SERMON XXV.

PROVERBS XII. VERSE XVI.

The way of the wicked seduceth them.

I INTEND, in my present discourse, to treat on the seduction of the lower class of females. in this town; an evil, which has arisen to a very alarming height, and which menaces, with utter corruption, the morals of one of the best, and wisest nations in Europe: I have no scruple to attribute this calamity to the profligacy of men in a superior situation of life, and to such I principally mean to apply my observations on this subject.

It is so much the custom to confine ourselves to generalities in the pulpit, and to direct the force of evangelical prohibition against sin, in general, rather than any parti

cular species of it, that it may be necessary to remind you how much we gain in precision, and how much we communicate of interest, by this abatement of dignity, and circumscription. The reasoning which applies to all crimes, acts languidly against - each individual crime; it does not paint the appropriate baseness, or echo the reproaches of the heart.-Our Saviour has signified to us his commandments clearly, but generally, and it must therefore, be our care to point them at the fluctuating vices of the times; if he has said, do no evil, and love thy neighbour as thyself, it is our duty to state to mankind an instance, in which they are guilty of an irreparable evil to their fellow creatures, and in which they are entailing 'endless destruction upon the most unprotected of the human race.

Among the far greater number who resort here, for the purposes of real devotion, there may be a few who, led to this sacred place by habit, or a principle of conformity, would be glad to convert their listlessness into mirth, and to catch from my lips some indiscretion, which would justify a moment of shallow pleasantry; this, God helping,

they shall not do; but they shall hear me pleading for the happiness of undefended women, pouring forth for all this church their honest indignation, and hurling the damnation of God, on base, brutal, sensual seducers.

First, The character of a seducer is base, and dishonourable; if deceit is banished from among equals; if the conduct of every man, to those of his own station of life, should be marked by veracity, and good faith; why are fallacy, and falsehood justified, because they are exercised by talents against ignorance, cunning against simplicity, power against weakness, opulence against poverty? No man ever lured a wretched creature to her ruin, without such a complication of infamous falsehoods, as would have condemned him to everlasting infamy, had they been exercised to the prejudice of any one in an higher scene of life; and what must the depravity of that man be, who has no other criterion of what he shall do, or from what he shall abstain, than impunity? who has no love of truth, but only a dread of the infamy consequent upon falsehood? and who,

as often as he believes that the eye of the world is not turned upon him, will descend to the meanest lies, to gratify the foulest vices? A seducer, of this class, owes his escape from infamy, to the inconsistency of his conduct in different situations; it is not believed by the better half of the world, that a man of unimpeached integrity in his own walk of life, who never deviates from truth, and who would repell, at the risque of his life, the imputation of falsehood, it is not believed that such a man can stoop to the most disgraceful subterfuge where he has no equal to awe him into better faith; and that his real object is to unite the gratifications of vice, to the convenience arising from the reputation for moral worth.What a dignified occupation this, for a gentleman, a scholar, and a Christian, to blind the understanding of an ignorant creature with specious sophistry, to inflame her vanity, to weaken her distinctions between right and wrong; to give her a distaste for honest industry, and to lead her, by imperceptible gradations, to guilt, to ruin, and to sorrow: how must such a man despise himself in the midst of all his artifices?