PREFACE.

OUR Congregation of cottagers will be better enabled, under the teaching of the Lord, to enter into an apprehension of what is here written, if previously made acquainted with some few of the historical circumstances which gave rise to it. It pleased the Lord, in his unerring will and counsel, to take me for a season from the public ministry of his word, to the private manifestations of his grace. Three months revolved, while the disorder remained; so that I lay, unconscious, under his Almighty hand, what his sovereignty had appointed, in respect to the termination. One thing I had assured myself, and which through every stage of the disease, I never lost sight of, but with Paul could and did say, and from the same well grounded hope as his, namely, that "Christ should be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death: for to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." (Phil. i. 20, 21.)

My appearing before the congregation this day testifieth the divine will. And although I have not strength to engage in my usual services, yet am I, through mercy, in a state of convalescence. In the interval between the singing of the last Psalm and the sermon, I found strength from the Lord, to speak to his people the substance of what is contained in this sermon. And concluding from the effects wrought on the minds of many then, the same, under the Lord's teaching, if put into a more tangible form, and circulated through our villages, would be useful now, I have endeavoured to recollect the leading particulars then advanced, and herewith present them to our spiritual cottagers.

Gracious God! with whom are the issues of life, and death; thou that killest, and makest alive; that bringest down to the grave, and bringest up; vouchsafe to bless with thy grace what is here brought before thy people, as far as the contents are agreeable to thy holy word! Grant that my exercises may minister to the comfort of others. Prepare any of thine, and all of thine, which are now before thee, and who are at present in health, for a time of sickness, and of death; knowing that the transition from the one to the other is sometimes in a moment. Make all thy visitations messengers of sanctification and wisdom, that however painful to flesh and blood, as the stroke with which the Angel smote Peter in the prison, the chains may fall off, and the prison doors fly open. Oh! the unspeakable blessedness, when the regenerated and redeemed child of God can say, under every dispensasion, "I know, Lord, that thy judgments are right; and that thou in very faithfulness hast caused me to be afflicted." (Ps. cxix. 75.)

SERMON XIX.

THE DIFFERENCE OF SICKNESS BETWEEN HIM THAT IS IN
THE UNRENEWED STATE OF NATURE, AND HIM THAT
IS CALLED BY SOVEREIGN GRACE.

BRETHREN, BELOVED IN THE LORD!

I AM not come out of the other world, neither am 1 come out of my grave, to speak to you this day of the grace and goodness of our wonder-working God! But the Lord, under whose divine hand of sickness I have lain, since I saw you last in this place, hath brought me from the borders of both, and preserved my life, by a great deliverance. I am come, therefore, to make my first offering, as is most justly due, to the God of my life, "in whose hand my breath is, and whose are all my ways!" It is to His goodness must be ascribed that we see once more each other's face in the flesh. Sure I am, that your thanksgiving will join mine; and that you will feel as holy men of old did, when one said to another, "O bless the Lord with me, and let us magnify his name together!" (Ps xxxiv. 3.)

And having first offered the tribute of praise to the Lord, I next turn to thank you. You have not only manifested an abounding affection to my person, in your enquiries after me; but what is yet more than that, you have carried me in the arms of your faith before the Lord: and this day is the Lord's day for shewing himself herein a prayer-hearing God. But, brethren, I am not come at this time, to reassume my

ministry among you. Indeed you must perceive too much of debility in me, for such a service. I am simply come now, only to relate to you some of the Lord's gracious dealings towards me, during this my confinement; and to prove the Lord's own words, which I have desired to speak to you from, at the present moment; that in all the diseases to which our nature, by the Adam-fall transgression, is liable, there is a total dissimilarity between the unrenewed man, and him that is called by sovereign grace. And these words of the Lord proclaimed to the church, at the first formation of the church, confirm the unquestionable truth:

I will put none of those diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the Lord that healeth thee.

I FEAR that there are very few of the Lord's people, who can, and do, enter into a real, heartfelt conviction of this divine promise, so as to live upon it, with full assurance of faith. And yet the promise is as absolute, and the certainty of it as sure, as heaven and earth: yea, heaven and earth shall pass away, but not one jot or tittle of the Lord's words shall fail. The grace of the promise is the grace of the covenant; it is in fact part of it: God is engaged by it to do as He hath said. And while he proclaimed himself from the bush as the Almighty I AM, in that glorious incommunicable name he proclaimed himself as unchangeable in all his promises. Read what Jehovah then said: "The Lord God of your fathers; the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob this is my name for ever, and this is my

memorial unto all generations." (Exod. iii. 15.) Here then is a pledge, an assurance, an immutable security. And every promise that follows to the church, looks back to this standard; and to all intents and purpose, makes appeal to it, for the fulfilment of all that God in his trinity of persons hath engaged for. It is precisely the same as the word and oath God made to Abraham, concerning which it is said, that "God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us." (Heb. vi. 17, 18.) And such is the promise in the text. Every regenerated and redeemed child of God hath not only a right to plead for its accomplishment; but to exercise faith upon the promise, that it must be so. I fear therefore, I say, that few of the Lord's people do this; at least they are not aware of the effectual nature of it, when bringing it for fulfilment before the throne.

And it is worthy your closest attention, nay, it is both your interest and your privilege to notice, in the history of Egypt, and Israel then, (and the same runs through all ages of mankind now,) how the Lord distinguished his different dispensations, as well in providence as grace, to the different characters. The Lord turned the waters of the Egyptians into blood. But the Lord converts the waters of his gospel into wine. (Exod vii. 19-21. John ii. 7-11.) When the Lord sent the plague of swarms of flies, which filled all the houses of Egypt in the land of Goshen, where Israel dwelt, there were none. (Exod. viii. 21, 22.) In the murrain of cattle, which destroyed the horses of the Egyptians; "of the cattle of the children of Israel died not one." In the visitation of darkness over the whole land of

(Exod. ix. 6.)

Egypt; the Israelites had perfect day in their habitation. (Exod. x. 21—23.) And when in the destruction of the first-born, while the blood sprinkled on the door posts and lintels of Israel's houses preserved the whole alive; we read concerning Egypt, "that there was not an house where there was not one dead." (Exod. xii. 30.) And beside the temporal mercies of distinction which marked Israel from Egypt, there was not a single plague of Egypt but which taught Israel to form conclusions also of spiritual blessings under them, as related to the Lord's people. The attack made on the bodies of the Egyptians was rendered more dreadfully distressing, from the horror they felt in their minds. And darkness, "which might be felt," (such as Job speaks of) "a land of darkness, as darkness itself, and of the shadow of death without any order, and where the light is as darkness." (Job x. 22.) What terrors must be excited in the breast of the sinner, contrasted to that divine light which God causeth to shine in the souls of his people, when he gives them the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ!" (2 Cor. iv. 6.)

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And what is it now, but the same dispensations, in the divine government, continually exercising, in proof that the Lord, as he hath said, puts" none of the diseases upon his people which he brought upon Egypt;" yea, he reveals himself in his own peculiar and incommunicable name, as a confirmation, I am Jehovah Rophe (the Lord saith) that is, "the Lord that healeth thee." Look into common life in proof. For amidst the general visitation that is common to all men, by reason of our common corruption in the Adam-fall transgression, still there is a diversity in the administration. And the Lord thereby calls upon his people to distinguish, how the Lord puts a difference, as between Israel and Egypt