Thus I have endeavoured to answer those objections against the gospel, which are pretended to arise from the truths or doctrines of it: And before I proceed to answer those cavils which are raised against it, because of the professors of it, I must finish the present discourse with a word or two of improvement. Use 1. If this be a gospel not to be ashamed of, then study it well: Learn the truths and doctrines of it thoroughly: Truths and doctrines, which St. Paul, so wise, and so great a man, did not blush to profess, and preach, and die for. Value it as he valued it: The more you know it, the more you will esteem it; and the better you are acquainted with all the glorious articles of it, the less you will be ashamed of it: The divine harmony of the whole will cast a beauty and a lustre on every part. Use 2. Furnish yourselves with arguments for it daily, that you may profess it without shame, and defend it without blushing: This is a day of temptation, and you know not what conversation you may be called into by divine providence; you know not what cavils you may meet with to assault your faith, and attack christianity. _Be ready therefore to give reasons of the hope that is in you_, and to make a just and pertinent reply to gainsayers, and convince those, if possible, that are led away captive by the wiles of the devil to forsake Christ and his gospel. Let not every turn of wit, or sleight of argument and sophistry, make you waver in your faith. It is a gospel that will bear the trial of reasonings and reproaches. It has something in itself that is divine, and therefore it is able to support the professors of it against an army of cavillers. Use 3. Submit to all the institutions of it. Profess the whole of the gospel; not only the doctrines, but the ordinances of this gospel, are divine and glorious; they have something in them that shew they come from God, and they have something in them that evidently leads to God. They have all something in their sense and signification that discovers divinity. Wait upon God therefore in all his ordinances, in the assemblies of christians, that you _may see his power and his glory in his own sanctuary_, and that you may, from your own experience, be able to say, that the gospel is too great, too glorious, too divine a thing in its doctrines and worship, and in all its institutions, for you ever to be ashamed of. It has now, for sixteen ages, endured the test of the wit, and the rage of earth and hell, and it shall stand in power and glory, till the heavens be no more. HYMN FOR SERMON XV. _A Rational Defence of the Gospel._ Shall atheists dare insult the cross, Of our Redeemer God? Shall infidels reproach his laws, Or trample on his blood?