It clearly follows, then, that the language of our Saviour, "No man can come unto me," is to be understood, not of natural strength, but of mental and moral power, the state of the inclination, will, and affections; and that it expresses a want of disposition to receive, understand, and act, according to the declarations of the heavenly Teacher. In the same way the expression is used in verse 60: "This is a hard saying, who CAN hear it?" i. e. what person does not feel the strongest dislike and repugnance to it? who can approve of it? who will allow himself to be persuaded by it?"

Thus the text affirms, that every person who is not the subject of divine grace, is in such a state of will, disposition, and mental affection, that it is utterly impossible for him to receive the saving blessings given to sinners by our Lord Jesus Christ, while that state of mind continues; and that state of mind will continue, until the infinitely powerful and gracious Spirit effect a radical and decided alteration of the sinner's inclination or disposition of mind.

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In the further consideration of this subject, I shall endeavour to show, I. in what this inability really consists; II. that it forms no just and reasonable excuse for continuing in a sinful and unconverted condition; III. that the removal of it is a proper object for the employment of means; and, IV. that the effectual blessing on the use of those means must come from the sovereign grace and power of God.

I. In what does this inability really consist? The observations which have already been made, in the explication of the text, might perhaps suffice for the answering of this question; but, on account of the importance of the subject, and the inaptitude of some to form correct ideas upon it, though it cau by no means be called a difN. S. No. 22,

ficult subject, some brief enlargement may be useful.

The powers and faculties with which the Creator endowed human nature are of two kinds; natural, called also physical, and moral: and the same distinction is applied to our inability, or want of power to a given end. Natural inability is, when either from the want of the proper faculty, or from the opposition of some invincible resistance, we cannot effect a purpose which otherwise we should be most sincerely ready and glad to do. If it were proposed to remove a mighty rock by one man's unassisted bodily strength, or to controul the tide by speaking a command, or to stop the planets in their orbits, for these actions, and such as these, we should say that we are naturally unable. But a moral inability is a want of disposition, will, or inclination, to do a specified action. Thus, a son who has uniformly proved himself tender-hearted, affectionate, dutiful, and obedient, could not (if in his sound senses) deliberately murder his father. A lady of the purest delicacy, chastity, and piety, could not offer herself to the loathsome embrace of a horrid and infamous villain. A holy angel could not blaspheme God: and the blessed and adorable God himself CANNOT do that which is unholy, unjust, or unwise.

It is this latter kind of inability under which a sinner lies, to comply with the will of God made known to him. God does not require of you to shake the earth, to arrest the heavens, or to do any thing beyond the proper sphere of those faculties and powers with which he has endowed you. All that he demands of you is to act fairly and truly up to your natural powers and faculties; to use them aright, in compliance with his good and righteous will, for his deserved glory and your own highest happiness, All that he re

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quires of you is, to love, serve, and honour him and for this you want no new faculties, either of mind or of body; you want nothing but a right direction and application of the capacities and powers which you already possess; you want nothing but the will. Why do you not obey and glorify your Maker? Why do you not come to the Lord Jesus Christ, in pursuance of his oftenrepeated invitations and commandments? Why do you say, "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow!" yielding to the murderer of time, guilty procrastination? Alas! it is because you are not willing; the bias of your soul is in favour of sin, which God hates, and contrary to holiness, without which you cannot enjoy his favour. You have faculties, you have means, you have opportunity: but you want the will; you have an antipathy in your heart to pure and true religion; you love something else in preference; and you miserably deceive yourself in saying, "Go thy way for this time, when I have a more convenient season I will call for thee."

In strict accordance with these truths are the precepts, warnings, directions, reproofs, and tender lamentations of the divine word: "Wherefore I will yet plead with you, saith the Lord; and with your children's children will I plead. Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be ye horribly afraid! My people hath committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and they have hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. Hast thou not procured this unto thyself, in that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God? Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thine own backslidings shall reprove thee. Know, therefore, and see, that it is an evil thing and bitter, that

thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord God of hosts. See thy way; know what thou hast done thou hast said, There is no hope; no, for I have loved strangers, and after them I will go." Jer. ii. "Behold! ye walk every one after the imagination of his evil heart, that ye may not hearken unto me." Jer. xvi. 12. "Thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass." Isa. xlviii. 4. "Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? Nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither COULD they blush." Jer. vi. 15. "I have called, and ye refused I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded: but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof." Prov.i. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!"-" And ye will not come unto me, that ye may have life."- "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."- "The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be."

