lections; but though we may not be able to explain the mode of his op perations, the Scriptures warrant us to assert, that, when men are renewed and prepared for heaven, it is through satisfaction of the spirit, and belief of the truth. How enlivening the thought! how encouraging the motive! We are not left to struggle alone with the difficulties which attend the practice of virtue in the present imperfect state. The merciful Father of our spirits is ever near to hep our infermities, to enlighten the understanding, to strengthen good resolutions, and, in concurrence with our owa endeavours, to make us conquerors over all opposition. Faithful is he to his promises and will not suffer the sincere and well disposed to be tempted above what they are able to bear. What can be desired more than this? To promote the virtue and happiness of his moral offspring, the Sapreme Parent hath done all that is consistant with the holiness of his nature, and the free agency of man: if then we are not virtuous and happy it is our own faults, and we are utterly inexcusible, in refusing the grace and mercy proffered in the gospel.

Let us also remember, that the great doctrine of the gospel concerning the propitious mercy of God to all penitents through CHRIST JESUS, greatly contributes to the ease and pleasure of a religious life. Let it be granted, that the hope of pardon is essential to the religion of fallen creatures, & one of it's first principles; yet, considering the doubts and suspicions which are apt to arise in a mind conscious of guilt it is uodoubtedly a great and inestimable favour, to be relieved in this respect by a messenger from Omnipotence himself. This is our happiness: we are not left to depend upon consequential reasonings, which the bulk of mankind are little used to ; but we are assured, that upon our true repentance, we shall, through the mediation of Christ receive the full remission of past sins, and be restored to the same state and favour with our Maker, as if we had never transgressed his laws; here the gospel triumphs; with these assurances it abounds; upon this head the declarations of our blessed Saviour and his apostles are so express and full that every one who believes them, & knows himself to be a true penitent, must banish every doubt and fear, and rejoice with joy unspeakable: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Mat. xi. 28. "All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men." ch. xii. 31. "Be it known unto you, men and brethren, that though this man has preached unto you the forgiveness of sins; & by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses." Acts xiii. 38, 39, "The blood of Jesus cleanseth from all sin." John i. 7. What grace and favour is this! Who can dwell upon the transporting theme too long! Now our way is plain before us, and the burden we are to bear is made easy. No sins are unpardonable, if repented of and forsaken; for it is said such shall find mercy.

You who have never yet regarded religion, but pursued a course of vice and sensuality all your lives long, are earnestly entreated to consider, that, though your conduct has been base to the last degree, your case is not desperate, far from it: the God whom you have so highly offended commiserates your errors, is ever ready to extend his pardoning mercy to his most degenerate creatures upon their repentance and reformation, and " is in Christ Jesus reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing unto" penitent sinners "their trespasses." 2 Cor. v. 19. "Let the wicked" therefore "forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord," who will so liberally extend his mercy to him; "and to our God," who will thus " abundantly pardon." Isaiah Iv. 7. What still further conduces to render the Christian religion easy and delightful is it's leading us to the perfect, eternal life of heaven. It cannot be denied but that we may draw from the light of nature strong presumptions of a future state; the present existance does not look like an

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entire scene but rather like the infancy of human nature, which is capable of arriving at a much higher degree maturity: but whatever solid founda tion the doctrine of a future state may have in nature and reason, certain it is, that through the habitual neglect of reflection, and the force of irregular passions, this doctrine was, before the coming of our blessed Saviour, very much disfigured, and, in a great measure, lost amongst the sons of men, some of whom affirmed, that there was neither resurrection, angel, or spirit.

