As the feast recommended in the text is of a sacred nature, it can of course afford no entertainment, and give no encouragement, to those presumptuous professors, who dare “to sin because grace abounds;” who take occasion, from the sumptuousness of the gospel feast, and the benignity of its Founder, to quote his very favors in justification of the most abominable licentiousness of manners; and sit down to his table only to insult him for the liberality that spread it. _Grace_, it is true, and grace alone, presides throughout with unrivalled glory, in contriving, accomplishing, and applying the great plan of salvation through the Redeemer. And though that grace confers all its favors gratuitously, and strongly presupposes the guilt and unworthiness of the recipients of them; yet as personal holiness is one of the favors it communicates, and makes a considerable branch of the evidences of a sinner’s salvation; they who leave it out in their pretended systems of evangelical truth, or disregard it in their walk and conversation, are convicted by the very fact of fatal error on the one hand, as well as of practical impiety on the other. For “the grace of God that bringeth salvation, teacheth us, that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live righteously, soberly, and godly, in this present world.” Tit ii. 12. Whoever sits down to the banquet of redeeming love, is supposed to rise up with a heart overflowing with gratitude to Jesus for the blessings imparted to him, and to go away more wise, more happy, and more holy. To act differently, would be to imitate the outrage of a victorious army rioting on the spoils of the vanquished, and intoxicating themselves with the fruits of their Commander’s conquests. Christ hath conquered for us; and the gospel feast is the consequence of his glorious victory over sin and hell. Believers conquer and feast with him. But their triumph ought to be sober, and their mode of rejoicing suited to the dangers they have escaped, and the sacred service in which they are engaged. But they who make Christ, either in their systems or their practice, “the minister of sin,” bear his name in vain, or expose it to reproach in the face of the world. The gospel, therefore, spreads no feast for the Antinomian; and, where it is abused, the food which it exhibits is turned into poison, and proves a savor of death unto death. “Without holiness no man shall see the Lord. And let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.”