SERMON LI. 121 thereby" Christ himself passed under it: Mat. iii. 13=I7. Those who had received the Holy Spirit received baptism also. Acts x. 47. Can any manforbid water that these should not be baptized? As there must be faith in order to salvation, so it is the common and appointed way of God that there should bebaptism too. Mark xvi. 16. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. , A wilful and entire neglect and contempt of any ordi- nance of Christ gives too much reason to suspect whether there he,any true faith. 1V. " Take all proper occasions to refresh the sense of your baptism on your spirits, and to act over again between God and your own . souls all that baptism implies, though the ceremony itself be but once tobe administered to you." When you see baptism administered to others, remember you yourselves were once baptized ; recal the season when you were thus washed with water in the nameof the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Acknowledge your defilements' by nature andby practice : Go tothe laver that is opened for sin and uncleanness, even the fountainof the blood of Jesus ; seek the fresh influences of thepurifying Spirit to cleanse you from all impurities of your heart, and to make you clean and holy. Give up yourselves afresh with sacred pleasure to God as your Father, to Jesus as your Saviour, to the Holy Ghost as your Sanctifier : renew" the surrender of yourselves to Christ as his disciples, and engage yourselves afresh to be the Lord's. V. " Be, very watchful to answer, all the engagements of . your christianbaptism, toguardyourselves from every defilement of flesh and spirit, and to grow up intogreater degrees of holi- ness and purity." It wasa. happy and successful defence against temptations in the primitive days, when the christiancould say, " I am baptized." Let this also be the constant language of our souls ; " I am washed in the sacred laver of regeneration, how shall I defile myself again ? I am devoted and consecrated to Christ, how shall I estrange myself from him ? Forgive, O Lord, all my shameful pollutions, since I have beenwashed in the christian baptism, and guard me, O blessed Spirit, against every new defilement, that I may be presented at last before my God and my Saviour without spot or blemish in the (lily of his public glory and of my complete joy. Now to himwho is able to keep us from falling, and to present us faultless before thepre- sence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power both now and ever.- dmen.
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