events; crushing his enemies; maintaining his Church; adored by angels; trembled at by devils.

Behold here a Lord worthy to be blessed. We honour, as we ought, your conspicuous greatness, O ye eminent Potentates of the Earth: but, alas! what is this to the great Lord of Heaven? when we look up thither, we must crave leave to pity the breath of your nostrils, the rust of your coronets, the dust of your graves, the sting of your felicities, and, if ye take not good heed, the blots of your memories.

As ye hold all in fee from this Great Lord, so let it be no disparagement to you, to do your lowliest homage to his footstool; homage, I mean, in Action: give me the real benediction: I am sure that is the best. They bless God, that praise him: they bless him more, and praise him best, that obey him. There are, that crouch to you Great Ones, who yet hate you: oh, let us take heed of offering these hollow observations to the Searcher of Hearts, if we love not our own confusion. They, that proclaimed Christ at Jerusalem, had not only Hosanna in their mouths, but palms in their hands too: so must we have. Let me say then, If the hand bless not the Lord, the tongue is a hypocrite. Away with the waste compliments of our vain formalities: let our loud actions drown the Janguage of our words, in blessing the Name of the Lord.

2. Neither must we bless God as a Sovereign Lord only, but, which is yet a more feeling relation, as a MUNIFICENT BENEFACTOR, who loadeth us daily with benefits. Such is man's self-love, that no inward worth can so attract his praises, as outward beneficence, While thou makest much of thyself, every one shall speak well of thee: how much more, while thou makest much of them! Here God hath met with us also,

Not to perplex you with scanning the variety of senses wherewith I have observed this Psalm, above all other of David's, to abound; see here, I beseech you, a fourfold gradation of Divine Bounty,

First, here are Benefits. The word is not expressed in the Original, but necessarily implied in the sense: for there are but three loads whereof man is capable from God; Favours, Precepts, Punishments: the other two are out of the road of Gratulation. When we might therefore have expected Judgments, behold Benefits.

And those, secondly, not sparingly handfulled out to us, but dealt to us by the whole load; loadeth with benefits.

Whom, thirdly, doth he load, but us? Not worthy and welldeserving subjects, but us on Rebels.

And, lastly, this he doth, not at one dole and no more, as even charls' rare feasts use to be plentiful; but or D, successively, unweariedly, perpetually.

One favour were too much; here are Benefits: a sprinkling were too much; here is a load: once were too oft, here is daily largition, Cast your eyes therefore a little upon this threefold exaggeration of Beneficence: the measure, a load of benefits; the subject, unworthy us; the time, daily. Who daily loadeth us with benefits.

Where shall we begin to survey this vast load of Mercies? Were it no more, but that he hath given us a world to live in, a life to enjoy, air to breathe in, earth to tread on, fire to warm us, water to cool and cleanse us, clothes to cover us, food to nourish us, sleep to refresh us, houses to shelter us, variety of creatures to serve and delight us; here were a just load. But now, if we yet add to these civility of breeding, dearness of friends, competency of estate, degrees of honour, honesty or dignity of vocation, favour of princes, success in employments, domestic comforts, outward peace, good reputation, preservation from dangers, rescue from evils; the load is well mended. If yet ye shall come closer, and add due proportion of body, integrity of parts, perfection of senses, strength of nature, mediocrity of health, sufficiency of appetite, vigour of digestion, wholesome temper of seasons, freedom from cares; this course must needs heighten it yet more. If still ye shall add to these the order and power and exercise of our inward faculties; enriched with wisdom, art, learning, experience; expressed by a not-unhandsome elocution: and shall now lay all these together, that concern Estate, Body, Mind; how can the axle-tree of the soul but crack under the load of these favours? But, if, from what God hath done for us as Men, we look to what he hath done for us as Christians; that he hath embraced us with an everlasting love, that he hath moulded us anew, enlivened us by his Spirit, fed us by his Word and Sacraments, clothed us with his merits, bought us with his blood, becoming vile to make us glorious, a curse to invest us with blessedness, in a word, that he hath given Himself to us, his Son for us; Oh, the height, and depth, and breadth of the rich mercies of our God! Oh, the boundless, topless, bottomless load of divine benefits, whose immensity reaches from the centre of this earth to the unlimited extent of the very empyreal heaven! Oh, that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and declare the wonders that he doth for the children of men.

