we have furveyed what we are, and what we may be, let us then afk ourselves, whether the proposals of God for our falvation, in their whole extent of obedience as well as faith, be not well worth our conftant attention?—and, whether it be not madness, if we fuffer the tranfitory pleasures and enjoyments of this world to deprive us of the eternal happiness, and plunge us into the eternal mifery, of the next? VOL, I. H SERMON SERMON VIII. CONSEQUENCES OF REJECTING THE GOSPEL. ROMANS i. 28. As they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind. ST. Paul in this chapter very largely fets out the moral, or rather the immoral, ftate of the heathen world before the gospel of Chrift was known among them; and the text I have now read to you points out two obfervations that may be drawn from it, which I shall make the fubject of my present difcourfe. The firft obfervation is --that the Gentiles had the knowledge of God, but did not like to retain it. H 2 The The Gentiles were capable of discovering the being and perfections of God; many did discover them; and those who did not, might, if they had applied their natural faculties, and attended to what they faw about them. The apostle fays - "That which may be known "of God is manifeft in them, for God hath "fhewed it unto them.' Not that they were capable of discovering all that belongs to the nature of God, which is more than even revelation hath fhewn us, but that they were capable of discovering as much as it was expedient for them to know of God-his eternity, his power, and his godhead or divinity; by which last term the apostle seems to understand thofe perfections, which naturally occur to the mind under the word God—that is, a being infinitely good, juft, and wife, the maker and governor of the world. All this the apostle fays the Gentiles might discover of God from the visible works of the creation. God, he fays, had fhewed them all this; which expreffion, as the Gentiles had no fupernatural revelation to inftruct them, muft mean the natural intellectual faculties, which God had given them, and by their application of which, to what they faw in the world about them, they might might discover the being and perfections of God. 66 But the Gentiles either neglected to attain this knowledge, which might be the cafe with the generality of them-or they did not like to retain it,-by making a proper use of it, which was the cafe with the reft; for they all refused to pay God that honour and obedience which was due to him, and in fo doing were all of them inexcufable; the one part, in not having a knowledge, which they might and ought to have had; the other part, in not rightly applying a knowledge which they had. The apostle says, they did not "like to retain God in their knowledge," which fhews, that God had not only given them natural intellectual faculties fufficient for dif covering him, if they would apply them, but had left them free in their ufe of them. The wisdom of God hath ever dealt with man according to what he hath made him. God made him a rational free being, and he hath always treated him as fuch. It was neceffary that man should have a knowledge of God, in order to obey him; and this knowledge, which it was neceffary for man to have, God fets before him in a way in which it was fuitable for man to receive it; it was |