favours, left you fhould not be able to bear the fhock. You know you have a thousand times repeated Hezekiah's offence. I need not be particular. Your confcience accufes you, and points out the particulars; and I fhall only join the cry of confcience against you, O the ingratitude! O! the bafe, vile, unnatural, horrid, unprecedented ingratitude! From you your God might have expected better things; from you, whom he has fo peculiarly, fo infinitely obliged, and whofe hearts he has made capable of generous fenfations. But, O! the fhocking, horrid ingratitude!-Let your hearts burft into a flood of forrows at the thought. They may be juftly too full to allow us to speak much upon it; but, O! they can never be too full of fhame, confufion, and tender relentings for the crime. Methinks the thought must break the hardeft heart among us.

Let me now add a confideration, which gives an aftonishing emphafis to all that has been faid. All this profufion of mercy, perfonal and relative, temporal and spiritual, is beftowed upon creatures that deferve not the leaft mercy; creatures that deserve to be stripped naked of every mercy; nay, that deferve to be made miferable in time and eternity; creatures that deserve not to breathe this vital air, to tread the ground, or drink the ftream that runs wafte through the wildernefs, much lefs to enjoy all the bleffings which the infinite merit of Jefus could purchafe, or the infinite goodness of God can beftow; creatures that are fo far from deferving to be delivered from the calamities of life, that they deferve to have them all heightened and multiplied, till they convey them to the more intolerable punishments of hell; creatures that are fo far from making adequate returns, that they are perpetually offending their God to his face; and every day receiving bleffings from him, and every day finning against him. O! aftonishing! moft aftonishing! This wonder is pointed out by Jefus Chrift himself, who best knows what

is truly marvellous. The most High, fays he, is kind to the unthankful and to the evil. Luke vi. 35. Your heavenly Father maketh his fun to rife on the evil and on the good, and fendeth rain on the just and on the unjust..

Matt. v. 45.

It need afford you no furprise, if my fubject fo overwhelms me as to difable me from making a formal application of it. I leave you to your own thoughts upon it. And I am apt to think they will conftrain you to cry out in a confternation with me,

O! the amazing, horrid, bafe, unprecedented ingratitude of man! And O! the amazing, free, rich, overflowing, infinite, unprecedented goodness of God! Let these two miracles be the wonder of the whole univerfe!

One prayer, and I have done. May our divine Benefactor, among his other bleffings, beftow upon us that of a thankful heart, and enable us to give fincere, fervent, and perpetual praife to his name, through Jefus Chrift, his unfpeakable gift! Amen.

SERMON

SERMON XXVI.

THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST, AND THEIR CONSEQUENT JOYS AND BLESSINGS.

ISAIAH liii. 10, II. When thou shalt make his foul an offering for fin, he fhall fee his feed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord fhall profper in his hand. He fhall fee of the travail of his foul, and fhall be fatisfied.*

TH

THIS chapter contains a moft lively and moving account of very tragical fufferings; and, if we have but a small fhare of humanity, we cannot hear it without being affected, even though we did not know the perfon concerned. Here is one fo mangled and disfigured, that he has no form or comeliness; one defpifed and rejected of men, a man of forrows, and acquainted with grief; one wounded, bruifed, oppreffed, afflicted; one brought as a lamb to the flaughter; one cut off out of the land of the living. And who is he? Were he an enemy, or a malefactor, we could not but pity him. But this was not his character; for he had done no violence, neither was there guile found in his mouth. And he was fo far from being our enemy, that he hath borne our griefs and carried our forrows; he was wounded for our tranfgreffions; he was bruifed for our iniquities, not for his own. Were he a child or a friend that had fuffered fuch things, it would raise all our mournful and fympathizing paffions to hear the hiftory.-But what if this fhould be the man that is God's fellow, the Redeemer, to whom we are bound by the most endearing

*The Sermon is dated Hanover (a county, if I mistake not, in Virginia) July 11, 1756; and is evidently a Sacramental. Difcourfe.

dearing obligations! a perfon of infinite dignity and perfect innocence, our best friend, and only Saviour! What if it fhould be he? Would not this move your hearts, and raise all your tender paffions? Or fhall he die in fuch agonies unpitied, unlamented, unbeloved, when even a dying criminal excites our compaffion? What do you think would be the issue, if I fhould make an experiment of this to-day? If I fhould make a trial what weight the fufferings of Jefus will have upon your hearts? Do you think the reprefentation of his fufferings and love would have any effect upon you? That they may have this effect is my design in the profecution of this fubject; for that it is Jefus who is the hero of this deep tragedy, or the fubject of thefe fufferings, we may learn from the frequent application of paffages quoted from this chapter to him in the New Teftament. This chapter has been a fuccefsful part of the fcriptures; and there are fome now in heaven who were brought thither by it. This is the chapter the Ethiopian eunuch was reading when he asked Philip, Of whom fpeakeft the prophet this? of himself, or fome other man? And Philip opened his mouth, and began at the fame fcripture, and preached unto him Jefus and he believed with all his heart, and was baptized; and went on his way homeward and heavenward rejoicing. Acts viii. 32, 35. This was the chapter that opened to the penitent Earl of Rochester the way of falvation through the fufferings of Chrift, which alone relieved his mind from the horrors of guilt, and constrained him to hope that even fuch a finner as he might find mercy. O! that it may have the fame effect upon you, my brethren, to-day, that with the eunuch you may return home rejoicing!

The design and method I have now in view is only to illuftrate and improve the feveral parts of my text, especially those that represent how pleafing and fatisfactory the converfion and falvation of finners by the death of Chrift is to him.

1. When

1. When * thou shalt make his foul an offering for fin.t An offering for fin, is, when the punishment of fin is transferred from the original offender to another, and that other perfon fuffers in his ftead. Thus the Lord Jefus was made a fin-offering for us. The punishment of our fin was transferred to him, and he bore it in his own body on the tree. He became our fubftitute, and took our place in law, and therefore, the penalty of the law due to us was executed upon him. It is in this, my brethren, that we have any hope of falvation; blood for blood, life for life, foul for foul the blood, the life, the foul of the Son of God, for the blood and life, and foul, of the obnoxious criminal. Here, firs, your grateful wonder may begin to rife upon our firft entrance on this fubject; and you will find the wonders will increase as we go along.

You fee Jefus prefented an offering for fin; and what was it he offered? "Silver and gold he had none," the blood of bulls and of goats, and the afhes of heifers, would not fuffice; and thefe too he had not. But he had blood in his veins, and that fhall all go; that he will offer up to fave our guilty blood. He had a foul, and that was made an offering for fin. His foul an offering for fin! his pure, fpotlefs foul! his foul, that was of more value than the whole univerfe befide! You may find those that will give a great many things for the deliverance of a friend, but who will give his foul? his foul for his enemies !— This is the peculiar commendation of the love of Jefus.

His

*The particle here rendered when, is more generally rendered if; and then the fentence will read thus: "If thou fhalt make his foul an offering for fin," the confequence will be, that "he fhall fee his feed," &c.

† Or, “When thou shalt make his foul fin." It is a common fcripture-phrafe, whereby a fin-offering is called fin. And it is fometimes retained in our tranflation, particularly in 1 Cor. v. 21. "He hath made him to be fin; that is, a fin-offering for us, &c.