week, to give you a parting word next Wednesday morning; and O that what has been my comfort this day in the meditation on this passage, may be yours and mine to all eternity. He that hath an ear to hear let him hear what the evangelic prophet saith, thy God thy glory.

The Holy Ghost seems, as it were, particularly fond of this expression; when God published the ten commandments upon mount Sanai, he prefaced it thus, I am the Lord, and not content with that, he adds, thy God and the frequency of it, I suppose, made Luther say, that the gosTM pel deals much in pronouns, in which consists a believers comfort; but if there were no other argument than this, it would cut up that destructive principle by the very root that pretends to tell us that there is no such thing as appropriation in the Bible; that our faith is only to be a rational assent to the word of God, without a particular application of that word made to our souls: this is as contrary to the gospel, and to experience of every real saint, as light is contrary to darkness and heaven to hell. My brethren, I appeal to any of you, what good would it do you, if you had ten thousand notes wrote in large characters by the finest hand that can write in London; suppose you have got them, as many men have, and it is a very convenient way, that they were put into your little pockets made on the inside of your coat; suppose you should say, my coat is buttoned, I have all these here next my heart: when I come to look at them, I find there is not one note payable to me, they are either all forged, or payable to some body else, and therefore are good for nothing to me. All the promises of the gospel, all that is said of God and Christ is ours. The great

question therefore is, whether the God we profess to believe in is our God? not only, whether he is so in general, that the devils may say; but whether he is our God in particular. The devils can say, O God; but the devils cannot say, my God: that is a privilege peculiar to God's chosen people, who really believe on the Lord Jesus Christ: and therefore, my brethren, a deist cannot say, my God, my Christ, because he does not believe on that medium by which God becomes our God. That was a noble saying of Luther, "I will have nothing to do with an absolute God;" that is, I will have nothing to do with a God out of Christ. Now this is a deist's glory: Lord Bolingbroke values himself upon it, I am astonished at that man's infidelity and cowardice.. I don't like those men that leave their writings to be published after their death: I love to see men bold in their writings: I like an honest man that will put out his writings while alive, that he may see what men can say against him, and then answer them; but it is mere cowardice to leave it to the world to answer for it, to set us a cavelling after they are got into the grave says he, I will have nothing to do with the God of Moses; and I suppose the principles of that deist made one pretty near to him ask as soon as the breath was out of his body, where do you think he is gone to another replies, where do you think but to hell. God grant that may not be the portion of any here!

The question then is, how God is our God; thy God. My brethren, our all depends upon it; what signifies saying, this is mine, and that is mine, if you cannot say, God is mine. The best thing that God has left in the New Testament, is

himself; I will be their God, that is one of the legacies; and a new heart also will I give them, that is another, I will put my laws in their mind, and write them in their hearts, that is another : but all that is good for nothing, comparatively speaking, unless God has said at the same time, for they are all inseparable, I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Now how shall I know that God is my God? I am afraid, some people think there is no knowing; well then, if you think so, you set up a worship, and go and erect an altar, and instead of receiving God in the sacrament as yours, go and worship an unknown God. I am so far from believing that we cannot know that God is ours, that I am fully persuaded of it, and would speak it with humili ty, and I would not chuse to leave you with a lie in my mouth, that I have known it for about thirty-five years as clear as the sun is in the meridian, that God is my God. And how shall I know it, my brethren? I would ask you this question, didst thou ever feel the want of God to be thy God? Nobody knows God to be their God that did not feel him to be his God in Christ: out of Christ, God is a consuming fire. I know there are a great variety of ways in peoples conversions, but still, my brethren, we must all feel our misery, we must all feel our distance from God, all feel that we are estranged from God, that we bring into the world with us a nature that is not agreeable to the law of God, nor possibly can be ; we cannot be said to believe that God is our God, till we are brought to be reconciled to him through his Son. Can I say a person is my friend, till I am reconciled to him? and therefore the gospel only is the ministration of reconciliation. Paul

saith, We beseech you as ambassadors of Christ, that you would be reconciled unto God: this is to be the grand topic of our preaching; we are to beseech them, and God himself turns beggar to his own creatures to be reconciled to him: now this reconciliation is brought about by a poor sinner's being brought to Jesus Christ; and when once he sees his enmity and hatred to God, feeling the misery of departing from him, and being conscious that he is obnoxious to eternal wrath, flies to Jesus as to a place of refuge, and expects only a reconciliation thro' the blood of the Lamb; without this, neither you nor I can say, God is my God: there is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked. The ministers of Christ must take care they don't preach an unknown God, and we must take care we don't pretend to live upon an unknown God, a God that is not appropriated and brought home to our souls by the efficacy of the Spirit. But, my brethren, we cannot say, God is our God, unless we are in Jesus Christ. Can you say, such a one is your father, unless you can give proof of it? You may be bastards, there are many bastards laid at Christ's door. Now God cannot be my God, at least I cannot know him to be so, unless he is pleased to send into my heart the spirit of adoption, and to admit me to enjoy familiarity with Christ.

My brethren, I told you the other night that the grand controversy God has with England is for the slight put on the Holy Ghost. As soon as a person begins to talk of the work of the Holy Ghost, they cry, you are a methodist: as soon as you speak about the divine influences of the Holy Ghost, O! say they, you are an enthusiast. May the Lord keep these methodistical enthusi

asts amongst us to the latest posterity. Ignatius, supposed to have been one of the children that Jesus took up in his arms, in his first Epistle (pray read it) wrote soon after St. John's death, and we valued nothing so authentic as what was wrote in the three first centuries, bears a noble testimony of this truth. When I was performing my first exercises at Oxford, I used to take delight to walk and read it, and could not help noting and putting down from time to time several remarkable passages. In the superscription of all his Epistles, I remember, he stiles himself Theophoros, i. e. Bearer of God*, and believed that those he wrote to, were so too. Some body went and told Trajan, that one Ignatius was an enthusiast, that he carried God about him: being brought before the emperor, who, though in other respects. a good prince, was a cruel enemy to the Christians but many a good prince does bad things by the inflence of wicked counsellors, like our king Henry the Vth, who was brought in to persecute the poor Lollards, for assembling in St. Giles's fields to hear the pure gospel, by false accusation of being rebels against him. Before such a prince was Ignatius brought; says Trajan who is this that calls himself a bearer of God? says Ignatius, I am he, for which he quotes this passage, I will dwell in them, and will walk in them, and they shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty. The emperor was so enraged that, in order to cure him of his enthusiasm, he ordered him to be devoured by lions; at which Ignatius laughed for joy: O! says he, am I going to be devoured? and when his friends came about him, he almost danced for gladness; when.

* Deum ferens, inspired, divine, holy,