bestow; and waiting, with tranquil and cheerful refignation, the bleffed moment that fhall diffolve its ties with earth, and translate it to a glorious and immortal state of felicity in the Heavens.

AMEN!

HUM

UMAN Nature is covered with imperfection. Conscience daily denounces to us errors and follies in our conduct, the guilt of which is fo ftrongly marked, that we cannot forbear to acknowlege and condemn them. But, a much greater number, in the hasty and fuperficial glance which, in the midst of bufinefs, or of pleasure, we throw on life, escape our obfervationmany, when we come to look back upon our own hiftory, and examine our conduct, have passed from our remembrance-and many more are covered from the cenfure of our own minds by that partiality to whatever is attached to ourselves even by a remote relation, that is among the most dangerous weaknesses of human nature.

Sins of this kind, forgotten, unobferved, or juftified and covered by felf-love, are, by the facred writer in the text, denominated fecret faults.

As it is of high importance to lay open, as far as poffible, every fource of humility that fhould affect a good man at the throne of grace, and to expofe to all men the hidden and unfufpected errors of their lives, I fhall endeavor, in the prefent discourse, to disclose their principal causes and springs. From each of thefe we may derive many facts and truths that may be profitably applied for the examination of our hearts, and the regulation of our conduct. They may be comprised under the heads of ignoranceof felf-love-of a corrupted ftate of public manners-of vicious habits-and of falfe principles.

I. In the first place ignorance is a fruitful fource of faults that, from their very caufe muft be unknown to ourfelves. In an uninformed mind, the pallions, uncontrouled by principle, will be continually gathering ftrength-and every criminal impulfe haftens to its object, freed from thofe

holy and powerful restraints which can be impofed upon it only by an enlightened confcience. Ignorance, as I here speak of it, refpects the laws of duty, and the system of divine truth contained in the holy fcriptures. For whatever fcience a man may poffefs, if his knowledge of these is defective, his heart is, in the fame proportion, laid open to the influence of temptation, and fubjected to the dominion of its paffions. Sound principles of divine truth early received, and permanently fixed in the mind, furnish the most effectual motives to duty, and form the strongest fences of virtue.Ignorance enfeebles and proftrates both the one and the other. It infallibly leads to vice. Make for it the most favorable fuppofition that it is the fubject of religious impression—it is liable to the falfe fervors, and the crimes of fanaticism which it exalts into virtues, or it finks into a vain discharge of the abfurd and ufelefs rites and penances of fuperftition, which it makes the fubftitutes of duty, and the expiation of its fins. If it is without religious impreffion, it is prone to plunge into the gulph of profligacy, and to abandon itfelf to the unreftrained indulQq

gence of every vice, to which propensity, example, or habit invites. Is not a great part of the reproachful idleness, the grofs. profanity, the fhameless intemperance and obfcenity that fo often difgrace the inferior orders of fociety, and offend our eyes, and wound our ears even in the public streets, to be ascribed to that defect of principle and inftruction that leaves the mind without a clear light to guide its conduct, or a faithful monitor to reftrain its exceffes ? Those who are leaft informed, indeed, cannot be wholly ignorant of the evil of these vices, but, unacquainted with the holiness and extent of the divine law, the high degree of their criminality is, in a great meafure, unknown to them. They are covered with the guilt of fecret faults, and are finking into perdition, unconfcious of the load that is preffing them down. Will ignorance, according to the falle hopes of finners, exculpate the confcience ? Invincible ignorance might; but ignorance of duty in the midft of our lights, arifing, as it does, from a criminal abufe of reafon, or a criminal neglect of the means of information, can only aggravate the guilt of our offences. But fins of ignorance, and this is a truth