shall be thus new modelled, let your lives and actions be in perfect unison with them; let your behaviour engage the beholder to a consideration of your doctrine, and your doctrine reflect lustre on your behaviour. Then may we hope you will reform what in very deed ought long since to have been reformed in your communion, and render it such as we can conscientiously accede to; such as becomes the simplicity and purity of the Gospel of Christ our Saviour. Or if this cannot be, we may at least live upon a foot of peace and security together (Judah no more troubling Ephraim, and Ephraim no more vexing Judah), without apprehension of plots, anathemas, and crusades. Indeed, their day seems to be pretty well over, since we have lived to see the sovereign Pontiff, instead of launching the thunderbolts of the Vatican at the devoted head of a reforming emperor, taking a long and painful journey to supplicate, and returning as he came-a spectacle entirely new! When a disposition appears in the rulers of any kingdom to abolish absurd and superstitious usages, the court of Rome has nothing now left for it, but with all possible expedition to issue an edict, most graciously empowering them so to do. Thus are the mighty fallen!--And still lower must they fall: for the day seems evidently approaching, when "the kings of the earth," as they are styled, or the princes of the Romish communion, shall, by some mighty effort, emancipate themselves from the bondage in which they are holden, and destroy the power which they have so long contributed

to support: unless that power will ingenuously purify itself from its corruptions, and begin a new ærá of primitive Christianity.

The church of Rome should have done this honestly and effectually, when its corruptions were first pointed out. It had then retained those branches, which, in default of such conduct, were broken off. Nor can there be-indeed there ought not to beany other method devised or thought of, to graft them in again.

When a church really stands in need of reformation, it should always, in prudence as well as duty, reform itself, to prevent the task from being undertaken by others, who, though they may entertain a very laudable abhorrence of idols, may not, perhaps, scruple, if a tempting opportunity should offer, to commit sacrilege: who, under cover of reforming abuses, may at length reform away Christianity itself; and, either through ignorance or malice, may "root up the wheat with the tares."

As to ourselves-We celebrate on this day a twofold deliverance from the tyranny of Rome, vouchsafed at different and distant periods. Let us not give occasion to our adversaries in that quarter to say, as they sometimes have had the effrontery to say, that Protestantism naturally leads the way to Socinianism and Materialism, and, in short, to every thing that is opprobrious. Let us not be forward to believe, what some are so very forward to tell us, that the doctrines of the ever-blessed Trinity in Unity, of the Divinity of our Lord and Saviour, and that "full, "perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and sa

"tisfaction, by him made for the sins of men," proceeded from the papal chair, and constitute a part of the grand apostasy. In one word, let our studies and our writings, our lives and our conversation, join in making a plain and unequivocal declaration to the whole world that, though we cease to be papists, we continue to be CHRISTIANS.

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DISCOURSE XX.

THE PURIFICATION OF THE MIND BY TROUBLES AND TRIALS.

JOB, XXIII. 10.

When he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.

THE afflictions of life, though often grievous enough in themselves, become much more so by that state of doubt and perplexity into which the mind of the sufferer is brought by them. He is at a loss to conceive why so much wretchedness is his portion, and what the design of Providence can be in sending it. He is tempted to despair, as thinking God has forsaken him; or to impiety, as imagining there can be no God who governs the world in wisdom and righteousness.

Whenever we find ourselves led to such conclusions as these, we may be sure there is some error in the principles upon which we set out. We are in the dark with regard to some point, the knowledge of which would bring all right, and restore peace and comfort to our fluttering and disordered spirits.

In the case before us, a wrong notion of human life is at the bottom of those desponding and murmuring thoughts which arise in our hearts, on find

ing ourselves encompassed and oppressed by a larger share than ordinary of its cares and troubles. We look not forward, as we ought to do; we confine our views to the state of things in this present world; we regard it as final, and then wonder why our condition should be worse than that of our neighbours, when we think ourselves much better than they, and perhaps we really are so.

When the matter is thus stated, difficulties will certainly thicken upon us apace; and, indeed, I know not how we shall ever be able to see our way through them. But let us only reflect for a moment, that this life is no more than a preparation for another; that we come into it in a fallen and corrupted nature; that we are to be purified, during our short continuance in it, to qualify us for perfect happiness and endless glory in the presence of God; that such purification must be effected by trials and temptations; and that trials and temptations necessarily suppose troubles and afflictions, without which they cannot be made-let but these few plain considerations take place in the mind, and, at the brightness before them, clouds and darkness shall disperse, doubts and difficulties shall vanish away; and the poor desponding sufferer, who was lately accustomed, like the possessed man in the Gospel, to wander wild among the tombs, his imagination haunted with thoughts of death and desolation, may now be seen in his right mind, sitting at the feet of Jesus, and listening to words like these: "My son, despise "not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint