Page:Great duty of confessing Christ before men, stated and recommended.pdf/23

23 and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. (Luke xxii. 28. 30.) 6. The duty of all professors of religion, to hold fast their profession, without wavering; to transmit it down to posterity; and, in the mean time, to honour it by a holy life.

Men, brethren, and fathers, let us be valiant for the truth on the earth. We serve a Master that will never leave nor forsake us, and we plead a cause that shall ultimately prevail; our infirmities and our inconsistencies are many, but the cause is good, even the cause of God and truth. A long list of witnesses, confessors and martyrs have preceded us in this course, and fought the battles of the Lord; but they are now more than conquerors through him that loved them, and know, in all their hearts and souls, that the cause of Christ is worth contending for, and must be victorious. Let us follow them as they followed Christ. The precious principles espoused by our ancestors, should not be deserted by us their sons. We are under the most solemn obligations to be faithful to God and his church and truth in our day. The summaries of divine truth in the Confession of Faith, in the Catechisms, Larger and Shorter, and in our own Testimony, should be frequently read by all, and inculcated by parents on their children, iu connection with a frequent perusal of the word of God. These summaries, however despised by a fastidious and self conceited generation, are of excellent use in the church; they tend to discover and condemn error, and to exhibit to the world what is called present truth: they not only discover and refute error but they are a strong preservative against it; when persons are acquainted with truth in its connections, or in a system, they are not easily led away from the truth as it is in Jesus; but ignorant and unstable souls, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth, who have loose and disjointed