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ture, when we will neither suffer ourselves to be reformed, nor God's word to sink farther into us than our lips. God, in this case, will be on the side of our adversaries, and will thus answer all we can say, What have ye to do, to declare my statutes, or that ye should take my covenant in your mouth; seeing ye hate instruction, and cast my words behind you you?'

God, of his infinite mercy, enable us to live up to the principles of that religion we profess, lest it rise in judgment against us, and condemn us for sinning against the light. Grant this, we beseech thee, blessed Lord, for the sake of Christ Jesus our Saviour; to whom, with Thee, and the Holy Ghost, be all might, majesty, dignity, and dominion, now, and for evermore.

Amen.

DISCOURSES,

CONTROVERSIAL AND PRACTICAL,

ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS.

PROPER FOR THE

Consideration of the Present Times.

"He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved; but he that believeth not, shall be damned."-MARK XVI. 16.

"As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also."JAMES II. 26.

[FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE YEAR 1754.]

THE PREFACE,*

ADDRESSED TO

THE CITIZENS OF LONDON.

GENTLEMEN,

THE Author of the following Discourses, having lived for some time among you, and preached many of them in your churches, humbly begs leave to address them to you. To this he is encouraged, not only by the attention and approbation, far exceeding his hopes, with which they were heard; but more especially by the repeated request of some very sensible and worthy members of your body, who pressed him for the publication of them. These gentlemen were, on various accounts, of too much consequence with the Author, not to be gratified. Whether this request shall contribute to his honour at the expense of theirs who made it, is now, with all imaginable respect, submitted to your judgment at large, and to that of every English reader. However this may be, he will think himself a very happy man, if, after thus laying his performances before you, your complacency in accepting shall bear any proportion to the pleasure he felt in presenting them to you. He still doth, and ever will, retain a grateful sense of the many friendships wherewith he was honoured, when in London. He there met with persons of excellent understandings, improved by the successful study of men and things; and of hearts, cultivated to a suitable benevolence, by that intercourse of minds, which waits inseparably on an extensive commerce in affairs. Whether in any other school more integrity and humanity may be learned than in this, the observations he made, during his abode in your city, gave him sufficient reason to doubt. Here virtue, inculcated, not by rules, but examples;

This Preface was prefixed by the Author to his second volume of Discourses, which included twenty-five, viz. from XXI. to XLV. inclusive, of the present edition. The remaining twenty-nine were first published in the year 1777.

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