their opinions, to raise an outcry louder than thunder, and deservedly, at the fraud. The church was never without a host of these; insomuch, that while we lament the mischiefs they wilfully did, we, at the same time, bless God for the good they unwittingly occasioned. Noxious vermin, if wholly useless, had not made a part of creation. Such as infest the human body enforce a cleanliness, necessary to a free insensible perspiration, a chief source of health. Had the church been always kept as clean as Christ left it, the similarity of this allusion here had been unintelligible.

swer.

170. Why of all masters is God the worst served? Because he is infinitely the best of all masters, and will have none but free servants; shocking answer! Are we bad, because he is good? Are we unfaithful and wicked, because he allows us to be free? If I return this answer, as well for myself as for others, my fellow-servants have the less right to take umbrage at it. We often omit what we ought to do, and do that which God forbids; and is there any other cause for this, but the patience and goodness of God, who does not instantly punish every act of disobedience? Or did he not leave us to the exercise of our liberty, to try what sentiments of gratitude towards him we feel in our heart; or had he compelled our services, we should be always obedient at least, and but obedient. Thus it is, that conscience forces me to anHow it may work or sleep in others, I am not to judge. There is one that judgeth. Yet the behaviour of my neighbours forces me to fear they are too like myself. I have had, in succession, a variety of servants, one better, and another worse; but am sensible I never had one, who was not a better servant to me than I was to God, purely because he knew my pride and severity would not brook such failures in him, as I found in myself to, wards my God, Conscious of this comparison, I frequently bore the ill behaviour of a man, when I was just on the point of turning him away; and do not remember, save in one instance, that I dismissed any of them, but was always, by the rest, deserted for higher wages with somebody else, or for a master they liked better. In this, like Job, I did not despise the cause of my servant, when he contended with me; If I had, what then should I do, when God riseth up? When he visiteth, what then should I auswer him? At present, I have one of the best servants that ever inan was blessed with; but feel inexpressible compunction and shame, when I compare his behaviour to me, with mine to God. It is true, I am a better master than a servant. But wretch

that I am! I was created, and purchased by the blood of Christ, to be a servant not a master. Even as a master, I am but a servant, and as such am to be tried, at the final account, by my purchaser. Thus I canvass myself. But when I look abroad at my fellow-clergymen, and my fellow-Christians, I see every where such a likeness to myself, such immense marks of delinquency, as force me to bode approaching ruin to both the church and kingdom, whereof I am a member, in reality an affectionate member. It stings me to the soul to think, that my sins help to raise the cry for judgments on both these objects of my love, the best of churches and countries, in every respect, but the service of God; and in this perhaps the worst, so far, I mean, as may be judged by the religious and political practice in general, which testifies an almost total disregard both to church and state. No set of people, I believe, ever thought more highly of their own understandings, nor were more exalted in the opinion of their own honour and greatness of soul, than we. Yet what proof of our wisdom do we give in the midst of an almost total indifference to the only possible means of our salvation? What proof of our magnanimity, in a total ingratitude to Providence for all the temporal blessings we enjoy, and all the spiritual, offered to us in the gospel and blood of our Redeemer? Do we, to shew our wisdom, postpone every worldly concern, in order to set forward the good required of us, and to redress the forbidden evil? Do we, to testify our gratitude, crowd the house and table of our infinite Benefactor? Do our clergy every where preach and act like men, who have set their hearts on a better world than this? Do our gentry keep within the bounds of humility, frugality, temperance, and chastity? Does the lower class of people, abhorring all profligacy of manners, aspire to those only attainable riches which no worms can corrupt, no thieves break through and steal?' If we all, a very few only excepted, take the contrary courses, where then is our wisdom? Where our dignity and generosity of soul? To be buried alive, that is, while the soul is still in the body, is most shocking. Yet far worse is his condition, whose soul serves for little else than to preserve his body from a stench, not at all so abominable as that which issues from its own spiritual putrefaction. Why should the dead bury their dead,' who don't stink half so ill as themselves? Servants! no, the slaves of sin can never be the servants of God. No professions can blind the eye of our Master. To please him, we must renounce ourselves, and recoil

at the service of his enemy. Herein is true wisdom. Herein is greatness and dignity of soul. The self-pleaser, the devil-pleaser, is a most stupid, abject, and contemptible soul; a soul, excommunicated by common sense, and reprobated by infinite wisdom. Who is so great a fool, as not to wish for a better guide than himself? Or who does not believe, that the guidance of his divine Master is absolutely infallible? Or who will reject the offer of this, and trust himself to his own, in the pursuit of happiness, on a road he knows little or nothing of? Did the Master of the universe claim our service purely for his own sake, we could not dispute the right of a Creator and Redeemer in so doing. But his claim is the demand of pity; and we may freely embrace, or reject it. How gracious is the claim! How infatuated the rejection!

