merry-meeting, a strumpet or a tavern, than in being useful to a church or a nation, in being a public good to society, and a benefit to mankind. The parts that God gave them, they held in unrighteousness, sloth, and sensuality; and this made God to desert and abandon them to themselves; so that they have had a doating and a decrepit reason, long before age had given them such a body.

And therefore I could heartily wish, that such young persons as hear me now, would lodge this one observation deep in their minds; viz. that God and nature have joined wisdom and virtue by such a near cognation, or rather such an inseparable connection, that a wise, a prudent, and an honourable old age, is seldom or never found, but as the reward and effect of a sober, a virtuous, and a well-spent youth.

4. I descend now to the fourth and last thing proposed; namely, The judgment, or rather the state and condition penally consequent upon the persons here charged by the apostle with idolatry; which is, That they were without excuse.

After the commission of sin, it is natural for the sinner to apprehend himself in danger, and, upon such apprehension, to provide for his safety and defence; and that must be one of these two ways: viz. either by pleading his innocence, or by using his power. But since it would be infinitely in vain for a finite power to contend with an infinite; innocence, if any thing, must be his plea; and that must be, either by an absolute denial, or, at least, by an extenuation or diminution of his sin. Though indeed this course will be found altogether as absurd as the other could be; it being every whit as irrational for a sinner to plead his innocence before omniscience, as it would

be to oppose his power to omnipotence. However, the last refuge of a guilty person, is to take shelter under an excuse; and so to mitigate, if he cannot divert the blow. It was the method of the great pattern and parent of all sinners, Adam, first to hide, and then to excuse himself; to wrap the apple in the leaves, and to give his case a gloss at least, though not a defence. But now, when the sinner shall be stripped of this also, have all his excuses blown away, be stabbed with his own arguments, and, as it were, sacrificed upon that very altar which he fled to for succour, this surely is the height and crisis of a forlorn condition. Yet this was the case of the malefactors who stand here arraigned in the text; this was the consummation of their doom, that they were persons, not only unfit for a pardon, but even for a plea.

Now an excuse, in the nature of it, imports these two things.

1. The supposition of a sin.

2. The extenuation of its guilt.

In

As for the sin itself, we have already heard what that was, and we will now see how able they are to acquit themselves in point of its extenuation. which, according to the two grand principles of human actions which determine their morality, the understanding and the will, the excuse must derive either from ignorance or unwillingness.

As for unwillingness, (to speak of this last first,) the heathen philosophers generally asserted the freedom of the will, and its inviolable dominion over its own actions; so that no force or coaction from without could entrench upon the absolute empire of this faculty.

It must be confessed indeed, that it hath been something lamed in this its freedom by original sin; of which defect the heathens themselves were not wholly ignorant, though they were of its cause. So that hereupon, the will is not able to carry a man out to a choice so perfectly, and in all respects good, but that still there is some adherent circumstance of imperfection, which, in strictness of morality, renders every action of it evil; according to that known and most true rule, Malum ex quolibet defectu.

Nevertheless, the will has still so much freedom left, as to enable it to choose any act in its kind good, whether it be an act of temperance, justice, or the like; as also to refuse any act in its kind evil, whether of intemperance, injustice, or the like; though yet it neither chooses one, nor refuses the other, with such a perfect concurrence of all due ingredients of action, but that still, in the sight of God, judging according to the rigid measures of the law, every such choice or refusal is indeed sinful and imperfect. This is most certain, whatsoever Pelagius and his brethren assert to the contrary.

But however, that measure of freedom which the will still retains, of being able to choose any act materially, and in its kind good, and to refuse the contrary, was enough to cut off all excuse from the heathen, who never duly improved the utmost of such a power, but gave themselves up to all the filthiness and licentiousness of life imaginable. In all which it is certain, that they acted willingly, and without compulsion; or rather indeed greedily, and without control.

The only persons amongst the heathens who sophisticated nature and philosophy in this particular,

were the Stoicks; who affirmed a fatal, unchangeable concatenation of causes, reaching even to the elicit acts of man's will. So that according to them there was no act of volition exerted by it, but, all circumstances considered, it was impossible for the will not to exert that volition. But these were but one sect of philosophers; that is, but an handful in comparison of the rest of the Gentiles: ridiculous enough, for what they held and taught, and consequently not to be laid in the balance with the united judgment of all other learned men in the world, unanimously exploding this opinion. Questionless therefore, a thing so deeply engraven upon the first and most inward notions of man's mind, as a persuasion of the will's freedom, would never permit the heathens (who are here charged by the apostle) to patronize and excuse their sins upon this score, that they committed them against their will, and that they had no power to do otherwise. In which, every hour's experience, and reflection upon the method of their own actings, could not but give them the lie to their face.

The only remaining plea therefore, which these men can take sanctuary in, must be that of ignorance; since there could be no pretence for unwillingness. But the apostle divests them even of this also: for he says expressly, in verse 19, that what might be known of God, that famous and so much disputed of τὸ γνωστὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ, was manifested in them; and in verse 21, their unexcusableness is stated upon the supposition of this very thing, that they knew God, but, for all that, did not glorify him as God. This was the sum of their charge; and how it has been made good against them we have already

shewn, in what we have spoken about their idolatry, very briefly, I confess, but enough to shew its absurdity, though not to account for its variety, when Vossius's very abridgment of it makes a thick volume in folio.

The plea of ignorance therefore is also taken out of their hands; forasmuch as they knew that there was a God; and that this God made and governed the world; and upon that account was to be worshipped and addressed to; and that with such a worship as should be agreeable to his nature, both in respect of the piety and virtue of the worshipper, and also of the means of the worship itself. So that he was neither to be worshipped with impious and immoral practices, nor with corporeal resemblances. For how could an image help men in directing their thoughts to á Being which bore no similitude or cognation to that image at all? And what resemblance could wood or stone bear to a spirit void of all sensible qualities and bodily dimensions? How could they put men in mind of infinite power, wisdom, and holiness, and such other attributes, of which they had not the least mark or character?

But now, if these things could not possibly resemble any perfection of the Deity, what use could they be of to men in their addresses to God? For can a man's devotions be helped by that which brings an error upon his thoughts? And certain it is, that it is natural for a man, by directing his prayers to an image, to suppose the Being he prays to represented by that image. Which how injurious, how contumelious it must needs be to the glorious, incomprehensible nature of God, by begetting such false and low apprehensions of him in the minds of