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Behold, heaven and hell before you! Is there a heaven to invite you to goodness! So is there an hell to deter you from evil. For your good deeds, you fhall be rewarded with a crown of glory; for your evil deeds, you shall be punished with shame and eternal mifery.

See then, and adore the fovereign justice of God! Forfake your fins, and submit yourselves to him, and God be merciful to us all, through Jefus Chrift our Lord. Amen.

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SERMON VII.

LUKE vi. 2.

Why do ye that which is not lawful to do on the fabbath day?

T

IS a misfortune which the very

best of men are liable to; to

have their most innocent actions feverely criticised at least (if not condemned) by hypocritical pretenders to religion and goodnefs. Indeed I can fee no other way a bad man has to take, who is confcious of his wickedness, and yet determined not to forfake it, but to endeavour to make all around him feem as bad as himself, that he may pass unobserved amongst the croud.---For it is a truth,

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that even the worft of men are convinced of, that it is impoffible to live with any tolerable degree of comfort without the good opinion of our neighbours; which opinion good men endeavour to obtain by good actions, and the wicked by cenfuring the good.

As no man upon earth ever did so much good as our blessed faviour, "who went about continually do

ing good;" fo never was any man fo much cenfured. Even his greatest miracles were afcribed to the power of devils and where no fhadow of a fault could fall upon himself, his adversaries defcend fo low as to shoot their poisonous darts at thofe small errors, which they pretend his disciples are guilty of.

Thus

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Thus the evangelift tells us, " and it came to pass on the second fab

bath after the first, that he (our

faviour) went through the corn fields; and his difciples plucked

the ears of corn and did eat, rubbing them in their hands." From which words nothing can be plainer, than that if there was any fault committed, the difciples only were the tranfgreffors; and the pharifees themselves had not the assurance to attack our Lord upon this account, but (as the fafer way, having often felt the sharpness of his rebukes) reprimanded his difciples in these words, "why do ye that which is not “lawful to do on the fabbath-day ?” A rebuke, very fevere, and feemingly the effect of zeal for God and his fervice,

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