Let me urge you, my younger hearers, to a more than ordinary attention to regularity and propriety of behaviour, becoming men and christians, that your conduct may be nɔ difgrace to the rational and liberal jontinents, which I trust you have imbibed. Let it be feen, that when God is confidered as the proper object of reverence, love, and confidence, as the benevolent Father of all his offspring of mankind, and their righteous and impartial moral governor, the principle of obedience is the most ingenuous and effectual. Cherish the most unfeigned gratitude to the Father of lights, that your minds are no longer bewildered with the gloom and darknefs, in which our excellent religion was, for fo many ages, involved; but let this confideration be a motive with you to walk as becomes fo glorious a light. If your conduct be fuch as, inftead of recommending your own generous principles, furnishes an excufe to others, for acquicfcing in their prejudices a 3 prejudices and errors, all the dishonour which is thereby thrown upon God, and the injury which will be done to the pure religion of Jefus Chrift, by keeping it longer in a corrupted state at home, and preventing its propagation abroad, will be your peculiar guilt, and greatly aggravate your condemna tion, Value the fcriptures, as a treafury of divine knowledge, confifting of books which are eminently calculated to inspire you with just fentiments, and prompt you to right conduct; and consider them also as the only proper authority in matters of faith. In a thing fo interefting to you as the bufinefs of religion, affecting the regulation of conduct here, fo as to prepare you for your immortal happiness hereafter, refpect no human authority whatever. Submit to thofe who are invefted with the fupreme power in your your country, as your lawful civil magijtrates; but if they would prefcribe to you in matters of faith, fay that you have but one Father even God, and cre Maler even Chrift, and fand faft in the liberty wilb which he has made you free. Respect a parliamentary king, and chearfully pay all parliamentary taxes; but have nothing to do with a parliamentary religion, or a parliamentary God*. Religious rights, and religious liberty, are things of inestimable value. For these have many of our ancesters suffered and died; and shall we, in the funfhine of profperity, defert that glorious caufe, from which no ftorms of adverfity or perfecution could make them fwerve, Let us confider it as a This was the language held, as I have been informed by Lord Wharton, in the debate about the act of William and Mary, concerning the doctrine of the Trinity. duty of the first rank with respect to moral obligation, to tranfmit to our pofterity, and provide, as far as we can, for tranfmitting, unimpaired, to the latest generations, that generous zeal for religion and liberty, which makes the memory of our forefathers fo truly illuftrious. So long as it fhall pleafe that God, in whofe hands our breath is, and whofe are all our ways, to continue me in that relation, in which I think myfelf happy in ftanding to you at prefent, I trust that I fhall not fail to endeavour to impress your minds with a juft fenfe of what you owe to God, to your country, and to mankind. Let it be our mutual care to derive the most durable advantage from our prefent temporary connection, by growing continually more established, firengthened, and fettled, in the habit and practice of all the virtues which |