would play the orator; no, but I came, if God should be
pleased, to touch your hearts. What shall I say to you ?
Open the door of your heart, that the King of glory, the
blessed Jesus, may come in and erect His kingdom in your
soul. Make room for Christ ; the Lord Jesus desires to sup
with you to-night ; Christ is willing to come into any of your
hearts, that will be pleased to open and receive Him. Are
there any of you made willing Lydias ? There are many
women here, but how many Lydias are there here ? Does
power go with the word to open your heart ? and find you a
sweet melting in your soul ? Are you willing ? Then Christ
Jesus is willing to come to you. But you may say, Will
Christ come to my wicked, polluted heart ? Yes, though you
have many devils in your heart, Christ will come and erect
His throne there ; though the devils be in your heart, the
Lord Jesus will scourge out a legion of devils, and His throne
shall be exalted in thy soul. Sinners, be ye what you will,
come to Christ, you shall have righteousness and peace. If
you have no peace, come to Christ, and He will give you
peace. When you come to Christ, you will feel such joy that
it is impossible for you to tell. O, may God pity you all. I
hope this will be a night of salvation to some of your souls.
My dear friends, I would preach with all my heart till mid-
night, to do you good, till I could preach no more. Oh, that
APPENDIX. 413
this body might hold out to speak more for my dear Redeemer !
Had I a thousand lives, had I a thousand tongues, they should
be employed in inviting sinners to come to Jesus Christ!
Come, then, let me prevail with some of you to come along
with me. Come, poor, lost, undone sinner, come just as you
are to Christ, and say, If I be damned, I will perish at the feet
of Jesus Christ, where never one perished yet. He will receive
you with open arms ; the dear Redeemer is willing to receive
you all. Fly, then, for your lives. The devil is in you while
unconverted ; and will you go with the devil in your heart to
bed this night ? God Almighty knows if ever you and I shall
see one another again. In one or two days more I must go,
and, perhaps, I may never see you again till I meet you at the
judgment-day. O, my dear friends, think of that solemn meet-
ing; think of that important hour, when the heavens shall pass
away with a great noise, when the elements shall melt with
fervent heat, when the sea and the grave shall be giving up
their dead, and all shall be summoned to appear before the
great God. What will you do then, if the kingdom of God is
not erected in your hearts ? You must go to the devil — like
must go to like — if you are not converted Christ hath asserted
it in the strongest manner : " Verily, verily, I say unto you,
Except a man be born again, he cannot enter into the kingdom
of God." Who can dwell with devouring fire ? Who can
dwell with everlasting burnings ? O, my heart is melting with
love to you. Surely God intends to do good to your poor
souls. Will no one be persuaded to accept of Christ ? If
those who are settled Pharisees will not come, I desire to
speak to you who are drunkards, Sabbath-breakers, cursers
and swearers — will you come to Christ ? I know that many
of you come here out of curiosity ; though you come only
to see the congregation, yet if you come to Jesus Christ,
414 APPENDIX.
Christ will accept of you. Are there any cursing, swearing
soldiers here ? Will you come to Jesus Christ, and list your-
selves under the banner of the dear Redeemer ? You are all
welcome to Christ. Are there any little boys or little girls
here ? Come to Christ, and He will erect His kingdom in
you. There are many little children whom God is working
on, both at home and abroad. O, if some of the little lambs
would come to Christ, they shall have peace and joy in the
day that the Redeemer shall set up His kingdom in their
hearts. Parents tell them that Jesus Christ will take them in
His arms, that He will dandle them on His knees. All of
you, old and young, you that are old and gray-headed, come
to Jesus Christ, and you shall be kings and priests to your
God. The Lord will abundantly pardon you at the eleventh
hour. "Ho, every one of you that thirsteth." If there be
any of you ambitious of honor, do you want a crown, a scep-
ter ? Come to Christ, and the Lord Jesus Christ will give you
a kingdom that no man shall take from you.
GOD, A BELIEVER'S GLORY.
"And thy God thy Glory." — Isaiah lx. 19.
