orderly and duly, there arises a sweet enjoyment upon the whole which we call health; so in the soul, when the supreme faculties of the will and understanding move regularly, the inferior passions and affections following, there arises a serenity and complacency upon the whole soul infinitely beyond the greatest bodily pleasures, the highest quintessence and elixir of worldly delights. There is in this case a kind of fragrancy and spiritual perfume upon the conscience much like what Isaac spoke of his son's garments, "That the scent of them was like the smell of a field which the Lord had blessed." Such a freshness and flavor is there upon the soul when daily watered with the actions of a virtuous life. Whatsoever is pure is also pleasant.

Having thus surveyed the image of God in the soul of man, we are not to omit now those characters of majesty that God imprinted upon the body. He drew some traces of His image upon this also, as much as a spiritual substance could be pictured upon a corporeal. As for the sect of the Anthropomorphites, who from hence ascribe to God the figure of a man, eyes, hands, feet, and the like, they are too ridiculous to deserve a confutation. They would seem to draw this impiety from the letter of the Scripture sometimes speaking of God in this manner. Absurdity! as if the mercy of Scripture expres sions ought to warrant the blasphemy of our opinions; and not rather to show us that God condescends to us only to draw us to Himself; and clothes Himself in our likeness only to win us to His own. The practice of the papists is much of the same nature, in their absurd and impious picturing of God Almighty; but the wonder in them is the less since the image of a deity may be a proper object for that which is but the image of a religion. But to the purpose: Adam was then no less glorious in his externals; he had a beautiful body, as well as an immortal soul. The whole compound was like a well built temple, stately without, and sacred within. The elements were at perfect union and agreement in his body; and their contrary qualities served not for the dissolution of the compound, but the variety of the composure. Galen, who had no more divinity than what his physic taught him, barely upon the consideration of this so exact frame of the body, challenges any one, upon a hundred years' study, to find how any the least fiber, or most minute particle, might be more commodiously placed, either for the advantage of use or comeliness. His stature erect, and tending upward to his center; his countenance majestic and comely, with the luster of a native beauty that scorned the poor assistance of art or the atterapts of imitation; his body of so much quickness and agility that it did not

only contain but also represent the soul; for we might well suppose that where God did deposit so rich a jewel He would suitably adorn the case. It was a fit work-house for sprightly, vivid faculties to exercise and exert themselves in. A fit tabernacle for an immortal soul, not only to dwell in, but to contemplate upon; where it might see the world without travel, it being a lesser scheme of the creation, nature contracted a little cosmography or map of the universe. Neither was the body then subject to distempers, to die by piecemeal, and languish under coughs, catarrhs, or consumptions. Adam knew no disease so long as temperance from the forbidden fruit secured them. Nature was his physician, and innocence and abstinence would have kept him healthful to immortality.

Now the use of this point might be various, but at present it shall be only this, to remind us of the irreparable loss that we sustained in our first parents, to show us of how fair a portion Adam disinherited his whole posterity by one single prevarication. Take the picture of a man in the greenness and vivacity of his youth and in the latter date and declensions of his drooping years, and you will scarce know it to belong to the same person; there would be more art to discern than at first to draw it. The same and greater is the difference between man innocent and fallen. He is, as it were, a new kind of species; the plague of sin has even altered his nature and eaten into his very essentials. The image of God is wiped out, the creatures have shaken off His yoke, renounced His sovereignty, and revolted from His dominion. Distempers and diseases have shattered the excellent frame of his body; and, by a new dispensation, "immortality is swallowed up of mortality." The same disaster and decay also has invaded his spirituals; the passions rebel, every faculty would usurp and rule, and there are so many governors that there can be no government. The light within us is become darkness, and the understanding, that should be eyes to the blind faculty of the will, is blind itself, and so brings all the inconveniences that attend a blind follower under the conduct of a blind guide. He that would have a clear ocular demonstration of this, let him reflect upon that numerous litter of strange, senseless, absurd opinions, that crawl about the world, to the disgrace of reason, and the unanswerable reproach of a broken intellect.

The two great perfections that both adorn and exercise man's understanding, are philosophy and religion: for the first of these, take it even among the professors of it where it most flourished, and we shall find the very first notions of common sense debauched by them. For there have been such as have asserted "That there

is no such thing in the world as motion: that contradictions may be true." There has not been wanting one that has denied snow to be white. Such a stupidity or wantonness had seized upon the most raised wits that it might be doubted whether the philosophers or the owls of Athens were the quicker sighted. But then for religion; what prodigious, monstrous, misshapen births has the reason of fallen man produced! It is now almost six thousand years that far the greatest part of the world has had no other religion but idolatry and idolatry certainly is the first-born of folly, the great and leading paradox, nay, the very abridgment and sum total of all absurdities. For is it not strange that a rational man should worship an ox, nay, the image of an ox? That he should fawn upon his dog? Bow himself before a cat? Adore leeks and garlic, and shed penitential tears at the smell of. a deified onion? Yet so did the Egyptians, once the famed masters of all arts and learning. And to go a little further, we have yet a stranger instance in Isaiah, "A man hews him down a tree in the wood, and a part of it he burns, with the residue thereof he maketh a god." With one part he furnishes his chimney, with the other his chapel. A strange thing that the fire must first consume this part and then burn incense to that. As if there was more divinity in one end of the stick than in the other; or, as if it could be graved and painted omnipotent, or the nails and the hammer could give it an apotheosis. Briefly, so great is the change, so deplorable the degradation of our nature, that whereas before we bore the image of God, we now retain only the image of men.

