societies; as the history of the old world, that of Sodom and Gomorrah, that of the kingdom of Judah, that of the ten tribes, that of Babylon, that of the seven eastern churches, and that of many others, whose sad but edifying ruins should always be before our eyes.

With these pernicious maxims, for the sake of a few trifling directions which you give society for maxims of state, you deprive us of the powerful protection of a God, who would himself sit at the helm; you raise his justice against us, you put into his hands thunder and lightning to destroy us, and, instead of being our parents and guides, you are disturbers of the state, and the most implacable enemies of sound civil polity.

O pillar of a cloud! O wisdom that is from above! Animate, for ever animate the conductors of this people, preside in their councils, march at the head of their armies, sanctify their reflections, and engrave for ever on their souls this maxim of my text, that there is no wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel against the Lord, Jam. iii. 17.

III. Our third article concerns the voluptuous. One of the most inviolable laws of God is, that felicity should be the reward of virtue, and misery the punishment of vice. What does a voluptuous man oppose against the execution of this law? Noise, company, diversions, refinements of lasciviousness. In these he intrenches himself, and defies us to force him thence. While the catechumen is studiously employing himself to clear away the difficulties, and to determine the important questions, on which all his future hopes depend; while the believer is striving against the stream, and endeavouring to subdue his own passions; while the penitent feels and bows under the weighty remembrance of his sins; while the martyr falls a victim to the rage of his persecutors; the voluptuary feels a joy, which he thinks unalterable, and creates a kind of fools paradise, in which he pretends to brave God, and to be happy in spite of him, whose sovereign command condemns him to misery. Absurd tranquillity! Senseless security! I appeal to reason, I appeal to conscience, I appeal to old age, I appeal to death, I appeal to judgment.

What a system is that of the voluptuary, when it is examined at the bar of reason! There he is taught, that he owes his existence to a Supreme Being, and that he is under infinite obligations to him; there he is made to feel that he hath no assurance of living four days, that within fifteen,

twenty,

twenty, or thirty years he will be taken out of this world, and that at the end of this term there will be before him nothing but death, eternity and hell. He knows nothing against this, he agrees to all this, he inwardly feels demonstrations of all this but, instead of trying to avoid the evil day, he tries to forget it; and, as if the existence of beings depended on the attention we paid to them, he imagines he hath annihilated these dreadful objects, because he hath found the art of obliterating them from his memory.

What a system is that of the voluptuary, when it is examined at the tribunal of conscience! For, in fact, whatever efforts may be employed to drown the voice of conscience, it sometimes roars and will be heard. Even a depraved conscience hath a kind of periodical power, it cannot always be intoxicated with worldly pleasure. Belshazar, on a certain festal day, was sitting at table with his court. In order to insult the God of Israel, he ordered the sacred vessels, which his father had brought away from the temple of Jerusalem, to be brought into company, that he and his princes, his wives and his concubines might drink therein, and praise the gods of gold and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone. All on a sudden his countenance changes, and his thoughts trouble him so that the joints of his loins are loosed, and his knees smite one against another, Dan. v. 2. 4. 6. thus proving the truth of what the wise man observes, that the wicked flee when no man pursueth, Prov. xxviii. 1. Unhappy king! What is the occasion of all this terror and fear? Dost thou see a sword hanging over thee by a single thread, and ready to fall on thee and cut thee asunder? Have thine enemies, who who are besieging the capital, found a way into it? Does the earth reel under thy feet? Is hell opening to thine eyes? Do the infernal furies surround thee, and cause the serpents on their heads to hiss in thine ears? No: but a hand is writing over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall, ver. 5. And what have you to fear from that hand? You are not acquainted with the characters. Perhaps the writing is an encomium on thee. Perhaps it is an oracle foretelling thee some new acquisition of splendor and glory. Why, of two senses, of which the writing is capable, dost thou imagine the worst? My brethren, behold the solution of this difficulty. These fingers of a man's hand are not alone: the finger of God accompanies them. The subject is not only written on the wall of the royal palace: but it is also inscribed on the heart

of

of the king. His eyes could not read the characters, but his conscience knew how to explain them. Ah! Miserable hypocrites! cease calling for astrologers; leave off consulting magicians and chaldeans. Listen to your own heart, The expositor is within thee, and thy conscience will tell thee more than all the wise men in thy kingdom.

What a system is that of a voluptuary considered in the decline of life! A voluptuous man, when his organs are become feeble, and his faculties worn out, finds he hath outlived his felicity, yet he looks after the gods, of which time hath despoiled him, and in vain expects that voluptuousness can rid him of the painful reflections, which torment and excruciate him.

What a system is that of a voluptuary considered in regard to death and future punishment! These, certainly, ought to alarm all that expect them: but they ought above all to terrify a voluptuous man. What will be the sensibility of such a man? What will be his despair, when he shall pass from a bed of down to all pervading pain, from pleasure to eternal fire, from excessive lasciviousness to chains of darkness, from the company of those, who ministered to his voluptuousness to that of the executioners of divine vengeance.

