The result is that with all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness we sustain the conflict.

However heavy the trial may be, we oppose to it patience in sustaining the load. However long continued and repeated the affliction, we oppose longsuffering to it, which waits all God's time, and says, "Blessed is the man that endureth temptation, for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of James i. 12. life."

Nor is joy absent. St. Paul adds, with joyfulness;

and so in the Epistle to the Romans, "We glory in Rom. v. 3. tribulation;" and St. James, "Brethren, count it all

joy when ye fall into divers temptations." And James i. 2. thus the apostles went forth from the presence of

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the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy Acts v. 41. to suffer shame for his name."

His cheerful resignation under the severest afflictions, gilded with holy joy, is peculiar to the christian doctrine, and was never pretended to in any other, much less produced. But in the Gospel it is the appropriate fruit of all the discoveries of grace there made, as applied by the Holy Ghost with efficacy to the heart.

Let us, then, direct our prayers and endeavours to these three main heads of St. Paul's sublime supplication for the Colossians-uniting them all in equal proportion, and omitting no one of them. Let us advance in knowledge, guarded on each hand by wisdom and spiritual understanding. Let us apply all this light to our growth in practical obedience

unto all well pleasing and fruitfulness in every good work; and let us leave our trials and persecutions, our spiritual enemies and foes, the errors of false teachers around us, and our own weakness and impotency, to the glorious power of the Holy Ghost.

So, whatever may await us, whatever invasions of false doctrines, whatever assault of revived popery, whatever dreams of heathen philosophy, we shall by the first of them be able to frustrate their designs by a full knowledge of God's will in Holy Scripture, wisely and spiritually understood and applied; we shall by the second resist them by a steady pursuit of manly and solid and divinely commanded good works: whilst by the third we repose in all emergencies, for the might we need, on the power of our reconciled and covenant God, who places his highest glory in displaying the triumphs of his grace and power in the weakness of those whom he carries on to final victory.

LECTURE V.

DISTINGUISHING BLESSINGS OF

REDEMPTION—

MEETNESS FOR HEAVEN, AND TRANSLATION FROM THE POWER OF DARKNESS TO THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST.

COL. i. 12, 13.

WE are coming now into the very heart of St. Paul. The preface or exordium to the whole Epistle being finished, ver. 1-11, the apostle prepares to enter upon his principal subject, the inexhaustible fulness of Christ to save them that believe, without the addition of human traditions, Jewish ceremonies, or philosophical speculations.

He enters upon this in the verses before us, which describe some of the distinguishing blessings of the redemption of Christ in its application to the soul of man. 1. A meetness for heaven communicated; and 2. In order to this, a deliverance from the power of Satan vouchsafed.

12. Giving thanks unto the Father who hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.

For praise still fills the heart of the apostle when he considers the immense benefits bestowed on the Colossian converts, contrasted with their former state.

He had already thanked God for the general and incipient blessings of faith in Christ Jesus, love to

all the saints, and the hope laid up for them in heaven. He now blesses God for the stupendous benefits from which these primary graces flowed, and in the completion of which also they would terminate.

He repeats his thanksgiving, in this verse, in order to raise the minds of the Colossians under their sorrows and fears. Let them not be too much depressed, nor let sophists and false brethren bewilder them the solid blessings of Christ are more than a counterbalance for all their tribulations. Let them still give thanks and praise to God the Father for his mercies towards them, and press on to the full enjoyment of them in heaven.

Who hath made us meet. Meetness is a suitableness, a fitness for a certain state or certain employments; a disposition of heart, of feeling, of habits, adapted to a certain condition, namely, the society of the saints in light.

Meetness is a very different thing from pardon and justification; and the attempt to confound it with them, and thus build up man's merits on the ruin of Christ's righteousness, is the fundamental error of too many of our modern divines, as well as of the Tridentine fathers.

This meetness is an internal change, gradually produced by the Holy Spirit by the renewing of the soul, which fits and prepares the fallen and corrupt heart of man for holy pleasures, holy duties, and holy society in the heavenly world.

By nature we have no meetness, no preparation, no qualification, no congruity, no capacity, for partaking of the inheritance of the saints in light.

We have not only no right nor title, because we are sinners and have broken the law of God, and are under the curse; but, besides that, we are excluded by having no taste, no possibility of finding happiness in a holy heaven. We should be out of our element there it would afford us no gratification-it would be distasteful, incongruous, miserable

to us.

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There is "a carnal mind" in each of us, which is

enmity against God." There is a will opposed to Rom. viii. 7 the divine will. There are affections full of impurity, disorder, perturbation, opposition to holiness. There is an understanding darkened, besotted, "alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in us, because of the hardness of our hearts." There are false notions attached to the Eph. iv. 18. words happiness, pleasure, satisfaction. The business of heaven, the perpetual songs of praise, the incessant contemplation, adoration, love of infinite holiness there exercised, the converse with holy beings, the ceaseless effusions of perfect love to God and his saints, would afford us no delight. For "the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” Nor will the offers of the Gospel, 1 Cor. ii.14. nor a profession of belief in it, nor the outward

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