5. All these difficulties are mightily strengthened, from their hearkening to sense, and trusting to its reports more than to the word of God. While believers are under these difficulties, their faith meets with many checks in its growth, and until they be enabled to overcome them, they continue to be little children in Christ. Their weak faith receives but little from Christ, and it continues weak, because they have but little dependence upon the effectual working of Christ's mighty power. The exceeding greatness of his power, is able to strengthen them, and he has promised it; but they dare not trust him. Consider, therefore, reader, if thou art one of these babes, why thou dost not grow up faster into Christ. The

First thing that stops thee, is the ignorance which is in thy mind about his person, and the prejudice against him, which is in thy carnal heart. These are in all men by nature; and these Satan will work upon, in order to hinder the increase of thy faith. He will use all his cunning, and his power, to keep thee from growing in that knowledge

of Christ, which is eternal life. He will inject into thy heart blasphemous thoughts against his Godhead; and when thou art reading in Scripture, or hearing about his being God manifest in the flesh, he will try to puzzle and perplex thy imagination, with a How can these things be? He will represent the union of the two natures in Christ, as a thing not to be understood; and as if they, who believed it with the clearest evidence of God's word and Spirit, had only some fancy about it. He has an old grudge against Christ, and will not scruple to tell any lies of him. He was a liar, from the beginning, and abode not in the truth. Regard him not. Mind what the word of truth says, and pray thou mayest understand it: for the more thou knowest of the Lord Christ, that blessed God-man, the more wilt thou be settled, and established in him. It is written of him, first, that he is God, true and very God, in the holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity; a person, co-equal and co-eternal with the Fa-. ther and the Holy Spirit, Isa. ix. 6. “Unto us a child is born, who is the mighty God;":

secondly, that he is Jehovah, which signifies the self-existent essence, Isa. xliii. 11. "I, even I, am Jehovah, and besides me, there is no Saviour;" from whence it is evident, that the Saviour is Jehovah, and that he exists in a manner independent of, and distinct from all other beings and things. St. Jude makes the opposition to this fundamental truth, the condemning sin of certain heretics, who denied Jesus Christ to be the only, Lord God, and our Lord. In the covenant of grace, this divine person undertook to be made man. He who was true and very God, was made true and very man: he had a reasonable soul and human flesh, and was in all points like other men, sin excepted. And as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ. This is the glorious person, who undertook, in the covenant of grace, to be man's surety. St. Paul calls him the surety of the New Testament; and what could there be wanting in him for this high office? He is every way qualified to be the surety for man, who is himself true and very man; who is also God as well as

man; and, therefore, has all the perfections. of Jehovah to render what he did and suffered, as man's surety, infinitely and everlastingly meritorious.

This is the blessed object of faith; God and man united in one Christ. Consider, then, reader, what the Scripture says of his wonderful person, in order that thy faith in him may be established. That very selfexistent God, who spake, and all things were made; who commanded, and they stand fast to this very hour, was made flesh. He came to be the surety for his people, to obey and suffer in their stead. What could not his almighty power effect? Is any thing too hard for the Lord God? What obedience can his Father's law demand, which he is not infinitely able to pay? What sufferings can satisfy his Father's justice, which he is not absolutely qualified to endure? for he has every perfection and attribute equal with the Father. On this truth thou must rest; and is it not a sure foundation? In the certainty of it, thou must seek to be more grounded every day because, as thou growest in the know

ledge of his divine person, thou wilt become more satisfied of his infinite sufficiency to save; and fully convinced of this, thou wilt be enabled from Scripture to answer and silence thine own unbelieving thoughts, and to reject the blasphemous suggestions of satan against the Lord Christ. Observe then that he is God, and that he is Jehovah. Read, and meditate on what the Scripture says of his Godhead, and pray that thou mayest be taught of God to understand it; for no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. It is his office to glorify Jesus, by enabling thee to believe him to be Lord and God, and to call him thy Lord and thy God; and to prove he is so, by thy humble dependence upon him for every blessing, both in time and in eternity.

It is much to be lamented, that believers in general take so little pains to get a clear knowledge of the doctrine of the ever blessed Trinity for want of which their faith is unsettled, and they are liable to many errors, both in judgment and practice. I would, therefore, most earnestly recommend it to all