But if any desire to flee from the wrath to come, and, for that end to know what course to take, I offer them these few advices; and implore and beseech them, as they love their own souls, to fall in with them. 1. Retire to some secret place and there meditate on this your misery. Believe it, and fix your thoughts on it. Let each put the question to himself, How can I live in this state? How can I die in it? How shall I rise again, and stand before the tribunal of God in it? 2. Consider seriously the sin of your nature, heart, and life. A proper sight of wrath flows from a deep sense of sin. They who see themselves exceedingly sinful, will find no great difficulty to perceive themselves to be heirs of wrath. 3. Labour to justify God in this matter. To quarrel with God about it, and to rage like a wild bull in a net, will but fix you the more in it. Humiliation of soul before the Lord is necessary for an escape. God will not sell deliverance, but freely gives it to those who see themselves altogether unworthy of his favour. 4. Turn your eyes, O prisoners of hope, towards the Lord Jesus Christ; and embrace him, as he offereth himself in the gospel. "There is no salvation in any other," Acts iv. 12. God is a consuming fire; you are children of wrath if the Mediator interpose not between him and you, you are undone for ever. If you would be safe, come under his shadow: one drop of that wrath cannot fall there, for he "delivereth us from the wrath to come," 1 Thess. i. 10. Accept of him in this covenant, wherein he offereth himself to thee; so thou shalt, as the captive woman, redeem thy life, by marrying the conqueror. His blood will quench that fire of wrath which burns against thee in the white raiment of his righteousness thou wilt be safe; for no storm of wrath can pierce it.

2. I shall drop a few words to the saints.

(1.) "Remember-that at that time," namely, when you were in your natural state, "ye were without Christ-having no hope, and without God in the world." Call to mind the state you were in formerly; and review the misery of it. There are five memorials which I may thence give in to the whole assembly of the saints, who are no more children of wrath, but "heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ," though as yet in their minority. 1. Remember, that in the day our Lord first took you by the hand, you were in no better a condition than others. O! what moved him to take you when he passed by your neighbours? he found you children of wrath, even as others: but he did not leave you so. He came into the common prisou, where you lay in fetters, even as others from among the multitude of condemned malefactors, he picked you out, commanded your fetters to be taken off, put a pardon in your hand, VOL. VIII.

H

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and brought you into the glorious liberty of the children of God, while he left others in the devil's fetters. 2. Remember there was nothing in you to engage him to love you, in the day he appeared for your deliverance. You were children of wrath, even as others; fit for hell, and altogether unfit for heaven: yet the King brought you into the palace; the King's Son made love to you, a condemned criminal, and espoused you to himself, on the day in which you might have been led forth to execution. "Even so, Father, for so it seemeth good in thy sight," Matth. xi. 26. 3. Remember, you were fitter to be loathed than loved in that day. Wonder, that when he saw you in your blood, he looked not at you with abhorrence, and passed by. Wonder, that ever such a time could be a time of love, Ezek. xvi. 8, 4. Remember, you are decked with borrowed feathers. It is his comeliness which is upon you, ver. 14. It was he that took off your prison garments, and clothed you with robes of righteousness, garments of salvation; garments where with you are arrayed as the lilies, which toil not, neither do they spin. He took the chains from off your arms, the rope from about your neck; put you in such a dress, as you might be fit for the court of heaven, even to eat at the King's table. 5. Remember your faults this day, as Pharaoh's butler, who had forgotten Joseph. Mind how you have forgotten, and how unkindly you have treated, him who remembered you in your low estate. Is this your kindness to your friend? In the day of your deliverance, did you think you could have thus requited him, your Lord?

(2.) Pity the children of wrath, the world that lies in wickedness. Can you be unconcerned for them, you who were once in the same condition? You have got ashore, indeed, but your companions are yet in hazard of perishing; and will not you afford them all possible help for their deliverance? What they are, you formerly were. This may draw pity from yon, and engage you to use all means for their recovery. See Titus iii. 1-3.

(3.) Admire that matchless love which brought you out of the state of wrath. Christ's love was active love; he brought thy soul from the pit of corruption !—It was no easy work to purchase the life of the condemned sinner; but he gave his life for thy life. He gave his precious blood to quench the flame of wrath, which otherwise would have consumed thee. Men get the best view of the stars from the bottom of a deep pit; from this pit of misery, into which thou wast cast by the fall of the first Adam, thou mayest get the best view of the Sun of Righteousness, in all his dimensions. He is the second Adam, who took thee out of the horrible pit, and out of the miry clay. How broad was that love, which covered such a

multitude of sins! Behold the length of it, reaching from everlasting to everlasting, Psalm ciii. 17. The depth of it, going so low as to deliver thee from the lowest hell, Psalm 1xxxvi. 13. The height of it, raising thee up to sit in heavenly places, Eph. ii. 6.

(4.) Be humble, carry low sails, walk softly all your years. Be not proud of your gifts, graces, privileges, or attainments; but remember you were children of wrath, even as others. The peacock walks slowly, hangs down his starry feathers, while he looks to his black feet. "Look ye to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged;" and walk humbly, as it becomes free grace's debtors.

