rit. Strong assurance will signify little, for that may be groundless: fulness of joy will avail as little, because it may be a false joy, or a golden dream. Besides that, when St. Paul told the Philippians, that " it was God that "worked in them both to will and to do of his good "pleasure," he did not therefore bid them be confident of their salvation, or full of assurance on that score: but he bade them "work out their own salvation with fear and "trembling." As much as if he had said, God is your helper, therefore do not despond: but then again, because God is your helper, and works with you, therefore behave as becomes you before the tremendous Majesty, with humble reverence, with anxious care and dread, with the utmost diligence and ready compliance, lest, if you should work under such a guide, in a negligent and careless mánner, altogether unworthy of so Divine a Master, he should at length desert you, and leave you to go on by yourselves.

Indeed, Divine wisdom knows human frame too well to give any of us infallible assurances of our reward, before we have done our work; lest those very assurances should make us secure and negligent, and render us altogether uncapable of being received into those pure and bright mansions above. God has told us plainly upon what terms he will accept us, through the merits of Christ; and he leaves us to discover the rest, as far as we reasonably and honestly may, by comparing our own lives with those Gospel terms. This is all, and this is sufficient for a state of probation: only, the farther to check vain presumption, whatever present advances we may have made, we are still left in the dark as to our future behaviour, and all depends upon our persevering unto the end. St. Paul, as I before hinted, above twenty years after his conversion, still spake so humbly of himself, as almost to fear, lest he might "become a castaway." Five years after that, he began to discover some degrees of as

surance, but still supposing himself not very far from his end. At the very last, which was five years later, when he had fought his "good fight, kept the faith," and "fi"nished his course," and was preparing to die a martyr, then, and not till then, he thought it became him (and he had the revelation of God to warrant him) to express the strongest assurances of his high reward in heaven. Let Christians of a much lower class learn from thence to think and speak modestly of their own case. If they wait for their full and complete assurance till they are on the other side the grave; they will, probably, be the surer to find it there, for their speaking and thinking so humbly and modestly of themselves here. Comfortable hopes, along with a life suitable, are sufficient encouragement for a good Christian to proceed with: more than that might be hurtful to us, as rather obstructing than furthering the great work of salvation: not but that God may sometimes, in cases extraordinary, fill pious minds, especially if very near their departure, and when such indulgence can do no harm, with joyous raptures and superabundant assurances: but I speak of what may ordinarily be expected in our Christian warfare. To conclude: as our acceptance hereafter depends entirely upon our careful and conscientious conduct here; so let every man take care to walk warily and circumspectly, and to rise in assurance in proportion to his so doing, growing in grace, and increasing in all virtuous and godly living, and so at length making his calling and election sure.

SERMON XXII.

The Scripture Doctrine of the Unprofitableness of Man's best Performances, an Argument against spiritual Pride; yet no Excuse for Slackness in good Works and Christian Obedience.

LUKE viii. 10.

So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.

THESE words are the conclusion of a parable, a kind of moral subjoined to it, to signify the use and application of it. Our blessed Lord had put the case of a labouring servant coming home from the field, to wait upon his master at the table, performing that additional service after his other labours of the day; providing a supper for his master, in the first place, and attending him patiently all the time, and after that, content to provide for himself. After our Lord had thus represented the case, he makes his reflections upon it in these words: "Doth he” (that is, the master) "thank that servant, because he did the 66 things that were commanded him? I trow not:" I suppose not. "So likewise ye," with regard to your heavenly Master, "when ye shall have done all those "things which are commanded you," it will become, it will behove you to "say, We are unprofitable servants; 66 we have" only "done that which" it "was our" bounden duty to do." Therefore we deserve no thanks from him,

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nor have any strict claim to a reward from him: but it is sufficient if our service is but accepted; for to have neglected it where it was due would have deserved stripes. This I take to be the general sense and purport of the text: and the main design of it was, to curb and keep down all spiritual pride and self-assumings, with respect to God, and to teach men modesty and true humility. Presume not to article strictly with him, or to make any proud demands upon him. Boast not before him of any even your best services, and reckon not at all upon your own deservings. Do as he has commanded you to do, to the utmost of your power, assisted by his Spirit: (for without that you are not fit to be called his servants at all, but rather to be discarded as none of his :) but after you have done all, and all reasonably well, still remember how insignificant you are in comparison, and how high God is; and therefore make no unbecoming claims upon him, because of your services, (poor enough at the best ;) but choose rather to refer all to his favour and goodness, than to your own deservings. In discoursing farther, I shall endeavour,

I. To explain what the phrase or title of unprofitable servants here strictly means.

. II. To show how much it concerns such servants to make their humble acknowledgments before God, of the worthlessness of all their services.

III. To observe, that such acknowledgments must not however be made an excuse or colour for any culpable slackness in our bounden duties, or for pleading any exemption or discharge from using all possible diligence in our Christian calling, to perform all that is commanded us.

I.

I propose to explain what the phrase or title of unprofitable servants here strictly means. There is the more need of explaining it, because it is used but twice besides in the New Testament, and in a sense which perhaps will not so conveniently suit the place which we are now upon. We first find it in St. Matthew, where our Lord

says, after delivering the parable of the talents, "Cast "the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall "be weeping and gnashing of teeth a." Here unprofitable servant means the same with a wicked or profligate servant; which is too hard a sense for our Lord to have intended in the present text, where he applies it to his own true and sincere disciples. In the Epistle to the Romans, in a quotation there taken from the fourteenth Psalm, we read, " They are all gone out of the way, they "are together become unprofitable; there is none that "doeth good, no, not one b." This appears to be a description of very ill men, of abandoned libertines: accordingly, in the Psalm itself, in the old translation, the style runs, They are corrupt and become abominable;" and according to the new translation, "They are all gone aside, "they are all together become filthy c." The words abominable and filthy are there made to answer what in Romans is rendered unprofitable. And that, again, is too hard a sense to put upon the word unprofitable in the text we are now upon: therefore we must look out for some softer and milder construction, in this single place, to make the context answer.

It may be considered, that no man can, by any services. of his, be profitable to God, who is all-sufficient, and is above needing any benefit, or receiving any real advantaged. But then it may be said that neither man, nor angel, nor archangel, nor any creature whatever can indeed be profitable to God: and what great matter were it for lapsed men to profess themselves unprofitable servants in such a sense only, as all the company of heaven must for ever profess the same? This appears to be a sense as much too high for the phrase in the text, as the other was too hard and severe. Let us therefore pitch upon some middle meaning, such as may neither be too degrading for a sincere Christian to own, nor yet too high or exalt

. Matt. xxv. 30.

b Rom. iii. 12.

Job xxii. 2, 3. xxxv. 7. Psal. xvi. 2.

Psal. xiv. 3.