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II. This moral impotency, as it essentially consists in the disinclination and antipathy of the will, forms no reasonable objection to a compliance with the demands of divine authority, nor any valid excuse for continuing in a sinful and unconverted state.

For the proof of this, it would be sufficient to appeal to your own judgment and conscience. You know that you sin voluntarily, agreeably to your inclination, and without any constraint or compulsion whatsoever and you know that you are blameable, criminal, and guilty in so doing. This sense of blame and guilt arises from

your consciousness, that in all your rebellions against God, and your rejection of Christ and his Gospel, you have acted freely, and in perfect accordance with the disposition and desires of your own heart. You own conscience accuses and condemns you, imperfect and partial as it is: what then must be the judgment of the omniscient and impartial Jehovah ?

The same conclusion follows from the universal feelings and conduct of mankind, in all matters connected with moral principle. If you have the happiness to know a most upright and honourable, amiable and beneficent person, whose moral excellencies render him the ornament and the blessing of his connexions; you do not regard him as the less excellent, and the less worthy of your esteem and honour, because you believe that his conduct springs out of good principles, that he acts thus well from a decided inclination to all that is good, from a holy and benevolent disposition, from sincere love to mankind, and piety towards God. The perfect holiness of the Lord Jesus Christ was not the less lovely and meritorious, because it was his delight to do the will of his Father, because he loved righteousness and hated iniquity. On the contrary, in these and all similar cases, your conviction of the excellency of the disposition is necessary to your approbation of the character; if you doubted the motive, your approbation would be suspended; if you believed the outward displays of goodness to spring from no fixed principle of goodness, your approbation would be changed into contempt, for the bad principle and hypocrisy thus detected. In like manner, you never excuse base, dishonest, and perfidious conduct, because the man chargeable with it assures you that it was quite natural to him, that it was perfectly conge

nial to his disposition, that with such an inclination and state of will as he possessed, he really could not do otherwise than act in the wicked manner in which he had done. You would not even hold the bad disposition to be any extenuation of the base conduct: you would see it quite in a different point of view, and would certainly consider the inward disposition as an aggravation of the wickedness and ill-desert of the outward character. You would never accept it as an apology for the unfaithfulness of your servant or your agent, if he told you that his inclinations and turn of mind were so thoroughly deceitful and dishonest, that he could not find in his heart to act uprightly.

Now, apply these sentiments, and this mode of judging to your self. Seriously interrogate your own heart, and suppress not the dictates of truth and justice: “Is my aversion from God any diminution of the wrong and blame of my rebellions against him? Are my inward love of sin, my deepseated distaste of holy and spiritual subjects, my pride, ambition, love of guilty pleasures, or immoderate thirst of gain, are these any excuse for my indifference, neglect, and disobedience, with respect to the truth, the authority, the mercy of Jehovah, the most interesting and glorious subjects that can enter into the heart of man to conceive? O, do not I stand self-convicted?-a lover of darkness rather than light? Guilty, condemned, and inexcusable, before the Righteous God?"

Remember, also, that "the judgment of God is according to truth." All his decisions are grounded upon the most perfect goodness, equity, and wisdom. He would not denounce condemnation and perdition for a state of mind, or а course of conduct which you could not help, which it was naturally impossible for

you to avoid. But he has uttered, and with the kindest intention has recorded, the most awful retributions upon those "who acknowledge not God, and obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ." He has denounced "indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil."" He who believeth not, the wrath of God abideth on him: -he is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the only begotten Son of God. Except ye believe that I am he," said the benevolent Redeemer, ye shall die in your sins."

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Thus the testimonies of reason and conscience, of the universal feelings and conduct of mankind, and of the Holy Scriptures, unite to declare that man's moral impotency to obey the just will of his Divine Sovereign, being no other than a rooted antipathy and enmity of heart, is no extenuation of sin, no excuse for continuing in the state of unbelief and hardness of heart; but is, on the contrary, a most awful aggravation of your guilt. O that ye would lay this to heart, all ye who are persevering in impenitence, and promising You are yourselves impunity! treasuring up for yourselves wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; and what will ye do when its tremendous accumulation shall burst forth upon you? How will you stand at his spotless tribunal? How will you meet the eye of his justice? O will you not now stir up all your capacities of attention and inquiry, to ascertain whether that awful catastrophe can be avoided?

