he is happy and holy: this is a fifth truth which follows from the fourth. This loving and merciful God is naturally inclined to relieve a multitude of his creatures, who are ready to be plunged into the deepest miseries: this is a sixth truth which follows from the fifth.

Thus follow the thread of Jesus Christ's theology, and you will find, as I said, each part that composes it depending on another, and every one giving another the hand. For, from the loving and merciful inclination of God to relieve a multitude of his creatures from a threatening abyss of the deepest miseries, follows the mission of Jesus Christ; because it was fit that the remedy chosen of God to relieve the miseries of men should bear a proportion to the causes which produced it. From the doctrine of Jesus Christ's mission follows the necessity of the Spirit of God: because it would have been impossible for men to have discovered by their own speculations the way of salvation, unless they had been assisted by a supernatural revelation, according to that saying, Things which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, God hath revealed unto us by his Spirit,' 1 Cor. ii. 9, 10. From the doctrines of the mission of the Son of God, and of the gift of the Holy Spirit, follows this most comfortable truth, that we are the objects of the love of God, even of love the most vehement and sincere that can be imagined: for 'God commended his love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,' Rom. v. 8. And, as we are objects of that love which God hath commended to us in his Son, it follows, that no bounds can be set to our happiness, that there is no treasure too rich in the mines of the blessed God, no duration too long in eternity, no communion with the Creator too close, too intimate, too tender, which we have not a right to expect; according to that comfortable, that extatic maxim of St. Paul,God, who spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?' Rom. viii.

32.

This is a chain of some truths of the gospel. We do not say that it might not be lengthened; we do not pretend to have given a complete system of the doctrines of the gospel; we only say that the doctrines proposed are closely connected, and that one produces another in a system of speculative gospel truths.

In like manner, there is a connexion between practical truths. The class of practical truths is connected with the class of speculative truths, and each practical truth is connected with another practical truth.

The class of practical truths is connected with the class of speculative truths. As soon as ever we are convinced of the truth of the doctrines just now mentioned, we shall be thereby convinced that we are under an indispensable necessity to devote ourselves to holiness. People, who draw consequences from our doctrines injurious to morality, fall into the most gross and palpable of all contradictions. The single doctrine of Jesus Christ's

mission naturally produces the necessity of sanctification. Ye believe that the love of holiness is so essential to God, that rather than pardon criminals without punishing their crimes, he has punished his own Son. And can ye believe that the God, to whom holiness is so essential, will bear with you while ye make no efforts to be holy? Do not ye see that in this supposition ye imagine a contradictory God, or, rather that ye contradict yourselves? In the first supposition ye conceive a God to whom sin is infinitely odious: in the second, ye conceive a God to whom sin is infinitely tolerable. In the first supposition, ye conceive a God, who, by the holiness of his nature, exacts a satisfaction: in the second, ye conceive a God, who, by the indifference of his nature, loves the sinner while he derives no motives from the satisfaction to forsake his sin. In the first supposition, ye imagine a God who opposes the strongest barriers against vice: in the second, ye imagine a God who removes every obstacle to vice: nothing being more likely to confirm men in sin than an imagina. tion, that, to what length soever they go, they may always find in the sacrifice of the Son of God, an infallible way of avoiding the punishment due to their sin, whenever they shall have recourse to that sacrifice. Were it necessary to enlarge this article, and to take one doctrine after another, you would see that every doctrine of religion proves what we have advanced, concerning the natural connexion of religious speculative truths, with truths of practice.

But, if practical truths of religion are connected with speculative truths, each of the truths of practice is also closely connected with another. All virtues mutually support each other, and there is no invalidating one part of our morality, without, on that very account, invalidating the whole.

