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tious and profane live in a continued state of hypocrify with their own hearts; always affecting to fupprefs real fears by a diffembled negligence and mirth. Vice ever was, and ever will be, the parent of uneafinefs and terror; nor is it in the power of the most ingenious libertine to invert it's nature; though he" call evil good, and good evil; though he put darknefs for light, and light for darkness; though he put bitter for sweet, and fweet for bitter.",

In a word-To rejoice evermore is what we are enjoined: But where shall we meet with a fund of perpetual Joy? Pleasure, fhort-lived Pleasure must own it is not in her; and the greatest worldly Profperity would tell us, it is not in However it is yet to be found, if we fearch for it where we ought, i. e. in the paths of Religion and Virtue; in

me.

a

a right Faith and a Confcience void of offence. Thefe, we may reft affured, are the only fovereign antidotes against melancholy and forrow, and the neverfailing fources of true Joy here, and of Joys inconceivable and everlasting hereafter Unto which God in his due time bring us all, through the alone merits and mediation of his Son Jefus Christ our Lord.

SERMON

SERMON XXVIII.

JOHN, V. 39.

Search the Scriptures.

THE leading crime, with which our

Bleffed Saviour charged the Jews, as the cause of their rejecting the true Meffias, was their not attending to those Holy Scriptures which teftified of him. "Had ye believed Mofes, faid He, ye would have believed Me; for he wrote of me But if ye believe not his writings, how fhall ye believe my words?" An imputation this, we may imagine, little expected and as little relished by

VOL. II.

R

that

that people; who pretended the highest veneration for their divine Legislator, and an implicit obedience to his dictates; not confidering that they even then forfeited their allegiance to him, by refusing to hear that Prophet, whofe heavenly miffion, character, and credentials, had been expressly foretold and delineated by Mofes himself; who had also admonished them in the name of the Lord, and under the fevereft penalty, to "hear that Prophet in all things, whatsoever He should say unto them."

The cafe was they had so long taken up with erroneous interpretations of Scripture; had fo fondly adapted the Word of Prophecy to their own private opinions and prejudices; that the very power of investigating the truth was in a manner precluded. They were become blind to the cleareft evidence, and their heart was darkened.

But

But fince the crime objected against the Jews is too justly chargeable on many Christians; who, under the glorious light of the Gofpel Revelation, either by withdrawing from the use of others, wrefting to their own deftruction, or difdainfully neglecting the facred records, very much leffen the good effect of God's Word upon the minds and actions of men It shall therefore be the subject of the following Discourse,

To enquire, firft, into the general
obligation and true import of this
precept-Search the Scriptures-

In order, fecondly, to recommend and enforce a due obfervance of it.

1. It hath pleased Almighty God, as "at fundry times," fo" in diverse manners" to reveal Himfelf and his Will to man-to Mofes by familiar intercourfe

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