world, so far as it is worth your reading, from the fall of man, down to the accomplishment of your redemption in Christ Jesus, and of your sanctification by the Holy Spirit, is nothing else, but the history of God's providential dealing with mankind, in order to this accomplishment, whereof the whole is laid before you in the book of God. If you attentively read this glorious book along the thread wherewith I have supplied you, your common sense will clearly perceive the truth of every particular in this my appeal to it. You will be most thoroughly convinced, that this book, in its wisdom, its spirit, in its power, and its compassion for your wants, is as much superior to all other books, as God is to man. You will perceive therein collected for your use all the delicious and wholesome fruits of the first four thousand and fifty years of the moral world. In this book you hear God speaking to you the words of eternal life, you see him bursting through the works of his own creation, and trampling on the very laws of nature, as he rushes forth to save you. In this you hear him prophesying, preaching, promising; and in this you see him, as a man, dying for you. This very book is his last will and testament, whereby he bequeaths to you a crown and kingdom, in glory exceeding those of ten thousand worlds. It is true, your title to this legacy is disputed by three very artful and eloquent lawyers, the devil, the world, and the flesh. But then in the Testament itself you clearly see on what terms to found your claim, and how to make it good at the bar of God, in spite of all their allegations, which you may easily refute by Christ your advocate, if you can plead the express words of the Testament, and shew that your title comes within their meaning. Hold this Testament fast to your hearts, for it was purchased with the blood of God, and contains your all. Part with life sooner than with this. Trouble not yourselves with the cavils and refinements of learned men on the subject of religion, or on the meaning of any passages in these sacred writings. All you want from it, is sufficiently plain. Only take care that your common sense alone is allowed to be your interpreter. As to the depth and darkness of a few passages, as God did not intend them for you, the unlearned, leave them as so many stumbling blocks in the way of pride and the devil, to be mangled, and then

quoted by them against Christ and his religion. If at any time your faith or virtue should at all stagger at their forced interpretations, consider whether they concern your salvation; and if they do not, banish them with contempt from your thoughts; but if they do, fly to prayer, and the book of God. Content yourselves with the plain open sense of such passages as you cannot mistake, and such as direct you in the safe path of life. Read, and be happy. If you can but see, hear, or think, you must be a Christian, must be saved. That no more is necessary to your being a Christian, will be evident by your taking this matter in another light. All sober people rightly take him for an errant fool or madman, who denies there is a God, or that the world was made by wisdom and power, or by any thing else than mere chance. You must take him to be equally mad, who denies, that God could speak to man, or make it evident, that he spoke to him. Nor is he less mad, who says that God could not prove, he empowered an angel, or man to speak to us, although he had enabled that angel or man to work miracles for our conviction; that is, to do such things, as are impossible to be done but by the power of God. And farther, if any one is thoroughly convinced, that God hath spoken the holy Scriptures to all men, and fully proved, that he did so, by repeated miracles accompanying the delivery of those Scriptures, whosoever, so convinced, does not firmly believe those Scriptures, or does not understand them in their plain and open sense, cannot, by any other means so fully prove himself to be stark mad. Again, is he not unquestionably mad, who confessing that God made the world by wisdom, power, and goodness, and placed man at the head of it; nevertheless doubts, whether God always willed the virtue and happiness of man; or did, at any time, use such means as were necessary, without forcing the freedom of man, to bring him back to virtue, the only way to human happiness? Or can any man, in his senses, if he reads or hears the Book of God read by another, doubt whether that Divine book contains the most true and powerful method of converting a sinner and saving his soul? It is not more sure that there is a God, than it is that he is the author of all good, and the preserver of order in all his works, insomuch that every thing in this world, proceeds as

