We pretend not to know any way of Salvation without innocence, or without repentance followed by real reformation in life and practice. The great benefits offered to all in the gospel, every man by God's grace must secure to himself. No benediction, alas! that we can pronounce

over any one, will make a Saint of him I Theff.v.

who continues in sin. The Spirit itself

may be quenched; and the grace of God re2 Cor.vi.i.

ceived in vain : yet, not wholly in vain ; since it will redound to the vindication of his judgments, and the greater glory of the supreme Justice in the final condemnation of the wicked,

19.

Can it avail us in the last day, that our Religion was reformed, while we ourselves were not so? we thank God that we are separated from the errours, and freed from the chains of Popery, without breaking out into a state of religious anarchy. But if in this land of light and liberty, we be yet blinded by corruption, and Naves to

II, 12.

fin, all honeft men of every religion, and
if there can be any honest upright man
of no religion upon earth, they will all
rise up in the judgment against us and con-
demn us. Many shall come from the eaft Matt. viii.
and west, from every region, and of all
professions, and shall fit down with Abra.
ham and Isaac, with Patriarchs, Apostles,
and Saints, in the kingdom of Heaven, while
the children of the kingdom, the professors
of Christianity, and pretenders to Re-
formation, are cast, together with all the
workers of iniquity, into outer darkness,
where shall be weeping and gnashing of
teeth.

SER

VISITING THE INIQUITY OF THE
FATHERS UPON THE CHILDREN,
UNTO THE THIRD AND FOURTH
GENERATION OF THEM THAT
HATE ME: AND SHEWING MERCY
UNTO THOUSANDS OF THEM THAT
LOVE ME, AND KEEP MY COM-
MANDMENTS.

for piety, God is pleased to declare, that He will new mercy unto thousands of

them that love Him, and keep his commandmenis, that is, to the remotest relations and latest descendants of an eminently good man, treating them with peculiar tenderness, rewarding with an opener hand, and punishing more sparingly, for his fake to whom they belong, or from whom they spring; we take all these offers in good part, and have no difficulty in being reconciled to fo gracious a dispensation. There is no complaint in this case of the want of a due proportion between the merit and there compence: we easily find our selves qualified to receive kindnesses; and consent readily that Almighty God may be as liberal as He will, , and with as little reason.

But it is much otherwise in the case of punishments. For if, in like manner, for the discouragement of impiety and vice, He has seen it necessary to descend to

threatenings; and intimate, that He is a Ifa.xlii.8. jealous God, not willing to give his glory to

another;