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LECTURE I

T being my intention to give from this place, on the Fridays during Lent, a courfe of Lectures explanatory and practical on fuch parts of Scripture as feem to me best calculated to inform the understandings and affect the hearts of thofe that hear me, I fhall proceed, without further preface, to the execution of a defign, in which edification, not entertainment, usefulness, not novelty, are the objects I have in view; and in which therefore I may fometimes perhaps avail myself of the labors of others, when they appear to me better calculated to anfwer my purpose than any thing I am myself capable of producing.

Although my obfervations will for the prefent be confined entirely to the Gofpel of St. Matthew, and only to certain felect parts even of that, yet it may not be improper or unprofitable to introduce thefe Lectures by a compendious view of the principal contents of thofe writings which go under the general name of the HOLY SCRIPTURES.

That book which we call THE BIBLE (that is, THE BOOK, by way of eminence) alhough it is comprized in one volume, yet in fact comprehends a great number of different narratives and compofitions, written at different times, by different perfons, in different languages, and on different fubje&s. And taking the whole of the collection together, it is an unquestionable truth that there is no one book extant, in any language, or in any country, which can in any degree be

compared with it for antiquity, for authority, for the importa ance, the dignity, the variety, and the curiofity of the mate ter it contains.

It begins with that great and ftupenduous event, of all others the earliest and most interesting to the human race, the creation of this world, of the heavens and the earth, of the celestiall uminaries, of man, and all the inferior animals, the herbs of the field, the fea and its inhabitants. All this it describes with a brevity and fublimity well fuited to the magnitude of the fubject, to the dignity of the Almighty Artificer, and unequalled by any other writer. The fame wonderful fcene is represented by a Roman poet,* who has evidently drawn his materials from the narrative of Mofes. But though his defcription is finely imagined and elegantly wrought up, and embellished with much poetical ornament, yet in true fimplicity and grandeur, both of fentiment and of diction, he falls far fhort of the facred hiftorian. LET THERE BE LIGHT AND THERE WAS LIGHT; is an inftance of the fublime, which stands to this day unrivalled in any human compofition.

But what is of infinitely greater moment, his history of the creation has fettled for ever that most important question, which the ancient fages were never able to decide; from whence and from what causes this world, with all its inhabitant and appendages, drew its origin; whether from fome inexplicable neceflity, from a fortuitous concourse of atoms, from an eternal feries of caufes and effects, or from one fupreme, intelligent, felf-exifting Being, the Author of all things, himself without beginning and without end. To this last cause the infpired hiftorian has afcribed the formation of this fyftem; and by fo doing has established that great principle and foundation of all religion and all morality, and the great fource of comfort to every human being, the exifience of one God, the Creator and Preferver of the world, and the watchful Superintendent of all the creatures that he has made.

The Sacred History next fets before us, the primeval happiness of our first parents in Paradife; their fall from this. * Ovid,

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