Neglect not then "to work out your own salvation, with fear and trembling," while you enjoy external helps herefor, and the influences of the Holy Spirit, without which you can do nothing. God's Spirit will not always strive with you. While you continue to oppose his motions, and to disregard the things of your peace, you constantly hazard the everlasting well-being of your souls. The seasons of grace will soon be at an end, and the door of divine mercy shut; and if they are so, before you have made your peace with God, through the great Mediator; with what unutterable confusion and distress, will you appear before your Judge! There will then remain no way to escape that awful sentence, from his decisive lips; "depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire." "Consider this, all ye that have hitherto been forgetful of God, and your souls, lest he tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver you."

As this is the first, so probably it will be the last time, of my speaking, to, by far the greater part of, you. Let me now earnestly entreat every sinner here present, without further delay, to accept, heartily to accept, of Christ, in all his offices; and to comply with that method of salvation which is proposed to you in the gospel. This is what I hope many of you have already done. Let such be careful to improve all the advantages they enjoy, to "grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." Among these advantages, you are to esteem the labors of Christ's ministers. Oh! seek to reap all the benefit by them, which you can; to strengthen your faith; to inflame your love to God; to confirm your Christian hope; to perfect your humility and patience; to increase your holy desires; to heighten your spiritual joy; and to regulate your whole conversation, that it may be as becomes the gospel of Christ. In this way go on, with steadiness and perseverance, until you arrive at the measure of the stature of perfect men in Christ; until you are prepared for the society of the spirits of just men made perfect in heaven; and for the presence of God, and your Saviour; in whose presence is fullness of joy; and at whose right hand, are pleasures for evermore. AMEN.

SERMON

PREACHED

AT THE ORDINATION

OF THE

REV. MR. MOSES EVERETT,

TO THE

PASTORAL CARE OF THE CHURCH IN DORCHESTER.

September 28, 1774.

Rev

BY JASON HAVEN, A. M.

PASTOR OF THE FIRST CHURCH IN DEDHAM.

BOSTON:

PRINTED BY MILLS AND HICKS, IN SCHOOL STREET.

B

SERMON.

2 COR. iv. 5.

"For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake."

EVERY gospel minister should be able to adopt this language, and to make this declaration of the apostle his own. We have here some short, but weighty and comprehensive rules to be observed by all, who enter on the work of the evangelical ministry. Were I able duly to explain and apply them, it would be a suitable entertainment, on the present occasion. Something of this, by divine assistance, I shall now attempt.

The most natural and familiar, and for that reason the best, method of discoursing on the words, may be, to take a distinct view of the three parts of which they consist.

I. The first, intimating what ministers ought not to preach. We preach not ourselves.

II. The second, what they should preach. Christ Jesus the Lord.

III. The third, the general character, in which they are to consider themselves, and in which they are to act, namely, as their people's servants, for Jesus' sake.

Each of these heads contains several weighty articles of instruction, which will suggest some practical inferences, with which I shall close the discourse.

I. The first thing to be considered, in the words, is a prohibition, drawn from the apostle's example, forbidding ministers to preach themselves. "We preach not ourselves."

There are two respects, more especially, in which ministers should take care not to preach themselves; viz. as to the matter, and as to the end of their preaching.