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of his hearers a dutiful attachment to the established Church of their country, as the best mean under Heaven, if done justice to, of preserving those principles in their primitive, and it is trusted, unadulterated purity. Fully convinced in his own mind, that could he once bring the people within the walls of our excellent Church, and at the same time persuade them to continue regularly in faithful attendance upon her ordinances, that they would not only never desert her communion, but would not fail, under the Divine blessing, to die with Christian comfort in it.

CON

DISCOURSE Í.

GEN. 1. 27.

God made Man in his own Image.

Of all the employments that can occupy the human mind, an enquiry into the state and condition of our forefathers' is certainly one of the most natural. Every circumstance relating to such a subject, however unimportant in itself, assumes a degree of consequence in our eyes, from the consideration of our connection with the party immediately concerned in it. Feeling ourselves living, as it were, in the lives of our progenitors, every event that tends to mark their character, or to describe their condition, becomes to us an interesting matter of record.

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Such is the general propensity of mankind to perpetuate what may be considered, in some degree at least, to be the history of themselves.

This history however, as under present circumstances it respects man only in his fallen condition, must on that account be a matter of curiosity, rather than of use or importance to the persons engaged in it. But when we take this subject up on Christian ground, that ground which can alone render it interesting to a Christian mind; when we carry our thoughts back to the original progenitor and first representative of human kind, in whose primæval state we all were interested, and by whose conduct in that state we are all most deeply affected; the subject assumes an importance correspondent to the dignity of the Being to whom it relates. In such case, the enquiry does not respect the circumstances or condition of fallen creatures like ourselves, our connection with whom furnishes materials for a pedigree not worth the tracing; but it relates to that once enviable being, placed at the head of the creation here below, whom

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