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pointed service! How crowded have we beheld our places of public worship! How ferious the deportment of our congregations! How pathetic and animating the discourses of our preachers! How confcientious and exact the folemn celebration of all appointed duties!" These fignal fucceffes, Father of bounty, omnipotent, and all-gracious! these are the fruits of thy favourable acceptance of our public and united petitions-(I am ready to say upon the review) -We fee and adore thy bleffed interpofition! Thou hast heard our prayers; thou hast seen our humiliation: Thou haft crowned us with ineftimable benefits!"

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If we admit a Providence,-(and what man in his fenfes denies a Providence For what man denies the Being of a God? And if there is a God, there must be a Providence: An Epicurean god being to all intents and purposes the fame as no god at all)—If we admit a Providence, we muft allow, that he is able to direct, according to his good pleasure, the affairs of mortals; and that confequently it is neceffary for mortals to invocate his aid, and to submit the difpofal of their affairs to his fovereign wifdom and goodnefs. Nor can we doubt, but that he will graciously interfere in the behalf of thofe, who make fuch proper application to him. All his Attributes ftand pledged to fecure us ; and his divine revelation in every page fpeaks

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confidence and certainty to us in fuch circumstances. We have applied; we do apply; let us be well fatisfied, that while we continue to do fo, the event will be profperous.

This confideration may fufficiently answer their cavil, which favours at once of weakness and irreligion, who pretend, that they can fee no propriety in any more public fafts; we have humbled ourselves often enough, they think: the end is anfwered: and there is need of no more acts of humiliation.-But do fuch people confìider, how eafily the favour of heaven, averted from us, might blast all our hopes, and ruin all our fair profpects! we are not yet independant; we cannot yet command winds and waves, life and death. These are in the hand of Omnipotence. It well becomes us humbly to acknow. ledge our dependance, and to deplore our manifold and yet uncorrected offences. Indeed this alone were a fufficient reason, why we should annually, at least, unite in common humiliation before God. For what need there is to implore his forgiveness, to entreat his mercy, to deprecate his indignation; no man can be ignorant, who knows the world at all; and who beholds the iniquity, which abounds amongst us; tho', bleffed be God, I hope we may fay, with humility, we do not feem to be more atrocious and guilty than many preceding ages. Yet, God knows, we are guilty enough: vice abounds

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N° 78. too, too much the bleffed and most excellent faith of our holy Redeemer is but too much profaned and defpifed; and every thinking man fees but too much caufe to complain, and to cry, "Spare us, O Lord, for our offences are great, are many! in mercy remember, and pardon a finful people!"

"If this be the cafe, an objector might fay, to what end is all your fafting? Do you imagine that the fearcher of hearts will be pleased with merely external humiliation? Is not this deep hypocrify? Hath he not declared, that the prayer, and confequently all the religious duties of the wicked, are his abomination ?"-This objection might have some force, if it was true, that every person in our nation was thus worthlefs and hypocritical. Though even then, perhaps it might be confronted with some striking inftances of the efficacy of external humiliation. But bleffed be God, we are well affured, amongst the vast numbers, that in this populous nation fhall fall before the throne of heaven, and unite in earnest supplication for its welfare, thousands and ten thousands will be found, upright in heart, fincere in faith, humbled, truly humbled in foul; and fuch obfervers of a Faft, as God, by his prophet hath declared, he will approve. See Ifaiah v. 8. Their prayers will arife, like incenfe before him: and many, we fincerely hope and trust, brought to a serious sense of

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things, will from these days, learn wisdom, rend their hearts and not their garments, and turn with repentance to their Lord and their Saviour. -This alone can make a Faft profitable to themselves as individuals: it is hoped, that fo far as concerns the nation, the fervent and humble prayers of the truly righteous, will prevail with the God of glory, to love, to save, and to defend.I will not deftroy it, (let us remember he once faid) for the fake of TEN righ

teous.

It should be the ambition of every Briton to be one of those righteous, true patriots, and real friends to their country: A country, happy beyond all others, which the light of heaven vifits with its gladnefs. Senfible of the peculiar felicity we enjoy, let us endeavour to secure it, by securing the protection of God, by thankful, humble, holy lives; and now especially, when we are called upon by our beloved Monarch, called upon this FIRST year of his aufpicious reign.-Let us rejoice in the thought, that with him we shall kneel, with him we shall pray, and with him, we do not doubt, be heard, for every defirable bleffing, upon him, our country, and ourselves!

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NUMBER LXXIX.

To man the bleeding Crofs has promis'd all:
The bleeding Crofs has favorn eternal grace:
Who gave his life what grace shall be deny?

YOUNG.

N my papers of last year, upon the pre

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fent folemn occafion*, it was fhewn at large, that the commemoration of Chrift's death and paffion, is itself a strong proof of Christianity, as well as the most exalted teftimony of divine love. It is very observable, that every particular, in this ftupendous act of mercy, was foretold long before the event; a fufficient evidence to the unprejudiced mind, that the whole was under the immediate direction of that God, who alone can foresee future events, and bring them to the determined iffue. "Chrift was apprehended," to use the words of an excellent prelate, The anointed of the Lord, fays Jeremiah long before, was taken in their nets. But how; he must be fold; for what? For thirty pieces of filver; and what must be done with these? Buy a field.-See it all foretold! And they took the thirty pieces, the price of him that was valued, and gave them for the potters field, faith Zachariah (miswritten Jeremiah, by

* Good-Friday.

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