greatest sin, and never can be pleaded as an excuse for your other sins, whereof it is the cause and fountain. Let your common sense say, whether there is a God, or not; whether there is any more than one God; whether he is not possessed of all wisdom, justice, goodness, and power, as is too plain to be doubted by any one, who reads his word, or behold his works; whether as an all-knowing God, you can hide from him any thought, word, or action of your whole lives; whether, as a just God, he will not judge you for them all, fully reward your obedience, or punish your rebellion; and lastly, whether as a good God, there is not with him forgiveness and plenteous redemption' for all who truly repent of their sins, and with all their hearts turn to him from a vain, vexatious, and wicked world. If your faith hath not this happy effect, I ask it, and your common sense, whether you do not, with the devils, believe and tremble?' I ask your common sense and conscience, how it is possible for you to believe these truths, and yet lead an ungodly life? And if you do not believe them, nor think it worth your while to inquire about them, I ask your common sense (if one so extremely blind can be possessed of it in the lowest degree) how you can step forward, through life and death to eternity, without a guide? This poor attempt of mine would bring your hand to that of an unerring guide. To him, as a miserable blind man, I have given my own hand, and it was my common sense, that led me to him, for, hearing his voice, I perceived where he was to be found. If I do not withdraw my hand from his, I shall no longer, as formerly, go astray.

In the next place, this kind of knowledge, which you cannot draw forth from within yourselves, nor gather from your observations on the works of God, though they so fully support it with the strongest evidence, Rom. i. 19. as soon as it is but hinted to you, which you are by your common sense so sufficiently qualified to apprehend and understand, and which you so greatly want, you can hardly suppose, without calling his goodness in question, that he should have refused it to you. No, he certainly did communicate it to the first men, and they handed it down to the following generations, so that even in the most dark and barbarous ages it was never wholly lost, although much im

paired and corrupted by inventions of men, who could not possibly have consulted with common sense, when they, instead of worshipping the true and only God, began to offer sacrifices and prayer to the sun, moon, and stars, to dead kings, and conquerors, to stocks and stones; that is, began to worship the creature even as the Creator,' in which gross absurdity and wickedness they must have probably gone on till now, had not God graciously interposed by a more clear and universal revelation to open their eyes, and recall them, in the use of their common sense, to a right knowledge of 'his eternal power and godhead,' of themselves, and of the world they are placed in.

But before mankind had so far lost the use of their reason, they had, through the horrible sin of their common parents, been sunk in blindness, and an outrageous irregularity of all their passions. Now this was the sin of their common parents, that the woman believed in, and trusted to the promise of an evil spirit, speaking to her in the form of a şerpent, and the first man believed in the woman, rather than the word of God, and so both transgressed the commandment of their Maker. It was a want of faith in God, together with pride, and a love of pleasure, that tempted Adam and Eve to these two horrible sins, the immediate effect and punishment of which was a deadly corruption of mind and body in both, and an impossibility of producing any children, untainted with the same corruption, the same defect of understanding, and the same violence of passion. This is properly called, original sin, as being the first sin of man, and the spring of all our sins. Eating the forbidden fruit was in itself a very heinous sin, for it was a transgression of God's commandment; but the crimes which led to this transgression were of a nature most offensive and horrible. Adam and Eve disbelieved the word, and distrusted the truth, of their Maker, who had placed them in a state of the highest human happiness. They gave their faith to the devil, speaking by the tongue of the serpent, and then flew in the face of their Maker, in obedience to their pride and sensual appetites, by doing violence to his commandment. The same perversion of faith from God, to pride, appetite, and the devil; the same perversion of obedience from God to pride, appetite, and the devil; that is, to faith and trust

in, and obedience to, a mixture of brute and devil, hath gone down through all the miserable posterity of these two shocking offenders. The recovery, therefore, of mankind to their duty and happiness can be no otherwise brought about, but by an utter distrust of the seducers, and an entire restoration of faith and obedience to God and his word. That distrust should be wrought in us by our miseries and fears; that faith and obedience, by our hopes of eternal happiness.

See the consequence of departing from the use of that common sense, wherewith God had, in their state of innocence, endowed the first man and woman more plentifully, as it is reasonable to believe, than their posterity have since enjoyed it under a universal corruption of mind and body, to which we are subject, but more especially by means of that pride and fondness for pleasure, the chief fountains of idolatry, infidelity, and all our other vices. These, which fouled the spring, foul likewise all the streams. Thus sin entered by one man,' the representative of all men, and ' death by sin hath passed on all men.' For this sin our first parents were expelled from Paradise into this world of labour, of vanity, and vexation; and unhappy Adam soon began to taste the bitter fruits of his own crime in the death of his best son, murdered by the hands of his worst, the introduction to all the barbarous persecutions, since raised by the old dragon against the followers of Abel, for the true religion.