A future state of rewards and punishments was a matter of mere speculation and uncertainty in the heathen world; it was sometimes hoped for sometimes doubted of, and sometimes absolutely denied. The law of Moses, though of divine original, is chiefly enforced by promises of temporal blessings; and, even in the writings of the prophets, a future immortality is very sparingly mentioned, and obscurely represented: but the doctrine of our Saviour hath "brought life and immortality to light." In the gospel we have a distinct account of another world attended with many engaging circumstances about which the decisions of reason were dark and confused. We have the testimony of the author of our religion, who was raised from the dead and who afterwards, in the presence of his disciples, ascended into heaven. In the New Testament it is expressly declared, that good men, "when absent from the body, are present with the Lord." Here we are assured of the resurrection of the body in a glorious form, clothed with immortal vigour, suited to the active nature of the animating spirit, and assisting its most enlarged operations and incessant progress towards perfection. Here we are assured that "the righteous shall go into life everlasting;" that they shall enter into the kingdom of the heavenly Canaan, where no ignorance shall cloud the understanding no vice disturb the will. In these regions of perfection, nothing but love shall possess the soul; nothing but gratitude employ the tongue: there the righteous shall be united " to an innumerable company of angels, and to the general assembly and church of the first born:" there they shall see their exalted Redeemer at the right-hand of Omnipotence, and sit down with him on his throne; there they shall be admitted into the immediate presence of the Supreme Fountain of life and happiness; and beholding his face, be changed into the same image from glory to glory - Here language-here imagination fails me! It requires the genius, the knowledge, and the pen of an angel, to paint the happiness, the blissful scene of the new Jerusalem, which human eyes cannot behold till this mortal body shall be purified, from its corruption and dressed in the robes of immortality: Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart" to conceive the joys" which God hath prepared for them that love him." What is the Elysium of the Heathens, compared with the heaven of the Christians? The hope, the prospect of this is suficient to reconcile us to all the difficulties that may attend our progress sweeten all our labours, alleviate every grief, and silence every murmur, by impressing on our minds a meek acquiescence with the divine dispensations in the course of his Providence.

But the libertine, in the gaiety of his heart, may po possibly inquire, why there should be any difficulties or restraints at all? God hath made nothing in vain. The appetites he hath planted in the human breast are to be gratified: to deny, or restrain them, is ignominous bondage; but to give full scope to every desire and passion of the heart, without check or con trol, is true manty freedom, and only pursuing the dictates of nature.

In order to confute and expose this loose and careless way of reasoning, let it be considered, that the liberty of a rational creature doth not consist in an entire exemption from all control, but in following the dictates of reason as the governing principle, and in keeping the various passions in due subordination. To follow the regular motion of those reflections which the wise Creator hath implanted within us, is our duty: but as our natural desires in this state of trial are often irregular, we are bound to restrain their excesses, and not to indulge them, but in a strict subserviency to the integrity and peace of our minds, and to the order and happiness of human society established in the world. They who allow the supreme command to be usurped by sense and brutal appetite, may promise thetaselves liberty, but are truly and absolutely the servants of corruption; to be vicious is to be enslaved. We behold with pity those miserable objects that are chained in the gallies, or confined in dark prisons and loathsome dungeons; but much more abject and vile is the slavery of the sinner! No slavery of the body is equal to the bondage of the mind: no chains press so closely, or gall so cruelly as the fetters of sin, which corrode the very substance of the soul, fret every faculty, and degrade men below the brute part of the creation.

We must indeed confess, that there are some profligates so hardened by custom, as to be past all feeling; and, because insensible of their bondage, boast of this insensibility as a mark of their native freedom, and of their happiness. Vain men! they might extol, with equal propriety the peculiar happiness of an apoplexy, the profound tranquility of a lethargy, or, we may add, the ideal paradise of a fool or a madman.

