and frozen affection will part with nothing for his sake, not even with our vices and follies, which are worse than nothing; for they are vanity, and misery, and death. The state of Christianity calls not now for such evidences as the Apostles gave of their attachment to it. We have, literally speaking, neither houses, nor lands, nor possessions to forsake; we have neither wives, nor children, nor brethren, nor sisters to be torn from,-no rational pleasure or natural endearments to give up. We have nothing to part with, but what is not our interest to keep-our lusts and passions. We have nothing to do for Christ's sake, but what is most for our own; that is, to be temperate, and chaste, and just, and peaceable, and charitable, and kind one to another. So that, if man could suppose himself in a capacity even of capitulating with | God, concerning the terms upon which he would submit to his government, and to choose the laws he would be bound to observe in testimony of his faith, it were impossible for him to make any proposals which, upon all accounts, should be more advantageous to his interest than those very conditions to which we are already obliged; that is, to deny ourselves ungodliness, to live soberly and righteously in this present life, and lay such restraints upon our appetites as are for the honour of human nature, the improvement of our happiness, our health, our peace, our reputation, and safety. When one considers this representation of the temporal inducements of Christianity, and compares it with the difficulties and discouragements which they encountered who first made profession of a persecuted and hated religion, at the same time that it raises the idea of the fortitude and sanctity of these holy men, of whom the world was not worthy, it sadly diminishes that of ourselves, which, though it has all the blessings of this life apparently on its side to support it, yet can scarce be kept alive; and, if we may form a judgment from the little stock of religion that is left, should God ever exact the same trials, unless we greatly alter for the better, or there should prove some secret charm in persecution, which we know not of, it is much to be doubted, if the Son of man should make this proof of this generation, whether there would be found faith upon the earth! As this argument may convince us, so let it shame us unto virtue, that the admirable examples of those holy men may not be left us, or commemorated by us, to no end; but rather that they may answer the pious purpose of their institution, to conform our lives to theirs, that with them we may be partakers of a glorious inheritance, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. XXXVII-PENANCES. And his commandments are not grievous.-1 Jonx v. 3. No, they are not grievous, my dear auditors. Amongst the many prejudices which, at one time or other, have been conceived against our holy religion, there is scarce any one which has done more dishonour to Christianity, or which has been more opposite to the spirit of the gospel, than this, in express contradiction to the words of the text, That the commandments of God are grievous ;'—that the way which leads to life is not only strait,-for that our Saviour tells us, and that with much tribulation we shall seek it,-but that Christians are bound to make the worst of it, and tread it barefoot upon thorns and briers, if ever they expect to arrive happily at their journey's end. And, in course, during this disastrous pilgrimage, it is our duty so to renounce the world, and abstract ourselves from it, as neither to interfere with its interests, nor taste any of the pleasures nor any of the enjoyments of this life. Nor has this been confined merely to speculation, but has frequently been extended to practice, as is plain not only from the lives of many legendary saints and hermits, whose chief commendation seems to have been, "That they fled unnaturally from all commerce with their fellow-creatures, and then mortified, and piously half-starved themselves to death,' but likewise from the many austere and fantastic orders which we see in the Romish Church, which have all owed their origin and establishment to the same idle and extravagant opinion. Nor is it to be doubted but the affectation of something like it in our Methodists, when they descant upon the necessity of alienating themselves from the world, and selling all that they have, is to be ascribed to the same mistaken enthusiastic principle, which would cast so black a shade upon religion, as if the kind Author of it had created us on purpose to go mourning all our lives long in sackcloth and ashes, and sent us into the world as so many saint-errants, in quest of adventures full of sorrow and affliction. Strange force of enthusiasm! and yet not altogether unaccountable. For what opinion was there ever so odd, or action so extravagant, which has not, at one time or other, been produced by ignorance, conceit, melancholy?