5. Holiness is neceffary in refpect of the danger you are in, if ye do not fludy holiness. If you be a child of God, you are indeed freed from the curfe of the covenant of works, that penalty can never reach you; but, is it nothing to you, that your heavenly Father fhould chaftife you, hide his face from you, deny an answer to your prayers, hide your evidences of heaven from you, give you up to the tyranny of your lufts, and then take vengeance on your inventions.

6. Holiness is neceflary in refpect of the advantage herein. You are obliged to holiness; why? in this way you may come to live joyfully, and die comfortably in this way your integrity may be fupported, as it was with Job; in this way you may come to have fweet communion with God, according to Chrift's promife, John xiv. 21. "He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loves me;-and I will love him, and will manifeft myself to him." In this way you fhall be fitted for ferving him in your generation, 2 Tim. ii. 19. In this way you will have an evidence of your justification, 1 John iii. 9, In this way you fhall bring down the bleffing of God on every work of your hand, all that ye do fhall prosper, Pf. i. 4. Yea, in this way you fhall become a public good, a common good, a bleffing, and a benefit to all about you, both in communicating good to them with whom. you converfe, and in diverting judgments from these that are about you, as ten righteous men would have preferved Sodom: O what a Sodom is the prefent generation! And as it is like Sodom and Gomorrah, and perhaps a thousand times worse, in respect of fins against law and gofpel light, which Sodom never had; fo, if the Lord do not leave us a remnant, we fhall be like Sodom and Gomorrah, in refpect of judgments. All these things, and a thousand more that might be adduced, fhould prefs you mightily to the ftudy of holinefs, and living unto God: you are dead to the law, that you may live unto God. But next,

For Direction. Now, here the queftion may be propounded, O how fhall I live unto God? I fhall offer you no directions but one, which my text leads me to

and it is this. If you would live unto God, O ftudy to be more and more dead to the law. The more you are dead to the law as a covenant, the more will you live according to the law as a rule: What! do you not find a legal spirit that remains with you, and weakens your hands in duties of holiness? When you are wrefiling at duties in your own natural ftrength, it is a legal old covenant way; and do you not find it a hard, heavy, wearifome tafk? I fuppofe there is little holinefs there but when you are leaning on the ftrength of Chrift, do you not find your foul enlarged and quickened in duty? When you perform duty from a principle of flavish fear, that is a legal way; and do you not find your hearts weakened, and little heart to. the work?-But on the contrary, when the love of Chrift conftrains you, is it not then that you run with pleasure in the ways of his commandments? Yea, fin hath dominion over you, when you are, and in fo far as you are under the law; for the motions of fin are by the law the law irritates corruption, and cannot fubque it; for it is the grace of God, revealed in the gofpel, that effectually teaches to deny ungodliness and worldly lufls. To be dead to the law, is to be married to Chrift; it is to be brought off from the first Adam, and united to the fecond Adam. And, believer, as you are in Chrift, fo you are to abide in him, if you would be fruitful, and live unto God; "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me," John xv. 4. Now, to abide in him, is juft to be ftrong in the grace that is in him, and to continue to be ftrong in him by faith; and this is neceffary in order to fruitfulness: as, though an imp be grafted into the root, if it be not fastened and take firm rooting, it does not come to fruitfulness; fo the finner is made a Chriftian, by being cut off from the law, and ingrafted into Chrift; but he is not a fruitful Chriftian, if he do not take a ftrong grip of Chrift, and draw virtue from him: therefore, "Abide in me, and I in you," fays Chrift; and, O but it is well faid! for, if he do not abide in us, we cannot abide in him. We will never abide in him by the grace of

faith, unless he abide in us by the Spirit of faith.

If we provoke God to take away his Spirit, our faith fades, fails, and decays; and then we depart from the Lord by an evil heart of unbelief. Here is the way then to live unto God, and to bring forth fruit to him, even to die more and more to the firft husband, the law, and to live by faith upon your bleffed Husband, Christ.

