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unto me.

The finner will never hunger nor thirst after righteousness till the fentence of death gives him an appetite.

God, who is a confuming fire, comes near to the elect finner to judgment, and appears in his fiery' law. Then he calls upon God in trouble, and is delivered; but he is fure to get his firft answer in the fecret place of thunder, Pfal. lxxxi. 7. Here the poor finner gets his first impreffions of the tremendous attributes of God, which fink too deep for time' or eternity ever to efface. In the glafs of the law the holiness of God appears; and in this aftonishing vifion the dreadful leprofy is difcovered from head to foot, both within and without. This view ftirs up his guilt and filth from the bottom of the heart, while the raging infection appears a loathfome difeafe. All external varnish, dead works, dry formality, good name, false confidences, lying refuges, and legal hopes, find their funeral together, or fly away like chaff from the threshing-floor, or as fmoke out of the chimney; fo that no place is found for them. It was this view, and the feraphic cry of Holy! holy! holy !" that made the prophet Ifaiah cover his lips, and cry," Unclean! unclean!"

At the fight of divine holiness in the law fin revives, and juftice applies the fentence. Nor has the finner one plea to urge why it fhould not be speedily executed: his mouth is ftopped, and he is become guilty before God. Such a finner fees and

feels

feels that God is ftrictly juft. Here all his former notions of a God all mercy forfake him and flee.

And true to his own

The truth of God is no lefs terrible to the finner than his juftice. He fees that God has spoken and revealed his wrath against fin, and pronounced his curfe upon every tranfgreffor; and has declared that he will not clear the guilty. honour, and to the word that is gone out of his lips, he muft be. Hence the poor finner fees no way of escape: he makes confeffion; he cries for mercy; he makes ufe of every argument he is mafter of; he turns his feet to the testimony, and makes hafte, and delays not, to keep the commandment; he makes the law his only rule of life, walk, and conduct; and, in good earnest, fets about the performance of every duty that appears right to him, in hopes of inclining his Maker to be propitious. But here the immutability of God appears: he finds that God is of one mind, and none can turn him; and what his foul defireth that he doth. This deftroys his former notion of God's being mutable, and altogether such an one as himself. He is obliged to acknowledge that with God is terrible majefty; and, as touching the Almighty and his ways, he cannot find him out.

A finner thus arraigned, and impreffed with the holiness, juftice, truth, and immutability, of God, is at his wit's end. He is like a wild bull in a net, full of the fury and the rebukes of his Maker. Every wound flightly healed is laid open; every

avenue,

M

avenue, or false retreat, cut off; righteousness and holinefs, by the law, are altogether despaired of; and the way to heaven by works, whether in whole or in part, for ever closed.

Thus far the finner learns, in the law, to know the only true God; and this leffon prepares him for the new, living, and confecrated, way through the vail. And thus to use the law is ufing it lawfully; for it is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for finners: For we know, fays Paul, that whatfoever the law faith it faith to them that are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world become guilty before God. Pointing finners to a phyfician, who never felt their fickness, and efpoufing them to Chrift before their first husband be dead, is leading them into adultery. A finner who thus learns of the Father cometh unto Chrift, to whom none can come except the Father draw them.

The finner's face is no fooner turned Zion-ward than the ftorm appears at his back; which is fweetly abated by a ftill voice behind him, intimating that he is now in the way. Dying love, by the Spirit, echoes from the cross to his confcience; which is answered again by the voice of faith; but fo unintelligibly, that the finner can hardly understand it, though the foul feels the effects of it. At this the heart begins to lofe its native hardness, and gradually opens and enlarges; while every faculty of the foul is upon the watch, and every thought of the

heart

heart intent upon the ftrange emotion; until the bleffed Spirit of God conveys a divine unction to the understanding,' and proposes a crucified Saviour to the finner, as the only object of hope, and teftifies of him as fuch. With a longing eye the poor finner looks, and with a trembling heart, and a wavering faith, longs, and begs of God to bring him near, and reveal his Chrift in him. As the eye of a man upon the band of his mafter, and as the eye of a maid on the hand of her mistress, fo the finner's eye waits upon God until he hath mercy upon him.

His face being Zion-ward, Zion-ward he looks; for out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God fhines: and into the finner's heart he fhines, to give him the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jefus Chrift. And in this glorious ray the Saviour defcends to the finner's foul, and God reveals his Son in him. When the voice of atoning blood at once drowns all the thundering fentences of Sinai, and filences every accufation in that tremendous court of judgment, the finner feels himself with God at the mercy-feat, where the righteous in Chrift may difpute with him, and fo be delivered for ever from their Judge (Job xxiii. 6, 7), unless he permits the bond-children to bring him again into bondage. Such a finner has found the righteousness and truth of God in the law, which opened his ear to discipline; and now, in Chrift, he finds mercy and peace in harmony with truth and righteousness; where mercy and truth met, there God reconciled

7

and

and the true penitent meet; and where righteouf nefs and peace kiffed each other, there the Fatherkiffes the prodigal, and the prodigal kiffes the king of peace.

This is the man that hath efcaped the mount that might not be touched, and that burneth with fire; and is gone from blackness, and darkness, and tempeft, and from the found of a trumpet, and from the voice of words; and is come to Mount Zion, where the Saviour reigns, and unto the city of the living God, which he has chofen, founded, and built, and where he dwells; even to the heavenly Jerufalem, the married wife, the free woman, and the mother of every freeborn fon, and to an innumerable company of angels, who were elected by the Father, confirmed in their standing by the Saviour, and who are the retinue of the Lord, miniftering fpirits to the heirs of promife, and the fellow-fervants of the faints-and to the general affembly, both of Jews and Gentiles-and to the church of the first-born, which the elder brother bought with his blood, arrays in his righteousness,, and fanctifies by his blood and Spirit; and which confifts of first-born fons, heirs of promife, and of the grace of life; whofe names are written in heaven, in the Lamb's book of life, being ordained to eternal life, or predeftinated both to grace and glory— and to God, the judge of all, as reconciled in Chrift, and who is the juftifier of him that believeth in Jefus-and to the Spirits of just men made perfect, under

the

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