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God, it must be because God is unwilling; if so, the language of that sinner's heart is "why doth he yet find fault?” Nay, but O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus ?"

Sinners are apt to confound a willingness to escape hell, with a willingness to come to Christ; and a desire to be happy, with a desire to be holy. But these things are widely different, the one from the other. This confusion of distinguishable desires, arises out of imperfect and erroneous views of the nature of heaven, and of its happiness and employments. It is said of sinners that they "hate knowledge and do not CHOOSE the fear of the Lord." Prov. i. 29.

Indeed when a sinner is made willing to come to Christ, he is not able of himself to follow him, and to hold on his way of faith. After he has received Christ Jesus the Lord, he needs continued help and grace, to walk in him. The spirit may be willing, but the flesh weak. Paul declared that to will was present with him, but how to perform that which is good, he found not. Rom. vii. 18. For the good he would, he dia not, and the evil which he would not, that he did; verse 19. This he attributed to sin that still dwelt in him; verse 20. Hence he complains of a warfare between the law of his members, and the law of his (now renewed) mind; verse 23. "So that it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.' Rom. ix. 16. The apostle calls his inability his sin. Rom. vii. 20. And yet it was an inability which he could not remove: for he cries out "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" verse 24. He did not suppose that he could deliver himself, on the contrary he attributes to God his ability to serve Him with his mind. I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord;" verse 25. This indwelling sin which hindered him from doing the good he would, was not laid to Paul's charge for his condemnation, because he consented not to it, but delighted in the law of God after the inward man; verse 22. But in the case of an impenitent sinner, who serves God neither with his mind nor flesh, this inability is regarded as a sufficient ground of condemnation; and cannot, therefore, be named as his excuse for impenitency. Besides, it ought to be borne in mind, that sinners plead their inability as their infirmity, and not as their sin. They overlook the fact that their inability is their sin. Viewing inability in this light, they are not fully convinced of its existence; for a sinner is described in the third chapter of Revelation, verse 17, as saying "I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing," and yet as

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Knowing not that he is wretched and miserable and poor an blind and naked." To plead inability as an infirmity, is to b ignorant of its criminality, and is only equalled in perversenes and folly by the plea of a murderer, who relies, for an escap from punishment, upon the excuse that his aversion to the ma he has slain was unconquerable, and his inclination to take hi life, was irresistible; a circumstance which enhances his guil rather than extenuates his offence.

The design of this discussion has been to show that there in the doctrine of human helplessness and dependence, no im peachment of the divine character and justice. David cor fesses and bewails his wilful transgressions, and his native de pravity, in which latter this inability consists, in order that Go might be justified when he speaks, and clear when he judges Ps. li. 1-5. It was the further design of this discussion, thu to wrest from the sinner's hand the feeble and unhallowed wea pon with which he would contend against God and his govern ment; and in love to the sinner, to tear away from beneath hir the sandy foundation on which he stands, in self-justification and in the wilful indulgence of vain, delusive, and destructiv hopes of ultimate acquittal at the bar of God; and thus arous him from the dream of a false security, before it be forever to late, and bring him, if possible, to the foot of the cross, withou excuse, convicted and self-condemned, to look upon Him who he had pierced, and mourn.

THE END.