and a glorious kingdom of the saints upon the earth; but would humbly endeavour, by serving out some such food as she hath a relish for, to bring her into a state of lustier and stronger health. Because, God knows, I pity from my heart our leanness, and I know too well the communion of the saints to think that I, or any other, can escape from it otherwise than by endeavouring to deliver all the election of grace. There is a law of organization in the body of Christ, which forbiddeth one to flee from, and stand independent of, the rest. As soon might one member of the body expect to thrive by labouring for itself only.

Now, in considering the subject of the fruits which we have from the Incarnation, I perceive them to be two-fold-the one respecting our knowledge of the grace of God; the other respecting our enjoyment of peace within ourselves. Of the substance of this grace and peace, as derived from the Incarnation, I would first speak. Then I would speak of the free publication of them to men. And, thirdly, of the application of them to every individual.

I. I am first, therefore, to speak of the substance of that grace and peace with which we are blessed by the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

1. And first, of grace.-The grace of God is an essential and substantial part of the Divine being and existency, like wisdom, or justice, or goodness, or truth: not an accidental, but an eternal and necessary, attribute of his substance; which he may reveal and manifest to his creatures, or withhold to his own enjoyment, as it may seem good to his own infinite wisdom and unrestrained will. But if it is to be manifested to the creatures, those

who are the subjects of it must have come under his mortal displeasure; because grace is more than goodness-it is forgiveness and favour to those who have deserved our displeasure. And how creatures are to become objects of the disfavour of God, who is invariable in his goodness, otherwise than by despising his goodness in their creation, and setting his holy will at nought, and trampling on the expressed and ordained laws of their being, is not to be conceived. Sin, therefore, is a pre-requisite to grace; and only a sinner can be the subject of grace: others may know goodness, but sinners alone can know grace. And herein is beheld the mystery of the fall of man, and of the entering in of sin, in order to make way for the manifestation of that grace of God which could not otherwise be divulged. But while this is truly so, and doth comfort us with the power and purpose of God in bringing good out of evil, we are not therefore the less to stand amazed with horror at sin, or the less to admire the boundless love and grace of God in redeeming us from sin. It doth, indeed, but reflect the greater honour and glory upon this attribute of the Divine character concerning which we discourse, that it should come in to restore and rebuild, to heal and remedy, the disagreement and disorder of that most excellent work which was produced from the labour of all the other attributes of God.

In

all our discourse, therefore, of the manifestation and operation of grace, we should never fail to remember that its fountain is in God, and that all its abundance proceedeth from him.

But though this grace be an essential part of the Divine substance which doth require a sinful

creature to exercise itself upon, it is an act of Divine will and sovereignty whether it shall be exercised at all, and also upon whom it shall be exercised: whereof the great and standing proof is given to us in his having passed by the angels which kept not their first estate, whose sin gives them no claim to that which we of sovereign grace received. There can be no doubt, that the Lord might have left us all to perish in that estate of sin and misery into which we had fallen: otherwise, if there lay any incumbency upon him, it were no more grace, but obligation. If he were not free to pass us by, then was he obliged to take us up; and room for grace there were none.--Grace is not goodness, nor is it harmony, nor is it wisdom, nor any other attribute of God which is exhibited in creation; but it is that power and liberty which remaineth in God after all these have done their work, and seen that work frustrated by sin, to come in the second time, and out of the ruins build a more glorious temple than the first, so framed and fashioned as to reveal hidden treasures of the Godhead which the first could never bring to light. The question, why there should be a ruin at all, we touch not here: we do but say, that a ruin there must be, a fallen and miserable estate of sin, before grace hath any occasion to discover or room to display itself. It is in recovering men from ruin, and saving them from perdition, that the grace of God exerts itself; as his power did exert itself in creating them at first. And grace shews itself in wisdom and in righteousness and in harmony and in holiness and in goodness and in truth, even as creation did: so that I feel obliged to take a somewhat higher

ground, and say, that grace is not an attribute of God, like wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth: but a form of the will of God, whereof all those are but the attributes or characteristics. As the will to create was waited on and carried into effect by all those attendant attributes, so also was the will to save. The act of grace is therefore like the act of creation, and hath its similitude in nothing else. It is another mood, if I may so express it, in the Divine mind; another act in the great mystery of manifesting himself. Grace, therefore, is not mercy, but mercy is to be seen in grace; it is not holiness, but holiness is to be seen in grace; and so of every other attribute of the Godhead. It is a new act of the Divine will, in which all the features of the Divinity will manifest themselves.

And, still a little higher to ascend into the nature of grace, I would observe, that it is not, as it were, the second term of a decreasing, but of an increasing series; not of a descending, but of an ascending ratio: it is not the repairing of a breach, or the reforming of a mistake, or the remedying of a disease; but it is the further opening of the mystery of the Divine Being, and the exalting of the Divine handy-work into a higher region: not to place man where Adam was, but far above what Adam had the idea of; to exalt the nature of man into consubstantial and eternal union with the nature of God, and in humanity to make God for ever manifest, and to lift the sons of men into the nearest link of the chain which hangeth from the throne of God. There is a great over-estimate and exaggeration of the work of creation, by transferring to it the spiritual ideas which we have

obtained from the regeneration, and decking out the primitive estate of the first Adam with honours derived from the essential properties of the second Adam: but to me it is clear and manifest, that the second Adam, which is the child of the regenerating Spirit, is as much superior to the first Adam, which is the child of the creating Spirit, as a quickening spirit is to a living soul, as the spiritual body of the resurrection is to the natural body which we have at present; as the prime place and prerogative of heaven is to the possession of a garden, and the sovereignty of angels of heaven is to the sovereignty of the creatures of the earth. And by how much I believe the issues of the regeneration to be unspeakably more noble than the issues of creation were, by so much do I believe this second act of the will of the Godhead, which ' is revealed in grace, to be more excellent than the former act of creation was. It is a great step forward in the great work of self-manifestation; it is a high advancement in the progress of the stability and blessedness of all things.--So much, in general, may be said concerning the nature and dignity of grace.

And now I proceed to speak in particular of grace as manifested in the redemption of sinful men by Jesus Christ. "The Law was given by Moses; but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." For though it be oft written in the Old Testament, that God is gracious, and full of compassion, and plenteous in mercy, as was proper to a dawning dispensation, preparatory to the full manifestation of the same, there was no open revelation of the manner how, or the means whereby, a sinner could be justified, until Christ came. They were concluded