J4 COMING TO GOD WITHOUT CHRIST. they areharmless and have done no wrong, and therefore they are safe for eternity. Perhaps, by education and other methods of restraining grace, they have escaped the viler pollutions ofthe age, and been preserved from gross impieties : Then they hope and believe all shall go well with them, and dream of nothing but the favour of God, and happiness after death, because their life has been outwardly unblameable in the world. Thus they live, and thus they die. Ask these persons when they lie languishing on a dyingpillow, " How they can venture to appear before the great, the just, and the holy God, hi the world of spirits ?" They will readily return this answer, "They have done no harm and they hope God will do them none ; they have wronged no man, and they know not why they should not be accepted of God." Poor ignorant, unthinking creatures ! One would wonder that so gross blindness and stupidity should re- main on the minds of any whosit under thepreaching of the law and gospel. Let me endeavour to convince such sinners here, and prove that this hope is a false and dangerous one. L If it were possible that they should be found such as they suppose themselves, that is, innocent in their outward carriages andactionstowards their fellow- creatures, yet have their language and their lips been always innocent too ? Or if they have in the main learned to bridle their tongues from gross falsehood, and wrath and slander,yet have they never indulged evil imaginations against their neighbour, and the working of evil passions ? Sirs, if we construe the law of duty to extend to our hearts, as well as to our lips and our lives, as our Saviour has construed it in his sermon on the mount, Mat. chapters v. and vi. and vii. who is there can ever plead innocence ? You llave kept your actions to all appearance tolerably blameless, with regard to men, but have you never broken the last command of the second table, never been desirous or covetous of another's possessions in thought, never been guilty of immoralities in heart ? Can such souls plead at the bar of God, that they never allowed one en- vious thought against their neighbour, and never let loose a ma- licious word ? That they never coveted that whichbelonged to another, nor wilfully lessened .their neighbour's good name or reputation ? Did.they never find wrath or revenge kindling and burning within them without resistance ? Did they never indulge the motions of lust orintemperance, or any sinful desire stirring in their hearts ? When the great apostle, in the second and third chapters to the Romans, is convincing all the world of sin, and laying.mankind under a sense of guilt, he convinces them effect- ually by their breach of thesecond table, that all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God ; Rom. ii. 21. and iii. 10, 12 -20. Where is the son or daughter of Adam that can stand forth and say, I never dishonoured father or mother, nor ever dis-
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