These mercies are great in themselves: our Unworthiness doth greaten them more. To do good to the well-deserving were but retribution, He loadeth us, who are no less rebellious to him, than he is beneficial to us. Our strait and shallow bounty picks out the worthiest and most capable subject: the greatest gift, that ever God gave, he gives us while we are enemies. It was our Saviour's charge to his disciples, Interrogate quis dignus; Ask who is worthy. that is, as Jerome interprets it, of the honour to receive such guests. Should God stand upon those terms with us, what should become of us? See, and wonder, and be ashamed, O ye Christian Hearers. God loads us; and we load him: God loads us with benefits; we load him with our sins, Behold, I am pressed under you, saith God, as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves; Amos ii. 13. He should go away laden with our thanks, with the presents of our duty; and we shamefully clog him with our continual provocations, Can there be here any danger of self-sacrificing with Sejanus, and not rather the just danger of our shame and confusion in ourselves? How can we but hate this unkind and unjust unanswerableness ?

Yet herein shall we make an advantage of our foulest sins, that they give so much more lustre to the glorious mercies of our God, who overcomes our evil with good, and loads even us.

The over-long interruption of favours loseth their thanks; and the best benefits languish in too much disuse. Our God takes order for that, by a perpetuation of beneficence: he loadeth us daily. Every day, every minute renews his favours upon us: Semper lar gitor, semper donator; as Jerome. To speak strictly, there is no time present: nothing is present, but an instant; and that can no more be called Time, than a prick can be called a line: yet how swift soever the wings of time are, they cannot cut one instant, but they must carry with them a successive renovation of God's gracious kindness to us.

This sun of his doth not rise once in an age, or once in a year; but, every minute since it was created, riseth to some parts of the earth, and every day to us. Neither doth he once hurl down upon our heads some violent drops in a storm, but he plies us with the sweet showers of the former and the latter rain; wherein the mercy of God condescends to our impotency, who are ready to perish under uncomfortable intermissions. Non mihi sufficit, saith that Father; "It is not enough that he hath given me once, if he give me not always." To-day's ague makes us forget yesterday's health. Former meals do not relieve our present hunger. This cottage of ours ruins straight, if it be not new daubed every day; new repaired: the liberal care of our God therefore tiles over one benefit with another, that it may not rain through.

And if he be so unwearied in his favours, why are we weary of our thanks? Our bonds are renewed every day to our God; why not our payments? Not once in a year, or moon, or week, but every day once, without fail, were the Legal sacrifices reiterated; and that, of all those creatures which were necessary for sustentation; a lamb, flower, wine, oil; that is, meat, bread, drink, sauce; why ? but that, in all these, we should still daily re-acknowledge our new obligations to the Giver? Yea, ex plenitudine et lacrymis, as it is in the Original; Exod. xxii. 29: of our plenty and tears; that is, as Cajetan, of a dear or cheap year must we return: more or less may not miss our thanks. We need daily; we beg daily, Give us this day; we receive daily: why do we not daily retribute to our God; and act, as some read it, Blessed be the Lord daily, who loadeth us with his benefits?

3. It is time now to turn your eyes to that mixed respect, that reacheth both to God and Us. Ye have seen him a Benefactor,

see him a SAVIOUR and DELIVERER; The God of our Salvation. The Vulgate's salutaria, following the Septuagint, differs from our Salvation but as the means from the end. With the Hebrews Salvation is a wide word, comprising all the favours of God, that may tend to preservation; and therefore the Psalmist elsewhere extends this act both to man and beast: and, as if he would comment upon himself, expounds cacov save, by uddarov prosper; Psalm cxviii. 25. It is so dear a title of God, that the Prophet

cannot have enough of it: the interposition of a Selah cannot bar the redoubling of it in my Text.

Every deliverance, every preservation fathers itself upon God: yet, as the soul is the most precious thing in the world, and life is the most precious thing that belongs to the soul, and eternal life is the best of lives, and the danger and loss of this life is the fearfullest and most horrible; chiefly is this greatest Salvation here meant, wherein God intends most to bless and be blessed.

Of this Salvation is he the God by preordination, by purchase, by gift: by Preordination; in that he hath decreed it to us from eternity; popire; Rom. viii, 30: by Purchase; in that he hath bought it for us, and us to it, by the price of his blood; nyopárdyte ; 1 Cor. vi. 20: by Gift; in that he hath feoft us in it; xágua Oe8; The gift of God is eternal Life; Rom, vi, 23. Since therefore he decreed it, he bought it, he bestows it, justly is he The God of our Salvation.

