sed to add to the declaration of his will in the gospel, the sacraments, as confirming seals of his love, by which the application of his benefits is more special, and the representation more lively, than that which is merely by the word. But they are few in number, only baptism and the Lord's supper, simple in their nature and easy in their signification, most fit to relieve our infirmities and to raise our souls to heavenly things. Briefly, the service of the gospel is answerable to the excellent light of knowledge shed abroad in the hearts of Christians.

Secondly; our Redeemer hath abolished all obligation to the other rituals of Moses, to introduce that real righteousness which was signified by them. The "carnal commandments" given to the Jews, are called "statutes that were not good," Ezek. xx. 25; either in respect of their matter, not being perfective of the human nature; or their effect, for they brought death to the disobedient, not life to the obedient; the most strict observation of them did not make the performers either better or happy. But Christians are "dead to these elements," that is, perfectly freed from subjection to them. "The kingdom of God" consists". not in meat or drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost; for he that in these things serveth Christ, is acceptable to God, and approved of men," Rom. xiv. 17, 18. We are commanded "to purge out the old leaven of malice and wickedness," that sours and swells the mind, and "to keep the feast" with the "unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." We are obliged to preserve ourselves undefiled from the moral imperfections, the vices and passions, which were represented by the natural qualities of those creatures which were forbidden to the Jews, and to purify the heart, instead of the frequent washings under the law. But the gospel frees us from the intolerable yoke of the legal abstinences, observations, and disciplines, the amusements of low and servile spirits, wherewith they would compensate their defects in real holiness, and exchange the substance of religion for the shadow and colours of it. For this reason the apostle is severe against those who would join the fringes of Moses to the robe of Christ.

Thirdly; the indulgence of polygamy and divorce that was granted to the Jews, is taken away by Christ, and marriage restored to the purity of its first institution. The permission of these was by a political law, and the effect was

temporal impunity: for God is to be considered not only in the relation of a Creator and universal Governor, that gave laws to regulate conscience, but in a special relation to the Jews as their King by covenant. Besides his general right and dominion, he had a peculiar sovereignty over them. And as in a civil state a prudent governor permits a less evil for the prevention of a greater, without an approbation of it; so God was pleased in his wisdom to tolerate those things, in condescension to their carnal and perverse humours," for the hardness of their hearts," lest worse inconvenience should follow, Matt. xix. 8. But our Saviour reduces marriage to the sanctity of its original, when man was formed according to the image of God's holiness. "He which made them at the beginning made them male and female: for this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder," Matt. xix. 4-6. From the unity of the person, that one male was made and one female, it follows that the superinducing of another into the marriage-bed is against the first institution. And the union that is between them, not being civil only in a consent of wills, but natural by the joining of two bodies, something natural must intervene to dissolve it, viz. the adultery of one party. Excepting that case, our Saviour severely forbids putting the wife away and marrying another, as a violation of conjugal honour.

Fourthly; our Redeemer hath improved the obligations of the moral law, by a clearer discovery of the purity and extent of its precepts, and by a peculiar and powerful enforcement. In his sermon on the mount, he clears it from the darkening glosses of the Pharisees, who observed the letter of the law, but not the design of the Lawgiver. He declares that not only the gross act, but all things of the same alliance are forbidden; not only murder, but rash anger and vilifying words which wound the reputation; not only actual pollution, but the impurity of the eye, and the staining of the soul with unclean thoughts, are all comprised in the prohibition. He informs them that every man in calamity is their neighbour, and to be relieved; and commands them to love their deadliest enemies. Briefly, he tells the multitude, that "unless their righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees," that is, the utmost that they thought themselves obliged to, "they should not enter into the king

dom of heaven." Besides, our Saviour hath superadded special enforcements to his precepts. The arguments to persuade Christians to be universally holy, from Christ's redeeming them for that great end, were not known either in the economy of nature or the law; for before our lapsed state, there was no need of a Redeemer, and he was not revealed during. the legal dispensation: his death was only shadowed forth in types, and foretold in such a manner as was obscure to the Jews. The gospel argues new reasons to increase our aversion from sin, which neither Adam nor Moses were acquainted with. So the apostle dehorts Christians from uncleanness, because their bodies are "members of Christ," and 66 temples of the Holy Ghost," and therefore should be inviolably consecrated to purity. If the utensils of the temple were so sacred, that the employing of them to a common use was revenged in a miraculous manner; how much sorer punishment shall be inflicted on those who defile themselves, after they are" sanctified by the blood of the covenant,” Heb. x. 19. The gospel also recommends to us love to one another, in imitation of that admirable love which Christ expressed to us, and commands the highest obedience even unto death when God requires it, in conformity to our Redeemer's sufferings. These and many other motives are derived from a pure vein of Christianity, and exalt the moral law to a higher pitch, as to its obligations upon men, than in its first delivery by Moses.

