furance of God's favour is but one and the fame thing with what we call a good confcience: for what force is there in a good conscience to give us peace, but only this, That it is our teftimony, that we have faithfully and diligently served our God; which is the ground of our hope and confidence in him? And when we are thus armed, and can without referve profefs, I have loved thy law, O God, and my delight hath been therein; we shall be superior to all the evils of life. The very circumftances which give terror to the worldly man, and fill his breaft with horror, will give ease and comfort to us. When he thinks of the shortness of his life, and the fpeedy account he must give to God, his blood retires to his heart, and hardly there maintains its poft but when the good man's thoughts are fo fixed, his heart springs with joy, and all his hopes begin to bloom: the profpect of that bleffed day fo fills his mind, and engages all his thought, that he is loft in pleasure and delight, and forgets all the pains and calamities of life: not the tyrant's frown, nor the executioner who waits for blood, can rob him of his peace: he looks on them as meffengers fent by Providence to deliver him from his pain, and to carry him to the haven of his reft, where his foul longs to be. This, this only was the art by which faints and martyrs overcame the world, and looked upon racks and gibbets, and every form of death, but as fo many doors opening into the kingdom of reft and glory. By the fame art ftill do good men triumph under all the trials of fortune: by this they preferve their peace in their latest

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hours, and resign with joy their spirits into his hand who gave them.

This is a trial which mortals muft undergo: the time will come, and is now at hand, when we must part with all that our eyes delight to fee, and when we must go to render an account to our great Judge: in that day, where shall we look for comfort, and whom shall we call to our affiftance? Your parting friends will have nothing but tears and fighs to lend you. Then happy is the man whose truft hath been in God; who can with patience, full of hope, wait the coming of his Lord, and obferve with comfort the degrees by which he haftens to his end. It is worth your while to lay the foundation of this peace betimes, that you may be able to look that day in the face, at which, even at a distance, the ftouteft heart may tremble: for it is not courage, but folly, not to think of death with fome concern, fince fo much depends from that moment.

And were we fure of nothing else, in confequence of our faith and obedience, but to flip quietly out of the world, without fuffering the agonies which guilty finners feel, and which none can defcribe; yet ftill our labour would not be quite in vain: but, fince this peace is but the forerunner of eternal peace, the earnest of future glory and immortality, it is worth all our pains to deny ourselves in this world, to take up our cross and follow Chrift, to labour to do the whole will of God, that we may inherit that peace which belongs to thofe, and those only, who love the law of God.

DISCOURSE LIX.

PSALM CXix. 63.

I am a companion of all them that fear thee, and of them that keep thy precepts.

THERE is nothing more useful or neceffary in the pursuit of virtue and holiness, and indeed in the whole conduct of our lives, than to obferve the rules and methods by which men of approved righteousness, who are fet forth to us as patterns and examples in holy Scripture, did attain to that perfection, which made them the fhining lights of the world, and the declared favourites of God. If therefore we look into fuch examples, and from thence draw rules for our own ufe, we shall be sure of two very great advantages; namely, that the rules we prescribe ourselves will be both proper and practicable; practicable, because drawn from the practice of men like ourselves; and proper, because we aim at no other end than that which good men before us have attained to by the use of these very means, and, confequently, for the attaining of which these rules have already by experience been found to be proper.

This divifion of the 119th Pfalm, from which

the text is taken, fets before us the several steps by which David recovered himself from the fin in which he had been involved: in the first verse he declares his choice, Thou art my portion, O Lord; and his refolution to pursue that choice, I have faid that I would keep thy word: this he knew by fad experience that he was not able to do, without the affistance and support of God; and therefore the next step was to apply for his affiftance, I entreated thy favour with my whole heart. Having thus prepared himself, he fet diligently to examine his heart, and to form refolutions, and immediately to put those refolutions into practice; I thought on my ways: I turned my feet unto thy teftimonies: I made hafte, and delayed not to keep thy commandments. This was a good beginning, and these very promifing refolutions; but to secure them there was need of patience and courage, and faith towards God. The way that leads to life is narrow, and befet with dangers; and we begin in vain, unless we are prepared to endure hardship like good foldiers of Chrift. The next thing therefore he mentions, and which we are to learn from him, is fteadfastnefs when we are tried: The bands of the wicked, says he, have robbed me; but I have not forgotten thy law. He then refolves on a conftant and uninterrupted devotion towards God: At midnight I will rife to give thanks unto thee, becaufe of thy righteous judgments. After this follow the words of the text; I am a companion of all them that fear thee, and of them that keep thy precepts.

At first fight this feems to be but a little thing to mention, after fo many great attainments spoken

of before after he had remembered his holy refolutions, his immediate and uninterrupted pursuit of them, his conftancy and steadiness under affliction, his perpetual devotions, what fhould lead him to fall fo low as to add, that he was careful to keep good company? What elfe could lead him to it but his own experience, which had taught him that this care was the great prefervative of all his other attainments, without which they would foon wafte away, and leave him once more an easy prey to the foft allurements of vice? He knew and had felt how great the contagion of ill company was ; and therefore with reafon adds, in the laft place, that which was his greatest care, the avoiding the fociety of wicked and voluptuous men; a fnare in which he had once already almoft perifhed, and in which he had been entirely loft, had not God fent his afflicting angel to terrify and awaken his conscience, which was ftupified with fenfual pleasures, and fleeping the fleep of death. So fenfible was the holy Pfalmift of this danger, that he not only refolved for himself to avoid it, but made it his early care to forewarn his fon of it: and fuch impreffions did the repeated admonitions of his father make upon the mind of Solomon, that in the book of Proverbs, when he comes to mention this neceffary advice of fhunning the company of wicked and evil men, he no longer fpeaks in his own perfon, but, being full of the image of his father when he delivered the inftruction, introduces him giving the advice to him, his fon : Hear, ye children, fays he, the inftruction of a father, and attend to know underfanding: for I was my father's fon, tender and only