—a mixture of devotion, with an ill concurrence of air and diet, operating together in the same person. When the minds of men happen to be thus unfortunately prepared, whatever groundless doctrine rises up, and settles itself strongly upon their fancies, has generally the ill luck to be interpreted as an illumination from the Spirit | of God; and whatever strange action they find in themselves a strong inclination to do, that i impulse is concluded to be a call from heaven; and, consequently, that they cannot err in executing it. If this, or some such account, was not to be admitted, how is it possible to be conceived that Christianity, which breathed out nothing but peace and comfort to mankind,-which professedly took off the severities of the Jewish law, and was given us in the spirit of meekness, to ease our shoulders of a burden which was too heavy for us;-that this religion, so kindly calculated for the ease and tranquillity of man, which enjoins nothing but what is suitable to his nature, should be so misunderstood; or that it should ever be supposed that he who is infinitely happy could envy us our enjoyments; or that a Being infinitely kind would grudge a mournful passenger a little rest and refreshment, to support his spirits through a weary pilgrimage; or that he should call him to an account hereafter because, in his way, he had hastily snatched at some fugacious and innocent pleasures, till he was suffered to take up his final repose? This is no improbable account; and the many invitations we find in Scripture to a grateful enjoyment of the blessings and advantages of life, make it evident. The Apostle tells us in the text, that God's commandments are not grievous. He has pleasure in the prosperity of his people, and wills not that they should turn tyrants and executioners upon their minds or bodies, and inflict pains and penalties on them to no end or purpose ;--that he has proposed peace and plenty, joy and victory, as the encouragement and portion of his servants; thereby instructing us that our virtue is not necessarily endangered by the fruition of outward things, but that temporal blessings and advantages, instead of extinguishing, more naturally kindle, our love and gratitude to God, before whom it is no way inconsistent both to worship and rejoice. If this was not so, why, you'll say, does God seem to have made such provision for our happiness? why has he given us so many powers and faculties for enjoyment, and adapted so many objects to gratify and entertain them?-some of which he has created so fair, with such wonderful beauty, and has formed them so exquisitely for this end, that they have power, for a time, to charm away the sense of pain, to cheer up the dejected heart under poverty and sickness, and make it go and remember its miseries no more. Can all this, you'll say, be reconciled to God's wisdom, which does nothing in vain? or can it be accounted for on any other supposition but that the Author of our being, who has given us all things richly to enjoy, wills us a comfortable existence even here, and seems moreover so evidently to have ordered things with a view to this, that the ways which lead to our future happiness, when rightly understood, he has made to be ways of pleasantness, and all her paths peace? From this representation of things, we are led to this demonstrative truth, then, That God never intended to debar man of pleasure, under certain limitations. Travellers, on a business of the last and most important concern, may be allowed to please their eyes with the natural and artificial beauties of the country they are passing through, without reproach of forgetting the main errand they were sent upon; and if they are not led out of their road by a variety of prospects, edifices, and ruins, would it not be a senseless piece of severity to shut their eyes against such gratifications? For who has required such service at their hands?' The humouring of certain appetites, where morality is not concerned, seems to be the means by which the Author of nature intended to sweeten this journey of life, and bear us up under the many shocks and hard jostlings which we are sure to meet with in our way. And a man might, with as much reason, muffle up himself against sunshine and fair weather, and at other times expose himself naked to the inclemencies of cold and rain, as debar himself of the innocent delights of his nature, for affected reserve and melancholy. It is true, on the other hand, our passions are so apt to grow upon us by indulgence, and become exorbitant, if they are not kept under exact discipline, that, by way of caution and prevention, 'twere better, at certain times, to affect some degree of needless reserve than hazard any ill consequences from the other extreme. But when almost the whole of religion is made to consist in the pious fooleries of penances and sufferings, as is practised in the Church of Rome (did no other evil attend it), yet, since it is putting religion upon a wrong scent, placing it more in these than in inward purity and integrity of heart, one cannot guard too much against this, as well as all other such abuses of religion as make it to consist in something which it ought not. How such mockery became a part of religion at first, or upon what motives they were imagined to be services acceptable to God, is hard to give a better account of than what was hinted above; namely, that men of melancholy and morose tempers, conceiving the Deity to be like themselves, a gloomy, discontented, and sorrowful being, believed he delighted, as they did, in splenetic and mortifying actions, and therefore made their religious worship to consist of chimeras as wild and barbarous as their own dreams and vapours. What ignorance and enthusiasm at first introduced, now tyranny and imposture continue to support. So that the political improvement of these delusions to the purposes of wealth and power is made one of the strongest pillars which upholds the Romish religion; which, with all its pretences to a more strict mortifi cation and sanctity, when you examine it minutely, is little else than a mere pecuniary contrivance. And the truest definition you can give of Popery is, that it is a system put