I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in peace: then shall the Lord be my God, Gen. xxviii. 20, &c. Did the patriarch mean, that he had no other reason for regarding the Lord as his God than this favor, which he asked of him? No such thing. He meant, that to a great many reasons, which bound him to devote himself to God, the favor, which he asked would add a new one. It would be easy to produce a long list of examples of this kind. At present the application of this one should suffice. Jesus Christ, who, as supreme God hath natural rights over us, hath also acquired rights, because he hath deigned to clothe himself with our flesh, in which he died to redeem us. None of us is his own, we are all his, not only because he is our Creator, but because he is also our Redeemer. He hath a supremacy over us peculiar to himself, and distinct from that, which he hath in common with the Father and the holy Spirit.

This

To return then, to our principal subject, from which this long digression hath diverted us. Jesus, who is the supreme head of the church; this Jesus, to whom all the members of the church are subject; willeth that we should tolerate, and he himself hath tolerated, those, who, having in other cases an upright conscience, and a sincere intention of submitting their reason to all his deci-, sions, and their hearts to all his commands, cannot clearly see, that christian liberty includes a freedom from the observation of certain feasts, and from the distinction of certain foods. If the sovereign of the church tolerate them, who err in this manner, by what right do you, who are only simple subjects, undertake to condemn them? Who art thou, that judgest another man's servant? to

his own master he standeth or falleth. For none of us liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and, whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore or die, we are the Lord's. Let us not therefore judge one another any more. Let us, who are strong bear the infirmities of the weak.

This is the design of St. Paul in the words of my text, in some of the preceding, and in some of the following verses. Can we proceed without remarking, or without lamenting, the blindness of those christians, who, by their intolerance to their brethren, seem to have chosen for their model those members of the church of Rome, who violate the rights of toleration in the most cruel manner? We are not speaking of those sanguinary men, who aim at illuminating peoples minds with the light of fires, and faggots, which they kindle against all, who reject their systems. Our tears, and our blood, have not assuaged their rage, how can we then think to appease it by our exhortations? Let us not solicit the wrath of heaven against these persecutors of the church; let us leave to the souls of them, who were slain for the word of God, to cry, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them, that dwell on the earth? Rev. vi. 10.

But, ye intestine divisions! Thou spirit of faction! Ye theological wars! how long will ye be let loose among us! Is it possible, that christians, who bear the name of reformed, christians united by the bond of their faith in the belief of the same doctrines, and, if I may be allowed to speak so, christians united by the very efforts of their enemies to destroy them; can they violate, after all,

those laws of toleration, which they have so often prescribed to others, and against the violation of which they have remonstrated with so much wisdom and success? Can they convoke ecclesiastical assemblies, can they draw up canons, can they denounce excommunications and anathemas against those, who, retaining with themselves the leading truths of christianity and of the reformation, think differently on points of simple speculation, on questions purely metaphysical, and, if I may speak the whole, on matters so abstruse, that they are alike indeterminable by them, who exclude members from the communion of Jesus Christ, and by those who are excluded? O ye sons of the reformation ! how long will you counteract your own principles ! how long will you take pleasure in increasing the number of those, who breathe only your destruction, and move only to destroy you! Öye subjects of the sovereign of the church! how long will you incroach on the rights of your sovereign, dare to condemn ` those whom he absolves, and to reject those, whom his generous benevolence tolerates! Who art thou, that judgest another man's servant? for none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For, whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and, whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore or die, we are the Lord's.

What we have said shall suffice for the subject, which occasioned the maxim in the text. The remaining time I dévote to the consideration of the general sense of this maxim. It lays before us the condition, the engagements, the inclination, and the felicity of a christian. What is the felicity of a christian, what is his inclination, what are his engagements, what is his condition? They are not to be his own; but to say, whether I live, or die,

I am the Lord's. The whole, that we shall propose to you, is contained in these four articles.

I. The text lays before us the primitive condition of a christian. It is a condition of dependence. None of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.

None of us liveth to himself, for whether we live, we live unto the Lord. What do we possess, during our abode upon earth, which doth not absolutely depend on him, who placed us here? Our existence is not ours; our fortune is not ours; our reputation is not ours; our virtue is not ours; our reason is not ours; our health is not ours; our life is not ours.

Our existence is not ours. A few years ago we found ourselves in this world, constituting a very inconsiderable part of it. A few years ago the world itself was nothing. The will of God alone hath made a being of this nothing, as he can make this being a nothing, whenever he pleaseth to do so.

Our fortune is not ours. The most opulent persons often see their riches make themselves wings, and fly away. Houses, the best established, disappear in an instant. We have seen a Job, who had possessed seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, and servants without number; we have seen the man, who had been the greatest of all the men of the east, lying on a dunghill, retaining nothing of his prosperity but a sorrowful remembrance, which aggravated the adversities that followed it.

Our reputation is not ours. One single frailty sometimes tarnisheth a life of the most unsullied beauty. One moment's absence sometimes debaseth the glory of the most profound politician, of the most expert general, of a saint of the highest

order. A very diminutive fault will serve to render contemptible, yea, infamous, the man, who committed it; and to make him tremble at the thought of appearing before men, who have no other advantage over him than that of having committed the same offence more fortunately; I mean of having concealed the commission of it from the eyes of his fellow creatures.

Our virtue is not ours. Want of opportunity is often the cause why one, who openly professeth christianity, is not an apostate; another an adulterer; another a murderer.

Our reason is not ours. While we possess it, we are subject to distractions, to absence of thought, to suspension of intelligence, which render us entirely incapable of reflection; and, what is still more mortifying to human nature, they, whose geniusses are the most transcendant and sublime, sometimes become either melancholy or mad ; like Nebuchadnezzar they sink into beasts, and browse like them on the herbage of the field.

Our health is not ours. The catalogue of those infirmities, which destroy it, (I speak of those, which we know, and which mankind by a study of five or six thousand years have discovered,) makes whole volumes. A catalogue of those, which are unknown, would probably make larger volumes yet.

Our life is not ours. Winds, waves, heat, cold, aliments, vegetables, animals, nature, and each of its component parts, conspire to deprive us of it. Not one of those who have entered this church, can demonstrate that he shall go out of it alive. Not one of those, who compose this assembly, even of the youngest and strongest, can assure himself of one year, one day, one hour, one moment of life. None of us liveth to himself; for, if we live, we are the Lord's.