Puslapio vaizdai
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XII.

uneafie a thing for men to act contrary to their Reason, and against the dictates of their Understandings, that men for their own quiet, and in their own defence, will bend their Judgments, and make them comply with the intereft of their Lufts. Mens Affections, which way foever they incline, fet a byafs upon their Underderstandings; and this doth not only proceed from the Nature of the thing, but from the juft Judgment of God.

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Theff. 2. 10, 11, 12. the Apoftle tells us, that thofe who receive not the the truth in the love of it, that they may be faved; God will fend them ftrong delafions, to believe lies; that they all be damned, who believe not the truth, but have pleasure in unrighteousness. If men once have pleasure in unrighteoufness, it will not be long before they give over believing the truth, because God by his juft Judgment will give them over to themselves, to follow the byafs of their own corrupt hearts, which inclines them to believe lies. Of all perfons in the world,a wicked and unholy Christan, is most like to turn a fpeculative Infidel and Atheift; and none fo like to fall into this

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grofs darkness, as those who refift and quench fo great a light as that of the Sermon Gofpel is, which they profess to believe.

X.

SER

IAN

SERMON XI.

Of the Miracles wrought in Confirmation of Christianity.

Sermon
XI.

HEB. II. 4.

God alfo bearing them witness, both with figns and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the holy Ghost, according to his own will?

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Hoever impartially confiders the Christian Religion, cannot but acknowledge the Laws and Precepts of it to be fo reasonable; and the Practice of them fo evidently to tend, not only to the Happiness of particular Perfons, but to the Peace and Welfare of the World; and the Promi

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Promifes and Threatnings of the Go Volume fpel, which are the great Motives to XII. perfwade men to the Obedience of thofe Laws, to be fo agreeable to the natural hopes and fears which Mankind were always poffeft withal; that upon this Confideration, it might juftly be expected, that the Doctrine of Christianity, upon the first publication of it, fhould have been enter tain'd with a readiness of mind proportionable to the reasonableness of

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Or if the bare Reasonableness of it be not thought inducement enough, we may easily imagine, how God, he had pleafed, could upon the first appearance of this Religion in the World, have given it fuch advantages, as would mightily have contributed to the more eafie reception and entertainment of it. He could have ordered things fo, that our Bleffed Saviour, the Author of this Doctrine, fhould have been, as the Jews expected, a great Temporal Monarch; he could have raised him to that dignity, and have armed him with that Authority, as must have given him a

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