easily conceive that the situation, in which you may sometimes find yourselves, may be such as affords very little advantage for study, on any plan of reading that could well be proposed. The books which I might recommend may not be found in the places to which your circumstances may lead you, and even the most ordinary helps may not be at hand. On the plan I propose, a great deal may be done with no other book but the Bible, and a Concordance, which are to be found every where. Such of you as can read Hebrew, and it is what you all ought to read, should never be without a Hebrew Bible of your own, and let me add to this, a copy of the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament. And if ye have these, which are neither cumbersome, nor expensive, ye are so richly provided, that it is your own fault, wherever ye are, if ye are not improving daily. The other books, which I have recommended for your advancement in the knowledge of sacred history, and for familiarizing you to the Jewish manners, ceremonies, polity, idiom, ye ought to use when ye have the opportunity of such assistances, but ought always to remember that the want of them needs never impede your progress, and consequently is no excuse for your being idle. It is a point of the utmost consequence to young men, that we lay down to them a proper method of employing their time, not in a certain imaginary situation which one might devise or wish, but in those actual situations, in which the greater part of you have a probability of being. I have known directions given to students, which seemed to proceed on the hypothesis, that they were to live all their days in the midst of a library, where no literary production of any name was

wanting. The consequence of this was, that the impracticability of the execution made all the sage directions they received, to be almost as soon forgotten as given; and even if they were not forgotten, as they could not be put in practice, for want of the necessary implements recommended, they would serve only as an excuse for idleness. I would, as much as possible, supply this defect; and allow me to add, I would deprive every one of you, if I can, of that silly pretext for doing nothing, that you have not books. I insist upon it, that the young student, while he has the Bible, may still be usefully employed.

A third advantage which will redound from a proper application of the method now proposed, is that your style on religious subjects will be very much formed on that of the scriptures. And what can be so proper for conveying the mind of God in the great truths of revelation, as that which was employed by the spirit of God, who speaks to us by the sacred penmen? One of the many unhappy consequences, which have resulted from the divisions of christians, from their classing themselves under their several captains and leaders, in manifest derogation from the honour due to their only head and lord, the Messiah, and in no less manifest contempt of the apostolical warnings they have received to the contrary, (one, I say, of the unhappy consequences of this conduct) is, that each party hath got a dialect of its own, formed upon the model of the great doctor or rabbi the founder, or, at least, the champion of the sect to whom they have implicitly resigned their understandings. And what is worse, this diversity in the dialects used by the different parties hath itself become the ground of an alienation of heart from one

another; and that, even in cases where this difference in phraseology, is all the difference which a wise man would be able to discern between them. It was the resolution of Paul to speak the things of God, "not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth." The reverse is the practice of all, in whom the true spirit of the sect predominates, of whatever denomination the sect be. They are ever for speaking the things of God, not in the words which the Holy Ghost teacheth, but which man's wisdom teacheth. In antediluvian times when the sons of God went in to the daughters of men, the product of this unnatural mixture, as the sacred historian informs us, was giants, men of renown indeed, but renowned only for what is bad, men hideous both in body and mind, as eminent for their wickedness as for their stature. When religion, the daughter of heaven, hath been at any time unhappily forced to admit an intercourse with school metaphysics, a mere son of earth, the fruit of such incongruous union has been a brood no less monstrous. Or to adopt an apt similitude of Luther's, " Mixtione quadam ex divinis eloquiis et philosophicis rationibus, tanquam ex Centaurorum genere biformis disciplina conflata est." Hence those absurdities in doctrine, dressed in technical and barbarous language, by which the truth, as it is in Jesus, hath been so miserably defaced. Nor have these last monsters been guilty of fewer or less considerable ravages, than the first. In proof of this fact, many of the most incontestible evidences from church history might be produced. What the apostle dreaded with regard to the Corinthians, has in less or more befallen christians of all denominations, their minds have been cor

rupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. A more curious, a more artificial and a more learned style was necessary to gratify a vitiated palate and depraved appetite.

Many are the evils, which to this day are consequent upon an immoderate attachment to scholastic language. One is, a certain jealousy of temper which it has occasioned. As one principal distinction, especially in those parties or factions which are considered as approaching nearest to one another, is in their style and idiom, a true sectary gives a particular attention, not to the sentiments, but to the phraseology of any writer or speaker whose performance falls under his consideration, in order that he may discover whether he be a genuine son of the party. For this purpose, he is apt to scrutinize every word and expression, though in itself the most harmless and inoffensive, with a kind of malicious severity, and, in consequence of this habit, acquires a suspicious censoriousness in his manner of judging, which in every doubtful case, leans to the unfavourable side; a disposition the most opposite, both to the docile and to the charitable temper of christianity, that can be well conceived. Do not mistake me, as though I meant this charge against any one sect or party, or those of one particular persuasion. I am persuaded, on the contrary, that it may with too great justice be charged on all. Nay what is worse, though they are shy to speak it out, the style of scripture itself doth not altogether escape their animadversion and dislike. In the various disputes that have been introduced, as those on each side pretend, that the doctrine of holy writ is conformable to that of their party, each has recourse to it for arguments. Each picks out those

expressions and passages which appear most favourable to its own dogmas, carefully avoiding those, which seem to lean to the side of the adversary and are most commonly quoted by him. The consequence of this is, that the various texts of scripture are strangely disunited among themselves, ranged on different sides, and, as it were, mustered among the forces of the opposite combatants. One set of scriptural expressions and terms become the favourites of one party, and are, to say the least of it, carefully avoided by another; this latter has also in holy writ its darling terms and phrases, which are no less shunned and disliked by the former. Thus all have more or less incurred the reproach which the prophet Malachi threw out against the priests of his day, "that they had corrupted the covenant, and were partial in the law." Part, it would seem, pleased them, and part did not; they were careful to cull out those particulars which were suited to their taste, and not less careful to omit such as were unpalatable. And are not we chargeable with the like partiality in regard to God's word? Doth not one side look with a jealous eye on the very mention of good works, especially as that according to which we must finally be judged, according to which we must be either rewarded or punished? Doth not the necessity of obedience, though delivered in the very words of scripture, the insufficiency of faith when unfruitful and alone, the danger of apostacy, of making shipwreck of faith and of a good conscience, and the duty of perseverance, alarm them with the direful apprehensions of arminianism, pelagianism, popery, the doctrine of merit, and what not? But do I accuse those of one side only? By no means. Under this sin all sects and