they will have the delightful society of angels and archangels; and there they will behold the face of their Redeemer in righteousness, and will have this assurance to add to the pleasure of their state, that their happiness will never cease, and their joys will never end. APPLICATION. When we, who enjoy the light of revelation, reflect on the imperfect notions, which the most refined among the Pagans had of the most momentous points; such as the unity of God, the corruption of man, the way to be reconciled to an offended Creator, the nature of virtue, and a future state, things in which all mankind are equally concerned, we should reckon it a great privilege that we are not left to the dim light of nature, but have a more sure guide afforded us than bare reason, in religious matters. When we look into the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans, we find that they have left us as complete models of history, as beautiful pieces of poetry, and as fine specimens of oratory, as any which have been composed by moderns, who yet enjoy the advantage of having them to copy after: nay, it may be said,* that, as to works of genius, the writers of a later date, have very seldom equalled, and never have exceeded the ancients, only in things composed in a sacred strain, they have vastly outdone them in true sublimity. The reason of remarking this is, that none may go away with a conceit that the ancients had less sense and reason than the moderns. In things which depend merely on intellectual abilities, they shewed themselves such great masters, I do not know any modern history that can compare with those written by Thucydides, Dionysius, Sallust, and Livy. As to the higher sort of poetry, we have some pieces in the Didascalic kind, wrote by Fracastorious, Vida, Angelius Bargeus, Palearius, D. Heinsius, which exceed much any thing left of the ancients, except Virgil's Georgics: In the epic kind, we have nothing comparable to Homer and Virgil, which is without a mixture of the Christian religion; by the help of this, Vida in his Christias, Mr. Spencer and Mr. Phineas Fletcher, in their allegorical writings, and, above all, Mr. Milton in his paradise Lost, have exceeded all the Pagan writers in true sublimity. In the more raised parts of oratory, Demosthenes and Cicero have never been equalled by any moderns, except by the christian preachers, whose plainness has something in it more grand than all their flourishes. that it is justly reputed the greatest perfection, in a piece wrote now, to come any ways up to them. However, these great masters of reason, these wonderful proficients in polite attainments, run into the most childish absurdities, when the meddled with the important matters of religion, which yet are of universal concern. As this shews how unfit reason, as it is now in men, is to be a guide in sacred matters, so we should take occasion, from hence, to be very thankful that we enjoy the light of the Gospel. When a celestial herald was sent to proclaim to some shepherds, near Bethlehem, the birth of the Lord of life, he called the message which he was to deliver, glad tidings of great joy, when he thus spoke to them; Luke ii. 10. 11. "Fear not, I bring you glad tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people; for to you is born, this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." As the harmless shepherds were tending their fleecy care, they were frightened at the sudden sight of an angel coming in a glorious majestic form; but the messenger of peace took care to inform them, that he came not as an executioner of Divine vengeance, that therefore they should not be discouraged, since he was to proclaim in their ears the best news that ever mortals heard; which glad tidings were, that a Saviour was actually born into the world. These tidings occasioned great joy in the inhabitants of heaven; Luke v. 13, 14. for "suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, and on good-will to men." The Gospel was called glad tidings of great joy, eminently, as it made known the actual birth of the Saviour of the world to the shepherds; and, indeed, the Divine revelation in the Gospel, of the whole method of man's salvation, makes it a message of joy and to all who have a value for their own interest. from the Scriptures of truth that we are informed, that the Divine Persons consulted about our welfare, and laid the plan of our happiness before the heavens were peace, It is stretched over the empty place, and the earth was hung upon nothing. God the Father chose to salvation a number of the posterity of man, and entered into a covenant with God the Son, as the Head of the elect, and with all the elect in him, as his seed. The oracles of truth declare to us, that according to the covenant of grace, the Son of God appeared as the Saviour of man, who had destroyed himself, and, that he might accomplish the great work he had undertaken, assumed the human nature into union with his Divine person, lived a life of ignominy and disgrace, and died a