careless profession of christianity, without any inward and divine change of heart. That little treatise, written by the learned Mr. John Jennings, concerning the preaching of Christ and experimental preaching, has many valuable hints relating to these two last particulars of my exhortation.

V. Lead your hearers wisely into the knowledge of the truth, and teach them to build their faith upon solid grounds. Let them first know why they are christians, that they may be firmly established in the belief and profession of the religion of Christ; that they may be guarded against all the assaults of temptation and infidelity in this evil day, and may be able to render a reason of the hope that is in them; furnish them with arguments in opposition to the rude cavils and blasphemies which are frequently thrown out in the world against the name and doctrines of the holy Jesus.

Then let the great, the most important, and most necessary articles of our religion, be set before your hearers in their fairest light. Convey them into the understandings of those of meanest capacity, by condescending sometimes to plain and familiar methods of speech; prove these important doctrines and duties to them by all proper reasons and arguments; but as to the introducing of controversies into the pulpit, be not fond of it, nor frequent in it: In your common course of preaching avoid disputes, especially about things of less importance, without an apparent call of Providence. Religious controversies, frequently introduced without real necessity, have an unhappy tendency to hurt the spirit of true godliness, both in the hearts of preachers and hearers; 1 Tim. iv. 7. And have a care of laying too much stress on the peculiar notions, and terms, and phrases of the little sects and parties in christianity; take heed that you do not make your hearers bigots and uncharitable, while you endeavour to make them knowing christians. Establish them in all the chief and most important articles of the gospel of Christ, without endeavouring to render those who differ from you odious in the sight of your hearers. Whensoever you are constrained to declare your disapprobation of particular opinions, keep up and manifest your love to the persons of those who espouse them, and especially if they are persons of virtue and piety.

VI. Do not content yourself to compose a sermon of mere doctrinal truths and articles of belief, but into every sermon (if possible) bring something practical. It is true, knowledge is the foundation of practice; the head must be furnished with a degree of knowledge, or the heart cannot be good: But take heed that dry speculations and mere schemes of orthodoxy do not take up too large a part of your composures; and be sure to impress it frequently on your hearers, that holiness is the great end of all knowledge, and of much more value than the sublimest speculations; nor is there any doctrine but what requires some correspondent practice of piety or virtue. And among the practical parts of christianity, sometimes make it your business to insist on those subjects which are inward and spiritual, and which go by the name of experimental religion. Now and then take such themes as these, viz. the first awakenings of the conscience of a sinner by some special and awful providence, by some particular passages in the word of God, in pious writings or public sermons, the inward terrors of mind, and fears of the wrath of God, which sometimes accompany such awakenings; the temptations which arise to divert the mind from them, and to soothe up the sinner in the course of his iniquities; the inward conflicts of the spirit in these seasons, the methods of relief under such temptations, the arguments that may fix the heart and will for God, against all the enticements

and oppositions of the world; the labours of the conscience fluctuating between hope and fear; the rising and working of indwelling sin in the heart; the subtle excuses framed by the flesh for the indulgence of it; the peace of God derived from the gospel allaying the inward terrors of the soul under a sense of guilt; the victories obtained over strong corruptions and powerful temptations, by the faith of unseen things, by repeated addresses to God in prayer, by trusting in Jesus the great Mediator, who is made of God to us wisdom and righteousness, sanctification and redemption.

While you are treating on these subjects, give me leave to put you again in mind, that it will sometimes have a very happy influence on the minds of hearers, to speak what you have learned from your own experience, though there is no need that you should tell them publicly it is your own: You may inform them what you borrowed from your own observation, and from the experience of christians, ancient or modern, who have passed through the same trials, who have wrestled with the same corruptions of nature, who have grappled with the same difficulties, and at last have been made conquerors over the same temptations. As face answers face in the glass, so the heart of one man answers to another; and the workings of the different principles of flesh and spirit, corrupt nature, and renewing grace, have a great deal of resemblance in the hearts of different persons who have passed through them. This sort of instruction, drawn from just and solid experience, will animate and encourage the young christian, that begins to shake off the slavery of sin, and to set his face towards heaven: This will make it appear, that religion is no impracticable thing; it will establish and comfort the professors of the gospel, and excite them with new vigour to proceed in the way of faith and holiness; it will raise a stedfast courage and hope, and will generally obtain a most happy effect upon the souls of the hearers, beyond all that you can say to them from principles of mere reasoning and dry speculation; and especially where you have the concurrent experience of any scriptural examples.

