State of Wisdom, would have only increased their judicial blindness. To bear this effusion of light undazzled, they had need of the instant aid of that SPIRIT OF TRUTH which was not yet come, but only promised to be sent.

Indeed, when this sacred Guide, who was to lead men into all truth, came down from above, and while he continued, in an extraordinary manner, to enlighten the Understandings of the Faithful, there was no occasion for this enforced Ministry of Folly to contribute to her own overthrow: And therefore, the first Ministers of the Gospel proceeded to the Establishment of Truth in a direct line, and on the solid principles of Wisdom only. Yet now again, in the ordinary effusions of the Holy Spirit, this direction of Solomon will be as useful as ever to the interests of Virtue and Religion-ANSWER A FOOL ACCORDING TO HIS FOLLY, LEST HE BE

WISE IN HIS OWN CONCEIT.

SERMON XXII.

Preached before the King, in Lent, 1761.

PROVERBS, Chap. xiv. ver. 9.

FOOLS MAKE A MOCK AT SIN.

HIS strange impiety, the Wise man fairly marks

THIS

as the utmost excess of Folly: For, having just before told us, that Fools despise wisdom, and that they hate knowledge, he completes their character, by observing, that they make a mock at Sin.

By the term fool, in common life, we understand one whom the powers of Reason have forsaken; but Religion gives it to that still more unhappy Being, who forsakes Reason; to that miserable Man who, rejecting the Guide which God and Nature have appointed for his direction, suffers himself to be misled by various Impostors, who have ridiculously usurped her name and office.

The Young are generally borne away by the Passions and Affections; the Old are mostly drawn aside by Habit and Custom; and all ages, both Young and Old, groan under the slavery of FASHION; which

yet,

yet, with all its airs of superior importance, at last resolves itself into a servile compliance with the caprices of others.

The Passions and Affections make the fiercest attack upon human Virtue; but Reason being then upon its guard, in its full vigour, and unimpaired by those prejudices, which a long commerce with the World hath made us to contract, if men yield to the sudden violence of the Appetites, they have suffered themselves to be betrayed by indolence, cowardice, a false selfishness, or from some cause which true Wisdom disavows and condemns.

As the Passions overpower and trample upon Reason; so Habit, by gentle and insensible degrees, throws it into a kind of Lethargy, which makes it insensible of right and wrong. But whenever it does so, it is by our own fault, a shameful neglect in not calling upon Reason to try and examine our habits, by the test she offers; which would presently shew us, what is permitted, and what is to be condemned.

The last and most impudent Impostor of all, is what men call FASHION, which imperiously enjoins submission to the Fancies of others. And this Dominion over fools is far more extensive than the other two. Our love of pleasure makes us confederate with the Passions, against Reason; our love of ease inclines us to fall in with habit against Reason; but it is Vanity alone which draws us to follow the FASHION, against her And Vanity having a more general, as well as more lasting sway, over the human heart, than either appetite or custom, it follows, that more are misled by the fashion, which Others give us, than either by

the

the passions, which Nature gave us, or by the habits, which we give ourselves.

Let us see then the sentiments of each of these slaves of folly, with regard to this mortal enemy of our Nature, SIN.

1. The man who is borne away from reason and virtue by the violence of his Appetites, has often, during that tempestuous Season, a true sense of his condition; and is ready to confess or to complain, in the words of St. Paul-The good, which I would, that I do not; but the evil, which I would not, that I do. Such a one will be so far from mocking, or being disposed to make himself merry with the idea of Sin, that he will look on it with horror, from the mischiefs which he sees it ready to produce; and on himself with resentment and contempt, for the baseness of his subjection to it: So that, while this unequal struggle continues between his Passions and his Reason, he will have very little disposition to preposterous mirth.

2. But when once the criminal gratification of his passions is grown into a Habit, the abhorrence of sin is at an end. He looks upon it, in its daily temptations, with the same unconcern that he re ceives the services of a deformed Domestic; who, at first perhaps, was never seen without dislike or horror, which a familiar converse has long since worn out. But still, mere use and habit will never carry the pliant perversity of our Nature much further: It will never bring us to make a jest of our Misery, or to try if we can laugh Sin out of its nature; and, VOL. X. G while

while its dreadful effects still object themselves to our senses and experience, to ridicule it as an empty Pantom, conjured up between the Nurse and the Priest.

3. No. To arrive at this perfection in Folly, we must have made the opinion of other men the standard of our manners; or, in plainer words, we must have become the FOOLS OF FASHION.

Now, in the polite World, Vice is entertained very differently from the reception it finds amongst Little People who sin, and are ashamed, and so turn Hypocrites to men; who sin, and are absolved, and so turn Hypocrites to God: While the part of the Man of Fashion is to sin bravely: to regard the natural bashfulness attending the breach of God's commandments, as the ill-bred shame of the Rustic; and repentance, as a kind of poltronery, in which his honour and reputation suffer. So that whenever a serious remonstrance is made to one of these, of the iniquity of his ways, this Fool of Fashion makes a mock at Sin, as deriving its fanciful existence from nothing but the sly contrivances of our Civil and our Spiritual Governors.

But as, in the numerous tribe of polite Vices, there are still some higher in the fashion than others, and therefore capable of a livelier defence, and deserving of a stronger ridicule on the Reprover; a cursory view of them will be sufficient to shew in which quarter the folly lies; whether under the mask of formal wisdom, where these Gentlemen direct us to seek it, or in the barefaced pleasantry of their own darling ridicule,