Book Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: if he has not from his own personal experience discovered, the (a) sufficiency of the Scriptures in all knowledge requisite for a right performance of his duty as a man and a Christian. Of the labouring classes, who in all countries form the great majority of the inhabitants, more than this is not demanded, more than this is not perhaps generally desire- able?( They are not sought for in public counsel, nor need they be found where politic sentences are spoken.?It is enough if every one is wise in the working of his own craft: so best will they maintain the state of the world. But you, my friends, to whom the following pages are more particularly addressed as to men moving in the higher class of society: ?You will, I hope, have availed yourselves of the ampler means entrusted to you by God's providence, to a more extensive study and a wider use of his revealed will and word. From you we have a right to expect a sober and meditative accomoda- tion to your own times and country of those important truths declared in the inspired writings ( for a thousand generations/ and of the awful examples, belonging to all ages, by which those truths are at once illustrated and confirmed. Would you feel conscious that you had shewn yourselves unequal to your station in society?would you stand degraded in your own eyes; if you betrayed an utter want of information respecting the acts of human sovereigns and legislators? And should you not much rather be both ashamed and afraid to know yourselves inconversant with the acts and constitutions of God, whose law executeth itself, and whose Word is the foundation, the power, and the life of the universe ? Do you hold it a requisite of your rank to shew yourselves inquisitive concerning the expectations and plans of statesmen and state-counsellors?..