LATELY had occasion to speak on the verse
immediately following that of our text ; but
when I am reading God's word, I often find it is
like being in a tempted garden ; when we pluck a
little fruit, and find it good, we are apt to look
after and pluck a little more, only with this dif-
' V ference — the fruit we gather below often hurts the
body at the same time that it pleases the appetite ;
but when we walk in God's garden — when we gather fruit of
the Redeemer's plants, the more we eat the more we are de-
lighted, and the freer we are, the more welcome : if any chap-
ter in the Bible deserves this character and description of an
evangelical Eden, this does.
It is very remarkable, and I have often told you of it, that
all the apostles preach first the law, and then the gospel, which
finds man in a state of death, points out to him how he is to
get life, and then sweetly conducts him to it. Great and glori-
ous things are spoken of the church of God in this chapter ;
and it struck me very much this evening, ever since I came
into the pulpit, that the great God speaks of the church in a
singular number. How can that be, when the church is com-
posed of so many millions, gathered out of all nations, lan-
guages, and tongues ? How is it that God says, thy Maker,
and not your Maker ; that He speaks of the church as though
it consisted of only one individual person ? The reason of it
(415)
416 Appendix.
is this, and is very obvious, that though the church is com-
posed of many members, they have but one head, and they
are united by the bond of one spirit, by whom they have
the same vital union of the soul with God; and therefore it
teaches Christians not to say of one another, / am of Paul,
I am of Apollos, or Cephas, but to behave and live so, that the
world may know that we all belong to one common Christ.
God revive, continue, and increase this true Christian love
among us ! Of this church, thus collectively considered,
united under one head, the blessed evangelical prophet thus
speaks : " Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, wast-
ing nor destruction within thy borders, but thou shalt call thy
walls salvation, and thy gates, (where the magistrates assemble,
and the people go in and out,) praise." From this text a great
many good and great men have gathered what they call the
millennium, that Jesus Christ is to come and reign a thousand
years on earth ; but I must acknowledge that I have always
rejected a great many good men's positive opinion about the
season when this state commences, and I would warn you all
against fixing any time; for what signifies whether Christ
comes to reign a thousand years, or when He comes, since you
and I are to die very soon ; and therefore instead of puzzling
our heads about it, God grant we may so live that we may
reign with Him for ever ; and it seems to me, that whatsoever
is said of this state on earth, that the millenium is to be under-
stood in a spiritual sense, as an emblem of a glorious, eternal,
beatific state in the kingdom of heaven. "The sun shall no
more be thy light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon
give light unto thee, but the Lord shall be unto thee an ever-
lasting light ;" and in order to prepare us for that light, and
show us the nature of it, while we speak of it may it come
with light and power to our souls. He adds in our text, and
APPENDIX. 417
thy God shall be thy glory. This is spoken to all believers in
general, but it is spoken to all fearful believers in particular ;
and I do not know that I can possibly close my poor feeble
ministrations among you here, better than with these words ;
though, God willing, I intend, if He shall strengthen me this
week, to give you a parting word next Wednesday morning ;
and O, that what has been my comfort this day in the medita-
tion on this passage, may be yours and mine to all eternity !
He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear what the evangelic
prophet saith, Thy God tliy glory.
The Holy Ghost seems, as it were, particularly fond of this
expression : when God published the ten commandments upon
Mount Sinai, he prefaced it thus, / am the Lord, and not con-
tent with that, he adds, thy God : and the frequency of it, I
suppose, made Luther say, that the gospel deals much in pro-
nouns, in which consists a believer's comfort ; but if there were
no other argument than this, it would cut up that destructive
principle by the very root, which pretends to tell us that there
is no such thing as appropriation in the Bible ; that our faith
is only to be a rational assent to the Word of God, without a
particular application of that Word made to our souls : this is
as contrary to the gospel, and to the experience of every real
saint, as light is contrary to darkness, and heaven to hell.
