SIX SERMONS,
PREACHED UPON PUBLIC OCCASIONS.
SERMON I.
PREACHED BEFORE THE INCORPORATED SOCIETY FOR THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL IN FOREIGN PARTS,
At their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St, Mary-le-Bow,
On Friday, February 16, 1738-9.
And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world, for a witness unto all nations.—Matthew xxiv. 14.
The general doctrine of religion, that all things are under the direction of one righteous Governor, having been established by repeated revelations in the first ages of the world, was left with the bulk of mankind, to be honestly preserved pure and entire, or carelessly forgotten, or wilfully corrupted. And though reason, almost intuitively, bare witness to the truth of this moral system of nature, yet it soon appeared, that "they did not like to retain God in their knowledge," Rom. i. 28, as to any purposes of real piety. Natural religion became gradually more and more darkened with superstition, little understood, less regarded in practice; and the face of it scarce discernible at all, in the religious establishments of the most learned, polite