171. We are told, that know thyself' was written in capital letters over the gate of Apollo's temple at Delphos. Wise as the words are in themselves, they were foolishly placed in that situation, for surely no man, who had the sense to know himself, would have gone in to worship, as a god, a thing far inferior to himself, made by some other man out of a block of wood or stone; or to inquire about futurity of a woman, half distracted by the noxious fumes of a cavern, on the mouth of which she sat, and from whence she belched out the windy injections of her scurvy god in bad verses, and fanatic equivocations, for which they were amply paid by the superstition of their stupid votaries. But had they been only middling guessers, not to say prophets, they ought to have been aware of the golden harvest which the needy and knavish Ætolians were to reap among their tripods and vases. But I should think, there were no small propriety in writing the words, Know thyself,' on the front of a church-porch, and 'Know thy God,' over the inner door. Take my inducements for so thinking. There is more reason that wisdom should begin at home than charity; and that which consists in the knowledge of one's self is by no means the easiest of acquisitions. An object may be too near to be seen; and the last thing we see is a defect or fault in ourselves. At the same time our understandings and virtues, if we have any, appear to us through magnifying optics. Were it not for these two hinderances, we should soon perceive how little beauty there is in our persons, how weak, how liable to accidents and distempers are our bodies; but especially we should quickly be made sensible, that our minds are still more exposed

to errors; that we know little or nothing, but as we are taught; and that we have a thousand biasses to the worst sort of instructions, particularly as to matters of religion, wherein we are infinitely more concerned, than in all other branches of knowledge, It is impossible for us to know any thing of God, but by analogy to ourselves, who are formed in his image, and by divine revelation. But as this image is miserably distorted and mutilated, that distortion is too apt to impart itself to our conceptions of revelation. Hence are generated an infinity of heresies and schisms; and hence again infidelity, with all its brood of vices. The first step to a deliverance out of this wilderness is to be made by a knowledge of ourselves, and that humility in a due sense of our wants, which lays the sole possible basis in us of true religion. Before we can come to God for either direction or help, we must be sensible we want both, and that he alone is able and willing to furnish them. Having by self-examination learned this humility in the porch, we may then enter the house of God, where we shall be taught to know ourselves still more perfectly, and become fit disciples for that Master, who holds forth the wisdom, which is from above.' The inquiry into ourselves will not be difficult, if it is not distracted by vain philosophy, for instance, how our souls and bodies are united; how they act and re-act on each other, what rolls the eye, or bends the finger; whether moral freedom is seated in the understanding or the will; and how the divine assistances operate on either; matters far too high for human comprehension. If vanity and presumption are laid aside, such researches will vanish with them, and we may then easily find, that we are in ourselves ignorant, weak, and lost creatures, if he that made us does not take us into his gracious guidance and protection. Man, in his best state, was made to be guided and governed by his Maker; but, now that his very nature is corrupted, to imagine that he can sufficiently guide and govern himself, is the worst effect of that corruption, and the most desperate thought that can possibly enter into his degenerate soul. It renders him utterly incapable of knowing himself, and, if possible, still more incapable of knowing God. God alone can teach us the knowledge of himself. But God will not make himself known to the self-sufficient, nor will the self-sufficient condescend to be taught by him. This double, this mutual repugnance, places an eternal bar against all communication between the source of light, and the benighted soul; an eternal bar against the happiness of a soul, thus self

sequestered from the fountain of all good. The man who addresses his king for a favour, knowing himself to be but a subject, approaches with humility, and is graciously received. The poor Christian, knowing himself to be an unworthy creature, approaches the King of kings with fear and trembling, and his prayers are granted, if fit for God to grant, and him to receive. But the self-sufficient hath nothing to ask or fear at the hands of God. His confidence is in his own understanding and power; and he therefore scoffs at churches, sacraments, and prayers, wherein we lower creatures repose some trust. This man saith 'to God, depart from me; for I desire not the knowledge of thy ways. What is the Almighty, that I should serve him? And what profit should I have, if I should pray unto him? From the height, to which his imagination hath raised him, he looks down on us with contempt; and we on him with pity from that to which our humility, we hope, entitles us on the strength of his declaration, who is the greatest and humblest of all beings, namely, he that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.'

172. It hath, I think, been asserted by some writer of eminence, that we derive from our ignorance a large share of those comforts and pleasures which we enjoy in this world. Sure I am, that since the days of Eve, the mother of philosophy, he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow;' and yet, in many instances, the sorrows of knowledge are preferable to the plea sures of ignorance. During the last war, a gentlewoman in a stage-coach having expressed to a young officer the most anxious fears about her son, whom she expected from Gibraltar, was comfortably freed from all her apprehensions by an assurance from the officer, that there had been lately made an excellent bridge from Gibraltar to Ireland, and that he himself had just arrived on furlough upon that very bridge, having but touched at that garrison in his way from Port Mahon.

173. A real Christian will never, as such can never, swear to do that which is sinful and unlawful in itself. A real Christian having, whether to save his life, or otherwise, sworn to do that which is lawful for him to do, will keep his oath inviolate, though it were to his own hinderance or loss. To this latter maxim it is objected, that a compulsory oath is not obligatory, as for instance, in the case of an oath taken to save the swearer's life; that, if such oaths were universally deemed obligatory, they would put