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there is a right and a wrong. A merciful, a liberal, a kind, and compassionate behaviour, which surely is our duty; and an unmerciful, contracted spirit, a hard and oppressive course of behaviour, which is most certainly immoral and vicious. But who can define precisely, wherein that contracted spirit and hard usage of others consist, as murder and theft may be defined? There is not a word in our language, which expresses more detestable wickedness, than oppression. Yet the nature of this vice cannot be so exactly stated, nor the bounds of it so determinately marked, as that we shall be able to say in all instances, where right and justice ends, and oppression begins. In these cases there is a great latitude left for every one to determine for, and consequently to deceive himself."*

Thus far Bishop Butler. No judicious hearer could wish for a statement more correct, or language more perspicuous; and sure I am, that the importance of the foregoing quotation will justify the length of it. Let me, then, at the conclusion of this discourse, resume those warnings, which I have already given upon sins, which in your respective situations, may be committed with little resistance to temptation; and which may be again and again reiterated without any immediate and strong remonstrance from conscience. You have not aimed at the life of a fellow-creature-you have not plundered his property, and you will readily confess,

*See Bishop Butler's Sermon, p. 188.

that in either of these cases you would be confounded and terrified. But there are many other cases, in which you may most criminally violate the duty of love to your neighbour; and therefore you would do well to commune with your own hearts upon topics, which, in your last moments, will debase you in your own estimation, and disquiet you with the view of your own danger. Have you imposed upon the credulity or ignorance of a fellowcreature in the transactions of worldly business ? Have you abused his confidence by revealing any important secrets, which he communicated for the sake of your counsel and assistance? Have you impertinently explored, and spitefully proclaimed those private faults, which occur more or less in every private family? Have you enviously depreciated his better qualities? Have you insidiously and wantonly exaggerated his failings? Have you for any sinister purpose of your own endeavoured to corrupt his moral principles? Have you encouraged him to talk and think lightly upon the awful truths of religion? Have you refused to him the tribute of gratitude for services, which he has rendered to you? Have you, with unrelenting severity, disturbed his peace and attacked his character in revenge for any wrongs, which he may have unfortunately done to you, and for which he may stand condemned within his own bosom, and be ready to make such reparation as you might equitably require? The conscience of Herod slumbered after greater offences than those, which I have enumerated. Your consciences may not take

the alarm after the commission of sins, which, separately considered, are less than was the sin of Herod, but which, from their number, may involve you in greater guilt than was the guilt of Herod. He was at last roused to a sense of his wickedness; and you, my brethren, one day or other, may be compelled to look back, with shame and with anguish, upon the aggregate of your own offences against justice, candour, mercy, and piety.

SERMON XIX.

MATTHEW xiv. 12.

At that time Herod the Tetrarch heard of the fame of Jesus, and said unto his servants, "This is John the Baptist: he is risen from the dead; and therefore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him."

IN In my first discourse upon the foregoing text, I explained to you the import of the term conscience. I made some general remarks upon the power of it in regulating or reforming our moral conduct; and I endeavoured to shew the real properties of remorse, the nature of which had, in my opinion, been misrepresented by some metaphysical writers of our own age. In my second discourse, I selected from writers, both profane and sacred, some striking instances, in which the operations of conscience were sometimes immediate, and sometimes late, after the commission of sin. In my third discourse I entered fully into the case of Herod, as related in the New Testament-I endeavoured to throw a kind of sidelight upon it by some parallel circumstances in a narrative, which Plutarch has inserted in the life of Artaxerxes; and from such various topics as then presented themselves to my mind, I drew some

practical inferences upon the danger, to which we are ourselves exposed from the temporary suspensions of conscience after misdeeds, which, in the ordinary course of human life, we may ourselves be tempted to commit. From the history of Herod, as I explained it to you, and applied it to situations, in which our own innocence may be lost, while for a time we are not visited by remorse, let me now turn your attention to other sinners, whose outrages against common justice and common humanity may sometimes have been equally, if not more loathsome, and more pernicious.

There are false tongues, which not only speak, but in the language of the psalmist, "love to speak all words which may do hurt." There are tyrants, who, as we read in another psalm, not only watch the steps of their prey, and in all they imagine, mean to do evil, but who even boast of themselves that they can do it. There are men, who hate and harass their fellow-creatures without poignant provocation, such, for instance, as most men feel from the exposure of their faults by the mouth of an inferior, and such as must have stung Herod to the quick from the rebukes of John upon his adulterous intercourse with Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip. There are men, who, when suffered to indulge their own lewd appetites without disguise, without restraint, without rebuke from the observer, without a murmur from the wronged, suddenly stand forth as champions, forsooth, in the cause of virtue, array themselves in armour offensive and defensive, and heroically profess to vindi2 H

VOL. V.

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