5. Thus, saith our Lord, pray ye: "Our Father which art in heaven." He who is become a new man, and is regenerated, and reconciled to his God through the grace of the gospel, beginneth very properly his address to God, with the appellation of Father, as having so lately commenced his son. "As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them who believe on his name." He therefore who hath believed on his name, and is thereby become the son of God, ought hence to take his rise, and, as a son, to pray with gratitude and thanksgiving, to his "Father which is in heaven." Nor is it enough, we may observe, my beloved brethren, to call him simply, "Father which is in heaven;" but we add, and say moreover, "Our Father, i. e. the Father of all believers ;" of all who through him are sanctified, and renewed, at their second birth by baptismal grace, and thence are become his children. This is, yet farther, a character and appellation which reflects severely upon the Jews, who not only refused to believe in Christ, though foretold to them by their prophets, and sent to them in the first place before all others, but treated him besides with all imaginable contempt and scorn, and put him at last to a cruel death. They therefore can no longer call God their Father; our Lord himself having confuted their pretension, and plainly referred them to their proper original,

saying of them and to them: "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him." God hath also complained, with indignation, by the mouth of his prophet Isaiah, saying: "I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib; but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider. Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil doers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger." Wherefore, to upbraid these men with their perverseness, we christians, when we pray, say Our Father, because he is now become ours, and bears no longer this relation to them who have so contemptuously forsaken him. Nor indeed can any sinners, continuing in a state of guilt, with propriety be called his children; but they whose sins are forgiven them, may fairly be allowed the title, as having moreover a claim by promise to life and immortality. Our Lord hath pronounced upon the case of the one and the other to the following purpose: "Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin; and the servant abideth not in the house for ever, but the Son abideth for ever." What acknowledgments therefore shall we make to God for the immensity of his love and his

goodness towards us, who hath directed our prayer to be addressed to him under the name and character of our Father. A relation this so honourable to us, that none of us should ever have presumed to claim it in our addresses to him, had he not expressly permitted and directed us so to pray. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, we ought to remember, when we call God our Father, that we are most particularly thence obliged to behave like his children; that as we rejoice in the title of his children, he may also have reason to be pleased with his relation to us as our Father. We should consider ourselves as the temples of God, and our lives should proclaim for us that he dwelleth in us. Our conversation should speak the spirit by which we are actuated; and as we profess to have entered upon a spiritual and heavenly life, we should think and do every thing within the character we have so assumed; we should remember that notable declaration made by God: "Them that honour me I will honour; and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed:" as well as what the apostle St. Paul hath observed to the Corinthians: "Ye are bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's."

6. We next proceed and say, "hallowed be thy name;" not that thereby we wish any accessions of holiness to God, or suggest a possibility of his receiving any such accessions from our prayers; what we ask of him here amounts to no more than

this, that his name may be hallowed in us. But by whom, it may be asked, can God be hallowed or sanctified, who is himself the great and only true sanctifier? Yet since he hath said, "be ye holy, for I am holy;" we, in conformity to this command, desire of him, that, as we have been sanctified by his holy baptism, we may persevere in that holiness which was then conferred on us; and this is, surely, no improper subject for our daily prayer, since indeed we do all stand in need of a daily sanctification; that the sins which we daily commit may thence be daily cleansed and done away. What sort of sanctification that is, which the grace of God confers on us, and in what consisting, the apostle hath fairly intimated where he tells the Corinthians: "Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you; but ye are washed. but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." Observe that he saith, "we are sanctified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of our God." We therefore desire of him that this sanctification may be continued to us, and since our Lord and judge hath admonished the person healed by him to beware of sinning any more, lest a worse thing should come unto him,

therefore we persevere in this prayer to God; therefore we make it each day and night the continual subject of our request to him, that those enlivening and quickening influences which we first received from his grace, may be continued to us through his favourable protection.

7. We go on, and make it our farther request, that his kingdom may come; where our meaning is, that the kingdom of God may be exhibited to us, and that we may have our part in it, as before we had asked that his name might be hallowed in us. For there is no time in truth and strictness wherein he doth not actually reign; nor can that be properly said to have had a beginning which was from all eternity, and shall continue for ever. We therefore beseech him that the kingdom may come wherein we are interested, which God hath promised, and Christ hath purchased for us with his blood; that we who have lived in this world as servants, may reign hereafter together with Christ our head, as he hath assured us, saying, "Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Now he who hath once renounced the world is above its honours, and values no kingdoms of the world which he hath so renounced: He therefore who thus hath devoted himself to God and Christ, asks not an earthly, but a heavenly kingdom. And there is need, in reality, of our continual prayer and supplication to God, that we forfeit