SI2 A CANTO AGAINST INFIDELITY. degenerate nature, and to make us conquerors over the tempts. tions of the world. Meditate often onyour own weakness, to practise what con- science dictates, and God and reason command. Think of the perfection of the law of God, that it reaches to your very thoughts, and then think what a loro or evil principle there is in your members, warring against the low of,your minds, and ready at every turn to bringyou into captivity ; Rom. vii. 23. Think how weak you are to subdue the sin that dwells in you, and to resist the temptations of a corrupt and degenerate age. Then, you will highly esteem the gospel, which furnishes you with the most powerful assistances for this end, and you will find that no religion on earth pretends to any such valuable relief, under this distress and impotence. There is no salvation or remedy for ruined man, comparable to that contained in the blessed gospel. Then you will value the powerful and heavenly motives, which the gospel proposes to awaken your hatred against sin, to turn your unwilling heart to strict holiness, and to change the corrupt inclinations of your souls. Such glorious motives are derived from the love of God, from the serenity and peace of conscience, from the fears of an eternal hell, and from the hopes of eternal happiness, as no other religion can furnish you with. You will then see how gloriously the gospel animates all the professors of it, to pursue great and exalted degrees of holiness, by the illustrious examples of the saints in all ages, and by the practice of Jesus the Son of God at the head of them. Feb. xii. 1. We have a blessed cloud of nitnesess gone before us, who assure us from the experiments they have made, that sin may be subdued, that temptation may be resisted, that corrupt nature may be formed into the likeness of God, and that those attainments which seem impossible to man, when leftto the mere principles of nature, have been possessed by the dis- ciples of Christ, and the believers of his gospel. And above all remember the promised aids of the Holy Spirit, to enlighten our dark minds, tosubdue our rebellious wills, to change our un- holynatures, and bring then into a conformity to God and his ion. The aids of this Spirit, are promised and given to those who seek them in the right way, by addressing God the Father in the name of his Son Jesus Christ. V. Think now and then of the wretched and deplorable state of the heathen world, who have no knowledge of the gospel of Christ, and remember what you owe to this blessed gospel. Alas, for the heathen nations ! In what gross darkness their souls are ! How confused and absurd are their notions even of the true God, and the religion of nature ? How ridiculous is their worship? How cruel and barbarous are many of their
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