QUEST. But, by what outward means fhould we thus live? May we not neglect duties, fince we are dead to the law? Nay, God forbid. It was the devil's temptation to Chrift, to caft himself headlong from the temple, because God had promifed to preferve him in all his ways; fo, believer, God hath promised to preferve you; he hath promised that fin fhall not have dominion over you, and that you shall never perish; and is the devil tempting you therefore to throw yourself down headlong from the temple, and from templemeans and ordinances, public and private? O tell that abominable devil, as Chrift did, "It is written, Thou fhalt not tempt the Lord thy God." If you neglect means, you tempt the Lord your God, who hath commanded you to ufe means, and made this the method of the communication of grace and ftrength, to wit, in the use of fuch means, as faith, prayer, reading, hearing, meditation, watchfulness: therefore, O be diligent in the use of these means; only do not confide in the means, by putting them in Chrift's room: give means their own room, and do not expect, without the grace of the new covenant, that means will do the bufinefs. Grace is the fpring from which the living water does flow, and means are the channel and pipes through which the water is conveyed; and if the fountain do not send out streams, all the conduits and pipes in the world can never convey it unto us. Therefore, in the ufe of means, be ftill looking to the Lord: look to him, both for grace to use the means, and for grace to blefs the means. If you lay any ftrefs upon the means, they become unprofitable. In the use of these means, O cry, cry mightily to the Lord, that he would kill your felf confidence: cry for the Spirit of life, to quicken

quicken you, that you may live unto God; for, till the Spirit of life enter into the dry bones, there will be no stirring, no motion, no living to God: cry for the Spirit of faith, fo as you may fay with Paul in the context, "I live, yet not I, but Chrift liveth in me; and the life I live, is by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." O cry for faith, and the affurance of faith no doubt, one may have faith, and yet want that affurance, which we commonly call fo; but whether there be fome kind of affurance or perfuafion in the nature of faith, is a queftion that I do not here enter upon only, this I am fure of, from the word of God, that doubting is no part of faith; for faith and doubting are as oppofite as light and darknefs. Some believers indeed have many doubts: why? because they have little faith, little faith, little faith: "O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?" And I find the believer who walks in darkness, and hath no light, he is directed to faith, as the antidote against his darknefs and doubting; "Let him truft in the name of the Lord, and stay himself upon his God." Cry, I fay, for the Spirit; and faith will work by love: cry for a gof pel-fpirit; for I teftify in the Lord's name, that gofpelholinefs will never flourish among us, or in the generation, till we be more free of a legal fpirit: and that we will not live unto God, unless we be dead to the law.

SERMON

SERMON XXVIII.

The BEST BOND; or, the SUREST ENGAGEMENT.*

JEREMIAH XXX. 21.

For, Who is this that engaged his heart to approach unto me? faith the Lord.

MY

Y friends, after that the firft Adam's heart departed from the Lord, fo as to violate the covenant of works, never one heart of all his posterity could, or would have approached unto God again, but had remained in their natural enmity against him, had not the fecond Adam fo engaged his heart unto God, in our favours, as to draw the hearts of many after him and if we could this day fee into Chrift's heart, and difcover his heart-kindness in this matter, fo as to unite our hearts to him, and to God in him, and get the knot fealed in the facrament with God's feal; it would make this a day to be much remembered to all eternity. O then, let you hearts be looking up to the Lord, that you may fee in to the heart and bofom of this fcripture, and in to the mystery of this great queftion, "Who is this that engaged his heart to approach unto me? faith the Lord."

The Lord, by the prophet Jeremiah, had been comforting his church, by feveral excellent promifes relating

This was an action fermon preached immediately before the administration of the facrament of the Lord's fupper, at Dunfermline, July 19th, 1724. To which is annexed, a Difcourfe on the fame subject, delivered after the folemn work was ended.

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