a decent and well-bred softness; and one may suppose himself religiously employed, in hearing the true gospel, and be charmed with the changes rung upon the names he has been accustomed to adore ; and still the god proclaimed may not be the blessed Jehovah. There may be a view exhibited that does not belong to the Creator, but to some imaginary god created for the occasion.

The text would furnish several topics of remark, but I intend to confine myself to one, To expose some of the false views of God, which are not unfrequently presented us under the appellation of the gospel; and thus illustrate the character of that only true God whom to know is eternal life.

I. There is sometimes an extolling of all the more clement attributes of God, as some have presumptuously distinguished, while the severer attributes are unnoticed. The design of these declaimers seems to be, that our attention be fixed exclusively upon what, in their estimation, is soft and mild and lovely in God, while his holiness, his justice and his truth;-all in him that can go to make a sinner afraid, or beget conviction and repentance, is industriously concealed. God's compassion for our lost and miserable world, his patience, his endurance, his long-suffering, his promptness to pardon, and total aversion to destroy ;-all those features of the divine mind, that can sooth alarm, are early and industriously developed, as if embracing the

whole of God that he himself loves, or man is required to worship and adore; while the other parts of the divine image are obscured, as one would hide the scars and excressences that have fortuitously covered more than half his visage. Thus the great luminary of the moral world must be cast into a deep and dark eclipse, that the naked eye of sense may gaze upon his few remaining glories. It is feared, we presume, that were the whole character of God exhibited, sinners would be filled with disgust, and be driven from the bosom of their Sovereign. He must not adhere to the principles of that law he has promulgated, nor care to vindicate himself from the aspersions that sinners have cast upon his character and his government. He must not resolve that mercy and truth meet together; and that righteousness and peace kiss each other. He must cast a smile upon the prodigal, ere he shall turn his face. or his feet toward his father's house. Thus must the holy and righteous God, before whom devils tremble, melt down into the weak and pitiful parent, or not one of his apostate family shall come back to his bosom and his service.-So men would judge.

But God seems to have had other views, and has revealed his whole character, fearless of the predicted consequences. If there was any danger from a full exposure of his character, why did he not hold himself concealed, or throw into the shade, as men would do for him, those parts of his character that must give offence. If that be good policy which I am

venturing to expose, God could have directed that neither the works of creation, nor the bible, should have told us the whole truth respecting himself. He might have suppressed the history of that revolt in heaven, and its results, and told us nothing of hell and the judgment, nor named in his book those attributes that throw around him such an atmosphere of darkness and terror. He need not have given us, if he had so pleased, the stories of the deluge, and of Sodom, and of Korah and his company. But God has exposed the whole truth, and that in the very book which he has directed should be our daily companion.

If the scheme I oppose be true, I know not how to account for such a bible as God has put into our hands, just calculated to betray a secret that should not have been divulged for worlds. If there belong to God any attributes that were not intended to be made known to sinners till they are reconciled to him; if they cannot safely be told that he is angry with the wicked every day, has appointed a time and place of judgment, and prepared a deep and dark perdition for the condemned: if they are to be urged to come to him, expecting to find him all mercy; then by what alarming oversight have we resolved to put the bible into the hands of sinners? Must the parental character of God so dazzle and fill the eye, as to eclipse the Sovereign, and the Judge, the Abettor of truth, and the Avenger of wrong and of outrage? And must we never know the whole character of

God, till we have to deal with him in the judgment? Can we be sure that the prodigal, after he has been thus decoyed home to his father's house, will be pleased with his father? Had he not better know, while away in his land of exile, exactly the father he must meet, and the father he must love, and stay there till this character is approved?

I know not where in the whole bible we are authorised, to elevate one attribute of God above another, and term the one mild and the other severe. I know not where men have learned, that there are principles in the divine nature and goverment, that to be fully known would subvert the benevolent design of the gospel. If God has thus instructed any of his ministers, and they act by his authority in deciding what may and what may not be developed to the world of the ungodly, I have only to say, "To their own master they stand or fall."

II. There is perhaps some occasion to fear, that some have gone into the opposite extreme, and have presented exclusively the more forbidding attributes of God, while his grace and mercy have been in this case too much concealed. When Jehovah is exhibited as constituted of entire sovereignty; as doing his pleasure in the armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth, without the least regard to the happiness and the salvation of his creatures; as casting after the wayward and the lost, no look of compassionate tenderness;-can this

be a faithful exhibition of the character of God? Should it be said, That God is willing to show his wrath, and that he has created intelligent beings on purpose that they might be the vessels of his wrath; and has communicated positive hardness to their hearts, because they did not render themselves depraved enough for his purpose; and pushed them on to a character, that would be sufficiently desperate for some deed of darkness, which he had resolved they should perpetrate ;-would one gather from all this the true character of God? I know that I have now presented an extreme case, and sincerely hope that not often, perhaps never, is sovereignty presented quite so bare and forbidding, and the truth pushed to an extremity so cold and cheerless. The objection to such presentations is, that they do not exhibit the whole character of God. He is willing to show his wrath, only where his mercy in Jesus Christ has been long and obstinately rejected. He created intelligent beings for his own glory, and will honour himself in their perdition, if by rejecting the Saviour, they count themselves unworthy of eternal life. He has hardened their hearts by the very dispensations that should have won them to duty and to God; has sent them strong delusions that they might believe a lie and be damned, when they did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. We must pour into these strong exhibitions of truth, in order to render them the gospel, and make them useful, the whole character of God.