To persons of this turn of thinking I would only take the freedom to set before them the example of the great Apostle, from whom I have borrowed my text, and beg leave to ask them whether the present state of Englishmen, bad as I allow it to be, can be conceived worse than that of the Jews, when he breathed this patriotic wish for that nation. To that profligacy which their own historian * has acknowledged and even painted in the blackest colours, he was a witness, and his own experience then shewed him with what acrimony they persecuted the disciples, and reprobated the doctrine of that divine teacher, whom, about twenty years before, they had ignominiously crucified: the Spirit of prophecy had also assured him that their fate was determined, and that for this and their other blasphemies and crimes, they would soon be nationally exterminated. Yet, notwithstanding this; notwithstanding he had been peculiarly appointed by Heaven, not their Apostle, but that of the Gentiles, he still could never forget that they were his countrymen, or conquer" that heaviness, that "continual sorrow in his heart" " for his brethren, his "kinsmen in the flesh;" nor could he ever remit his zeal for both their temporal and eternal welfare, by endeavouring to convince them of their errors, and restore them to the divine favour. When the persons I am now speaking to have well weighed all this, when they have duly contemplated * Josephus. St. Paul's character in this amiable, this affecting light, I should hope they would be convinced, that to despair of the public weal, even under the most unfavourable circumstances, is not only a pusillanimous, but an unchristian disposition, and that the apathy and supineness which they dignify with the name of prudence, argues a want of one of the noblest, as well as most beneficent sensations that can actuate the human soul. |