Consider, then,

III. That this condition is a proper and suitable object for the employment of means, in order to its removal.

If this impotency of man to perform the commands of God were a natural and proper inability,

it would be unassailable by means; it would destroy accountableness; and sinners would be objects indeed of pity, but not of blame and punishment. But, since it is a moral inability, lying only in the dispositions and inclinations of the soul, it is in its own nature RE

MOVEABLE.

Now reflect, if you wished to remove any prejudice, any injurious antipathy, any wrong disposition or mental habit, from any person under influence ;your how would you proceed? Certainly, you would take all the methods in your power that were likely to weaken the wrong principle, and to introduce and strengthen its opposite. You would urge the person in question, to reflect much and closely upon the false and hurtful character of the prejudice under which he laboured, and upon the truth, goodness, and value of the opposite principle: you would place him, as much as you could, under the influence of evidence and impressions calculated to produce a conviction in his mind in favour of your object: and, if you could once see in him any symptoms of right feeling, any appearance of a disposition to renounce his wrong inclination, any indications of a sincere desire to be set right, you would form pleasing anticipations of success. Then let me entreat you to derive, from this easy and reasonable supposition, a rule of conduct for yourselves. Your state of crime and misery is bottomed upon a sinful bias of mind, a wrong inclination, a wicked will, a love of sin, and hatred of holiness. O then, take the methods best calculated to strike at the root of the evil, a wicked and obstinate will. Meditate seriously and constantly upon the great truths of God's holy law and gospel, their evidence, their importance, their solemn relation to you! Be assured that your state of mind,

hitherto, has been founded on falsehood and injustice towards infinite truth and goodness; that your distaste to holiness is vile and wicked; that your sinful dispositions, your pride, selfishness, avarice, voluptuousness, or whatever else they may be, are every way wrong, and should be instantly forsaken with the deepest sorrow and repentance. O set the Lord always before you; read, with deepest attention, the most important and affecting parts of his holy word; flee from all scenes and occasions of temptation, and break off every sin; diligently frequent the means of grace and religious instruction to which you have access; and cry with earnest and constant prayer to the God of infinite grace and mercy, that he may change the disposition of your heart, and emancipate your soul from its guilty thraldom. "Seek ye the Lord, &c. Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. Labour not for the meat that perisheth, but for that which endureth to everlasting life, which the Son of man will give unto" those who truly seek it. Isaiah lv. 6, 7. 1 Tim. i. 15. But, in all this, O beware of the false and dangerous imagination, that you are meriting the divine mercy, that you are preparing yourself for Christ, that you are putting upon him some sort of obligation to grant you salvation. Nothing can be more unfounded, in fact, nothing more dangerous in tendency, than such self-righteous and presumptuous expectations. They are in direct and total opposition to the whole constitution of the Gospel, and they cannot but be completely preventive of any well-grounded hope of salvation.-Ah! What are all your seekings, what all your strivings; but the outcries of a terrified criminal, a wretched suppliant, who deserves to suffer all the dire ef

fects of his sins against heaven, but who is stretching forth his imploring hands, while the Author of salvation passes by? If you beg for mercy with the sincere acknowledgment that you deserve it not, that mercy will most certainly be shown to you; but if you have in your heart the opinion of merit, claim, or deserving, you will be sent empty away.

But, while these are the means and instruments which the Lord of mercy generally uses in effecting the conversion of sinners, let us ever recollect that they are only means and instruments, and that,

IV. The effectual blessing must come from the sovereign power, grace, and mercy of God.

The harmonious connexion of our duty in the use of means, and the unrivalled efficiency of divine power in producing the effect, are set before us, in the clearest manner, in that instructive and important passage, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to do of his good pleasure." He is the omnipotent Lord of all hearts. He only can subdue the dreadful prejudices of our fallen nature, conquer our enmities and aversions, and enthrone right affections and holy inclinations within us. He alone can draw the souls of men to the Saviour; and blessed be his name! he does it with the persuasive cords of a man, with the winning bands of love. The mighty acts of his converting grace are no compulsion of the mind, no forcing of the will; but he gives a right direction to the feelings and faculties of the soul, and all its powers then say, “Turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the Lord my God! Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me!" This he does. He sprinkles the clean water of his holy influences upon the soul. He