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troduce idolatry instead of the worship of the true God, practise every crime instead of exemplifying every virtue, on condition they would let this base people share their guilty enjoyments. Miserable people! you love to have it so, in the time of a Jeremiah too, and when the enemy is just at your gates, and the judgments of God, hanging like a thick cloud, just ready to overwhelm you with misery! You love to have it so; so did not Abraham your father: but you keep bad company, and place a superstitious confidence in your profligate guides! "If a man say, I will prophesy unto you of wine and of strong drink, even he shall be the prophet of this people!" But what says your compassionate friend Jeremiah? He asks this alarming question, "What will you do in the end thereof?" Suppose this prophet to return to the world again, pity you as he did the people of his own times, meet you in some of your walks, look steadfastly at you, and with tears running down his cheeks, gently ask you, "What will you do in the end thereof?" Are you wiser than the old world, who lived as you do, while Noah was building and entering the ark, and knew not till "the flood came and swept them all away?" Will you provoke the Lord to jealousy? are you stronger than he? What will you do in the end? I defy you to give an answer that will not be a reason for your immediate attention to Christianity. If that punishment, which is at the end of your path, and is in full prospect all the way, be before your eyes, you will instantly "make supplication to your judge," that you come not into that place of torment:" if, on the contrary, you have repentance, forgiveness, and heaven in prospect, you will be confounded for your ingratitude to that benefactor, from whom you live in hopes of receiving such undeserved favours.

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Brethren, if there be in you the least degree of selflove, or the fear of God; if you have not lived in sin till your understandings are blasted and perished, I conjure you, respect the Apostle of us Gentiles, who now says to "If you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ." Tell him, if you have the heart, We will not read, nor will we hear any body else read the book that contains the christian religion. Religion is the last thing we desire to understand, and we prefer a newspaper

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and a ballad, before all your histories and prophecies, and epistles and gospels. If this be your case, when heathens are pitied, some of whom went half over the then known world in pursuit of wisdom, but never saw the wisdom of God in the Christian religion; I say, when you and they stand at the judgment-seat of Christ, to receive for the deeds done in the body, their condition will be more tolerable than yours.

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Oh! may that God "whose tender mercies are over all his works, who desireth not the death of a sinner, but that he should return and live," inform your minds, by means of our instructions, and so may he enlighten the eyes of your understanding, and give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints!" When you come to die, may he "show you the path of life ;" and in the world to come may you "see him face to face, and know even as also you are known!"

DISCOURSE II.

ALMIGHTY GOD THE LOVELY FATHER OF ALL MANKIND.

[AT GRANCHESTER.]

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LUKE xi. 2.

When ye pray, say, Our Father.

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LUTHER, that great reformer of religion in Germany, about two hundred and fifty years ago; Luther was one day catechising some country people in a village in Saxony. When one of the men had repeated these words, "I believe in God the Father Almighty," Luther asked him what was the signification of Almighty? The countryman honestly replied, "I do not know." "Nor do I know," said Luther, nor do all the learned men in the world know: however, you may safely believe that God is your Father, and that he is both able and willing to protect and save yourself, and all your neighbours." The reformer might have added, that "no man had seen God at any time;" that no man had "either heard his voice, or seen his shape;" that, when Moses said to God, "I beseech thee show me thy glory," the answer was, "thou canst not see my face, for there shall no man see me and live ;" and that all the displays of God, by his works, in the eyes of men, were rather a ing of his power," than a discovery of it. Yes, my brethren, "the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords, who alone hath immortality, dwelleth in the light which no man can approach unto; and him no man hath seen nor can see." It was wise, therefore, in Luther not to pretend to teach what neither the countryman, nor himself, nor all the men in the world understood; and he had the advantage of the best examples to justify the method he took; that is, to allow what all mankind are obliged to allow, that there is a God; that God hath all possible per

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fections, is perfectly wise, perfectly just, perfectly good, too wise to do any thing wrong, too good to do any thing unkind; and that all these perfections are the guardians, protectors, and friends of every good man.

Moses began to write the Holy Scriptures, but he did not begin by attempting to prove there was a God; but, taking this for granted, the first line he wrote was this, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” When the same Moses besought God to show him his glory, meaning by that himself, God said, "I will make all my goodness pass before thee:" and, on the same principles, when one of the disciples of Jesus Christ said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, Jesus, who was with God, and knew God, and came from God, said unto them, When ye pray, say, What? Jehovah, First Cause, Supreme Being, co-equal, co-essential? No: but, when ye pray, say, Our Father.

In order to enter into the spirit of our subject; that is, so to know God as to love and obey him, we will endeavour... to take off some of the veils which conceal our heavenly Father... to examine the representations which he hath given us of himself. . . and to apply the whole to the improvement of our hearts, and the amendment of our lives. "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth; forgive us our sins; and lead us not into the temptation" of thinking meanly and wickedly of thee; but deliver us from all the evil notions of God which ignorant and vicious men entertain, and to this end condescend to bless the good word which we are now going to hear.

My brethren, if you desire to form just notions of Almighty God, lay aside all creatures. Your Father, who is in heaven, is not earth, water, air, light; he is not gold, silver, precious stones; he is not fire, a star, a sun; he is not a man; he is not any of these apart; he is not all these put together; he is not great or little, tall or low, round or square; he is not white or red, or of any colour; he is not to be smelled, tasted, felt, weighed, or measured. All these are his works; but none of these is himself. Your forefathers, like all other uninstructed people in the world, made images to represent God; and, as they could not think of any one thing sufficient to describe even what lit

tle they knew of God, they endeavoured to represent one of his excellencies by one image, and another by another, till they were multiplied beyond reckoning; and, as they paid that respect to such images, which was due to none but Almighty God, the images were called idols, and the people idolaters, who amidst all their gods and lords, were "without God in the world."

Suppose an old Briton, one of your fathers, about two thousand years ago, to have fallen blind, and to have lost the use of his limbs, so that he could neither see nor feel the parish idol; yet if he, lying in his bed, or sitting over his fire, remembered the form of the idol, and felt respect for it in his heart, should we not have reason to say he was an idolater? Now this may be your case; for if you think of God under any form, and respect that form as God, though you cannot produce any likeness of the form in your mind, yet this idea of God will become a veil thrown over your understanding, and will prevent your entertaining just notions of Almighty God. This you must lay aside, if you desire to know God.

In like manner, if you would form just notions of Almighty God, you must lay aside all the similitudes of Scripture, under which the inspired writers speak of God. I exact nothing of you in this respect, but what you yourselves perform every day in other respects. You say, A sharp man, with a sharp scythe, on a sharp morning, with a sharp appetite, mowed an acre of grass before breakfast, which was sharp work: but you mean, an ingenious man, whose scythe had a keen edge, early in the morning, while it was yet cold, and though he was all the while very hungry, cut an acre of grass before breakfast, which was hard work. Now why do you use the same word to express wit, cold, hunger, hardship, which properly signifies only the fine edge or point of a tool? You do so, because you have more thoughts than words to express them, and because there is some one general likeness in which all these things agree; and as you understand one another, there is no danger; for you lay aside, when you hear of a sharp appetite, the ideas of edge, wit, cold, hardship, and understand hunger.

If words be too few and too poor to express other sub

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