s, O know your privilege! What his
soul desireth, he doth even that, and what he hath seriously promised to
you, he desires. If you ask, who are heirs of the promises? I would
answer, simply those and those only, who do own them and challenge them,
and cling to them for their life and salvation, those who seek the
inheritance only by the promise, and whose soul desires them and embraces
them. O, if you would observe how unlike ye are to God! Ye change often,
ye turn often out of the way, but that were not so ill if ye did not
imagine him to be like yourselves, and it is unbelief which makes him like
to yourselves,--when your frame and tender disposition changes,--when
presence and access to God is removed. That is wrong, it speaks out a
mortal creature indeed, but if it be so, O do no more wrong! Do not, by
your suspicions and jealousies and questionings of him, imagine that he is
like unto you and changed also. That is a double wrong and dishonour to
his majesty. Hath he not said, "I am the Lord, and change not." "He is in
one mind, who can turn him?" How comes it then, that ye doubt of his love
as oft as ye change? When ye are in a good temper, ye think he loves you;
when it is not so ye cannot believe but he is angry, and hates you. Is not
this to speak quite contrary to the word, that he is a God that
changes--that he is not in one mind, but now in one, and then in another,
as oft as the inconstant wind of a soul's self pleasing humour turns
about? Here is your rest and confidence, if you will be established, not
within yourselves,--not upon marks and signs within you, which ebb and flow
as the sea, and change as the moon,--but, upon his unchangeable nature and
faithful promises. This we desire to hold out to you all, as one ground
for all. You would every one have some particular ground in your own
disposition and condition, and think it general doctrine only which layeth
it not home so, but believe it, I know no ground of real soul
establishment, but general truths and principles common to you all, and
our business is not to lay any other foundation,--or more foundations,
according to your different conditions,--but to lay this one foundation,
Christ and God unchangeable, and to exhort every one of you to make that
general foundation your own in particular, by leaning to it, and building
upon it, and clinging to it. All other are sandy and ruinous.

Let us now, in this sad time, press consolation from this. The Lord