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of the world. The Christian must not be of such a compliant nature as to cut the coat of his profession according to the fashion of the times, or the humour of the company he falls into. No! he must stand fixed to his principles, and not change his habit, but freely show what countryman he is by his holy constancy in the truth. Now, what an odium, what snares, what dangers doth this singularity expose him to! Some will hoot and mock him as if he were a fool! It requires no small degree of courage to despise the shame which the Christian must expect to meet with on account of his singularity. Again; as some will mock, so some will persecute to death for this nonconformity in the Christian's principles and practices. In such a case, as when the Christian must "turn or burn,"leave praying, or become a prey to the cruel teeth of bloody men,-how many politic retreats and self-preserving distinctions would a cowardly, unresolved heart invent! The Christian, that has 80 great opposition, needs to be well established in his profession, or else he will soon be overthrown.

III. The Christian must keep on his way to heaven in the midst of all the scandals that are cast on the ways of God by the apostasy and falls of false professors. In all times there have been such persons in the church, and their sad miscarriages in judgment and practice have laid a stone of offence in the way of profession, at which weak Christians are ready to make a stand, not knowing whether they may venture any further when they see men whose gifts they so much admired lie before them wallowing in the blood of their slain profession-men once zealous for truth and liberty, now fiery perse

cutors; once strict performers of religious duties, now irreligious atheists, no more like the men they were some years ago than the vale of Sodom is like what it was when, for fruitfulness and beauty, it resembled the garden of the Lord. We have need of holy resolution to bear up against such discouragements, and not to faint. Let us imitate the undaunted spirit of Joshua, who, amidst a backsliding and rebellious generation, nobly resolved to serve the Lord, though not a man besides should bear him company.

IV. The Christian must trust in a withdrawing God: "Let him that walks in darkness, and hath no light, trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God," Isa. 1. 10. It requires a holy boldness of faith indeed to venture into God's presence when no smile is to be seen on his face, and no golden sceptre is held forth to encourage it to come; nay, more, to trust in a withdrawing but a killing God, Job xiii. 15; not when his love is hid, but when his wrath breaks forth ! Now for a soul to approach God by faith while he seems to shoot his frowns, like envenomed arrows, into it, this is hard work, and will try the Christian's courage to the utmost. Yet such a masculine spirit we find in that poor woman of Canaan, who takes up the darts Christ shot at her, and, with admirable boldness of faith, sends them back again in her prayer.

V. The believer is to persevere in his Christian course to the end of his life: his work and his life must end together. This adds weight to every other difficulty of the Christian's calling. Many are soon engaged in holy duties, easily persuaded to take up a profession of religion, and as easily

wicked, and the other wavering in his holy course! How mournful to see guilt putting innocency to flight, and

persuaded to lay it down. Like the new moon, which shines a little on the first part of the night, but is down before half of it is spent, they are light-hell keeping the field, impudently brav

ing it with displayed banners of open profaneness; whilst saints are hiding their colours for shame, or running from them for fear, instead of courageously resolving to wrap themselves in them, and die upon the plain, rather than betray the glorious name of God to the scorn of the uncircumcised!

some professors in their youth, but their old age is wrapt up in the thick dark ness of wickedness. Oh! this perse vering is a hard word! This taking up the cross daily-this praying alway -this watching night and day, and never laying aside our armour, this sends many sorrowful away from Christ. It is, however, the saint's duty to make religion his every-day work, without any vacation, from one end of the year to the other. These few instances are sufficient to show what need the Chris-salvation. You march in the midst of tian hath of resolution.

From what has been said you will see the reason why there are so many professors, and so few Christians; so many that go into the field against Satan, and so few that come out victorious. All have a desire to be happy, but few have courage to grapple with the difficulties that meet them in their way to happiness. All Israel came joyfully out of Egypt under Moses: yea, and a mixed multitude with them: but when they were a little pinched with hunger, they were ready to abandon their colours, and make a dishonourable retreat. Thus the greatest part of those who profess the gospel, when they encounter trials, grow sick of their enterprise. Be exhorted then, O Christian, to labour for this holy resolution, which is so needful for your profession-without which you cannot be what you profess to be. The fearful are in the forlorn band that march to hell. Violent and valiant are they who take heaven by force. Oh! how unlovely a sight is a bold sinner and a timorous saint: the one resolved to be

Take heart, therefore, O ye saints, and be strong; your cause is good. God himself espouses your cause. Christ is the all-accomplished Captain of your

gallant spirits; your fellow-soldiers are every one of them the son of a Prince! In a word, Christians, God and angels are spectators, observing how you quit yourselves; and every exploit which you perform in your spiritual warfare causeth a shout of joy in heaven!