In our treatises of morality, we have usually assigned three objects to our virtues. The first of these objects is God: the second is our neighbour: and the third ourselves. St. Paul is the author of this division. The grace of God that bringeth salvation, hath appeared to all men; teaching us, that denying ungodliness, and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world,' Tit. ii. 11, 12. But all these are connected together: for we cannot live godly without living at the same time righte ously and soberly: because to live godly is to perform what religion appoints, and to take that perfect Being for our example to whom religion conducts and unites us. Now to live as religion appoints, and to take that perfect Being for our pattern to whom religion conducts and unites us, is to live righteously with our neighbour, and soberly with ourselves. Strictly speaking, we have not one virtue unless we have all virtues; nor are we free from one vice unless we be free from all vices; we are not truly charitable unless we be truly just, nor are we truly just unless we be truly charitable: we are not truly liberal but as we avoid profuseness, nor are we truly frugal but as we

Such is the chain of religious truths: such is the connexion, not only of each truth of speculation, but of speculative truths with the truths of practice. There is then a concatenation, a harmony, a connexion in the truths of religion; there is a system, a body of doctrine, in the gospel. This is the article that we proposed to prove.

But, a religion in which there is such a chain, such a harmony and connexion; a body of doctrine so systematically compacted and united, ought not to be taken by bits and parts.

To illustrate this we may compare spiritual with natural things. The more art and ingenuity there is in a machine composed of divers wheels, the more necessary it is to consider it in its whole, and in all its arrangements, and the more does its beauty escape our observation when we confine our attention to a single wheel because the more art there is in a machine, the more essential is the minutest part to its perfection. Now deprive a machine of an essential part, and you deface and destroy it.

Apply this to spiritual things. In a compact system, in a coherent body of doctrine, there is nothing useless, nothing which ought to occupy the very place that the genius who composed the whole hath given it. What will become of religion if ye consider any of its doctrines separately? What becomes of religion if ye consider the holiness of God, without his justice, or his justice without his mercy?

II. Let us then proceed to inquire why so many of us confine ourselves to a small number of religious truths, and incapacitate ourselves for examining the whole system. The fact is too certain. Hence, our preachers seem to lead us in obscure paths, and to lose us in abstract speculations, when they treat of some of the attributes of God; such as his faithfulness, his love of order, his regard for his intelligent creatures. It is owing to this that we are, in some sense, well acquainted with some truths of religion, while we remain entirely ignorant of others, which are equally plain, and equally important. Hence it is that the greatest part of our sermons produce so little fruit, because sermons are, at least they ought to be, connected discourses, in which the principle founds the consequence, and the consequence follows the principle; all which supposes in the hearers a habit of meditation and attention. For the same reason we are apt to be offended when any body attempts to draw us out of the sphere of our prejudices, and are not only ignorant, but (if you will pardon the expression) ignorant with gravity, and derive I know not what glory from our own stupidity. Hence it is that a preacher is seldom or never allowed to soar in his sermons, to rise into the contemplation of some lofty and rapturous objects, but must always descend to the first principles of religion, as if he preached for the first time, or, as if his auditors for the first time

which are true in themselves, demonstrated in our scriptures, and essential to religion, become errors, yea, sources of many errors in our mouths, because we consider them only in themselves, and not in connexion with other doctrines, or in the proper places to which they belong in the system of religion. This might be easily proved in regard to the doctrines of the mercy of God in Jesus Christ, the sacrifice of the cross, the necessity of the Holy Spirit's assistance: doctrines true, demonstrated, and essential; but doctrines which will precipitate us from one abyss to another, if we consider them as our people too often consider them, and as they have been too often considered in the schools, in an abstract and detached manner. The fact then is too certain. Let us attend to the principal causes of it.

Four principal causes may be assigned: 1. A party-spirit. 2. The choice of teachers. 3. A hurry of business. Above all, 4. The love of pleasure. As we shall take the liberty of pointing out the causes of this malady, we shall also prescribe the remedy, whether our most humble remonstrances regard the people, the pastors, or even the sovereign, whose noblest office, as well as most sacred and inviolable duty, it is to watch for the support of the truth, and the government of the church.

