account.Where, upon the defertion of feveral other difciples,-our Saviour puts the queftion to the twelve,-Will ye alfo go away?— Then, fays the text, Peter answered and faid,-Lord! whither fhall we go? Thou haft the words of eternal life,—and we believe, and know that thou art Chrift the fon of God.Now, if we look into the gospel, we find what our Saviour pronounced on this very confeffion.

Bleffed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it

unto thee, but my father which is in heaven.-That our Saviour had the words of eternal life,-Peter was able to deduce from principles of natural reafon; because reason was able to

judge from the internal marks, of his doctrine, that it was worthy God, and accommodated properly to advance human nature and human happiness. -But for all this, reafon could not infallibly determine that the meffen

ger of this doctrine was the Meffias, the eternal fon of the living God:to know this required an illumination; and this illumination, I say, feems to have been vouchsafed at that inftant as a reward, as would have

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been fufficient evidence by itself of the difpofition of his heart.

I have now finished this fhort effay upon the character of St. Peter, not with a loud panegyric upon the power of his keys, or a ranting encomium upon fome monaftic qualifications,

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with which a popish pulpit would ring upon fuch an occafion, without doing much honour to the faint, or good to the audience ;-but have drawn it with truth and fobriety, representing it as it was, as confifting of virtues the moft worthy of imitation, and grounded, not upon apo. cryphal accounts and legendary inventions, the wardrobe from whence popery dreffes out her faints on these days, but upon matters of fact in

the facred Scriptures, in which all chriftians agree. And fince I have mentioned popery, I cannot better conclude than by obferving, how ill the spirit and character of that church resembles that particular part of St. Peter's which has been made the fub

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ject of this difcourfe.Would one think that a church, which thrufts itfelf under this apoftle's patronage, and claims her power under him, would prefume to exceed the degrees of it which he acknowledged to poffefs himfelf.-But how ill are your expectations anfwered, when instead of the humble declaration in the text, -Ye men of Ifrael, marvel not at us, as if our own power and holiness had wrought this ;-you hear a language and behaviour from the Romish court, as oppofite to it as infolent words and actions can frame.

So that instead of, Ye men of Ifrael, marvel not at us,-Ye men of Ifrael, do marvel at us,-hold us in admiration -Approach our facred pontiff,

(who is not only holy-but holiness itself)-approach his person with reverence, and deem it the greatest honour and happiness of your lives to fall down before his chair, and be admitted to kifs his feet.

Think not, as if it were not our own holinefs which merits all the homage you can pay us.-It is our own holinefs, the fuperabundance of it, of which, having more than we know what to do with ourselves,-from works of fupererogation, we have transferred the furplus in ecclefiaftic warehoufes, and in pure zeal for the good of your fouls, have eftablished public banks of merit, ready to be drawn upon at all times.