God. He is put upon studying the nature of this peace. He reads and meditates the revealed account of it. He sees it is a perfect unchangeable peace, secured to him by the everlasting covenant of the blessed Trinity, who have engaged to save him from all his sins and miseries, and never to turn away from doing him good. To this he trusts. He commits himself to the care of this covenant God; and he finds the promise true. In temptation he believes, and is delivered. In his warfare out of weakness he is made strong. He fights the good fight of faith, and he conquers all his enemies. learns from trials to trust with more confidence. not only maintains, but also improves peace with God. He depends on what God has promised to them, who walk with him, and the promise is made good, and he learns to go on more comfortably, and daily walks closer with his heavenly Father.

He

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The enemy looks on him with malice. He envies his state. He once knew the heaven of communion with God, but he was lifted up with pride, and fell. It stirs up every infernal temper in him to see the happy believer, who had fallen like him restored to what he can never expect. Hence either as a sly serpent, or as a roaring lion, he never ceases to tempt. As soon as one

wile fails, he has another ready. He is night and day plotting and scheming, waiting for an opportunity to make a seasonable attack. While conscience is at peace with God, and lives under the protection of the blood of sprinkling, he tempts in vain. But he does not despair

of success. He knows he has an ally within us in fast league with sin, and therefore he still hopes to draw him into sin by surprise or assault. In which he is indefatigable. He is never tired. He is always tempting the believer, not so much to gross offences, as to spiritual wickedness. Sly injections, legal insinuations, and selfrighteous thoughts, are his most common temptations. With these he tries to shake the peace of conscience, and he forms his attack generally in this manner.

How can you be a child of God, and yet be as you are? There is nothing in you, for which God should look upon you, and love you. What have you? What ceasing from evil, what learning to do well, to recommend you to him? How can God love any thing, unless it be agreeable to his will, and what can he delight in unless it be conformable to his image? But do you live up to his will, and is his image perfectly renewed in you? Have you grace, and do you live up to it? Are you a christian, and are you like Christ? How are your duties? Just as they should be! You know they are not, and how can God be pleased with them, when you are not pleased with them yourself? How is your walk? Is it such as becometh your high calling-close with God, and at a vast distance from sin, and the world? How is your warfare? Is the whole armour of God kept buckled on? And are you always in the strength of the Lord a conqueror? Examine, and try yourself. Bring forth that one good thing, for which God should love you, and bestow his blessing upon you. You have no such thing. You have nothing to merit, yea, nothing to recommend you to the divine favour: and therefore is it not great presumption to fancy, that God will love such a one as you, whose just desert is wrath and everlasting destruction?

These are some of the depths of Satan. He knows, how strongly we are by nature attached to the covenant of works, and that if he can get the believer to look off from Jesus, expecting to see something in himself, for which God should love him, he shall then weaken his

faith and shake his peace. In this snare he has catched many a child of God. The temptation is suitable to the workings of our legal minds: it flatters our self-righteous hopes and is vastly pleasing to the pride of our carnal hearts. No wonder then, so long as there is flesh in us as well as spirit, this artful suggestion should be sometimes received in this manner-Have I any thing for which God should esteem me and bless me? I wish I could discover some amiable temper, or some praiseworthy deed, which might recommend me to the particular regard of God. Indeed at present I have not any such. But I hope to attain it sometime or other. If I do but use more diligence, and watchfulness, and wait more constantly in the means of grace, perhaps I may attain it soon. However there can be no harm in trying. I will exert myself. And I hope the day will come, when I shall be someway deserving of the divine favour.

Here the temptation has taken place. As the serpent beguiled Eve, through his subtilty, so is this man's mind corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. The subtile serpent has attacked the liberty of the child of God and has darkened his understanding, and obscured his view of gospel grace. His eye is not now single: his heart is not now simple, in the finished salvation. He has been deceived into a legal dependence, and is giving way to a spirit of bondage. If he was left to himself, the enemy would lead him captive at his will. Satan desires to have him, that he may sift him as wheat, but he is not suffered to blow any thing away, except a little chaff; for the Holy Spirit, in whose keeping he is, dicovers and defeats the attempts of Satan. He brings to his mind, and enables him to make use of what he before knew of the doctrine of grace. present trial requires the practice and affords occasion for the improvement of his former lessons. He had learnt from scripture, truths very different from the suggestions, to which he was ready to yield. He was therein taught, that the Father's love to his children

The

does not suppose merit in them. Grace does not follow works for then grace would be no more grace. Election is not of him that willeth, or of him that runneth, but of God, who sheweth mercy. For we are saved freely by grace through faith, and that not of ourselves; it is the gift of God. The election of grace is from mere love and sovereign favour, and has no motives to influence it but the good pleasure of the divine will. The objects of it are not the worthy, but the unworthy -not innocent, but fallen man-sinners, as such, no way conditioned or qualified--the lost, the helpless, the ungodly-yea the chief of sinners-open enemies and rebels against God. They are not saved by works of righteousness, which they have done, or can do, least any of them should boast: For boasting is absolutely excluded. Salvation was so contrived, was so wrought out, and is so appiled, that he who glorieth shall have nothing left him to glory in, but the Lord. No flesh can glory in his presence: for of him, and through him, and to him are all things, to whom be glory for ever. Amen.

So soon as the spirit of God opens this view of the exceeding riches of divine grace, the believer sees his mistake. He finds that he was departing from the simplicity of the gospel, by supposing that the love of God followed merit, and that he should be loved more according as his walk recommended him. His eyes are open

ed.

The delusion vanishes. The perfect freeness, and the absolute sovereignty of the Father's love as revealed in scripture, is manifested to him. He reads, and mixes faith with what he reads, and so recovers himself out of the snare of the devil. Some such passage as this is made the means of his deliverance, Psal. ciii. 17. "The mercy "of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon "them that fear him." Precious words! full of rich consolation to those, who have been tempted to seek some qualifications in themselves, on account of which they might be entitled to the love of God, and who have been distressed upon their not finding it. The holy