Would to God! there was any other reason to incline one to fo charitable a belief;-for without running into any common-place declamation upon the wickednefs of the age,-we may fay within the bounds of truth, -that we have profited in this refpect as little as it was poffible for the Jews; that there is as little virtue, -and as little fenfe of religion, at leaft as little of the appearance of it, as can be fuppofed to exist at all, in a country where it is countenanced by the state. Our forefathers, whatever greater degrees of real virtue they were poffeffed of,-God, who fearcheth the heart,-beft knows ;but this is certain, in their days they had at least—the form of godliness,

-and paid this compliment to religion, as to wear at least the appear. ance and outward garb of it.-The public fervice of God was better frequented, and in a devout, as well as regular manner;-there was no open profaneness in our streets to put piety to the blush,-or domeftic ridicule, to make her uneafy, and force her to withdraw.

Religion, though treated with freedon, was still treated with refpect;— the youth of both fexes kept under greater restraint ;-good orders and good hours were then kept up in most families; and, in a word, a greater ftrictnefs and fobriety of manners maintained throughout amongst people of all ranks and conditions ;-fo

that vice, however fecretly it might be practifed, was afhamed to be

feen.

But all this has infenfibly been borne down, ever fince the days of our forefathers trefpafs ;-when, to avoid one extreme, we began to run into another;-fo that inftead of any great religion amongst us, you fee thoufands who are tired even of the form of it, and who have at length thrown the mask of it afide,-as an useless incumbrance.

But this licentiousness, he would fay, may be chiefly owing to a long courfe of profperity, which is apt to corrupt mens minds.-God has fince this tried you with afflictions;-you

have been vifited with a long and expenfive war :-God has fent, moreover, a pestilence amongst your cattle, which has cut off the ftock from the fold, and left no herd in the stalls.

Surely he'll fay,-two fuch terrible fcourges must have awakened the confciences of the most unthinking part of you, and forced the inhabitants of your land-from fuch admonitions, though they failed with the Jews, to have learnt righteousness for themselves.

I own this is the natural effect, and one would hope should always be the natural use and improvement from fuch calamities; for we often find that numbers who, in profperity, feem to forget God, do yet remember

him in the day of trouble and diftrefs.-Yet confider this nationally,we fee no fuch effect from it in fact, as one would be led to expect from the speculation:-for instance,-with all the devaftation, bloodshed, and expence which the war has occafioned, how many converts has it made to frugality,-to virtue, or even to seriousness itself?-The peftilence amongst our cattle,-though it has diftreffed and utterly undone fo many thousands, yet what one vifible alteration has it made in the course of our lives?

And though one would imagine that the neceffary drains of taxes for

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the one, and the lofs of rents and

property from the other, fhould in