e A CHRISTIAN CHURCH. within the reach of their proper evidences. Whereinsoever revelation gives us plain and certain rules for our conduct, rea- son itself obliges us to submit and follow them. Where the rules of duty are more obscure, we are to use our reason to find them out, as far as we can, by comparing one part of revelation with another, and making just andreasonable infer- ences from the various circumstances and connections of things. In those parts or circumstances of religion where revelation is silent, there we are called to betake ourselves to reason again, as our best guide and conductor. And let it beobserved, that there are many instances also, wherein we are instructed to pay the same honours to God, and fulfil the same duties to men, in the practice of public as well as private religion, both by the light of reason and the light of revelation.: For God, who knows the weakness of our intellectual powers, has been graciously pleased to give us a shorter, plainer, and easier discovery of many rational and moral truthsand duties by revelation, which would have been very tedious and tiresome, as well as much more difficult, for the bulk of mankind, to have ever found out and ascertainedby their own reasonings. III. When we have received upon just evidence the New Testament, as a revelation sent us from heaven, then our own reason and conscience oblige us to search in these writings, what new doctrines God has there proposed to our faith, and what new duties to our practice. And here, in our search after the things that relate to our personal religion, we shall find several sublime and glorious truths to be believed concerning " the blessed trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit ;" and almost all the ceconomy of our salvation revealed to us, above andbeyond what the light of reason can ever discover, or so much as surmise. We shall here find also the duties of faith, in the name, and blood, and righteousness of the Son of God, for the pardonof our sins, and the justification of our persons; hope in his resurrection; subjection to his government; offer- ing up our addresses of prayer and thanksgiving to God the Father, in his name ; seeking the influences of the blessed Spirit, to sanctify our souls; waiting for the return of Christ from heaven, and for our own resurrection to eternal life. All these, I say, we shall find revealed and prescribed, over and above the duties discovered by reason. And besides these, we have the institution of the two sacraments, to be ever celebrated by christians, as memorials and pledges of some ofthose duties and blessings. And it is not at all to be wondered at, that the gospel should require of us the additional belief and practice of such doctrines and duties in our personal religion, as the light of nature knows, nothing of; because the very design of the gospel was to restore.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=