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abound? God forbid. The thing is fo monftrous and unnatural, that 'tis impoffible to think of it without horror and indignation.

Once more: if we confider the justice of God; that is a thought which is apt to check the motions of fin, and excite to holinefs and virtue. The fcripture affures us, that God will bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil: and that he will render to every man according to his deeds; to them who by patient continuance in welldoing feek for glory, honour, and immortality, eternal life; but to those who do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteouf nefs, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguifh. Now who that seriously confiders this, and reprefents the divine being to himself under the notion of a judge, can dare to allow himself in a courfe of fin? he must be a moft hardened, impudent wretch that can do it. For he expofes himself to the feverest punishments that can be inAlicted.

Finally, in whatsoever view we confider the divine being, we fhall always find him oppofite to fin. So that he who

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entertains these notions concerning God, and makes them familiar to his mind, as he will do if he converses much with the word of God, cannot habitually fin against him.

II. The word of God abounds with precepts of religion and virtue; and therefore he who is converfant with it, will abstain from fin and wickedness. This is the scope of our bibles from the beginning to the very end of them; to recommend true piety and godliness, and difcourage irreligion and vice.

The old teftament is full of exhortations to the fear and the love of God; which are general names, comprehending the whole of religion. Particular duties are there alfo enumerated; efpecially in the decalogue, which is a fummary of our duty both to God and our neighbour. As full as the Jewish religion was of ceremony, yet ceremony was not all that it requir'd. The numerous fafts and feafts, the facrifices and baptisms which it appoints, and the various rules which it prescribes about external religion, are all accounted nothing in comparison of internal piety and devotion, and the practice of moral righte

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oufness. See for this purpose, 1 Sam. XV. 22. And Samuel faid, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and facrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than facrifice, and to hearken, than the fat of rams. Pfalm LI. 16, 17. Thou depreft not facrifice, thou delighteft not in burntoffering. The facrifices of God are a broken fpirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not defpife. Micah VI. 6-8. Wherewith fhall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleafed with thoufands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firft-born for my tranfgreffion, the fruit of my body for the fin of my foul? He hath fhewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk bumbly with thy God?

And if moral virtue is fo much inculcated in the old teftament, much more in the new. What is Chrift's fermon on the mount but a fyftem of moral precepts

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And not only this, difcourfes do fome

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way tend to promote virtue, and difcourage vice. In fhort, this was the very defign of his coming into the world. For this purpose the Son of God was manifefted, that he might destroy the works of the devil; 1 John III. 8. He gave bimJelf for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works Tit. II. 14. He hath introduced liberty, but not a liberty to fin. He hath freed men from the law of Mofes, but not from the law of nature. Nay, for this very reafon he seems to have abolished the former, that men might have more leifure to attend to the latter. His appearance is fo far from loofing our obligation to the law of nature, that on the contrary it hath much confirmed it; if fo be a clearer explication of its precepts, the promise of a greater ftrength to enable us to perform them, and of a greater happiness to reward the performance, have any thing in them to enforce an obligation.

To our Saviour we may add his apoftles; who concur with him in the fame defign of promoting practical religion and godlinefs. If you read the epiftle

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to the Romans, you will find that the apoftle takes up the first part of it in demonftrating the mercy of God to the gentile world, in revealing the gospel unto them, and taking them to be his people in the room of the Jews, whom he rejected because of their ftubborn infidelity. And the ufe which he makes of this doctrine in the latter part of the epiftle, is to exhort to the following virtues; viz. purity, humility, diligence in our callings, joyfulness, patience, devotion, alms-giving, a pitiful and compaffionate temper, peaceablenefs, forgiveness of injuries, obedience to magiftrates, univerfal love and benevolence, temperance and fobriety, and mutual charity and forbearance between chriftians of different fentiments. The fame apostle pursues the fame method in feveral other of his epiftles; particularly those to the Galatians, Ephefians, and Coloffians; in which half is doctrinal, and half preceptive.

The firft epiftle of John is full of exhortations to the love of God, and of our christian brethren. The apoftle Peter delivers a great many precepts of morality in his epiftles. And no body goes beyond Saint James for zeal in

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