pains and infirmities were removed, these clogs taken off, you might, with Basil, wish for them again, to prevent worse evils. Are you poor? With that poverty God hath clogged your pride. Are you reproached? With these reproaches God hath clogged your ambition. Corruptions are prevented by your afflictions. And is not all this a most merciful help to holiness of life?

By your afflictions, your corruptions are purified. By these God dries up and consumes that spring of sin that defiles you: "By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this is all the fruit to take away his sin." Isa. 27: 9. God orders your wants to kill your wantonness; and makes your poverty slay your pride. "When they fall.by the sword, and by famine, and by captivity, and by spoil, it is to try them, and to purge them, and to make them white." Dan. 11: 33-35. Others have the same afflictions that you have, but they are not sanctified to them. To you they are as fire for purging, and water for cleansing and yet, shall not your lives be clean? It is true, as one well observes, Christ's blood is the only fountain to wash away sin; but, in the virtue and efficacy of that blood, sanctified afflictions also purify us. A cross without Christ never made any man better, but with Christ, saints are much the better for the cross. Hath God put you so many times into the furnace, and yet is not the dross consumed? The more afflictions you have suffered, the more assistance you have had for this life of holiness.

By all your troubles, God hath been sundering your affections from the world, and drawing out your souls to a more excellent life and state than this. He makes your sorrows in this life give a lustre to the glory of the next. Be sure, he will never give you rest here; and all, that you may long more ardently for that to come. He often makes you groan, "being burdened, earnestly desiring to be clothed with your house from heaven."

2 Cor. 5: 2, 4. And yet will you not be weaned from the lusts, customs, and sins of this world? Oh what manner of persons should you be in heavenly and holy conversation!

You stand upon the higher ground. You have, as it were, the wind and tide with you. None are assisted for this life as you are. Put all this together, and see what this second argument contributes to constrain you to a holy life. Have you received a supernatural principle, fitting you for, and inclining you to holy actions, resisting and holding you back from sin? Hath God also set before you such eminent patterns to encourage and quicken you in your way? Doth the Spirit himself stand ready in so many ways to help you in all difficulties, and hath God hedged up the way of sin with the thorns of affliction to prevent your wandering; and yet will you turn aside? Will you offer violence to your own principles and new nature? refuse to follow such leaders as have beaten the way before you? resist or neglect the gracious assistance of the blessed Spirit, which he offers you in every need; and venture upon sin, though God hath hedged up your way with afflictions? Oh, how can you do such great wickedness, and sin against such grace as this!

III. Another irresistible motive to a godly life appears in THE GREAT AND MANIFOLD USES God will make of the visible holiness and purity of your lives, both in this world and that to come. Among these are,

1. To win souls to Christ, and bring them in love with religion. Practical holiness is lovely, attractive, and constraining. If the heathen could say of moral virtue, that, were it visible to human eyes, all men would adore it, and fall in love with it; how much rather may we so say of true holiness, made visible in the lives of saints! So much of God as appears in men, so much excellency

there is in them to draw men to him. And this is the apostle's argument: "That ye may have fellowship with us." 1 John, 1: 3. Why, what is there in your fellowship to invite men to you? "Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ." Who can but covet the company of them who keep company every day with God? Great is the efficacy of visible holiness upon the hearts of men; either working in fellowship with the word, or working solitarily without the word.

Where God is pleased to afford the word unto men, there the practical holiness of saints is of great use in enforcing it upon their hearts. When the lives of christians speak to the eyes of men, what the Gospel does to their ears; when we so preach, and you so believe and live; when we draw men by our doctrines, and you draw with us by your example; when we "hold forth the word of life" doctrinally, and you hold it forth practically, as Phil. 2: 16; where is the heart that can stand before us? Oh! when the plain and powerful Gospel pierces the ears of men, and at the same time the visible holiness of professors so shines that they must acknowledge that God is in you of a truth; then it will take effect upon the souls of men; then will Christ see of the travail of his soul daily.

Yea, if God deny the word to men, yet this practical holiness may be to them an ordinance for conversion. In this souls may way be won to Christ without the word, as the apostle speaks. 1 Peter, 3: 1. Though pulpits should be silent, and vision fail; yet, if your lives but preach the reality, excellency, and sweetness of Jesus Christ and his ways; if you in this way preach down the love of the world, and let men see what poor vanities these are; and preach up the necessity and beauty of holiness; surely you, even you may be honored to bring many souls to Christ, to "turn many to righteousness," and cause many to bless God, on your behalf, in

the day of visitation. This is the use God hath for the holiness and purity of your lives; and doth not this constrain you? What, not when it may prove the means of eternal life to others? Surely, if you have any bowels of mercy you cannot hide from others that whereby they may be saved. How can you, instead of "holding forth the word of life," (which is your manifest duty,) visibly hold forth the works of death before men? Have you been blessed by the faithfulness of others, and shall none be helped by you towards heaven? Dare you say, let others shift as well as they can, find the way to heaven by themselves as they can, they shall have no benefit by your light? If such be the language of your heart or life, you are christians of a different stamp and spirit from any we find described in Scripture. Should you not rather say as the lepers did, "Do we well to hold our peace," 2 Kings, 7:9, whilst others are perishing? If the lips of ministers are silenced, shall the lives of christians be also silent? Shall poor sinners neither hear any thing from us, nor see any thing from you, that may help them to Christ? The Lord have mercy then upon the poor world, and pity it, for its case is desperate. Oh "put on, as the elect of God, bowels of mercy." Destroy not, by the looseness of your conversation, so many souls; for your scandalous falls are like a bag of poison put into the spring which supplies the whole city with water.

2. Another use God makes of the holy lives of his children is to recover the credit of religion, which, by the apostacies of hypocrites and scandalous falls of careless professors, is wounded and exposed to contempt. Much reproach by this means is brought upon religion, and how shall that reproach be rolled away, but by your strictness and purity? By this the world must be convinced that all are not so. Though some be a blot to the name of Christ, yet others are his glory. The more

others disgrace religion, the more God expects you to honor and adorn it. I remember Chrysostom brings in the persecutors speaking to two renowned martyrs, after this manner, Why are you so nice and scrupulous ? See you not that others of your rank and profession have done these things? To which they returned this noble answer, "For that very reason we will stand out like men, and will never yield to sin." There is a holy impulse in the zeal of a christian, which makes it the more bright in the midst of obstacles, as fire burns most vehemently in the coldest weather. If men make void God's law, therefore will David love his commandments above gold. Psalm 119: 127.

3. God makes your holy living an encouragement to his ministers. And indeed it is of no small use to refresh their hearts, and strengthen their hands in their painful work: "Now we live," saith the apostle, "if ye stand fast in the Lord." 1 Thess. 3: 8. He speaks as if his very life lay at the mercy of the people, because so much of its joy and comfort consisted in their regularity and stedfastness. God knows what a hard duty his poor ministers have, and how many discouragements attend them in their work; hear how one of them expresses it: "Ministers would not be grey-headed so soon, nor die so fast, notwithstanding their great labors, if they were but successful; but this cuts to the heart, and makes us bleed in secret, that though we do much, yet it comes to nothing. Our work dies, therefore we die-not so much that we labor, as that we labor in vain."-Lockyer on Colossians.

Christians, you hear our case, you see our work. Now a little to cheer our spirits in the midst of our hard and killing labors! God sends us to you for a little refreshment, that, by beholding your holy and heavenly conversation, your cheerful obedience, and sweet agreement in the ways of God, we may be comforted in all these troubles. 2 Thess. 1: 3, 4.