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THE

GREAT IMPORTANCE

OF A

RELIGIOUS LIFE

CONSIDERED.

A SHORT CHARACTER

OF THE

AUTHOR

OF THE FOLLOWING

TREATISE.

IT may add weight, perhaps, to the reflec

tions contained in the following pages, to inform the reader, that the author's life was one uniform exemplar of those precepts, which, with fo generous a zeal, and such an elegant and affecting fimplicity of style, he endeavours to recommend to general practice. He left others to contend for modes of faith, and inflame themfelves and the world with endless controverfy: It was the wifer purpose of his more ennobled aim, to act up to those clear rules of conduct which revelation has graciously prefcribed. He poffeffed by temper every moral virtue; by

religion every chriftian grace. He had a humanity that melted at every distress; a charity which not only thought no evil, but fufpected none. He exercised his profeffion with a skill and integrity, which nothing could equal but the difinterested motive that animated his labours, or the amiable modesty which accompanied all his virtues. He employed his induftry, not to gratify his own. defires; no man indulged himself less: not to accumulate useless wealth; no man more difdained fo unworthy a pursuit : it was for the decent advancement of his family, for the generous affiftance of his friends, for the ready relief of the indigent. How often did he exert his distinguished abilities yet refused the reward of them, in defence of the widow, the fatherless, and him that had none to help him! In a word, few have ever paffed a more useful, not one a more blameless life; and his whole time was employed either in doing good, or in meditating it. He died on the 6th day of April, 1743, and lies buried under the cloister of Lincoln's Inn chapel. MEM. PAT. OPT. MER. FIL. DIC.

THE

PREFACE.

THE defign of the the following treatise,

is to awaken in the minds of unthinking men, a serious sense of religion and a true concern for the intereft of their immortal fouls a defign, at all times feafonable and necessary, but more especially at this time, when we fee fuch numbers of perfons carried away with the love of pleasure, and fuch arts invented and methods used to gratify their corrupt and vicious taste.

Whoever reflects, with a due concern, upon the exceffes and debaucheries which have overspread this nation, and has any regard for the honour of God, and the in

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