SECTION III, IÇj not bound then to enquire what surer signsyouhave of the favour and love of God to you ? What better inward tokens and evi- dences have you, that you are the children of God and partakers of his favour ? You complain that.the public liturgy tempts children to be- lieve, they are regenerated or born again, and made members of Christ and children of God in baptism, which dangerous opi- nion is alsorepeated in theoffice of confirmation ; andyou com- plain that they are further confirmed in this mistake when the bishop lays his hand upon their head to certify them by this sign of the favour of God ; are you careful then to teach your chil- dren, and to enforce it upon their consciences, that they must seek after better signs of regeneration and of the divine favour, even the graces of faith and love, and the exercise of universal holiness in heart and life? What a vain imagination is it, what an idle pretence to guard against the dangers, of mistaking the imposition of the hand of a man, for a certain sign of the favour of God, unless you instruct your household, what are the true and undoubted signs of his favour ? Unless you persuade them to all holy diligence, in securing and maintaining such eviden- ces of converting grace and the love of God, as God himself has prescribed, such as God will approve of, and such as will stand the test in the day of judgment? H. Another advantage that you protestant dissenters have, towards your improvement in true religion and in acceptable ser- vice to God is, that you are freed from the inventions of men, and from the impositions and incumbrances of human ceremonies in divine worship-. There need be no proof of the imposition of such rites in the established church, since the preface to the common -prayer book confesses they have been devised by man, and yet it is thought good to reserve them still. But you, my friends, are required to practise nothing in the worship of God, but what you take to be his own pure institutions. It has pleased God in his providence, and it hath pleased our late and present rulers in their great goodness and justice, to give you freedom from these human appointments, and to permit you toworship God in a way more agreeable to his own word and to your own consciences : the question of my text then returns upon you, What are you better than they who submit to them, what do you more than they ? Do you never content yourselves with mere forms of Godliness? Are you more spiritual in the * This mistake is still more confirmed and established by the office of burial wherein every baptized person, except the self-murderers and the excommuni- cated, has his body committed to the dust insure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal !Ye, and is called a dear brother or a sister, and thanks are given fur God's taking their souls to himself, how wicked soarer their lives bave been. f See Dr. Colamy's fntroductiondo bis Second Vol. of Moder. Niaconf. n 2
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