In the last place, we learn from hence the excellency of Christian religion, in that it is the great and only means that God has sanctified and designed to repair the breaches of humanity, to set fallen man upon his legs again, to clarify his reason, to rectify his will, and to compose and regulate his affections. The whole business of our redemption is, in short, only to rub over the defaced copy of the creation, to reprint God's image upon the soul, and, as it were, to set forth nature in a second and a fairer edition.

The recovery of which lost image, as it is God's pleasure to command, and our duty to endeavor, so it is in His power only to effect.

To whom he rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen

DISCOURSE TWENTY SECOND.

BENJAMIN KEACH.

THIS old divine, rendered famous by his sufferings for the truth's sake, and his "Scripture Metaphors," "Travels of True Godliness," etc., was born in Stakehaman, Buckinghamshire, February 29th, 1640. He died in London, July, 1704; where he had held the pastoral office, as Baptist minister for thirty-six years. There were published of his writ ings, before his death, forty-seven different works; three in folio, six in quarto, and many in octavo and smaller forms; all of which are now exceedingly rare.

Keach was a bold and zealous preacher during the reign of Charles the Second, and his influence was so great that he incurred the most bitter persecution. Frequently was he seized and committed to prison; and, on one occasion he came near being put to death by means of the trampling under foot of dragoons of horsemen. In 1664 he was sentenced to the pillory for publishing a work called "The Child's Instructor, or a New and Easy Primer." While in the pillory, he said, "The way to the crown is by the cross." "This is one yoke of Christ's, which I experience is easy to me, and a burden which He doth make light." He added, "I do account this the greatest honor that ever the Lord was pleased to confer on me." Keach was a strong writer, exceedingly rich in Scriptural illustration, and in the clear and forcible presentation of the Gospel doctrines. The sermon which follows, besides its intrinsic merit, has an additional value at the present time, when pretended revelations are foisted upon society, to gainsay or supersede the word of of the living God. Some preliminary and inferential matter is here omitted.

THE SCRIPTURES SUPERIOR TO ALL SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATIONS.

“And he said, If they will not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead."-LUKE, xvi. 31.

I shall endeavor to prove from these words that the Holy Scriptures, in the ministration thereof, have far more efficacy to bring

men to believe and repent than immediate revelation, or apparition from the dead.

I. For the proof of this truth I shall first show the uncertainty of the evidence of all other pretended ways.

1. Suppose a man pretends to immediate inspiration or revelation, by which he says he knows the truth, or the only way to be saved, and how to worship God. How can we be assured that what he says is a true and infallible revelation? For perhaps twenty men may all teach contrary doctrine one to the other, yet all pretend to immediate revelation, or inspiration of God: how then shall any inquiring person be assured which of these are truly inspired? One may say, I witness it in myself and know it is of God. Well, and so all: how then is the doubting person left at an utter uncertainty!

For unless one or another of this sort who pretends to immediate inspiration can do such things to confirm his mission which no imposter can, he is not in the least to be regarded. What must he do? He must work real miracles, as raise the dead, or open the eyes of one that was born blind, by that Spirit of which he pretends to be led. And if he can not do such things, he can do no more than any deceiver can pretend to.

Consider that Almighty God Himself, who is a free Agent, and under no obligation to His creatures, never gave forth but two religions, or two sorts of public worship, laws and ordinances-the first was the Jewish religion, and the second the Christian-neither of these He imposed on His people without confirming them by signs and wonders.

The first was given forth by Moses. And what amazing miracles and wonders did he work in Egypt before Pharaoh, and at the Red Sea, to prove his mission, or that he was sent from God! None could do the like. Though Jannes and Jambres withstood him, and strove to do the like, yet at last they were forced to cry out it was "the finger of God."

Moreover, when the time of the Jewish worship and their Churchstate was expiring, and our Lord was sent from heaven to give forth the doctrine of the New Testament, what wonderful miracles did He work to prove He was sent from heaven! He also said, "If I do not the works that no other man can do, believe Me not. The works that I do, they bear witness of Me." They proved that the Father sent Him, and that His doctrine was of God. "Or else believe Me for My works' sake."

2. Suppose a man should say he is come from the dead, either from