of false principles? Ah! Who can understand his errors? We are altogether as an unclean thing! Our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away! Cleanfe us O Lord, from fecret faults! Keep back thy fervants alfo from prefumptuous fins!

AMEN!

DISCOURSE XIII.

ΟΝ PUBLIC VICES.

PSALM XIX. 13.

Keep back thy fervant alfo from prefumptu

PRES

ous fins.

RESUMPTUOUS SINS form a comprehenfive clafs of evils, and embrace all known and deliberate acts of vice. They require no other description, and are evidently placed by the facred writer, in contraft with fecret faults which escape the knowledge and obfervation of our own minds. They are ftiled prefumptuous on account of that hardiness, and infolence of heart which they manifeft; for, not only have they thrown off the reverence which we owe to that judge which God hath feated in our own breasts; but they infult the authority of his holy law, and fet at defiance the terrors of his juftice with which he hath armed it.

Of this clafs of fins, for the conviction, and, if poffible, the reformation of the guilty, it is my defign to treat. And, that I may render the illuftration the more clear, and useful, I shall divide them into feveral degrees, and endeavour, in fome measure, to trace their progreffion.-They are fuch fins as are committed against the light and conviction of our own minds-they are aggravated by the abufe of great and diflinguifhing mercies--or by infenfibility, or a ipirit of revolt under the judgments and corrections of divine providence-they have attained their ultimate progreffion when they come to be committed without fhame-and, especially when they difcover a zeal to enfnare, feduce, and corrupt others.

I. They are, in the first place, committed against the light and conviction of our own minds.

This character embraces every grade of them-if it extends to the highelt, it reaches, alfo, the loweft. It is effential to their nature. This chiefly conftitutes their guilt that they violate the dictates, and remonftrances of confcience. Confcience is our

natural law, and our natural judge.—It is more-it is the vicegerent of God in the bofom of man. All its dictates point to a higher fource of duty in his will-all its reproaches point to a higher sanction in his juftice. When, therefore we fin against its lights, it is, in the very act, to defy the authority of God our Maker. But no fmall portion of their guilt confifts in their violating that reverence which a man ought to have for himself, and the law of his own breaft. What though the darkness may cover him? What though no human eye may perceive him? He is his own witnessthat judge is intimately confcious whom, next to God, he ought to refpect and fearbefore whom crime thould tremble, and the impurity of the thoughts fhould cover him with fhame.

A good man will cultivate a fine and del. icate fenfibility of confcience, that he may be able to perceive the minuteft objects of duty, and difcern even the remote approaches of vice; and he will fludy to illuminate it by all the lights which he can derive from reafon, from reflection, and the word of God. A wicked man feeks only

to blind it, or to blunt its feelings; and, when he can blind it no longer, he hardens himself against its reproofs. And, is not he a bold and infolent offender who neither respects himself, nor fears the judge of the universe who can venture upon acts of acknowledged vice in oppofition to the conviction of his own mind-to the reproaches of his own heart-to the majesty and authority of the divine law, and the terrors of a judgment to come?

What then shall we fay of that flothful neglect, or irreverent contempt of the house of God, and the ordinances of Chrift which is the disgrace of a people who call themselves by his name, and which, in this age of imaginary freedom from the moft facred ties, infects fo many of the profeffors of the gofpel? What fhall we fay of that intemperance and debauch, the frequent reproach of our focial meetings, and even of those conventions of the people, held under the authority of the laws, where the purest morals ought to reign in a free country? An intemperance that impairs the health-that wafles the profits of industry-that murders time-that overturns the habits and