ready been remarked in them, touch, and that oftentimes by very affecting reprefentations, upon some of the most interesting topics of human duty, and of human meditation; upon the principles, by which the decisions of the last day will be regulated * ; upon the fuperior, or rather the supreme, importance of religion; upon penitence, by the most preffing calls, and the most encouraging invitations; upon self-denials, watchfulness ||, placability, confidence in God **, the value of spiritual, that is, of mental worship ††, the necessity of moral obedience, and the directing of that obedience to the spirit and principle of the law, instead of feeking for evasions in a technical construction of its terms.

* Mat, xxv. 31 et seq.

† Mark viii. 35. Mat. vi. 31-33. Luke xii. 16. 21.

-4,5.

‡ Luke xv.

§ Mat. v. 29.

1

If we extend our argument to other parts of the New Testament, we may offer, as amongst the best and shortest rules of life, or, which is the same thing, descriptions of virtue, that have ever been delivered, the following passages:

"Pure religion, and undefiled, before God and the Father, is this; to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world*."

" Now the end of the commandment is, charity, out of a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned †.”

"For the grace of God that bringeth falvation, hath appeared to all men, teaching us, that, denying ungodliness and worldly lufts, we should live soberly, righteoufly, and godly, in this present world‡."

those sufficiently accurate, and unquestionably just, are given by St. Paul to his converts in three several epistles*.

1

The relative duties of husbands and wives, of parents and children, of masters and fervants, of Christian teachers and their flocks, of governors and their fubjects, are fet forth by the fame writert, not indeed with the copiousness, the detail, or the distinctness, of a moralist, who should, in these days, fit down to write chapters upon the subject, but with the leading rules and principles in each; and, above all, with truth, and with authority.

Lastly, the whole volume of the New Teftament is replete with piety; with, what were almost unknown to heathen moralists, devotional virtues, the most profound veneration of the Deity, an habitual sense of his bounty and protection, a firm confidence in

the final result of his councils and dispensations, a disposition to refort, upon all occasions, to his mercy, for the supply of hu man wants, for assistance in danger, for relief from pain, for the pardon of fin,

:

CHAP. CHAP. III.

The candour of the writers of the New Testament.

I MAKE this candour to confift, in their putting down many passages, and noticing many circumstances, which no writer whatever was likely to have forged; and which no writer would have chosen to appear in his book, who had been careful to present the story in the most unexceptionable form, or who had thought himself at liberty to carve and mould the particulars of that story, according to his choice, or according to his judgement of the effect.

A strong and well-known example of the fairness of the evangelifts, offers itself in their account of Christ's refurrection, namely, in their unanimously stating, that, after he was risen, he appeared to his disciples alone. I do not mean, that they have used G3

the