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Sufficiency of God.

the Redeemer, is and must be best acquainted with the nature and purpose of the law, and, by its use, enters most deeply into the renunciation of himself. He, who mingles Law and Gospel (a case not unfrequent even among great professors), through ignorance of the right place of either, must proportionally walk in darkness and discomfort, and may, unless God in mercy prevent it, fall into some dangerous errors, the very nature of which tends to harden the heart, as well as to blind the eyes, of those who are subverted by them. Heresy is no slight affair, but will spread and eat as doth a canker. In very deed, every man without real grace, be his denomination what it may, is and must be, either secretly, or openly, if not both together, a real Antinomian.

Who then is sufficient for these things, or able to direct his own steps? How can any escape, since all are blinded by nature, and shut up under sin and condemnation through the holiness of the law? Blessed be the Lord for his Grace and Allsufficiency! Viewing these, in faith, the believer may say, with his brother of old; Though I am not sufficient of myself to think any thing as of myself, yet my sufficiency is of God; or, with a brother of still higher antiquity; JEHOVAH is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear: JEHOVAH is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? He, who knows what all this means, will tremble to have recourse to the powers of nature, or to rely upon himself; and, of course, boasting will be excluded. Egotisms, or much about a man's own self, rarely become a Christian, and are seldom necessary. Publications of this. sort are usually the ebullitions of an overflowing

Liberty of Soul.

vanity, or the high conceit of a man's own consequence in the world.

CHAP. XLIII.

ON LIBERTY OF SOUL.

THE real liberty of the soul consists in a happy freedom from the usurped dominion of sin and Satan. The Christian therefore denies himself, because of sin in his mortal body; he shuns the spirit of the world, because by its sinfulness it promotes its inbred corruptions; he prays and watches against the evil one, because he is the grand tempter and stirrer of all iniquity both in himself and others.

The more this frame is maintained, the more will the heart enjoy the glorious liberty of the children of God. This is a holy and righteous freedom, which the Christian pants after continually, and which is then most sweetly experienced, when the soul is most abstracted from the low solicitudes and dull satisfactions of sense and of time. The Father of mercies is the cause, the Son of his love is the channel, and the Spirit of grace is the power, of all the spiritual freedom in earth and heaven, and of all the transporting blessedness resulting from it.

The world and the flesh are a dead weight upon the mind in its possession and exercise of this delightful liberty; and, therefore, in the mind's struggles to gain and secure it, the world and the flesh must be brought down and kept down, hav-,

Upon Sickness.

ing nothing about them, separately from the mercy and providence of God, but miserable chains and fetters, wherewith to bind and imprison the soul.

CHAP. XLIV.

UPON SICKNESS.

ALL sickness and sorrow arise from sin. If we were not unholy creatures, we could not be unhappy creatures. Because of the ill habit, occasioned by transgression, every element fights against our health by changes and inclemencies; and the very food we eat, while it nourishes for a time, lays the foundation of disease in our bodies, already prepared by their own weakness and ill temperament to receive and increase it.

Sickness is a dismal scourge to the ungodly, and a painful spur to the gracious. To the one, when the Law flashes its lightnings upon the guilty conscience, and thunders all its terrors upon the startled soul, then disease comes forward as the horrible harbinger of miseries everlasting; but, to the other, a solemn remembrancer, through the Gospel of Grace, both of the yanity of all earthly things, and of the nearer and near approach to immortal glory.

When sickness comes and grace can meet it; Q what a just representation do they make to the soul concerning the poor honours, riches, cares, and pleasures, of this transitory world! How unimportant do all the struggles for power, splen

Serious Reflections.

dour, titles, wealth, and pre-eminence, which have employed or enraged the past and present ages, appear! How childish and mean do those objects pass before us, for which men have lavished their time, and thrown away their souls! What bubbles, what nonsense, what glaring and horrid stupidity, have filled and directed, have engaged and overwhelmed, the counsels of the greatest among men; and all to no other profit than a little fleeting vanity, with a rapid descent to lasting oblivion or ruin! Thus the soul feels, when it is quickened by sickness to consider the low and passing affairs of earth and of time.

On the contrary, how inexpressibly great and tremendous do the things of God and eternity rise fully in view to the mind! O the worth of worlds, what are they, in some of these soulsearching moments! How is the soul astonished with the grandeur of God, and with the deep and wide importance of all that belongs to him!Wrapt in the solemn contemplation of unutterable glories, how doth the spirit of a man tremblingly examine and solicitously inquire into the truth and extent of its interest in them! And if grace seal an answer of peace upon the heart, how doth it flutter with gladness at its safety, and how will the whole frame be agitated with a new delight in the sure prospect of eternal concern in these valuable, these only valuable, things!

The Christian will be wakingly alive to all this and more, if his disorder be such, as can admit of reflection. Blessed be God, however, whether he can thus reflect or not; yet, being a Christian, his state is equally safe with God through his gracious Redeemer. Whatever be the frame, the

All things sure.

promise is sure, the covenant of God is ordered in all things and sure, and sure and faithful is God himself to perform it. It is comfortable, and indeed desirable, to have pleasant foretastes and feelings of grace and glory, under the pain or decay of the body; but they are no otherwise material to the true believer's security for heaven. If he hath not these perceptions during the short time of his sickness, he will have them abundantly after it, if it end in his dissolution; or, if it do not thus end, the want of them is a loud admonition to make his calling and election sure, in the days that may yet be appointed him.

If we cannot think of Christ, through the power of disease, O what an happiness is it to be assured, that Christ thinks constantly and effectually of us! He maketh all our bed in our sickness; that is, he turns the whole frame of our condition in it for our best advantage.

O Lord, leave me not, poor and helpless sinner that I am, in my most healthful state; leave me not especially, I beseech thee, in the low, the languid, the distressing circumstances of infirmity and disease! Jesus, Master, thou art said to have borne our sicknesses, because thou barest the sins which occasioned them; take, take away from my conscience the guilt which brought disease, and then the worst part of its misery shall likewise be done away. And when, through my feebleness or disorder, I cannot act faith upon thy love; O lift my drooping spirit, carry me as one of thine own lambs in thy bosom, enfold me in thy gracious arms, and let my soul wholly commit itself, and give up its all, in quiet resignation to thee! If thou raise me from my sick

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