VII. Whether you are discoursing of doctrine or duty, take great care that you impose nothing on your hearers, either as a matter of faith or practice, but what your Lord and Master Christ Jesus has imposed. These are the limits of the commission which Christ gave to the first ministers of the gospel; Matt. xxviii. 19, 20. Go disciple all nations, baptizing them who are willing to become my disciples, and teach them to observe whatsoever I have commanded you. He has not given leave to his ministers, whether separate in their single congregations, or united in synods or councils, the least degree of power to appoint one new article of faith, nor to enjoin any new sort of devotion or practice, nor to impose any one right or ceremony of worship but what he himself has framed and enjoined. And yet, to our universal reproach, there is scarce any party of christians but hath been too ready to impose some doctrines upon the belief of their proselytes which Christ has not imposed, or to require of them some practices or some abstinences about meats or days, or things indifferent, which Christ has not required. It is this assuming power that has turned christianity into a hundred shapes, and every one of them in some degree unlike the glorious gospel. It is this has brought in all the superstitions and fooleries, the splendid vanities, the useless austerities, and the childish trifles of the Greek and Roman churches; and it is this has too far corrupted the purity, and defaced the beauty of most of those churches who boast of reformation, and wear the protestant name.

Now to discourage and deter us all from such presumption, let us remember that this

imposing spirit has generally found it necessary to support its commands with penalties and persecutions. Hence proceed the imprisonments and the murders, the cruelties, the tortures, and the wild and bloody fury that has ravaged the nations of Christendom, and cast a foul and lasting blot and infamy upon the religion of the blessed Jesus. Blessed Jesus! when shall this stain be washed out from thy religion, and this scandal die? If we survey the persecuting laws and edicts that have been framed and executed in Great Britain, or in foreign nations, in ancient or later times, we shall seldom find that the plain and explicit doctrines and duties of the gospel have been guarded with these terrors; but it is the wretched inventions of men, it is the institutions of priests, or the appointments of kings, (all which have been mere additions to the word of God) that have had the honour, shall I say, or the infamy to be thus guarded with bloody severities, and with engines of death. It is the absolute determination of men upon some points which Christ has not plainly determined; it is some forms of pretended orthodoxy which scripture knows nothing of, or at least which the word of God has not made necessary to our faith; it is some ceremonies or modes of worship which Christ and his apostles never commanded, that have generally been the shameful occasion of excommunications and prisons, of banishments and martyrdoms. See to it therefore with a holy and religious care, when you dictate any thing to your hearers as necessary to be believed or practised, that you have the plain and evident direction of scripture to support you in it.

It is this corrupt mixture of human opinions, and human forms of divine service, that has so disguised the pure religion of the gospel, as to tempt the deist to renounce it entirely. The pure religion of Jesus has divine charms in it, and is, like the author, altogether lovely; but when on one hand it is corrupted and debased, by new doctrines foisted into our creeds, and new mysteries which men have invented to overload our faith; when it is incumbered by new rituals of worship, or imposed rules and practices on the other hand, which the holy scripture has not enjoined; when men make articles of faith, which are no where plainly revealed; when they pronounce that to be a sin which God hath no where forbidden, and apppoint that to be a duty which God hath never commanded, (which I take to be the very nature of superstition) it casts such a veil of deformity over the beauties of the gospel, that it is no wonder if the men of reason start at it, and pronounce against it. While we hold forth this confused mass and mixture of things divine and human, and call it the religion of Christ, we tempt the men of infidelity to establish themselves in their unbelief; and they will hardly now give a favourable hearing to the pure doctrine of the gospel, because they have been so much disgusted with the sight of it, in a corrupt and superstitious dress.

But in this state of frailty and imperfection, dangers attend us on either hand. As we must take heed that we do not add the fancies of men to our divine religion, so we should take equal care that we do not curtail the appointments of Christ. With a sacred vigilance and zeal, we should maintain the plain, express, and necessary articles, that we find evidently written in the word of God, and suffer none of them to be lost through our default. The world has been so long imposed upon by these shameful additions of men to the gospel of Christ, that they seem now to be resolved to bear them no longer. But they are unhappily running into another extreme; because several sects and parties of christians have tacked on so many false and unbecoming ornaments to christianity, they resolve to deliver her from these disguises; but while they are paring off all this foreign trumpery, they too often cut her to the quick, and sometimes let out her life-blood, (if I may so express it)

and maim her of her very limbs and vital parts. Because so many irrational notions and follies have been mixed up with the christian scheme, it is now a modish humour of the age to renounce almost every thing that reason doth not discover, and to reduce christianity itself to little more than the light of nature and the dictates of reason. And under this sort of influence, there are some who are believers of the Bible and the divine mission of Christ, and dare not renounce the gospel itself; yet they interpret some of the peculiar and express doctrines of it into so poor, so narrow, and so jejune a meaning, that they suffer but little to remain beyond the articles of natural religion. This leads some of the learned and polite men of the age to explain away the sacrifice and the atonement made for our sins by the death of Christ, and to bereave our religion of the ordinary aids of the Holy Spirit, both which are so plainly and expressly revealed, and so frequently repeated in the New Testament, and which are two of the chief glories of the blessed gospel, and which perhaps are two of the chief uses of those sacred names of the Son and the Holy Spirit, into which we are baptized. It is this very humour that persuades some persons to reduce the injury and mischief that we have sustained by the sin and fall of Adam, to so slight a bruise and so inconsiderable a wound, that a small matter of grace is needful for our recovery; and accordingly they impoverish the rich and admirable remedy of the gospel to a very culpable degree, supposing no more to be necessary for the restoration of man, than those few ingredients, which, in their opinion, make up the whole composition. Hence it comes to pass, that the doctrine of regeneration, or an entire change of corrupt nature by a principle of divine grace, is almost lost out of their christianity; or at least they suppose renewing grace and sanctification by the Holy Spirit, and his assistances, to carry nothing more in them than the outward divine messages and discoveries of grace, made and attested by the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit to the christian world. This is a dangerous extreme on the other hand; I hope it will never obtain amongst us protestant dissenters; but since it is a fashionable error, you ought to set a stricter guard against it. As he that adds or takes away from the words of the prophecy in the latter end of the book of God, is left under a curse; Rev. xxii. 18, 19. so we should set a holy guard upon ourselves, lest we add any thing to the gospel of Christ; or take any thing from it, lest we expose ourselves to the same divine indig

