way as directly as by a weapon, by the empi'rical fale of noftrums and quack medicines,which ignorance and avarice blend. —The loud tongue of ignorance impudently promises much,—and the ear of the fick is open.—And as many of these pretenders deal in edge tools, too many, I fear, perish with the misapplication of them. So great are the difficulties of tracing out the hidden caufes of the evils to which this frame of ours is fubject,—that the most candid of the profeffion have ever allowed and lamented how unavoidably they are in the dark.So that the best medicines, administered with the wifeft heads,-fhall often do the mischief they were intended to prevent.-These are misfortunes to which we are fubject in this ftate of darkness;-but when men without skill,—without education,—without knowlege either of the distemper, or even of what they fell, make merchandize of the miserable,and from a dishonest principle-trifle with the pains of the unfortunate,-too often with their lives, and from the mere motive of a difhoneft gain,-every fuch inftance of a perfon bereft of life by the hand of ignorance, can be confidered in no other light than a branch of the fame root.-It is murder in the true sense; -which, though not cognizable by our laws, -by the laws of right, every man's own mind and confcience, muft appear equally black and deteftable. In doing what is wrong,-we ftand chargeable with all the bad confequences which arise from the action, whether forefeen or not.And as the principal view of the empiric in thofe cafes is not what he always pretends, the good of the public,-but the good of himself, it makes the action what it is. Under this head it may not be improper to comprehend all adulterations of medicines, wilfully made worse through avarice.-If a life is loft by fuch wilful adulteration,-and it may be affirmed, that in many critical turns of an acute diftemper, there is but a fingle caft left for the patient,-the trial and chance of a fingle drug in his behalf;-and if that has wilfully been adulterated and wilfully despoiled of its best virtues,—what will the vender anfwer? May God grant we may all answer well for ourselves, that we may be finally happy. Amen. SERMON IX MATTHEW xi. 6.. Bleed is he, that shall not be offended in me. Ttion and.conTHE HE general prejudices of the Jewish na tion concerning the royal state and condition of the Saviour, who was to come into the world,-was a ftone of ftumbling, and a rock of offence, to the greatest part of that unhappy and prepoffeffed people, when the promise was actually fulfilled.-Whether it was altogether the traditions of their fathers,-or that the rapturous expreffions of the prophets, which represented the Meffiah's fpiritual kingdom in fuch extent of power and dominion, mifled them into it;-or that their own carnal expectations turned wilful interpreters upon them, inclining them to look for nothing but the wealth and worldly grandeur which were to be acquired under their deliverer whether thefe, or that the fyftem of temporal bleffings helped to cherish them in this grofs T |