shameful and a painful death on the cross: They assure us, in the most positive manner, that he who was born a child, who appeared as a mean man, and who died as a malefactor, was no less than the Mighty God, one invested with infinite power; who consequently was able to bear the Divine wrath, to offer up to infinite justice a proper satisfaction, and to make way for mercy to be glorified, without any other Divine perfection being injured: The Gospel reveals the perfect righteousness of this great Saviour, as the righteousness which, being imputed to the guilty, can justify them before God, or give them a right to forgiveness of sins, to the favour of the supreme Potentate, whom they have provoked, and to everlasting happiness. It is in this that the Holy Spirit is promised, to quicken, renew, and sanctify those for whom Christ died; to enable them to follow holiness, or to practise virtue, out of love to God and with an aim to advance his glory; to strengthen them, and support them, that they may grow in grace, and persevere in true holiness; to comfort them by working in them peace, joy, and hope; and to bring them, at last, to the land of uprightness:-In fine, it is the Scripture which declares to us, that the departing spirits of such as trust in Christ, are conveyed into the presence of God, to partake of the most substantial joys, and that their bodies shall be raised in glory, when Christ, who is their life, and the God of their salvation, shall appear. These glorious things we, who have the Scriptures, know from thence; and seeing, through the tender mercies of our God, this Gospel light has visited us, we ought to abound in thankfulness, and should rightly improve the knowledge with which we are blessed. And as we should be sensible of our own mercies, so we should greatly pity such muddy souls, as are enamoured with the darkness of Paganism, and choose obscurity rather than light, because their pride is great, their apprehensions are condensed, and their deeds are evil. When we receive the Scripture account of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, concerning themselves in our salvation, we may with rapture cry out, “O the depth of the love of these Divine Persons, which in the full extent of it, passes knowledge." But can we be enough affected with a sense of it? Alas! no; not so long as we sojourn in these curtains of distance: We cannot sing their praises in so exalted and so rapturous a strain as we ought; how do Hosannahs languish on our tongues? And how does our devotion die? This will be our case, as long as we abide in a country of separation, and are strangers in a strange land. We cannot then but be wishing that the hour may come, and the day may hasten, when we shall put off the rags of our mortality, and be clothed with the white attire of innocence, and shall take up our abode in the amiable tabernacles, which are spread on the mountains of spices. There, there, and no where else, in the company of angels and archangels, and of all who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb, and have trode the path to glory before us, we shall strike the strings of the heavenly lyres, with skilful hands, and shall raise our voices to a due pitch, to sound forth, to all eternity, the high praises of the Father, who chose us to salvation; of the Son, who redeemed us from wrath; and of the Spirit, who made us meet for, and conducted us to, the peaceful provinces of rest and joy. To the three Divine Persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the one living and true God, whom we adore, be supreme honour and glory, now, henceforth and for evermore, Amen. THE DOCTRINE OF PARTICULAR ELECTION, STATED AND DEFENDED. TWO SERMONS, By Mr JOHN SLADEN, Minister of the Gospel. SERMON I. 2 THESS. ii. 13. We are bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord; because God hath, from the beginning, chosen you to salvation, through sanctification of the Spirit, and belief of the truth. As pride was the great sin, and proved the sad fall of our first parents, so it is the prevailing vice and damning evil of their posterity: They, in affecting to be as God, knowing good and evil, ruined themselves; and we, in following their pernicious example, bring swift destruction upon ourselves; Vain man would be wise, though he is born as the wild ass's colt, a poor unthinking ignorant creature. We either aspire after the knowledge of what God has not revealed, and pretend to dive into the secrets of his counsel, or we reject and quarrel at what he has declared, because it sets us low, and advances the riches of Divine grace and wisdom, and ascribes all glory to God, and will not allow us to boast of any thing of our own. From hence it is, that men speak evil of the things they know not, and swell into an opposition to those truths that they cannot fathom, and which tend to lower their exalted pride. What was said of the man of sin, in purticular, is too justly applicable to all men by nature; He opposes and exalts himself above all that is called |