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eousness for thee. Here is my good will. Behold, my substance is thy stock; mine interest is for thy service: I lay all at thy feet. There thou hast them; they are thine. My children I enter as thy servants; my possessions I resign as thy right. I will call nothing mine but thee. All are thine. I can say, "My Lord and my God," and that is enough; I thankfully quit my claim to all things else. I will no more say,

My house is mine," or "My estate is mine;" I myself am not mine own: Yet it is infinitely better for me to be thine, than if I were mine own. This is my happiness, that I can say, "My own God, my own Father." And O what a blessed exchange hast thou made with me!to give me thyself, who art an infinite sum, for myself, who am but an insignificant cipher!

And now, Lord, do thou accept and own my claim. I am not worthy of any thing of thine, much less of thee. But since I have a deed to show, I bring thy word in my hand, and am bold to take possession. Dost thou not know this hand? Wilt thou not own this name? Wilt thou not confirm thine own grant? It were infidelity to doubt it. I will not disparage the faithfulness of my Lord, nor be afraid to aver, and stand to what he hath said and sworn. Hast thou said, thou art my God; and shall I fear thou art mine enemy? Hast thou told me, thou art my Father and shall I stand aloof, as if I were a stranger? will believe. Lord, silence my fears; and as thou hast given me the claim and title of a child, so

give me the confidence of a child. Let my heart be daily kept alive by thy promises, and with this staff let me pass over Jordan. May these be my undivided companions and comforters; when I go, let them lead me; when I sleep, let them keep me; when awake, let them talk with me. And do thou keep these things for ever upon the imaginations of the thoughts of the hearts of thy people, and prepare their hearts unto thee. And let the heart of thy servant be the ark of thy testament; wherein the sacred records of what hath passed between thee and my soul, may for ever be preserved. Amen.

CHAP. V.

A Treasure of Gospel Promises, left in Legacy by Jesus Christ; for the strength ard encouragement of believers in their journey to the heavenly Canaan.

TO THE READER.

MAN, who at the beginning was created happy, having now lost God and his image, is, of all earthly creatures, become most miserable; no less than a slave of the devil, a child of wrath, and an heir of eternal damnation. This is not the estate of a few only, but of all mankind out

a Gen. i. 26. Eph. ii. 10. b Eph. ii. 2, 3.

of Christ, for we are all by nature under the curse.a The best, before their conversion, were, by nature, children of wrath, even as others; b for all fell equally in Adam. Hence it comes to pass, that no man, by nature, is now in better esteem with God than another. Cain and Abel, as children of the first Adam only, were equally miserable; the like may be said of us all; for both Jews and Gentiles are come under sin : and, as the Psalmist saith, "We are all gone out of the way, we are altogether become filthy; there is none righteous, no not one." O that men and women had their eyes enlightened, and their judgments convinced of that woful plight in which naturally they are! Oh, were their hearts thoroughly loaden herewith!* surely they would not long content themselves therein.

The truth is, most in the world are spiritually blind, and cannot discern their own misery; and spiritually dead too,e and cannot be affected with it. The Holy Ghost saith thus of them, "They walk in the vanity of their mind, having their understanding darkened; and are strangers from the life of God, through the ignorance which is in them, because of the hardness of their hearts: who, being past feeling, have given themselves unto wantonness, to work all uncleanness with

a 2 Cor. iv. 4. Rom. v. 19. Gal. iii. 10. Rom. v. 12. c Rom. iii. 9. d Psalm xiv, 3. 19. Eph. ii. 1, 5.

* Made sensible of their true condition,

b Eph. ii. 3.

e 1 John v.

greediness." Such as these, are so far from having any right to God's promises, that for the present they are under the curse; and consequently in the dint* of all the plagues and threatenings in God's book."

Wherefore, let not such, as yet, challenge any comfort from the promises; but let them rather labor, to the utmost of their power, in using all good means to be made capable and fit subjects for mercy revealed in the promises. Is it not a

pity so many sweet promises of life should be made, and yet thou die and be damned notwithstanding? Pray fervently to God, that he would touch thy heart with grief for all thy sins, and work in thee a clear apprehension of thine own unworthiness; and that he would bestow faith on thee; that by it thou maycst be able to go wholly out of thyself to God, through Jesus Christ, for salvation.

We having departed from him who is the God of all grace and consolation, are fallen into an estate of all baseness, desolation and misery; and cannot be recovered again into the former estate of spiritual life and happiness, unless we be brought again to him who is the foundation of life and happiness, even the living God. And brought to him we can never be, but by faith,1

a Eph. iv. 18, 19. b Deut. xxviii. 27, 56, 63. c Acts ii. 37. Luke xv. 19. d Heb. xi. 6.

* In the dist, under the power or stroke

which is nothing else but the going out of the soul to God, through Christ, to fetch a new principle of spiritual life and grace; which once in Adam we lost, and now need. The which work of faith is not wrought but by the promises ;* and being wrought in our hearts, gives us a most sure right and interest unto all the promises of grace. Thus we, through faith and patience, are said "to inherit the promises;" therefore we are called "The heirs of the promise:" the promises are as well ours who truly believe, as heaven itself is. Now by these heavenly promises, God our Father hath engaged himself as a debtor to us, his poor children, for all things needful to life and godliness; until that blessed time comes,

a Rom. x. 8, 17. Heb. vi. 12, 17. b 2 Pet. i. 3.

"A promise, in the Scriptural sense of the term, is a declaration or assurance of the divine will, in which God signifies what particular blessings or good things he will freely bestow, as well as the evils which he will remove. The promises therefore differ from the threatenings of God, inasmuch as the former are declarations concerning good, while the latter are denunciations of evil only-at the same time it is to be observed, that promises seem to include threats, because, being in their very nature conditional, they imply the bestowment of the blessing promised, only on the condition being performed, which blessing is tacitly threatened to be withheld on non-compliance with such condition. Further, promises differ from the zommands of God, because the latter are significations of the divine will concerning a duty enjoined to be performed, while promises relate to mercy to be received."-See Horne's Introduction to the Critical study of the Bible.

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