To JOSHUA WATSON, Esq. MY DEAR SIR, Mr. Landor has said in one of his exquisite dedications, that it is an insult to any man to request his leave to dedicate a book to him, because it is a request to be allowed to praise or perhaps to flatter him. The principle is generally, though not universally, true. Yet in acting on it in the present case, I do not gain all the advantages which I might expect. It gives me the liberty indeed of indulging my strong feelings towards you, but it does not give me the power of expressing them. I am sensible too, that if I endeavoured to do so, the words, which to me would seem faint and unworthy, would be painful and perhaps offensive to you. I feel the same difficulty pressing on me, whether I speak as a private friend, or as a Minister of the Church of England, under a deep sense of the inestimable advantages which her cause has derived from exertions on your part, the extent and the fruits, of which I cannot describe from seal, from wisdom, from firmness and from munificence. Every friend of yours will join in my heartfelt prayer, that it may please God to preserve you long to us and to the Church of England. You will join heartily in the prayer that it may please Him to preserve His Church to us and to you. Ever, my dear Sir, Most truly and affectionately yours, HUGH JAMES ROSE. Trinity College, May 10, 1831. TITUS I. 15, 16. Unto the pure all things are pure; but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled. They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abomin- able, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate p. 45. Comforts of Religion to the Believer. JOHN XVI. 32. Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall * Preached also, with alterations, before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, at Christ Church, Newgate, London, as the Spital Sermon for 1830. ST. MATTHEW XXVI. 13. Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall ST. JOHN XIV. 22, 23. Judas saith unto him (not Iscariot), will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and SERMON I. GOD'S GRACE SUFFICIENT TO SANCTIFY 2 CORINTH. XII. 9. My grace is sufficient for thee. I CAN do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me'', is not the language of a boasting or self righteous man. It is the language of him who in his sincere and heartfelt humility declared that he counted not himself to have apprehended, but that he followed after, if by any means he might attain unto the resurrection of the dead"; it is the language of him who knew that he must maintain a perpetual warfare with evil and seducing passions, 'lest that, by any means, when he had preached to others, he himself might be a castaway. This strong declaration came not from trust in himself, but from trust in God; it came from a full acceptance, and a just appreciation of the gift of God, and of the promises of the gospel. For the whole tone of the gospel is, in fact, a tone of triumph. It denounces indeed the bitterest and severest woes against sin; it 1 Phil. iv. 13. 2 Phil. iii. 12. 31 Cor. ix. 27. |