sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel; My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God? and so on.

This subject may seem perhaps too copious for one discourse, however, it will not exceed the limits of this; and we will venture to detain you a moment, before we attend to the matter, in remarking the manner, that is, the style of our prophet, and the expressive sublimity of our text. It is a composition, which not only surpasses the finest passages of the most celebrated profane authors, but perhaps exceeds the loftiest parts of the holy scriptures.

Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand? Who hath meted out heaven with a span? Who hath comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure? Who hath weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? All nations before him are as the drop of a bucket. He taketh up the isles as a very little thing. He sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers. What loftiness of expression! The deference we pay to the sacred writers is not founded on the beauty of their diction. They do not affect to come to us with the enticing words of man's wisdom, 1 Cor. ii. 4. We cannot help observing, however, in some of their writings, the most perfect models of eloquence. God seems to have dispensed talents of this kind, in the same manner as he hath sometimes bestowed temporal blessings of another kind. Riches and grandeurs are too mean, and too unsatisfying to constitute the felicity of a creature formed in the image of God. Immortal men, who are called to participate felicity and glory with their God, are indifferent to the part they act, during their short existence on the stage of time. To them it is a matter of very little importance, whether they Occupy the highest or the lowest, the most conspicuous or the most obscure posts in society. It signifies but little to them, whether they ride in sumptuous equipages or walk on foot. To them it is a matter of very little consequence, whether superb processions attend their funerals, or their carcasses be laid in their graves without pomp and parade. Yet, when it pleaseth God to signalize any by gifts of this kind, he doth it like a God, if you will allow the expression, he doth it so as to shew that his mighty hands hold all that can contribute to ennoble, and to elevate mankind. Observe his munificence to Solomon. I have given thee riches and glory, said the Lord to him, so that there shall not be

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any

any among the kings like unto thee, neither after thee. shall any arise like unto thee, 1 Kings iii. 12, 13. In virtue of this promise, God loaded Solomon with temporal blessings: he gave him all. In virtue of this promise, silver was no more esteemed than stones in Jerusalem (the capital of this favourite of heaven) nor the cedars of Lebanon than the sycamore trees of the plain, 2 Chron. ix. 27.

God hath observed the same conduct to the heralds of religion, in regard to the talents that form an orator. The truths they teach are too serious, and too interesting, to need the help of ornaments. The treasures of religion, which God committed to them, are so valuable, that it is needless for us to examine whether they be presented to us in earthen vessels, 2 Cor. iv. 7. But when the holy Spirit deigns to distinguish any one of his servants by gifts of this kind, my God! with what a rich profusion hath he the power of doing it! He fires the orator's imagination with a flame altogether divine; he elevates his ideas to the least accessible region of the universe, and dictates language above mortal

mouths.

What kind of elocution can you alledge, of which the sacred authors have not given us the most perfect models ?

Is it the style proper for history? A historian must assume, it should seem, as many different forms of speaking as there are different events in the subjects of his narration. And who ever gave such beautiful models of this style as Moses? Witness these words, which have acquired him the elogium of a pagan critic: God said, Let there be light, and there was light, Gen. i. 3. Witness these, Isaac said, My father; Abraham answered, Here am I my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt-offering, chap. xxii. 7, 8. Witness these words: Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him, and he cried, Cause every man to go out from me: and there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren. And he lifted up his voice and wept, and said unto his brethren, I am Joseph: doth my father yet live? Come near to me, I pray you, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt, chap. xlv. 1.

Longinus, Sect. ix.

Is

:

Is it the tender style? Who ever gave such beautiful models as the prophet Jeremiah? Witness the pathetic descriptions, and the affecting complaints in the Lamentations : The ways of Zion mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts All her gates are desolate her priests sigh: her virgins are afflicted and she is in bitterness. Is it nothing to you all ye that pass by? behold and see, if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow. For these things I weep, mine eye, mine eye runneth down, ch. i. 4, 12, 16. Is it a style proper to terrify and confound? Who ever gave more beautiful models of this style than Ezekiel? Witness, among many others, these expressions: How weak is thine heart, saith the Lord God, seeing thou dost all these things: the work of an imperious whorish woman? A wife that committeth adultery, which taketh strangers instead of her husband! They give gifts to all whores: but thou givest thy gifts to all lovers, and hirest them, that they may come unto thee on every side for thy whoredom, chap. xvi. 30, 32, 33.

