the basis of civil life, and the tribunals of men, and the thrones of monarchs, and the temples of God, were shaken to the lowest atom of their structure. What was the firm, dignified, and manly conduct of this country? we stood up for human happiness, and spurning from us the luxuries of peace, unfurled a banner to the nations, under which the good, and the honourable, and the wise might range; and with as much moderation as security would permit, and with as much courage as man could display, through internal disaffection, and through mutiny, and through open rebellion, and through two awful visitations of famine for many long years, we have maintained this great fight. What evils are still in preparation for us, what we are yet doomed to suffer, it is painful, and difficult to conceive; upon the success of the contest which we are now carrying on, depends the tremendous question, whether Europe shall, or shall not be visited by a long period of political struggles; and liberal arts, domestic happiness, and rational piety, be forgotten, and destroyed in the sorrows, and the fury of revolutions: Our feelings are just now a little blunted from the long continuation of the danger; but no man can seriously turn his eyes to the position of the world, without being sensible, that till this great gulph be passed over, every hope of honest ambition, every wish for repose, every feeling which warms the heart, may be but a new cause of misery and despair: From. all these evils, may the solid understanding, and watchful courage of this country, guided, and blessed by the providence of God, protect, and defend us; and may he shelter, with his almighty power, a humane, a generous, and an ancient people, who may now, perhaps, be destined to preserve to the human race those indelible rights of our nature, of which they were the first to teach them the value, and the use. SERMON XIV. PSALM XXXI. VERSE XX. Let the lying lips be put to silence, which cruelly, disdainfully, and maliciously, speak against the righteous. To neglect those floating imputations, and popular calumnies, which are in circulation against any system either moral, religious, or political, is rather magnanimous, than wise, and savours more of a generous contempt for danger, than of prudent precaution against it: Bold assertions, and specious invectives often repeated, begin at last to be credited; we hear the calumny so often united to its object, that the mention of the one, almost mechanically introduces the notion of the other; and we are |