together and contrived to operate upon men's weaknesses and passions, and thereby to pick their pockets, and leave them in a fit condition for its arbitrary designs. And, indeed, that church has not been wanting in gratitude for the good offices of this kind which the doctrine of penances has done them; for, in consideration of its services, they have raised it above the level of moral duties, and have at length complimented it into the number of their sacraments, and made it a necessary point of salvation. By these and other tenets, no less politic and inquisitional, Popery has found out the art of making men miserable in spite of their senses, and the plenty with which God has blessed them. grosser objects, do, by a mechanical effect, dispose us for cool and sober reflections, incline us to turn our eyes inward upon ourselves, and consider what we are, and what we have been doing,-for what intent we were sent into the world, and what kind of characters we were designed to act in it. It is necessary that the mind of man, at some certain periods, should be prepared to enter into this account; and without some such discipline, to check the insolence of unrestrained appetites, and call home the conscience, the soul of man, capable as it is of brightness and perfection, would sink down to the lowest depths of darkness and brutality. However true this is, there still appears no obligation to renounce the innocent delights of our beings, or to affect a sullen distaste against them. Nor, in truth, can even the supposition of it be well admitted: for pleasures arising from the free and natural exercise of the faculties of the mind and body, to talk them down, is like talking against the frame and mechanism of human nature; and would be no less senseless than the disputing against the burning of fire, or falling downwards of a stone. Besides this, man is so contrived that he stands in need of frequent repairs: both mind and body are apt to sink and grow inactive under long and close attention, and therefore must be restored by proper recruits. Some part of our time may doubtless innocently and lawfully be employed in actions merely diverting; and whenever such indulgences iecome criminal, it is seldom the nature of the actions themselves, but the excess, which makes them so. So that in many countries where Popery reigns, but especially in that part of Italy where she has raised her throne,-though, by the happiness of its soil and climate, it is capable of producing as great variety and abundance as any country upon earth; yet so successful have its spiritual directors been in the management and retail of these blessings, that they have found means to allay, if not entirely to defeat them all, by one pretence or other. Some bitterness is officiously squeezed into every man's cup for his soul's health, till at length the whole intention of nature and providence is destroyed. It is not surprising that where such unnatural severities are practised, and heightened by other hardships, the most fruitful land should be barren, and wear a face of poverty and desolation; or that many thousands, as has been observed, should fly from the rigours of such a government, and seek shelter rather amongst rocks and deserts, than lie at the mercy of so many unreasonable taskmasters, under whom they can hope for no other reward of their industry but rigorous slavery, made still worse by the tortures of unnecessary mortifications. I say unnecesary, because where there is a virtuous and good end proposed from any sober instance of self-denial and mortifica-souls and bodies, which, like clocks, must be tion, God forbid we should call them unnecessary, or that we should dispute against a thing from the abuse to which it has been put; and, therefore, what is said in general upon this head will be understood to reach no farther than where the practice is become a mixture of fraud and tyranny, but will no ways be interpreted to extend to those self-denials which the discipline of our holy Church directs at this solemn season; which have been introduced by reason and good sense at first, and have since been applied to serve no purposes but those of religion. These, by restraining our appetites for a while, and withdrawing our thoughts from But some one may here ask, By what rule are we to judge of excess in these cases? If the enjoyment of the same sort of pleasures may be either innocent or guilty, according to the use or abuse of them, how shall we be certified where the boundaries lie? or be speculative enough to know how far we may go with safety? I answer, there are very few who are not casuists enough to make a right judgment in this point. For, since one principal reason why God may be supposed to allow pleasure in this world seems to be for the refreshment and recruit of our wound up at certain intervals, every man understands so much of the frame and mechanism of himself as to know how and when to unbend himself with such relaxations as are necessary to regain his natural vigour and cheerfulness, | without which it is impossible he should either be in a disposition or capacity to discharge the several duties of his life. Here then the partition becomes visible. Whenever we pay this tribute to our appetites, any further than is sufficient for the pur- | poses for which it was first granted, the action proportionably loses some share of its innocence. The surplusage of what is unnecessarily spent on such occasions is so much of the little portion of our time negligently squandered, which in prudence we should apply better; because it was