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lined our unwilling minds, and dropt upon us, like the dews of heaven, never-ending instruction, informed our ignorance, and taught our ideas how to shoot, while with severe and stern discipline they taught us the more invaluable lesson of obedience and submission, and regular tasked diligence; whether that ancient respect which drew Sandys and Cranmer to the humble curacy of Hooker, be any longer present in the minds of our youth, trained up in these brilliant days of the human mind; whether the ancient gratitude felt by apprentices to their masters, the undying constancy of friend to friend, the fast attachment of servant and master, the grateful hereditary love of dependant to superior, yea to the very house and grounds which they occupied. I ask, whether these fine multitudinous threads which wove strong and durable the texture of the web of human life be not, many of them, wholely dissolved, and all of them grown so bare, as no longer to endure the convulsions of former times, hardly to sustain the tear and wear of life, and surely no longer able to keep warm and comfortable the hearts and souls of men. I know that these grateful affections which entwined into one strong band, all the particular threads of social life, the clanship, the chivalry, the lordship, the court, the university and the college, the school, the family, the circle of friends, the sphere of acquaintance, the attachment of neighbourhood, the pride of parish, of glen,

of dale, of district, and of county, are all looked upon by our modern philosophers and disciples of political justice, to be no better than the relics of barbarism, and vestiges of superstition. Base revilers of their fathers, and slanderers of their mothers, and disgrace to the name of Briton! Let them go to the back woods of Indiana, and keep their orgies of equality with the men of Kentucky, but not dare to defile the temple of British society with their unholy and irreverent feet.

Thus have I undertaken and performed the unpleasant, yet most needful, task of exposing another of the characteristics of the last times, and shewing that it is present in the midst of us. I lament, while I behold; and I am ashamed, while I reveal the misery of our estate; but if I might arouse men to serious thoughts of the condition into which the church is come, I would be comforted. I pray you, brethren, if ye believe these things, to be humbled before God, under the sense of them. And if you believe them not as yet, to give heed to them, and to consider. I pray you, brethren, if I have revealed to you any of your short-comings and omissions, in thankfulness either to God or to Christ, to the church, or to the state, or to the world, to be humbled because of them; and to repent and to seek the Spirit of all grace, that ye may be enabled to offer, in the time to come, a more perfect offering. For, be assured,

And

in shutting out God, you shut out your own enjoyment. The salvation proceedeth from grace to grace, not from work to work. "to him that hath shall be given, and he shall have more abundantly." And " he who is unfaithful in the least, is unfaithful also in the greatest.

And he that used not his one

talent, was not entrusted with more, but given up to outer darkness. Therefore give heed to the words which have this night been spoken to you, and suffer them not to slip out of your remembrance. For a great duty hath been laid before you, and a great short-coming of this generation hath been laid open in your hearing. Therefore, follow not the multitude, but cleave unto the still small voice of Christ, and shine as lights in the world. Which may the Lord enable us all to do, and to his name be the praise. Amen.

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THE former characteristic of the last times, in the midst of which we believe ourselves to be living, dearly beloved brethren, led us to discourse of the thankful, gracious, or eucharistical disposition of spirit which, flowing from the first fountain of God's love to the creatures for his own glory, and shewing itself in the work of Christ to come into the world in the creature form for the manifestation and impartation of the Godhead, doth shew itself forth in every one of his members, by leading them to deny and to devote themselves to the same great end of shewing forth the grace of the Godhead; so that in all their purposes and words and actions they shall not be content with attaining unto the just and equitable, but shall pass into the gracious or eucharistical, forgiving enemies

and dispensing blessedness, foregoing right and preferring loss, and in all things conforming to the pattern of Christ, for the same end of the Father's glory. In which, the only spirit proper to a Christian-for the just is only a legal, and doth not rise into the stature of an evangelical, principle-we shewed, by manifold demonstrations, that this age of the church is eminently defective above every other; having introduced into all acts and offices, from this the highest in the church, which I fill, down to the lowest, the idea of debt and payment of debt, and lost the ancient idea of a grace offered on the part of the superior, and a grace received on the part of the inferior. The same shewed we in the spirit of political affairs, where all things are deemed to be done by hire; and in the relation of masters and servants, where I may say there is nothing but paymaster and hireling; and in business, where it is all debtor and creditor; and in courtesy also, where the same degradation is introduced to the very payment of friendly visits and in short every where, in all the offices of the church and state, and in all the functions of life, the spirit, not of a Christian land, but of a Jewish state, the legal principle of natural justice and equity hath prevailed over the Christian principle of free grace. I would fain re-enter into that subject, and go over the ground again, but for the resolution which I have taken to limit myself to one discourse upon each of these characteristics of the last perilous times;

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