SERMON X. LUKE xvi. 9. I say unto you, make to yourselves Friends of the Mammon of Unrighteousness; that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting Habitations. HE Motive of all others, which most THE effectually enforces a right Behaviour, is drawn from the Belief and Expectation of a future State. This must ever awe the reafonable Mind, and terrify the evil Conscience, must make the Sinner fit joyless over the Gains of Guilt, and compel him to do Jus tice tice and love Mercy, if for no better Reafon, yet from mere Selfishness at least, and a Regard to the Quiet of his own Bofom. Death, we fee in fact, is a Law to which all are subject; and after Death the Judgment,---a folemn and fevere Enquiry into the Manners of all Men, and a juft, impartial Diftribution of Reward and Punishment according to the Things done in the Body. A wife Provifion for this Determination of our everlasting State is therefore the great Bufi. nefs before us; and the Advice of our bleffed Saviour in the Text the most reafonable and important that can be, to bend our Attention chiefly to the future Fates and. Fortunes of the human Race, to make the Advantages of this Life contribute, fo far as they may, to the Happiness of a better, and fo to pass through Things temporal, that we finally lofe not the Things eternal. I fay unto you, make to your felves Friends of the Mammon of Unrighteousness; that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting Habitations. Let Let us confider 1.---What is meant by the Mammon of Unrighteousness. 2.---What is that Employment of it, which will make us the best and most lasting Friends. By making to yourfelves Friends of the Mammon of Unrighteousness cannot be intended, what indeed the Words at the firft Glance feem to suggest, an Art of atoning for unwarrantable Ways of gaining Riches by a Dedication of any Part thereof to the Purposes of Charity. No Liberality of that which is another's deferves the leaft Degree of Praife; and the Obfervation of the Heathen Moralift is indisputably just, that† "whoever does Wrong to one in order to "affift another is guilty of the fame Disho † Qui aliis nocent, ut in alios liberales fint, in eâdem funt Injuftitia, ut fi ipfi in fuam rem aliena convertant.---Nihil enim liberale, quod non idem fit justum. Cic. De Off. L. 1. nesty nefty, as if he he had taken what is an"other's merely to ferve himself. For no 66 thing that is unjust can be an Act of Li"berality." What is here tranflated the Mammon of Unrighteousness means not therefore the Riches that are unrighteously obtained, but the Wealth that is unjust to it's Poffeffors, what ill requites the Pains that they have taken to obtain it. It denotes uncertain Riches, (1. Tim. vi. 17.) deceitful Wealth, what is falfe to it's Promises, and raises Expectations which it feldom or never juftifies. Accordingly (in verfe 11th.) we fee that the unrighteous Mammon is opposed to the true Riches, thofe good Things which verify their Name, Bleffings that are true and permanent, full as our Wishes and lafting as ourselves; in a Senfe conformable to which Pheraulas in Xenophon terms his Patrimony, a poor one indeed, but very just to it's Owner, in faithfully rendering him back the Seed entrusted to it's Bofom. Η δικαιοτατόν Now |