or I will, life and health permitting;[27] and they quote the text for
it, where our Saviour expressly commands to use such a caution, and
which I shall say nothing to lessen the force of.

But to say a word to our present custom. Since Christianity is the
public profession of the country, and we are to suppose we not only are
Christians ourselves, but that all those we are talking to, or of, are
also Christians, we must add that Christianity supposes we acknowledge
that life, and all the contingencies of life, are subjected to the
dominion of Providence, and liable to all those accidents which God
permits to befall us in the ordinary course of our living in the world,
therefore we expect to be taken in that sense in all such appointments;
and it is but justice to us as Christians, in the common acceptation of
our words, that when I say, _I will certainly_ meet my friend at such a
place, and at such a time, he should understand me to mean, if it
pleases God to give me life and health, or that his Providence permits
me to come, or, as the text says, 'If the Lord will;' for we all know
that unless the Lord will, I cannot meet, or so much as live.

Not to understand me thus, is as much as to say, you do not understand
me to be a Christian, or to act like a Christian in any thing; and on
the other hand, they that understand it otherwise, I ought not to
understand them to be Christians. Nor should I be supposed to put any
neglect or dishonour upon the government of Providence in the world, or
to suggest that I did not think myself subjected to it, because I
omitted the words in my appointment.

In like manner, when a man comes to me for money, I put him off: that,
in the first place, supposes I have not the money by me, or cannot spare
it to pay him at that time; if it were otherwise, it may be supposed I