1. The first cause that we have assigned is a party-spirit. This is a disposition that cannot be easily defined, and it would be difficult to include in a definition of it even its genus and species: it is a monstrous composition of all bad genuses and of all bad species; it is a hydra that reproduces while it seems to destroy itself, and which, when one head hath been cut off, instantly produces a thousand more. Sometimes it is superstition, which inclines us to deify certain idols, and, after having formed, to prostrate first before them. Sometimes it is ignorance which prevents our perceiving the importance of some revealed truths, or the dreadful consequences of some prejudices that we had embraced in childhood. Sometimes it is arrogance, which rashly maintains whetever it has once advanced, advanced perhaps inconsiderately, but which will afterwards be resolutely defended till death, for no other reason but because it has been once asserted, and because it is too mortifying to yield, and say, I am wrong, I was mistaken. Sometimes it is a spirit of malice and barbarity, which abhors, exclaims against, persecutes, and would even exterminate, all who dare contradict its oracular propositions. Oftener still it is the union of all these vices together. A party-spirit is that disposition which envenoms so many hearts, separates so many families, divides so many societies, which has produced so many excommunications, thundered out so many anathemas, drawn up so many canons, assembled so many councils, and has been so often on the point of subverting the great work of the reformation, the noblest opposition that was ever formed against it.

This spirit, which we have faintly described, must naturally incapacitate a man for consider

ing the whole of religion: it must naturally incline him to take it only by bits and shreds. On the one hand, it contracts the mind: for how can a soul that harbours and cherishes all the phantoms which a party-spirit produces, how can such a soul study and meditate as religion requires? On the other hand, a partyspirit depraves the heart, and eradicates the desire of knowing religion. A man animated with the spirit of party, directs all his attention to such propositions of religion as seem to favour his erroneous opinions, and irregular passions, and diverts it from all that oppose them; his system includes only what strengthens his party, it is exclusive of every thing that weakens or opposes it.

This is the first cause of the malady. The remedy is easily discovered. Let us divest ourselves of a party-spirit. Let us never determine an opinion, by its agreement or disagreement with what our masters, our parents, or our teachers have inculcated, but by its conformity or contrariety to the doctrine of Jesus Christ and his apostles. Let us never receive or reject a maxim because it favours or opposes our passions, but as it agrees with, or opposes the laws of that tribunal, the basis of which are justice and truth. Let us be fully convinced that our chief study should be, to know what God determines, and to make his commands the only rules of our knowledge and practice.

2. The second cause of the evil we would remove is, The choice of teachers. In general, we have three sorts of teachers. The first are catechists, who teach our children the principles of religion. The second are ministers. The third prepare the minds of young people for the ministry itself.

The carelessness that prevails in the choice of the first sort of teachers cannot be sufficiently lamented. The care of instructing our children is committed to people more fit for disciples than masters, and the meanest talents are thought more than sufficient to teach the first principles of religion. The narrowest and dullest genius is not ashamed to profess himself a divine and a catechist. And yet what capacity does it not require to lay the first foundations of the edifice of salvation! What address to take the different forms necessary to insinuate into minds of catechumens, and to conciliate their attention and love! What dexterity to proportion instruction to the different ages and characters of learners! How much knowledge, and how many accomplishments are necessary to discern what is fundamental to a youth of fifteen years of age! What one child of superior talents cannot be ignorant of without danger, and what another of inferior talents may remain innocently unacquainted with! Heads of families, this article concerns you in a particular manner. What account can ye render to God of the children with whom he has intrusted you, if, while ye take so much pains, and are at so much expense to teach them the liberal arts, and to acquaint them with human sciences, ye discover so much negligence in teaching them the knowledge of salvation? Not only in a future state

