to "give diligent attendance, to reading," to instruction, to prayer, to meditation ; and all the ordinances of Religion; more especially to the devout celebration of the holy Sacrament-that most exalted, most divine, most heart-enlivening portion of all Christan worship. To neglect, as is cuftomary with too many-to neglect thefe facred ordinances, is, alas to neglect our own good. It is, oh dreadful confideration! it is, to deprive ourselves of "the means of grace," and to extinguish in ourselves "the hope "of glory.”—For what hope can we have of attaining at laft" the end of our cal"ling; the falvation of our fouls ;" if we prefumptuously despise those very means, which God has appointed for the attainment of it? He, who created us in a state of innocence, and who had compaffion D 4 fion upon us when we corrupted ourselves, best knew the method that would infure our recovery. That method is comprised in the established ordinances of Religion. Which ordinances, faithfully obferved, will enable us, partly by their natural fitnefs, and partly by fupernatural grace annexed, to correct the perverseness of our evil difpofitions, and to improve in the virtues of a holy life. If the world and its temptations should affault our integrity, and labour to feduce us from the right path; let us look forward to the iffue of things-to those eternal rewards and punishments, that finally await us in another ftate. They are more than fufficient to outweigh all other confiderations. For what has the world to offer, either in terrours or in allurements, that is worthy to be compared with those joys and torments; which heaven and hell prefent to our view? And what folly is it, to be influenced by the light, the tranfient occurences of time, in preference to the momentous, the everlafting concerns of eternity? The fum of the whole is this-We have a revealed religion proposed for our acceptance, to whofe truth and divine authority our own hearts and consciences bear ample teftimony. The great defign of this religion is, to correct what is wrong, and to improve what is right, in our nature its great defign is, to make us virtuous and holy in this life, that we may be eternally happy in the other. With this view it lays before us just and perfect rules. of conduct; which it enjoins us carefully to observe. To difpofe us the better to obferve them, it prescribes to our ufe cer tain ordinances, adapted to suppress our carnal inclinations, and to raise our affections to fpiritual things. And to engage us the more firmly to cultivate in ourselves these good difpofitions, as well as to practife the duties of our stations, it opens a profpect into the other world, and fets before us the glorious rewards annexed to virtue, and the dreadful punishments adjudged to vice: rewards and punishments that will last for ever. Having then, my dearly beloved, such view of things before our eyes; having fuch promises of happiness on the one hand, and fuch denunciations of misery on the other; how much does it concern us, in point of wisdom, in point of duty, in point of interest, to attend diligently to the voice of Religion! and, in obedience to its precepts |