Supreme Being in distinguishing you by so many merciful advantages; they have told you it was to engage you to inform idolatrous nations of the truth, to nourish and favour it in cruel and persecuting countries, to support it at home, and so to cast out profaneness, infidelity and atheism. They have repeatedly urged you to come to a settlement of accounts on these subjects, and they have delivered in against you such an interrogatory as this; are the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees lifted up? Doth superstition cover the truth in any places of your government? Is the affliction of Joseph neglected? Doth religion insolently lift its head among you, and is it protected by such as are bound to suppress it? They have shewn you the Deity ready to punish an obstinate perseverance in sin, and, if you will forgive the expression, they have preached, illuminated by lightning, and their exhortations have been enforced by thunder. Then every one was struck, all hearts were united, every one ran to the breach, to turn away the wrath of God, lest he should destroy us all, Psal. cvi. 23. The magistrate came down from his tribunal, the merchant quitted his commerce, the mechanic laid aside his work, yea the very libertine suspended his pleasures; vows, prayers, solemn protestations, tears, relentings, promises, sincere promises, nothing was wanting to your devotions. Then the angels rejoiced, a compassionate God smiled, the corn revived, war was hushed, and was dying away but along with the first tide of prosperity came rolling back the former depravity, the same indifference to truth, the same negligence

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of religion, the same infidelity, the same profanity. This is the first kind of that piety, which is "as the early dew that goeth away." Let us study ourselves in the image of the Jews described in the context. "Come," say they, when the prophet had predicted the Babylonish captivity to Judah, and the carrying away into Assyria to the ten tribes, "come, and let us return unto the Lord, for he hath torn, and he will heal us, he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. After two or three days he will revive us, and we shall live in his sight," ver. 12. "After they had rest, they did evil again before thee," (these are the words of Nehemiah) "therefore thou didst leave them in the hand of their enemies. When they returned, and cried unto thee, thou heardst them from heaven, and many times didst thou deliver them, according to thy mercies. O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee? for your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away," chap. ix. 28.

2. In a second class of transient devotions we place that which religious solemnities produce. Providence, always watching for our salvation, hath established in the church not only an ordinary ministry to cultivate our piety, but some extraordinary periods proper to invigorate and bring it to maturity, thus proportioning itself to our frailty. How considerable soever the truths of religion are, it is certain they lose their importance by our hearing them always proposed in the same circumstances, and the same points of light. There are some days which put on I know not what of the

extraordinary, and put in motion, so to speak, the first great powers of religion. To this our festivals are directed, and this is one of the principal uses of the Lord's Supper. Were this ordinance not appointed with this view, as some affirm, had not God annexed some peculiar benediction to it, yet it would be a weak pretence to keep from the Lord's table, and the use generally granted would always be a sufficient reason to induce those to frequent it who have their salvation at heart. But however this may be, it is certain that such days occasion the sort of devotion we are describing, and usually produce a piety like the morning cloud, and the early dew that goeth anay.

We do not intend here to describe a kind of Christians too odious to be put even into this vicious class. For, my brethren, we have a very singular sort of people among us, who, though they live in the practice of all worldly licentiousness, will frequent the Lord's table, in spite of all the pains we take to shew their unworthiness, and to keep them away. They will pass through a kind of preparation, and for this purpose they retrench a little portion of time from their course of licentiousness, set out, however, with so much accurate calculation that it is easy to see they consider devotion more in the light of a disagreeable task than in that of a holy enjoyment. They suspend their habits of sin the whole day before, and all the live long day after the communion. In this interval they receive the Lord's supper, all the while determining to return to their old course of life. What devotion, in which the soul burns with

love to worldly pleasure, while it affects to play off the treacherous part of love to religion and God! A devotion that disputes with Jesus Christ a right to three days, gives them up with regret and constraint, and keeps all along murmuring at the genius of a religion, which puts the poor insulted soul on the rack, and forces it to live three whole days without gaming and debauchery! A devotion deep in the plot of Judas to betray the Saviour at his own table! These people need not be characterized. We never administer the Lord's supper without protesting against them: we never say any thing to them but Wo, wo be to you; and though through a discipline of too much lenity, they escape excommunication, yet never can they escape the anathemas, which God in his word denounces against unworthy communicants.

We mean here people of another character. It is he among Christians who doth not live in the practice of all sins, but who doth reserve some, and some of those which, says the gospel, they who commit shall not inherit the kingdom of God, 1 Cor. vi. 10. This man doth not with a brutal madness commit such crimes as harden him beyond reflection and remorse, but he hath a sincere desire to a certain degree to correct himself. He takes time enough to prepare himself for the Lord's supper, and then he examines his conscience, meditates on the great truths of religion, the justice of its laws, the holiness of every part, and the rich present which God bestowed on the church in the person of his own Son. He is affected with these objects, he applies

these truths to himself, he promises God to reform: but, a few days after the communion, he not only falls into one or two vicious actions, but he gives himself up to a vicious habit, and persists in it till the next communion, when he goes over again the same exercises of devotion, which end again in the same vices, and so his whole life is a continual round of sin and repentance, repentance and sin. This is a second sort of people whose devotions are transient.

3. But of all devotions of this kind, that which needs describing the most, because it comes nearest to true piety, and is most likely to be confounded with it, is that which is excited by the fear of death, and which vanishes as soon as the fear subsides.

The most emphatical, the most urgent, and the most pathetical of all preachers is death. What can be said in this pulpit which death doth not say with tenfold force? What truth can we explain, which death doth not explain with more evidence? Do we treat of the vanity of the world? So does death; but with much more power. The impenetrable veils which it throws over all terrestrial objects, the midnight darkness in which it involves them, the irrevocable orders it gives us to depart, the insurmountable power it employs to tear us away, represent the vanity of the world better than the most pathetical sermons. Do we speak of the horrors of sin? Death treats of this subject more fully and forcibly than we; the pains it brings, the marks it makes upon us while we are dying, the grave, to which it turns our eyes as our habitation after death, represent the horror of