your hand; but why will you give Christ the lye, who says, Without me ye can do nothing? And if that be a truth, O how sweet is it to have a heart engaged to him, that has engaged to do all! You may know from your experience, how fad a thing it is to take any part of the engagement upon yourself alone, and on your own head: For it never abides a touch; and when you break your engagement, then you are quite difpirited, as if the covenant of grace were broken; and thus you turn your covenant of duties to God's covenant of grace, and so the covenant of grace to a covenant of works; and in that cafe, no wonder that you find the law a hard and heavy task-master. But the covenant of grace is Chrift's engaging to do all: It is not a bargain that God is making with you, for he will not make a bargain with such as you. God knows you are a bargain-breaker; but it is a bargain made with Chrift, wherein Christ hath engaged to God to do all for you, because you can do nothing: And now he courts your heart to fall in with this device of glorious and free grace.

3dly, Confider who it is that is courting your heart. It is he to whom the heart of God is engaged; Behold my fervant whom I uphold, mine elect in whom my foul delighteth. God's heart was engaged to Chrift from eternity, not only because he was his eternal Son, but also because he engaged his heart to approach to him on your account. God's heart is so much engaged to him for that very reason, that he declares three times, with an audible voice from heaven, This is my beloved in whom I am well pleased; and all that he seeks is that you be well pleased too. And O you are ill to please, if that which pleases God, will not please you; and your

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your heart is ill placed, if it be not engaged to him to whom God's heart is engaged. God the Father put him upon this work, out of good-will to you; he caused him to approach on your account; and he is pleased with his engagement and approach; and nothing in the world will please God so much, nor make him take so much pleasure in you, as your being well pleased with Christ and his undertaking, so as to find your heart engaged to him for it: For then you will please him more than ever your fins displeased him; and you will honour him more than ever your fins dishonoured him: Yea, then he will get full fatisfaction for all your fins; because that glorious engager, whom you close with, hath fully contented his heart; and fo you will fatisfy his justice more than your eternal damnation in hell could do. O the heart of God is engaged to him, and the hearts of angels are engaged to him, and the hearts of all the redeemed are engaged to him: O shall all hearts be engaged to him but yours! O there would be a joy in heaven, and it would be a day of the gladness of Chrift's heart, and it would give a glad heart to God, angels and faints, if your hearts were engaged to Chrift.

4thly, Confider whose heart he is courting: You perhaps think, surely it will be fome very good heart that will please him. Indeed I know none that have a good heart by nature; and you that think you have a good heart to God, do but de ceive yourselves: But O he is even courting the love of that heart that is full of enmity against him ; his love is seeking to break your enmity this day. What fort of a heart have you, my friends? Be what fort of a heart it will, he is seeking it; My Son, give me thy heart. Is it a wicked heart, and a wandring

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wandring heart, an unbelieving heart, a deceitful heart? Is it the heart of a Manasseh in compact with Satan? Is it the heart of a Mary Magdalene, out of whom were cast seven devils? Is it the worst heart in all the world, and the worst heart that ever was in the world, a hard heart, a stout heart, a stony heart, a heart full of hell, and a heart like the devil? It is even the heart that he is seeking and courting this day: He engages to give you a new heart and a new spirit; and if you fign his engagement with your heart, saying, content, Lord; he will make your heart to his mind by degrees, and your heart shall be according to his heart. What, say you, is that poffible, that he is courting such a heart as mine? Would it not be presumption for such an one as me, vile, filthy, black and ugly me, to expect so much good at the hand of such an one as Christ? What, man? when God calls, is it presumption in you to answer his call? No, it is the greatest presumption in the world to fit his call, and refuse his kind embraces, when he offers to take you into his very heart. When Christ offered to wash Peter's feet, O did it not ill become him to say, Lord, thou shalt never wash my feet? John xiii. 8. Be your feet never so foul, and your heart never fo black, you have the more need to let Christ wash you.

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5thly, Confider, that the present opportunity is a special season of letting out your heart upon him, when he is coming so near to you in this work. It is a dangerous thing to miss the tide when it is flowing. Some of your friends and neighbours are in eternity, fince the last communion here; and you may never hear another action-fermon all your life: And tho' you may hear other fermons, yet it

it is but now and then that the wind blows, and that the fpirit breathes; and it is dangerous to refift the motions that would blow you into the happy harbour of Christ's engaged heart: If there be a gale of heaven just now blowing, yet it may be over before an hour be past. O fhall not your heart be engaged unto Christ! What if death approach to you, and cut the thread of your life in two? O you would be more miferable than the devil to all eternity; for he never had fuch an offer as this. Death is approaching, judgment is approaching, eternity is approaching, and yet your heart not approaching to Chrift; wo is me, what will come of you!

6thly, Confider, that Christ hath fulfilled his engagement to the Father for you, by bringing in everlasting righteousness; and God hath accepted it, and is well-pleased with it as the condition of the covenant, and all the promises thereof: And, upon this account, the promise is made to you, as follows immediately upon the text, I will be your God, and ye shall be my people. I WILL, and ye SHALL, is the tenor of the promise; because Christ hath fulfilled the condition of it, so as you have nothing to do, but to say with the heart, Thy will be done. And if your heart be engaged to him, and made willing, the God who commends Christ so highly to you in the words of the text, will turn it over to your commendation, saying, Who is this that engaged, &c. Now, fay not, that you want such and fuch qualifications and conditions requisite in these that give their heart and hand to the Son of God; if your heart stand off from him on this account, it argues a heart in league with the law as a covenant of works, which is but a black bargain

now, for any of the fallen race of Adam; but the better teftament is a better bargain, where Chrift hath engaged for all fully, and you are only to take all freely; and never a good qualification will you have acceptable to God, till your heart be engaged to him whose heart was engaged to give all. If your heart be not thus engaged to Christ, to bę obliged and indebted to him for all, then, tho you had a thousand times more qualifications than you would be at, yet you shall go to hell with them, and perish eternally: And if your heart be once engaged to Chrift, then, tho' you had ten thoufand good qualifications, you will count them all but dung for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ, as Paul did. It is said of the creditor, concerning his two debtors, Luke vii. 42. When they had nothing to pay, be frankly forgave them all. So long as you think you have something to pay your own debt, or hope that you shall have something to make payment with, you are not in God's way of forgiveness; but when you have nothing to pay, not a penny in your purse, either to pay your debt of obedience and fatisfaction to the law as a covenant, or your debt of duty to the law as a rule, and are content to take a cautioner, then he frankly forgives all. And so the best qualification is for you to fee that you have nothing, no money nor moneyworth, that you may be obliged to Christ for all.

What say you, Man? Is your heart engaged to him? I think so, may some say; but it may be only a flash, because I have a deceitful heart. Why, Man, be your heart never so deceitful, yet if there be such a heart-warming in your breast, as makes you subscribe to his engagement to do all for you, and to make you holy as well as happy, and to free Bb 4

you