that, if you are remifs and negligent, you fhall provoke his heavy difpleafure. Do not attempt to fatisfy your confcience, by pretending fome little engagement, or trifling business, The Almighty admits of no business to detain you constantly from his worship. Would you be fatisfied, were your own commands neglected, under such trivial pretences? We lament that the heathens had no Sunday, no fet day, on which they might have worshipped God. And we make ourselves worfe than the heathens, becaufe, having fuch a day, we defpife and defile it. Reprefent to your minds the awful feafon, when you fhall be vifited with fickness, and arrefted by death; and ask yourselves, if you think your confciences will fignify their approbation of your having been only occafional worshippers of God? Do you think you fhall derive any pleafure in that awful hour, from the reflection, that you have spent fo many Sundays, emphatically called God's own days, in idleness, in bufinefs, or in pleasures? Ah foon, too foon it may be! will that time arrive. And fhould I be called on to attend you thofe agonizing moments, if I am not fuccefs

in

ful

ful in my attempt, to perfuade you to attend public worship, every page of the Bible will forbid me to give you encouragement to expect falvation. Confider how deplorable such state will be, and may God give you Grace to prevent it!

a

SERMON

SERMON XVIII.

GENESIS, XXVIII. 16.

Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it

THE

not.

HE carelefs and irreverent behavior of many people, in the house of God, affects with deep concern, all ferious, and well-difpofed minds. Is it that they do not go there, with the actual defign of worshipping God? or because they may as well fpend an hour in Church as any where elfe, and therefore think themselves discharged from the obligation of devoutly fupplicating God? Whatever be their motive, it is evident that they do not confider themselves in the more immediate prefence of him, who is "jealous of his honor, and who "will not give his glory to another." All fuch, with too great reafon, may fay with 'Jacob in the text, 66 Surely the Lord is in this place, And he was faraid, and

" and I knew it not.

faid, how dreadful," or how awful," is this place! This is none other than the house of “God, and this is the gate of heaven." That I may, by the bleffing of God, excite, in every irreverent worshipper, the fame awful ideas; that I may, by the affiftance of Divine Grace, awaken, inevery careless breast, the tremendous thought, that surely God is in this place, I will beg your ferious attention, whilft I fhew,

First, The motives and inducements that ought to bring us to the house of God. Secondly, The devotion and reverence with which we ought to behave in it. Thirdly, I shall point out fome of the improprieties too often obfervable in our congregations; and fhall then conclude with a ferious application.

First, We go to Church to acknowlege Whose we are, and Whom we ferve; to demonstrate to the world, and to ourselves, that we have enlisted under the banners of the Lord; and that, "whoever others may ferve, "the Lord our God will we serve, and his "voice only will we obey." We go to Church to return God our public, thanks for creating, preferving, and redeeming us from everlasting mifery; to befeech him to " give us those