tle gives to this purpose, Phil. iii. 15: Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in anything ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing. Let us follow our Lord unanimously, in what He hath clearly manifested to us, and given us with one consent to embrace; as the spheres, notwithstanding each one hath its particular motion, yet all are wheeled about together with the first.

And this leads us to consider the further extent of this word, to agree in heart and in conversation, walking by the rule of those undoubted truths we have received. And in this I shall recommend these two things to you :

1. In the defence of the Truth, as the Lord shall call us, let us be of one mind, and all as one man. Satan acts by that maxim, and all his followers have it, Divide and conquer; and therefore let us hold that counter-maxim, Union invincible.

2. In the practice of that Truth, agree as one. Let your conversation be uniform, by being squared to that one rule, and in all spiritual exercises join as one; be of one heart and mind. Would not our public worship, think you, prove much more both comfortable and profitable, if our hearts met in it as one, so that we would say of our hearing the word, as he, Acts x. 33, We are all here present before God, to hear all things that are commanded of God?-if our prayers ascended up as one pillar of incense to the Throne of grace; if they besieged it, as an army, stipato agmine Deum obsidentes, as Tertullian speaks, all surrounding it together to obtain favor for ourselves and the Church? This is much with God, the consent of hearts petitioning. Fama est junctas fortius ire preces: It is believed that united prayers ascend with greater efficacy. So says our Saviour, Matt. xviii. 20: Where two or three are gathered-not their bodies within the same walls only, for so they are but so many carcasses tumbled together, and the promise of His being amongst us, is not made to that, for He is the God of the living and not of the dead, Matt. xxii. 32; it is the spirit of darkness that abides amongst the tombs and graves; but-gathered in my name, one in that one holy name, written upon their hearts, and uniting them, and so thence expressed in their joint services and invocations. So He says there of them who agree upon anything they shall ask, if all their hearts present and hold it up together, if they make one cry or song of it, that harmony of their hearts shall be sweet in the Lord's ears, and shall draw a gracious answer out of His hand: if ye agree, your joint petitions shall be as it were an arrest or decree that shall stand in Heaven it shall be done for them of my Father which is in Heaven. But alas! where is our agreement? The greater number of hearts say nothing, and others speak with such wavering and such a jarring harsh noise, being out of tune, earthly, too low set,

Were the censer

that they spoil all, and disappoint the answers. filled with those united prayers heaven-wards, it would be filled with fire earth-wards against the enemies of the Church.

And in your private society, seek unanimously your own and each other's spiritual good; not only agreeing in your affairs and civil converse, but having one heart and mind as Christians. To eat and drink together, if you do no more, is such society as beasts may have to do these in the excess, to eat and drink intemperately together, is a society worse than that of beasts and below them. To discourse together of civil business, is to converse as men; but the peculiar converse of Christians in that notion, as born again to immortality, an unfading inheritance above, is to further one another towards that, to put one another in mind of Heaven and Heavenly things. And it is strange that men who profess to be Christians, when they meet, either fill one another's ears with lies and profane speeches, or with vanities and trifles, or, at the best, with the affairs of the earth, and not a word of those things that should most possess the heart, and where the mind should be most set, but are ready to reproach and taunt any such thing in others. What are you ashamed of Christ and religion? Why do you profess it then? Is there such a thing, think ye, as the communing of saints? If not, why say you believe it? It is a truth, think of it as you will. The public ministry will profit little anywhere, where a people or some part of them, are not thus one, and do not live together as of one mind, and use diligently all due means of edifying one another in their holy faith. How much of the primitive Christians' praise and profit is involved in the word, They were together with one accord, with one mind: and so they grew; the Lord added to the church. Acts ii. 1, 44, 47.

Christian Sympathy.