ought ye to fear the punishment of so criminal a conduct; ye will be punished in this present world. Children ignorant of religion will but little understand their duty to their parents. They will become the cross, as they will be the shame and infamy of your life. They will shake off your yoke as soon as they have passed their childhood; they will abandon you to the weakness, infirmities, and disquietudes of old age, when you arrive at that distasteful period of life, which can be rendered agreeable only by the care, the tenderness, and assiduity of a well-bred son. Let us unite all our endeavours, my dear brethren, to remove this evil. Let us honour an employment which nothing but the licentiousness of the age could have rendered contemptible. Let us consider that, as one of the most important trusts of the state, one of the most respectable posts of society, which is appointed to seminate religious principles in our children, to inspire them with piety, to guard them against the snares that they will meet with in the world, and, by these means, to render them dutiful in childhood, faithful in conjugal life, tender parents, good citizens, and able magistrates.

The pastors of our churches are our second class of teachers. I know that all our sufficiency is of God, 2 Cor. iii. 5. that though Paul may plant, and Apollos water, God only giveth the increase that holy men, considering the end of the ministry, have exclaimed, Who is sufficient for these things? 1 Cor. iii. 6. Yet the ordinary means which God uses for the conversion of sinners, are the ministry of the word, and the qualifications of ministers, for faith cometh by hearing, Rom. x. 17. Now this word, my brethren, is not preached with equal power by all; and, though the foundation which each lays be the same, it is too true that some build upon this foundation the gold and precious stones of a solid and holy doctrine, while others build with the wood, hay, and stubble, 1 Cor. iii. 12. of their own errors, the productions of a confused imagination, and a mistaken eloquence. And as the word is not preached with the same power, so it is not attended with the same success.

But when the word proceeds from the mouth of a man whom God has sealed, and enriched with extraordinary talents; when it proceeds from a man, who has the tongue of the learned and the wisdom of the wise, as the Scripture speaks, Isa. 1. 4. When it proceeds from a Boanerges, a son of thunder, from a Moses, mighty in words and in deeds, Mark iii. 17. Acts vii. 22, who maintains the dignity of his doctrine by the purity of his morals, and by the power of his good example, then the word is heard with attention; from the ear it passes to the mind, from the mind to the heart, from the heart to the life; it penetrates, it inflames, it transports. It becomes a hammer breaking the hardest hearts, a two-edged sword, dividing the father from the son, the son from the father, dissolving all the bonds of flesh and blood, the connexions of nature, and the love of self.

What precaution, what circumspection, and, in some sort, what dread, ought to prevail in the choice of an office, which so greatly influ

ences the salvation of those among whom it is exercised! There needs only the bad system of a pastor to produce and preserve thousands of false notions of religion in the people's minds: notions, which fifty years' labour of a more wise and sensible ministry will scarcely be able to eradicate. There needs only a pastor sold to sordid interest to put up, in some sort, salvation to sale, and to regulate places in paradise according to the diligence or negligence with which the people gratify the avarice of him who distributes them. There needs only a pastor fretted with envy and jealousy against his brethren to poison their ministry by himself, or by his emissaries. Yea sometimes, there needs only the want of some less essential talents in a minister to give advantage to the enemies of religion, and to deprive the truths which he preaches of that profound respect which is their due: a respect that even enemies could not withhold, if the gospel were properly preached, and its truths exhibited in their true point of view.

It would be unreasonable, perhaps, to develope this article now. How many of our people would felicitate themselves if we were to furnish them with pretences for imputing their unfruitfulness to those who cultivate them! But, if this article must not be developed, what grave remonstrances, what pressing exhortations, what fervent prayers, should it occasion! Let the heads of families consider the heinousness of their conduct in presuming to offer impure victims to the Lord, and in consecrating those children to the holy ministry, in whom they cannot but discover dispositions that render them unworthy of it. May ecclesiastical bodies never assemble for the election of pastors, without making profound reflections on the importance of the service in which they are engaged, and the greatness of the trust which the sovereign commits to them! May they never ordain without recollecting, that, to a certain degree, they will be responsible for all the sad consequences of a faithless or a fruitless ministry! May they always prostrate themselves on these occasions before God, as the apostles in the same case did, and pray, Lord, show whom thou hast chosen,' Acts i. 24. May our rulers and magistrates be affected with the worth of those souls whom the pastors instruct; and may they unite all their piety, all their pity, and all their power, to procure holy men, who may adorn so eminent, so venerable a post!

