sent unto them, saying, Ye men and brethren, if you have any word of exhortation for the people, say on. Then Paul stood up, and, beckoning with his hand, said, Men of Israel, and ye that fear God, give audience.”— "For they that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning him.”—“ And when the Jews were gone out of the synagogue, the Gentiles besought them that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath."-ACTS, xiii. 14, 15, 16, 27, 42.

"Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail, saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit? That ye may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat."-Amos, viii. 4, 5, 6.

"If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable, and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasures, nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord, and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."-Isa, lvii. 13, 14.

And for

"In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn towards the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, to see the sepulchre. And, behold, there was a great earthquake; for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow. fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. And the angel answered, and said unto the women, Fear not ye; for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here; for he is risen, as he said: Come see the place where the Lord lay.”— Matthew, xxviii. 1.—6.

"And on the Sabbath, he went out of the city by a river side, where prayer was wont to be made."-ACTS, xvi. 13.

"And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow, and continued his speech until midnight."-ACTs, xx. 7.

The toil-worn horse set free.-P. 4. l. 11.

"A Sabbath day's journey," says an able and faithful labourer in the vineyard of the Lord," was, among the Jews, a proverbial expression for a very short one. Among us it can have no such meaning affixed to it. That day seems to be considered by too many, as set apart, by divine and human authority, for the purpose, not of rest, but of its direct opposite, the labour of travelling; thus adding one day more of torment to those

generous, but wretched animals, whose services they hire; and who, being generally strained beyond their strength the other six days of the week, have, of all creatures under heaven, the best and most equitable claim to suspension of labour on the seventh. Considerations such as these may perhaps appear to some below the dignity of this place, and the solemnity of a Christian assembly. But benevolence, even to the brute creation, is, in its degree, a duty, no less than to our own species; and it is mentioned by Solomon as a striking feature in the character of a righteous man, that he is merciful even to his beast.' HE, without whose permission' not a sparrow falls to the ground, and who feedeth the young ravens that call upon him,' will not suffer even the meanest work of his hands to be treated cruelly with impunity. He is the common Father of the whole creation. He takes every part of it under his protection. He has, in various passages of scripture, expressed his concern even for irrational creatures, and has declared more especially, in the most explicit terms, that the rest of the Sabbath was meant for our cattle and our servants, as well as for ourselves.”— BISHOP PORTeus.

Of giving thanks to God. P. 4. 1. 24.

Though this usage did not originate in positive institution, yet our Lord may be said to have enjoined it by his example. Many are the instances that might be quoted. Even after his resurrection, he brake bread, and blessed it. "But they constrained him, saying,

Abide with us, for it is towards evening, and the day is far spent; and he went in to tarry with them. And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him, and he vanished out of their sight. And they said one to another, Did not our hearts burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures? And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them, saying, the Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon. And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread.”—LUKE, xxiv. 20.—35.

Their constancy in torture and in death.

P. 10. I. 16.

The following passage from Bishop Burnet's History of his Own Time, will give some notion of the kind, though not of the extent, of that hideous persecution, from which the people of Scotland were delivered by the Revolution. "When any are to be struck in the boots, it is done in the presence of the council; and upon that occasion almost all offer to run away. The sight is so dreadful, that, without an order restraining such a number to stay, the board would be forsaken. But the duke, while he had been in Scotland, was so far from withdrawing, that he looked on all the while with an unmoved indifference, and with an attention, as if he had been to look on some curious experiment. This gave

a terrible idea of him to all that observed it, as of a man that had no bowels nor humanity in him. Lord Perth observing this, resolved to let him see how well qualified he was to be an inquisitor-general. The rule about the boots in Scotland was, that upon one witness, and presumptions, both together, the question might be given: But it was never known to be twice given, or that any other species of torture, besides the boots, might be used at pleasure. In the courts of inquisition, they do, upon suspicion, or if a man refuses to answer upon oath as he is required, give him the torture; and repeat it, or vary it, as often as they think fit; and do not give over, till they have got out of their mangled prisoners all that they have a mind to know from them.

"This Lord Perth resolved now to make his pattern; and was a little too early in letting the world see what a government we were to expect under the influence of a prince of that religion. So, upon his going to Scotland, one Spence, who was a servant of Lord Argyle's, and was taken up at London, only upon suspicion, and sent down to Scotland, was required to take an oath to answer all the questions that should be put to him. This was done in a direct contradiction to an express law against obliging men to swear, that they will answer super inquirendis. Spence likewise said, that he himself might be concerned in what he might know; and it was against a very universal law, that excused all men from swearing against themselves, to force him to take such an oath. So he was struck in the boots, and continued firm in his refusal. Then a new species of torture was