(2.) The laws of Christ exceed the rules which the best masters of morality in the school of nature have prescribed for the government of our lives. It is true there are remaining principles of the moral law in the heart of man; some warm sparks are still left, which the philosophers laboured to enliven and cherish. Many excellent precepts of morality they delivered, either to calm the affections and lay the storms in our breasts, whereby most men are guilty and miserable, or to regulate the civil conversation with others. And since the coming of Christ, Promotheus-like, they brought their dead torches to the sun, and stole some light from the scriptures. Yet upon searching, we shall easily discover, that notwithstanding all their boasts to purge the soul from defilements contracted by union with the body, and to restore it to its primitive perfection, "they became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened." Although the vulgar heathens thought them to be guides in the safe

way, yet they were companions with them in their wanderings; and truth instructs us, that "when the blind leads the blind, both fall into the ditch."

I will briefly show that their morals are defective and mixed with false rules: only premising three things; that I shall not insist on their ignorance of our Redeemer, and their infidelity in respect of those evangelical mysteries that are discovered only by revelation, for that precisely considered, doth not make them guilty before God; but only take notice of their defects in natural religion, and moral duties, to which "the law written in the heart" obliges all mankind: that virtue is not to be confounded with vice, although it is not assisted by special grace. Those who performed acts of civil justice, and kindness, and honour, were not so guilty as those who violated all the laws of nature and reason. Their heroic actions were praiseworthy among men, and God gave them a temporal reward; although not being enlivened by faith, and purified by love to God and a holy intention for his glory, they were dead works, unprofitable as to salvation. Their highest rule, viz. to live according to nature, is imperfect and insufficient: for although nature in its original purity furnished us with perfect instructions, yet in its corrupt state it is not so enlightened and regular, as to direct us in our universal duty. It is as possible to find all the rules of architecture in the ruins of a building, as to find in the remaining principles of the natural law, full and sufficient directions for the whole duty of man, either as to the performing of good, or avoiding evil. "The mind is darkened" and defiled with error, that indisposes it for its office.

I will now proceed to show how insufficient philosophy is to direct us in our duty to God, ourselves, and others.

In respect of piety, which is the chiefest duty of the reasonable creature, philosophy is very defective, nay, in many things contrary to it:

First; by delivering unworthy notions and conceptions of the Deity. Not only the vulgar heathens "changed the truth of God into a lie," when they measured his incomprehensible perfections by the narrow compass of their imaginations, or when looking on him through the appearing disorders of the world, they thought him unjust and cruel; as the most beautiful face seems deformed and monstrous in a disturbed stream: but the most renowned philosophers dishonoured him by their base apprehensions: for the true notion of God signifies a

being infinite, independent, the universal Creator, who preserves heaven and earth; the absolute director of all events; that his providence takes notice of all actions; that he is a liberal rewarder of those that seek him, and a just revenger of those that violate his laws: now all this was contradicted by them. Some asserted the world to be eternal; others that matter was; and in that denied him to be the first cause of all things. Some limited his being, confining him to one of the poles of heaven; others extended it only to the amplitude of the world. The Epicureans totally denied his governing providence, and made him an idle spectator of things below. They asserted that God was contented with his own majesty and glory; that whatever was without him, was neither in his thoughts nor care; as if to be employed in ordering the various accidents of the world, were incompatible with his blessedness, and he needed their impiety to relieve him. Thus by confining his power who is infinite, they denied him in confessing him. Others allowed him to regard the great affairs of kingdoms and nations, to manage crowns and sceptres; but to stoop so low as to regard particular things, they judged as unbecoming the divine nature, as for the sun to descend from heaven to light a candle for a servant in the dark.. They took the sceptre out of God's hand, and set up a foolish and blind power to dispose of all mutable things. Seneca himself represents fortune as not discerning the worthy from the unworthy, and scattering its gifts without respect to virtue. Some made him a servant to nature, that he necessarily turned the spheres: others subjected him to an invincible destiny, that he could not do what he desired. Thus the wisest of the heathens dishonoured the Deity by their false imaginations, and instead of representing him with his proper attributes, drew a picture of themselves. Besides, their impious fancies had a pernicious influence upon the lives of men, especially the denial of his providence; for that took away the strongest restraint of corrupt nature, the fear of future judgment; for human laws do not punish secret crimes that are innumerable, nor all open, as those of persons in power, which are most hurtful; therefore they are a weak instrument to preserve innocence and virtue. Only the respect of God to whom every heart is manifest, every action a testimony, and every great person a subject, is of equal force to give check to sin in all, in the darkness of the night