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that is to fay, I will for ever forfake you; I will leave you fingle; I will deliver you up to your inclinations, and to the falfe peace of your paffions I will no longer be your God, your protector, your fpoufe; I will for ever forsake you.

But may I here finifh my miniftry, my brethren, with the words formerly made ufe of by Jefus Chrift, in finishing his miffion to an ungrateful people? You have refused to believe in me, faid he to them a few days before his death; you have shut your eyes against the light; you have had ears, yet you heard not: I go, and you shall die in your blindness. If you were ftill blind, and if you had ne. ver known the truth, your fin would be more excusable; but at present you see, I have announced to you the truths which my Father had taught me; and therefore your fin is without excufe: your obftinacy is confummate; you have rejected that falvation which shall be offered to you no more, and the guilt of the truth despised must for ever be upon your head.

Great God! fhould this then be the price of my toils, and the whole fruit of my ministry? Could the unworthinefs of the inftrument, which thou haft employed to announce thy word, have destroyed its efficacy, and placed a fatal impediment to the progrefs of the gospel? No, my dear brethren, the virtue of the word of the crofs is not attached to that of the minifter who announces it. In the hands of the Lord, clay can give fight to the blind; and, when he pleaseth, the walls of Jericho fall at the found of the weakest trumpets. I trust then in the Lord for you, my brethren; that having received his word with gladness, as Paul formerly faid to the believers of Corinth; that having received it, not as the word of a man, weak, a 1 finner,

finner, and full of wants, all calculated to deftroy the work of the gofpel, and unworthy of fo great a ministry, but as the word even of God, it fhall fructify in you; and that, on the awful day of judgment, when account fhall be demanded from me of my ministry, and, from you of the fruit which you have reaped from it, I fhall be your defence and your juftification, and you my glory and my crown. So do I ardently with it.

SERMON

SERMON III.

ON THE VICES AND VIRTUES OF THE GREAT,

MATTHEW iv. 8.

And the Devil fheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and faith unto him, all these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worShip me.

HUMAN

UMAN profperities have always been one of the most dangerous wiles employed by the devil to entrap men. He knows that the love of fame and of distinction is so natural to us, that, in general, nothing is confidered as too much for their attainment; and that the use of them is fo feducing, and fo apt to lead aftray, that nothing is more rare than piety furrounded with pomp and power.

Nevertheless, it is God alone who raiseth up the great and the powerful; who placeth you above the reft, in order to be the fathers of the people, the comforters of the afflicted, the refuge of the helpless, the fupports of the church, the protectors of virtue, and the models of all believers.

Suffer then, my brethren, that, entering into the fpirit of our gospel, I here lay before you the dangers, as well

as

as the advantages of your ftate; and that I point out to you the obftacles and the facilities which the rank, to which, through providence you are born, prefents to your dif charge of the duties of a Chriftian life.

Great temptations, I confefs, are attached to your station; but it has likewife as great refources: people of rank are born, it would feem, with more paffions than the reft of men; yet have they alfo the opportunity of practifing more virtues: their vices are followed with more consequences; but their piety becomes also more beneficial: in a word, they are much more culpable than the people when they forget their God; but they have likewise more merit in remaining faithful to him.

My intention, therefore, at present, is to represent to you the extenfive good, or the boundless evils, which al'ways accompany your virtues or vices; to convince you of what influence the elevated rank to which you are born, is towards good, or towards evil; and, laftly, to render irregularity odious to you, by unfolding the inexplicable confequences which your paffions drag after them; and piety amiable, through the unutterable benefits which al'ways follow your good examples. It would matter little to point out the dangers of your station, were the advantages of it not likewise to be shown. The Chriftian pulpit declaims in general against the grandeurs and the glory of the age; but it would be of little avail to be continually fpeaking of your complaints, were their remedies not held out to you at the fame time. These are the two truths which I mean to unite in this difcourfe, by laying before you the endless confequences of the vices of the great and powerful, and what ineftimable benefits flow from their

virtues.

PART

PART I. "A fore trial fhall come upon the mighty, fays "the Spirit of God; for mercy will foon pardon the mean"eft; but mighty men shall be mightily tormented."

It is not, my brethren, because he is mighty himself, that the Lord, as the Scriptures fay, rejects the great and the mighty, or that rank and dignity are titles hateful in his eyes, to which his favours are denied, and which, of themselves, constitute our guilt. With the Lord there is no exception of perfons: he is the Lord of the cedars of Lebanon, as well as of the humble hyffop of the valley: he causes his fun to rife over the highest mountains, as well as over the lowest and obfcureft places; he hath formed the stars of heaven, as well as the worms which crawl upon the earth: the great are even more natural images of his greatness and glory, the minifters of his authority, the means through which his liberalities and generofity are poured out upon his people. And I come not here, my brethren, in the ufual language, to pronounce anathemas against human grandeurs, and to make your ftation a crime, fince that very station, comes from God, and that the object in queftion is not fo much to exaggerate the perils of it, as to point out the infinite ways of falvation attached to that rank to which, through the will of providence, you have been born.

But, I fay, that the fins of the great and powerful have two characters of enormity which render them infinitely more punishable before God, than the fins of the commonality of believers: ftly, the fcandal; 2dly, ingratitude.

The scandal. There is no crime to which the gospel leaves lefs hope of forgiveness than that of being a ftumbling-block to our brethren: "Wo unto the man," said

Jefus