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and most vehement manner. Sitting at the right hand of his Father, he holds back that 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 fig-tree 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 favour! To him, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be honour and glory for ever. Amen.

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SERMON XII.

God the only Object of Fear.

PART I.

JEREMIAH X. 7.

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

THE

HE prophet aims, in the words of the text, to inspire us with fear, and the best way to understand his meaning is to affix 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 endeavoureth 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. Nah. i. 2. Heb. xii. 29. Remember the terrors that your own consciences felt, when they first awoke from the inchantment of sin, and when they beheld, for the first time, vice in its own colours. 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," Gen. iii. 10. said the first man, after his fall: but it was because he was naked, 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 raiment, 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, Jam. 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 Lainb." 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, Rev. xix. 16. of him, who is elsewhere described as having on his thigh the stately title of KING OF KINGS; of him, whose dominion is described as constituting the feli

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