allotted us for more important uses, and a different account will be required of it at our hands hereafter. For this reason, does it not evidently follow that many actions and pursuits, which are irreproachable in their own natures, may be rendered blameable and vicious from this single consideration, That they have made us wasteful of the moments of this short and uncertain fragment of life, which should be almost one of our last prodigalities, since, of them all, the least retrievable?' Yet how often is diversion, instead of amusement and relaxation, made the art and business of life itself? Look round,-what policy and contrivance is every day put in practice for pre-engaging every day in the week, and parcelling out every hour of the day for one idleness or another, for doing nothing, or something worse than nothing; and that with so much ingenuity as scarce to leave a minute upon their hands to reproach them! Though we all complain of the shortness of life, yet how many people seem quite overstocked with the days and hours of it, and are continually sending out into the highways and streets of the city for guests to come and take it off their hands! If some of the more distressful objects of this kind were to sit down and write a bill of their time, though partial as that of the unjust steward, when they found in reality that the whole sum of it, for many years, amounted to little more than this,-that they had rose up to eat, to drink, to play, and had laid down again, merely because they were fit for nothing else,-when they looked back and beheld this fair space, capable of such heavenly improvements, all scrawled over and defaced with a succession of so many unmeaning cyphers,-good God! how would they be ashamed and confounded at the account! With what reflections will they be able to support themselves in the decline of a life so miserably cast away,-should it happen, as it sometimes does, that they have stood idle even unto the eleventh hour? We have not always power, and are not always in a temper, to impose upon ourselves. When the edge of appetite is worn down, and the spirits of youthful days are cooled, which hurried us on in a circle of pleasure and impertinence, then reason and reflection will have the weight which they deserve: afflictions, or the bed of sickness, will supply the place of conscience; and if they should fail, old age will overtake us at last, and show us the past pursuits of life, and force us to look upon them in their true point of view. If there is anything more to cast a cloud upon so melancholy a prospect as this shows us, it is surely the difficulty and hazard of having all the work of the day to perform in the last hour; of making an atonement to God when we have no sacrifice to offer him, but the dregs and infirmities of those days when we could have no pleasure in them. How far God may be pleased to accept such late and imperfect services is beyond the intention of this discourse. Whatever stress some may lay upon it, a deathbed repentance is but a weak and slender plank to trust our all upon. Such as it is, to that, and God's infinite mercies, we commit them who will not employ that time and opportunity he has given to provide a better security. That we may all make a right use of the time allotted us, God grant, through the merits of his Son Jesus Christ. Amen. XXXVIII.-ON ENTHUSIASM. For without me ye can do nothing.'-Jons XV. 5. OUR Saviour, in the former part of the verse, having told his disciples that he was the vine, and that they were only branches,―intimating in what a degree their good fruits, as well as the success of all their endeavours, were to depend upon his communications with them,―he closes the illustration with the inference from it in the words of the text: For without me ye can do nothing. In the eleventh chapter to the Romans, where the manner is explained in which a Christian stands by faith, there is a like illustration made use of, and probably with an eye to this, where St. Paul instructs us, that a good man stands as the branch of a wild olive does when it is grafted into a good olive-tree; and that is, it flourishes not through its own virtue, but in virtue of the root, and such a root as is naturally not its own. It is very remarkable, in that passage, that the Apostle calls a bad man a wild olive-tree ;not barely a branch (as in the other case), but a tree, which, having a root of its own, supports itself, and stands in its own strength, and brings forth its own fruit. And so does every bad man in respect of the wild and sour fruit of a vicious and corrupt heart. According to the resemblance, if the Apostle intended it, he is a tree, has a root of his own, and fruitfulness, such as it is, with a power to bring it forth without help. But in respect of religion, and the moral improvements of virtue and goodness, the Apostle calls us, and reason tells us, we are no more than a branch; and all our fruitfulness, and all our support, depend so much upon the influence and communications of God, that without him we can do nothing, as our Saviour declares in the text. There is scarce any point in our religion wherein men have run into such violent extremes as in the senses given to this, and such-like declarations in Scripture, of our sufficiency being of God: some understanding them so as to leave no meaning at all in them→→→ others too much; the one interpreting the gifts and influences of the Spirit so as to destroy the truth of all such promises and declarations in the gospel-the other carrying their notions of them so high as to destroy the reason