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Vice is a thing not to be trifled with. You may, by the force of vigorous resolution, break off in the early stages of it; but habits, when they have been confirmed and long continued, are obstinate things to contend with, and are hardly ever entirely subdued. When bad habits seem to be overcome, and we think we have got rid of our chains, they may perhaps only have become, as it were, invisible; so that when we thought we had recovered our freedom and strength, so as to be able to repel any temptation, we may lose all power of resistance on the first approach of it.

A man who has contracted a habit of vice, and been abandoned to sinful courses for some time, is never out of danger. He is exactly in the case of a man who has long labored under a chronical disease, and is perpetually subject to a relapse. The first shock of any disorder a man's constitution may bear; and, if he be not naturally subject to it, he may perfectly recover, and be out of danger. But when the general habit is such as that a relapse is apprehended, a man's friends and physicians are alarmed for him.

The reason is, that a relapse does not find a person in the condition in which he was when the first fit of illness seized him. That gave his constitution a shock, and left him enfeebled, so as to be less able to sustain another shock; and especially if it be more violent than the former, as is generally the case in those disorders.

In the very same dangerous situation is the man who has ever been addicted to vicious courses. He can never be said to be perfectly recovered, whatever appearances may promise, but is always in danger of a fatal relapse. He ought, therefore, to take the greatest care of himself. He is not in the condition of a person who has never known the ways of wickedness. He ought, therefore, to have the greatest distrust of himself, and set a double watch over his thoughts, words, and actions, for fear of a surprise. For if once, through the force of any particular temptation, he should fall back into his former vicious courses, and his

former disposition should return, his case will probably be desperate. He will plunge himself still deeper in wickedness; and his having abstained for a time, will only, as it were, have whetted his appetite, and make him swallow down the poison of sin by larger and more eager draughts than

ever.

Such persons may be so entirely in the power of vicious habits, that they shall be in no sense their own masters. They may even see the danger they are in, wish to free themselves from the habits they have contracted, and yet find they have no force, or resolution, to relieve themselves. They are not to be rescued from the snare of the destroyer, and brought to their right mind, but by some uncommon and alarming providence, which is in the hands of God, and which he may justly withhold, when his patience and longsuffering have been much abused. Justly may he say to such an habitual sinner, as he did to Ephraim in my text, he is joined to idols, he is joined to his lusts, let him alone. He is determined to have the pleasure of sin, let him receive the wages of sin also.

This brings me to the third head of my discourse, in which I propose to consider the equity of the proceeding with respect to God.

It may be said that it is not agreeable to equity, for God to favor some with the means of improvement, and suffer others to abandon themselves to destruction, without a possibility of escaping. But I answer, that the persons whose case I have been describing, have had, and have outlived,

their day of grace. God has long exercised forbearance towards them, but they have wearied it out; and it could not be expected to last for ever. They have had gracious invitations to repentance, but they have slighted them all: they stopped their ears, and refused to return. They have been tried with a great variety both of merciful and of afflictive providences, but they made no good use of them. "Why

then," as the prophet says, " should they be stricken any more, when they will only revolt more and more?"

A day of trial and probation, or what is frequently called a day of grace, must necessarily have some period. Else when would the time of retribution, when would the time of rewards and punishments, take place? A state of trial necessarily respects some future state, in which men must receive according to their deeds. But this state of trial it has pleased God to make of uncertain duration; no doubt, to keep us always watchful, having our accounts always in readiness, because in such an hour as we think not, our Lord may come and require them. The state of trial, therefore, is with some, of much longer duration than it is with others; and God is the sovereign arbiter of every thing relating to it. He makes our lives longer or shorter, as seems good in his sight, and at death, a state of trial ends of course. We may, therefore, as well pretend to question the justice and equity of God's cutting us off by death when and in what manner he pleases, as arraign his justice in sealing up our doom, though while we live, whenever he pleases.

No doubt God gives to every person a sufficient trial; for, "he is not willing that any should perish, but had rather that all should come to repentance." We may, therefore, assure ourselves, that he will not cease to endeavour to promote the reformation of a sinner by all proper means, till he shall become absolutely incorrigible, and the methods taken to reclaim him would be abused and lost. And if we consider that every means of improvement neglected, adds to a man's guilt and aggravates his condemnation; it may even appear to be mercy in the Divine Being to grant a person no farther means of improvement, after it has been found, by actual trial, that they would only have been abused, and therefore have proved highly injurious to him. Not but that it might have been sufficient to silence every cavil of this kind, to say, as Paul does on a similar occasion, "Who art thou, O man, that repliest against God;" or with Abraham, "Shall not the

Judge of all the earth do that which is right?" But it is proper to show, that, in the midst of judgment, God remem

bers mercy.

There is a very pathetic description of the case of a sinner who, after a relapse into vicious courses, is justly abandoned of God to seek his own destruction, in a parable of our Saviour's, formed upon the popular opinion of the Jews of his age concerning demons, or evil spirits: "When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith,

came out; and

I will return into my house from whence I when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in, and dwell there, and the last state of that man is worse than the first." The application of this parable either to the case of the Jews (for whom it seems to have been originally intended) or to particular persons, who, after a seeming reformation, have relapsed into vicious courses, is too obvious to be particularly dwelt upon.

To come, therefore, to a general application of this doctrine: Let all persons who are sensible of the folly and evil of sinful courses, and of the danger of persisting in them, make a speedy and effectual retreat. Let us do nothing by halves. To be lukewarm in religion, is, in effect, to have no religion at all. We must give God our hearts; we must give him an undivided affection; for we cannot truly love God and Mammon, or the world, at the same time. In this unsettled and fluctuating disposition, temptations will have a great advantage over us. We shall ever be in danger of throwing off all restraint, and of running into every kind of riot and excess, till nothing on the part of Divine Providence shall occur to reclaim us.

In reality, my brethren, and to every valuable end and purpose, the term of our trial and probation does generally expire long before the term of our natural lives. For how

few are there whose characters, whose dispositions, or habits of mind, undergo any considerable change after they are grown to man's estate! Our tempers and general characters are usually fixed as soon as we have fixed ourselves in a regular employment and mode of life; for, after this, we see almost every person continue the very same to the end of his life. Some remarkable providential occurrence, some fit of sickness, or some unforeseen misfortune of any kind, may alarm those who have been addicted to vicious courses, and for a time bring them to serious thought and reflection; but if they be turned thirty or forty years of age, how soon do the serious purposes, which they then form, go off, and their former modes of thinking and living return! Not only with respect to temper and disposition of mind, as it relates to virtue or vice, but with respect to those habits which are indifferent to morals, we see that, excepting one case perhaps in a thousand, they are not subject to change after the period that I have mentioned. Any habits that we contract early in life, any particular bias or inclination, any particular cast of thought, or mode of conversation, even any particular gesture of body, as in walking, sitting, &c. we are universally known by among our acquaintance, from the time that we properly enter life, to the time that we have done with it; as much as we are by the tone of our voice, or our handwriting, which, likewise, are of the nature of habits or customs.

These observations may be applied in a great measure even to matters of opinion, (though, naturally, nothing seems to be more variable,) as well as to mental and corporeal habits. A man who has studied, or who fancies he has studied, any particular subject, sooner or later makes up his mind, as we say, with respect to it; and after this, all arguments, intended to convince him of his mistake, only serve to confirm him in his chosen way of thinking. An argument, or evidence of any kind, that is entirely new to a man, may make a proper impression upon him; but if it has

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