SECT. II.] IN REGARE) OF GOD. 477 racter was God manifest in the flesh." See what sort of inference the apostle makes from such a view of our blessed Lord ? verses 3, 4, 5. Let nothing be done through strife or vain -glory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, that is with a self - flattering and exalted survey of them, but let every man also look on the things of others," paying all due regard to their real worth and dignity. " Let this mind he in you which was also in Christ Jesus." Indeed there is no possibility of lessening ourselves comparably to the self - abasement of the Son of God ; and yet the nearer we are like hirn the more shall we partake of the Father's love, and we shall be in the way of divine advancement, in a humble imitation of the advancement of Christ himself: Be-. cause " he humbled himself to death, thereforeGod hatlr highly exalted him, and given him a name above every name ;" Phil. ii. 9. V. By a humble opinion of ourselves, and by a lowly conduct and behaviour in life we shall bring honour to the gospel and become the truest ornaments to the divine religion which we profess. Never was any religion founded in so much humility as that of the gospel : The first principle of it requires that we be sensible of our own guilt and sinfulness, our danger and misery, andour utter insufficiency to relieve ourselves : And in the pro- gress it shews us to derive all the good we have and hope for from the free mercy of God through a Mediator. The first line of that excellent sermon which Jesus, the au- thor of the gospel, preached to his people upon the mountain, is this, " Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven ;" Mat. v. 3. Blessed are those who have the lowest and meanest thoughts of themselves, for the heavenly treasures of divine grace, are particularly offered to them, and they are the most ready to receive them. It is the very design of the gos- pel to stain the glory of all flesh, and to hide pride from man, to teach man that he is nothing, and that he has nothing in and of himself, " that he that glorieth may glory in the Lord ?" 1 Cór. i. 19, 31. Now the man that keeps those self- abasing virtues, and maintains a humbling sense of his own nothingness in himself, and his universal dependance upon the grace of Christ, does
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