doctrine of mortification means, that by a few momentary acts of self-denial we should free ourselves from eternal misery, and that by contemning temporal things which are seen' we should obtain things which are not seen, but which are eternal.'

4. But, say you, this perfection required by the gospel, is it within our reach? Is it not this religion which exhorts us to be 'perfect as God is perfect?' Is not this the religion that exhorts us to be holy as God is holy?' Does not this religion require us to be renewed after the image of him that created us?' Indeed it does, my brethren: yet this law, severe as it may seem, has a fourth character exactly according to our just wishes, that is, it has a character of proportion. As we see in the doctrines of religion, that although they open a vast field to the most sublime geniuses, yet they accommodate themselves to the most contracted minds, so in regard to the moral parts of religion, though the most eminent saints are required to make more progress, yet the first efforts of novices are acceptable services, provided they are sincerely disposed to persevere, Jesus Christ, our great lawgiver,knoweth our frame, and remembereth that we are dust; he will not break a bruised reed, and smoking flax he will not quench: and the rule by which he will judge us, will not be so much taken from the infinite rights acquired over us by creation and redemption as from our frailty, and the efforts we shall have made to surmount it.

5. Power of motive is another character of evangelical morality. In this life we are animated, I will not say only by gratitude, equity, and reason, motives too noble to actuate most men: but by motives interesting to our passions, and proper to inflame them, if they be well and thoroughly understood.

You have ambition. But how do you mean to gratify it? By a palace, a dress, a few servants, a few horses in your carriages? False idea of grandeur, fanciful elevation! I see in a course of Christian virtue an ambition well directed. To approach God, to be like God, to be made a 'partaker of the divine nature;' this is true grandeur, this is substantial glory. You are avaricious, hence perpetual care, hence anxious fears, hence never ending movements. But how can your avarice bear to think of all the vicissitudes that may affect your fortune? In a course of Christian virtue I see an avarice well directed. The gospel promises a fortune beyond vicissitude, and directs us to a faithful correspondent, who will return us for one grain thirty, for another sixty, for another a hundred fold.

a man have to resist it? Is this the religion we must oppose in order to be damned? Ŏ Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.

III. Well, well, we grant, say you, we are stupid not to avail ourselves of such advantages as religion sets before us, we are negligent, we are depraved: but all this depravity, negligence, and stupidity, are natural to us; we bring these dispositions into the world with us, we did not make ourselves; in a word, we are naturally inclined to evil, and incapable of doing good. This religion teaches, of this we are convinced by our own feelings, and the experience of all mankind confirms it.

This is the third difficulty concerning the proposition in the text, and it is taken from the condition of human nature. In answer to this, I say, that the objection implies four vague notions of human depravity, each erroneous, and all removable by a clear explication of the subject.

1. When we speak of our natural impotence to practise virtue, we confound it with an insurmountable necessity to commit the greatest crimes. We may be in the first case without being in the second. We may be sick, and incapable of procuring medicines to restore health, without being invincibly impelled to aggravate our condition by taking poison for food, and a dagger for physic. A man may be in a pit without ability to get out, and yet not be invincibly compelled to throw himself into a chasm beneath him, deeper and darker, and more terrible still. In like manner, we may be so enslaved by depravity as not to be able to part with any thing to relieve the poor, and yet not so as to be absolutely compelled to rob them of the alms bestowed on them by others, and so of the rest.

It seems to me, my brethren, that this distinction has not been attended to in discourses of human depravity. Let people allege this impotence to exculpate themselves for not practising virtue, with all my heart: but to allege it in excuse of odious crimes practised every day freely, willingly, and of set purpose, is to form such an idea of natural depravity as no divine has ever given, and such as can never be given with the least appearance of truth. No sermon, no body of divinity, no council, no synod ever said that human depravity was so great as absolutely to force a man to become an assassin, a murderer, a slandercr, a plunderer of the fortune, and a destroyer of the life of his neighbour, or, what is worse than either, a murderer of his reputation and honour. Had such a proposition been advanced, it would not be the more probable for that, and nothing ought to induce us to spare it. Monsters of You are voluptuous, and you refine sensual nature! who, after you have taken pains to enjoyments, tickle your appetite, and sleep in eradicate from your hearts such fibres of naa bed of down! I see in a course of virtue a ture as sin seems to have left, would you atjoy unspeakable and full of glory, a peace tempt to exculpate yourselves? you who, afthat passeth all understanding,' pleasures ter you have rendered yourselves in every inboundless in prospect, and delicious in enjoy-stance unlike God, would carry your madness ment, pleasures greater than the liveliest imagination can conceive, and more beautiful than the most eloquent lips can describe.

