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And how poor are our attainments, how finall our progrefs in religious improvement, confidering the years we have lived and the advantages we have enjoyed. God hath spoken to us rif ing up early and fpeaking. From the firft dawn and opening of our faculties, hath the voice of inftruction founded in our ears; but no fooner were we taught our duty, than we had learned to difobey. We were as froward children, forfaking the guide of our youth. Starting afide like a broken bow, have been our continual deviations from the right way. When we confider the examples of the Saints of old, how do we fall fhort of their virtues Few and evil have been the days of our pilgrimage

We have not attained unto the days of our fathers. If we look back upon our paft lives, how little good does there appear! How little have the best of

ùs to boast of. Who can fay that he is clean from fin? Who can produce one good action that ever he did, which had not fome evil intermixt with it. We must look for juftification not from our own works, but from the free grace of God: For though our works may juftify us in the fight of men, yet when God comes to fearch into the hidden motives and fecret fprings of action, our fairest and moft fpecious virtues will not ftand the test of his impartial fcrutiny In his fight fhall no man living be juftified. Before him, we must all confefs, that few and evil have the days of the years of our life been few, compared with his eternity; evil, in the fight of his infinite purity. But here is our confolation and stay, He who is God from everlasting to everlasting,became united to our frail mortality-became the mystic fon of Jacob, the fpi

ritual Jofeph And as the aged Patriarch was nourished in Egypt under the care of his favourite fon, fo will the SON OF MAN nourish and preferve us, pardon all our fins, guide us by his counfels, and after that, receive us up into glory.

SERMON XII.

JACOB'S DYING CHARGE.

GENESIS, xlvii. 29, 30, 31.

And the time drew near that Ifrael muft die : And he called his fon Jofeph, and faid unto him, If now I have found grace in thy fight, put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh, and deal kindly and truly with me; bury me not, I pray thee, in Egypt. But I will lie with my fathers, and thou shalt carry me out of Egypt, and bury me in their burying place: And he faid, I will do as thou haft faid. And he said, fwear unto me, and he fware unto him. And Ifrael bowed himfelf upon the bed's head.

THE affairs of Egypt continue under the administration of Joseph: His brethren with their father are placed in the best of the land: They there find

pafture for their cattle; while Jofeph fupplics them with bread for the fupport of themselves and their families. Thus are they preferved during the time of famine.

THE Egyptians, while their money remained, came and bought corn of Jofeph; and when their money was spent, they gave their cattle for corn; and last of all they fold themselves and their lands. Only the land of the priests bought he not. The minifters of religion were not reduced to the neceffity of difpofing of their property to procure fuftenance; they had a certain allowance of provifion affigned them every day from Pharaoh, and therefore they fold not their lands.

AT length the famine abates; and by the provident care of Jofeph, there

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