neglect and despise the house and worship of God, we may be certain, neglect and despise every thing sacred and divine; and have lost all sense of the infinite weight and importance of eternal realities. And when these objects have lost their weight and influence upon the minds of a people, there is nothing to restrain them from the grossest vices and immoralities.

We have criminally departed from the noble and virtuous examples of our pious ancestors, in neglecting family religion and family government. They brought up their children and those committed to their care in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and warned them against every appearance of evil. They strictly guarded them in their young and inexperienced age, and actually restrained them from that company, and from those places, where they would be eminently exposed to temptation. And to impress all their instructions and admonitions the deeper on their tender minds, they called them together every morning and evening to the private devotions of the family. This general and strict observance of family religion and family government, which went hand in hand and strengthened each other, did, for more than a century, preserve our virtues, and prevent a general corruption of morals. But now these strongest bulwarks of virtue and piety are gone. For family devotion and parental instruction and discipline are very generally neglected and despised. Many of the rising families do neither exhibit the forms of religion, nor the examples of virtue. They cast off fear, and restrain prayer before God, and neglect the important duties which they owe to Him, to the public, to themselves, and to the precious souls committed to their care and instruction. These prayerless and irreligious families are the hives of vice. And from these, we may expect, will issue swarms of prayerless children, prayerless parents, ungovernable subjects, and prodigies of wickedness, to disturb the peace of society, and to propagate irreligion and immorality from generation to generation.

There is no vice in nature more debasing and destructive to men than the vice of intemperance. It robs them of their reason, reputation, and interest. It renders them unfit for human society. It degrades them below the beasts that perish, and justly exposes them to universal odium and contempt. But even this mean and shameful vice has become extremely common and fashionable amongst us. Multitudes may be seen every day, and almost every where, wallowing in drunkenness, and glorying in their shame. Intemperance appears not only in public houses, and at public places, but in private families, and among individuals of every age and every sex.

Those foreign liquors, which were once used as mere cordials and delicacies only, are now used by many, as common and necessary articles of life. The consumption of intoxicating spirits is tenfold greater now than in time past, and a thousandfold greater than it ever ought to be in time to come. Among all our vices, there is none so rapid in its progress, nor so fatal in its consequences, as this of intemperance. And unless it be seasonably restrained, it will assuredly turn the poor men into sots, the rich men into beggars, and the wise men into fools.

Prodigality reigns among us in every form, and in every place, covering the heads of rich and poor with the feathers of folly and pride. Those silks which ought to be worn by those nations to whom they were given for use, are become the common ornaments not only of our ladies and gentlemen, but of multitudes in the lowest ranks of life. The rage for foreign manufactures, foreign fashions, foreign customs and manners, seems to have seized people of every class, and rendered them totally blind to their own, as well as to the public good. Our resources are by no means sufficient to support our prodigality and extravagance. We live in a country formed by nature for agriculture rather than for commerce. We shall never be able, therefore, to support that luxury and profusion, which the more commercial and opulent nations have been able to support. A people who are obliged to labor with their hands, must never indulge in the fopperies and ornaments of dress, but always practice the rigid virtues of industry and economy. It is our wisdom and honor, therefore, as a distinct and separate nation, to form our own customs and manners agreeably to our own peculiar genius, situation, and climate. Besides, we are now loaded with a public debt of many millions, which requires all our exertions, and the most frugal application of all our resources, to discharge. The voice of prudence, the demands of justice, and even the cries of necessity, unitedly urge us to a reformation of manners, and a general disuse of foreign superfluities. And unless we seasonably hearken to these admonitions, we have nothing to expect, but to reap the fruits of our folly in poverty and shame.

I might still add to this long list of vices, injustice, avarice, oppression, indolence, gaming, and almost every other species of corruption, which ever disgraced the most abandoned people. But it is time to observe,

That all these open and gross immoralities, which I have now mentioned, are in the strictest sense, land-defiling and God-provoking iniquities, which threaten to destroy our highest and best interests, both for time and eternity. If public

vices have invariably destroyed single individuals, private families, and whole nations and kingdoms in time past; it is the height of folly for us to imagine, that the same vices in time to come will not be followed with the same serious and fatal consequences. If the laws of nature remain, and the same causes continue to produce the same effects, our sins will as certainly, and much more rapidly, destroy us, as the same sins have actually destroyed other nations. For,

Vice is the bane of a republic, and immediately saps the foundations of liberty. If our industry, economy, temperance, justice, and public faith, are once extinguished by the opposite vices, our boasted constitution, which is built upon the pillars of virtue, must necessarily fall. And if any other form of government should happen to arise from its ruins, it must be one which springs from corruption, which is administered by corruption, and which tends to spread and perpetuate corruption.