We have, in the foregoing observations, endeavoured to place in a plain and conspicuous light, some of the peculiar excellencies of the Christian religion; and from hence many useful reflections will naturally arise in the mind of every attentive reader. It is the religion of Jesus that hath removed idolatry and superstition and brought immortality to light when concealed under a veil of darkness almost impenetrable. This hath set the great truths of religion in a clear and conspicuous point of view, and proposed new and powerful motives to influence our minds, and determine our conduct. Nothing is enjoined to be believed, but what is worthy of God; nothing to be practised but what is friendly to man. All the doctrines of the gospel are rational and consistent; all it's precepts are truly wise, just, and good. The gospel contains nothing grievous to an ingenuous mind; it debars us form nothing but doing harm to ourselves or to our fellow creatures; and permits us to range any where but in the paths of danger and destruction. It only requires us to act up to the dignity of the rational nature, and to prefer to the vanishing pleasures of sin, the smiles of a reconciled God, and an eternal weight of glory: and is this a rigorous exaction, a heavy burden not to be endured? How can sinful mortals harbour a thought so ridiculous and unworthy?

Can any man who is a real friend to the cause of virtue and to the interest of mankind, ever be an enemy to Christianity if he truly understands it, and seriously reflects on its wise and useful tendency? Impossible, for it conducteth us to our journey's end by the plainest and securest path, where the steps are not straightened and where he that rupneth stumbleth not. Let us who live under this last, and most gracious dispensation of God to mankind "count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord:" and not suffer yourselves, by the slight cavils of unbelievers, to be moved away from the hope of the gospel. Let us demonstrate, that we believe the superior excellency of the Christian dispensation, by conforming to it's precepts. Let us shew that we are Christians in deed and in truth; not by endless disputes about trifles, and the transports of a blind zeal, but by practising that universal that exalted goodness our holy religion commands, and by abounding in those " fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God." Phil. i. 11.

We may clearly perceive, from what has been said, how groundless all those prejudices are which some conceive against religion, as if it was a peevish, morose seheme, burdensome to human nature, and inconsistant

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with the true enjoyment of life. Such sentiments are too apt to prevail in the heat of youth, when the spirits are brisk and lively, and the passions warm and impetuous: but it is wholly a mistake, and a mistake of the most dangerous tendency. The truth is, there is no pleasure like that of a good conscience, no real peace but what results from the practice of virtue; this enobles the mind, and can alone support it under all the various and unequal scenes of the present state of trial; this lays a sure foundation of an easy, comfortable life, of a serene, peaceful death and of eternal joy and happiness hereafter: whereas vice is ruinous to all our most valuable interests; it spoils the native beauty, and subverts the order of the soul; is renders us the scorn of man, the rejected of God, and, without timely repentance, will rob us of a happy eternity. Religion is the health, the liberties, and the happiness of the soul; sin is the disease, the servitude, and destruction of it, both here and for ever.

If these arguments be not sufficient to convince you let me lead you into the chamber of an habitual rioter, the lewd debauchee, worn out in the cause of iniquity, his bones full of the sins of his youth, that from his own mouth, as he lies on his expiring bed, you may learn that the way of transgression is hard; and that however sweet sin may be in the commission, "it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." Prov. xxiii. 32. This awful truth is exemplified in a very strong point of view, by the late celebrated Dr. YOUNG, in his Centaur not Fabulous, page 149, 161, where he draws a most awful picture of the last scene of an abandoned profligate, who had despised religion, and led a life of pleasure and disipation. The relation is as follows:

" I am going, Reader, to represent to thee the last moments of a person of high birth and spirit, of great parts and strong passions, every way accomplished, not the least in iniquity: his unkind treatment was the death of a most amiable wife, & his monstrous extravagance, in effect, disinherited his only child. And surely the death-bed of a profligate is next in horror to that abyss to which it lead: it has the most of hell that is visible upon earth, and he that has seen it has more than faith to confirm him in his creed. I see it now, says the worthy divine from whom I shall borrow this relation, for who can forget it? Are there in it no Games and fluries? You are ignorant then, of what a sacred imagination can figure, what a guilty heart can feel! How dismal is it! The two great enemies of soul and body, sickness and sin, sink and confound his friends; silence & darken the shocking scene: sickness excludes the light of heaven, and sin it's blessed hope. Oh, double darkness! more than Egyptian ! acutely to be felt !