What has been said on the choice of pastors still more particularly regards the election of tutors, who are employed to form pastors themselves. Universities are public springs, whence rivulets flow into all the church. Place at the head of these bodies sound philosophers, good divines, wise casuists, and they will become seminaries of pastors after God's heart, who will form the minds, and regulate the morals, of the people, gently bowing them to the yoke of religion. On the contrary, place men of another character at the head of our universities, and they will send out impoisoned ministers, who will diffuse through the whole

church the fatal venom which themselves have imbibed.

3. The third cause which we have assigned, of the infancy and novitiate of most Christians in religious knowledge, is the multitude of their secular affairs. Far be it from us to aim at inspiring you with superstitious maxims. We do not mean that they who fill eminent posts in society should give that time to devotion which the good of the community requires. We allow, that in some critical conjunctures, the time appointed for devotion must be yielded to business. There are some urgent occasions when it is more necessary to fight than to pray: there are times of important business in which the closet must be sacrificed to the cares of life, and second causes must be attended to, even when one would wish to be occupied only about the first. Yet, after all, the duty that we recommend is indispensable. Amidst the most turbulent solici tudes of life, a Christian desirous of being saved, will devote some time to his salvation. Some part of the day he will redeem from the world and society, to meditate on eternity. This was the practice of those eminent saints, whose lives are proposed as patterns to us. The histories of Abraham, Moses, Samuel, and David, are well known, and ye recollect those parts of their lives to which we refer, without our detaining you in a repetition now.

The last cause of the incapacity of so many Christians for seeing the whole of religion in its connexion and harmony the last cause of their taking it only by bits and shreds, is their love of sensual pleasure. We do not speak here of those gross pleasures at which heathens would have blushed, and which are incompatible with Christianity. We attack pleasures more refined, maxims for which reasonable persons become sometimes apologists: persons who on more accounts than one, are worthy of being proposed as examples: persons who would seem to be the salt of the earth,' the flower of society, and whom we cannot justly accuse of not loving religion. How rational, how religious soever they appear in other cases, they make no scruple of passing a great part of their time in gaming, in public diversions, in a round of worldly amusements; in pleasures, which not only appear harmless, but, in some sort, suitable to their rank, and which seem criminal only to those who think it their duty not to float on the surface of religion, but to examine the whole that it requires of men, on whom God hath bestowed the inestimable favour of revealing it. We may presume, that if we show people of this sort, that this way of life is one of the principal obstacles to their progress in religion, and prevents their knowing all its beauties, and relishing all its delights, we shall not speak without success. In order to this, pardon me if I conjure you to hear this article, not only with attention, but with that impartiality which alone can enable you to know whether we utter our own speculations, or preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. Recollect here that general notion of religion which we

have laid down: It contains truths of speculation, and truths of practice. Such sensual pleasures as we have just now mentioned, form invincible obstacles to the knowledge of ti both.

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I. To the knowledge of speculative truths. How is it possible for a man to obtain a complete system of the doctrines of the gospel while he is a slave to sensual pleasures!

1. To obtain a complete system of the doctrines of the gospel there must be a certain habit of thinking and meditating. In vain ye ke turn over whole volumes, in vain ye attend methodical sermons, in vain ye parade with bodies of divinity, ye can never comprehend the connexion of religious truths unless ye acquire a habit of arranging ideas, of laying down principles, of deducing consequences, in short of forming systems yourselves. This habit cannot be acquired without exercise, it is unattainable without serious attention, and profound application. But how can people devoted to pleasure acquire such a habit? Sensual pleasure is an inexhaustible source of dissipation: it dissipates in preparing, it dissipates in studying, it dissipates after the study is at an end.

