mies of shameless depravity. It is my present intention to enter upon that examination, and to show, by an induction of particulars, that it was plainly the design of the Almighty, in revealing his Will to man, to teach him the way of righteousness, and to direct him to walk therein, to deter him from vice, and to show him how inconsistent it is, not only with the obedience due to his Creator, but with his own nature, with the perfection for which it was designed, and of which it was capable. This indeed is so obvious, and the declarations to this effect in sacred writ are so frequent and so express, that it may seem perhaps to require some apology for my presuming so far upon the patience of my present hearers, as to introduce before them a view of this subject, the plainness and simplicity of which, the least exercised in theological studies must at once perceive and acknowledge. Would to God that such were indeed the case! would to God that there were no occasion to insist, in the way of controversy at least, upon the necessity of obedience to the Divine Law, and to illus

trate the moral tendency of God's word! But man continually bears the strongest testimony to the account of his fall, by corrupting and perverting every good with which the Divine Mercy has entrusted him. It might appear no doubt an unreasonable thing in speculation, to suppose, that any man or set of men could so far mistake or pervert the intentions of God, in his communications to the human race, as not to confess, that they must be designed to correct what is amiss, and to improve what is right amongst them, and that no less in moral practice than in matter of opinion. The holiness of God, his immaculate purity and perfect righteousness, might have been a sufficient security, that nothing coming from Him could do less than promote the same holiness and purity and righteousness amongst his creatures, as far as they were capable of following the heavenly pattern He should set before them. Even had there been no express declaration in favour of these virtues, and no express precept to enjoin them, still a Revelation from Him, who is infinite as well in

truth and righteousness as in power, would of necessity have been stamped with a character conformable to that of its Author. But when it is considered, that every page of that Revelation teems with attestations to the indispensable necessity of virtue; when it is plainly told us, that as essential holiness is the perfection of God, so a derived holiness is the perfection of man; when in the history of our unhappy degradation we see clearly, that sin alone caused a separation between man and his Maker, and that there can be no restoration to His favour without a restoration to holiness; and when we meditate with due attention upon the means, which have been supplied both in the Law and the Gospel, for the effecting of that restoration, it must appear an extraordinary proof of human weakness or wickedness, should a Revelation thus circumstanced not be understood as imposing the strongest obligation to rectitude of conduct in every possible respect. Yet so it has been. Neither the flaming sword set to guard the Tree of Life, nor the burning terrors of Sinai, nor the clear

though mild declarations of the Preacher on the Mount, have been able to secure the revelations of Heaven from being made subservient to the errors and the vices of men. Scarcely indeed is there any error or any vice, which has not at one time or other sought to sanction its enormity by some unhappy perversion of revealed truth. Doctrines have been taught, as contained in the Book of God, completely at variance with all moral obligation, and at once derogatory to His righteousness, and subversive of human virtue. This is attested by the whole current of that history which has informed us of the manner in which man has received the instructions of his Maker, and which in truth is frequently nothing but an account of the various misrepresentations to which the sacred Oracles have been subjected since they were first promulgated to the world. The ingenious subtleties of philosophy, and the wild fictions of poetic fancy, were equally employed in polluting that small stream of traditionary instruction, which, had it run clear, would have given men a correct, though a

faint view of their origin and their duty. But the philosophers and the poets of Paganism may perhaps be excused, from the difficulties by which they were surrounded; a greater guilt and a greater misery must assuredly fall upon those, who have corrupted even the plainest testimonies of God's written word. The scepticism of the Sadducee, and the hypocrisy of the Pharisee, the uncleanness of the Nicolaitan, the ungovernable anarchy of the early Anabaptist, and the direct encouragement to wickedness afforded by the principles of the Antinomian, together with those ever varying shades of error by which vice would fain conceal some part of its deformity, seek each of them to support itself by a pretended regard to that word, which, in its design and in its form, is most clearly opposed to them all. But unhappy as this is, it ought neither to surprise nor disturb us. The cause is deeply seated in the human heart, and in that corruption with which it is so evidently tinctured. Man has so much of his original uprightness remaining in him, that with Religion generally he