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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: live every day in the same tempers, and the same design,s. and the same indulgences, as they did who knew not God, nor of any happiness in another life. Every body, that is capable of any reflection, must have observed, that this is generally the state even of devout people, whether men or women. You may see them different from other people so far as to times'and places of prayer, but generally like the rest of the world in all the other parts of their lives. That is, adding Christian devotion to an heathen life: I have the authority of our blessed Saviour for this remark, where he says, Take no thought. saying what shall we eat, or what'shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed ? for after all these things do the Gentiles seek. But if to be thus affected even with the necessary things of this life, shews that we are not yet of a Christian spirit, but are like the heathens; surely to enjoy the vanity and folly of the world as they did, to be like them in the mam chief tempers of our lives, in self- love and indulgence, in sensual pleasures and diversions, in the vanity of dress, the love of show and greatness, or any other gaudy distinction of fortune, is a much grenter sign of a heathen temper. And consequently they who add devotion to such a life, must he said to pray as Christians, but live as heathens. CHAP. II. An Hlquiry into the Reason, why the generality of Christians fall so far short of the Holiness and Devotion of Christianity. IT may now be reasonably inquired, how it comes to pass, that the lives even of the better sort of people are thus strangely contrary to the principles of Christianity. But before I give a direct answer to this, I desire it jnay also be inquired, how it comes to pass that swearing is so common a vice amongst Christians; it is...