THE ANTIQUITY OF HOLINESS. HOLINESS is of the greatest, highest, and ancientest antiquity; the first suit that ever was put upon the back of man's nature was holiness; sin is of a later edition than holiness, holiness was when sin was not: "Let us make man (saith God) in our own image." Sin is against nature; it is a defect in nature; it came in by a lie, and, by-the-by, through the subtilty of the father of lies. God stampt his image of holiness upon man, before ever Satan assayed to tempt him. Holiness is of the ancientest house, of the greatest antiquity; sin is but an upstart, holiness is the first-born; the way of holiness is the oldest way. Jer. vi. 16: "Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways,

and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls: but they said, We will not walk therein." The way of holiness was that old way in which Adam at first, and in which all the holy patriarchs and prophets walked. In this sense it is most certain, that the oldest way is the best way; the way of sanctity is of the greatest antiquity. Let papists and carnal, superstitious Protestants cry up their superstitious ways, as ways of greatest antiquity; yet when they have said all they can, there is no antiquity to that of holiness: the way of willworship was not the first way of worshipping God in the world. Many carnal men cry out that they are for the good old way: they care not for this new way; they care not for this new religion (as they call it); they say that we have never had good days since there has been so much praying, and so much preaching, and so much fasting, and so much printing, and so much ado about close walking with God. It is most certain that a carnal religion is best pleasing to a carnal heart; and this you may see evidently among the Turks, whose religion gives much carnal liberty to the professors of it, and whose religion promises them a paradise of sensual pleasures in another world. And the same is very observable among the papists, and all the carnal Protestants in the world, who cry up that for the best religion, and for the true religion, and for the good old religion, that is most suitable for their carnal reason, and most pleasing and indulging to their lusts. Socrates is sufficiently condemned for his prescribing of men to worship God according to the manner of the country

where they lived; and what was this, but to gratify the lust of men by subjecting the rule of God's worship to the laws and customs of men? but from the beginning it was not so. Holy Noah, holy Enoch, and the rest of the holy Patriarchs, Prophets, and Apostles, walked only in the ways of piety and purity. Holy Abraham, holy Isaac, and holy Jacob, never walked in those ways that are now by loose, formal, carnal, and superstitious persons cried up for the good old way, but in ways of holiness and righteousness. I have read of the Cretians, that when they cursed their enemies, they did not wish their houses on fire, nor a sword at their hearts, but that they might be delighted and given up to an ill-custom. It is one of the greatest and bitterest curses and woes, to be delighted and given up to ill-customs; and the older the custom is of evil, the worse it is: and, ah! how many are fallen under these curses in our days, wherein multitudes are addicted and given up to carnal and superstitious customs, and choose rather to follow an ill-custom, though it be never so absurd, irregular, vain, and superstitious, than to walk in a way of peace and holiness. Well, sirs, shall the antiquity of holiness provoke you to be holy? Many will do much for antiquity sake, and why, then, should you not do much for holiness sake? Holiness is God's first-born; it is as ancient as the Ancient of Day. The way of holiness is gray-headed, and of ancientest institution; all other ways are but of yesterday, they are but new ways to the way of holiness; and, oh! that this might alarm you to look after holiness! The Gibeonites cheated Joshua with their old clouted shoes, and with their old sacks, and

we feel its benign and gentle influence suffusing our hearts, how truly noble it appears! And we wonder, as well we may, that we should have been so long enveloped in the dark and dismal cloud of sin as not to have perceived it! And when our eyes are opened to the great and important fact, it becomes us to live the nearer to God, that that spiritual essence may be assimilated the more to him!