(5.) Be wholly for your Lord. Every wife is obliged to be dutiful to her husband; but double ties lie upon her who was taken from a prison, or a dunghill. If your Lord has delivered you from wrath, you ought, on that very account, to be wholly his; to act for him, to suffer for him, and to do whatever he calls you to.-The saints have no reason to complain of their lot in the world, whatever it be. Well may they bear the cross for Him, by whom the curse was borne away from them. Well may they bear the wrath of men in his cause, who has freed them from the wrath of God; and cheerfully go to a fire for him, by whom hell-fire is quenched as to them. Soul and body, and all thou hadst in the world, were formerly under wrath: he has removed that wrath, shall not all these be at his service? That thy soul is not overwhelmed with the wrath of God, is owing purely to Jesus Christ; and shall it not be a temple for his Spirit? That thy heart is not filled with horror and despair is owing to Him only; to whom then should it be devoted, but to him alone? That thine eyes are not blinded with the smoke of the pit; thy hands not fettered with chains of darkness; thy tongue is not broiling in the fire of hell; and thy feet are not standing in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone,—is owing purely to Jesus Christ! and shall not these eyes be employed for him, these hands act for him, this tongue speak for him, and these feet speedily run his errands? To him who believes that he was a child of wrath, even as others, but is now delivered by the blessed Jesus, nothing will appear too much, to do or suffer for his Deliverer, when he has a fair call to it.

3. To conclude with a word to all. Let no man think lightly of sin, which lays the sinner open to the wrath of God.. Let not the sin of our nature, which wreathes the yoke of God's wrath so early about our necks, seem a small thing in our eyes. Fear the Lord because of his dreadful wrath. Tremble at the thought of sin, against which God has such fiery indignation. Look on his wrath, and stand in awe, and sin not. Do you think this is to press you to

slavish fear? If it were so, one had better be a slave to God with a trembling heart, than a free man to the devil, with a seared conscience and a heart of adamant. But it is not so; you may love him, and thus fear him too; yea, you ought to do it, though you were saints of the first magnitude. See Psalm cxix. 120; Matt. x. 28; Luke xii. 5; Heb. xii. 28, 29. Although you have passed the gulph of wrath, being in Jesus Christ, yet it is but reasonable that your hearts should shiver when you look back to it. Your sin still deserves wrath, even as the sins of others; and it would be terrible to be in a fiery furnace, although by a miracle we were so protected against it, as that it could not harm us.

PART III.

MAN'S UTTER INABILITY TO RECOVER HIMSELF.

For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.-ROMANS V. 6.

No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.-JOHN v. 44.

WE have now had a view of the total corruption of man's nature, and that load of wrath which lies on him, that gulf of misery into which he is plunged in his natural state. But there is one part of his misery that deserves particular consideration; namely, his utter inability to recover himself; the knowledge of which is necessary for the due humiliation of a sinner. What I design here, is only to propose a few things, whereby to convince the unregenerate man of this his inability; that he may see an absolute need of Christ and of the power of his grace.

As a man that is fallen into a pit cannot be supposed to help himself out of it, but by one of two ways; either by doing all himself alone, or taking hold of, and improving, the help offered him by others so an unconverted man cannot be supposed to help himself out of his natural state, but either in the way of the law, or covenant of works, by doing all himself without Christ; or else in the way of the Gospel, or covenant of grace, by exerting his own strength to lay hold upon, and to make use of the help offered him by a Saviour. But, alas! the unconverted man is dead in the pit, and cannot help himself either of these ways; not the first way; for the

we were

first text tells us, that when our Lord came to help us, without strength," unable to recover ourselves. We were ungodly, therefore under a burden of guilt and wrath; yet "without strength," unable to stand under it; and unable to throw it off, or get from under it: so that all mankind would have undoubtedly perished, had not "Christ died for the ungodly," and brought help to those who could never have recovered themselves. But when Christ comes and offers help to sinners, cannot they take it? Cannot they improve help when it comes to their hands? No, the second text tells, they cannot; "No man can come unto me,"&c.—that is, believe in me, John vi. 44, "except the Father draw him." This is a drawing which enables them to come, who, till then could not come; and therefore could not help themselves by improving the help offered. It is a drawing which is always effectual; for it can be no less than "hearing and learning the Father," which, whoever partakes of, cometh to Christ, ver. 45. Therefore it is not drawing in the way of mere moral suasion, which may be, yea, and always is effectual. But it is drawing by mighty power, Eph. i. 12, absolutely necessary for those who have no power in themselves to come and take hold of the offered help.

Hearken then, O unregenerate man, and be convinced that as thou art in a most miserable state by nature, so thou art utterly unable to recover thyself any way. Thou art ruined; and what way wilt thou go to work, to recover thyself? Which of the two ways wilt thou choose? Wilt thou try it alone; or wilt thou make use of help? Wilt thou fall on the way of works, or on the way of the Gospel? I know very well that thou wilt not so much as try the way of the Gospel, till once thou hast found the recovery impracticable in the way of the law. Therefore, we shall begin where corrupt nature teaches men to begin, namely, at the way of the law of works.

I. Sinner, I would have thee to believe that thy working will never effect it. Work, and do thy best; thou wilt never be able to work thyself out of this state of corruption and wrath. Thou must have Christ, else thou wilt perish eternally. It is only "Christ in you" that can be the hope of glory. But if thou wilt needs try it, then I must lay before thee, from the unalterable word of the living God, two things which thou must do for thyself. If thou canst do them, it must be yielded, that thou art able to recover thyself; but if not, then thou canst do nothing this way for thy recovery.

1. "If thou wilt enter into life keep the commandments," Matt. xix. 17. That is, if thou wilt by doing enter into life, then perfectly keep the ten commandments; for the object of these words