Such is religion, my brethren. What a fund of stupidity, negligence, and corruption, must

so far as to render God like yourselves by accusing him of creating you with dispositions, which oblige you to dip your hands in innocent blood, to build your houses with the spoils of widows and orphans, and to commit crimes

subversive of society? Cease to affirm, these as eager in pursuit of lasciviousness, as ever are natural dispositions. No, they are acquired the heathens were, and you never blush, nor dispositions. That part of religion which pro-ever feel remorse, and all under pretence that hibits your excesses, is practicable by you the gospel teaches us we are frail, and can do without the supernatural aid necessary to a nothing without the assistance of God! thorough conversion.

2. When we speak of natural depravity, we confound the pure virtue that religion inspires with other virtues, which constitution, education, and motives of worldly honour, are sufficient to enable us to practise. I grant, you cannot practise such virtues as have the love of God for their principle, order for their motives, and perfection for their end: but you may at least acknowledge your natural depravity, and exclaim, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? You may at least exclaim with the magician mentioned by a poet, I see and approve of the best things, though I practise the worst. You may do more, you may practise some superficial virtues, which the very heathens, not in covenant with God, exemplified. You may be cautious like Ulysses, temperate like Scipio, chaste like Polemon, wise like Socrates. If then you neglect this sort of virtue, and if your negligence ruin you, your destruction is of yourselves.'

4. In fine, my brethren, when we speak of the depravity of nature, we confine the condition of a man, to whom God has given only exterior revelation, with the condition of him to whom God offers supernatural aid to assist him against his natural frailty, which prevents his living up to external revelation, Does he not offer you this assistance? Does not the holy Scripture teach you in a hundred places that it is your own fault if you be deprived of it?

Recollect only the famous words of St. James, which were lately explained to you in this pulpit with the greatest clearness, and pressed home with the utmost pathos.* 'If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him.' God gives to all men liberally, to all without exception, and they who are deprived of this wisdom ought to blame none but themselves, not God, who gives to all men liberally, and upbraids not.

True, to obtain it, we must ask with a design to profit by it; we must ask it nothing wavering,' that is, not divided between the hope and the fear of obtaining it: we must not be like those double-minded men, who are unstable in all their ways,' who seem by asking wisdom to esteem virtue, but who discover by the abuse they make of that wisdom they have, that virtue is supremely hateful to them. We must not resemble the waves of the sea' which seem to offer the spectator on a shore a treasure, but which presently drown him in gulfs from which he cannot possibly free himself. Dod God set this wisdom before us at a price too high? Ought we to find fault with him for refusing to bestow it, while we refuse to apply it to that moral use which justice requires? Can we desire God to bestow his grace on such as ask for it only to insult him?

3. When we speak of natural depravity, we confound that of a man born a pagan with only the light of reason with that of a Christian, born and educated among Christians, and amidst all the advantages of revelation. This vague way of talking is a consequence of the miserable custom of taking detached passages of Scripture, considering them only in themselves without any regard to connexion of time, place, or circumstance, and applying them indiscriminately to their own imaginations and systems. The inspired writers give us dreadful descriptions of the state of believers before their being called to Christianity: they call this state a night, a death, a nothing,' in regard to the practice of virtue, and certainly the state of a man now living without religion under the gospel economy may be properly described in the same manner: but I affirm, that these expressions must be taken in a very different sense. This night, this death, this nothing,' if I may be allowed to speak so, have different degrees. The degrees in regard to a native pagan are greater than those in regard to a native Christian. What then, my brethren, do you reckon for nothing all the care taken of you in your infancy, all the instructions given you in your childhood by your pious fathers and mothers, all the lessons they procured others to give you, all the tutors who have given you information! What! agreeable books put into your hands, exhortations, directions, and sermons, addressed to you, you reckon all these things for nothing! What! you make no account of the visits of your pastors, when you thought yourselves dying, of the proper discourses they directed to you concerning your past negligence, of your own resolutions and vows! I ask, do you reckon all this for nothing? All these efforts have been attended with no good effect: but you are as This remark indicates a generous temper in Sauambitious, as worldly, as envious, as covetous, rin, to speak handsomely of his colleagues.

