with a steady eye into your own hearts? Dare you read to the bottom of the page? Are you not afraid to find there the sentence of your condemnation? Do you know what manner of spirit you are of?

The time will not allow us to consider, minutely, the means, by which this knowledge may be attained. A few general precepts must conclude. First, then, suspect yourselves. Do not be afraid of doing yourselves injustice. When you suspect, watch your conduct; and detect, if you can, your predominant motives. Depend upon it, you will struggle hard to deceive yourselves. Compare yourselves, then, with the word of God, and with one another. Recollect, that what appears disgraceful in others, cannot be honourable in you; and what diminishes your esteem of them, ought to diminish your esteem of yourself. Find, if you can, some disinterested and sensible friend, who will have the courage to disclose to you your faults, and the goodness to assist you in correcting them. But, above all, look up to the Father of lights, lay yourself open to the eye of almighty mercy, and cry, Lord, who can understand his errours? cleanse thou me from secret faults.

'

SERMON XVIII,

EPH. ii. 5.

BY GRACE YE ARE SAVED.

THIS simple proposition, though often in the mouth of christians, is yet not without its difficulties. Every believer in the gospel acknowledges its truth; and yet there are very few men, who would entirely coincide in their interpretation of the passage.

It is not to excite your surprise, that we shall now proceed to enumerate some of the most popular senses, in which this proposition has been understood, but only to guard you against being carried away by the dogmatical assertions of men, who are contented with detaching a form of scripture words from the place where it is found, and insisting, that it means only what they choose to understand by the phrase.

What then is the meaning of grace? When spoken of God, it means simply, gratuitous kindness, and thus is it often applied to any thing, in which his favour is discovered. Thus the gospel is called the grace of God. The terms saved, or salvation, originally mean deliverance from danger, from disease,

or evil of any kind, and hence, are often used with a latitude, which embraces all the benefits, derived from the introduction of the gospel, whether relating to this life or the next, including of course the healing of the mind, and deliverance from the power and consequences of sin.

The following are some of the interpretations, which the clause in our text has received.

1. There are many, who understand by the proposition, by grace are ye saved, that man can do nothing towards his own salvation. By grace, they understand a supernatural operation of the divine spirit, which effects a change in the moral nature of a man, toward which his own exertions contribute nothing; and where this change is effected, salvation is certain, and thus God is not only the ultimate source, but the sole and immediate agent in the production of goodness in moral beings.

This, in technical language, is the doctrine of human inability. It represents the moral state of man to be such, that he can do nothing to save himself from ruin; for, if it were otherwise, his salvation, it is said, would not be of God, but of himself.

In this statement, it is obvious to remark, that though there is a sense, and a very just one, in which man can do nothing without God, it cannot be regarded as any derogation from the grace or glory of God, to admit, that man can do all, that God enables him to do. God governs and treats his moral creatures in a moral way; and it would seem to be

charging God with folly or contradiction, to say that he offers men means and motives to virtue, while he has provided them with no capacity to use the one, and no susceptibility of the influence of the other, without his own immediate and extraordinary operation. To a plain man, there is no greater mystery in our dependence on God, in the affair of religion, than in any other. We are to be saved, indeed, by grace, as by grace we are, every moment, preserved from natural and moral ruin; that is, by the goodness of him, who gives us our powers, and appoints us our circumstances.

Others, on the contrary, to avoid the perversion, to which the interpretation just stated is exposed, and by which christianity has suffered, think, that they sufficiently answer the meaning of the apostle, when they admit, that man is not saved, either by his own exertions, or by the operations of divine grace alone, but by the.concurrence or cooperation of God's spirit with human endeavours. Thus they suppose, that grace, by which they mean spiritual influence, is communicated to all good men, in answer to prayer, or in consequence of human endeavours, and especially in seasons of great temptation, trial, necessity, or peculiar infirmity; and yet always in such a silent manner, as not to be distinguished from the natural operations, or ordinary state of our minds. Thus, say they, we are truly saved by grace, because, if left to ourselves, we could not work out our salvation, but should, infallibly, sink in the arduous undertaking. In this way they propose to avoid the difficulties, attending

the doctrines of human merit or ability on the one hand, and those of human inability and irresistible grace on the other; while their adversaries say, that they only unite, in one unintelligible scheme, the realdifficulties of both. Perhaps the principal advantage of this mode of interpretation is, that it seems to allow sufficient meaning for the various phraseology of different passages of scripture, while it leaves the real metaphysical difficulty of man's dependence and activity as inexplicable as ever, and as much open as before to the disputations of those, who wish to penetrate into the secrets of the divine influence on moral agents.

There is yet another class of christians, who conceive, that men are said to be saved by grace, because the introduction of the christian religion, by which men are prepared for salvation, or a state of future happiness, is a singular instance of the grace or undeserved favour of God. It is a proof of his care, to which mankind had no claim, and of which they had no previous desert. It was God's grace or favour only, which originally appointed Jesus the mediator, and sent him into the world; it is God's gratuitous or unmerited, kindness, which provides the means of reformation and recovery offered us by christianity, which gives the promise of pardon to the penitent, establishes the hopes and wishes of immortal life, It is in consequence of God's favour, that we are born under this dispensation; and if we attain, at last, to the salvation, which it offers us, by grace only do we