Heaven

Besides, we have more reason than any other nation, to expect that our vices will speedily awaken the displeasure of the Almighty, and draw down his judgments upon us. has favored us with great and distinguishing privileges. We have been indulged with more instructions and examples of virtue and religion, than any other nation on earth. We have had line upon line, and precept upon precept. We have been planted in the house of the Lord. We have lived in virtuous and religious families. And great numbers of us have been long inured to the political virtues of economy, industry, temperance, and commutative justice. By falling into vice, therefore, we shall do violence to our customs and habits, as well as to the enlightened dictates of reason and conscience. Add to all this, the great and marvellous deliverances, which God has, from age to age, and especially of late, granted to our nation. These will amazingly aggravate our guilt, if we forsake the author of our mercies and the God of our fathers, and defile the land which he hath taken from the heathens and given to us. We may justly conclude, therefore, that God will deal with us for our sins, as he said he would deal with his own people, on whom he had bestowed great and distinguishing favors. "You only of all the families of the earth have I known, therefore I will punish you for your iniquities."

Now if our sins do really abound, and eminently expose us to ruin and reproach, what is our duty? Is there a single person at a loss to know? Our guilt and danger speak louder than words, and call upon us to exert every effort, to prevent and restrain the corruption of the times. But what course shall we pursue? Let us awake from our lethargy, consider our situation, and remove the grounds of our danger. We

shall be enemies to ourselves as well as the public, if we do not put away our strange vices, as the polluted Israelites put away theirs, in the days of Ezra, and in a time of reformation. And let us moreover do, as some of the same people did, on account of the corruption of morals. They sighed, and cried, and prayed for the guilty nation; and then united their exertions to reform their public vices. They entered into a solemn engagement, and sealed it with their own hands, to employ all their influence in restraining open and shameful immoralities. Nor let any imagine that it is either impracticable or fruitless in these times, to form unions in virtue to weaken and destroy combinations in vice. This mode of reformation has been tried, in various parts of the British dominions, with great success. At the end of the bishop of St. David's sermon, preached to the societies for the Reformation of Manners, is subjoined the three-and-thirtieth account of the progress made in the cities of London and Westminster, and places adjacent, by those virtuous and respectable societies. The account says, "This undertaking, begun by a few persons, has mightily spread itself, not only in Great Britain, but in foreign parts. And the great good which, by God's blessing, has been done by the said societies has very much animated their endeavors. They have likewise been encouraged by several royal proclamations, orders of sessions, presentments of grand juries, in many counties in England; by the lord mayors and court of aldermen in the city of London; by many sermons of the right reverend the bishops, and other eminent divines, preached to the societies, and by the writings of other learned men." ter this, the account farther says, "The said societies have presented, and been assisting in presenting, from the first day of December 1727, divers sorts of offenders, namely: For lewd and disorderly practices, common gaming houses, and other disorderly houses, common gamesters, profane swearing and cursing, exercising their trades or ordinary callings on the Lord's day, and for drunkenness; in all, one thousand three hundred and sixty-three.

Af

"The total number of persons prosecuted by the societies, in or near London only, for debauchery and profaneness, for thirty-six years last past, are calculated at about ninety-four thousand three hundred and twenty-two."

These accounts carry convincing evidence, that unions in virtue may be so formed and conducted, as to restrain, in some measure at least, the progress of vice. What is there then which can possibly prevent us, in this day of declension, from uniting our exertions for the reformation of manners, but merely the want of virtuous resolution? Were we sufficiently

possessed of virtuous resolution, we might easily form such respectable unions, as would put the bold and brazen vices to the blush, and cause them to creep into corners. Union is of singular service to any who are engaged in promoting the same common cause. It collects their wisdom, adds weight to their characters, and at the same time enlivens their zeal and fortitude. Indeed, union in a good cause scarcely ever fails of success. Can we therefore answer it to God, or to ourselves, if we neglect to pursue those measures, which we believe are wise and expedient, and would effectually check the progress of vice, and produce a reformation of manners? I mean not, however, to urge this point. I choose to submit this subject to your more private, deliberate, and solemn reflections.

But if the measure which we have now suggested should surpass the strength of your virtue; yet there remain many other methods of restraining vice, which lie equally open to every individual. Be entreated then to act properly as individuals, and exert all the influence of your private characters and connections, to restrain the licentiousness of the times.

Let the aged lead in this good design. They have lived to see the happy fruits of virtue, and the baneful effects of vice. They have lived to observe that course of conduct, by which these infant States gradually arose to greatness and affluence; and that course of conduct by which they are now subjected to great embarrassments. They have lived in the days of industry, economy and temperance, and owe their ease, reputation, and fortunes to the practice of these political virtues. They are able therefore, by their own observation and experience, to warn the young and inexperienced, of the folly and danger of departing from their primitive purity and simplicity of manners; and to exhibit the most forcible evidence, that diligence and virtue will raise men to wealth and honor, but idleness and vice will sink them to poverty and wretchedness.

It is the duty of parents to employ their peculiar power and authority in promoting the reformation of morals. They have the first and easiest access to their children, while their minds are young and tender, and susceptible of the deepest impressions. They have peculiar opportunity of inculcating the precepts of prudence, virtue and religion, before their minds have been hardened and corrupted by the pollutions of the world. They may, by a proper mixture of instruction, persuasion, authority, and example, form their external conduct and behavior, almost just as they please. And in this way they can do more to restrain the prevalence of vice, than all the exertions of ministers and rulers can do, without their particu