nation.

To avoid both these extremes, permit me to give this general word of advice, and may God enable me to take it myself, viz. That in all our ministrations we keep a constant and religious eye upon the holy scripture, that in the necessary and most important points of doctrine or duty, we may teach our hearers neither more nor less than the scripture teaches. Our great business is to expound scripture, and enforce the word of God upon the minds and hearts of men: When therefore we explain the great and necessary points of the gospel contained in any one scripture, let us do it as much as possible by bringing other parts of scripture into the same view, that the word of God may be a comment on itself. When we have occasion to make inferences from it, let us take care that the connection of them be strong and evident, and that they lie not far off at a distance, for in very distant inferences we are more liable to mistake. When we are delivering our own best opinions concerning divine subjects, and giving our advice upon matters which are not so evidently and so expressly revealed, let us practise the modesty of the blessed apostle, 1 Cor. vii. 6, 10, 12, 25, &c. I speak this by permission or advice, and

not of commandment:* It is I speak it, and not the Lord: I have no plain commandment of the Lord about it, yet I give my judgment as one that has obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful: I suppose, therefore, that in the present case, this is good to be practised, or that to be avoided: Judge ye within yourselves, whether what I speak be agreeable to the word of God; 1 Cor. xi. 13.

VIII. Remember that you have to do with the understanding, reason, and memory of man, with the heart and conscience, with the will and affections; and therefore you must use every method of speech which may be most proper to engage and employ each of these faculties, or powers of human nature, on the side of religion, and in the interests of God and the gospel. Your first business is with the understanding, to make even the lower parts of your auditory know what you mean. Endeavour, therefore, to find out all the clearest and most easy forms of speech, to convey divine truths into the minds of men. Seek to obtain a perspicuous style, and a clear and distinct manner of speaking, that you may effectually impress the understanding, while you pronounce the words; that you may so exactly imprint on the mind of the hearers the same ideas which you yourself have conceived, that they may never mistake your meaning. This talent is sooner attained in younger years, by having some judicious friend to hear or read over your discourses, and inform you where perspicuity is wanting in your language, and where the hearers may be in danger of mistaking your sense. For want of this, some young preachers have fixed themselves in such an obscure way of writing and talking, as hath very much prevented their hearers from obtaining distinct ideas of their discourse. And if a man gets such an unhappy habit, he will be sometimes talking to the air, and make the people stare at him, as though he were speaking some unknown language.

Remember you have to do with the reasoning powers of man, in preaching the gospel of Christ; for though this gospel be revealed from heaven, and could never be discovered by all the efforts of human reason, yet it is the reason of man must judge of several things relating to it, viz. It is reason must determine whether the evidence of its heavenly original be clear and strong: It is reason must judge whether such a doctrine or such a duty be contained in this gospel, or may be justly deduced from it: It is the work of human reason to compare one scripture with another, and to find out the true sense of any particular text by this means: And it is reason also must give its sentence, whether a doctrine, which is pretended to be contained in scripture, be contrary to the eternal and unchangeable relations and reasons of things; and if so, then reason may pronounce that this doctrine is not from God, nor can be given us by divine revelation. Reason, therefore, hath its office and proper province, even in matters of revelation; yet it must always be confessed, that some propositions may be revealed to us from heaven, which may be so far superior to the limits and sphere of our reasoning powers in this present state, that human reason ought not to reject them, because it cannot fully understand them, nor clearly and perfectly reconcile them, unless it plainly see a natural absurdity in them, a real impossibility, or a plain inconsistence with other parts of divine revelation.

*I know these expressions of the apostle have another turn given them by some judicious commentators, viz. that the apostle had sufficient proof of the directions which he pronounces strongly to be the commands of Christ from other places of scripture; but that these which he expresses so cautiously, were directions which Christ had not elsewhere given us, but were made known to him by his own special inspiration. I am not fully assured which is the true sense, but I rather think it is to be understood, as St. Paul's own private sense of things, who was a man favoured with many inspirations.