A history of the work of redemption. Containing the outlines of a body of…

I BEGIN with an use of reproof; a reproof of three things▪ 1. Of unbelief. 2. Of self-righteousness. 3. Of a careless neglect of the salvation of Christ.

I BEGIN with an use of reproof; a reproof of three things▪ 1. Of unbelief. 2. Of self-righteousness. 3. Of a •areless neglect of the salvation of Christ.

I. If it be as we have heard, how greatly do these things reprove those who do not believe in, but reject the Lord Jesus Christ! i. e. all those who do not heartily receive him. Persons may receive him in profession, and carry well outwardly towards him, and may wish that they had some of those benefits that Christ has purchased, and yet their hearts not receive Christ; they may be hearty in nothing that they do towards Christ; they may have no high esteem of Christ, nor any sincere honour or respect to Christ; they may never have opened the door of their heart to Christ, but have kept him shut out all their days, ever since they first heard of Christ, and his salvation has been offered to them. Though their hearts have been opened to others, their doors have been flung wide open to them, and they have had free admittance at all times, and have been embraced and made much of, and the best room in their hearts has been given them, and the throne of their hearts has been allowed them: yet Christ has always been shut out, and they have been deaf to all his knocks and calls. They never could find an inclination of heart to receive him, nor would they ever trust in him.

Let me now call upon you with whom it is thus, to consider how great your sin, in thus rejecting Jesus Christ, appears to be from those things that have been said. You slight the glorious person, for whose coming God made such great preparation in such a series of wonderful providences from the beginning of the world, and whom, after all things were made ready God sent into the world, bringing to pass a thing before unknown, viz. the union of the divine nature with the human in one person. You have been guilty of slighting that great Saviour, who, after such preparation, actually accomplished the purchase of redemption; and who, after he had spent three or four and thirty years in poverty, labour, and contempt, in purchasing redemption, at last finished the purchase by closing his life under such extreme sufferings as you have heard and so by his death, and continuing for a time under the power of death, completed the whole. This is the person you reject and despise. You make light of all the glory of his person, and of all the glorious love of God the Father, in sending him into the