Guided by these sentiments, you will come to a right understanding of holy scripture, and feel the danger of perverting it; you will easily distinguish between truth and error.--Let the plain sense of scripture, not the suggestions of fancy, or supposed extraordinary impulses on the soul, or opinions of men, be your directory.--Search the Oracles of the one living and true God, with humility and integrity, with a desire to understand them--and a resolution to live up to their divine precepts--earnestly seeking to the throne of grace for divine light and teachings. Thus, may you hope that your diligent endeavours to know the right way of the Lord, will be crowned with happy success. _For the meek he will guide in judgment.--The meek he will teach his way._ AMEN.
_And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved._
These words are a quotation from the prophet Joel. And the whole quotation is the text, from which St. Peter preached that powerful Sermon, which was the mean of converting three thousand hearers.--He very pertinently applies the passage from that prophet to the remarkable day and time, in which he speaks; being the day of Pentecost, when the Apostles, who were all in one place, of one accord, were endowed with miraculous gifts, and qualified to carry the good news of the gospel, according to their commission, over all the earth. And the words of the text inform us, in a very concise manner, what we are to do, in order to be saved. The condition of salvation, proposed in them, is as easy as it can be made, consistently with the honour of the law, attributes, and government of God. For he, being infinitely wise and gracious, never requires of any of his rational creatures either what is hard and cruel, or unjust and improper. As he hath been pleased to make us rational creatures and moral agents, so he ever more treats us as rational creatures. In all his laws, commandments, calls, precepts, and requisitions we are considered as being what we are. He never did, and never will, do any thing incompatible either with wisdom and justice, or benevolence and goodness. Indeed, were we to sit down, and in cool and dispassionate reasoning, to propose or desire our own terms of happiness, could we desire or wish for easier, than what are contained in the text. _And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved._----It it so indeed?--May we be saved, if we will but accept of salvation, if we desire, or ask for it?--We certainly may. And it is a glorious truth.--It is a pleasing doctrine. It is a delightful thought.--Call not the Religion of the Gospel, therefore, unreasonable. Object no longer to its offers. No more consider it as requiring impossibilities of man. It is the perfection of beauty. It is reason itself:--divine in its nature:--rich in its promises:--plain in its essential precepts:--and heavenly in its tendency.----