SECTION If. 597 rose, they are pursuing some of these designs which I have now mentioned, and that the principles and topics of revelation and Christianityare in reserve, to be displayedat large in their follow- ing sermons. In general, it is most safe and honourable for a minister of Christ, to make the gospel appear to be the reiningprinciple in his discourses, and make our hearers sec how gloriously it has improved the religion of nature. If you speak of our natural knowledge of the attributes of God, and the truths of religion that reason dictates, shew how they are all exalted, how brightly they shine in the gospel of Christ, and what new discoveries and new glories relating to them -are derived from the holysoriptures. If you speak of the duties which men owe to God, or to one another, even those which are found out by reason and natural conscience, shew how the gospel of Christ bath advanced and refined every thing that nature and reason teach us; enforce these duties by motives of christianity, as well as by philosophi- cal arguments drawn from the nature of things : stir up the practiceof them by examples of Christ and his apostles, -by that heaven and that hell which are revealed to the world by Jesus Christ our :Saviour; impress them on the heart by the constrain- ing influence of the mercy of God, and the dying love of our tord Jesus.Christ, by his glorious appearance to judge the living end,the.deud, and by our blessed hope of attending hint on that day. ",These are the appointed arguments of our holy religion, :and may expect more divine success. When you have occasion to represent what need there is of diligence and labour in the duties of holiness, show also what aids are promised in the gospel, tohumble and feeble souls who are sensible of their own frailty to resist temptations,- or to dis- charge religious and moralduties ; and what influences of the Holy Spirit may be expected by those who seek it. Let them know that Christ is exalted to send forth this spirit, to bestow repentance and sanctification as well as forgiveness; for without him we can do nothing Acts v. 31. John xv. 5. As there are.seasons and times, proper to impress the mind with the glories of God our Creator, and to enforce the duties of morality, to teach men to govern their unruly appetites and passions, to bind all the rules of virtue on the consciences of men, and press them with zeal and fervour according to the example of the apostles in the New Testament ; so there are times and seasons, to treat more at large on the peculiar truths of revelation and the glories of christianity, both for the honour of our Saviour, and for the welfare of souls. For this reason they are so largely insisted on by the holy writers, those blessed patterns of our ministry. There must be some seasons allotted to-the descriptions of the sinful and miserable state of mankind r p 3
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