THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH VINDICATED, IN OPPOSITION TO SCEPTICAL INDIFFERENCE AND INFIDEL PRACTICE, BY THE REV. R. P. FINCH, D.D. PREBENDARY OF WESTMINSTER, AND RECTOR OF ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST, IN THAT CITY. "THE SON OF MAN IS LORD ALSO OF THE SABBATH." London: PRINTED FOR W. AND W. GINGER, COLLEGE-STREET, WESTMINSTER; J. HATCHARD, NO. 173, PICCA- 1798. 14 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS: T is a truth far too notorious to be IT controverted, that religion in this Island hath been long declining in its influence upon the minds of men. Externals are by too many difregarded with a feeming contemptuoufnefs, which leaves little ground for hope in respect to it's vital principles, and their operation upon moral conduct. For whatever abstract reafoners may pretend, there muft, to preferve it's fubfiftence, be a body as well as a foul; otherwife, like faith without works, it will be dead. A 2 Ceremonials, it it is agreed, are far from being the whole, or, indeed, the firft and fundamental part; but they are conftituent in fuch a degree, that our light cannot, when feparated from them, fhine with a fufficiency of splendour; nor can piety, without which religion must be defective, difcover itself in fuitable acts of adoration, thanksgiving, and praife, towards the fupreme object of affection and homage. The propriety therefore, or rather neceffity, of a vifible difplay of our faculties in His fervice is fixed in nature, and most evidently deducible from our capacity, and ftill more from our obligation, to display them. Long experience hath, however, put it beyond doubt, that our debt and the payment of it bear no proportion to each other. So far from it, that they, who have |