strictest searches we shall be able to fathom the whole mystery of godliness, God manifeft in the Flesh. He, who fhut up the fea with doors, and faid, " hitherto fhalt thou come, and no farther, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed;" hath fixed as determined bounds to man's reafoning pride, which he cannot pass. It is enough for us to acquiefce in what God hath spoken, (provided there be testimony sufficient that he hath spoken it) because we are liable to error, and bis word is truth.

Moreover the precept of the text requires a fair and candid judgment of words and things, when we peruse the Holy Scriptures. We are not to try the Word of God by our own preconceived opinions, but to regulate our opinions by the rule of his Word. Prejudice and fancy must be entirely difcarded, when we fet about a duty of fuch importance.

Reason

Reason indeed properly directed will be found an excellent auxiliary: But prepoffeffion and partiality, when we are fearching after truth, are furely most unreasonable. To pick out here and there a text of Scripture without confidering the relation it bears to others; and to infift upon the words of an infpired writer in one place, and yet overlook what the fame writer by the fame inspiration fpeaks in another, in defence of an error before imbibed; is like taking a fecond draught of poifon, to make the former operate with the greater violence: And is too a most wicked trifling with the God of Truth, who hath threatened to take the part of fuch out of the book of life. And yet, it is not to be concealed, this impious abuse of Scripture has been the caufe, and is still the fupport of the most enormous and abfurd tenets, that have ever been obtruded upon and difgraced the Chriftian Church.

What

What remains is to recommend and enforce an humble and ingenuous attention to the Holy Scriptures; as being a duty both piously entertaining, and of infinite confequence.

To enquire after truth in general is the proper employ of a rational foul, and to find it, it's fingular happiness. But of all other, religious Truth is most defirable; in that it brings us nearest to God, who is the adorable fountain of truth itself. Seeing then the Holy Scriptures are the undoubted Oracles of Religion; by which, as by the ladder in the Patriarch's dream, is the most regular afcent from darkness to light, from error to truth, from earth to heaven: Surely a profpect fo delightful, how difficult foever the way that led to it, must needs invite the most indifferent and unactive spirit. But fuch is the excellence of the facred writings, they charm

whilst

whilst they instruct. They do not carry us as through a barren wilderness to the promised land; but entertain the Reader with whatever is wont to recommend. the best human compofitions.-Who that peruses the Old Teftament can chufe but admire that majesty of style, and grandeur of expreffion, with which the Prophets deliver the Word of God? The Pfalms of David, the Book of Job, with some other poetical portions of Holy Writ, prefent us with fuch exalted descriptions of the Supreme Being, and fuch animated pictures of Nature, as can never fail to warm and elevate the foul. And who is not touched with that primitive fimplicity peculiar to the facred Writers in their hiftorical narrations ? Again Whatever Disciple attends our Bleffed Saviour through the whole miraculous courfe of his ministry, cannot but be happily transported, not with his power only, VOL. II.

S

but

but likewise with his benignity to mem. When we obferve Him opening the eyes of the blind, raifing the dead, and reftoring those that were poffeffed; how muft we adore Him, the great author of divine light-who is himself the refurrection and the life-and who came to deftroy the works of the Devil! At the fame time fo compendious and plain, fo modeft and impartial are the relations of the Evangelifts, as must pleafe and edify the beft as well as the meaneft Reader.

A book in all refpects fo entertaining might, one would think, (abstracting the obligation which Religion lays upon us,) recommend itself to the natural curiofity of man. But when we confider farther that to fearch this heavenly book is not only an agreeable employment, but a neceffary and momentous duty; what abundant reafon have we to study

and