fatiable defire after happiness-yet every thing you try, deludes, disappoints, or difgufts you. You are directed by your reason impetuous paffions interpose. These two parts are equally natural to you-yet they are ever at variance, oppofing, thwarting, and torturing one another.

In a fhort time, after leading this wretched incoherent life, difeafe and infirmity come on; you grow weary of the world-yet a certain inftinct makes you unwilling to die. yet are afraid to lofe it.

You hate life,

Nature gave you an appointed time-yet fhe has not reconciled you to her appointment. You die then at last in the fame perplexity, in which you lived; amidst fears and wishes, uncertain where you are going, and what is to be your por

tion.

If the religious account of man has its difficulties; certainly this is worse; this is furrounded with infurmountable

difficulties, with palpable contradictions.

BLESSED be GOD! if we take the Gospel for our guide, we have there light enough to unravel our difficulties; and comfort enough, to animate us under all our diftreffes.

THIS ftate is not the original creation of God. He is raifing us from it, by the mediation of his Son, to a ftate of perfect peace, innocence and happiness in a better world. All present evils, grievous as they are, have a tendency, if properly received, to promote this end. Nothing, but the groffest disbelief, can defeat this purpose.

I. IN examining the extent and progrefs of redemption, we are immediately encountered with, by one great difficulty, which has ftaggered the faith of many, and rendered fome unwilling to admit the univerfality, and others even the reality of this Divine mercy.

The

The difficulty is, what is to become of the great majority of mankind, the nations, which never heard of this falvati

on;

if it be really neceffary to the whole race of man.

BUT it is a grofs error, to confider the gospel as a partial religion, confined to a few ages and countries of the world. It is the religion of mankind.

REDEMPTION is as universal a gift as creation. As in Adam all die, fo in Chrift fhall all be made alive.

THOUGH, for reafons best known to GOD, it was necessary that the Mediator fhould live and die and fuffer in

fome part of this vaft œconomy; yet all generations, from the first beginning to the end of the world, fhare alike in the benefits of his atonement. The benefits of the mediatorial fcheme began with fin, and continue as long as fin continues reclaimable.

IF

you

afk me how the ages before Chrift received these benefits, I answer

that

ces.

that it was by the pious use of sacrifi* There is no tolerable account to be affigned of their inftitution, but that they were appointed by heaven, immediately upon the fall, to prefigure the great facrifice of the Redeemer, and to appropriate its falutary effects to ferious worshippers by faith and repentance, The only difference between them and latter generations is, that they looked forwards towards it through the fhadows and types by which it was exhibited to their faith; we in thefe later ages receive and believe and apply it as a past

event.

66

BUT the difficulty, you will fay, ftill

«* AFTER all, that has been wrote upon the fubje&t "of facrifices, I am ftill forced to afcribe their origin to Divine appointment: to afcribe fuch an inftitution, as "this of facrificing animals, wholly to the invention of men, especially to the men of thofe times, feems very "unnatural." Bifbop Law's Theory of Relig. p. 50. Dr. Delany has proved this Divine appointment în a manner equally lively and satisfactory. Rev. examined with Gandour. Vol. 1. Diff. 8.

remains :

remains: what becomes of the heathens, who foon loft the fpiritual purpose of the inftitution, amidst the uncertainty of traditional religion; and of the numerous modern nations, who have never heard of Chrift or his atonement ?

THE general mercies of GOD depend not upon human error and corruption. His preferving Providence, whether we gratefully reflect upon it, or not, invariably acts for the good of man. The fun fhines, the heavenly bodies move, the elements act for the promifcuous ufe of the thankful and unthankful. Thus too it is in religion: though the encreafing corruptions of the world induced him to enter into a new covenant with Abraham and his pofterity; yet his general mercy through a Redeemer was ftill extended to the common race of mankind; they had fufficient powers to work out their falvation; and fuch blinded but well-meaning worshippers, as had the proper moral difpofitions,

were