Who can, who dares arrogate to himself any partnership in this great work? What power can dispose of the soul's final condition, but the same that made it? Who can give eternity, but he that only hath it? What but an infinite merit can purchase an infinite glory? Cursed be that spirit, that will offer to share with his Maker. Down with your crowns, O ye Glorious Elders, at the foot of him that sits on the throne, with a Non nobis, Domine; Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to thy Name give the praise. Away with the proud encroachment of the merits of the best saints; of papal largesses. Only our God is the God of our Salvation.

How happy are we the while! All actions are according to the force of the agent: weak causes produce feeble effects; contingent, casual; necessary, certain. Our Salvation therefore, being the work of an infinitely-powerful cause, cannot be disappointed. Lo the beauty of Solomon's ; Prov. xxx. 31. Who hath resisted his will? When we look to our own fleshy hands, here is nothing but discouragement; when we look to our spiritual enemies, here is nothing but terror: but, when we cast up our eyes to the Mighty God, here is nothing but confidence, nothing but comfort.

Comfort ye, comfort ye therefore, O ye Feeble Souls; and send your bold defiances to the Prince of Darkness. Heaven is high and hard to reach, Hell is steep and slippery, our Flesh is earthy and impotent, Satan strong and rancorous, Sin subtle, the World allur ing; all these yet, God is the God of our Salvation.

Let those infernal Lions roar and ramp upon us; let the gates of Hell do their worst; let the World be a cheater, our Flesh a traitor, the Devil a tyrant; Faithful is he that hath promised, who will also do it. God is the God of our Salvation.

How much more then in these outward temporal occasions, when we have to do with an arm of flesh! Do the enemies of the Church rage, and snuff, and breathe nothing but threats and death? Make sure of our God: he shall be sure to make them lick our dust. Great Benhadad of the Syrians shall come with his hempen collar to the King of Israel. The very winds and waves shall undertake

those Mahometan or Marian powers, that shall rise up against the inheritance of the God of Salvation.

Salvation is rateable, according to the danger from which we are delivered. Since Death therefore is the utmost of all terribles, needs must it be the highest improvement of Salvation, that to our God belong the issues from Death. Death hath here a double latitude; of kind, of extent: the kind is either temporal or eternal; the extent reaches not only to the last complete act of dissolution, but to all the passages that lead towards it. Thus the issues from death belong to our God, whether by way of preservation, or by way of rescue.

How gladly do I meet in my Text with the dear and sweet name of our Jesus, who conquered death by dying, and triumphed over hell by suffering, and carries the keys both of death and hell; Rev. i. 18! He is the God, the Author and Finisher of our Salvation, to whom belong the issues from death.

Look first at the Temporary. He keeps it from us: he fetches us from it.

It is true, there is a Statutum est upon it: die we must: death knocks equally at the hatch of a cottage and gate of a palace: But our times are in God's hand; the Lord of Life hath set us our period; whose Omnipotence so contrives all events, that neither enemy, nor casualty, nor disease can prevent his hour. Were death suffered to run loose and wild, what boot were it to live? now it is tethered up short by that Almighty Hand, what can we fear? If envy repine, and villainy plot against Sacred Sovereignty, God hath well proved upon all the poisons, and pistols, and poniards, and gun-powders of the two late memorable successions, that to him alone belong the issues from death. Go on then, Blessed Sovereign, go on courageously in the ways of your God. The invisible guard of heaven shall secure your royal head. The God of our Salvation shall make you a third glorious instance to all posterities, that unto him belong the issues from death.

Thus God keeps death from us: it is more comfort yet, that he fetches us from it. Even the best head must at last lie down in the dust, and sleep in death. O vain cracks of valour! thou braggest thyself able to kill a man: a worm hath done it; a fly hath done it. Every thing can find the way down unto death: none but the Omnipotent can find the way up out of it. He finds, he makes these issues for all his. As it was with our Head, so it is with the members, Death might seize, it cannot hold. Gustavit, non de glutivit: "It may nibble at us, it shall not devour us." Behold the only sovereign antidote against the sorrows, the frights of death, Who can fear to lay himself down and take a nap in the bed of death, when his heart is assured that he shall awake glorious in the morning of his resurrection? Certainly, it is only our infidelity, that makes death fearful. Rejoice not over me, O my last enemy: though I fall, I shall rise again. O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?

Cast ye one glance of your eyes upon the Second and Eternal