My brethren, I appeal to any of you, what good would it do
you, if you had ten thousand notes wrote in large characters
by the finest hand that can write in London ; suppose you
have them, as many men have , and as it is a very convenient
way ; that they were put into your pockets, made on the inside
of your coat ; suppose you should say, my coat is buttoned, I
have all these here next my heart : when I come to look at
them, I find there is not one note payable to me ; they are all
forged, or payable to somebody else, and therefore are good
27
41 8 APPENDIX.
for nothing to me. All the promises of the gospel, all that
is said of God and Christ, is ours. The great question there-
fore is, whether the God we profess to believe in is our God :
not only whether He is so in general — that the devils may say;
but whether He is our God in particular. The devils can say,
O God ; but the devils cannot say, my God : that is .a privilege
peculiar to God's chosen people, who really believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ : and therefore, my brethren, a deist cannot
say my God, my Christ, because he does not believe on that
medium by which God becomes our God. That was a noble
saying of Luther, / will have nothing to do with an absolute
God ; that is, I will have nothing to do with a God out of
Christ. Now this is a deist's glory. Lord Bolingbroke values
himself upon it ; I am astonished at that man's infidelity and
cowardice. I do not like those men that leave their writings
to be published after their death : I love to see men bold in
their writings : I like an honest man that will put out his
writings while alive, that he may see what men can say against
him, and then answer them ; but it is mere cowardice to leave
it to the world to answer for it, to set us a caviling after they
are in the grave : says he, I will have nothing to do with the
God of Moses ; and I suppose the principles of that deist
made one pretty near to him ask, as soon as the breath was
out of his body, Where do you think he is gone ? Another
replies, Where do you think, but to hell ? God grant that
may not be the portion of any here !
The question then is, how God is our God; thy God. My
brethren, our all depends upon it ; what signifies saying, this
is mine, and that is mine, if you cannot say, God is mine.
The best thing that God has left in the New Testament, is
Himself; "I will be their God," that is one of the legacies;
and " a new heart also will I give them," that is another ; " I
APPENDIX. 419
will put My laws in their mind, and write them in their hearts,"
that is another : but all that is good for nothing, comparatively
speaking, unless God has said at the same time, for they are all
inseparable, " I will be their God and they shall be My people."
Now how shall I know that God is my God ? I am afraid,
some people think there is no knowing : well then, if you
think so, you set up a worship, and go and erect an altar, and
instead of receiving God in the sacrament as yours, go and
worship an unknown God. I am so far from believing that
we cannot know that God is ours, that I am fully persuaded of
it, and would speak it with humility, and I would not choose
to leave you with a lie in my mouth, that I have known it for
about thirty-five years, as clear as the sun is in the meridian,
that God is my God. And how shall I know it, my brethren ?
I would ask you this question, didst thou ever feel the want
of God to be thy God ? Nobody knows God to be their God
that did not feel Him to be his God in Christ : out of Christ,
God is a consuming fire. I know there are a great variety of
ways in people's conversions, but still, my brethren, we must all
feel our misery, we must all feel our distance from God, all feel
that we are estranged from God, that we bring into the world
with us a nature that is not agreeable to the law of God, nor
possibly can be ; we cannot be said to believe that God is our
God, till we are brought to be reconciled to Him through His
Son. Can I say a person is my friend, till I am reconciled to
Him ? And therefore the gospel only is the ministration of
reconciliation. Paul says, "We beseech you as ambassadors
of Christ, that you would be reconciled unto God ;" this is to
be the grand topic of our preaching ; we are to beseech them,
and God Himself turns beggar to His own creatures to be re-
conciled to Him : now this reconciliation is brought about by
a poor sinner's being brought to Jesus Christ ; and when once
420 APPENDIX.
he sees his enmity and hatred to God, feeling the misery of
departing from Him, and being conscious that he is obnoxious
to eternal wrath, flies to Jesus as to a place of refuge, and ex-
pects only a reconciliation through the blood of the Lamb ;
without this, neither you nor I can say, God is my God :
"there is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked." The min-
isters of Christ must take care they do not preach an unknown
God, and we must take care we do not pretend to live upon
an unknown God, a God that is not appropriated and brought
home to our souls by the efficacy of the Spirit. But, my
brethren, we cannot say, God is our God, unless we are in
Jesus Christ. Can you say, such a one is your father, unless
you can give proof of it ? You may be bastards ; there are
many bastards laid at Christ's door. Now, God cannot be
my God, at least I cannot know Him to be so, unless He is
pleased to send into my heart the spirit of adoption, and to
admit me to enjoy familiarity with Christ.
