598 AN IIUMBLE ATTEMPT, &c. as revealed in scripture ; to the dignity of the person of Christ the Redeemer, the only begotten Son of God and the Son of man; to .the covenant of grace, of pardon and salvation made with men, in and through this gloriousMediator ; to the incar- nation, life and death, the sacrifice and atonement, the resurrec- tion, , intercession, and universal government arid lordship of Jesus Christ, and his coming to judge the world at the last day; and to the appointed methods of our participation of the bles- sings which he bestows. These illustrious doctrines are big with a thousand duties both to God and man ; all the practices of faith and love, repentance and universal holiness flow front them by plain and easy deduction : All the sacred rules of piety and virtue, sobriety, justice and goodness, the holy skill of living and dyingin the love and favour of God, are the most natural and happy inferences from these sublime truths of our religion. We preach the gospel in a very defective manner, if we neglect the moral or divine duties which are derived from the faith of Christ. If you would raise, the hearts of your hearers to a just and high esteem of this gospel of grace, and impress them with an awful sense of the divine importance and worth of it, be nit afraid to lay human nature low, and to represent it in its ruins by the fall of thefirst Adam. It is the vain exaltation of ruined nature, that makes thegospel so much despised irr our age. La- bour therefore to make them see and feel the deplorable state of mankind as described in scripture, that by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and a sentence of death bath passed uponall nieu, for that all havesinned: let them hear and know that Jews anal Gentiles are all under sin, that there is none righteous, Ira, not one ; that every mouth naafis] be stoppedand all the world may appear guilty before God. Let them know that it is not in man that zealketh to direct his steps; that we are not sufficient of ourselves to thinkanygood thing: that we are with- out strength, alienated from the life of God through the igno- rance and darkness of our understandings, and are by nature children of disobedience, and children of wrath ; that we are unable to recover ourselves out of these depths of wretchedness. without the condescensionsof divine grace, and that the gospel of Christ is introduced as the only sovereign remedy and relief under all this desolation of nature, this overwhelming distress ; neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved ; Acts iv. 12. And they that wilfully and obstinately re- ject this message of divine love, must perish without remedy and without hope ; for there remains no more sacrificefor sin, but a certain fearful expectation of vengeance; Ref). x. 26. By this conduct you will approve yourself to be a faithful messenger of
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