follow; and to follow another which you cannot love; it is a very great tyranny to find all your noble resolutions frustrated by one base sensuality; to see the honour and peace, and piety, within your reach, snatched from you by one degrading passion; to know that you' are cheated out of happiness, and out of salvation; not by a pleasure, for that would be something, but by an habit, by that which at last yields no other pleasure in the doing, than the absence of that misery which would proceed from not doing it: in fine, in all wretchedness, and under the rod of any op pressor, if a man despise not himself, joy has not left that man, neither is happiness turned away from his paths; but the eternal frailtys of sin at length degrades a man in his own eyes, makes him castaway his soul in despair, and become ostentatious in vice, because, in the pursuit of virtue, he is contemptible, and

`mean.

The delight which success imparts in this sort of conflict is no mean motive to begin: most fervently, and sincerely, do I express my real thoughts, when I say that wealth, power, fame, and all the vulgar objects of

human ambition, have not a single pleasure comparable to that which results from victory over sin : they do not only fall far short of it in degree, but they have nothing like it in kind; we might as well liken the melody of the harp to the sounds which are sung out before the throne of God, or measure the proudest fabric upon earth against the eternal

arch of the Heavens.

When vice has become so intrenched in habit, and the mind so feeble, that every germ of repentance is stifled as soon as it appears, then we must gradually repent. The mind will not yield totally to first efforts, but it will yield a little; and every time we return, with stronger force, to a weaker resistance; for the same law of habit, which makes the sin so powerful, confirms the virtue which resists it. The gradual attempt at repentance does not flatter us by a sudden act of power, or spare our patience by its rapid progress: often we are hurried on by the inveteracy of habit, and driven down by the vehemence of passion; but let us keep on, and continue; if only a year of life remains, let

that be a year of repentance; remember, that the reward for which we labor is the salvation of our souls; and, that if any motive can stimulate human industry, or animate human exertion, an hope, above all this world can promise, should lead to efforts above all this world can produce.

But it often happens, that the penitence, began at a moment of sickness, or despondence, or seriousness, vanishes with its cause, as the fearful dreams of the night are dispelled by the morning's light. In this fatal resumption of self-confidence, we should remember, that the horror of our vices, which we experienced in the moment of peril, will probably return at the greatest of all perils; that the reasonings against our sins, which have before appeared so irresistible, and conclusive, will resume their power, when they cannot re-produce the effects of repentance; that it is childish to say, there is a God in the storm, and to become an Atheist again when the winds, and the waves, are still; to blaspheme in health, and bless in sickness; to enter upon the first stage of repentance,

at every event more serious than common, and to relapse into our antient sins the moment we resume our original feelings.

Though the instability of repentance does sometimes proceed from the errors of the understanding, it is most commonly to be attributed to the inability to execute what the understanding determines to be right; there is a state of mind, (avery common one,) in which an human being, perfectly aware he is doing wrong, and destroying his own happiness, cannot refrain from the impulse of present gratification. Such a strange preference of evil has lead some to suppose, that the imagination always miscolours the facts in these cases, and that, at the moment of election, from some specious misrepresentation, the best of two actions is made to appear the worst, and the worst the best. On the contrary, it is quite manifest, when gratifications are immediate, and penalties remote, that men do deliberately pursue that line of conduct which they have no doubt will produce to them a much greater -portion of misery than good. I do not. only mean misery in a world to come, but

misery in this; and to such an extreme is irresolution carried, that men will frequently do that for which they are absolutely certain they must atone, by tenfold wretchedness, within the short period of a day, or an hour;-such is the power of immediate enjoyment over the minds of men.

The great mean of making repentance efficacious, is by holding no parley with temptation; to hesitate is to consent; to listen is to be convinced; to pause is to yield. The soul of a penitent man should be as firm, against future relapse, as it is sorrowful for past iniquity: the only chance for doing well, is to be stubborn in new righteousness; to hear nothing but on one side, and to be indebted for safety, to prudence, rather than to impartiality; above all things, to tremble for youthful virtue; not to trust ourselves, till till we have walked long with God,-till the full measure of his grace is upon us,-till long abstinence has taught us to forbear,-till we have gained such wide, and such true, knowledge of pleasure, that we compre