THE following Sermons are prefented to the Public, merely as a fpecimen of a mode of preaching, which I think may be useful to a country congregation. The fcriptures will be read with more pleasure, the more each little difficulty, which now and then stops an unlearned reader, is removed. This mode of preaching might be carried still farther. The Sunday Leffons, from the Old Teftament, are not all, perhaps, felected with equal judgment. Many of them contain difficulties, which want explanation. If these Leffons, as they occur, were now and then explained in the following Sermon, it might have its use among the common people. SERMON XVI. JOHN, V. 39. SEARCH THE SCRIPTURES; FOR IN THEM YE THINK YE HAVE ETERNAL LIFE. THE HE fcriptures which our Saviour here inftructs us to fearch, were the fcriptures of the Old Teftament; for the New Teftament, you know, was not then written. The inftruction, however, applies equally to both. You are here, then, ordered to fearch, or to examine carefully the fcriptures; and the reafon given is, that they contain the knowledge of eternal life, and the terms of obtaining it. The fcriptures alone open to us the knowledge of these great truths. The heathen had an obscure idea of immortality: it is an idea, in a degree perhaps, natural to us all; but it was revelation alone, as given us in the fcripture, which opened a life of immortality distinctly to us. Nor do the fcriptures only convey to us the knowledge of everlasting life; which had been little, if they had not fhewn us alfo, the means of obtaining it. The heathen had no notion of the pardon of fin, nor of the mischief which attended it: and God, no doubt, will exact from them only in proportion to their knowledge, But to us, the fcriptures are clear on these great heads: they fhew us our loft condition-our natural unworthiness; -and point out to us the only means of our restoration, through the atonement of Jefus Christ. part of your lei. The advantages therefore arifing from fearching the fcriptures, are equal to any pains you can bestow upon it. I cannot exhort you too earnestly to employ a conftant fure in this useful exercife. Many of you are much engaged, and muft neceffarily be fo, in your worldly affairs; but ftill every one of you may employ fome little leifure, if you chufe it, in reading his Teftament; and all of you may attend reverently to it, when you hear it read at church. That I may contribute as much as I can to make the study of the fcriptures more useful and agreeable to you, I propose to go through a fhort |