condescended to assure me of it in such a tender manner! I will lose myself in that ocean of love, which thou, O God infinitely good! still discoverest to me, I will persuade myself thou dost not despise the sacrifice of a broken and contrite heart, and this persuasion I will oppose to an alarmed conscience, to a fear of hell that anticipates the misery of the state, and to all those formidable executioners of condemned men, whom I behold ready to seize their prey!

My brethren, the riches of the goodness and forbearance, and long-suffering of God, are yet open to you: they are open, my dear brethren, to this church, how ungrateful soever we have been to the goodness of God; how much insensibility soever we have shewn to the invitations of grace; they are open to the greatest sinners, nor is there one of my hearers who may not be admitted to these inexhaustible treasures of goodness and mercy.

But do you still despise the riches of the longsuffering of God? What! because a space to repent is given, Rev. ii. 21. will you continue in impenitence? Ah! were Jesus Christ in the flesh, were he walking in your streets, were he now in this pulpit preaching to you, would he not preach to you all bathed in sorrows and tears? He would weep over you as he once wept over Jerusalem, and he would say to this province, to this town, to this church, to each person in this assembly, yea, to that wicked hearer, who affects not to be concerned in this sermon, O that thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! Luke xix. 42. What am I saying! he would say thus! He doth say thus, my dear brethren, and still interests himself in your salvation in the tenderest and most vehement manner. Sitting at the right hand of his Father, he holds back his avenging arm which is ready to fell us to the earth at a stroke; in our behalf he interposeth his sufferings and his death, his intercession and his cross; and from the top of that glory to which he is elevated, he looks down and saith to this republic, to this church, to all this assembly, and to every sinner in it: O that thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace!

My brethren, the patience of God, which yet endures, will not always endure. The year, which the master of the vineyard grants, at the intercession of the dresser, to try whether a barren figtree can be made fruitful, will expire, and then it must be cut down, Luke xiii. 6. Do not deceive yourselves, my brethren, the long-suffering of God must produce in the end either your conversion or your destruction. O may it prevent your destruction by producing your conversion! The Lord grant you this favor! To him, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory for ever. Amen.

SERMON XII.

God the only Object of Fear.

PART І.

Jeremiah x. 7.

Who would not fear thee, O King of nations? For to thee doth it appertain.

THE Prophet aims, in the words of the text,

to inspire us with fear, and the best way to understand his meaning is to fix distinct ideas to the term. To fear God is an equivocal phrase in all languages; it is generally used in three senses in the holy scriptures.

1. Fear sometimes signifies terror; a disposition, that makes the soul consider itself only as sinful, and God chiefly as a Being who hateth and avengeth sin. There are various degrees of this fear, and it deserves either praise or blame, according to the different degree to which it is carried.

A man, whose heart is so void of the knowledge of the perfections of God, that he cannot rise above the little idols which worldlings adore; whose notions are so gross, that he cannot adhere to the purity of religion for purity's sake; whose taste is so vitiated that he hath no relish for the delightful union of a faithful soul with its God; such a man deserves to be praised, when he endeavoreth to restrain his sensuality by the idea of an avenging God. The apostles urged this motive with success, knowing therefore the terror of the Lord we persuade men, 2 Cor. v. 11. Of some have compassion, saith St. Jude to the ministers of the gospel, making a difference; and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, ver. 22, 23. Such a disposition, is, without doubt, very imperfect, and were a man to expect salvation in this way, he would be in imminent danger of feeling those miseries, of which he is afraid. No casuists, except such as have been educated in an infernal school, will venture to affirm, that to fear God in this sense, without loving him, is sufficient for salvation. Nevertheless this disposition is allowable in the beginning of a work of conversion, it is never altogether useless to a regenerate man, and it is of singular use to him in some violent temptations, with which the enemy of his salvation assaults him. When a tide of depravity threatens, in spite of yourselves, to carry you away, recollect some of the titles of God; the scripture calls him the mighty and the terrible God; the furious Lord; a consuming fire, Neh. ix. 32. Nahum i. 2. Heb. xii. 29. Remember the terrors, that your own consciences felt, when they first awoke from the enchantment of sin, and when they beheld, for the first time, vice in its own colors. Meditate on that dreadful abode, in which criminals suffer everlasting pains for momentary pleasures: The fear of God, taken in this first sense, is a laudable disposition.

But it ceaseth to be laudable, it becomes detestable, when it goeth so far as to deprive a sinner of a sight of all the gracious remedies, which God hath reserved for sinners, I heard thy voice, and I was afraid, and I hid myself, said the first man, after his fall: but it was because he was naked, Gen. iii. 10. it was because he had lost the glory of his primitive innocence, and must be obliged to

prostrate himself before his God, to seek from his infinite mercy the proper remedies for his maladies, to pray to him, in whose image he had been first formed, Gen. i. 26. to renew him after the image of him that created him, Col. iii. 10. and to ask him for habits, that the shame of his nakedness might not appear, Rev. iii. 18. Despair should not dwell in the church, hell should be its only abode. It should be left to the devils to believe and tremble, James ii. 19. Time is an economy of hope, and only those, whom the day of wrath overwhelmeth with horrible judgments, have reason to cry to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the wrath of the Lamb, Rev. vi. 16. Too great a degree of fear, then, in this first sense of fear, is a detestable disposition.

Fear is no less odious, when it giveth us tragical descriptions of the rights of God, and of his designs on his creatures: when it maketh a tyrant of him, whom the text calleth the king of nations; of him, who is elsewhere described as having on his thigh the stately title of KING OF KINGS, Rev. xix. 16. of him, whose dominion is described as constituting the felicity of his subjects, The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice, Psal. xcvii. 1. Far be such descriptions of God from us! They represent the Deity as a merciless usurer, who requireth an account of talents, which we have not received; who requireth angelical knowledge of a human intelligence, or philosophical penetration of an uninstructed peasant. Far from us be those systems, which pretend to prove, that God will judge the heathens by the same laws by which he will judge the Jews, and that he will judge those, who lived under the law, as if they had lived under the gospel! Away with that fear of God, which is so injurious to his majesty, and so unworthy of that throne, which is founded