My brethren, I told you the other night that the grand
controversy God has with England, is for the slight put on
the Holy Ghost. As soon as a person begins to talk of the
work of the Holy Ghost, they cry, You are a Methodist ; as
soon as you speak about the divine influences of the Holy
Ghost, O! say they, you are an enthusiast. May the Lord
keep these methodistical enthusiasts amongst us to the latest
posterity. Ignatius, supposed to have been one of the chil-
dren that Jesus took up in His arms, in his first epistle, (pray
read it,) wrote soon after St. John's death, and we value noth-
ing- so authentic as what was wrote in the three first centuries,
bears a noble testimony of this truth. When I was perform-
ing my first exercises at Oxford, I used to take delight to
walk and read it, and could not help noting and putting down
from time to time several remarkable passages. In the super-
APPENDIX- 42 1
scription of all his epistles, I remember, he styles himself
Thcophoros, i. e., Bearer of God,* and believed that those he
wrote to, were so too. Somebody went and told Trajan, that
one Ignatius was an enthusiast, that he carried God about
him : being brought before the emperor, who, though in other
respects a good prince, was a cruel enemy to the Christians ;
but many a good prince does" bad things by the influence of
wicked counsellors, like our king Henry V., who was brought
in to persecute the poor Lollards, for assembling in St. Giles'
fields to hear the pure gospel, by false accusation of being
rebels against him. Before such a prince was Ignatius
brought: says Trajan, Who is this that calls himself a bearer
of God ? Says Ignatius, I am he ; for which he quotes this
passage, / will dwell in them, and will walk in them, and they
shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty. The
emperor was so enraged, that, in order to cure him of his en-
thusiasm, he ordered him to be devoured by lions ; at which
Ignatius laughed for joy. O ! says he, am I going to be de-
voured ? And when his friends came about him, he almost
danced for gladness ; when they carried him to execution, he
smiled, and turning about said, now I begin to be a martyr of
Jesus Christ! I have heard that the lions have leaped from
the martyrs, but when they come to me, I will encourage
them to fall on me with all their violence. God give you such
enthusiasm in a trying hour! This is to have God for our
God; "he that believeth hath the witness in himself," as it is
written in this blessed word of God, and I hope it will be
the last book that I shall read. Farewell father, farewell
mother, farewell sun, moon, and stars ! was the language of
one of the Scotch martyrs in King Charles' time, and it is
amazing to me that even Mr. Hume (I believe) a professed
* Deum ferens ; inspired, divine, holy.
422 APPENDIX.
deist, in his history of England, mentions this as a grand exit,
and also that seraphic soul Mr. Hervey, now with God, that
the last words of the martyr were, Farewell thou precious
Bible, thou blessed book of God. This is my rock, this is
my foundation ; it is now about thirty-five years since I began
to read the Bible upon my pillow. I love to read this book,
but the book is nothing but an account of the promises which
it contains, and almost every word from the beginning to the
end of it, speaks of a spiritual dispensation, and the Holy
Ghost, that unites our souls to God, and helps a believer to
say my Lord and my God ! If you content yourselves with
that, the devil will let you talk of doctrines enough. O you
shall turn from Arminianism to Calvinism. O you shall be
orthodox enough, if you will be content to live without
Christ's living in you. Now when you have the Spirit, then
you may say, God is mine. O this is very fine, say some,
every body pretends to the Spirit ; and then you may go on as
a bishop once told a nobleman — My lord, these Methodists say
they do all by the Spirit, so if the devil bids them murder any
body, they will say the Spirit bid them do it ; and that very
bishop died, how? Why horrid ! the last words he spoke were
these, The battle is fought, the battle is fought, the battle is
fought, but the victory is lost for ever. God grant you and I
may not die with such words as these. I hope you and I shall
die, and say, The battle is fought, the battle is fought, the battle is
fought, I have fought the good fight, and the victory is gained
for ever. Thus died Mr. Ralph Erskine — his last words were,
Victory, victory, victory! and they that can call God their
God, shall by and by cry, victory, victory ! and that for ever.
God grant that we may all be of that happy number.