Hence idolatry. Hence the lewd worship of lewd gods. Hence the cruel worship of cruel gods. Hence the brutish worship of brutish gods. And hence have proceeded all the horrible crimes of mankind, which blacken the history of the world in almost every page. During the long reign of stupidity in perfection, and of wickedness so abominable, so unnatural, so monstrous, that even very bad men are shocked at the recital of it. Tired of old truth, and fond of novelty, they invented new religions, and manufactured new gods, with eyes like their own that could not see, with ears like their own that could not hear, and as void of sense and thought as themselves. Nothing was ever so ridiculous as their new religions, excepting their new gods. They were miserable bunglers at both. Before their trade of making gods was improved into something like an art, if one of their

scurvy gods could possibly have had the power to do it, he must have damned his maker for the hideous figure he was forced to make. Of these some are yet preserved as curiosities. But when the knack of god-making was farther improved, and the artificer could compliment his god with somewhat according to the beauty of a man,' yet he had not the sense to consider, that this his god was but a stick, a stone, or a lump of metal. No, but to excuse his stupidity, he maintained, it was useful to teach the ignorant some knowledge of, and veneration for, a divine being. How! did he think a stick could be like a divinity? Could he be fool enough to imagine that a dumb stone could teach any thing? Had not a deceived heart turned him aside, that he could not deliver his soul, nor say, Have I not a lie in my right hand?' If he had not been wholly deprived of common sense, why did he not say with Habakkuk, 'What profiteth the molten image, that teacher of lies? Woe unto him, that saith to the wood, Awake, to the dumb stone, Arise, it shall teach. Behold, it is laid over with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in the midst of it.' Can there be men, calling themselves Christians, that go to a god-smith, as they do to a lock-smith for the one, or the other, utensil? Men are less inexcusable in worshipping beasts, creeping things, or any the meanest work of God, than this despicable trumpery of deities, made by themselves, or bought from another, cheapening, and differing sometimes for a halfpenny in the price of a god, or a saint, to be worshipped as a god. Where was, or is, common sense all the time? It was felt by few, and followed by none, not always by Noah, Lot, Moses, David, or Solomon.-O Solomon! where was thy common sense fled to, when thou wast on thy knees to a block of stone, or a log of wood? All this while, did not common sense want instruction? No, the pride originally infused, taught mankind to depend on their own wisdom, and rendered them unteachable. Here and there, indeed, pride set up its philosophers, those senseless reasoners on the nature of things, sometimes those presumptuous reasoners on the nature of God, or rather of the abominable gods their foolish forefathers had erected. Each of these philosophers was attended by a small number of equally conceited disciples, who hoped to parade it on the

drivel of their teachers. Some of their books are still preserved, wherein ignorance and vanity, for the most part, come forth in fine language, like rotten beaux in gold lace, to challenge the admiration of literary fops, equally vain, and equally empty. It is your happiness, that you are not qualified by learning, falsely so called, to keep them company. It is a poor sort of education, that, under the pretence of teaching a man abundance of uncommon sense, only teaches him that he is a fool, and leaves him still a greater. I might say somewhat more on this too fruitful subject, had not St. Paul sufficiently warned you to treat all philosophy with contempt. 1 Cor. i. at the end.

Here now you may ask, why did God suffer the world to sit so long in darkness? It is fitter you should ask this question of God than of me; and when you do, will have as good a right to add another, namely, why his providence hath bestowed more health and riches on you, than on your neighbour, now pining on a sick bed for want of necessaries? As to you and your neighbour, even I can return you a sort of answer. Probably the poor man may be the better man for his afflictions, at least better than you, who suffer him to perish for want of a small share of that wealth wherewith you are unhappily intrusted. But as to the providential dispensations of religious light, had I, in that matter, been of council with God, I should certainly not have given my opinion against his manner of proceeding, nor would you, without cavilling at that saying, that man was made upright, but sought out to himself many inventions;' that is, many arts to gratify his pride and his love of pleasure. Can you, dare you say, the infinitely wise, good, and powerful God made you no other, than that miserably foolish and corrupt creature, which you find yourself to be? You will not surely so much as suspect your Creator was the author of all that folly, and all those crimes which you, with the aid of the devil, have contrived and executed during the sinful part of your life. This is too absurd and blasphemous for common sense to be guilty of. Yes, but you still think it surprising, that God for some thousands of years should have deferred that revelation, which he himself, at length, thought fit to give. Here you are grossly mistaken, for he did not so defer it. He gave it to Adam; he gave it to