I fear, for a degree of complaint; and in more, a colourable pretext for the imputation. I believe that fome preachers, shocked on beholding examples, real or supposed, of congregations ftarving on mere morality fubftituted for the bread of life; eager to lay broad and deep the foundations of the gofpel; and ultimately apprehenfive left their own hearers should fufpect them of reverting towards legality; have not given to morals, as fruits of Faith, the station and the amplitude to which they have a fcriptural claim. Anxious left others fhould mistake, or left they should themselves be deemed to mistake, the branch for the root: not fatisfied with proclaiming to the branch, as they were bound habitually to proclaim, Thou beareft not the root, but the root thee: they have fhrunk from the needful office of tracing the ramifications. They have not left morality out of their difcourfes. But they have kept it too much in the background. They have noticed it shortly, generally, incidentally: in a manner which, while perhaps they were eminent as private patterns of moral duties, might not fufficiently guard an unwary hearer against a reduced estimate of practical holiness, nor exempt themfelves fromthe fufpicion of undervaluing moral obedience. We are conti ر nually nually flying each from the other into oppofite errors. It might be well for fome of us to be more diftinctly aware that to preach Christian Morality, to preach it in detail, to take from time to time a specific moral duty for the avowed fubject of a sermon, to pursue the duty through its fubdivifions, to point out its bearings on the transactions of common life, (be it observed that I speak of morality rendered chriftian by being unequivocally built on faith in Christ,) is not only not to be legal, but is to ftrengthen by practical application the impreffion of doctrinal truth, and to fupply to the humble follower of our Lord aid highly important both as to the perception and the discharge of his daily obligations. There are others among us to whom it might be profitable if they were led clearly to difcern, that to preach justification by faith, by faith only, without the deeds of the Law, (without the deeds either of the ceremonial or of the moral law contributing an atom towards the purchase of our juftification, the free gift of God through the blood of His Son,) is not only to preach with the apostles and with the articles of our church, is not only not to make void the law, but is to establish the law (a), (4) Rom. iii. 31. The The mode of preaching which, in uniting and incorporating doctrinal with practical inftruction, at one time difcourfes fpecifically on a doctrine, developes it, establishes it, applies it to the advancement of holiness: at another, leads found doctrine and correfponding practice hand in hand from the commencement to the clofe: at another, felects a chriftian or an unchristian disposition, a moral or an immoral practice, as the prominent fubject, yet anxiously and manifeftly fixes on the Great Corner-stone every part of the fuperftructure: this I conceive to be the mode, by which a Chriftian minister may hope the most efficaciously to declare all the counfel of God (b). (b) Acts, xx. 27.. CON 1 On the Changes produced by the Coming of Chrift, in the Situation of Men as to the MATTHEW, V. 17, 18. Think not that I am come to deftroy the law or the prophets : I am not come to defroy, but to fulfil. For verily I fay unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one Juftification not attainable by Acts of ROMANS, iii. 28. Therefore we conclude that |