this principle, that there can be religion without mo> rality, has prepared for him.

The fureft way to try the merit of any difputed notion,-is, to trace down the confequences fuch a notion has produced, and compare them with the Spirit of Christianity.It is the short and decifive rule, which our SAVIOUR has left for these, and fuch like cafes, and is worth a thoufand arguments By their fruits, fays he, ye shall know them.

Thus Religion and Morality, like fast friends and natural allies, can never be fet at variance, without the mutual ruin and difhonour of them both ;-and whoever goes about this unfriendly office, is no well wifher to either; and, whatever he pretends, he deceives his own heart;-and, I fear, his morality as: well as his religion will be vain.

I will add no farther to the length of this difccurfe, than by two or three fhort and independent rules, deducible from what has been faid.

ift, Whenever a man talks loudly against religion, always fufpect that it is not his reafon, but his paffions which have got the better of his creed.-A baď life and a good belief are difagreeable and troublesome neighbours; and, where they feparate, depend upon it, it is for no other caufe but quietnefs' fake.

2dly, When a man thus represented, tells you, in any particular instance, that fuch a thing goes against his confcience,—always believe he means exactly the fame thing as when he tells you fuch a thing goes. against his stomach,-a present want of appetite being generally the true caufe of both..

In a word ;-truft that man in nothing,-who has not a confcience in every thing.

And, in your own cafe, remember this plain diftinction, a mistake in which has ruined thousands,

That your confcience is not a law ;-no,-GOD and Reafon made the law, and has placed Confcience within you to determine-not like an Afiatic Cadi, according to the ebbs and flows of his own paffions; -but like a British Judge, in this land of liberty, who makes no new law,but faithfully declares that glorious law which he finds already written.

SERMON XXVIII.

Temporal Advantages of Religion.

PROVERBS 111. 17.

Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.

THERE are two opinions which the inconfiderate are apt to take upon truft.-The firft is, a vitious life is a life of liberty, pleasure, and happy advantages.--The fecond is-and which is the converfe of the first, that a religious life is a fervile and moft uncomfortable state.

The first breach which the devil made upon human innocence, was by the help of the first of these fuggestions, when he told Eve, that by eating of the tree of knowledge, fhe fhould be as GOD; that is, fhe fhould reap fome high and ftrange felicity, from doing what was forbidden her.-But I need not repeat the fuccefs.-Eve learned the difference between good and evil by her tranfgreffion, which fhe knew not before;-but then fhe fatally learned, at the fame time, that the difference was only this-that good is that which can only give the mind pleasure and comfort, and that evil is that which muft neceflarily be attended, fooner or later, with fhame and forrow.

As the deceiver of mankind thus began his triumph -fo has he carried it on, ever fince,

over our race;

by the very fame argument of delufion; that is, by poffeffing men's minds early with great expectations of the prefent incomes of fin,-making them dream of wondrous gratifications they are to feel, in following their appetites in a forbidden way,

making them fancy that their own grapes yield not fo delicious a taste as their neighbour's, and that they fhall quench their thirft with more pleasure at his fountain, than at their own. This is the opinion which at first too generally prevails,―till experience and proper feafons of reflection make us all, at one time or other, confefs-that our counfellor has been (as from the beginning) an impoftor,-and that, instead of fulfilling these hopes of gain and sweetness in what is forbidden-that, on the contrary, every unlawful eniovment leads only to bitterness and lofs.

The fecond opinion, or, That a religious life is a fervile and uncomfortable state, has proved a no less fatal and capital false principle in the conduct of inexperience through life,-the foundation of which miftake arifing chiefly from this previous wrong judgment, that true happiness and freedom lies in a man's always following his own humour,-that to live by moderate and prefcribed rules, is to live without joy, that not to profecute our paffions, is to be cowards, and to forego every thing for the tedious diftance of a future life.

Was it true, that a virtuous man could have no pleasure but what should arise from that remote profpect, own, we are by nature fo goaded on by

the defire of present happiness, that, was that the case, thousands would faint under the discouragement of fo remote an expectation.-But, in the mean time, the Scriptures give us a very different profpect of this matter.-There we are told, that the service of GOD is true liberty,that the yoke of Christianity is easy, in comparison of that yoke which must be brought upon us by any by any other fyftem of living ;and the text tells of wifdom- -by which he means: Religion, that it has pleasantness in its way, as well as glory in its end—that it will bring us peace and ' joy, fuch as the world cannot give. So that, upon examining the truth of this affertion, we shall be fet right in this error, by feeing that a religious man's happiness does not ftand at fo tedious a diftancebut is fo prefent, and, indeed, so infeparable from him, as to be felt and tafted every hour; and, of this, even the vitious can hardly be infenfible, from what he may perceive to fpring up in his mind, from any casual act of virtue. And though it is a pleasure that properly belongs to the good, yet let any one try the experiment, and he will fee what is. meant by that moral delight, arifing from the con-fcience of well-doing.Let him but refresh the bowels of the needy, let him but comfort the broken-hearted—or check an appetite-or overcome a temptationor receive an affront with temper and meeknefs, and he fhall find the tacit praise of what he has done, darting through his mind, accompanied with a fincere pleasure ;-conscience playing the monitor even to the loofe and moft inconfiderate, in their moft cafual acts of well-doing, and is, like an

DS