may fall, for otherwife temptations would be no trials, it appears that those who have the gifts of the Spirit, and grace fufficient, may nevertheless fall into fin through the power of temptations, and the want of care and diligence on their own part. It is a false comfort, therefore, which finners administer to themselves, when they excuse their fins by laying all the blame upon their own natural infirmities, and the want of God's grace to enable them to do well. God is never wanting to those who are not wanting to themselves; and though he fuffers all to be tempted, yet it is with this reftriction upon the tempter, that he tempt them not above what they are able to bear. The inftruction which I propofe to you from this confideration is this, that whenever you are fo unhappy as to offend, you do not try to palliate and excufe your offences, and charge God foolishly as if he had been wanting to your affiftance; but that. you rather confider your own iniquity as your own, and instead of excufing your fins, and adminiftering thereby a falfe comfort to your foul, you labour through a timely repentance to correct and amend what is amifs, and endeavour to regain the true peace of mind, by reconciling yourselves to God, and by a speedy and refolute return to your duty.

In a word, it is no man's fault that he is tempted; it is the condition of our fpiritual warfare; it is the combat to which God calls us for the proof and trial of our virtue. Then only are we guilty, when we give way to temptations, and forfake God to follow the pleasures or the gains of wickednefs. And whenever this is the cafe, there is but one remedy,

repentance through faith in Chrift Jefus, which will never be refused when it comes from a fincere heart, touched with a lively fenfe of God's goodness and its own unworthiness.

DISCOURSE XXII.

2 COR. vii. 10.

Godly forrow worketh repentance to falvation not to be repented of; but the forrow of the world worketh death.

You have, in the words of the text, a character given you of religious forrow, and the advantages of it fet forth, and illuftrated by a comparison between them and the evil effects of worldly forrow. Sorrow in all cases arises from the conceit of misery either present or expected. When our forrow grows from the confideration of our fpiritual condition, from a fenfe of our own iniquity, and the pains of a guilty mind; from the fear of God's wrath and heavy judgments denounced against finners; which are the proper objects of religious forrow, and diftinguish it from the grief of a worldly mind, which reaches only to the real or fuppofed evils of this life in this cafe, forrow is not only the confequence of the evil we fuffer or apprehend, but likewise its very cure and remedy. But in worldly grief, where men lament the loss of riches and honours, and vex their fouls with the various disappointments of life ; which are perpetual fprings of uneafinefs to all

whofe affections are wedded to the pleasures and enjoyment of the world; there forrow is a remedy worse than the disease, and adds weight to our miffortunes, which, could they be neglected, would not be felt.

It is the glory of philosophy to raise men above the misfortunes of life, to teach them to look with indifference upon the pleasures of the world, and to fubmit with manly courage and a steady mind to those calamities which no care can prevent, and which no concern can cure. Such are all the miseries which are brought on us by a change of fortune, or the neceffity of human condition. And the confiderations of philofophy not extending beyond these limits, it is no wonder to find wisdom placed in an absence of paffion; and grief and forrow and all the tender motions of the mind exposed as certain marks of a flavish abject spirit. But when the reasons of philofophy are transferred to the cause of religion, they lose their name; and the fame conclufions, for want of the fame princi ples to fupport them, are foolish and abfurd. In natural evils, forrow and grief of mind give us the quickest and sharpest sense of our afflictions, and diveft us of the power of looking out for the proper comforts and supports: they increase and lengthen out our misery; nor can the mind ever lofe fight of its afflictions, till length of time fets it free from grief, or the very excess of forrow fo far ftupifies the sense of feeling, that it deftroys itself. And when it leaves us, often it carries off with it our strength and health, and bequeaths to us a weak body and a feeble mind, and entails upon the very