PART I. SERMON I. God. That Jesus Christ our Lord shall raise the dead, shall come in the last day to judge the world, and pass a decisive sen- tence, and shall then reward every one according to their works. Though all these thingswerenot so plainly taught byour Saviour himself in his public ministry in the world, yet these were the doctrines which his apostles preached continually, and they re- ceived them from him by private instructions, or the inspiration of his Spirit, so that they may be properly called the doctrines of Christ. But this is not all that is required of believers; for so much knowledge, and so much faith as this is, the devils may have, and 'SimonMagus the sorcerer might have as much as this when lie believed. The faith that is expressed in this epistle, and in other places of scripture, is more than a bare assent to the great truths of the gospel; for it is such a faith as overcomes the world; such á faith as gains a victory over things sensual, and over Satan ; such a faith as evidences a man to be bornof God. And therefore something More most be implied in it than a mere belief of the nature and person of Christ, and the truth of his -doctrine. 2. It therefore implies a betrusting the soul into the hands'of Christ, that he may be our Saviour. And I have sometimes thought that those words in the Greek, which we render faith and believing are continually used in the New Testament, to sig- nify faith, a savingfaith; because they not only signify, intheir natural sense, the believing of a truth, but the trusting in aperson. They signify believing the doctrine of Christ, and committing the soul into his hands as a Saviour, as it is expressed by $t. Paul ; 2 Tim. i. 12. I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded he is able to keep zchat I have committed to him. To believe on the Son of God therefore, is when a person, from a sense of sin and danger of eternal death, and his inability to escape any other way, applieshimself unto Christ Jesus, as the Son of God, the Saviour of the world. When the soul commits itself into his hands, as one All-sufficient in himself to save, and one appointed by the Father for this glorious purpose. When the soul is madewilling to bejustifiedbythemerits and righteous- ness ofanother, seeing itself unable, by all its own works, toattain to a justifying righteousness. When the soul is desirous to be sanctified by the grace that is from above, because it sees the necessity of holiness, and yet feels itself utterly incapable' to renew its own natùre, to mortify its own sins, or to form itself fit for the enjoyment of Gód and heaven. When the soul for these ends, puts itself under the care of Christ Jesus, who is - authorised andcommissioned by the Father to take'care of sinful and guilty souls, to remove and cancel their guilt by his sacrifice, B 3
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