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PLAIN SERMONS,

DOCTRINAL AND PRACTICAL,

ORIGINALLY PREACHED

BEFORE A COUNTRY CONGREGATION.

BY E. EDWARDS,

PERPETUAL CURATE OF MARSDEN, IN THE DIOCESE OF RIPON.

LONDON:

J. HATCHARD AND SON, 187, PICCADILLY.

1838.

Б.з.

OTHE

LONDON:

PRINTED BY IBOTSON AND PALMER,

SAVOY STREET.

PREFACE.

THE FOLLOWING SERMONS were originally preached before a country congregation; which may account for the plain and diffuse style of the Author's composition: and the plainness of the style may, he hopes, recommend the volume to a numerous and interesting class of the people. This hope is the only apology that the Author can offer for having added this to the many excellent publications, with which the religious press, at present, teems.

The reader, as he proceeds through the volume, may discover something like too frequent a repetition of some of the doctrines

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of our holy religion:-such as the corruption of human nature,-the inadequacy of any righteousness, wrought out by man in his present fallen state, to satisfy the demand of divine justice, the righteousness constituted by the active and passive obedience of Christ, as the only righteousness commensurate with that justice,-the imputation of this righteousness to every one that believeth, for his justification,-and the incipient, progressive, and finally complete sanctification, or perfect conformity with Christ, of every one who by a true faith embraces the righteousness of the Lord Christ. These truths, however, cannot, it is presumed, be too frequently or strongly inculcated. They exhibit the leading features of that stupendous and glorious plan of man's redemption, which surpasses the comprehension of even the holy angels. These doctrines are not the production of some peculiar and novel

section of the christian Church; but the doctrines which are recognised and inculcated in the Articles, Homilies, and Liturgy of the Church; as well as in the divine word, by which, as the only ultimate standard, all religious articles, creeds, homilies, and liturgies, must be approved or rejected.

The writer may not be warranted in entertaining the apprehension that the aforesaid fundamental truths of the christian religion, have been but too sparingly or obscurely treated by many of those able divines of the present day, whose views appear to agree with the leading doctrines of the Church. But he presumes not to suppose that any such apparent defect will be supplied in the following pages.

Inadequate, however, as the Author's attempt may be to defend or exhibit these leading doctrines of the Reformation; or, rather, the doctrines of God's holy word,

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