IV. In fine, a stoical obstinacy is the fourth obstacle, which some place against the purposes of God. Would you see this hardiness represented in the most insolent language? Would you see how far men have been able to carry their extravagance on this article. Hear one of the most admired of the ancient philosophers, but the least worthy of admiration. Hear what an idea he gives of his wise man. "There are neither walls nor towers, which battering rams cannot subvert: but there are no machines that can shake the soul of a wise man. Do not compare him to the walls of Babylon, which Alexander knew how to destroy; nor to those of Carthage and Numantia, which human power subverted. Do not compare him either to the citadel or to the capital, where the marks of enemies attempting to render themselves masters of them are yet to be seen. Arrows shot at the sun never reach him. Sacrileges committed in the temples of the deity, by breaking in pieces the symbols, and by subverting the edifices, never affect him. What am I saying, the gods themselves may be buried in the ruins of their own. temples: but the wise man never can; or, could he be overwhelmed,

whelmed, he could suffer no damage. Jupiter hath nothing more than the wise man, except his immortality. But the wise man, in his turn hath this superiority, that he is perfectly happy during the short space of this life. In this he is as much greater than Jupiter as it is more glorious to compress all happiness into a narrow space than to diffuse it through one more considerable, and to possess as much felicity in one single instant as the greatest of the gods enjoy in eternity."

Who would believe, my brethren, that men, who were formerly the admiration of the world had been able to oppose such crude and fanciful ideas against all the evidences of their depravity and dependence? Who could conceive, that they seriously set these against sickness, poverty, pain, conscience, death, the grave, the punishment of hell, and the majesty of God?

Are there any of this extravagant sect yet subsisting? Hath Zeno any disciples now? Are there any who ýet follow and revere the doctrine of the portico? Yes, my brethren, there are yet people, who under another name maintain the same sentiments. I know not whence the evil comes, whether from the air we breathe in these provinces, or from our diet, or from any other cause; I cannot tell whether dullness of fancy produce in us what excessive vivacity produces in other countries; but it should seem, we have as many of this sort among us as there are in other places. We have people, who affect an unshaken firmness, who glory in preserving their tranquillity under all the extremes of fortune; people who behold the king of terrors with intrepidity, and who laugh at the horrors of death, alike immoveable in the hearing of the most alarming truths, the most terrible descriptions of futurity, censures the most sharp, and threatnings the most dreadful. And whence do they derive this calm intrepidity? From vows addressed to heaven? No. Is it from the progress they have made in religion? Not at all. Is it from the clearness of a close, connected, and evident system? Nothing of all this. Whence then do they derive these sentiments? From 1 know not what secret pride, from I know not what absurd gravity, from I know not what infernal inflexibility, from a sort of stoical, or shall I rather call it brutal philosophy, which they have revived. We ingenuously acknowledge, that a sight of people of this character always excites emulation in us, at least it leads us to deplore the inefficacy of religion in VOL. V.

some

some people's minds. Truth with all its brightness, virtue with all its graces, religion with its evidences, eternity with its demonstrations, celestial felicity with its pomp, all these things can hardly hold some trembling christians steady to their profession, who yet seem to adhere to Jesus Christ: while these men without light, without proofs, without demonstration, without certainty, yea without hope discover a tranquillity, which we should congratulate ourselves for producing even after we have spent twenty or thirty years in the ministry.

But how fair soever this exterior may seem, how insura mountable soever this difficulty may appear, how strong soever it may seem to prevent the judgments of God, and to dispose of the terrors, which they naturally excite in the conscience, it is an effort of wickedness easily defeated, and although this fourth way seems to surpass the three others in wisdom, yet it actually goes beyond them all in absurdity and extravagance.

Do we impose on people of this kind? Let them tell us on what their tranquillity is founded. Allowing the circumstances, in which we now are, there can be only two ways of acquiring tranquillity in prospect of death. The first is, to prove that religion is a human contrivance; that all we propose concerning a future state, a heaven and a hell, and concerning the means of escaping the last and enjoying the first is either exaggerated or imaginary. The second is, to bring full proof that we have performed the duties, to which religion hath annexed a promise of freedom from misery, and the possession of eternal felicity. In which class shall I place the man I have been describing?

He would complain of injustice should I put him in the first class. He always professed himself a christian. He hath all his life long been present at public worship, and hath partaken of our sacraments. In any case, if he be an infidel, he is a mere idiot. Distracted with the cares of life, he hath never made such enquiries as are absolutely necessary to refute the system of religion, even supposing the system could be refuted; and I pledge myself, let him take which. side he will, to silence him, whether he undertake to attack religion, or to defend it, so grosly ignorant is he of every thing that belongs to the subject.

Hath he then obtained satisfaction by the second method? A man, who hath set his heart entirely at ease, because he can give full proof that he hath perforined the duties, to