though the one and the other are under the most fatal delusion. But this will be disputed by the good livers, as they think themselves, who trust that they are righteous. It may not therefore be amiss to manifest a little more explicitly the fact of disobedience, and shew you, that so far from keeping all the commandments in the highest measure continually, you never for one day truly kept any of the commandments in the lowest measure but having been a transgressor from the womb, you continue so to this hour.

I have indeed already at large laid open to you the "carnal mind which is enmity against God; and shewn you that it neither is subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be." (Rom. viii. 7.) I have proved that every living soul is thus carnal; and as a consequence thereof, that he is essentially a sinner, wanting that principle with-out which there can be no obedience.

This alone might be sufficient; but because the matter is of such importance, I pass on to a review of our evident transgressions against the law, in order more fully to support the charge. just laid against us. Though it may startle some to be accused of idolatry, profaneness, sabbathbreaking, murder, adultery, theft and perjury; it is a fact, that you are guilty of all. I might indeed plead your own petitions for mercy, after the rehearsal of each commandment,* and the acknowledgments you are continually making to the same purpose in many others places of our Liturgy for surely you are not allowing yourselves thus deliberately, solemnly and repeatedly to utter what you deem only so many falshoods. But I would rather wave this proof, to

* Rubric before the commandments in the communion service.

enter more intimately into the subject, and shew you the ground of such acknowledgments.

It must be observed that "the law of God is spiritual." (Rom. vii. 14.) Our Saviour's comment upon it declares how far it reaches. Each command comprehends under it not only outward acts but inward, yea, and every intention or thought that hath either a more immediate or distant tendency to violate it.

The law begins with the object of worship and the nature of it: who is the true God, and how he must be served. God alone must be the object of our worship. We are called upon to have no other; and to worship him, is to pay to hima that supreme regard, that faith and fear and love which we may not give to any other. Now who hath thus sanctified the Lord God in his heart ?What have we been doing but setting up against him so many idols of jealousy? It matters not whether we have made to us "gods of wood and stone, which are no gods;" or put in the fine gold, with Cæsar's image upon it, our confidence: whether we have worshipped at the shrine of a deceased or perhaps imaginary Venus, or supremely fixed our affections upon some living object; whether we have cried "Baal, help us;" or fled. to creature-dependences: whether we have with the Americans sacrificed to devils, or feared the faces of men; wherever or in whatever we have loved, feared and trusted upon the creature more than the Creator, there we have had other gods beside him.

As God alone must be worshipped, the nature of that worship next claims our attention. He must be worshipped in spirit and in truth; and in ways only of his own appointment. We are equally guilty of idolatry in worshipping the true God after a wrong manner, as if we worship

ped a false god. When the Israelites "proclaimed a feast unto the Lord" before the golden calf, they were as much idolaters as when "they erected the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of their god Remphan." Images with us are no longer the mediums of worship. I will suppose you never bowed to them, nor have been tempted todo so; but are you therefore wholly free from idolatry? Can we find no idolaters but in the deserts of Afric, among those who prostrate themselves. before the rising moon? or must we travel to the distant East to behold the bending votaries of a Chinese pagod? Are they alone in this respect culpable, who in the country of grossly idolatrous Romanism bow the knee to a god which the ba ker hath made, or adore the dead bones of a man? Alas! I fear there is not a protestant church in the world where as great idolatry almost is not in the worshippers; not to mention. the misconceptions which are usually entertained of God, and that aptness to frame corporeal ideas of the infinitely incomprehensible nature; I would only beg you to observe the temper and manner in which God's worship is performed among us; and you will needs confess, that it better suits a dumb idol, that "having eyes seeth. not, and having ears heareth not ;" than the allseeing, heart-searching Jehovah. Some indeed. there are who are worse than idolaters: they worshipped some god, though a false one; but your neglect of God's worship in public, in your families, and in private, testifies with what con→ tempt you treat the great God and Saviour, "in whom you live, and move, and have your being." (Acts xvii. 28.) You have risen up, and he hath sustained you; you have lain down in. peace, because he has preserved you; but hath he seen a bended knee, a grateful acknowledg

ment of his care, or a petition for its continuance? Not a word. You have left him "far above out of your sight;" you "restrained prayer before him." (Job xv. 4.) Is he a God, or is he not, that you have treated him with such neglect ?

But you daily worship him. How?"in spirit and in truth?" What, when so many vain thoughts, so many worldly thoughts, so many wicked thoughts, lodge within you? Is this a worship in spirit and in truth? What, when you are so unsuitably affected with his glory, so irreverent, cold, unmeaning and hypocritical, "drawing near to him with your lips, when your heart is far - from him?" (Isai, xxix. 13. Matt. xv. 8.) Is this the worship he demands? Go wait upon the meanest person you would ask a favour of; you dare not treat such, as you have many a time treated the eternal Majesty.

You are commanded to "sanctify that great and terrible name, The Lord thy God." (Isai. viii. 13.) But how often hath this tremendous name been in your mouth vainly, wantonly, thoughtlessly, profanely, or passionately? Were the charge only brought against you for your mentioning it so often in your prayers, when your heart hath felt no awe of his presence and glory, you would see a catalogue of sins that would increase beyond the number of the hairs. of your head.

Your sabbaths have been greatly polluted.That holy day hath been sometimes a burden to you. You have said, "When will it be "When will it be gone?" (Amos viii. 5.) Yea, you have not waited for its end. You have thought your own thoughts, "spoke your own words, and done your own pleasure in it." (Isai. lviii. 13.) You have neglected the public worship often on the most

frivolous pretexts. You have attended, but without any reverential sense of him whose throne is in heaven, and his footstool the earth. You have gone away, but not in a sabbatical temper. Indulgence, idleness, dress, visitings or worse, have profaned that perhaps more than any common days. Your man-servant or maid-servant have been detained from the service of God: you have sacrilegiously converted God's right in them on that day to your own secular purposes.

Upon these facts I appeal to your respective consciences, who is guiltless in any instance of the breach of his duty towards God? Nor shall we be able to give a better account of our obedience to the duties of the second table.

The proud and naturally independent heart of man will not, as hath been shewn before, easily bend to "give honour to whom honour is due." (Rom. xiii. 7.) Contempt of authority, disobedience to superiors, ingratitude to parents, exalting ourselves above our equals, and haughtiness towards inferiors, have in innumerable instances appeared.

But murder you never committed, no not in thought. Do not be too confident: somebody perhaps is now alive, whom you have wished to be dead; or some one hath died, whose death rejoiced you. Was not this murder, think ye?Suppose you have not proceeded to the act of imbruing your hands in innocent blood (yet perhaps you may have contributed to this, and been a party if not a principal many ways in bringing on the untimely end) have you never been" angry without a cause?" Never been heated to say, " Raca, or thou fool ?" Never "hated your brother?" He who knows best his own commands, expressly charges these things to