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PART III.

OF CHRISTIANITY.

ITS FACTS-ITS DOCTRINES-ITS MORAL PRECEPTS -ITS WORSHIP AND RITES-ITS INSTITUTIONS FOR ITS PRESERVATION AND EXTENSION.

THE religion of Jesus is reared on the foundation of the Mosaical economy. It was considerably advanced by our blessed Redeemer himself, and completed in all its parts by his apostles, after they had been instructed by him, and still more enlightened by that holy Spirit which he promised to send to them, and whose directing, strengthening, and animating effusions they experienced in such miraculous abundance. The structure raised by the Messiah, and the workmen whom he employed, and his Spirit directed, exhibited neither defect nor redundance, but was perfect in all its dimensions. If it had been allowed to remain in the state in which they left it, nor had been disfigured and weakened by the

various additions of " gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble,” which human ignorance or presumption has attempted to incorporate with it, long since it would have furnished a certain refuge to the greatest miseries of the human race, and opened the school for the improvement of their present happiness, and for their preparation for eternal felicity. The original building displayed that chaste simplicity which unites utility with magnificence, and bears the signatures of divine contrivance and execution. It rested on the rock of truth, and towered towards heaven with unborrowed majesty. It has been shamefully deformed by the appendages of various kinds annexed to it, and the work of God has been marred by the paltry inventions of man.

Our divine religion was not delivered in a didactic or systematic manner, such as was employed in the schools of philosophy. Its different parts occasionally rose in the course of our Saviour's ministry and of that of his apostles, after these last had been completely furnished with the means of executing the sublime commission with which he had invested them. Both he and they, retaining the essentials of Judaism, consisting in the belief of the unity and infinite perfections of the Deity, as the sole object of

a J Cor. iii. 12,

b Simplex sigillum veri,

worship and the infallible director of conduct, and in the immutable obligations of the moral law, superadded to these those farther informations concerning the Supreme Being himself, and the final recovery and regeneration of man, which human nature absolutely required, and completely unfolded that ultimate dispensation under the Messiah, which the Jewish prophets had foretold, and for which the temporary economy of Moses was the just preparation. As, from the contemplation of the divine works, we collect the existence, the perfections, and the moral government of God; so, from the accounts of his second creation of man to new intellectual and moral life and energy, as detailed in the scriptures of the New Testament, we infer the sum and substance of Christian faith and practice. These scriptures relate the facts of our Saviour's history, his conduct, his doctrines, his actions, his death, his resurrection, and ascension; the transactions of his apostles in spreading his religion; and exhibit their instructions, their exhortations, their rebukes, their warnings, delivered to their converts, in the Epistles, including the book of Revelation. As Christianity, then, is founded on certain well-established facts, the simplest method of giving a concise view of it seems to be, to state, 1st, the facts on which it is grounded; 2dly, the distinctive doctrines which it establishes; 3dly, the moral precepts

which it injoins; 4thly, the rites and worship which it prescribes or implies; and, 5thly, the means which it has instituted for its preservation and extension in the world. I mean to enter into no controversy in regard to the authenticity of certain portions of the scriptures now contained in the volume of the New Testament; but to consider as complete the sacred canon of that branch of the Bible which is received among all Protestant churches, and as transmitted to them from the most early times. I cannot help thinking, that it is rather late to raise disputes on this subject, to which there can be no end or limitation. Besides, such controversies have no connexion with the main design of this work; and, in fact, I consider the points in question as completely settled by writers of superior talents.

CHAP. I.

OF THE FACTS ON WHICH CHRISTIANITY IS
GROUNDED.

JOHN the Baptist was the harbinger of Jesus of Nazareth. Miraculous circumstances attended the birth of John. His father and mother had

a Luke i.

both passed the period of life which admitted any hope of offspring. The birth of this child, however, was announced to his father Zacharias by the angel Gabriel, who further informed him that, on account of his unbelief in this intelligence, he should be dumb till the period of its accomplishment. Accordingly, as soon as he had written, in conformity to his wife Elizabeth's desire, that his son's name should be John, (signifying the grace or gift of the Lord,) he recovered the use of speech," and praised God. The birth of John the Baptist and that of Isaac bore to each other a striking resemblance, in having been both announced by divine messengers, and in the preternatural conception of their respective mothers. John, leading a recluse and austere life, after the manner of the ancient prophets, and constituting the link which connected the old and the new dispensations, preached and administered the baptism of repentance, as the preparation for the Messiah's terrestrial reign; boldly reproved the vices of his age, in every station of life, and even those of the throne and died a martyr to truth and righteousness. His violent and iniquitous death seemed to exhibit a type or symbol of the sufferings and tragical conclusion of the lives of Christ, of his apostles, and of many thousands of their dis

;

a Luke i. 64.

b Gen. xviii. xxi.

c Mat. iii. John i.

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