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fore afford to put clothes upon the naked. He eats and drinks for health and refreshment; and his wits are always with him. As he feeds not to excess, he can spare something to feed the hungry. If he be the father of a family; he is their friend and protector; he looks upon them with kindness and affection; and they look up to him with gratitude and delight. His speech is with grace; and his words are the words of truth and soberness; the ignorant derive light from it, and the afflicted help and comfort. Hymns and psalms give calmness and sweetness to his mind; and when God is exalted, he is lifted toward heaven; which place he will reach at last; for his charities and his affections went thither before him.

Such may be, and such, by the blessing of God, hath been the life and the end of many a wise man : but what is the other? what is the servant of sin? He begins with folly, and ends with misery. His time has neither order nor value: a thousand years of such time would be worth nothing. His object is pleasure; but he is always out of the road for an unnatural world can never prove to be a pleasant world., His wealth is devoured by himself; or lost and squandered away upon hawks and harpies; who would tear the flesh off his bones, and never thank him, for any thing they get by him. By eating, or drinking to excess, his understanding is darkened; his body is distempered; and his life is cut short. The ill company he keeps at home by their faithlessness and ingratitude, disappoint him, distress him, and ruin him; and, in the end, he treats them, and they treat him, with mutual curses and accusations, As to his conversation, the best of it is seasoned with foolish jesting, and the worst of it is poisoned with blasphemy. His music is the noise of intoxication; it gives glory to vice

and folly; and his mirth is the crackling of thorns under a pot, which consume themselves with their own blaze. When he has done what mischief he can to himself and others, he comes to his last hour; but there is no comfort to be found a dreadful gulph is before him; God hath not been in all his thoughts: the world which he abused is going from him; and a worse is coming; toward which, every step of his life was leading him; but he saw not the end.

The two men I have now been describing appear like the inhabitants of two different worlds. They certainly belong to two classes of beings; the first to the children of light; the other to the poor disappointed children of this world, who love darkness rather than light.

Methinks I hear some of you cry out, " What would I give to be like the first of these men ?" And hath not God called you for this very end, and taught you how to be like him; and promised to assist you, in the endeavour to make yourself like him? If you dread the other character, hath not God taught you how to avoid it? Has he not forewarned you of the deceitfulness of sin; what a cheat it is; and how it betrays into certain misery? Conquered you may be; but you never can be taken by surprize, when you have had so many warnings.

You may now see by example, that man is the maker of most evils; for the greater part are occasioned by the abuse of this world; and they are in most danger of abusing it, who have most of it in their possession. Men look up to them with admiration for what they have got, and praise the happiness of their situation; but, unless they have wisdom along with their riches, they are to be pitied, rather than envied, for their temptations and dangers. The poor

man has not so much to fear, yet he can find ways of abusing the world to his own ruin: so that all men, rich and poor, should learn in time, what it is to use it wisely if they do not, they see the consequence; the whole subject has been reduced to matter of fact.

And now, who can behold, without sorrow of heart, what man is, when it is considered what he might be ! But how dreadful does the case become, when it is added, that man has but one life to live in this world; if he throws that away, there is no second trial: he never returns to correct his mistake; he is never permitted to try the world over again; and if he were to try it a thousand times, he would always miscarry, if he is not with God, and God is not with him.

Thrice happy, then, is he, who looking up to God, and following his rules, and depending upon his protection, is in the way of deliverance: who, looking upon the world as a wide-ocean, sees others tossed in the storm, while his own feet are upon firm land; who, having used this world according to the sense of the Apostle in the text, shall be admitted to the use of a better, where there shall be neither abuses nor offences, but righteousness and peace without end, and without interruption.

SERMON XXI.

CALLING AND ELECTION.

PREFACE.

EVIL is not yet established by law in this country; but good

and evil have been growing up together so long, that they will never more be separated, unless it shall be in some small remnant of Christians. By means of predestination falsely stated, the rights of God and his ministry are so far forgotten, that we are getting every day nearer to Babel, and further from Jerusalem. In the last century, this Calvinistic corruption swallowed up both Church and State, and it threatens to do so again, if it be not guarded against, more than I expect it will be. It will not work directly and with the same violence as before, but slowly and by way of sap, under the name, appearance and intention of good, as evil always does, when most mischief is intended. We cannot wonder, that it is so unmerciful now in consigning the souls of men to perdition, when we remember how cruelly it treated their bodies and estates formerly. God, who saved us before, cannot be expected to save us again, by any equally extraordinary interposition, where the error is the same as before; I have therefore drawn up these few hints to set wise men on thinking: if I had been in health, I would have carried them much farther: I pray God to turn them to good, to the end that old apostolical faith, that piety and peace, may still remain among us.

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