elying on the promises to repenting sinners of acceptance through
the Redeemer, they have renounced and abjured all other masters, and
have cordially and unreservedly devoted themselves to God. This is
indeed the very figure which baptism daily represents to us: like the
father of Hannibal, we there bring our infant to the altar, we
consecrate him to the service of _his proper owner_, and vow _in his
name_ eternal hostilities against all the enemies of his salvation.
After the same manner Christians are become the sworn enemies of sin;
they will henceforth hold no parley with it, they will allow it in no
shape, they will admit it to no composition; the war which they have
denounced against it, is cordial, universal, irreconcilable.

But this not all--It is now their determined purpose to yield themselves
without reserve to the reasonable service of their rightful Sovereign.
"They are not their own:"--their bodily and mental faculties, their
natural and acquired endowments, their substance, their authority, their
time, their influence; all these, they consider as belonging to them,
not for their own gratification, but as so many instruments to be
consecrated to the honour and employed in the service of God. This must
be the master principle to which every other must be subordinate.
Whatever may have been hitherto their ruling passion; whatever hitherto
their leading pursuit; whether sensual, or intellectual, of science, of
taste, of fancy, or of feeling, it must now possess but a secondary
place; or rather (to speak more correctly) it must exist only at the
pleasure, and be put altogether under the controul and direction, of its
true and legitimate superior.

Thus it is the prerogative of Christianity "to bring into captivity
_every thought_ to the obedience of Christ." They who really feel its
power, are resolved (in the language of Scripture) "to live no longer to
themselves, but to him that died for them;" they know indeed their own
infirmities; they know, that the way on which they have entered is
strait and difficult, but they know too the encouraging assurance,
"They who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength;" and relying on
this animating declaration, they deliberately purpose that, so far as
they may be able, the grand governing maxim of their future lives shall
be, "_to do all to the glory of God_."

Behold here the seminal principle, which contains within it, as in an
embryo state, the rudiments of all