O! that we were properly affected with the greatness of our depravity, and the shame of our slavery! But our condition, all scandalous and horrible as it is, seems to us all full of charms.

When we are told that sin has subverted nature, infected the air, confounded in a manner cold with heat, heat with cold, wet with dry, dry with wet, and disconcerted the beautiful order of creation, which constituted the happiness of creatures; when we cast our eyes on the maladies caused by sin, the vicissitules occasioned by it, the dominion of death over all creatures, which it has established; when we see ourselves stretched on a sick bed, cold, pale, dying, amidst sorrows and tears, fears and pains, waiting to be torn from a world we idolize; then we detest sin, and groan under the weight of its chains. Should that Spirit, who knocks to-day at the door of

our hearts, say to us, open, sinner, I will re-, store nature to its beauty, the air shall be serene, and all the elements in harmony, I will confirm your health, reanimate your enfecbled frame, lengthen your life, and banish for ever from your houses death, that death which stains all your rooms with blood: Ah! every heart would burn with ardour to possess this assistance, and every one of my hearers would make these walls echo with, Come, Holy Spirit, come and dry up our tears by putting an end to our maladies.

connected with the other part, but in me is thine help.' God yet entreats us not to destroy ourselves. God has not yet given us up. He does not know, pardon this expression, he is a stranger to that point of honour, which often engages us to turn away for ever from those who have treated us with contempt. He, he himself, the great, the mighty God does not think it beneath him, not unworthy of his glorious majesty, yet to entreat us to return to him and be happy. Omercy,' that reacheth to the heavens! O'faithfulness, reach

ing unto the clouds! What consolations flow from you to a soul afraid of having exhausted you!

But when we are told, that sin has degraded us from our natural dignity; that it has loaded us with chains of depravity; that man, a creature formed on the model of the divine perfec- Above all, think, think, my brethren, that tions, and required to receive no other laws the truth we have been preaching will bethan those of order, is become the sport of un-come one of the most cruel torments of the worthy passions, which move him as they damned. Devouring flame, kindled by divine please, which say to him, go and he goeth, come and he cometh, which debase and vilify him at pleasure, we are not affected with these mortifying truths, but we glory in our shame!

vengeance in hell, I have no need of your light; smoke ascending up for ever and ever, I have no need to be struck with your blackness; chains of darkness that weigh down the damned, I have no need to know your weight, to enable me to form lamentable ideas of the punishments of the reprobate, the truth in my text is sufficient to make me conceive your horror. Being lost, it will be remembered that there was a time when destruction might have been prevented. One of you will recollect the education God gave you, another the sermon he addressed to you, a third the sick

Slaves of sin! Captives under a heavier yoke than that of Pharaoh, in a furnace more cruel than that of Egypt! Behold your Deliverer! He comes to-day to break your bonds and set you free. The assistance of grace is set before you. What am I saying? An abundant measure is already communicated to you. Already you know your misery. Already you are seeking relief from it. Avail your-ness he sent to reform you: conscience will be selves of this. Ask for this succour, and if it be refused you, ask again, and never cease asking till you have obtained it.

obliged to do homage to an avenging God, it will be forced to allow, that the aid of the Spirit of God was mighty, the motives of the gospel powerful, and the duties of it practicable. It will be compelled to acquiesce in this terrible truth, thou hast destroyed thyself.' A condemned soul will incessantly be its own tormentor, and will continually say, I am the author of my own punishment, I might have been saved, I opened and entered this horrible gulf of myself.

Recollect, that the truths we have been preaching are the most mortifying of religion, and the most proper to humble us. It was voluntarily, that we so often rebelled against God. Freely, alas! freely, and without compulsion we have, some of us, denied the truths of religion, and others given mortal wounds to the majesty of its laws. Ah! Are there any tears too bitter, is there any remorse too cut- Inculcate all these great truths, Christians, ting, any cavern in the earth too deep, to expi- let them affect you, let them persuade you, ate the guilt of such a frightful character! let them compel you. God grant you the Remember, the truths we have been teach-grace! To him be honour and glory for ever. ing are full of consolation. This part of my text, O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself,' is

Amen.