This makes a Christian rejoice in the welfare and good of another, as if it were his own, and feel their griefs and distresses, as if himself were really a sharer in them; for the word comprehends all feeling together, feeling of joy as well as grief. Heb. xiii. 3; 1 Cor. xii. 26. And always, where there is most of grace and of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, there is most of this sympathy. The Apostle St. Paul, as he was eminent in all grace, had a large portion of this. 2 Cor. xi 29. And if this ought to be in reference to their outward condition, much more in spiritual things there should be rejoicing at the increases and flourishing of grace in others. That base envy which dwells in the hearts of rotten hypocrites, who would have all engrossed to themselves, argues that they move not further than the compass of self; that the pure love of God, and the sincere love of their brethren flowing from it, are not in them. But when the heart can unfeignedly rejoice

in the Lord's bounty to others, and the lustre of grace in others, far outshining their own, truly it is an evidence that what grace such a one hath, is upright and good, and that the law of love is engraven on his heart. And where that is, there will be likewise, on the other side, a compassionate tender sense of the infirmities and frailties of their brethren; whereas some account it a sign of much advancement and spiritual proficiency, to be able to sit in judgment upon the qualifications and actions of others, and to lavish out severe censures round about them to sentence one weak and of poor abilities, and another proud and lofty, and a third covetous, &c.; and thus to go on in a censor-like magisterial strain. But it were truly an evidence of more grace, not to get upon the bench to judge them, but to sit down rather and mourn for them, when they are manifestly and really faulty, and as for their ordinary infirmities, to consider and bear them. These are the characters we find in the Scriptures, of stronger Christians, Rom. xv. 1; Gal. vi. 1. This holy and humble sympathy argues indeed a strong Christian. Nil tam spiritualem vir um indicat, quam peccati alieni tractatio: Nothing truly shows a spiritual man so much, as the dealing with another man's sin. Far will he be from the ordinary way of insulting and trampling upon the weak, or using rigor and bitterness, even against some gross falls of a Christian: but will rather vent his compassion in tears, than his passion in fiery railings; will bewail the frailty of man, and our dangerous condition in this life, amidst so many snares and temptations, and such strong and subtle enemies.

As this sympathy works towards particular Christians in their several conditions, so, by the same reason, it acts, and that more eminently, towards the Church, and the public affairs that concern its good. And this, we find, hath breathed forth from the hearts of the saints in former times, in so many pathetical complaints and prayers for Zion. Thus David in his saddest times, when he might seem most dispensable to forget other things, and be wholly taken up with lamenting his own fall, yet, even there, he leaves not out the Church, Psal. li. 17. In thy good pleasure, do good to Zion. And though his heart was broken all to pieces, yet the very pieces cry no less for the building of Jerusalem's wall, than for the binding up and healing of itself. And in that cxxiid Psalm, which seems to be the expression of his joy on being exalted to the throne and sitting peaceably on it, yet he still thus prays for the peace of Jerusalem. And the penman of the cxxxviiith Psalm, makes it an execrable oversight to forget Jerusalem, or to remember it coldly or secondarily: no less will serve him than to prefer it to his chief joy. Whatsoever else is top or head of his joy, (as the word is,) Jerusalem's welfare shall be its crown, shall be set above it. And the prophet whoever it was, that wrote that ciid Psalm, and in it poured out that prayer from an afflicted soul,

comforts himself in this, that Zion shall be favored. My days are like a shadow that declineth, and I am withered like grass, but it matters not what becomes of me; let me languish and wither away, provided Zion flourish; though I feel nothing but pains and troubles, yet, Thou wilt arise and shew mercy to Zion: I am con

tent that satisfies me.

