Hints of Meditations at the Sacrament, October 7, 1750

The believer rendered ultimately secure from death and sin

I INTRODUCED the Ordinance with a meditation on Jer. i. 20, “The iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none; and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found: for I will pardon them whom I reserve.” A promise relating to the re-admission of the Israelites into the charter of salvation, and therefore common to Christians. God will pardon them more fully. It implies, that if sin were sought for, there should be no trace found. This may refer to the mark of the curse upon them, when the blood of Christ lay on them, and on their children. God would do it entirely away; and so he does with respect to all believers. As yet we see not all things put under his feet, although it is said they shall be. We see not all the sins of Judah and of Israel done away — or of God’s people; they are under some remaining tokens of sin; and of these, are all distempers, all the deaths of children, and all other calamities. Yet soon shall their separate spirits be dismissed; and then, with regard to them, there will not be a mark of sin remaininsi;! God never joined a rational soul to a body for a punishment: it was a token of his favour, to bestow instruments of action, and of happiness. Death never came otherwise than as the wages of sin, actual or imputed; therefore we must consider souls in separate abodes, even in abodes of glory, as under some remembrance of sin; that is only to be done away by the resurrection. Never did any sinful creature appear in the likeness of such bodies; we are not then, as servants of Christ, in the likeness of sinful, but of sinless flesh. Death and sin shall then be swallowed up in victory! And God says, “I will pardon those whom I reserve;” intimating, that it was in consequence of his reservation that they were pardoned. He reserves them as a little remnant from destruction:

except the Lord had chosen them they would have been cut off as was Sodom, where there was no remnant. He preserves them as a remnant remaining according to the election of grace. We are a remnant. We might have been cut off unconverted. God has spared, has reserved us. Adore his name, and trust in him to aboHsh all remaining memorials of sin. And, O! rejoice in the pardon. Blessed is the man whose iniquity is pardoned. Psalm xxxii. 1, 2; Rom. iv. 7, 8. Is not ours? Are we not receiving the pardon? Let us trust in Christ And, O, let us rejoice!

After breaking the bread, in which I repeated the heads of the sermon, I had an affecting representation of my heart’s desire, and prayed for every one of my people, and for each of my hearers.