kind ego Homuncio hoc nen fucerem? shall I, a mortal, an inconfiderable mortal too, cloth'd with infirmities of flesh and blood,-pretend to a virtue, which the Father of gods and men could not ?What infolence!!

The conclufion was natural enough; and as fo great a master of nature puts it into the mouth of one of his principal characters, no doubt the language was then understood; it was copied from common life, and was not the first application which had been made of the story..

It will scarce admit of a queftion, Whether vice would not naturally grow bold upon the credit of fuch an example; or whether fuch impreffions did not influence the lives and morals of many in the heathen world?-And, had there been no other proof of it, but the natural tendency of fuch notions to corrupt them, it had been fufficient reafon to believe it was fo..

No doubt, there is fufficient room for amendment in the Chriftian world; and we may be faid to be a very corrupt and bad generation of men, confidering what motives we have, from the purity of our reli gion, and the force of its fanctions, to make us better:-yet ftill I affirm, if these restraints were taken off, the world would be infinitely worfe: and though fome fense of morality might be preserved, as it was in the heathen world, with the more confiderate of us; yet in general I am perfuaded, that the bulk of mankind, upon fuch a fuppofition, would foon come to live without. GOD in the world, and in a fhort time

differ from Indians themselves in little elfe but their complexions.

If, after all, the Chriftian religion has not left a fufficient provifion against the wickedness of the world, the short and true anfwer is this, That there. can be none.

It is fufficient to leave us without excafe, that the excellency of this inftitution, in its doctrine, its precepts, and its examples, has a proper tendency to make us a virtuous and a happy people every page is an addrefs to our hearts to win them to these purposes.But religion was not intended to work upon men by force and natural neceffity, but by moral perfuafion, which fets good and evil before them, so that if men have power to do the evil and choose the good, and will abuse it,this cannot be avoided.-Religion ever implies a freedom of choice; and all the beings in the world which have it, were created free to ftand, and free to fall ;-and therefore men who will not be perfuaded by this way of address, muft expect, and be contented to be reckoned with according to the talent they have received.

SERMON XXVII.

The Abuses of Confcience confidered.

HEBREWS XIII. 18.

-För we trust we have a good Confcience

TRUST-Truft we have a good Confcience! Surely, you will fay, if there is any thing in this life which a man may depend upon, and to the knowledge of which he is capable of arriving upon the most indifputable evidence, it must be this very thing Whether he has a good Confcience, or no.

If a man thinks at all, he cannot well be a stranger to the true ftate of this account: He must be privy to his own thoughts and defires He must remember his paft pursuits, and know certainly the true fprings and motives, which, in general, have governed the actions of his life.

In other matters we may be deceived by falfe appearances; and, as the wife man complains, Hardly do we guefs aright at the things that are upon the earth, and with labour do we find the things that are before us:

-But here, the mind has all the evidence and facts within herfelfs confcious of the web fhe

has wove ;-knows its texture and fineness, and the exact share which every paffion has had in working upon the feveral defigns which virtue or vice has plann'd before her.

Now,as Confcience is nothing else but the knowledge which the mind has within sitfelf of this; and the judgment, either of approbation or cenfure which it unavoidably makes upon the fucceffive ac-tions of our lives,—'tis plain, you will fay, from the very terms of the propofition, whenever this inward teftimony goes against a man, and he ftands felf-accused, that he must neceffarily be a guilty man. And, on the contrary, when the report is favourable on his fide, and his heart condemns him not,that it is not a matter of trust, as the Apoftle intimates, but a matter of certainty and a fact, that the Confcience is good, and that the man must be good alfo..

At first fight, this may feem to be a true state of : the cafe; and I make no doubt but the knowledge of right and wrong is fo truly impreffed upon the mind of man, that, did no fuch thing ever happen, as that the confcience of a man, by long habits of fin might (as the Scripture affures us it may) infenfibly become hard; and, like fome tender parts of his body, by much ftrefs, and continual hard ufage, lofe, by degrees, that nice fenfe and percep. tion with which GoD and nature endowed it :

Did this never happen ;-or was it certain that selflove could never hang the leaft bias upon the judgment :- -or that the little interefts below, could rife up and perplex the faculties of our upper re

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gions, and encompass them about with clouds and thick darkness could no fuch thing as Favour and Affection enter this facred court :-did WIT disdain to take a bribe in it, or was afhamed to show its face as an advocate for an unwarrantable enjoymentor, laftly, were we affured, that INTEL REST food always unconcerned whilft the caufe was hearing-and that PASSION never got into the judg ment-feat, and pronounced sentence in the stead of Reafon, which is fuppofed always to prefide and des termine upn the cafe was this truly fo, as the objection must suppose, no doubt, then, the reli-gious and moral ftate of a man would be exactly what he himself esteemed it ;-and the guilt or innocence of every man's life could be known, in ge-neral, by no better measure than the degrees of his own approbation or cenfure...

I own, in one cafe, whenever a man's Confcience does accuse him (as it feldom errs on that fide) thathe is guilty; and, unless in melancholy and hypochondriac cafes, we may fafely pronounce, that there are always fufficient grounds for the accufation.

But, the converse of the propofition will not hold true, namely, That wherever there is guilt, the Confcience muft accufe'; and if it does not, that a man is therefore innocent. This is not fact:

fo that the common confolation which fome good Chriftian or other is hourly adminiftering to himfelf, That he thanks GOD his mind does not mifgive him; and that, confequently, he has a good Confcience, because he has a quiet one-As current as the inference is, and as infallible as the