Imatges de pàgina
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regard, and a veneration for the frame, the grandeur, the dignity of our own beings, may perhaps merit the first place: I am fure, to hold them in contempt, is to weaken what we ought to defend; for to undervalue the gift, is to reflect on the giver. The man who thinks fuperior rank and title no grace or ornament to his family, will not believe he is, in any manner, bound by his actions to fupport the honour of it; and he who defpifes human nature, will, I fear, contribute little himself towards its dignity or improvement.

The heathen world placed all their true and rational enjoyment of prefent blifs, and all their uncertain hopes of future happiness, in acting up to the dignity of human nature, which they thought capable of being by virtue exalted into the divine: and in purfuance of this opinion, we fee, thofe kings and lawgivers, thofe fathers and deliverers of their country, whom they reverenced and efteemed while living, when dead they wor shipped and adored.

As the light of the Gofpel had not yet appeared to guide and direct their fieps, as Revelation had not discovered to them the knowledge of the true God, it was by no means to be wondered at, that Reafon fhould point out to them the fairest images and most exact reprefentatives of him, as the proper objects of their adoration.

But if the pride and felf-fufficiency of the ancients, if the ftoic enthusiasm did perhaps

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infpire men with too high an opinion of a nature, which, with all its boafted privileges, had little title to perfection, yet have the modern and more enlightened ages of Chrif tianity fallen into a worfe extreme, by an utter contempt and difregard of it. Human nature has, for a long time, been the conftant mark at which the fullen and difcontented have aimed; the pen of the fatyrift, and the wit of the declaimer, have been em. ployed to brand it with infamy and difgrace, to degrade man to the meaneft clafs of beings, and fink him even below the animal creation.

In vindication, therefore, of that religion we profefs, and that nature which, as we all partake of, we ought all to love, to honour, and to defend, let us turn our eyes a little on the bright fide of it; let us not defpair of tracing out the image of God in man; and to this end we will confider him at prefent only in regard to those three glorious attributes of the Deity, wherein the resemblance is more immediately vifible; his power, his knowledge, and his goodness.

God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, fays Mofes; and immediately he fubjoins, and God faid, have dominion over the fish of the fea, and over the fowls of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. He gave him dominion over every thing; a dominion which, though forfeited by the fin of our first parents, was yet graciously continued to their pofterity;

pofterity; though it was reftrained and limited, yet was it not utterly loft: God, in his mercy, has thought fit ftill to preferve to man that empire which he at firft appointed him; though we finned against him, and were no more worthy to be called his fons, yet has he not withdrawn his patriomony; man ftill retains his fovereignty over the creation, and every thing is put in fubjection under him. But to what do we owe this power, to what are we indebted for this glorious fuperiority, but to the second thing I purposed to confider, our knowledge.

Was the understanding of man once removed or diminished, his power would fland on a very weak and tottering foundation: human knowledge, though when compared to the great fountain of wisdom it shrinks into a point fcarce difcernible, is furely a field of a noble extent, and abounding with infinite variety. The mind of man is capable of the fublimeft truths, is able to raise itself above the air by which it is furrounded, and the world it inhabits, to feek a fitter mansion, and point out the place of its nativity; circumfcribed as it is within its present bounds, who fhall determine its height, when none ever yet arrived at the fummit. We complain of the narrowness of the circle, yet who ever touched the circumference of it? Who fhall determine it impoffi ble for God to endue a mind with qualities even far above all we have yet ever feen or known? What may we not expect where there

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is infinite wifdom to contrive, and infinite power to execute?

Thus clothed with majefty and power, and adorned with wisdom and knowledge, man may feem no unworthy reprefentative, no poor or contemptible image of his Creator; but when we proceed to the great and diftinguishing characteristic of the Deity, his Goodness, how defective fhall we find him, how mean a copy, how unlike to the divine original! Power and Knowledge may fubfift in the world without Goodness; and hourly experience convinces us, that the most exalted and the most intelligent are not always the best of men; though to be good is indeed to be really powerful; to be virtuous, truly wife. The juftice of God manifested itself in the punishment of the first man, by the lofs of that power and knowledge, in fearch of which he facrificed his innocence; aud the moment man ceafed to be good, he ccafed to be powerful, to be wise, and to be happy.

But tho' the goodness of man was of so short a duration, that of God was ftill immutable. By the crime of our firft parent, the whole race of mankind was made fubject to fin and death; and, in procefs of time, fo effaced was the image of the Creator, that fcarce could the leat feature or likeness of the father be traced out in his pofterity. When God, out of his inanite mercy and benevolence, was pleafed once more to fhew himfelf to mankind in the perfon of his beloved Son, to present us with a fairer copy and tranfcript of himself, he fent

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Chrift in the brightness of his glory, and the exprefs image of his perfon. With this light to guide and direct, this example to influence and adorn it, human nature feemed reftored to its former dignity and luftre, to re-affume its native charms, and fhine once more in its original beauty; and indeed, in the first ages of Christianity, though galled by adverfity, crufhed by the oppreffive hand of power, and groaning under chains and perfecution, it broke through the cloud of misfortunes, and amazed mankind with that noble conftancy and refolution, that steady perfeverance in the cause of Christ and his religion, which appeared in the primitive faints and martyrs. By degrees indeed this zeal abated, this glorious warmth decayed, and men returned again from the thorny and difficult road of virtue, to the fmoother paths of vice and folly; but, thanks to God, in all ages and nations there have not been wanting fome to ftem the torrent of impiety; and though it must be confeffed we are degenerated from the virtue, the goodness, and the piety of our forefathers, yet let us not defpair; in arts and sciences things we know have lain hid for a long feries of time, which have at length been difcovered; and why then may not virtue and religion, which have been concealed and buried, break forth amongst us with fresh luftre, and fhine with more diftinguifhed glory? Why may not the image of God be again traced out in the mind of man? Let us look for it in the prefent, let us hope for it from the rifing generation.

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