For your own fake, and for the fake of those who love you, not only on earth, but above, the bleffed angels, the Holy Trinity, return to yourself, to a sound mind, to the exercife of piety, and the Luke xv. practice of all virtue: there is joy in heaven over one finner that repenteth. 7. SER LET EVERY ONE THAT NAMETH THEC HERE is no perfon, of what perfuafion foever in religion, but has cogent reasons to diffuade him from a vitious course of life, and engage him in the practice of virtue. Even the fool, Pf. xiv. 1. that hath faid in his heart, or with his lips, there is no God, yet muft own that there are are at least Rulers upon earth, who are Rom. xiii. not a terror to good works but to the evil, and who bear not always the fword in vain; that health attends on temperance, fecurity on justice, honour on generosity; and that great degrees of the oppofite vices, as they are univerfally either contemptible or odious, so they are commonly full as detrimental to the guilty perfon, as to any of those who are aggrieved by him. To all these confiderations, he who styles himself a profeffor of the religion of nature, will add further, that he hath a God to serve, and a foul, perhaps, to fave. The followers of the great Impoftor in the Eaft are tied down to rules of devotion, fobriety, and abftinence, in fome respects very rigorous; with an affurance of ample amends hereafter in the enjoyment of all corporeal pleasures in a terreftrial paradise. The The express promise of plenty, health, long life, and honour, with fome obfcure intimations of better things to come, were the motives which it pleased the Divine Wisdom to make use of in order to engage the obedience of the Jewish people: difgrace and poverty, peftilence, and death were threatened to deter them from Idolatry. Now most of these arguments have, or had at the time when they were propofed, their degree of efficacy; and many of them are univerfal, alike solid and fatisfactory in all ages. But yet, as the piety and charity required by the Christian revelation are the most fublime; fo the arguments urged to enforce them are the most confiderable, not a few peculiar to Christianity, and fome the moft weighty that can poffibly be addreffed to the mind of man. In the first place, every Christian is bound to the practice of every thing good and holy by his own promise and vow. The religion of Christ is fo utterly incompatible with all kinds of vice, that no person can be admitted into it by baptifm, without giving the most folemn affurances, before God and the Church, that he will renounce them all. This engagement, which was first made for us before we were fenfible of it's importance, we have fince, it must be supposed, fuch of us as are arrived at the age of manhood, made our own: by a particular and formal act taking the baptifmal vow upon our own fouls, and binding our confcience by the form of found words pronounced over us at the laver of regeneration. At the Lord's table also, we prefent unto God ourselves, our fouls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice. Nay, by barely joining with the congregation in the common Christian worship, we fhew to what religion we be |