SERMON LXIX.

THE GRIEF OF THE RIGHTEOUS FOR THE MISCONDUCT OF THE

WICKED.

PSALM CXIX. 36.

Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law.

FEW people are such novices in religion as not to know, that sinners ought not to be troubled for their own sins; but it is but here and there a man, who enters so much into the spirit of religion as to understand how far the sins of others ought to trouble us. David was a model of both these kinds of penitential grief.

Repentance for his own sins is immortalized in his penitential psalms: and would to God, instead of that fatal security, and that unmeaning levity, which most of us discover, even after we have grossly offended God, would to God, we had the sentiments of this penitent! His sin was always before him, and imbittered all the pleasures of life. You know the language of his grief. Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak, my bones are vexed. Mine iniquities are gone over mine head: as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me. Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. I acknowledge my transgression, and my sin is ever before me. Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.'

But as David gives us such proper models of penitential expressions of grief for our own sins, so he furnishes us with others as just for lamenting the sins of others. You have heard the text, 'rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law.' Read the psalm from which the text is taken, and you will find that our prophet shed three sorts of tears for the sins of others. The first were tears of zeal the second flowed from love: the third from self-interest. This is a kind of penitence, which I propose to-day to your emulation.

In the first place, I will describe the insults which a sinner offers to God, and will endeavour to show you, that it is impossible for a good man to see his God affronted in this manner without being extremely grieved, and shedding tears of seal.

In the second place, I will enumerate the miseries, into which a sinner plunges himself by his obstinate perseverance in sin, and I will endeavour to convince you, that it is impossible for a good man to see this without shedding tears of pity and love.

In the third place, I shall show you, if I perceive your attention continue, the disorders which sinners cause in society, in our cities and families, and you will perceive, that it is impossible for a good man to see the prosperity

of society every day endangered and damaged by its enemies without shedding tears of selfinterest.

·

Almighty God, whose 'tender mercies are over all thy works,' but whose adorable Providence condemns us to wander in a valley of tears; O condescend, to put our tears into thy bottle,' and to gather us in due time to that happy society in which conformity to thy laws is the highest happiness and glory! Amen.

I. David shed over sinners of his time, tears of zeal. Thus he expresses himself in the psalm from which we have taken the text, My zeal hath consumed me, because mine enemies have forgotten thy words.' But what is zeal? How many people, to exculpate themselves for not feeling this sacred flame, ridicule it as a phantom, the mark of an enthusiast? However, there is no disposition more real and sensible. The word zeal is vague and metaphorical, it signifies fire, heat, warmth, and applied to intelligent beings, it means the activity and vehemence of their desires, hence, in common style, it is attributed to all the passions indifferently, good and bad: but it is most commonly applied to religion, and there it has two meanings, the one vague, the other precise.

In a vague sense, zeal is put less for a particular virtue, than for a general vigour and vivacity pervading all the powers of the soul of a zealous man, Zeal is opposed to lukewarmness, and lukewarmness is not a particular vice, but a dulness, an indolence that accompanies and enfeebles all the exercises of the religion of a lukewarm man. On the contrary, zeal is a fire animating all the emotions of the piety of the man who has it, and giving them all the worth and weight of vehemence.

But as the most noble exercises of religion are such as have God for their object, and as the virtue of virtues, or, as Jesus Christ expresses it, the first and great commandment' is that of divine love, zeal is particularly taken (and this is the precise meaning of the word,) for loving God, not for a love limited and moderate, such as that which we ought to have for creatures, even creatures the most worthy of esteem, but a love boundless and beyond moderation, so to speak, like that of glorified spirits to the Supreme Intelligence, whose perfections have no limits, whose beauties are infinite.

The idea thus fixed, it is easy to comprehend, that a soul animated with zeal, cannot see without the deepest sorrow, the insults of

fered by sinners to his God. What object is it that kindles flames of zeal in an ingenuous soul? It is the union of three attributes: an attribute of magnificence, an attribute of holiness, and an attribute of communication. This union can be found only in God, and for this reason God only is worthy of supreme love. Every being in whom any one of these three attributes is wanting, yea, any being in whom any degree is wanting, is not, cannot be an object of supreme love.

