SERMON X.

PSALM XXXI. 26.

O love the Lord all ye his Saints; for the Lord preferveth them that are faithful; and plenteously rewardeth the proud doer!

I'

having been shewn, in my last

discourse, what the love of God is, whereon it is founded, the good effects of it to the faithful, and that it is the most proper motive to be urged to fecure our obedience; and the best means of obtaining the blef fings of this world and the next. I fhall now confider the latter part of the text, and fhew how a sense of punishment is confiftent with the love Q3

of

of God, and how it affects us.

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And

plenteously rewardeth the proud

"doer."

ift. It is plain from the text that punishments are ordained only for the proud, or wicked doer: the faithful therefore, or righteous, are no otherwise concerned in them, than to take care to avoid them by obedience, and to praise God both for his justice, and mercy; his juftice in inflicting punishments to inforce and defend his laws, and his mercy in guarding and fparing themfelves: for, doubtlefs, the intention of all the divine laws, which are founded on promises as well as threatnings, was to encourage the good and to discourage the wicked.---They therefore, who love God, and in confe

quence

quence of that love keep his commandments, having their eye upon the promises, and by faith waiting for them; live in no dread of the threatnings; but on the contrary are thankful for them, and when they are inflicted, as they often are, in this world, in defence of the righte"he reous; inftead of trembling

joiceth, when he feeth the venge"ance," and in his exultation crieth out with David, Verily, there is a

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"reward for the righteous; verily he "is a God that judgeth in the earth.'

The certainty of this truth, "He * is a God that judgeth in the earth," a God, not a man! void of ignorance and partiality; is equally full of confolation to the good, and of terror to the wicked; for to have our virtues and

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and vices, our weakness, and wilfulness, stripped of all aggravations on the one hand, and extenuation on the other, fully known, "naked and

open to the eyes" of an infinitely juft, and an infinitely merciful God, this is juft matter of terror to the wicked who knows that no evasion can skreen him, no power rescue him from the hand of impartial justice ; and of comfort to the righteous, who is blessed above meafure; knowing that "his unrighteousness is hid, and "his fin is covered, to whom the "Lord imputeth no fin," on account of the frailties and infirmities of his flesh, the uprightness of his intentions, his humility and fincere repentance, and his firm faith in the merits and sufferings of his blessed Redeemer ; the washing of whose blood,

blood, joined with the purifying of the holy spirit, is able to present his foul without spot before the tribunal of God.

The terms alfo in which the law is given to mankind, are a ftrong proof of the kind intention of God in giving it, the promise of temporal, and eternal rewards, being always offered to the righteous, in contraft to the punishments denounced against the wicked.---Let us hear Moses in regard to temporal rewards, and punishments, in his pathetic exhortation to the Ifraelites in the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy ; and, first as to the bleffings, beginning at the first verse; "And it fhall "come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the "Lord