But where is now this spirit of high sympathy with the Church? Surely, if there were any remains of it in us, it is now a fit time to exert it. If we be not altogether dead, surely we shall be stirred with the voice of those late strokes of God's hand, and be driv en to more humble and earnest prayer by it. When will men change their poor, base grumblings about their private concerns, Oh! what shall I do? &c., into strong cries for the Church of God, and the public deliverance of all these kingdoms from the raging sword? But vile selfishness undoes us, the most look ing no further. If themselves and theirs might be secured, how many would regard little what became of the rest! As one said, When I am dead let the world be fired. But the Christian mind is of a larger sphere, looks not only upon more than itself in present, but even to after times and ages, and can rejoice in the good to come, when itself shall not be here to partake of it: it is more dilated, and liker unto God, and to our Head, Jesus Christ. The Lord, says the Prophet, (Isa. Ixiii. 9) in all his people's affliction, was afflicted himself. And Jesus Christ accounts the sufferings of His body, the Church, His own: Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? Acts ix. 4. The heel was trod upon on earth, and the Head crieth from Heaven, as sensible of it. And this in all our evils, especially our spiritual griefs, is a high point of comfort to us, that our Lord Jesus is not insensible of them. This emboldens us to complain ourselves, and to put in our petitions for help to the throne of Grace through his hand, knowing that when He presents them, He will speak his own sense of our condition, and move for us as it were for Himself, as we have it sweetly expressed, Heb. iv. 15, 16. Now, as it is our comfort, so it is our pattern.

Love as brethren.] Hence springs this feeling we speak of: love is the cause of union, and union the cause of sympathy, and of that unanimity mentioned before. They who have the same spirit uniting and animating them, cannot but have the same mind and the same feelings. And this spirit is derived from that Head, Christ, in whom Christians live, and move, and have their being, their new and excellent being, and so, living in Him, they love Him, and are one in Him: they are brethren, as here the word is; their fraternity holds in Him. He is the head of it, the first born among many brethren, Rom. viii. 29. Men are brethren in two natural respects, their bodies are of the same earth, and their souls breathed from the same God; but this third fra

ternity which is founded in Christ, is far more excellent and more firm than the other two; for being one in Him, they have there taken in the other two, inasmuch as in Him is our whole nature: He is the man Christ Jesus. But to the advantage, and it is an infinite one of being one in Him, we are united to the Divine nature in Him, who is God blessed forever, Rom. ix. 5; and this is the highest, certainly, and the strongest union that can be imagined. Now this is a great mystery, indeed, as the Apostle says, Eph. v. 32, speaking of this same point, the union of Christ and his Church, whence their union and communion one with another, who make up that body, the Church, is derived. In Christ every believer is born of God, is His son; and so, they are not only brethren, one with another, who are so born, but Christ himself owns them as his brethren; Both he who sanctifies, and they who are sanctified, are all of one, for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren. Heb. ii. 11.

Sin broke all to pieces, man from God, and men from one another. Christ's work in the world was, union. To make up these breaches He came down, and began the union which was his work, in the wonderful union made in his person that was to work it, making God and man one. And as the nature of man was reconciled, so, by what He performed, the persons of men are united to God. Faith makes them one with Christ, and he makes them one with the Father, and hence results this oneness amongst themselves: concentring and meeting in Jesus Christ, and in the father through Him, they are made one together. And that this was His great work, we may read in His prayer, John xvii., where it is the burden and main strain, the great request He so reiterates, That they may be one, as we are one, ver. 11. A high comparison, such as man durst not name, but after Him who so warrants us! And again, ver. 21, That they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.

So that certainly, where this exists, it is the ground-work of another kind of friendship and love than the world is acquainted with, or is able to judge of, and hath more worth in one drachm of it, than all the quintessence of civil or natural affection can amount to. The friendships of the world, the best of them, are but tied with chains of glass; but this fraternal love of Christians is a golden chain, both more precious, and more strong and lasting the others are worthless and brittle.

The Christian owes and pays a general charity and good will to all; but peculiar and intimate friendship he cannot have, except with such as come within the compass of this fraternal love, which, after a special manner, flows from God, and returns to Him, and abides in Him, and shall remain unto eternity.

Where this love is and abounds, it will banish far away all those