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breathe after a state of greater nearness, and more free and delightful intercourfe? Can you live happy without the enlightening beams of God's gracious prefence? Can this world fatisfy you, and its enjoyments content you ? You are often asking, who will fhew us any good? but never enquiring, where is God our Maker?-Surely you have no reason to confider yourselves as true Christians, whatever your pretenfions may be.

Wherefore, O finners! you, who have hitherto preferred the world and its flatteries, awake this day to choose the Lord for your God.-Is it not better for you to have God for your friend, than all the world without him? Can the world comfort you in a dying hour? Can it befriend you before the bar of God? Can it relieve you when doomed by the Divine fentence to eternal mifery?

Wherefore, O finners! be perfuaded this day to renounce the ways of vanity and fin; and take the God of Ifrael for your portion, the Sun of Righteoufnels for your Saviour, and the Spirit of Grace for your confolation.

And may God of his infinite mercy work this perfuafion in your hearts, through Jefus Christ our Lord.

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SERMON VI.

THE EVIL AND DANGER OF SECURITY

IN SIN.

BY

ALEXANDER MACWHORTER, D. D. Pastor of the First Prefbyterian Church, at Newark, New-Jersey.

ΜΑΤΤ. χχίν. 38, 39.

For as in the days that were before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the Ark: and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; fo fhall alfo the coming of the Son of Man be.

'HE discourse, of which these words are a part, was

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addreffed by our Lord to his difciples.-The express design of it was to animate them to a steady vigilance and attention to their immortal interest- to preserve them from floth and stupidity, the too common effects which Divine patience has upon mankind. This defign is fufficiently vifible in the account St Luke gives us of this discourse; but what is here related by St Matthew, puts the matter beyond all doubt :-Watch therefore, for ye know not the hour when your Lord doth come.

Hence

Hence, the propriety and force of the words of our text, with regard to the general argument and exhortation of our Lord to vigilance, stand thus:

"There can be no feason whatsoever, in which it is proper or fafe to grow fecure, and neglect a daily preparation for the folemn appearance of Chrift, either to fummon us before him by death, or to pour out trying. and terrible judgments upon our land, or to bring on the general judgment of quick and dead: I fay, there can be no season in which it can be safe to be secure and unprepared; because, there is no feafon in which he may not come, in one or other of these ways; and it would be shocking and irretrievable, to be furprised in an unprepared condition."

And befides, Chrift's coming both to the general judgment and to punish wicked communities, will certainly be in a time of general fecurity, as it was in the time of the flood, and deftruction of Sodom. It is generally in this condition he comes, and furprises men by death. Therefore, it is greatly to be apprehended, that the season of our security and negligence about his coming, will be the very juncture in which he will come to our great furprise, and to the everlafting forrow of many.-We ought then, always, to watch, and to be ready.

The words of our text, confidered independent on their relation to the general argument, prefent us with the fol lowing obfervations.

I. We may obferve the state of the old world before the flood. They were perfectly secure They were eating and drinking, 6. They were eagerly pursuing their pleafure, each in his own way, and according to his own taste. Their attention was univerfally engaged in those affairs, projects and applications, that were calculated only for a

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prefent fenfual happiness, utterly inapprehenfive both of the wrath of God, that was already enkindled against them, and of thofe fatal effects into which it foon burft out, and mingled them in one common destruction. They had no misgivings of heart with respect to their danger; although the justice of God is always awake, and attentive to the growth and prevalence of vice; or if some of them had any apprehenfions of evil, they did not suffer them to mature into ferious confiderations and fincere repentance. They were feduced either by a paffion to imitate the general practice and opinion; or carried away by an innate defire for fenfual gratifications, or overwhelmed in the cares and bufinefs of life.

Nor was this infenfibility owing to want of fufficient warning. In the fixth chapter of Genefis, God tells us with an original regard to mankind in that day, that his Spirit fhould not always firive with man. This, in the strongest manner, implies, that God had remonftrated against their wickedness-used proper methods to reform them, and had given them fufficient affurance of the fatal iffue of their impenitence. The Apostle Peter informs that Jefus Chrift, by his Spirit, preached to them their danger, and the neceffity of repentance. He acquaints us also, that Noah was employed to declare to them, in the name of God, the wickedness and danger of their practices. They had, likewife, the ftrongest confirmation of the truth of Noah's doctrine, for a great while before their eyes, in that long and tedious labour of his building the ark. So fingular a machine muft needs have struck their attention and awakened their curiofity. The use of which, when known, we may well fuppofe from their temper, did not fail to be matter of pleafantry and ridicule among them. How often did they call him an old foolish fanatic, and wild enthufiaft! How much was he

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the fubjects of the fcoffs and fneers of the gayer fort, while the graver ones among them, who were admired as oracles by the meaner rabble, pronounced his conduct the height of frenzy and madness. Would not fome say, 'See the doating fool, how he toils and labours to build himself a machine, by which he may escape the deluge that his difordered brain fuggests to him is to come.' While others reply, Curfe the old enthusiast, I wish he was drowned ten thousand fathom deep; for he does nothing but interrupt bufinefs, and distract the world with his reveries and nonfenfe.'

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II. We obferve, that their wickednefs, infenfibility and unbelief, continued to the last. The reprefentations of the divine displeasure against them were utterly dif regarded. God's threatnings carried no terror to their hearts, and consequently formed no prevailing argument or reason for reformation. The denunciations of general ruin, without a speedy change of heart and life, were no doubt looked upon imaginary and romantic; fitted only to alarm weak and superstitious minds, incapable of examining fuch predictions by the laws of reafon, and the perfections of God. We may eafily conclude, that they objected to Noah's prophecies that they could not be true, because they were repugnant to the divine attributes. It was natural to blind and unbelieving finners to affert, that it was inconfiftent with the mercy and goodness of the common parent of the universe, to deftroy fo many millions of his creatures, and that too only for indulging thofe very appetites with which himself had formed them. How plaufible would fuch arguments be? How well adapted to the tafte and depraved reafon of licentious and prefumptuous finners? How would they triumph in this reafoning, as a complete confutation of E 4

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