14 THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH VINDICATED, IN OPPOSITION TO SCEPTICAL INDIFFERENCE AND INFIDEL PRACTICE. BY THE REV. R. P. FINCH, D.D. PREBENDARY OF WESTMINSTER, AND RECTOR OF ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST, IN THAT CITY. 0000000 16 THE SON OF MAN IS LORD ALSO OF THE SABBATH." MATT. ii. 28. London: PRINTED FOR W. AND W. GINGER, COLLEGE-STREBT, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH.YARD. 1798. INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS: IT controvertéd, that religion in this Isand hath been long declining in its influence upon the minds of men. Externals are by too many disregarded with a seeming contemptuousness, which leaves little ground for hope in respect to it's vital principles, and their operation upon moral conduct. For whatever abstract reasoners may pretend, there must, to preserve it's subsistence, be a body as well as a soul; otherwise, like faith without works, it will be dead. Ceremonials, A 2 it The pro it is agreed, are far from being the whole, or, indeed, the first and fundamental part ; but they are constituent in such a degree, that our light cannot, when separated from them, shine with a sufficiency of fplendour; nor can piety, without which religion must be defective, discover itself in suitable acts of adoration, thanksgiving, and praise, towards the supreme object . of affection and homage. priety therefore, or rather necessity, of a visible display of our faculties in His service is fixed in nature, and most evidently deducible from our capacity, and still more from our obligation, to display them. Long experience hath, however, put it beyond doubt, that our debt and the payment of it bear no proportion to each other. So far from it, that they, who have for 4 |