"The sad evening before the death of that noble youth, whose last hours suggested these thoughts, 1 was with him. No one was there but his physician, and an intimate acquaintance whom he loved and whom he had ruined. At my coming he said, "You and the physician are come too late. I have neither life nor hope. You both aim at miracles. You would raise the dead."

"Heaven, I said, was merciful."

"Or 1 could not have been thus guilty. What has it not done to bless, and to save me ?-1 have been too strong for Omnipotence: I plucked down ruin."

" I said, the blessed Redeemer."

"Hold! Hold! you wound me! That is the rock on which I have split! I denied his name."

"Refusing to hear any thing from me, or take any thing from the physician, he lay silent, as far as sudden darts of pain would permit, till the clock struck; then be cried out with vehemence, "Oh time! time! It is fit thou shouldst thus strike thy murderer to the heart.-How art thou

hed for ever?-4 month? Oh for a single week! I ask not for years, though an age were too little for the much I have to do."

"On my saying we could not do too much; that heaven was a blessed place. "So much the worse. 'Tis lost! 'Tis lost! Heaven is to me the severest part of hell!"

"Soon after I proposed prayer.-" Pray you that can: I never prayed : I cannot pray. Nor or need 1. Heaven is on my side already: it closes with my conscience, it's severest strokes but second my own."

"His friend being much troubled, even to tears at this (for who could forbear? I could not) he, with a most affectionate look, said, "Keep these tears for thyself. I have undone thee. Dost thou weep for me? That's cruel, What can pain me more ?"

" Here his friend, too much affected, would have left him."

"No, stay. Thou still may'st hope; therefore hear me. How madly have I talked ?-How madly hast thou listened and believed? But look on my present state as a full answer to thee and to myself. This body is all weakness and nd pain; but my soul, as if stung up by torment, to greater strength and spirit, is full powerful to reason; full mighty to suffer. And that which thus triumphs within the jaws of mortality, is doubtless immortal. And as for a Deity, nothing less than an Almighty could inflict the pains I feel."

" I was about to congratulate this passive involuntary confession, in his asserting the two prime articles of his creed, extorted by the rack of nature: when he thus: very passionately added, "No, no! let me speak on I have not long to speak.--My much injured friend! my soul as my body, lies in rnins, in scattered fragments of broken thoughts: remorse for the past throws my thoughts on the future: worse dread of the future strikes it back on the past. I turn, and turn, and find no ray.-Didst thou feel half the mountain that is on me, thou wouldst struggle with the martyr for his stake, and bless heaven for the flame;-that is not an everlasting flame; that is not an unquenchable fire."

"How were we struck? Yet, soon after still more. With what an eye of distraction, what a face of despair he cried out, " My principles have poisoned my friend; my extravagance has beggared my boy; my unkindness has murdered my wife! And is there another hell? Oh! thou blasphemed, yet most indulgent Lord God! Hell itself is a refuge if it hides me from thy frown."

" Soon after, his understanding failed; his terrified imagination uttered horrors not to be repeated, or ever forgotten; and before the sun (which I hope has seen few like him) arose, this gay, young, noble, ingenious, accomplished, and most wretched mortal, expired."

1t sometimes happens, we confess, that men who have led very wicked lives have gone out of the world, as they lived in it defying conscience, and deriding a future judgment as an idle fiction: but these instances are very rare, and only prove that there are monsters in the moral as well as in the natural world, who have sported with their own deceivings, and have even dared to lift their puny and rebellious arm against Omnipotence.

But it will perhaps be said, that the sons of vice and riot have pleasure in sensual indulgences. Allowed: but it is altogether of the lower kind, empty, fleeting, and transient; like the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the mirth of the wicked. It makes a noise and a blaze for the present but soon vanishes away into smoke and vapour. On the other hand, the pleasure of religion is solid and lasting and will attend us through all, even the last stages of life. When we have passed the levity of youth, and have lost our relish for the gay entertainments of sense; when old age steals upon us, and bends us towards the grave, this will cleave fast to us, and give us relief. It will be so far from terminating at death, that