Soo The NEW and COMPLETE LIFE J our BLESSED LORD " Soon after his underfianding failed; his terrified imagination uttered horrors not to be repeated, or ever forgotten ; and before the fun (which I hope has feen few like him) arofe, this gay, young, noble, ingenious, accomplifhed, and moll wretch- ed mortal expired." It fometimes happens, we confers, that men who have led very wicked lives have gone out of the world, as they lived in it, defying confcience, and deriding a future judgment as an idle fiflion : but thefe inflances are very rare, and only prove that there are monflers in the moral as well as in the natural world, who have fported with their own deceivings, and llave even dared to lift their puny and re- bellious arm againft Omnipotence. But it will perhaps be raid, that the fons of vice and riot have pleafure in fenfual indulgences. Allowed: but it is'altoge- ther of the lower kind, empty, fleeting, and tranfient ; like the crackling ofthorns under a pot, fo is the mirth of the wicked. It makes a noire and a blaze for the pre fent ; but foon vanifhes away into fmoke and vapour. On the other hand, the pleafureof religion is folid and failing, and will attend us through all, even the fait Rages of life. When we have paffed the levity of youth, and have loft our relieh for the gay entertainments of retire ; when old age (teals upon us, and bends us to- wards the grave, this will cleave fail tous, and give us relief. It will be fo far from terminating at death, that it then com- mences perfefl, and continually improves with new additions, and ever -blooming` joys. If our fouls are clad in this immortal robe, we neednot fear the awful fummons of the king of terrors, nor regret our re- tiring into the chambers of the duff. Our immortal part will wing it's way to the arms of it's Omnipotent Redeemer, and find refi in the heavenly manfions of the Almighty. And though our earthlypart, this tabernacle of clay, return to it's ori- ginal duff, it is only to be railed in a more beautiful and heavenly form. If it 3 retires into the fltadow of death, and vifits the gloomy habitations of the grave, it is only to return from a fhort confinement to endlefs liberty : for our great Mailer will lead his redeemed from the chambers ofthe grave, and guide them in his firength to his holy habitation : he will plant them in the mountain of his inheritance, in the place he bath prepared for them, even the fanfluary which his hands bath eflablifhed ; and we {hall be with the Lord for ever and ever, to ferve him day and night in his temple, where the inhabitant {hall never fay, I am fick; where the wicked {hall ceafe from troubling, and where the weary foul will be for ever at refl. We lhall here fubjoin a copy ora letter, Pent by Publius Lentulus, governor of Judea, to the fenate of Rome, relpeaing theperron and aEfions of our bleffed Lord and Saviour, Jesus CHRIST ; which may ferve as a firong teflimony and evidence in favour of the divinity of our Lord's perron and doarines againfi the Hale ob- jeaions of the Deifls, as the authenticity of the ancient manufcripts, from which it was tranflated, is founded on the belt authority. Tiberius Ctefar was then em- peror, and caufed the extraordinary intel- ligence, contained in this letter, to be publi{hed throughout all the Roman pro- vinces.. One would have thought this confirmation, jilted by the Roman gover- nor, might have convinced the generality ofthe Romans, as well as Jews, concern- ing the divinity of our Lord's million; but fuch was the univerfal prejudice of the people, that nothing would íatisfy thofe who had not given credit to the words of CHRIST himfelf. The epifile runs as follows : " ° There appeared in thefe our days a " man of great virtue named Jesus " ° CHRIST, who is yet living amongfl us, " and of the Gentiles is accepted as a " Prophet of Truth, but by his own dif- " cipies called the SON of Gon. He ., raifeth the dead and cureth all manner " of difeafes. A man ofMature fomewhat tall
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