RIETY, INDEPENDENCE, AND FORCE OF THE EVIDENCES with which Christianity is actually surrounded, increase this obligation; that the duty is augmented by the PARTICULAR ADVANTAGES which we have each respectively ENJOYED; and that the whole is carried to the utmost height by its VAST DIScove

RIES AND THE IMMENSE INTERESTS WHICH ARE AT STAKE.

And do Thou, O blessed Lord God, vouchsafe to assist us! Do Thou dispose every ear to attend! Do Thou dissipate every prejudice from our understandings, and discharge every passion from our hearts! Do Thou excite in each breast an ardent desire for that grace, which alone can cause truth to penetrate and renew the soul, and give efficacy and success to all those evidences with which thou hast been pleased to accompany thy gospel!

I. We observe, in the first place, that men ARE ALREADY BOUND TO LOVE AND OBEY GOD BY THE STRONGEST ANTECEDENT OBLIGATIONS; and are therefore by no means at liberty to receive or reject Christianity at their mere option.

The question is not between Christianity, and no moral and religious accountableness whatever; but between that accountableness, dreary and awful, without assistance and without joy, and the same accountableness relieved by the gracious discoveries of Christianity. We are addressing those who admit the bonds of essential religion. With the atheist we have nothing to do in the present argument. "Do not imagine, then,"-I adopt the language of a great writer,' "that you can consult your tranquillity by shaking off the incumbrance of Revelation. Do not imagine you may live without religion, the fear of God, restraining your passions, mortifying your lusts, making sacrifices from a sense of duty, if you

1 Robert Hull.

can succeed in getting rid of the New Testament. You may shake off the restraints of the Christian religion; but you will not on that account shake off the restraints of religion. Christianity did not give birth to religion. Christ was not the author of religiondid not come into the world to teach religion. Had the Son of God not come forth from the presence of the Father into the world, religion would have remained in all its extent and obligation. The law of God was already promulgated; the obligation of man to love and serve God would have remained unalteredthe chain which connects man with the Deity, undissolved. Our blessed Saviour came not to make you religious, but to make you happy by religion. If he had not come, indeed, the religion of nature could only have breathed the accents of despair and misery. Whether you choose to be the disciples of Christ or not, you are previously under his law, and that law you have broken. Let the New Testament be a deception-Jésus Christ an impostor; yet a judgment to come is certain. Every secret thing will be brought to light. Whether you shall taste, indeed, of the divine goodness, depends upon the truth of the gospel; whether you entertain any hope of pardon, enjoy communion with God as a Father, experience the consolations of religion, be justified by faith, and die in the full assurance of hope; this is alone the gift of the religion of Christ. If you reject this, you reject your remedy, your medicine, the only antidote to your misery. Your guilt, apostacy, ruin, is the great foundation on which all the statements concerning a Saviour rest; the things supposed and taken for granted. Let no man think he can quiet his mind by shaking off the fear of judgment, by rejecting revealed religion. The only consolation you can derive by refusing to be guided by the New Testament, is to lose the hopes of religion; to stand, in relation to God, as an enemy, when you might have been reconciled to

him by the blood of his Son, adopted into his family, and made heirs of eternal life. Do not imagine that you are in a state of safety, because you go out of hearing of the voice of Christ, the great Deliverer."