If we can call God our God, we shall endeavor by the
Holy Ghost to be like God, we shall have His divine image
APPENDIX. 423
stamped upon our souls, and endeavor to be followers of that
God who is our Father : and this brings in the other part of
the text, thy God thy glory. What is that ? The greatest
honor that a poor believer thinks he can have on earth, is to
boast that God is his God. When it was proposed to David,
that if he killed an hundred Philistines, he should have the
king's daughter for his wife, and a very sorry wife she was,
no great gain turned out to him : says he, " Do you think it is
a small thing to be the son-in-law to a king ?" A poor strip-
ling as I am here, come with my shepherd's crook ; what ! to
be married to a king's daughter ; do you think that a small
thing ? And if David thought it no small thing to be allied
to a king by his daughter, what a great thing must it be to be
allied to the Lord by one Spirit ? I am afraid there are some
people that were once poor that are now rich, that think it a
great thing, that wish, O that my family had' a coat of arms ;
some people would give a thousand pounds, I believe, for one.
Coats of arms are very proper to make distinction in life ; a
'great many people wear coats of arms that their ancestors
obtained honorably, but they are a disgrace to them as they
wear them on their coaches. But this is our glory, whether
we walk or ride, whatever our pedigree may be in life, this is
our honor, that our God may be our glory. " O what manner
of love is this," saith one, "that the Lord doth bestow on us,
that we should be called the sons of God !" born not of the
will of man, born not of flesh, but born from above. O God
grant that this may be your glory and mine !
My brethren, if God is our God and our glory, I will tell
you what we shall prove it by; whether we eat or drink, or
whatever we do, we should do all to the glory of God. Re-
ligion, as I have often told you, turns our whole life into one
continued sacrifice of love to God. As a needle, when once
424 APPENDIX.
touched by a loadstone, turns to a particular pole, so the
heart that is touched by the love of God, turns to his God
again. I shall have occasion to take notice of it by and by.
when I am aboard a ship : for as soon as I get on board I
generally place myself in one particular place under the com-
pass that hangs over my head ; I often look at it by night and
by day ; when I rise, the needle turns to one point, when I go
to bed, I find it turns to the same point : and often while I
have been looking at it, my heart has been turned to God,
saying, Lord Jesus, as that needle touched by the loadstone,
turns to one point, O may my heart, touched by the magnet
of God's love, turn to Him ! A great many people think,
they never worship God but when at church ; and a great
many are very demure on Lord's days, though many begin to
leave that off. I know of no place upon the face of the earth
where the Sabbath is kept as it is in Boston ; if a single per-
son was to walk in Boston streets in time of worship, he
would be taken up ; it is not trusted to poor insignificant
men, but the justices go out in time of worship, they walk
with a white wand, and if they catch any person walking in
the streets, they put them under a black rod. O ! the great
mischiefs the poor pious people have suffered lately through
the town's being disturbed by the soldiers! When the drums
were beating before the house of Dr. Sawell, one of the holiest
men that ever was, when he was sick and dying, on the Sab-
bath day, by his meeting, where the noise of a single person
was never heard before, and he begged that for Christ's sake
they would not beat the drum ; they damned and said, that
they would beat to make him worse ; this is not acting for the
glory of God ; but when a soul is turned to God, every day is
a Sabbath, every meal is a spiritual refreshment, and every
sentence he speaks, should be a sermon ; and whether he
APPENDIX. 425
stays abroad or at home, whether he is on the exchange, or
locked up in a closet, he can say, O God, Thou art my God !
Now, my dear friends, can you, dare you say, that your
God is your glory, and do you aim at glorifying the Lord
your God : if your God is your glory, then say, " O God forbid
that I should glory, save in the cross, of our Lord Jesus Christ,
by whom the world is crucified to me, and I am crucified to
the world." What say you to that now? Do not talk of
God's being your glory, if you do not love His cross. If God
is our glory, we shall glory not only in doing, but in suffering
for Him ; we shall glory in tribulation, and count ourselves
most highly honored when we are called to suffer most for
His great name's sake. I might enlarge, but you may easily
judge by my poor feeble voice this last week, that neither my
strength of voice, or body, will permit me to be long to-night,
and yet I will venture to give you your last parting salutation;
and though I have been dissuaded from getting up to preach
this night, yet I thought as my God was my glory, I should
glory in preaching till I died. O that God may be all our