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tereft plead with them in vain. It is not în the feafon of health and profperity that

we can expect, from a man of the world, ferious attention to the reprefentations of another, or even to the convictions of his own mind, concerning the depravity of his character. But vifit him in the day of his calamity, when pain of body and anguifh of spirit have taken hold of him. See him especially in the near views of death, roufed to confideration of his fpiritual and eternal ftate, forced to look back upon his paft life, and forward to an awful futurity; afk him then how he is to appear before God, what account he can give of his life, and upon what grounds his hopes are founded? (No harm, but much good, may arise to each of us, from our fometimes, in imagination, placing ourfelves in thefe circumftances, 'ere long they will be real to us all, and afking ourfelves fuch interefting queftions.)

The delufive hopes which ignorant fuperstition received from defigning prieftcraft, it is not neceffary in this country and in the prefent age to expofe. Excepting that of the gofpel then, there are but two pleas, to which with any probability of fuccefs, man can have recourfe; his own attainments in virtue; and the mercy of God. As to the first of these, the plea of merit; who, that is poffeffed of a found mind, will, for a moment, reft upon it, as his title to eternal life? Examine the best of your actions, analyze the principles from which they proceeded, and on which they were conducted; bring them to the ftandard of confcience, compare them with the pure and fpotiefs precepts of the gospel, you will find that they come far fhort, that they are full of imperfection. But had the cafe been otherwife, and had a few actions of your life been perfectly pure and virtuous, ftill you are but unprofitable fervants, and even

in thefe have done no more than your duty. Surely, then, these can make no atonement for the innumerable tranfgreffions which you must confefs. The plea of merit, indeed, from a creature to his Creator, from a creature, especially, fo guilty and depraved as man, is at once fo arrogant and abfurd, that stupidity and ignorance alone can urge it.

The other plea to which the finner may have recourse, the mercy of God,-is far more plaufible; yet neither will this avail him, if raised on any foundation fave that which God himself hath established in the gospel. In any other way it must be rejected as invalid both by reafon and by conscience. For, the stern demand of reafon is abfolute, unlimited obedience; and the accusing voice of confcience fills the heart, not with the hopes of pardon and acceptance, but with the fad forebodings of impending judgment. What then is the ground upon which the light

of nature can direct the finner to build his hopes of the divine favour. It is, at least, but a faint probability, a prefumptive hope, that in compaffion to his weakness, God may be pleafed to pardon his tranfgreffions, and to accept of his fervices imperfect and unworthy as they have been. But this plea, it is evident, may be urged, and thefe hopes be affumed, by every offender, however enormous, against every law both human and divine, which is at once to annihilate all diftinction between right and wrong, virtue and vice. If the extent of the divine favour is to be meafured by the unbounded hopes of the finner, then how are the perfections of Deity, and the equity of his moral government to be vindicated? How is a difcrimination to be made between the righteous and the wicked, "between thofe who ferve God and those who serve him not?"

Both reafon and confcience concur in condemning the finners' claim to the mer

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ty of God: A claim fuggested by au dacious hope, and founded upon princi ples too fallible, to afford fuch fecurity, as can bring peace to a mind anxious about futurity, and apprehenfive of just retribution.

Now, if this fandy foundation be the only one upon which the religion of nature fupports the hopes of her votaries, let us enquire, whether the wishes of the human heart be placed upon firmer ground, by the gospel itfelf, according to a late fashionable fyftem. A fyftem, of which the chief object is to exclude from revelation the atonement of Chrift, that grand and capital doctrine, which hitherto, in the general fenfe of the church, was not only its characteristical diftinction, but the great pillar on which all its other parts depend. To the abettors of this system, the doctrine of falvation by the cross, inftead of the wisdom of God, appears, as much as ever it did to the ancient Jews