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SERMON I

PROVERBS iii. 17.

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

T

HERE are two opinions which the inconfiderate are apt to take upon

truft.-The firft is a vicious life, is a life of liberty, pleasure, and happy advantages.-The fecond is—and which is the converse of the first-that a religious life is a fervile and most uncomfortable state.

The first breach, which the devil made upon human innocence, was by the help of the first of these fuggeftions, when he told Eve, that by eating of the tree of knowlege, she should be as God, that is, fhe fhould reap fome high and strange felicity from doing what was for

bidden her. But I need not repeat the fuccefs-Eve learnt the difference between good and evil by her tranfgreffion, which she knew not before-but then fhe fatally learnt at the fame time, that the difference was only thisthat good is that which can only give the mind pleasure and comfort-and that evil is that, which must neceffarily be attended fooner or later with fhame and forrow.

As the deceiver of mankind thus began his triumph over our race-fo has he carried it on ever fince by the very fame argument of delufion. That is, by poffeffing men's minds early with great expectations of the present 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 tafte as their neighbours, and that they fhall quench their thirst with more pleasure at his fountain, than at their own. This is the opinion which at first too generally prevails-till experience and proper seasons of reflection make us all at one time or other

confefs-that our counsellor has been (as from

the beginning) an imposture—and that instead of fulfilling these hopes of gain and sweetness in what is forbidden-that on the contrary, every unlawful enjoyment leads only to bitternefs 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 unexperience through life-the foundation of which mistake 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 prescribed rules, is to live without joy-that not to profecute our paffions is to be cowards and to forego every thing for the tedious distance of a future life.

Was it true that a virtuous man could have no pleasure but what should arise from that remote profpect-I own we are by nature so goaded on by the defire of present happiness, that was that the cafe, thousands would faint under the discouragement of so remote an expectation. But in the mean time the Scriptures give us a very different prospect of this

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