version and good of men, than their fel

lows; they do not content themselves with the middle regions of virtue, but are ever aspiring to the most sublime. He who is sensible that in the former part of his life he has greatly offended, and who does not find in himself these dispositions, has much reason to doubt his own sincerity; and thus have I suggested a criterion by which he may try it.

A second reason why the penitent should labour more abundantly, is, the danger of a relapse, to which, indifference or mediocrity of virtue would expose him. If he does not recede, as far as possible, from the confines of those sins, of which he has formerly been guilty-if he be not careful to avoid those situations, which he has experienced to lead to them-and to forsake those companions, in whose society he has so frequently transgressed-it is scarcely possible that he should preserve his inVOL. II. U tegrity;

SER M.

XIX.

XIX.

SERM. tegrity; his resolutions, however firm he may think them, will be transient as the morning cloud and the early dew, which so soon passeth away. Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed, lest he fall!-this caution is very necessary to be observed, even by those who have constantly gone on in an undeviating course of virtue; but it more peculiarly applies to him who is just emerging from the gulphs of vice; for even the very habit of sinning, independent of the depravity of heart which wickedness creates, will be continually soliciting his return. Let every one then, who is fully convinced of his former miscarriages, and truly sorry for them, constantly retain the example of St. Paul in his eye; and as that great apostle, who had erroneously offended, thought himself obliged to use such extraordinary efforts in favour of the religion of Jesus,-much more let him,

who

who has so frequently sinned knowingly SER M. and presumptuously, exert every faculty

of his soul, and employ every hour of his life, to exhibit himself a pattern of every Christian grace and every human virtue.

XIX.

SERMON XX.

THE TEMPORAL AND ETERNAL ADVANTAGES

OF GODLINESS.

I TIMOTHY iv. 8.

Godliness is profitable unto all things; having the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.

XX.

Ir is very unaccountable how it ever came SERM to be imagined that religion was an unprofitable and ill-natured thing, and that if a man was determined earnestly to follow it, he must give up all the pleasures of this world, and quit every hope of advancing himself in it. This persuasion, I say, is very unaccountable, since the contrary is evidently the case; the religious man is of all others by far the most likely to ob