expected a reprieve. It could serve no other purpose than to embitter his agonies, and make him see more clearly the justice of his condemnation. If you chose to do the unhappy man a real service, and to give him any substantial comfort, you must assure him that the offence for which he was going to die was forgiven him; that his sentence was reversed; that he would not only be restored to his prince's favour, but put into a way of preserving it for the future; and that if his conduct afterwards was honest and upright, he should be deemed capable of enjoying the highest honours in his master's kingdom. But no one could tell him this, or at least he would credit no one that did; except he was commissioned and authorized by the prince himself, to tell him so. He might study the laws in his hands till the very moment of his execution, without ever finding out from them that he should obtain a pardon.

Such, the Scriptures inform us, was the state of man before Christ came into the world. He had fallen from his original in

obnoxious to his wrath. The sentence of death had passed upon him, and he had no plea to offer to arrest the execution of it. Reason, you say, gives him a perfect rule to walk by. But he has already transgressed this rule; and if even this transgression were cancelled, yet if left to himself, he may transgress it again the next moment. He is uneasy under his sentence, he wants forgiveness for the past, assistance for the future; and till you can give him this, it is an insult upon his misery to talk to him of a perfect rule of action. If this be all that reason can give him (and it is really much more than it can give him) he must necessarily have recourse to Revelation. God only knows, and God only can tell, whether he will forgive, and upon what terms he will forgive, the offences done against him; what mode of worship he requires; what helps he will afford us; and what condition he will place us in hereafter. All this God actually has told us in the Gospel. It was to tell us this, he sent his Son into the world, whose mission was confirmed by the highest anthority, by signs from heaven, and miracles on earth; whose life and doctrine

are delivered down to us by the most unexceptionable witnesses, who sealed their testimony with their blood: who were too curious and incredulous to be themselves imposed upon, too honest and sincere, too plain and artless, to impose upon others.

What then can be the reason that men still refuse to see, and persist in " loving darkness "rather than light?" They will tell you, perhaps, that it is because the Gospel is full of incredible mysteries; but our Saviour tells you, and he tells you much truer, that it is "because their deeds are evil.” The mysteries and difficulties of the Gospel can be no real objection to any man that considers what mysteries occur, and what insuperable objections may be started, in almost every branch of human knowledge; and how often we are obliged in our most important temporal concerns to decide and to act upon evidence, encumbered with far greater difficulties than any that are to be found in Scripture. If we can admit no religion that is not free from mystery, we must, I doubt, be content without any religion at all. Even the religion of nature itself, the whole constitution both of the natural and

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the moral world, is full of mystery*; and the greatest mystery of all would be, if, with so many irresistible marks of truth, Christianity should at last prove false. It is not then because the Gospel has too little light for these men that they reject it, but because it has "For every one that doeth evil "hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved."+ The light of the Gospel is too prying and inquisitive for such an one. It reveals certain things which he could wish to conceal from all the world, and if possible from himself. Nor is this all; it not only reveals, but it reproves them. It strikes him with an evidence he cannot bear; an evidence not only of its own truth, but of his unworthy conduct. The Gospel does indeed offend him; but it is not his understanding, it is his conscience, that is shocked; he could easily credit what it requires him to believe; but he cannot, or rather he will not, practise what it commands him to do.

* Vide Voltaire, Questions sur l'Encyclopedie, v. i. p. 190. Rousseau, t. 7. p. 176. & t. 8. pp. 17. 26. 32. 49.—12o, 1762. Francfort.

+ John iii. 20.

It is plain that such a man cannot possibly admit a Revelation that condemns him; and it is as plain that the man of virtue cannot spurn the hand that is graciously stretched out to reward him. If he is a truly virtuous man, that is, one who sincerely labours to know his duty, and sincerely intends to perform it, he cannot but wish for more light to guide him in the investigation, more assistance to support him in the discharge of it, more happiness to crown his perseverance in it, than bare reason alone can afford him.

This is what all the best and wisest Heathens most ardently desired, what nature has been continually looking out for with the utmost earnestness of expectation. When with a mind thus disposed he sits down to examine the Gospel, suggest to me the least shadow of a reason why he should reject it. He finds in it a religion, pure, holy, and benevolent, as the God that gave it. He finds not only its moral precepts, but even its sublimest mysteries, calculated to promote internal sanctity, vital piety, unbounded philanthropy. He finds it throughout so great and noble, so congenial to the finest feelings, and most generous