Nor is this the only obligation under which we already lie, with respect to God and religion. Another follows. Let it never be forgotten, that if Christianity be true, it is NOT A MATTER LEFT TO OUR OPTION whether we will receive it or not. Human authority cannot constrain; but divine can and does. It is a fatal mistake to suppose that it is left to our choice whether we will receive Christianity or not, so that we are under no direct moral obligation to believe in it and obey it. On the contrary, we are under the strongest and most indispensable, supposing the religion to be true. Man is not left to his option; and he knows he is not: his whole moral nature, his conscience, the reason of the case, his common understanding, tells him the obligations he is under to submit to the greatest communication which God ever made to man. What! when God has provided a scheme for the salvation of mankind before the ages; when he has proposed that scheme by many successive revelations of himself; when he has separated a chosen family from the rest of the world, to serve as a repository of his counsels; when he has sent out many holy men and prophets, to signify beforehand the glories of a new kingdom, which he meant to establish upon earth, and to prepare men for the reception of it; when, after all these preludes, he has astonished the world with the completion of his adorable counsels, by sending forth his only-begotten Son, the express image of his person, to take upon him our nature, and to suffer and die for us; and by raising up apostles and evangelists, under the guidance of his Holy Spirit, to record these amazing transactions, and, by the attestation of stupendous miracles, to spread the knowledge of them over the face of the

earth when this, and much more has been done by the Almighty, to usher in the gospel, think not that all this mighty apparatus is to be thrown away on our caprice or obstinacy; and that, after all, we may be at liberty to reject his whole design, or take as much or as little of it as our wayward fancies should suggest to us. No: as well may we think to overturn the everlasting mountains, or push the earth itself from its centre, as to defeat or set aside one tittle of that eternal purpose which God hath purposed in Christ Jesus. To whomsoever the sound of the gospel comes, whether he will hear, or whether he will forbear, by that gospel he must stand or fall. Through faith in Christ, he may inherit the promises; if he withhold that faith, it is not at his option to have no concern in the threatenings of his affronted Sovereign.' Accordingly, the gospel proceeds on the footing of my text. "He that believeth" is exempted from condemnation, and entitled to eternal life; but "he that believeth not, is condemned already," because he "hateth the light, and cometh not to the light," but prefers darkness to it, from the consciousness" that his deeds are evil." "For every one that doeth truth,” and acts as an accountable being, "cometh to the light," and accepts and rejoices in the gospel, which sheds it upon a darkened world.

These, then, are the antecedent considerations. Whether Christianity be true or not, you are under the essential obligations of religion as due from a creature to his Creator; and if it be true-as it most assuredly is-it is not left to our option, but we are bound by the most solemn sanctions to believe in it and obey it. These are primary principles. May your hearts yield to them! You see how the case stands. We do not so much argue as entreat and persuade.

Let us proceed :

2 Bishop Hurd.

II. To remind you that CHRISTIANITY IS SO EX

CELLENT IN ITSELF, THAT THE SLIGHTEST EXTERNAL EVIDENCE IS SUFFICIENT TO OBLIGE MEN TO OBEY IT.

I need not surely dwell on this point. You have not so soon forgotten the adaptation of Christianity to the obvious state and wants of man. You have not so soon forgotten the excellency and elevation of its doctrines, the purity and beauty of its morals, the inimitable character of its Founder, and its tendency to promote in the highest degree the welfare of mankind. The impression is still deep of the internal constitution and framework of Christianity. How worthy of God, how suitable to the whole state and desires and aspirations of man. Yes; the remedial, consoling nature of the gospel, its soothing and purifying character, its gentle and yet powerful operations of grace upon the heart, its knowledge of all the secret springs of human conduct, proclaim, as with the voice of an angel, the author from whence it sprung. The three facts there disclosed, the FALL OF MAN, the REDEMPTION OF MAN, the RESURRECTION OF MAN, have the impress of God upon them, and answer to the exact necessities of a ruined world. To comply with the demands of such a religion, is to act on all the obligations of natural religion, only in a higher degree and with new energy. To follow it, is to obey what conscience dictates, only in a purer and more uniform manner. To believe in it, is to find a remedy for all our moral maladies, and an incentive to all our duties. Its mysteries are the sources of the most holy affections of the heart, and the most strenuous obedience of the life. All is congruous, pure, elevated, consoling, efficacious.

Such, then, being the excellency of Christianity, the obligation of obeying it rests on no minute and

2 Lect, XIV.

5 Lect. XVII. VOL. II.

3 Lect. XV.

4 Lect. XVI. 6 Lect. XVIII.

BB