Mave made fome pretentions to revelation. But have they not all been deftitute of any fuch characters or marks of divinity? In ancient paganifm, we fee a mixture of midnight darkness, error, and fuperftition, blended with the practice of fuch external rites as frequently contained in them the height of cruelty and impiety. Their fyftem of morality, both in refpect to extent, principle, and motive, was very defective, and the groffeft immoralitics frequently paffed for acts of piety and devotion. The religion of Mahomet has, ftampt upon it, the most evident marks of fraud and impofture; is calculated to infpire the worst of paffions, cruelty, malice, and revenge, and tends to the practice of unbounded licentioufnefs. It is true it contains fome precepts of morality, borrowed from the chrif tian revelation, yet this fyftem is a ftranger to purity of heart, and the eternal rewards it holds up to view confift only in a paradife of fenfual delights, where there is every thing to please a carnal vicious appetite, but nothing to fatisfy a holy or virtuous mind. As the founder of it was a man of profligate morals, fo he made ufe of his religion as an engine to forward his fchemes of ambition, and to establish a temporal dominion. But no fuch thing appeared in the character and life of the founder of the chriftian religion. This fubject, however, will be reaffumed in a future difcourfe. At prefent I conclude with this obfervation, that if the fcriptures are fo excellent, and contain fo many marks of divinity, then we are under obligations to prize and efteem them. Let us fearch them daily, and endeavour to regulate our hearts and lives by the pattern of holiness which they exhibit.

DISCOURSE III.

LUKE xvi. 29, 31.

Abraham faith unto him, they have Mofes and the Propets; let them hear them.

And he faid unto him, if they hear not Mofes and the Prophets, neither will they be perfuaded, though one rofe from the dead.

THESE words are a part of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, (if it may be called a parable,) which we have recorded at large, from the 19th verfe to the end of this chapter. Our bleffed Lord communicated many folemn and interesting truths to his hearers in parables, but -among all his difcourfes of that kind, we will find none more plain or more important than this. Indeed it has

been a question among commentators whether it ought to be denominated a parable at all, and not rather a piece of hiftory, literally true, which our bleffed Lord related from his knowledge of the unfeen world. Our Saviour does not call it a parable, nor does he add any particular illuftration or explanation of it to his difciples. No fuch explanation appears to be neceffary. In it we have a relation of the very different situation of two perfons in this world, and the still unspeakably greater difference between them in a future ftate. The anxiety discovered by the rich man that Abraham would fend Lazarus i warn his brethren, who were still in the world, left they fhould alfo come into that place of torment, cannot be fuppofed to arife from any benevolent affection which he had to his brethren or his Father's houfe, but rather from a fear, left,

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by their coming into that place of horror and despair, they fhould add to his own torment, as he had probably been, by his evil example, the means of hardening them in wickedness. This request is denied, and his brethren are referred to Mofes and the Prophets. The fentiments here expreffed by the rich man, who was in torments, are agreeable to impreffions which are prevalent among many. Mankind are prone to overlook, or at least to undervalue, thofe means which God has inftituted, and to which providence has favoured them with a daily, free, and unreftrained accefs. They thus reafon with themselves. If they could be favoured with fuch and fuch extraordinary means; if they were to fee the truths of the Gofpel confirmed by incontestable miracles; if it had been their lot to fee and converfe with Chrift in the flesh, or live in the age of infpiration; or if one was to be fent from the dead to inform them of what paffed in the unfeen world, and warn them of their danger; or, if God was to fend an Angel from heaveu to preach the everlafting Gofpel, inftead of one in their own nature, a man of like paffions with themfelves--they would believe and turn from their evil ways. But experience has proved this to be fallacious, by fhowing how little effect the most ftupenduous miracles have, many times, had upon the minds of men. Extraordinary means, at least means which the imaginations of men would devife, if they may be called means, may alarmı, bewilder, and frighten, and might, probably, promote the cause of fuperftition, but it is the fpirit, with the word, that quickeneth. If the hearts of the children of men are not foftened in the ufe of ordinary means, there is no profpect that a change would be effected, either by extraordinary operations of providence, or by even, inverting the courfe of nature. It is accordingly added, If they bear not Mofes and the Prophets, neither will they be perfuaded, though one rofe from the dead. But the particular purpofe, which I have in view in difcourfing from these words, is to confider them in the light of an atteftation, given by our bleffed Saviour, to the truth or divine original of the writings of Mofes and the Prophets, or of the various writings compofing the Old Teftament. The par

