to the good of the other, and all of them jointly to the good of man; and that therefore we are the only irregular useless part of the creation if we are unserviceable one to another: all these reasons, I told you, oblige us as men, that is, as reasonable and sociable creatures, to promote each other's good in general; and if, either by the strength of our reason or the light of revelation, we can learn that our happiness is not confined to this world, but that we are capable of a more durable and lasting good in the world to come, the same reasons determine us more strongly to endeavour each other's spiritual welfare, as being the greatest good we are capable of, and the only good we can be satisfied with.

I further observed to you, that the angels, who are a superior order to us, do joyfully minister to our salvation; and that therefore we, who are more nearly tied to each other by the same common nature, ought much more to contribute to the salvation of one another.

Lastly, I told you that charity is the bond of all perfection, and that this promoting the salvation of others is the most perfect kind and noblest instance of charity. All these reasons have we, as I showed you, to promote the salvation of each other; by all these ties are we bound to this duty; each of them, considered severally, strong enough to make us diligent in the performance of it; all of them taken together, of such force, as not, without the greatest hardness of heart, callousness of soul, and utter insensibility of conscience, to be resisted.

But though our obligations to this duty have been set in their true light; though, if we attend to the reasons which have been brought for promoting each other's salvation, we cannot but be fully convinced that

it is our bounden duty, and ought to be our constant practice; yet what hath been hitherto said may perhaps be too general to be of any great use. We may be thoroughly persuaded by the arguments which have been brought, that we are all indispensably bound to further each other's spiritual good, but we may still be at a loss how to contribute to so necessary and excellent a work. Few men are so diabolically malicious as not to wish the salvation of others: if indeed the salvation of one man did any way interfere with that of another, some might be tempted to invert St. Paul's wish, and to desire others might be accursed from Christ that they themselves might be saved. But since the eternal happiness of our brethren can no way diminish, but may much augment our own; since the eternal misery of those who perish is so far from adding to the bliss of those who are saved, that it is difficult to account for its not lessening it; as far as faint desires and unactive wishes go, we are all willing enough that others should be saved. Some, by the heat of an ungovernable passion, or by the power of an overgrown habit, may be carried so far as to wish, and that with seeming earnestness and vehemence, the damnation of those who have either really or in their imagination provoked them. But it is observable that the same men are as liberal in wishing destruction to their own souls, so that it is plain they either mean nothing by what they say, or that they have no settled notions of a future state, or that they think their wishes will have no effect in bringing upon themselves and others the evils wished for. These are hasty, not deliberate wishes; wishes of passion, not of reason; wishes in language, not in heart; or if they are real, cool, sincere desires, they are the wishes not of Christians, but of men possessed

15, 16.

by the devil, and led away captive by him at his plea

sure.

Certain it is, that all who have any sense of religion; all who desire their own salvation, how slack soever they may be in actually promoting, will not fail to wish for, the salvation of others. For we may wish our brethren eternal salvation as cheaply as we may the least temporal good; and these wishes being as cheap, may be as common; but then we cannot but know that they will be as useless too, as ineffectual to the good of our brethren, as insufficient to the discharge of our duty. What St. James saith of unactive wishes of temporal good things to our brethren, without doing any thing to procure to them what we wish, is equally applicable to these empty, superficial, James ii. uneffectual desires of their spiritual good: If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? So if a brother or sister be naked of good works, and destitute of God's grace, and one of us say of them, Would to God they were reclaimed! may they have a due sense of their danger! may they repent and be saved! notwithstanding we impart not to them those things which are needful to the soul, what doth it profit? Such a charitable wish in both cases, if it hath not works, is dead being alone. This spiritual charity, therefore, if it be sincere, will not terminate in empty wishes, but will exert itself in real acts of charity.

If our desires of promoting the salvation of others are vigorous, they will put us upon finding out some methods of attaining what we so earnestly desire. For nothing is more active, nothing more ingenious, than a warm and eager desire. Our thoughts will be always

upon the full stretch to bring about those designs our hearts are entirely set upon; and whilst they are so, we can scarce fail to strike out some proper method of compassing what we are once fully and steadily resolved

on.

There are several ways of promoting the salvation of other men, which will offer themselves to those who are inflamed with a warm desire of effecting so glorious a work, and who are busy in searching out the most likely methods of doing it to purpose: and amongst these, spiritual advice and wholesome reproofs are instances of charity, which a wicked and degenerate age will furnish us with too many and too pressing occasions for. A charitable and seasonable reproof of our brethren for their sins is a duty of such importance to others, and such advantage to ourselves; so necessary to be performed by all Christians, and yet so apt to be neglected by most; so difficult to be managed as it pught, and so useful when it is managed in the manner it should be, that it cannot but be very proper to show,

I. That this instance of spiritual charity, this particular way of promoting the salvation of those who neglect their own, is the duty of all Christians.

II. That this duty, in order to its being acceptable to God and beneficial to our neighbour, must be performed with caution, and after a particular manner: which manner I shall endeavour to represent to you, for your better direction in the right performance of a duty so important to be practised, and so difficult to be practised as it ought.

First, then, I am to prove, that it is the duty of all Christians to reprove their offending brethren.

This is the more necessary to be proved, because some even good men are apt to think it the peculiar office of those who are set apart to minister to the

salvation of mankind, and that it would be an usurpation of the sacred rights of God's ministers for any, who are not called to his immediate service, to intrude upon their function, by reproving men for their faults, which is either thought, or pretended to be thought, their peculiar duty and incommunicable privilege. Now true it is, that the ministers of God's word are under more and stronger ties to discharge this duty than private Christians, but it doth not hence follow that private persons are under no obligations at all to perform it. Some acts indeed are so peculiar to the stewards of God's mysteries, that it is not lawful for others, who are not appointed to this work, to invade what God hath made their singular prerogative; but the duty of reproving sinners is not so restrained to them, that the conscientious practice of it by others, according to that measure of grace which God has given them, should be deemed an usurpation. When those whose health is dear to us labour under a distemper which may prove fatal, though we pay a great deference to the skill and abilities of an experienced and professed physician, yet we are not afraid to interpose our own judgment and assistance towards administering to their ease and recovery: what knowledge we have arrived to in these matters, either by instruction or by experience, we think ourselves bound in charity to impart, though we do not pretend to be of the faculty.

It hath before been proved that we are all indispensably obliged to promote the salvation of others; and if reproof may be an effectual method, through God's grace, to promote it, it necessarily follows that this also is a duty common to all believers. Now wholesome reproofs must be allowed to have a direct tendency to this end, and a proper efficiency to procure this benefit to our brethren. When sinners are com