And now the other thing is respecting those who have been already delivered: for after they have been set at liberty, they are faithful and holy who were before rebels and unholy. If, therefore, it be asked, What sort of persons are they whom the mercy of God hath delivered? The answer is, that they now are new men, shining in faith and godliness. Us, says the apos.

tle, hath he delivered, that is, us who believe; us who love the brethren; us who walk worthy of the Lord; bringing forth the fruit of good works: such he hath delivered.

men dream about

For as the Israel

Hence it is manifest, 1. Whatever carnal their deliverance and salvation, is most vain. ites, whilst they served Pharaoh, and lusted after the Egyptian flesh-pots, were not in the enjoyment of liberty; so Christians, whilst they obey the devil, whilst they wallow in the delights of sin, are not delivered from slavery and a state of condemnation.

2. Hence also we infer, for the consolation of the godly, That the faithful and godly alone are free, are honored, are unspeakably precious with God; whilst, on the other hand, the ungodly, although they glitter in the eyes of men, are accounted for slaves the most vile and abject. Truly said Clemens, "The most excellent thing in the earth is the man who most serveth God."

MAY 22.

By whose stripes we are healed.-1 Peter ii. 24.

LEIGHTON.

DID we see it, no infirmary or hospital was ever so full of loathsome and miserable spectacles, as in a spiritual sense, our wretched nature is in any one of us apart: how much more when multitudes of us are met together! But our evils are hid from us, and we perish miserably in a dream of happiness! This makes up and completes our wretchedness, that we feel it not with our other diseases; and this makes it worse still. This was the church's disease, Rev. iii. 17: Thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. We are usually full of complaints of trifling griefs which are of small moment, and think not on, nor feel our dangerous maladies as he who showed a physician his sore finger, but the physician told him he had more need to think on the cure of a

dangerous imposthume within him, which he perceived by looking at him, though himself did not feel it.

In dangerous maladies or wounds, there be these evils: a tendency to death, and, with that, the apprehension and the fear of it, and the present distemper of the body. So, there is in sin, 1. The guiltiness of sin binding over the soul to death, the most frightful, eternal death; 2. The terror of conscience in the apprehension of that death, or the wrath that is the consequence and end of sin; 3. The raging and prevailing power of sin, which is the ill habitude and distemper of the soul. But these stripes, and that blood which issued from them, are a sound cure. Applied unto the soul, they take away the guiltiness of sin, and death deserved, and free us from our engagement to those everlasting scourgings and lashes of the wrath of God; and they are likewise the only cure of those present terrors and pangs of conscience, arising from the sense of that wrath and sentence of death upon the soul. Our iniquities which met on him, laid open to the rod that back which in itself was free. Those hands which never wrought iniquity, and those feet which never declined from the way of righteousness, yet, for our works and wanderings, were pierced; and that tongue dropped with vinegar and gall on the cross, which never spoke a guileful nor sinful word. The blood of those stripes is that balm issuing from that Tree of Life so pierced, which can alone give ease to the conscience, and heal the wounds of it they deliver from the power of sin, working by their influence a loathing of sin, which was the cause of them; they cleanse out the vicious humors of our corrupt nature, by opening that issue of repentance: They shall look on him, and mourn over him whom they have pierced.

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Now, to the end it may thus cure, it must be applied: it is the only receipt, but in order to heal, it must be received. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.

This is among the wonders of that great work, that the sovereign Lord of all, who binds and looses at his pleasure the influences of heaven, and the power and workings of all the creatures, would himself in our flesh be thus bound, the only Son bound as a slave, and scourged as a malefactor! And his willing obedience made this an acceptable and expiating sacrifice, among the rest of his sufferings: He gave his back to the smiters.

Now, it can not be that any one who is thus healed, reflecting upon this cure, can again take any constant delight in sin. It is impossible so far to forget both the grief it bred in themselves, and that which it cost their Lord, as to make a new agreement with it, to live in the pleasure of it.

His stripes.-Turn your thoughts, every one of you, to consider this: you that are not healed, that you may be healed; and you that are, apply it still to perfect the cure in that part wherein it is gradual and not complete; and for the ease you have found, bless and love him who endureth so much uneasiness to that end. There is a sweet mixture of sorrow and joy in contemplating these stripes; sorrow, surely, by sympathy, that they were his stripes, and joy, that they were our healing. Christians are too little mindful and sensible of this, and, it may be, are somewhat guilty of that with which Ephraim is charged, Hos. xi. 3: They know not that I healed them.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear, shall live.-John v. 25.

