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are worth any thing, they are worth every thing. Be, then, not only almost, but altogether Christians. Let no enticing words of man's wisdom put you out of conceit with the divine truths of the Gofpel, and make you halt between two opinions; let no one favourite vice, no worldly pursuits, no vain amusements, draw you off from any part of your duty, and divide your obedience between God and Baal. If you have chofen the other world for your portion, cling not any longer fondly to this;

if

you have set your hand to the plough, look not back to the vanities you have renounced. Be not irrefolute, wavering, and indecifive; be not governed by the opinion of the day, nor the temptation of the moment. Do not fo divide yourselves between two masters, as to pleafe neither the one nor the other; do not manage fo wretchedly as to lofe at once what little this world has to give, and all the glorious rewards which the other holds up to your view. "Chufe ye, in fhort, this day, whom

ye will ferve." If the Lord be God, and not Baal, be refolved at once; take a manly and a decided part; fix your affections immoveably on heavenly things; purfue, with unremitting

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unremitting attention, your best and trueft interest; give up yourselves, body and foul, into the hands of your Maker, and persevere uniformly in his service to the end of your lives; that having thus finished your courfe, and kept the faith to the last, you may receive “ the

prize of your high calling in Christ Jesus ; "and when your flesh and your heart shall fail, may find God to be the ftrength of your "heart, and your portion for ever,"

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SERMON X.*

PSALM Xxii. 28.

THE KINGDOM IS THE LORD'S, AND HE IS THE GOVERNOR AMONG THE NATIONS.

HE doctrine conveyed to us in these words is that of A NATIONAL PROVIDENCE; and it is a doctrine no lefs confonant to reafon than confolatory to the human mind. It must therefore afford us the highest fatisfaction, to find this truth confirmed by the facred writers in the clearest and the strongest terms. The Scriptures are full of the most gracious promises to righteous nations, and of the most dreadful denunciations against wicked and impenitent kingdoms; and it is well known, that neither these promises nor these threatenings were vain. The history of the Jewish people, more especially, is

• Preached before the House of Lords, January 30, 1778.

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scarce any thing else than the hiftory of God's providential interpofition to punish or reward them, according as they obeyed or disobeyed his laws. And although we should admit that on account of the peculiar circumstances of that people, and the unexampled form of their theocratic government, their cafe cannot be drawn into a parallel with that of other nations, yet there are not wanting fome which may. Those four celebrated empires of antiquity which rofe up one after another, and fucceffively filled the world with astonishment and terror, were nothing more than mighty engines in the hand of God to execute his various difpenfations of mercy or of justice on the Jewish nation, and other civil communities; and to prepare the way gradually for the introduction of another kingdom of a very different nature, and fuperior to them all. Their rife and fall were predicted in the sacred writings long before they existed *, and thofe extraordinary perfonages, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Alexander, Auguftus, Vefpafian, and Titus, were, though unknown to themfelves, the AGENTS of the Almighty,

Daniel vii. and viii.

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