..urr SE M0:ß XVII. 241 he can do it withglory to allhis terrible perfections ; therefore I may venture my assent to this doctrine, and I may restmy soul uponit." 2. The gospel is a powerful means also to raiseundeserving sinners to a hope of heaven and eternal life. It shews us what heaven is, by the discoveries ofone that has been there, even the Son of God himself. Life and immortality are brought to light by thisgospel, which lay hid under much darkness before ; 2 Tim. i. 10. It teaches us also, how the happiness of heaven is procured for us, even by the obedienceand blood of the Sonof God ; and therefore, some think, heaven is called thepurchased possession in Eph. i. 14. It assures us, that this blessed state of the enjoy- ment of God in unchangeable peace, and in the company of blessed spirits,. waits for every believer, when he is dislodged from this flesh, and whenthe habitation of the body is no longer fit to retain the spirit : And it reveals also the final heaven of the saints, when the body shall be raised into immortality. " Without this gospel, says the soul, I could have no just ground to hope for heaven ; for all my best righteousnesses are im- perfect, my fairest acts of holiness have many defects ih them; but I behold the perfect righteousness of my Saviour that has procured it A lifeof holiness without defect, and a most sub- missive obedience to a painful and shameful death, has been the price and purchase of it." 3. This gospel isa most powerful means to subdue sin in the soul, tomortify corrupt nature, to inspire us withvirtue, to wean our hearts from vice, sensuality, and trifles, and from all the in- sufficient pretences to blessedness that the world can flatter us with. The gospel of Christ, both in his own personal ministry of it, and in the writings of his apostles, sets before us the most divine scheme of morality, piety and virtue, that ever the world knew. The sacred dictates of probity and 'goodness towards men, as well as the venerable rules of piety toward God, which are scattered up and down in an imperfect and obscuremanner among the philosophers, and shine like a star here and there in the midnight darkness of heathenism ; these are all col- lected and refined in the gospel of Christ, and fill the chris- tianworld with apure and universal' light like the sun unclouded in a meridian sky i We know our duty infinitelybetter from the instructions of Christ and St. Paul, than all the Platos, and the Plutarchs, all the Zenos and the Antonines of Greece and Rome, could ever teach us. The most divine rules of the gospel are attended also with the noblest motives to love virtue, and to hate all vice ; for never .vas the evil of sin so displayed to the eyes and senses ofmen, as x2
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