oppreffed, the unhappy confequence of accumulated Guilt? we are enabled with him to answer, I thank God-or rather, The Grace of God thro' Jefus Chrift our Lord. Therefore, as St. Paul proceeds, there is now no condemnation to them which are in Chrift Jefus, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. * The refult of this reafoning cannot but be evident to the meanest and most uninformed understanding. The true profeffion of Chriftianity, the true Faith in Chrift, is that which removes the Guilt of Sin, and by which we can fay, there is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jefus. Religion, a state which I fear most of you have never known, now invites you to receive her comforts. With * Rom, vii. 24. 25. & vii. 1. With earnestnefs fhe beckons you to her fide, and addreffes you with the voice of Supplication, This is the way, walk you in it. + But Christianity, my unhappy Brethren, confifts not in a fet of fpeculative opinions. It is not an affent alone to any doctrine that will fave you. That book, in which the Will of God is revealed to mankind, holds forth a train of moral duties, which the Author of our religion requires us, under the fevereft penalties, to perform. How many of these you have violated, your own hearts can beft inform you. Certain it is that the recollection must make every nerve to tremble, every Soul to fhrink. Look back upon your miferable lives, and reflect how often you have broken every band of human Society, how often the duties you owed to God, your Neighbours, and yourselves, have been trans + If. xxx. 21. greffed; greffed; then-enter into the rock, and hide thee in the duft, for fear of the Lord, and for the Glory of his Majefty. + It is not neceffary to enumerate the various crimes which men are capable of committing. The heart is deceitful above all things and defperately wicked: who can know it? Yes. God fearcheth the heart: he trieth the reins. Unto him all hearts are open, all defires known, and from him no fecrets are hidden. All things are naked and open to the Eyes of him with whom we have to do. § Need we a stronger argument, to prove the Truth of this Affertion, than that which now appears before us? Your fecret Sins hath he difcovered, your crimes. hath he made manifeft as the day. And tho' religion affures us, that every man's offences, however veiled from If. ii. 1o. Jer. xvii. 9, 10. § Heb. iv. 13. from human fight, are ftill before the Eyes of God; yet your tranfgreffions, for wife reafons, have been made public; to inftruct you that you owe the world a recompence for the Offences you have committed against it: and that if your Examples, however afflicting to yourfelves, may but conduce to deter others from pursuing the fame perilous paths; or your present punishment prove the means of refcuing your own Souls from future destruction, happy may you efteem the day in which you were doomed to captivity and chains. Turn ye, then, to the Strong-hold, ye prifoners of hope.-Ye captives of Sin and Satan! endeavour to extricate yourselves from your prefent fevere bondage, by becoming the Servants of Him, whofe Service is perfect freedom. In undertaking fo confiderable a change, you are not left without Inftruction. Teachers C and You and Laws are both at hand. are intreated with the Voice of Love, and threatned with the rod of punishment. You have every thing to gain; for, in your prefent unhappy circumstances, you cannot fall lower in this world, and miferable must be your Expectation in the other. But perhaps you imagine, that when the current of Life is flopped, all fenfation and remembrance ceafe with it that the Grave is the boundary of Exiftence, and that the profpects of a future world, whether of Happiness or Mifery, are the mere paintings of fancy, the fports of the imagination, the dreams of the credulous. Before you can bring yourselves to believe this, you muft diveft your Minds of the faculty of thought; you must debase your reafon below that of the most uninformed Savage; and by an Effort, much greater than that which would have |