SECTION III. 27 lend on their messages of truth or duty with holy joy, and make them the food and support of your spirits' ? If you chuse the person, and are pleased with the performances of him who ministers, it is a very considerable step toward profiting by his ministry, The word methinks should glide more easily into the heart, and have a povyerful sway and influence on the conscience, when it is received from the man we love to hear : and indeed -what sort Of sermons can you ever hopeto profit by, if not by the Preaching of those 'whom yourselves have chosen ? You have plainly this advantage above your neighbours, but is your im- provement greater than theirs? But if we enter into. particulars on this subject, we shall find that your advantages are more con - áiderable even in your own esteem, arising from the character and qualifications of the ministers whose labours you chute to attend, and from the way and incliner of their preaching*. It was the general desire of your fathers, and- it is still for the most part your desire and endeavour to sit under sucha mi- nistry, as not only preaches the law, to convince you of sin and, to direct you to the several duties you owe to God and man, but -which leads you into a sense of your degeneracy and r-tiin by the fall of Adam, and your impotence to restore yourselves; and gives you a large acquaintance with the methods of divine grace in the gospel, and the benefits of the new covenant, recovering you from your guilty and sinful state by the sacrifice and death of .Christ,- and enabling you, by his spirit, to perform the several duties prescribed. You desire such preachers as display the various glories of Christ in hissacred offices of a Mediator and High priest, aKing and a Judge, auch lead you to practise all the divine, social and personal virtues, by evangelical motives and evangelical assistances, as well as by the principles and ob- ligations of the light -of nature, and who insist frequently upon the peculiar themes of christianity and divine revelationt. Now permit me to make the enquiry in my text. Those of you who do sit tinder such ministrations as you desire in this re- spect, What do you more than athers`.f Are your souls more evangelical; more truly Christian than your neighbours ? Have you more of the temper and spirit of the gospel, wrought into your very hearts and inward powers ? Do you love Christ Jesus the Lord, and live upon him by daily faith and dependence, * Letjt. be observed here, that different nations and ages, and parties of Christians, have their peculiar way and manner in preaching. The primitive fathers and She moderns bave very different fashions. The Germans and French, the English and Scots, the Cocceians and Voetians among the Dutch, the Armi- nian& and Calvinists, the ancient Puritans, and the zealous Churchmen of that day, the present Conformists and the Nonconformists, have their different man- ners partly in composing and partly in delivering their sermons: nor is it strange that the protestant dissenters should think the way practised among them prefect able to any other, and of more advantage toward their salvation. t See Lay-Nonconf. Justified; p. 16, 1 ".
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