lawfully live in disobedience to the first command of the law of the great God, or suspend your obedience to it, till you find qualifications in yourselves, upon which you think you may lay claim to him in a way of sense. This is not to ground your faith upon the veracity of God in his promise, but to seek a ground for your faith within you.

2dly, However surprising this way of teaching may appear from the first commandment, yet it is nothing else than what you are taught in your lesser, received, and approved Catechisms. The first commandment requires us to know and acknowledge the Lord as God, and our God: and to worship and glorify him accordingly.

3dly, I find God requiring faith of sinners, and of notorious backsliders, in the same terms as is here called for, Jer. iii. 4, compared with ver. 1. If we notice the 1st verse, and the 2nd following, we shall find that God is there dealing with a company of people who had made defection into idolatry; and he charges them with a perfidious and treacherous dealing with him, under the notion of an adulteress that had forsaken the guide of her youth, and prostituted herself to other lovers. However, infinite love opens up its bowels of pity, sends out a sound of grace and love to them, saying, in the close of ver. 1, "Though thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the Lord." Well, what is the return sovereign grace expects from them after such a discovery of his readiness to receive them? See it, ver. 4: “Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My father, thou art the guide of my youth?" that is, Wilt thou not from this time obey the first commandment of my law, and know and acknowledge me, and me only, as thy God and Father in Christ?

4thly, I find that whenever a sinful people begin to act faith, their faith, even the first receptive by faith, is expressed in words which bear a plain obedience to what is required in the first commandment; as in the case of these, Jer. iii. Whenever the call of the word is carried home by the efficacy of the Spirit upon their hearts, they cry out, ver. 22, "Behold we come unto thee, for thou art the Lord our God;" by which they acknowledge him as their God, even their own God. So Zech. xiii. 9. And I find that the saints of God in scripture, when in the exercise of faith, still yielding obedience to this first command of the law, and coming in with their appropriating my, Psal. xvi. 2: "O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord." With what pleasure does David obey his command, Psal. xviii. 1, 2, where eight or nine times he repeats his claim, acknowledging God as God, and his own God? And unbelieving Thomas, so

soon as he gets his foot upon the neck of his unbelief, obeys this command, making a solemn acknowledgment of Christ, My Lord, and my God."

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To all this I shall only add, to prevent mistakes, that when the first commandment requires us to know and acknowledge God as our God, it is not to be understood, as if this were done by a saying it with the mouth only; no, no, “With the heart man believeth unto righteousness." We read of some that "remembered God as their rock, and the high God as their Redeemer; but they flattered him with their mouth, and they lied to him with their tongues, for their heart was not right with him:" they did not acknowledge him as their God, with their hearts, acquiescing in him as their chief good and only portion; and therefore God rejects all their profession of kindness. Let us then embrace and acknowledge him as our God, with our hearts, lips, and lives, worshipping, glorifying, and serving him, as our God, all the days of our appointed time.

III. The third thing proposed was, to speak a little of the connexion betwixt the promise and the precept. That there is a connexion between them is plain; for the promise is repeated in the command, and the meaning is, Thou shalt have no other gods before me, who engage myself by covenant to be the Lord thy God. How sweetly is the law and gospel connected here! how sweetly does the law stand in a subserviency to the glorious designs of grace!

I would have you carefully observe as to this order and connexion, that it is suited to the circumstances of the lost sinner, or of fallen man, who has nothing, and can do nothing, but is, "wretched, miserable, poor, and blind, and naked." Because man can now do nothing for his life, therefore God will give him life and glory for nothing at all: and as a testimony of his having got all freely from God, he will have him to obey. It is an order and method suited to God's great design, of abasing man, staining his pride, and of exalting the glorious freedom and riches of his grace: "Where is boasting?" says the apostle. "It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay; but by the law of faith." The law of faith is just the free promise, I am the Lord thy God; I will be to them a Father, &c. Now, by this law, and not by the way of works, self is abased, and the glory of free grace exalted.

I shall only add, as to this connexion and order, that God, like a wise builder, first lays the foundation of faith in the promise, saying, I am the Lord thy God; and then enjoins the duty of believing: he first reveals the object of faith; and then lays on the duty of faith: he first makes a grant of

grace; and then warrants us by his command to lay hold on it. The promise is a plaster or medicine; and the command orders the application or making use of it. The promise is the door of salvation opened; and the command enjoins us to enter in by that door. The promise is the testament: and the command is the Judge's order and warrant to make use of the goods, without fear of vicious intromission. The promise gives us a right of access; the command, when obeyed and complied with, gives a right of possession. By the grant of the covenant, God manifests his free and sovereign grace; and by the command he manifests his royal authority, which he makes subservient to his glorious design of grace. And so much shall serve for clearing the order and connexion between the promise, I am the Lord thy God: and the precept, Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

