suited to excite men's attention to the Bible, and to assist them in understanding it. At the same time, no restraint is imposed on the preachers of God's word; nor are any forbidden to attend on their instructions; and numbers, in almost all parts of the land are employed in publishing the glad tidings of salvation, with a clearness and plainness that hath seldom been exceeded. So that we are peculiarly favoured with every advantage for becoming wise, holy, and happy. This hath been our felicity for a long course of years; and when we consider how scarce in comparison copies of the Scripture were in Israel, and how much darker their dispensation was, than that of the gospel, we shall be constrained to allow, that they did not possess religious privileges, even cqual to those of our favoured land. So that the LORD may well demand of us, "What could have been done more for us, that "hath not been done," as a proper means of rendering us a religious and a righteous nation? This leads us to enquire,

II. The improvement which we ought to have made of our advantages?

The LORD looks for grapes from this well-cultured vine; he requires righteousness and judgment from a people so highly favoured. It might have been expected that all orders among us, from the highest to the lowest, would, in their publick and private conduct, have I manifested a serious regard to the truths, precepts, ordinances, providence, and glory of GoD. Sobriety, temperance, chastity, justice, truth, peace, and love, should have been observable in our national character,

and in all our transactions. They that come among us, and they among whom we go, should have been constrained to confess, that probity, sincerity, humanity, piety, meekness, and purity, were found in the eonduct of Britons more than in any other nation. Impiety and immorality should at least have been discountenanced, driven into corners, put to shame, or dragged out to condign punishment; and it should have been shewn, by all our laws, legislators, magistrates, and publick measures at home and abroad, as well as in the conduct of the inferior orders, and of those employed in the sacred ministry, that we were a nation"fearing GoD and working righteousness;" a wise and understanding people, whom GOD had chosen to himself, for his own inheritance.- Who can deny that this ought to have been our national character? Who can excuse what is contrary to this, without palliating ingratitude, as well as impiety and iniquity? Or who can account for it, without allowing that the heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked?

III. Then, We consider the wild, or poisonous grapes, which the LORD finds in his vineyard.

1 do not intend at present to descant on such vices as are common to men at all times, and in all places, but rather to select some instances, which may be re. garded as peculiar to this age and nation. The LOR requires his servants, on these occasions, "to cry "aloud, and not spare, to lift up their voice like "trumpet, whilst they shew his professing peopl "their sins and transgressions;" as we found it writ

ten in that chapter, which, with peculiar propriety, was appointed for the first lesson in our morning service* * And let it be remembered, that what will be spoken of national sins, should be applied by each of us to our own particular transgressions. All our violations of the divine law, and all our neglect, contempt, or abuse of the gospel, from our infancy to the present day, constitute a part of that accumulated guilt, for which the LORD hath a controversy with the land; and it is incumbent upon us, as we proceed, to enquire concerning every particular charge, whether we have not committed, or countenanced, the specified iniquity? Whether we have used all our influence to prevent others from committing it? And what our conduct, in these respects, is at this present time? Thus we shall avoid the absurd hypocrisy of pretending to humble ourselves before God, whilst we are merely reflecting on the sins of other men, without confessing, mourning over, or forsaking, our own.

1. The daring infidelity, and “damnable heresies," which prevail, may well be adduced as one of our national sins. I say damnable heresies; for this is the language of Scripture: and much mischief has been done, by calling enormous evils by soft names, which seduces men into a forgetfulness of their malignity. I would not, however, be understood to mean every deviation from the system of divine truth. Much hay, straw, stubble may be built on the precious Foundation which God hath laid in Zion; and though the builder

* Is. lviii.

will suffer loss, yet he may be saved, as by fire. "But "other Foundation can no man lay, than that which is

laid, even CHRIST JESUS." The truths respecting his person, as "GOD manifest in the flesh," his sacri. fice and mediation, and the sanctifying work of his Spirit, are inseparable from christianity, and stand or fall with the authority of the Scripture, and our reverence for it. I must, therefore, confidently maintain, that the apostles, if living, would pronounce many modern dogmas to be "damnable heresies," subversive of the foundation; more plausible indeed, but no better, than infidelity; to which, by an easy transition, they evidently tend.

We seem, almost universally, to stand aghast, at the atheism and daring impiety of that nation, with which we are at war: and indeed we cannot too much execrate their principles and practices; which seem to constitute a new exhibition of the deceitfulness and desperate wickedness of the human heart. But if we infer that France is, as a nation, more criminal in the sight of GOD than Britain, we may perhaps be found partial in our judgment. We are not competent to decide on such a complicated question, which involves in it all our advantages and their disadvantages. In one respect we act more wisely than our opponents; for they insult the GOD of heaven, set him at defiance. and, as it were, declare war against him, as well as against mankind; whereas, we make our appeal to him and call publickly on him for assistance, whilst w confess ourselves deserving of his righteous indigna

tion.

On the other hand, it must be allowed, that the atheism and impiety of France want many of those aggravations, which are found in our infidelity and impiety. Few among them were previously acquainted with the Scriptures, having been discouraged from reading and examining them. The religion, which they had witnessed, was in general a compound of gross absurdities, unmeaning forms, human inventions, and priestly usurpations or impositions; which, when exposed, must become the objects of contempt and abhorrence. Voltaire, and other ingenious facinating infidels, were the apostles of their reformation; the ideas of civil liberty and irreligion entered into their minds at the same time, and thus were associated together; there was no one at hand to set before them true christianity, in its genuine beauty and simplicity, when they turned from their old superstition with disgust; and no wonder they greedily imbibed the sentiments of those who had emancipated them from their former abject slavery, and that they even carried their principles further than their teachers had done.

But the partial or total infidelity, which rapidly spreads among us, is of another kind. Men, who have been instructed in the principles of christianity, and who want neither talents, opportunity, liberty, nor encouragement for free enquiry, have deliberately and decidedly given the oracles of reason' a preference to the "oracles of GOD." The deists, who some time back opposed the divine authority of the Scripture, have been completely baffled in the open field of argument; and no man now ventures forth, as an ad