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V.

SERM. per and refolutions, fhould be founded on careful inquiry, and very attentive confideration. There's such a self-partiality, I may fay, even natural to men, that wisdom requires us not to rely wholly on the first hopeful appearances of good affections and purposes: But examine diligently, and reflect calmly that we be not deceived. Secondly, the refolutions of good men, in particular circumftanced cafes, that they will stand in such a trial, which they are warned of, or overcome fuch a temptation, are yet less to be depended on, than their purposes of perfevering integrity in the main: Because the laft is what we have greater encouragement to hope for from the promises of God, who will perform his good work in them till the day of Chrift, will strengthen, Stablish, and fettle them, and keep them by his power thro' faith unto falvation, if he fees their dispositions and the course of their lives habitually right with him: But they have no fuch fecurity against the prevalence of particular temptations. And, lastly, great modesty becomes us, with thankful acknowledgments of, and humble confidence in God's gracious interpofal for our establishment. See how St. Paul expreffes himself,

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when he had the strongest affurance of his SERM. persevering even to the end of faith, the V. Salvation of the foul; 2. Tim. i. 12. I know whom I have believed, and I am perfwaded he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day: his hope chiefly refted,

Where it is plain, not on his present fincerity, and the firmness of his own refolutions, but on him whom he had believed; and his perfwafion of his being preferved to the final happiness of the great day, was founded on the ability, and the grace of that Saviour, to whom he had committed his foul in well doing.

Thirdly, The whole paffage, whereof my text is a part, leads us to confider the inspection of God's providence into the failures of his fervants, his forefight of them, his fuperintending care, even during the progrefs of their temptations, and his overruling the iffues of them for good. Nothing does more obviously strike our minds in reading the hiftory, than the part which our Saviour had in it. He forefaw Peter's denying him. What can be more evident? he foretold it with all its circumstances, and if this tranfgreffion of Peter, of which himself was the adequate, complete, and 13 only

SERM.only guilty cause, was the object of divine V. prescience, so are all others of the fame kind

indeed all the voluntary actions of moral agents: For no reafon can poffibly be affigned, why fome fhould, and not others. This is, I acknowledge, a fubject of a very high nature, and difficult queftions have been moved concerning it. As how it can confift with the freedom of rational agents? and, again, how it confifts with the rectitude, and goodness of God, to foresee moral evil in his creatures, and not interpofe for preventing it? I fhall not enter, at this time, on the difcuffion of these points, but only obferve, that the liberty of our actions, fo far as is neceffary to constitute their morality, is what we are confcious of; which is the fureft kind of knowledge, and excludes all doubting: That prefcience does not change, nor at all influence the nature of things, particularly of human actions, any more than the bare knowledge of what is past or prefent: And, that, tho' the nature and manner of the divine foreknowledge is to us incomprehenfible, as the manner of God's exerting his other perfections alfo is, for example, his power in creating, yet that's no argument against the truth of the thing it

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self, which is otherwife fully prov'd by SER M.

fufficient evidence.

But let us obferve, that our blessed compaffionate Saviour was not unmindful of his weak difciple, in that low state, to which he was to fall, and actually did fall, even by his own fault; but regarded him with tender pity: He took early precautions against the ruinous tendency of that fall, by making timely interceffion for him: I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: He gave early repeated warnings, that if the fin could not be wholly prevented, a foundation might be laid for repentance, when it thould afterwards be brought into Peter's remembrance.

Our

Lord also, in the extremity of his own diftress, when he stood before a most unrighteous tribunal, where he was cruelly and inhumanly used, yet did not forget his guilty fervant. One of the evangelists observes, that when the cock crew, the time foreseen for Peter's compleating his offence, Jefus looked upon him; which is taken notice of as the occafion of his going out and weeping bitterly; or forrowing after a godly fort, which wrought repentance unto falvation, not to be repented of. And, lafily, the fe quel fhows, that the good fhepherd recover

V.

SERM.ed his straying sheep from the error of his V. way, and restored him to that favour with

himself in which he stood before; far from taking the forfeiture of privileges which he had made by his crime, he receives him, upon repentance, as if he had not finned, (as it was just now obferved, he contributed by his gracious care and kind interpofition, to bring him to repentance) and reinstates him in his office without abating one circumftance, one honourable diftinction from the reft of his brethren, which had ever been granted to him. After our Lord's refurrection, when an angel attended at his grave to direct the difciples who should come to enquire for him, this heavenly meffenger distinguishes Peter, in the report he makes to be communicated to the apoftles; tell, fays he, to the women, Mark xvi. 7. his dif ciples and Peter, that he goes before them into Galilee. And we read John xxi. 15. that he received again with great folemnity the charge which had been given him before, to feed the fheep and the lambs of Chrift: Nay, care was taken by our Saviour, that Peter should rife with advantage from his fall, to greater usefulness, by an eminent zeal which naturally accompanies fincere repentance, for

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