IV. The fourth general head was the Application. And the first use shall be comprised in these inferences:

1. From what is said we may see, that Christ, our glorious Redeemer, is none other than the supreme, self-existent, and independent God. Who ever doubted, as was hinted before, that it was the supreme God, the great lawgiver of heaven and earth, who spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God: Thou shalt have no other gods before me? &c. Whosoever reads or hears these words with opened eyes, or understanding hearts, cannot shun to cry out, "It is the voice of God, and not of man ;" yea, the voice of the supreme, selfexistent God, and not of any inferior or dependent being; the voice of him whose prerogative alone it is to be Lord of the conscience, and to "search the heart and the reins;" for these words are "quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and discern the thoughts and intents of the heart." As all the works, so all the words of God carry the stamp and evidence of their glorious Author in their bosom. And are we not immediately struck with the impressions of the supreme, self-existent Being, when these words are uttered, I am the Lord thy God? &c. Had Moses, or the children of Israel, when they stood quaking and trembling at the foot of the mount, any notions of a dependent deity speaking to them? No, they knew and believed that it was he "whose name alone is JEHOVAH, most high over all the earth." Yet it was cleared already, this was Christ the eternal Son of God; and therefore he must needs be the supreme God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory with his Father. It is the most daring presumption, the most consummate ingratitude, for any of Adam's race, especially

for any professed Christian, bearing his blessed name, and wearing his livery, to lessen his glory, and derogate from his excellency; as if, when he is called the supreme God, it were to be understood cum grano salis, with grains of allowance or abatement. I am persuaded there was not an Arian at the foot of Sinai among all the many thousands of Israel: and were these words to be repeated by the Son of God with the same awful solemnity among us, I am very sure there would not be one Arian among us either. What pity is it, that the resentment of our Redeemer's quarrel, against a notorious blasphemer of his supreme Deity, has not run deeper than it has done of late in the supreme judicatory of this national church, whose peculiar province it has been in former times to contend for the royalties of his crown against those who attempted to invade them?

2. From what has been said, we may see the mistake of those who assert, that faith in Christ is a new precept of the gospel, not required in the moral law, but by a new positive law given forth under the gospel. None, I suppose, will deny, that the law required faith in a God Creator from our first parents in innocency; and if so, what need of any new law to bind and oblige us to believe in the same God revealing himself in the capacity of a Redeemer? We have already observed from the text, how sweetly the old law of nature is grafted in, in a subserviency to the grace of the new covenant, obliging us to know and acknowledge a God in Christ as our own God, upon the footing of this glorious grant of grace, I am the Lord thy God. The applying or appropriating act of faith, when it is expressed in words, comes forth carrying the stamp of obedience to what the first commandment of the moral law requires. What need, then, of any new positive law to enjoin it? The same law that bound Adam, before the fall, to believe the promise of life upon the footing of perfect obedience, bound him to believe the promise of life, after the fall, upon the footing of the incarnation and satisfaction of the Son of God: and therefore, when the first promise of the seed of the woman is uttered, Gen. iii. 15, we read of no new law enjoining him to believe it; the very light and law of nature told our first parents, that a promise, especially the promise of God, was to be believed.

3. See hence the necessity, excellency, and warrantableness of the great duty of believing, which we ministers are so much pressing upon you who are hearers. It must needs be the most necessary and excellent duty which God enjoins in the first precept of his law, and which he has laid as the very spring and foundation of obedience to all the other precepts; namely, to receive him, and to acknowledge him

as our own God in Christ, and him alone; and to rest in him, and upon him, as our up-making and everlasting all. Hence, (John vi. 28, 29,) when the Jews were fond to know what they should do to work the work of God, he directs them to faith in himself; because this was the first thing that the law required as it stood under a covenant of grace: "This is the work of God," (his work in a way of eminence; the very first and fundamental work, and the spring and soul of all obedience,)" that ye believe on him whom he hath sent." For this reason, true obedience to the law is called “the obedience of faith :" and we are told, Heb. xi, 6, that "without faith it is impossible to please God;" and, "Whatsoever is not of faith, is sin," Rom. xiv. 23; because, until this first command of the law be obeyed, till we receive, embrace, and acknowledge the Lord as our God in Christ, we do nothing at all in obedience to God's law, but break it every moment of our life. Again, as I said, we see here also the warrantableness of believing in Christ, and of embracing the promise. It is as warrantable for a lost sinner to embrace the promise, and to receive Christ by virtue of the promise, as to do any other thing that the law requires. Will any man doubt his warrant to honour and reverence the name of God, to honour his father and mother, to sanctify the Sabbath? &c. As little reason has he to doubt his warrant by faith to lay claim to this glorious grant of sovereign grace through Christ, I am the Lord thy God; seeing this is the very thing that is required in this command, Thou shalt have no other gods before me. And as this command is a noble warrant for believing, so it is a warrant of universal extent: none who own the obligation of the moral law, can shift the obligation of its very first command. This view of matters, if taken up in the light of the Spirit, serves to overthrow one of the principal strongholds of unbelief; and at the same time discovers a ground of believing with boldness, without any manner of presumption. The unbelieving deceitful heart turns us away from the living God, by telling us, that we are not warranted to believe in Christ, and that it is arrogance and presumption for us to intermeddle with the promise. But, so far is this surmise from being truth, that unless you believe in Christ, or, which is all one, except you acknowledge a God in Christ as your God, you make God a liar, who says, I am the Lord thy God; and rebel against his authority interposed in his first commandment, Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

4. See hence a solid ground for the assurance of faith. Why, it has the noblest ground in the world to go upon, namely, the infallible word of a God of truth, saying, I am the Lord thy God; and the best warrant in the world, namely,