ticular defign of this difcourfe, taken in connexion with thofe which precede and follow it, will be to prove by facts, that the facred books compofing the Old Testa ment, are divinely inspired, or that Mofes and the Prophets are worthy to be heard, and their writings received as containing an effential part of that revelation which God has been pleafed to give to mankind.

Before I proceed directly to the proof of the authenticity of the Old Testament, it may not be amifs to take a brief view of religion, as revealed in the writings of Mofes and the Prophets. This may be confidered under two periods.

ift. As it appeared under the patriarchal difpenfation. Under this difpenfation, religious rites were few, and rev. elation confined within a narrow compafs. It confifted in the true knowledge and unadulterated worship of the living and true God, as diftinguished from the prevailing idolatry of the times; in a firm belief in, and reliance upon, both his general and particular providence ; in a hope of pardoning mercy to penitent finners, and in a confidence in God as the great rewarder of thofe who diligently feek him, which rewards they were taught to expect, not merely in this life, but principally in a future and better world: For we are told that they fought a better country, even an heavenly. From the earliest period, they had an expectation, founded firft upon one, and af terwards upon a variety of promifes, that a great Saviour would, in due time, appear in our nature, who was to redeem mankind from the ruins of the apoftacy, and whose fufferings and death, for the purpofe of fatisfying divine juftice, for the fins of men, were prefigured by the very ancient rite of facrificing. In thefe divine promifes the Patriarchs had a firm faith, in which they lived and died. The whole of the revelation of a Meffiah made to our first parents, was, at first contained in that, comparatively, ob fcure promife, that the feed of the woman fhould bruife the ferpent's head. In the call of Abraham, and the promise made to him that in his seed should all the families of the earth be blessed, this revelation became fomewhat more plain and diftinct. This faith in the promifes, connected

with the practice of virtue, or univerfal holinefs, appears to have been the main principle of the patriarchal religion. The practice of this religion was remarkably exem-. plified in Noah, Abraham, Ifaac, Jacob, Job, and other Old Teftament faints, who all died in faith, not having received the premises, but having feen them afar off and were perfuaded of them and embraced them.

The fecond view of religion exhibited in the Old Teftament, is in the Mofaic difpenfation. The covenant made with Abraham, is, by the Apoftle Paul, denominated, The covenant that was confirmed before of God in Chrift. This, the law which was four hundred and thirty years: after, cannot difannul, that it should make the promise of none ffect. This was fubftantially the fame religion with that: which was practifed in the more ancient patriarchal times, with the addition of a fpecial covenant, made with a peculiar people, among whom God was pleafed to erect a facred polity, and to whom he gave a revelation of his will, which was now, for the first time, committed to writing, as the best and safest mean of its prefervation, whereas it had been, heretofore, handed down by tradi tion, which, on account of the long lives of the ancient Patriarchs, and the narrow limits within which revelations was confirmed, had been heretofore eafy.. The principal ends for which this facred polity was erected were, to reflore and preferve the true worship of God which had been corrupted, and more effectually to guard against that fyftem of grofs idolatry which now began to prevail, almoft univerfally, among the nations of the world, by ef tablishing fuch a fyftem of laws as would keep the Jews a diftinct people from all other nations, as well as engage. them to a holy practice, by the purity of their laws, which were to them a rule of duty, enforced by fevere penalties, under the fanction of divine authority, and to keep alive in their minds, the hope and expectation of that Meffiah who had been early promised, and who was now more particularly foretold by many additional intimations, as well as prefigured in that great variety of typical institutions, which made fo confpicuous a part of their worship. Whoever impartially confiders the Mofaic difpenfation,