And I do give and bequeath my daughter Naomi to the God of our father Abraham, before whom I have walked; the Angel who hath redeemed me from all evil; the God of grace and providence, who hath fed me all my life long unto this day, and fixed the bounds of my habitation.

And now, O Lord God, gracious and merciful, flow to anger, and of great compaffion, who haft in answer to prayer brought my daughter back from the gates of death, I most humbly befeech thee to accept her at my hands; and enable my faith to engage thy kind protecting care over her! Be thou her guide and guardian, her father and her friend; and let not thy bleffed hand go out against her, nor fuffer her name to be called Marah, O make her one of thy honourable women, and a gracious mother in Ifrael; guide her through all the dangers which attend the giddy in their youth, and keep her feet from being taken by any of the fnares which are fet to entangle fouls for Satan! Are not children an inheritance that cometh of thee? and is not the fruit of the womb thy own reward? Art not thou the author of her being, and the preferver of her life? To whofe care then can I commit her but to thine, who art fo well known by the endearing names of a father to the fatherlefs, a hufband to the widow, a friend to the friendlefs, and the aid of thofe who have no helper! All which characters thou art the truth of in the fuperlative degree, and in every

fenfe of the words!

I will not ask temporal wealth, honour, beauty, pleasure, or long life, but beg thy felf only as her portion. Thy love fhed abroad in the heart is the best inheritance; thy immenfity fatisfies every boundless defire that the most enlarged fpirit is capable of, and thy eternity fends every thought back to the believing breaft fweetly laden with infinite fatisfaction. O that my daughter may live before thee, and be brought to know the God of her father; and let thy bleffings on my offspring exceed the bleffings of their progenitor; even to the utmost bounds of the everlasting hills! Amen and Amen.

And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them that are fanctified. Acts xx. 32.

Eighthly, All the poor fheep which thou haft called by me, and thofe over which the Holy Ghoft has made me an overfeer, together with all thofe whom the love of Chrift has constrained me to love, care for, or to feed; I do leave them, and the fole care of them all, to the chief Shepherd and Bishop of fouls, Chrift Jefus my Lord, to whom they belong by donation, by purchase, and by conqueft; as the gift of his Father, the purchase of his blood, and the trophies of his victory.

And now, O Lord God, the Ancient of Days,

and

and the End of Time, Time's Alpha and Omega, our everlasting Father, who from all eternity waft fet up to be a future head, and a gathering fhepherd; who receivedst our names, perfuns, and the number of them, even before chaos was conceived, or order born; Thou great I; Thou one eternal Now, and Eternity's only Centre; whom no fpace can measure, and in whom the past and the future are for ever loft! O Thou, who art incomprehenfible, and yet well known in Judah; though invifible, yet faith discerns thee; and though the only poffeffor of immortality, yet thou dwelleft with mortals; I humbly entreat thee ever to appear the watchful, careful, and tender Shepherd of Ifrael; gather them from among the goats, bring back that which is gone aftray, heal that which is fick, bind up that which is broken, and feed that which is faint; let not even an ear be loft (Amos iii. 12.), or an hoof be left behind; and, as thou haft appeared unblemished in every covenant character, from age to age, and haft established thy word to a thousand generations, be pleased to ftrengthen, establish, and fettle thine elect in the strongest faith of it,

And now, O Lord, deliver them all from that God-dishonouring and dear-bought infenfibility of the Deift (Ezek. viii. 12.); and from the damnable delufion of the Arian (2 Pet. ii. 1.); from the fleshly confidence too, and rafh prefumption of the Antinomian (2 Cor. xiii. 2.); and from the galling

and

and severe yoke of the felf-fufficient Arminian (Acts xv. 10.); from the voluntary fervice of worldlings, and from the woful and unexpected end of the whole tribe of Pharifees.

Amen.

Amen and

As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; fo are children of the youth.

Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of

them they fhall not be ashamed, but they

shall speak with their enemies in the gate. Pfal. cxxvii. 45• .

Ninthly, The child that is coming, and all that may come, whether many or few, males or females; I do give and bequeath all, and every one of them, to the Father of the fpirits of all flesh; otherwise the Second Adam, the quickening Spirit, the Lord from heaven, the ever-bleffed Immanuel, our God and God with us; to be kept by his power, governed by his fceptre, and to be only at his abfolute disposal.

And now, O Lord, who didft not despise the fimple facrifices of the infant tribes, when in the temple they offered their unknown Hosannas to thee; but didft sharply rebuke and wonderfully ftill thy enemies by the lips of babes and fucklings, out of whofe mouths thou hadst pre ordained strength to perfect praife; O let the rifing generation join in the innocent and holy acclamations of

Hofanna

Hofanna to the fon of David! or, Save, Lord, toe befeech thee! Yea, let them rife up and call thee bleffed. Thou haft richly difpenfed thy invaluable benedictions on various of thy chofen ones in every age of life. Some have been filled with thy Holy Spirit from their mother's womb, others from their childhood have known the Holy Scriptures; others were ordained prophets before they were conceived, or born; and two thousand infants at one time fell martyrs to thy truth, fealed it with their blood, and died in Gofpel hope others at the eleventh hour have found thee the Meffiah; and the poor thief on the cross felt the convictions of fin and the pains of death, go hand in hand, and apparently keep pace; fo that a fpiritual travel and a lingering death met both together in one chofen veffel, and at one time: but bleffed be thy name, the fpiritual birth outstripped the dart of death. Surely this was a double deliverance, or an unproclaimed jubilee, to see the carcafe of a thief hang on the gibbet, while the foul was finging celestial anthems in paradife! But these are some of the difcriminating acts of thy fovereign grace. O Lord, grant that our offspring may fee and know for themselves, many of these wonderful difplays of thy unmerited and everlasting love; and let the Spirit thou haft put upon us, and the word thou haft put in our mouth, never depart out of our mouth, nor out of the mouth of our feed, nor out