2. To counterbalance the difficulty of meeditation and study, there must be a relish for it. Those who make study a duty, or a trade, seldom make any great progress in knowledge at least a prodigious difference has always been observed between the proficiency of those who study by inclination, and those who study by necessity. But nothing is more capable of disgusting us with the spiritual pleasures of study and meditation than the love of sensual pleasures. We will not intrude into the closets of these persons. But is there not a prodigious difference between their application to study and their attention to pleasure? The one is a violence offered to themselves, the other a voluptuousness after which they sigh. The one is an intolerable burden, eagerly shaken off as soon as the time appointed expires: the other is a delicious gratification, from which it is painful to part, when nature exhausted can support it no longer, or troublesome duty demands a cessation. In the one, hours and moments are counted, and the happiest period is that which terminates the pursuit: but in the other, time glides away imperceptibly, and people wish for the power of prolonging the course of the day, and the duration of life.

3. To acquire a complete knowledge of religious truths, it is not enough to study them in the closet, in retirement and silence; we must converse with others who study them Loo. But the love of sensual pleasure indisposes us for such conversations. Slaves to sensual pleasures have but little taste for those delicious societies, whose mutual bond is utility, in which impartial inquirers propose their doubts, raise their objections, communicate their discoveries, and reciprocally assist each other's edification: for, deprive those who love sensual pleasures, of gaming and diversions, conversation instantly languishes, and converse is at an end.

But, secondly, if the love of sensual plea-
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sure raise such great obstacles to the knowledge of speculative truths, it raises incomparably greater still to the truths of practice. There are some Scripture maxims which are never thought of by the persons in question, except it be to enervate and destroy them; at least, they make no part of their system of morality.

In your system of morality, what becomes of this Scripture maxim, 'evil communications corrupt good manners?' 1 Cor. xv. 33. Nothing forms connexions more intimate, and at the same time more extravagant, than an immoderate love of pleasure. Men who differ in manners, age, religion, birth, principles, educations, are all united by this bond. The passionate and the moderate, the generous and the avaricious, the young and the old, agree to exercise a mutual condescension and patience towards each other, because the same spirit actuates, and the same necessities haunt them; and because the love of pleasure, which animates them all, can only be gratified by the concurrence of each individual.

In your system of morality, what becomes of those maxims of Scripture, which say that we must confess Jesus Christ before men,' that whosoever shall be ashamed of him before men, of him will he be ashamed when he cometh in the glory of his Father?' Matt. x. 32. Mark viii. 38. A man who is engaged in the monstrous assembly which the love of pleasure forms, must hear religion disputed, the morality of the gospel attacked, good manners subverted, the name of God blasphemed and he must hear all these without daring to discover the sentiments of his heart, because, as I just now observed, patience and compliance animate that body to which he is attached by such necessary and intimate ties. In your system of morality, what becomes of those Scripture maxims, which threaten those with the greatest punishments who injure others? The love of sensual pleasure causes offences of the most odious kind; I mean, it betrays your partners in pleasure into vice. Ye game without avarice; but do ye not excite avarice in the minds of those who play with you? Ye do not injure your families; but do ye not occasion other men to injure theirs? Ye are guilty of no fraud; but do ye not tempt others to be fraudulent?

What becomes in your moral system of those maxims of Scripture that require us to contribute to the the excision of all wicked doers from the city of the Lord,' Psal. ci. 8. to discountenance those who commit a crime as well as to renounce it ourselves? The love of sensual pleasure makes us countenance people of the most irregular conduct, whose snares are the most dangerous, whose examples are the most fatal, whose conversations are the most pernicious to our children and to our families, to civil society and to the church of God.

In your system of morality, what becomes of those maxims of Scripture which expostulate with us, when the Lord chastiseth us, to be afflicted and mourn, to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God; to enter into our chambers, and shut the doors about us, to