"O God, whose nature and property is ever to have mercy and to forgive, receive our humble petitions; and though we be tied and bound by the chain of our sins, yet let the pitifulness of thy great mercy loose us, for the honor of Jesus Christ, our Mediator and Advocate." Amen.

SERMON VIII.

THE APOSTLES' CREED.

MATTHEW XXVIII. 19.

Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

THE Church in its Liturgy calls on the congregation, calls on each in the presence of the rest, to declare his belief in that Holy Trinity, wherein the Author of our faith required that each should be baptized. The Apostles' Creed, (to the explanation and the proofs of which I mean to devote this discourse,) has its name as containing the substance of the doctrine taught by the Apostles, and from its use in Churches over which they had presided. Placed as I have shewn, most judiciously in this part of the Church service, it has been drawn up in the form most convenient for each to recite, in accordance with, and clear of interruption from, the rest. It

has not been drawn up in the manner of the general Prayers, which are offered up in the name of the whole congregation, and where each prays for all others as well as for himself. Belief is an act of the mind of the individual, in which no other can have share or cognizance: though we pray therefore for all and say "we beseech thee," "we praise thee O God," each says I believe in God. This belief is carried on through each of the smaller elements into which the articles are divided. The whole is called a Creed, from the Latin word which denotes, I believe. In the first paragraph thus each declares that he believes in God, he believes that there is a God, he believes that he is the Father of all, that he is Almighty, that he is the Maker of Heaven and Earth.

The existence of a God is an article of the highest importance; for on it depends the certainty of every religious truth, and the obligation to every moral duty. God therefore anxious not to leave himself without witness, or his creatures without a knowledge of those doctrines that were connected with their comfort and their hopes, has graciously provided that the proofs of his existence shall be plain to every capacity, and suggested by every object in nature to every reflecting mind. He has so constituted the course of this world, that every thing which now exists may lead

us to him who has existed from all eternity, for there is nothing which we see or know about us, capable of having made itself. We ourselves exist we know not how; deriving our existence from parents as little endured with creative power as we are, whose beginning we have heard of, and whose duration is perhaps now at an end. Go back in this chain of men long buried in the grave, unable to have continued their being, unable to have caused it, and at last you must come to some time when that chain began, to some superior power from whom man's existence must have been derived, to a Creator made by none other, beginning at no time, to an independent and eternal, to an all-wise and an allpowerful God. The proofs of his wisdom and his power encrease to us, as our understanding is exerted to enquire into his works, and improved to tracing out their constitutions and learning their uses. The meanest insect is formed with exactness to which human wisdom is not adequate, and provided for in ways surpassing human power. The succession of the seasons, the regular return of day and night, of summer and winter, traced to the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, themselves the workmanship of superhuman strength and intelligence all testify the continually upholding arm of the great superintending artist. Chance never made a house or a clock

or a ship, and who but a fool would say, that chance could make the great luminary in the heavens, or give in such regularity the seed time and the harvest in the earth. No: "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handiwork. Invisible to our senses, he is yet seen in his works— seen through all the extent to which the world his creation reaches seen in all withoutheard in all that passes within us: from him conscience, his remembrancer, pronounces his commands and his rebukes, and with a submission to a Creator, alarms to the dread of the Judge before whom all are to give account.

Of the belief in the Existence of a God, all nations, all ages, people in the least civilized or most refined estates, from times the most distant, have given their attestation. However imperfect they might have been in their conception of him, however different in their worship, the universality of the belief proves it either the remains of an original communication, or an irresistible conclusion fixed on the principles of sound reason in the minds of all, equally obvious to the shepherd as to the philosopher, to the dwellers in all lands, whether settled or wandering, whether savage or enlightened. His existence in power and wisdom thus proved and thus acknow

*Psalm xix. 1.