be a faithful exhibition of the character of God? Should it be said, That God is willing to show his wrath, and that he has created intelligent beings on purpose that they might be the vessels of his wrath; and has communicated positive hardness to their hearts, because they did not render themselves depraved enough for his purpose; and pushed them on to a character, that would be sufficiently desperate for some deed of darkness, which he had resolved they should perpetrate ;—would one gather from all this the true character of God? I know that I have now presented an extreme case, and sincerely hope that not often, perhaps never, is sovereignty presented quite so bare and forbidding, and the truth pushed to an extremity so cold and cheerless. The objection to such presentations is, that they do not exhibit the whole character of God. He is will-ing to show his wrath, only where his mercy in Jesus Christ has been long and obstinately rejected. He created intelligent beings for his own glory, and will honour himself in their perdition, if by rejecting the Saviour, they count themselves unworthy of eternal life. He has hardened their hearts by the very dispensations that should have won them to duty and to God; has sent them strong delusions that they might believe a lie and be damned, when they did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. We must pour into these strong exhibitions of truth, in order to render them the gospel, and make them useful, the whole character of God.

- How can you hope to persuade rebels to submit themselves to this bare and appalling sovereignty? Why must they become reconciled to their Creator, before they may even know, that he is a God of mercy, or has it in his heart to bestow pardons? An apostle has said, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." I am not without my fears, that on this side of the line of orthodoxy there has sometimes been presented a character of God, as imperfect, not to say as unsafe, as when only his clemency is seen. And who can say that God would not be as unwilling, that one set of his attributes should be exclusively presented, as another? Under neither have we a full and honest portrait of the only true God, whom to know is eternal life. While the one error will lead unregenerate men to presume, that they love their Maker, so under the other it is feared, that many true believers may be kept all their lifetime subject to bondage through fear of perdition. The one will make a multitude of happy hypocrites, while the other will conduct to heaven whole churches of trembling, doubting believers. The one will widen the fold, till the sheep and the goats can herd together; the other will contract it till many of the lambs must lie without, and be exposed to storms and beasts of prey; and finally neither presents correctly the character of God.

III. We have sometimes presented us a picture

of warring attributes. Mercy triumphs over justice, and grace is made victorious over truth and righteousness. Under this system, God disapproves the properties of his own nature, and the principles of his own government; and contrives to defeat and nulify his own decrees. He issued his law, and pronounced it good, and made in it no provision for pardon, none he could make; and when the sinner broke that law, he passed sentence, and threatened its execution. But he is now made to repent of the sternness, and integrity, and purity, that dictated that law, and uttered that sentence, and threatened its execution; and is reresolved, that, come what will of reproach upon his name, and injury to his government and kingdom, the sinner shall not suffer. He built a place of torment, and seperated it from heaven by a bottomless gulf, and made it a dark, and dreary, and desolate abode; but he has since had better and milder views; has decreed that ultimately the gulf shall become passable, the fires shall go out, and the worm shall die.

.

And all this is contrived to save the divine honour. To let God be what he is, and do what he has said, and carry into execution his own purpose, would, it is believed, so hurt his reputation with the population of the apostacy, that any thing, that can be, must be done to save it. There must rather be suspicion cast over the whole record that would exhibit God as so inflexibly holy, and reproach poured

in

upon the bigoted multitude that would so rigidly explain the word. The book of God, plain as it is,

may rather mean nothing, and John record falsely, and Paul reason inconclusively, than to blot so foully and fatally the divine reputation.

To complete the picture, the Son of God is despatched from heaven to take the part of sinners, and shield them from the sword of a devouring justice. He saw, it seems, that the execution of the law would ruin the credit of the court of heaven which gave sentence, and hasted down to counteract the decree. What was stern, and unbending, and cruel in the Father, has been softened down in the Son. He covers the rebel with his hand, smiles on him, wipes away his tears, and prays him to forgive a father's unjust severity. His errand was to stay the rod of justice. He makes no atonement, none is necessary, asks no change of heart in the culprit, but a mere reform, as the condition of pardon and life.

Thus has the character of God been so exhibited, as to involve heaven in a quarrel, and place the persons of the Godhead at issue, on the question, whether the honours of the broken law deserve to be repaired, or its Author shall sink into universal disrespect? What in the mean time shall happen to the divine government in heaven, and in all the worlds that have continued loyal, and have had hitherto the utmost confidence in the unchangeably wise and holy God? O, I feel that the ground on which I stand is holy! Will God forgive me, if in attempting to vindicate his honour, I have drawn near to him without being duly sanctified,

I know that men who have resolved to go on in sin, who have long been offended at the purity and extent of the law, and would not care if all the rights of the Godhead were trampled upon, find it very convenient to have the character of God thus brought down to their taste and their temper. They will support and will love a gospel, that will thus make God altogether such an one as themselves. Give them a gospel like this, and in half a century there will not be an avowed infidel on the whole face of the earth. Gladly would they be rid of the reproach of infidelity, could they have a gospel that would promise them a salvation equally cheap and convenient.

If God will give out his word, and then break it; will make a law, and when men have fallen under its curse, repeal it; will join the rebel in hating his own attributes; will issue an edict, and then a counter edict by which the first is nutralized; this is all exactly as they would have it. God is invest

ed with all the human weaknesses.

So Ahasuerus

would make a decree, assigning to death all his Jewish subjects, and then enact another, directing them to arm themselves for their own defence, and thus his decree comes to the ground. But how will God be affected by these inroads made upon his name and his glory? Will he suffer his character to be tampered with, and finally to be thus frittered down to the taste and the convenience of a polished, and proud, and worldly, and time-serving genera