he hath appointed, excepting man, the only free agent here. Your common sense cannot help pronouncing him an outrageous madman, who coupling a lion and a lioness together, declares, they have as good a chance to generate a lamb as any thing else. You will not stop a moment to say the same thing of another, who sows his field with thistleseed, and tells you, it may as well chance to produce a crop of wheat as of thistles. And can you suppose it less reasonable that God should care for man, than for brutes or plants? If he preserves order in the lower parts of his creation, shall he not preserve, or restore it in the higher? God hath so ordered the nature of man, that he is at liberty to be good or wicked. If then in consequence of this liberty, man should become wicked and miserable, is it not reasonable to believe, that his gracious Maker should, in mercy, use the proper means of his retrieval? Your common sense strongly maintains, it is; and nothing but downright madness can doubt of it. Now nothing hath ever been known to mankind, which can at all effect this retrieval, but the contents of God's Book. I therefore say again, read, meditate, be virtuous. Read and be happy. If you say you have common sense, do not put it in the power of reasonable beings to say with truth, that you are mad. This appeal requires nothing of you but to distinguish yourselves from the inhabitants of Bedlam. If any one of you were to be publicly hanged for some great crime, unless he should read, or hear another read, the king's reprieve, must he not have totally lost his senses, in case he should refuse to do either? In the Book of God he sends you a most gracious reprieve from the most shameful and miserable of all deaths, from eternal death; and will you neither read nor hear it read? The Scriptures are able to make you wise unto salvation.' What then must be said of your understanding, if you neglect so great salvation?' To common sense in the reader of these Divine Writings, and to that alone, I mean hereafter solely to appeal.

But whereas you can read them only in a translation from the Greek, the language wherein they were originally written (for Christ himself and the Holy Ghost have given the full force of originality to the Greek translation of the Old Testament) it is requisite I should say somewhat to you

on those translations before I proceed farther with that appeal. The holy Scriptures were intended chiefly for your use, in every country, and throughout all ages of the world, if in the seed of Abraham all nations of the earth were intended to be blessed.' Translations therefore of these Divine Writings, wherein that blessing in Christ, the seed of Abraham, and in his holy religion, is offered to you, were intended to be made into all vulgar languages; and that they might be safely made without any loss of sense and power, they were originally written in terms of the greatest simplicity and plainness, so as that the sense can be every where preserved, in all its beauty and force, by putting word for word in every living or vulgar language. Accordingly, all the translations of these sacred books have been scrupulously turned after this manner, for the benefit of every Christian country; excepting one only among many Latin translations, wherein the translator hath aimed at elegance, and hath therefore been universally condemned, even by those of his own communion. The other translations have been made by men of reputed piety and learning. Be this however as it may, no man, who set himself to this work, durst do more than poorly nibble, here and there, at interpretations favourable to his own sect. The fear of God prevented his taking many liberties which he wished to take. His dread of censure from all the learned world, in case he should have shewn a considerable degree of partiality, kept him still within closer bounds, and the good God, ever watchful for the truth of his own word, and the faith and salvation of his own people, stood over him, and in some degree guided or restrained his pen as he judged fitting. Here every thing I have just now said in regard to purity in the copies of Holy Writ, is almost as applicable in regard to its translations, so applicable indeed, that nothing, wherein faith or virtue is materially concerned, is kept out of sight in any translation; and that the sound Christian is able fully to refute the most artful heretic or schismatic by what he calls his own Bible, that is, by the translation in use among his own party. It is true, that all translations are the works of men only, and perhaps none of them wholly free from faults; yet there is not omitted in any one of them a single truth necessary to the salvation of the reader, nor a single

fallacy inserted that can endanger the soul of him who compares the suspected passage with other places even of the same translation. If therefore you read only to be saved (and I know not for what other purpose you or I should read), you may most safely confide in that which God, in his infinite goodness, hath blessed you with in your mother tongue. I speak this as my judgment in the presence of God, and humbly think, I may safely go so far.

It is now time, having God's word in our hands, to draw somewhat nearer to the great Redeemer, Christ Jesus. In the great number of prophecies concerning Christ, delivered through Isaiah, that which foretells the coming and office of John Baptist is very remarkable: chap. xl. ver. 3—5. Here it is foretold, that on our Saviour's arrival in this world, and somewhat earlier than his entrance on his priestly function, the voice of one shall be heard, crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a high way for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough shall be made plain, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.' Pursuant to this prophecy, an angel, Luke i. said to Zacharias the father of John, Thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son-who shall turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he shall go before the Lord God in the spirit of Elias-to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.' This John being asked by the priests and Levites who he was, answered, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias,' John i. Such was the mortified life and sanctity of this man, that the Jews crowded to him from Jerusalem, and all parts of Judea, confessing their sins to him, and receiving baptism from him in the river Jordan. To them he preached repentance, and to the Pharisees and Sadducees he said, Ye generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?' To our blessed Saviour he bore repeated witness, as to Christ, or the promised Messiah, saying, Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away sin, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.' The high reputation of this holy man, his application of the prophecies to Jesus, his