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observations. Oh then, what manner of persons ought you to be, who bear the worthy name of Christ!

But more than this, you have obliged yourself to this life of holiness by your own prayers. How many times have you lifted up your hands to heaven, and cried with David, "O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes! Order my steps in thy word: and let not any iniquity have dominion over me." Psa. 119:5, 133. Were you in carnest with God when you thus prayed? Did you mean as you said? If your heart and tongue agreed in this request, doubtless it is as much your duty to endeavor to practise, as to desire to possess those graces of the Spirit. And more, all these prayers stand on rccord before the Lord, and will be produced against you as witnesses to condemn you for your hypocrisy and vanity. How often, also, have you in your prayers lamented and bewailed the sins of your life! You have said with Ezra, "O my God, I am ashamed, and even blush to look up unto thee." Chap. 9:6. And do not your confessions oblige you to greater circumspection and care for time to come? Will you confess and sin; and sin and confess? go to God and bewail your faults, and then return again to the commission of them? God forbid you should thus dissemble with God, trifle with sin, and add iniquity to iniquity.

You have also often reproved or censured others for their falls, which adds to your own obligation to walk circumspectly. Have you not often reproved your erring brethren; or at least privately censured them, (for these left-handed blows of secret censure are more common than the fair and open strokes of just and due reproof;) and will you practise the same things for which you criminate and censure others? "Thou that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?" Rom. 2:21. Will your rebukes ever do good to others, whilst you allow in yourself what you condemn in them? By these very

reproofs you are self-condemned; and out of your own mouth God will judge you. Your censures and reproofs of others will leave you without plea or apology, if you guard not carefully your own life. And will you be careless still? Fear you not the displeasure of God, nor the wounding and disquieting of your own conscience? Surely these things are of no light value with you, if you be a christian indeed.

3. You are further bound to a life of practical holiness on account of your brethren. If, through the neglect of your hearts, your lives be defiled and polluted, many innocent and upright ones will be reproached and grieved by it. This mischievous effect holy David ear. nestly deprecated: "O God, thou knowest my foolishness, and my sins are not hid from thee. Let not them that wait on thee, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed for my sake: let not those that seek thee, be confounded for my sake, O God of Israel." Ps. 69:5, 6. As if he had said, Lord, thou knowest what a weak and foolish creature I am, and how liable to fall, if left to myself; and should I, through my foolishness, act unbecoming a saint, how would this reproach and sadden the hearts of thy people! They will be as men confounded at the report of my fall. The fall of one christian is a reproach to all the rest. Thy loose and careless life will cause them to estrange themselves from thee, as being ashamed to own thee; and canst thou bear that? will it not grieve and pierce your very heart to see a cloud of strangeness and trouble over the countenances of your brethren; to see yourself disowned and lightly esteemed by them?

This very consideration struck Ustazanes, a great favorite in the Persian court. Through fear, he had denied the christian faith, and complied with the idolatrous worship of the king. One day sitting at the courtgate, he saw Simon, the aged archbishop of Seleucia,

drawn along to prison for his constancy in the christian faith, and felt such veneration for his character, that he instantly rose and expressed his reverence to this holy man. But the godly man frowned upon him, and turned away his face, as thinking such an apostate unworthy of the least respect from him. This struck Ustazanes to the heart, and drew from him many tears and groans; and thus he reasoned with himself: Simon will not own me, and will God, when I appear before his tribunal? Simon will not speak to me, will not so much as look upon me, and can I expect a good word or look from Jesus Christ, whom I have so shamefully betrayed and denied? Hereupon he threw off his courtly robes and put on mourning apparel, professed himself a christian, and died a martyr. Oh it is a piercing thing to an honest heart, to be cast out of the favor of God's people. If you dishonor your profession, neither God nor his people will look kindly upon you.

4. Your very enemies should engage you to this pure and holy life, both as they are your bold censurers and your watchful observers. They censure you as hypocrites, and will you give them ground for such a charge? They say, your tongues only are more holy than other men's; and shall they prove it from your practice? They also observe you diligently, and are highly gratified by your falls. If your lives be loose and defiled, you will not only be a shame to your friends, but the song of your enemies. You will gratify all the enemies of God. For this they are watching. And they triumph in your falls, not only from the deep-rooted enmity between the friends and enemies of Christ, but because all your errors are as so many absolutions to their consciences, and justifications (as they think) of their ways and practices. For, as your strictness and holiness condemn them, as Noah, by his godly life, condemned the world, Heb. 11:7; so when you fall, you, as it were, absolve their consciences,

and loose the bonds of conviction you had made fast upon them. Oh, say they, whatever these men talk, we see they are no better than we. They can do as we do. They can deceive and cheat for advantage. They can comply with any thing for their own ends: it is not conscience, as we once thought, but mere humor, that made them so precise. And Oh! what a sad thing is this! Hereby you shed soul-blood. You fasten the bonds of death upon their souls. You kill those convictions, which, for any thing you know, might have ended in their conversion. When you fall, you may rise again; but they may fall at your example, and never rise more, never have a good opinion of the ways of God or of his people any more. Upon this consideration, David begs of God, "Lead me, O Lord, in thy righteousness, because of mine enemies," (or observers,) "make thy way straight before my face." Psalm 5: 8. Thus you see how your very enemies should influence you to a holy life.

Now what think you of all this? Are you not obliged to this purity of life? Are all these bonds such that you can free yourselves from them at pleasure? If all these things are of no force with you, may it not be questioned, notwithstanding your profession, whether any spiritual principle, any fear of God, or love to Christ, be in your soul?

II. Consider, as you are more obliged than others to keep the issues of life pure, so God hath given you GREATER ASSISTANCES AND ADVANTAGES for it than others have. God hath not been wanting in helps and means. Even the heathen, who are without the Gospel, will be speechless and inexcusable before God; how much more will you be if your life be still unholy, who, besides the light of nature and the general light of the Gospel, have such a principle put within you, such patterns set

before you, such an assistant ready to help you; so many rods to quicken you and prevent your wandering.

1. Shall men of such principles walk as others do? Shall we lament for you, as David once did for Saul, saying, "There the shield of the mighty was vilely cast away, the shield of Saul; as though he had not been anointed with oil:" There the honor of a christian was vilely cast away, as though he had not been anointed with the Spirit? "You have received an unction from the Holy One," which teacheth you all things, 1 John, 2: 20; an illumination far above that which is in other men. 1 Cor. 2: 12. "Ye are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works." Eph. 2: 10. This holy spirit, or principle, enkindled in the soul, has such a tendency to this holy life, that if you live not purely and strictly, you must offer violence to your own principles and new nature.

This principle affords you a twofold help to a life of holiness. It restrains from sin, as in Joseph; TT How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?" And it also inclines you powerfully to obedience. It is a curb to sin, and a spur to holiness. It is impossible for others to live spiritually and heavenly, because they have no new nature to incline them thereto. And, methinks, it should be hard for you to live carnally and sensually, and therein cross the very bent and tendency of the new creation which is formed in you. How can

you neglect prayer, as others do, whilst the Spirit, by divine pulsations, is awaking and rousing up your sluggish hearts with such inward motions and whispers as Psalm 27: 8, "Seek ye my face;" yea, whilst you feel (during your omissions of duty) something within that bemoans itself, and, as it were, cries for food, and will not let you be quiet till it be relieved? How can you give your hearts to the world, as other men do, when all the while your spirit is restless, and aches like a bone

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