Above all, is it the lofty, noble, and sublime style? Whose models are comparable to the prophet Isaiah's? Christian preacher, thou who studiest to convince, to persuade, to carry away the hearts of the people to whom God hath sent thee, neither make Cicero nor Demosthenes thy models; investigate the ideas, and appropriate the language of the inspired writers.-Heat thine imagination at the fire which inflamed them, and with them, endeavour to elevate thy mind to the mansions of God, to the light which no man can approach unto, 1 Tim. vi. 16. Learn of these great masters to handle the sword of the Spirit, and to manage the word of God quick and powerful, even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, Heb. iv. 12.

But, when I propose my text as a pattern of elocution, far from your minds be the idea of a trifling orator's fraudful art, whose ambition it is to exceed his subject, and to lend his hero the virtues he wants. The portrait drawn by the prophet is infinitely inferior to his original. You will be fully convinced of this, if you attend to the four following considerations of the grandeurs of God.

1. The sublimity of his essence. 2. The immensity of his works. 3. The efficiency of his will. 4. The magnificence of some of his mighty acts, at certain periods, in favour of his church.

First, The sublimity of his essence. The prophet's mind was filled with this object. It is owing to this that he repeats the grand title of Jehovah, THE LORD, which signifies I am by excellence, and which distinguisheth, by four grand characters, the essence of God, from the essence of creatures.

1. The Essence of God is independent in its cause. God is a self-existent being. We exist, but ours is only a borrowed existence, for existence is foreign from us. There was time when we were not, and our origin is nothing: and as we should cease to be if God were only to give the word, so his word was necessary to give us existence at first. But God exists of himself: Existence is his own: and he owes it only to himself, and to the eminence of his own perfections. An idea, in which it is difficult not to lose one's self, and which is incomprehensible to us, because it relates to an infinite attribute, and because all that is infi nite absorbs a finite mind: but an idea, however, as true as it is incomprehensible. The existence of a mite, or of a grain of dust, or even of the most diminutive being in nature, is sufficient necessarily to conduct us to the independent, self-existent God.

Even the atheist is obliged by his own principles to agree with us in this article: I mean the atheist of some knowledge the modern atheist. Let us thankfully own, my brethren, that the improvements, which a sound philosophy hath produced in the sciences, have been communicated even to atheism. Formerly, atheists could digest such propositions as these: the world hath not always subsisted; it was made of nothing. Now, these propositions are too gross for any to hazard his reputation on the advancing of them. Indeed, to affirm, that nothing hath made the world, is not only to advance an absurdity, it is to advance a contradiction. To say that nothing hath created the world, is to say that nothing hath not created the world, and to say that nothing hath not created a world, which actually exists, is to deny the existence of the world. No rules of reasoning require us to answer people, who contradict themselves in so glaring a manner; and, on this article, we rank them with ideots. Modern atheists admit, as we do, a self-existent being. All the difference between them and us is this; they attribute this eminent perfection to matter; but we attribute it to God. The atheist derives his existence from a collection of atoms, which a blind chance had assembled:

we

we ascribe our existence to a Being possessed of all possible perfections. The atheist discovers his God and Creator in a confused conjunction of bodies destitute of reason: we find our God and Creator in the Supreme Being, the fountain of all existence. But both we and the atheist are obliged to own. an increated, self-existent Being. And as it is easy for a reasonable person to decide the question, whether this perfection agree to God or to matter, it is easy for him also to comprehend that God is a self-existent Being.

2. The Essence of God is universal in its extent. God possesseth the reality of every thing that exists. A celebrated infidel, educated in your provinces, (would to God none were educated here still!). This infidel, I say, invented a new way of publishing atheism, by disguising it. I mistake in saying new, for itwould be easy to prove, that the miserable Spinoza had not the glory of inventing it; he only revived a pagan notiont. He says that there is a God, but that this God is only the universality and assemblage of creatures that every eing is a modification of God; that the sun is God as giving light, that aliments are God, as affording nourishment; and so of the rest. What a sy

stem! What an abominable system! But this system, all abominable as it is, hath however, some truth, or some foundation. God is not diffused through all these different beings: God is not divided: but he possesseth all the perfections of the universe, and it is by this notion of God, that the true religion is distinguished from superstition. The superstitious, struck with the beauty of some particular being, made that being the object of their adoration. One, struck with the beauty of the stars, said, the stars were gods. Another, astonished at the splendour of the sun, said, the sun was God. Democritus, surprized at the beauty of fire, said God was material fire. Chrysippus, amazed at the beauty of that necessity, which causeth every thing to answer its destination, said, God was fate. Parmenides, affected with the beautiful extent of heaven and earth, said, God was that extent.

But

*Benedict de Spinoza was born at Amsterdam, and was educated in the same city under Francis Vander Ende. Him Mons. Saurin means.

† See Dr. Clarke on the Attributes. Vol. 1. prop. 3.