of the gospel itself, and render the Christian religion, which consists of sober and consistent doctrines, the most intoxicated, the most wild and unintelligible institution that ever was in the world. This being premised, I know not how I can more seasonably engage your attention this day than by a short examination of each of these errors; in doing which, as I shall take some pains to reduce both the extremes of them to reason, it will necessarily lead me, at the same time, to mark the safe and true doctrine of our Church concerning the promised influences and operations of the Spirit of God upon our hearts, which, however depreciated through the first mistake, or boasted of beyond measure through the second, must nevertheless be so limited and understood as, on one hand, to make the gospel of Christ consistent with itself, and, on the other, to make it consistent with reason and common sense. If we consider the many express declarations wherein our Saviour tells his followers, before his crucifixion, that God would send his Spirit the Comforter amongst them, to supply his place in their hearts; and, as in the text, that without him they could do nothing ;-if we conceive them as spoken to his disciples, with an immediate view to the emergencies they were under, from their natural incapacities of finishing the great work he had left them, and building upon that large foundation he had laid, without some extraordinary help and guidance to carry them through, no one can dispute that evidence and confirmation which was afterwards given of its truth; as our Lord's disciples were illiterate men, consequently unskilled in the arts and acquired ways of persuasion. Unless this want had been supplied, the first obstacle to their labours must have discouraged and put an end to them for ever. As they had no language but their own, without the gift of tongues they could not have preached the gospel except in Judea; and as they had no authority of their own, without the supernatural one of signs and wonders, they could not vouch for the truth of it beyond the limits where it was first transacted. In this work doubtless all their sufficiency and power of acting was immediately from God; his Holy Spirit, as he had promised them, so it gave them a mouth and wisdom which all their adversaries were not able to gainsay or resist. So that without him, without these extraordinary gifts, in the most literal sense of the words, they could do nothing. But besides this plain application of the text to those particular persons and times when God's Spirit was poured down in that signal manner held sacred to this day, there is something in them to be extended further, which Christians of all ages, and I hope of all denomi nations, have still a claim and trust in; and that is, the ordinary assistance and influences of the Spirit of God in our hearts, for moral and virtuous improvements,-these, both in their natures as well as intentions, being altogether different from the others above-mentioned, conferred upon the disciples of our Lord. The one were miraculous gifts, in which the endowed person contributed nothing, which advanced human nature above itself, and raised all its projectile springs above their fountains, enabling them to speak and act such things, and in such manner, as was impossible for men not inspired and preternaturally upheld. In the other case, the helps spoken of were the influences of God's Spirit, which upheld us from falling below the dignity of our nature: that divine assistance which graciously kept us from falling, and enabled us to perform the holy professions of our religion. equally called spiritual gifts, the first case, the entire works of the Spirit, but the calm co-operations of it with our own endeavours, and are ordinarily what every sincere and well-disposed Christian has reason to pray for, and expect, from the same fountain of strength, who has promised to give his Holy Spirit to them that ask it. Though these are they are not, as in From this point, which is the true doctrine of our Church, the two parties begin to divide both from it and each other, each of them equally misapplying these passages of Scripture, and wresting them to extremes equally pernicions. To begin with the first,-of whom, should you inquire the explanation and meaning of this or of other texts, wherein the assistance of God's grace and Holy Spirit is implied as necessary to sanctify our nature, and enable us to serve and please God?-they will answer, that no doubt all our parts and abilities are the gifts of God, who is the original author of our nature, and, of consequence, of all that belongs thereto.-‘That as by him we live, and move, and have our being,' we must in course depend upon him for all our actions whatsoever, since we must depend upon him even for our life, and for every moment of its continuance.-That, from this view of our state and natural dependence, it is certain, they will say, we can do nothing without his help. But then they will add, that it concerns us no further as Christians than as we are mcn; the sanctity of our lives, the religious habits and improvements of our hearts, in no other! sense depending upon God than the most indifferent of our actions, or the natural exercise of any of the other powers he has given us. Agreeably with this,-that the spiritual gifts spoken of in Scripture are to be understood, by way of accommodation, to signify the natural or acquired gifts of a man's mind; such as memory, fancy, wit, and eloquence; which, in a strict and philosophical sense, may be called spiritual, |