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SERMON III.

Description of the World.

[33]

SERMON III.

2 PETER iii. II.

Seeing then, that all these things shall be dif folved,-what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy converfation and godliness? looking and haftening unto the coming of God.

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HE fubject upon which St. Peter is dif

courfing in this chapter, is the certainty of Christ's coming to judge the world;and the words of the text are the moral application he draws from the representation he gives of it,-in which, in answer to the cavils of the fcoffers in the latter days, concerning the delay of his coming,-he tells them, that God is not flack concerning his promises, as some men count flackness, but is long fuffering to us ward;-that the day of the Lord will

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come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens fhall pass away with a great noife, and the elements fhall melt with fervent heat, the earth alfo, and the works that are therein shall be burnt up.-Seeing then, fays he, all these things shall be diffolved, what manner of perfons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godlinefs?—The inference is unavoidable, -at least in theory, however it fails in practice ;-how widely thefe two differ, I intend to make the fubject of this difcourfe; and though it is a melancholy comparison, to confider, what manner of perfons we really are,' with what manner of perfons we ought to be,' yet as the knowlege of the one, is at least one step towards the improvement in the other,the parallel will not be thought to want its ufe.

Give me leave, therefore, in the first place, to recall to your obfervations, what kind of world it is we live in, and what manner of perfons we really are.

Secondly, and in oppofition to this, I fhall make use of the apoftle's argument, and from a brief reprefentation of the Chriftian religion,

and the obligations it lays upon us, fhew, what manner of perfons we ought to be in all holy converfation and godlinefs, looking for and haftening unto the coming of the day of God.

Whoever takes a view of the world will, I fear, be able to difcern, but very faint marks of this character, either upon the looks or actions of its inhabitants.—Of all the ends and pursuits we are looking for, and hastening unto, this would be the leaft fufpected,-for without running into that old declamatory cant upon the wickedness of the age,—we may fay within the bounds of truth,-that there is as little influence from this principle which the apoftle lays ftrefs on, and as little fenfe of religion,―as fmall a share of virtue (at least as little of the appearance of it) as can be supposed to exift at all in a country where it is countenanced by the state.-The degeneracy of the times has been the common complaint of many ages:— -how much we exceed our forefathers in this, is known alone to that God who trieth the hearts.—But this we may be allowed to urge in their favour, they ftudied at least to preferve the appearance of

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