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Beloved, believe not every Spirit; but try the Spirits, whether they are of God.

T hath pleased the Almighty Creator

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to impress upon the heart of man a moral sense of good and evil, right and wrong; by virtue of which distinguishing faculty he is enabled and required both to form his own conduct, and to prove that of others. The propriety of all free action, whoever be the agent, even matters of divine administration, are subject to the cognizance of human VOL. II. reafon,

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reason, within the affigned sphere of it's comprehenfion: As is evident from the frequent appeals which God himself hath vouchfafed to make to it. Thus we find him excufing the feverity of his judgments upon his chofen People, by the mouth of the Prophet Isaiah -"And now, O Inhabitants of Jerufalem, and Men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my Vineyard: What could have been done more to my Vine yard, that I have not done in it ?"-In like manner does he call upon the Ifraelites, by his Servant Ezekiel, to acknowledge the equity of his dispensations" Hear now, O House of Ifrael, are not my ways equal, are not your ways unequal?"-Our Bleffed Lord too, during his abode upon earth, oftentimes expoftulated with the Jews upon the unreasonableness of their infidelity, in not making a proper ufe of thofe intellectual abilities with which God had endued

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endued them, toward difcovering the evidences of his miffion, and the truth of his doctrines" Ye hypocrites, ye can difcern the face of the fky, and of the earth; but how is it that ye cannot difcern this time? Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?"

Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life; and they are they which testify of me." Accordingly the Inhabitants of Berea are highly commended by the facred Hiftorian, for a more ingenuous difpofition than fome other Jews, in that they diligently compared the Apostle's preaching with the tenor of their Scriptures.-St. Paul too enjoins Chriftians in general to “ prove all things," in order to the rejecting what is evil, and to the "holding fast that which is good."-And upon the fame principle of rational and impartial enquiry is grounded the admonition of St. John in my text-" Beloved, believe not

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