THE Lord's deeds are not only deeds, but signs. If then they be signs, besides being wonderful, they are doubtless significant of something and to find out the signification of these deeds, requires more pains than to read or hear them. With wonder we read, just as if the spectacle of the mighty miracle were before our eyes, how Lazarus came to life again. If we mark well what are more wonderful works of Christ,-every one who believes undergoes a resurrection: if we mark well, all of us, and ́ understand, what are more dreadful deaths,-every one who sins dies. But the death of the flesh every man fears, few the death of the soul. Though the death of the flesh without doubt must come at last, all men have a care that it may not come: this is that they take pains for. Man destined to die, takes pains that he may not die, he takes them to no purpose; for his aim is that death may be a long while deferred, not that it may be escaped from: whereas, if he refuse to sin, he will have no pains, and will live for ever. Oh that we could rouse men, and with

them be like aroused, to be such lovers of the life that abideth, as men are of the life that fleeteth! What is there that a man will not do in peril of death? To whom was it ever said, Labor, that thou mayest not die, and he was idle? They be easy things that God bids us do, that we may live for ever, and yet we neglect to obey. God saith not to thee, lose whatever thou hast, that thou mayest live a poor brief life in labor, full of care; but, give to the poor of what thou hast, that thou mayest live for ever without labor, free from care. They that are enamored of this temporal life accuse us, albeit they have it neither when they would, nor for so long as they would: and yet we do not accuse ourselves, so sluggish are we, so lukewarm in laying hold of life eternal, which, if we be willing, we shall have, and having, shall not lose whereas this death which we dread, although we be unwilling, we shall have.

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If then the Lord by his great grace and his great mercy raiseth souls to life again, that we may not die eternally, we do well to understand those three dead persons whom he raised to life again in their bodies, to be signs and figures of something concerning the resurrections of souls, which are effected by faith. He raised the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, while yet she lay in the house; raised the young man, the widow's son, as he was carried out at the gates of the city; raised Lazarus, when he had been four days buried. Let each look into his own soul: if it sins, it dies: sin is a death of the soul. But sometimes the sin is in thought. That which is evil hath delighted thee: thou hast consented thereto, hast sinned; that consenting slew thee: but the death is within, because the evil conceived in thy thought has not yet come forth into a deed. To signify his raising a soul in this condition, the Lord raised that girl who was not yet carried out to her burial, but lay dead in the house that was, so to say, sin latent. If, however, thou hast not only consented to evil delight, but also done the evil itself; thou hast as it were, carried thy dead out at the gate: now art thou abroad, and art the dead man carried out to burial. Yet even him, the Lord raised, and restored to the widow his mother. The third dead is Lazarus. There is a dreadful kind of death, it is called evil custom. For it is one thing to sin, another to make a custom of sinning. He that sins and is forthwith corrected, soon comes to life again; because he is not yet entangled with a custom, he is not buried,

But he that has accustomed himself to sin, is buried, and it is well said of him, He stinketh: for he is beginning to have a very ill report, which is a most noisome odor. Such are all that are inured to crimes, men of abandoned manners. Thou sayest to him, Do not so! How should he hear thee, while the earth lies so heavy upon him, and he is rotting away in corruption, and weighed down by the load of custom? And yet was there no less virtue in Christ even to raise him. We have known, have seen, do daily see, men brought by thorough change from most evil custom, to live better lives than they did who reproved them. We see many, we know many. Let none despair, none be self-confident. It is evil both to despair and to be self-confident. Despair not, but so that thou make him thy choice in whom thou oughtest to be confident.

And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.—Luke xxiii. 46.

THE blessedness of this privilege of commending our spirits into the hands of our heavenly Father! That he is our Father, is the foundation of the privilege. Let the privilege itself, then, be unfolded to our view.

First, we may consider what it is which is thus commended into the hands of God: it is the soul, the more excellent and immortal part of man, that is committed to the sure custody of God.

1. It is our more excellent part in its nature and capacity. Man is a compounded creature, of a body and a soul: the body in its original and resolution is earth; the soul is of a divine descent, a spiritual substance, and in the nobility and perfection of its nature, but a little lower than the angels; it is the vile body, but the precious soul.

In its capacity it incomparably excels the body; for the body lives and moves in the low region of the senses, that are common with the worms of the earth; but the soul in its understanding and desires, is capable of communion with the blessed God, of grace and glory. From hence it is, that the whole world can not make one man happy; for the ingredients of true and complete