←988
←988
‘Were all these talents and excellences’ (alluding to the classic sages and orators), ‘united in one man; and you were the person so richly endowed; and could you employ them all in every sermon you preach; yet you could have no reasonable hope to convert and save one soul, while you lay aside the glorious Gospel of Christ, and leave it entirely out of your discourses. Let me proceed yet further, and say—Had you the fullest acquaintance, that ever man acquired, with all the principles and duties of natural religion, both in its regards to God and your fellow-creatures—had you the skill and tongue of an angel to range all these in their fairest order, to place them in their fullest light, and to pronounce and represent the whole law of God with such force and splendour, as was done to the Israelites at Mount Sinai; you might perhaps lay the consciences of men under deep conviction (“for by the law is the knowledge of sin”); but I am fully persuaded that you would never reconcile one soul to God, you would never change the heart of one sinner, nor bring him into the favour of God, nor fit him for the joys of heaven, without this blessed Gospel which is committed to your hands.
The great and glorious God is jealous of his own authority, and of the honour of his Son Jesus. Nor will he condescend to bless any other methods for obtaining so Divine an end, than what he himself has prescribed. Nor will his Holy Spirit, whose office is to “glorify Christ,” stoop to concur with any other sort of means for saving sinners, where the name and office of his Son, the only appointed Saviour, are known, despised, and neglected. It is the Gospel alone that is the power of God to salvation. ‘If the Prophets will not stand in his counsel, nor cause the people to hear his way, they will never be able to turn Israel from the iniquity of their ways, nor from the evil of their doings—Unless, therefore, you have such a high esteem for the Gospel of Christ, and such a sense of its Divine worth and power, as to take it along with you in all your efforts to save souls, you had better lay down your Ministry, and abandon your sacred profession; for you spend your strength for nothing, and you waste your breath in empty declamation.’ Watts’s Humble Attempt, pp. 30, 31, 38.