SECTION Il. , 3 SECT. II.The Application of the Words of the Text to our own Age and Circumstances. Thus having shewn how reasonable was this demand of Christ upon his own disciples, we come in the next place to apply all this to our own ease, to our own age and circumstances. Awl here in order to enforce 'Vs enquiry upon our consciences, what do we more than others 2 We shall consider our character and our privileges ; (1.) That we are Christians, and not Jews nor heathens. (2.) That we are protestants and not papists. (3.) That we are protestant dissenters, who worship God in separate assemblies, and follow the teachings of men who have no com- mission from the established and national church; and under each of these characters we shall enquire how much our cir- cumstances of advantage and obligation are'superior to those of the rest of the world from whom we are distinguished, and whether our behaviour has been answerable to these special en- gagements. I. We are ehristians, and not Jews nor heathens. Let me speak to each of these apart : 1st, We are not born in a land of heathenism, in gross darkness and in the shadow of death, and therefore our, piety and virtue should far exceed all the practices of the heathen world. We are not left to the teachings of the book of nature, and to the silent lectures which the sun, moon and stars can read us : nor are we abandoned, merely to the instructions of religion that we may derive from as the beasts of the earth and the fowls of the heaven," or any of the works of God the Creator. We are not given up in the things of religion merely to the wandering and uncertain conduct of our reason, feeble as it is in itself, corrupted by the fall of Adam our first.father, beset with many sins and prejudices, and turned asidefrom the truth by a thousand false lights of .sense and appetite, fancy and passion, by the vain customs of the country, and the corruptions of our sinful hearts. We are not bewildered among the poor remains of divine tradition delivered down from Adam to Noah, and from Noah to-his posterity in the several nations of the earth ; we are not left to spell out our duty from those sorry broken fragments of revelation, which are so lost and defaced amongst most of the nations, and so mingled with monstrous folly and delusion, that it is hard to find any reliques of truth or goodness in them. We are not given up to foul idolatry and wild super- stition, nor to the slavish and tyrannical dictates of priests and kings, who contrive what ceremonies they please, and impose them Oil the people, which is the case of a great part of the hea- then world. A 3
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