and review the evidences of your faith; to recollect the profeffions you have made; to confider the characters of Christians, in ancient times and in your own; diligently to attend on the means of instruction and edification; and to celebrate the ordinances of CHRIST; to look back on your own experience; to be diligent in prefent duty, and, especially, to give yourselves to prayer. My dear friends! EXHORTATIONS and advices of this kind can never be unfeafonable. Warnings, refpecting the danger of the errors, and arts, and converfation, and company, of irreligious men; may not be equally neceffary to all. Because men are distinguished by eminent piety, by habitual goodnefs and examplary conduct, the wicked do not attempt to enfnare and feduce them: like arrows darted against a buckler of steel, or a wall of adamant, the wit or arguments of infidels fall upon them harmless, as the chaff or the thistle down, the sport of the winds. Even to fuch confirmed Christians, however, it is not in vain, I trust, to reprefent the perverfity of the irreligious; their attachment to religion religion is thus increased: in regretting and lamenting the influence of irreligion, their zeal for repreffing that influence, their concern for faving others, and efpecially thofe with whom they are connected, from the infection of irreligious principles and practices, is awakened. EXHORTATIONS to fave ourselves from the irreligious, I have faid, are too neceffary, in thefe days. Syftems of Atheism and irreligion have been published and circulated, and adopted. Nor is it enough that men are not fo openly and daringly wicked. "By "their works ye fhall know them, who are without GOD, without CHRIST, and there"fore without all rational hope, in the "world." They have not the faith of CHRIST; the fear of GOD is not before their eyes; they have virtually rejected Chriftianity, who allow themfelves in finfulness, in whatever is condemned in Scripture, in thofe things against which the LORD hath manifested, and hath declared he will manifeft, his awful displeasure. "THEY profefs that they know GOD, but "in works they deny him :" works, or a course of life, more certainly, and more explicitly, declare what we are, than profesfions: Are thefe few? Alas! alas! many in this manner declare that they renounce the Gospel, and are of the generation of the irreligious. AGAINST the influence of irreligious principles and irreligious practice, we would warn and guard you all: but, in a particular manner, and with peculiar earnestness, I befeech and obteft those of the rifing generation to fave themselves from the loofe principles and morals of the age. And, let me call upon their parents to be equally folicit ous that their children be not infected and polluted with the profligacy of the age. Much, very much, depends on parents. Much, very much depends on the principles you inftil, the course you prefcribe, the example you exhibit: "train up a child in the way he fhould go, and when he is old he "will not depart from it." My young friends! be thankful for the inftructions, the examples, the zeal and the devotion, of your parents. You are not always under their eye. When I eye. You must go abroad into the world. Launched on the ocean of life, be not carried about by every wind of doctrine; by the principles or manners of the irreligious. When I think on the one hand, on the excellence and bleffedness of the Chriftian character; and, on the other, on the perversity and wretchedness of the irreligious; I cannot but be folicitous that you embrace the one and abandon the other. think, on the one hand, on the temptations to which you may be expofed, and on the other, your liableness to be perverted and infected by the opinions and manners of the age, "I ftand in fear of I would ye you; "knew," to use the words of St. Paul, "what great conflict I have for you." From you, my young friends, especially, the Minifters of religion expect the fruit of their labours. "What is their hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing, are not even ye in the "presence of the LORD JESUS CHRIST, at his coming? for ye are our glory and joy." In the words of the fame apostle, after mentioning, also, the coming and glory of the LORD, "who fhall change the vile body, "that M m |