old boots, and old garments; and so doth Rome, to this day, cheat and delude multitudes of poor, blind, ignorant souls with their old customs, and with their old ceremonies, and old traditions, and old inventions, under a pretence of the good old way, and the good old religion; but certainly the way of holiness, the way of purity, is of the greatest antiquity; and therefore, O embrace it! O walk in it! Look, as the stamp of antiquity upon some things is a disparagement and a dishonour to them, as an old garment that is past wearing, and an old house that is past mending, and an old ship that is past rigging; so the stamp of antiquity upon other things is a praise and an honour to them-as old gold, old friends, old manuscripts, old monuments, old scars, and old holiness; the stamp of antiquity upon holiness is the praise and honour of holiness. Look, as it is an honour to a man to be descended of an ancient house, so it is an honour to a man to be allied to holi-culties to a dangerous degree. We ness, because sanctity is of greatest an- feel as though extricated from the mire tiquity, and therefore, above all gettings, of guilt and ruin; and we evince a deget holiness.-Thomas Brooks, 1662. cided eagerness to hasten on to the fountains of salvation, there to be cleansed and purified!

REFLECTIONS.

WHAT a glorious state it is to live in Christ, and to feel that he is our BROTHER! What condescension-what love! Man to claim fellowship with God! And intercourse with him causes us to feel deeply that we have a flame of divinity within us, kindled by God himself a soul! immortal! which, while grovelling in the obscurity of this world of evil, with heart and desire on earthly and sensual things, was unobserved by us! But when we have "demonstration" of its existence, when

How sin blinds the inner eye! It causes a kind of film to obscure the vision; and that film it is necessary to remove ere we perceive the beauties of religion. And it can be removed! Yes. we have a BALSAM, which, when properly applied, will restore a heavenly sight to the blindest of Satan's menials! That balsam is the Saviour's blood! When the healing influence of this invaluable remedy is first apparent, and its wonderful powers are felt, we seem as though awakened from a long, deep slumber, which had suspended our fa

What perfect freedom there is in the service of God! The mind, no longer pent up with transitory things, loves to soar above the trivial gratifications of sense, and scans eternity for something nobler-something more suitable to its Divine nature-something with which it can claim fellowship;-and that something is found in its Creator! On the wings of faith it soars to heaven, pierces the veil between it and its God-and rests not till it finds sweet intercourse with him! What an ennobling theme is this!

How the soul

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WHAT is the submission to "the powers that be," of which the apostle speaks in these verses? Is it submission in secular and spiritual things, or in secular things only? The apostle must mean submission to "the powers that be" in secular things only. The character of the civil power at that time proves this. It was Pagan. If the apostle meant submission in things spiritual, the early Christians paid no regard to his admonition. Did not thousands of them suffer imprisonment and death, because they refused to submit to the civil power in things spiritual? From whom did the apostle Paul himself receive authority to imprison and put to death the followers of Jesus Christ? The high-priest, Acts ix. 2-14. By whom was James, the brother of John, put to death? Herod the king, Acts xii. 1, 2. By whom were Paul and Silas imprisoned at Philippi, for preaching the gospel? The magistrates, Acts xvi. 19—24.

"For the magistrate," says Dr. Ibbott, (Chaplain to his Majesty, George I.,) "to interpose and make himself a judge and a revenger in affairs which are purely of a religious nature, is to transgress the bounds of his duty, and to invade the prerogative of God; it is (to borrow the words of an incompar able author) to judge and misuse the servants of another Master, who are not accountable to him.' For nothing can be more clear or certain than that as religion has God for its author, so it is properly his care and concern only. The laws of religion are the laws of God only, and he himself has appointed rewards and punishments for the observers and transgressors of them. He has taken the whole matter upon himself, and reserved it to himself, and has nowhere authorized any man, or any number of men upon earth, to be his deputies or vicegerents in this behalf. So that it is highly wicked and unjust in any man to usurp any authority over others in cases of a religious nature, in matters of faith and conscience; for here God himself has laid down the rule of our actions, and not left it to others to prescribe to us."

"Most certain it is that the duty of the magistrate is confined to the care of the civil and temporal good of his people, and does not extend to their spiritual and eternal affairs."

"So that toleration, or absolute liberty in matters of religion and conscience, however it has been vilified and exclaimed against, is as much every man's just right as any other thing which can be mentioned; and persecution, however meritorious blind zeal and bigotry have made it, is as flagrant an instance of cruelty and oppression as any of those things which

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