"joy";" and that the only use, to which these paffages can be applied by finners, is that of

making them careful to adjust their moral "external conduct according to the rules of decency, justice, and regularity, and thereby

prevent much inconvenience to themselves "and injury to fociety:" is to suppose, (let me not be deemed irreverent in affirming it,) that the Bible is a compound of inconfiftency and error; is to make a liar of the God of truth; and to convert his gracious tenders of mercy into the moft bitter, the most cruel, and most farcastic irony towards his deluded and abandoned creatures.

I have thus ftated the arguments, by which I would vindicate my claim to the title of an evangelical Minister, a Preacher of the Gospel of Chrift, although I decline to preach the doctrines of Calviniftic predeftination. In order to this statement, I have been induced to enter at confiderable length on a myfterious and much controverted queftion; a question, to which, I folemnly repeat, that I have not been voluntarily led, and which it were better to leave precisely where the Gospel leaves it; were it not that the diligence, with which it is obtruded by our accufers both from the pulpit

P Whitefield's Eighteen Sermons, p. 160.

and from the prefs, and the mifery and mifchief, which it occafions to the Church of Christ, and the calumny withal, which it is made the inftrument of discharging against the national clergy; call loudly on us for a vindication of ourselves, and therein (as we believe) of the true evangelical faith. I dare not hope indeed, that the present arguments are likely to convince a perfon, prepoffeffed by the contrary perfuafion: yet, whilft they might not unreasonably ferve to abate the confidence, and mitigate the afperity of our accufers, they lead me to judge, with no faint perfuafion, of the fentence, which from a review of the general scope of the Scriptures an unprejudiced inquirer would pronounce upon the question, whether the Gospel is preached by us or by the Calvinifts :- - by us, who teach, that Chrift Jefus made atonement for all the fins of the whole world; that all men may therefore be faved, who will ftrive by the grace of God to work out their falvation; but that no man will be faved, who is not 'diligent in fulfilling the conditions which God hath appointed:-or by the Calvinist, who teaches, that God elected a few individuals to falvation, and that Chrift died to make atonement for their fins alone, to the exclufion of the great mass of mankind; that the falvation of thefe elect depends folely upon

certain abfolute and irrespective decrees of God, and is effected folely by the grace of God, fo that no conditions are required to be fulfilled, no cooperation to be given on their parts, but that, however great and numerous may be their fins, they are eternally fure of falvation: and that the great bulk of mankind are eternally doomed to perdition, no reference whatever being made to any faults of theirs; no poffibility whatever being allowed them of escaping their doom; the fole cause of which is the pleasure, and the sole object of it the glory, of God.

Not fuch, we humbly prefume, was the tenor of those Hallelujahs, which the beloved difciple heard in the Spirit before the eternal throne: when " every creature in heaven, on the earth, and under the earth," even "a

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great multitude which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, "and tongues," joined in uttering praises to the Lamb, who had redeemed them to God by his blood:" whilft " they who had the harps of God, fang the fong of Mofes the "fervant of God, and the fong of the Lamb; "Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord "God Almighty; Juft and true are thy ways, "thou King of Saints'!"

Now therefore "Amen: Bleffing and ho"nour and glory and power be unto Him that "fitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb " for ever."

DISCOURSE V.

JOHN vii. 37, 38, 39.

In the last day, that great day of the feaft, Jefus ftood and cried, faying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.

He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath faid, out of his belly fhall flow rivers of living water. But this fpake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him fhould receive.

IN

N this metaphor there are an appropriate force and beauty, which no doubt were immediately felt by the perfons, to whom the words were addreffed. Liable from their natural fituation to feel the misery of occasional drought, and acquainted perhaps by their own experience, or at leaft by the narratives of others, with the horrors of the neighbouring deferts, the people of Judea would confequently perceive in the comparison all that expreffion, which our Saviour intended it to convey. The alteration to be wrought in the foul by the