xeài D£DTCA7TOV: the city ; am( if I attempt to stay but aweek or ten (lays there, T finds send ble return of weakness ; so that I sin constrained to retire to the country-air, in order to recruit and maintain thislittle capacity of service. I bless Godheartily; and you aremy witnesses; that inmy betterseasons Of health heretofore, and in the intervals of my studies, I was not a stranger of your privatefamilies, nor thoughtless of your soups improvement. What shall I do now to make up these defects? What can I do more pleasing andprofitable toyou, than toseize the advantages of my retirement, to review some of thosediscourses which have assisted your faith and joy in my firmer ministry, and to put them into your hands? 'Thus something of me shall abide with you in your several houses, while I am so incapable of muchpublic labour, and of personal Visits: This, my friends, is thetrue design of sending this volume to the press : And though many of my brethren may composé far better sermons than I, whose persons I love and honour, and their labours I read with reverence and improvement, yet I am persuaded, that share whichI havé in your affections, Will 'renderthese discourses at least as agreeable to your taste, as those df su- perior excellency from other hands. Ifanyother christians shall think fit to peruse them, and find any 'spiritual benefit, they must mike their acknow- ledgments to God and you. I cannot invite theloose and fashionable part of mankind, the vain censors of the age, and the deriders of the ministry, to become my readers : Toa Many of them grow weary of christianity, and look back upon heathenism with a wishful eye, asthe Jews did ofold upon the leeksand onions ofEgypt, when they grew angry with Moses, and began to loathe the bread of heaven. Thesepersons will findbut little here that suits their taste ; for Í have not en- tertained youwith lectures of philosophy, insteadof the gospel of Clnist; Corhave I affected that easy indolence of style which is the dry delight of some modish writers, the cold and insipid pleasure of menwho pretend'to po- liteness. Youknow it has always been the business of my ministry to con- vince and persuade your souls into, practical godliness, by ase clearest and strongest reasons derivedfrom the gospel, and byall the most moving methods of speech, of which I was capable ; but still in a humble subserviencyto the promised influences of the I3oly Spirit, I ever thought it my duty to press the convietion with forceon the conscience,when light was first let into the mind. A statue hung round with moral sentences, or a marblepillar with divine truths inscribed upon it, may preach coldly to the understanding, while devotion freezes at the heart : Butthe prophets and apostles were burning andshining lights; they wereall taught by inspiration to make the words of truth glitter like sun-beams, and to operate like a hammer, and a fire, and a two-edged. amord*. The movements of sacred passion may be the ridiculeof an age. which pretends to nothing but calm reasoning. Life and zeal in the minis- try of the word, maybe despised by men of like-warm and dying religion : Fervency of spirit is the semice of theLordt, may become the scoff and jest of the criticand the profane : But this very life and zeal, this sacred fervency, shall still remain one bright character of a christian preacher, till the names t: 2 Cor. iv. 4, 6. John v. 35. Jer. xxíìi. 29 lIeb. iv. lß,, 3 Acts mill. 25. Roma xii. )1.
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