light from that glorious body of light and splendor, that can convey light into the finner's mind, and illuminate his darkened understanding. Let your minds be otherwise enlightened as they will; let your knowledge in other arts and sciences be as extenfive as possible; and let your success be proportioned to your diligence in such studies and inquiries, to the height of your ambition and defires; yet you know nothing yet as you ought to know, unless you have the knowledge of Chrift and him crucified. Yea, all your laborious researches, and toilsome scrutinies and inquiries, are but loft labour, and good for nothing, if you don't know a Saviour, and don't fall under the enlightening influence and oрегаtion of his Holy Spirit. I don't however mean to disparage human learning, and diligence in the profecution of your respective studies. No; these are of great importance in themselves, will afford pleasure and profit to you, and will qualify you for being ufeful members of society, as well as for acting a part fuitable to your station and character on the stage of life. Far less would I bę understood to undervalue or decry the study of divine things, or make you fancy that a speculative acquaintance with the doctrines of Christianity delivered in the holy scriptures, is a vain and useless acquirement. No: my brethren, I have quite other views of the matter. I know the utility, the excellence, and the importance of the study of these things too well, to diffuade you from commencing or continuing any diflike or neglect of inquiring into the things that belong to your peace. I know that the knowledge of Chrift is the most excellent in itself, and the most beneficial to man; that grace refides not in an unrenewed heart, and that happiness in the other world is not referved for those who know not God, God, nor obey the gospel of our Lord Jefus Chrift. The Lord commands us to search the scriptures; to hide his word in our hearts, and to labour diligently, after knowledge and inftruction; and enforceth fuch commands with the most excellent motives, motives drawn from the fublimity, the excellence, the advantage, the pleasure, and happy confequents of fuch study and knowledge, and the hazard, the eternal hazard and danger of floth and neglect in the cafe. I only caution you, Gentlemen, against making religion a matter of mere speculation, and from thinking it a thing of no moment, a business you may neglect or omit innocently or with impunity. No; the study of religion ought to be preferred to all your other studies; it ought to lead the van of all other inquiries, and by no means to be thrown into the rear, or put off till old age, or made the amusement of a vacant hour. By no means. Wisdom is the principal thing thing, therefore. get wisdom; and with all your getting get under-. standing. Religion is necessary to falvation; upon the study and knowledge of it depends your eternal felicity. It therefore challengeth your attention and regard, and ought to be the object of your most fedulous inquiry and diligent study. Therefore carefully read the holy fcriptures, diligently attend the dispensation of gospel-ordinances, converse with the best religious treatises, and devote much of your time to meditation, prayer, and every other duty of religion, and mean of instruction; and at the same time cry to God for divine teaching and instruction; look unto the great Prophet who taught as man never taught. Thus shail you happily advance in the knowledge whose influence reacheth beyond the grave, yea penetrateth into eternity, and rendereth the fubject of it bleffed through eternal ages. Hear

Hear (fays Wisdom) instruction, and be wife, an i refuse it not. Bleffed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoso findeth me, findeth life, and shall obain favour of the Lord. But he that finneth against me, wrongeth his own foul; all they that hate me love death. This is the command and advice of the great Prophet of the church, the uncreated, the perfonal Wisdom of Jehovah, who was fet up from everlasting, from the beginning, ere the heavens were stretchedout as a canopy, or the valleys extended, to be the Redeemer of loft mankind; who was with Jehovah the Father, as one brought up with him, was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth, and his delights were with the fons of men. The command of a king seated on his throne, delivered with authority, mingled with lenity and meekness, is generally obeyed with a ready cheerfulness. How much more ought the command of the King of the universe, the Lord of heaven and earth, to be obeyed with joy and delight; especially when the command is founded in mercy and love to the finner, and obedience to it rewarded with eternal life? Hearken therefore to the inftruction of Wisdom: for the commandment is a lamp, and the law is light, and reproofs of instruction are the way of life; to keep you from evil women, from the flatteries of the tongues of strange women.

"Let me therefore, Gentlemen, inform you, from the holy oracles, that God made man upright; but he foon found out many inventions, malignant in themselves, and deadly in their effects. Adam, our original progenitor, was not only our natural, but federal or moral head. God having created him in the utmost perfection

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of body and mind, and blessed him with all the conveniencies and delights he could wish for, made a covenant or agreement with him, as representing his whole posterity, by which he exacted from him obedience to his holy law, promifed him eternal life upon finishing his course in that obedience, and threatened him with eternal death if he failed. The test of his obedience was a prohibition to eat of a tree in the garden in which God had placed him, called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Though this prohibition was in itself merely an arbitrary deed, and declarative of the fovereignty and absolute empire of the mighty Creator, as the tree in itself could be no more hurtful than any other tree of the garden, of the fruit of which he was allowed to eat freely; yet the Deity's interposing his authority, discharging the eating of it, rendered the action absolutely criminal; as the event proved. Man did not long continue in his primeval glory and felicity. He who was the favourite of Heaven, blessed above all creatures in heaven and earth; he who was lord of the lower world, and whom all the creatures were obliged to obey; he who had the highest advantages poffible and defirable, not subject to the artifices of seduction, the fallacies of error, or temptations from external agents, as we poor mortals are; this happy creature, the darling of Heaven, the perfection of divine architecture, the sovereign of the brute creation, and the envy of apoftate spirits, by fondly listening to the suggestions of his confort, who was created with equal excellen. cies, and who was imposed upon by Satan, the old Serpent, ate, alas! the forbidden fruit, fell from his primitive integrity, became subject to death in its utmost extent, and (listen with fear and terror!) involved all his race in the fame ruin. By one man fin entered into the world, and death by fin; and death hath passed upon all men, in whom all have finned Thus the human race was loft for ever, despoiled of their glory and excellency, stript of their innocence and beauty, disabled from serving their Maker, and became the objects of divine abhorrence, the scorn of angels, the prey of devils, and a curse to the brute creation. In confequence of this fatal lapse, we are born children of wrath, heirs of hell, and obnoxious to eternal perdition; the faculties of our minds are all perverted and difordered, and our bodies are instruments of fin. We are flaves to the devil, the servants of fin, subject to the tyranny and disorder of irregular passions, and incapable to resist one temptation, one motion of luft, or a wanton glance. Witness, my brethren, the life we have led; trace the springs of your actions; canvass the source of your uncleanness and wanton dalliance; search into the rife of your ebriety and gaming, your attending the playhouse, and other modish diversions. Let confcience speak, stop not her mouth. Who of us refifted the fight and pleasure of generous wine? who opposed invitations to the bed and embraces of a harlot? who was not fired at the fight of a beauty, adorned with the graces of shape and tongue? who retreated from the playhouse, the assembly, or a ball, even when business more important challenged the attention? • Who withstood parties of pleasure or of gaming? We are in a state of corruption and fin; all mankind are in the fame deplorable circumstances. Who can deny it, though revelation had not affured us of the fact, or told us the fource and spring of the fatal inheritance? Every man is a witness of it against himself; and men joined in fociety attest the melancholy truth with shining evidence.