some adequate apprehensions of them, though they appear well worthy of all adoration, yet is our view of them but faint and dim, on account of their sublimity and distance from us; and what views we may have of them, are apt rather to excite astonishment and awe, than move the softer and more endearing passions; and therefore the ideas of loving and delighting in God, were such as the most elevated hea then writers could not reach: nor indeed had they among all the crowd of their divinities any proper objects of religious homage.

But here the deity lets himself down to our capacities, and becomes on a level with our tenderest affections; discovers himself under the intimate relations of a friend and a father; displays such an affecting scene of the mildest and most merciful condescension as must strike even the dullest, and warm the coldest heart.

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The Lord, who knows our frame, sees that we are not capable of beholding him in his full glory, and therefore kindly draws a veil over it, suiting his ral dispensations to the feeble subjects of them. He sends a messenger in our own state and circumstances, who being encompassed with our infirmities, experiencing our difficulties and temptations, and having a fellow-feeling of all our troubles, might show how well qualified he was to bear with us and teach us to bear them; to have compassion on the ignorant and those that were in error; pointing out to us the true way to happiness, and enabling us to walk there-.

in; leading us gently by the hand, inviting and encouraging us to come to God through him. "I am the way, the truth, and the life: he that hath seen me hath seen the father. All that my father hath is mine: I and my father are one, as I and you are one."

Thus, he who was to his own people formerly the Lord of Hosts, a mighty God and terrible, jealous, avenging, and whose whole worship was styled fear (a worship fitly accommodated to such people), is now to men of more enlarged minds, under this proportionably more indulgent dispensation, the God of all joy and consolation; the father of mercies, whose children and heirs we are said to be; whom we are taught to approach in a more liberal way, with a true filial assurance, whose darling attribute is goodness, and the first principle and great commandment in his law, the end and the completion of it, love.

These amiable representations, illustrated in the most easy and agreeable manner, must above all things tend to strengthen and confirm our faith, enliven our hope, and draw our whole soul after him that so loved us, and dwelt amongst us: especially that, which was the greatest possible instance of affection for us, his voluntarily laying down his life, to bring us from a state of misery and disobedience, and reconcile us to the happy, gracious government of our heavenly father. This cannot but endear his character to all who are capable of giving attention to it; and will in a much nearer and more tender manner unite him to us, and make the memory

and contemplation of him more affecting than that of any other being, however great, good, and glorious, who has not undergone the like kind office, or appeared in such familiar light to us.

And though in order to direct our reason to the proper object of religious worship, and guard against every misconception of our true relation thereto, we are oft reminded who it was that originally provided this redemption for us; yet in that other, no less essential (perhaps with the bulk of mankind the predominant) part of our nature, by which religion and every thing else take the strongest hold of usthe passions—we are necessarily touched in a much more sensible manner, with what is so very obvious to our present comprehensions, and as it were analogous to what we feel among ourselves; and may be satisfied, that the benevolent author of our being will make due allowances for this, so far as it becomes unavoidable; which is in some degree the case at present universally: and every one that reflects upon the general turn of his own mind in his devotion, will, I believe, find it to be so; which is, in this respect, an experimental proof of the propriety and beauty of the plan before us.

And as this dispensation was well suited to the frame of human nature in general, and an improvement on the foregoing one to the Jews; so it was no less properly accommodated to the state of the heathen world; and no less necessary in the circum

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stances under which it then was, and must in all probability have continued.

The founders and supporters of religious institutes among the Gentiles, had no better ground for them than uncertain tales of empty apparitions of their fictitious deities, or as blind and vague reports of their transactions; some of these ill devised by themselves, others in great part copied from true scripture, history, or primitive tradition; but all so much abused and blended with each kind of vice and folly, to comply with the general corruption, and suit the several tastes and tempers of particular countries, as at length rendered the whole little else than a gross compound of absurdity and immorality, and made their very worship and devotion impious.

Their system of doctrines, and subsequent rites, must by these means be extremely complicated, and vary according to the various degrees of superstition and impurity that reigned amongst them: yet they were all so far of the same cast and complexion, that there could be no great room for a competition with each other in point of either authenticity or excellence; it would be hard to distinguish between the different sorts of evidence producible in different places for the one; or of the reasons that might be alleged to vindicate the other, since custom was the common plea for both; since both were equally uncertain in their origin, and both alike unprofitable as pertaining to the conscience. So that, when any species of idolatry was

once established in a nation or city, it must with the generality be either a point of necessity to abide by it, since they could find no better, or appear a matter of indifference whether they should exchange it for any other, or admit that other along with it, as occasion served; and this might well be left to the determination of the state.

Such were the circumstances of the heathen world, when Christ appeared to put an end to all those lying vanities, and turn men to the living and true God; by exhibiting a plan of religion in every respect worthy of such a Being, and which would lead them to the love and likeness of him.

Farther: Men had been so long used to the notion of supernatural appearances, and messages from heaven, and a pretence of these been made the ground of every article of faith and mode of worship, that nothing but a real one, clear and better circumstanced, could be conceived to prove effectual toward bringing the generality to a firm belief in one true, spiritual, invisible God; and induce them to worship him in spirit and in truth, and assure them of always finding access to him. Dry, abstract reasoning would go but a little way with the vulgar, who, though they are most susceptible of sudden impressions, yet require something strong and visible to strike them; nor would a few transient signs and dazzling wonders serve to make any such impressions last. Of these they had already but too many reported among them; and the more common