In vain would God possess attributes of charitable communication, if he did not possess attributes of magnificence. His attributes of communication would indeed inspire me with sentiments of gratitude: but what benefit should I derive from his inclination to make me happy, if he had not power sufficient to do so, and if he were not himself the happy God, that is, the origin, the source of all felicity, or, as an inspired writer speaks, 'the parent of every good and every perfect gift?" James i. 17. In this case he would reach a feeble hand to help me, he would shed unavailing tears over my miseries, and I could not say to him, my supreme good is to draw near to thee; whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee,' Ps. lxxiii. 28. 25.

They attack the magnificence of God. Such are those madmen who employ all the depths of their erudition, all the acuteness of their genius, and all the fire of their fancy to obscure the eternity of the first cause, the infinity of his power, the infallibility of his wisdom, and every other perfection that makes a part of that complexure, or combination of excellences, which we call magnificence. Such, again, are those abominable characters, who supply the want of genius with the depravity of their hearts, and the blasphemies of their mouths, and who, not being able to attack him with specious reasons and plausible sophisms, endeavour to stir up his subjects to rebel, defying his power, and trying whether it be possible to deprive him of the empire of the world.

Some sinners attack the attributes of holiness in the perfect God. Such are those detestable men, who presume to tax him with falsehood and deceit, who deny the truth of his promises, who accuse his laws of injustice, and his conduct of prevarication, who would persuade us, that the reins of the universe would be held much more wisely by their impure hands than by those of the judge of all the earth.

Some sinners attack the attributes of comIn vain would God possess attributes of ho- munication. Such, in the first instance, are liness, if he did not possess attributes of com- those ungrateful persons, who, while they munication. In this case he would indeed be breathe only his air, and live only on his alian object of my admiration, but he could not ments, while only his earth bears, and only be the ground of my hope. I should be struck his sun illuminates them, while they neither with the contemplation of a virtue always live, nor move, nor have a being, but what pure, always firm, and always alike: but in they derive from him, while he opens to them regard to me, it would be only an abstract and the path to supreme happiness, I mean the metaphysical virtue, which could have no in-road to faith and obedience, pretend that he is fluence over my happiness. Follow this reasoning in regard to the other attributes, and you will perceive that nothing but a union of these three can render an object supremely lovely; and as this union can be found only in God, it is God only who can be the object of zeal, or, what is the same thing, expressed in other words, God alone is worthy of supreme love.

As we make a progress in our meditation, and in proportion as we acquire a just notion of true zeal, we shall enter into the spirit and meaning of the words of our psalmist. Do you love God as he did? Does your heart burn like his, with flames of divine zeal? Then you can finish the first part of my discourse, for you know by experience this disposition of mind, my zeal hath consumed me, because mine enemies have forgotten thy words. Rivers of waters run down mine eyes because they keep not thy law.'

Sinners, I do not mean such as sin through infirmity and surprise, the text does not speak of them, I mean such as sin openly, freely, and deliberately, these sinners attack the perfections of God, either his attributes of magnificence, or those of holiness, or those of communication, and sometimes all three together. They endeavour to disconcert the beautiful harmony of the divine perfections, and so to rob us of all we adore, the only worthy object of R

our esteem.

wanting in goodness, charge him with all the miseries into which they have the madness to plunge themselves, dare to accuse him with taking pleasure in tormenting his creatures, and in the sufferings of the unfortunate; who wish the goodness of the Supreme Being were regulated by their caprice, or rather by their madness, and will never consent to worship him as good, except he allows them with impunity to gratify their most absurd and guilty passions.

Observe too, people may be profane by action as well as by system and reasoning. If sinners attack the attributes of God directly, it is equally true, they make an indirect attack upon the same perfections.

Here I wish, my brethren, each of us had accustomed himself to derive his morality from evangelical sources, to hear the language of inspired writers, and to judge of his own actions, not by such flattering portraits as his own prejudices produce, but by the essential properties of morality as it is described in the word of God.

For example, what is a man who coolly puts himself under the protection of another man without taking any thought about the guardianship of God? He is a profane wretch, who declares war against God, and attacks his attributes of magnificence by attributing more power to the patron, under whose wing he creeps and thinks himself secure,