us of the established church take heed, lest, to avoid enthusiasm, we fall into coldness, or lukewarmness; lest we be too little righteous, through a fear of being righteous over-much. But enough of caution. I trespass on your time.

Let us conclude, with representing to our minds, in the most lively manner, the infinite advantages of living in a state of Grace. To have within us, even in our hearts, an emanation of the Deity! to undergo a renewing of our minds, a new creation, to become a new man. To overcome the weakness of our nature introduced by the Fall; to regain our likeness to the image of God, according to which man was created in righteousness, and true holiness. In this state of darkness, wickedness, and misery, to be enlightened, sanctified and comforted by the spirit of truth! These are the glories of Christianity; these her honourable triumphs over the beggarly inventions of human wisdom.

Be it our constant care to keep our hearts open to those fertilizing showers of grace, which descend from heaven, and produce the blossoms of hope, the fruits of all virtue, and all happiness. Under its powerful influence, and refreshed by the streams flowing from the fountain of life, we shall grow and flourish in Christian perfection, like a tree planted by the water side. Let us sow of the spirit in the good soil of a good and honest heart; for we are expressly informed, that he that soweth of the spirit, shall of the spirit reap life everlasting. Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God; and let us joyfully and gratefully remember, that, there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit.

And God grant that, forgetting all animosities, whether of religious sects or of private life, we may all taste the fruits of the Spirit-love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: Lovely qualities, which must cause earth to anticipate that Heaven to which they lead.

SERMON IV.

CORRUPTION OF HEART THE SOURCE OF IRRELIGION AND IMMORALITY.

PSALM XCV. 10.-It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways.

As worldly honour and emolument frequently attend superior abilities, many, who are by no means actuated by virtuous motives, eagerly pursue intellectual improvement, and all the ornaments of various erudition. A great number is urged up the steeps of science, by a principle of pride and selfinterest. But this desire to improve the natural sagacity, and to enlarge the boundaries of knowledge, for the sake of worldly interest, is seldom accompanied with any solicitude for the melioration of the heart. Men who are justly anxious to become, and to be esteemed, able and learned, are too often indifferent on the subject of their moral and religious character. Let the world admire their wit, their acuteness, their strength of reason and depth of learning, and they regard not its opinion of their morals, any farther than it may be conducive to their interest to be externally decent and tolerably punctual in pecuniary negociations.

It is obvious to observe, that even in the common course of education much less attention is paid by many to the culture of the heart, than to the improvement of the understanding, and the acquisition of shining accomplishments. While a boy displays what is called a fine spirit in mischievous frolics, and makes a tolerable appearance in the studies of his school, some are unwise enough to admire instead of reprobating his propensity to evil. Such a propensity, if attended with a certain sprightliness of manners, is too often considered as a mark of genius, and a certain presage of future eminence; a fatal error, which tends to pollute life at the very fountain, and to infuse such impurity into all its progréssive streams, as they may possibly carry with them into the ocean of eternity.

Every competent judge of that which makes and keeps us happy, must lament this conduct, as he must be convinced that more happiness arises to the individual and to society, from goodness of disposition, than from great parts and brilliant accomplishments. When they are all united in the same person, they greatly enhance each other's value; but if they are to be separated, it is certain that goodness of heart, rectitude of intention, meekness, innocence, and simplicity, are infinitely more desirable, than wit, eloquence, and erudition.

Those, indeed, whose hearts are right, will seldom fall into fatal or irretrievable mistakes, by the defects of their understandings, or of their acquired knowledge. It is the obliquity of the heart which causes the most frequent and most destructive instances of immorality and irreligion. It is a people that do ERR IN THEIR HEART, says the text, and they have not known my ways; a plain intimation, that an ignorance of the ways of God, of truth and virtue, is

commonly produced, by the corruption of the will and affections, and not by a want of intellectual ability. From these words I shall take occasion to enforce the necessity of cultivating the heart, in order to arrive at happiness and wisdom; and I shall endeavour to represent the effects of an erring, or bad heart, on our own happiness, the happiness of others, and our acceptance with God.

I. "The first vengeance on the guilty," said a heathen poet, "is that which is inflicted on his bosom by his own conscience." Notwithstanding the pains which the wicked take to deaden their sensibility, they cannot entirely divest themselves of it; and the malignity of their hearts will give them many a severe pang in the midst of their highest enjoyments, and throw a gloom over their minds in the day of their brightest prosperity. A righteous Providence has decreed that every bad man should be a self-tormentor.

But supposing the wicked to have arrived at that hardened state which enables them to stifle conscience, and to despise the pungency of remorse; yet their corrupted hearts are of themselves, independently of religious compunction, engines of perpetual self-torment. The badness of their hearts is, as it were, a serpent, which they carry in their bosom, and which stings and bites them in their softest moments of pleasure and repose. They bear their own hell within them; and if there were no other, would be punished enough by this, to evince the wisdom and happiness of him who has reformed his heart, and preserved it pure, by his own diligence cooperating with the assistance of divine grace.

Is there any mode of torture devised by the cruel ingenuity of man, comparable to the inward corrosions of envy? This vice, which is always prevalent

in a bad heart, turns all the brighter prospects of life into darkness, the fairest into deformity, and would of itself be sufficient to unparadise an Eden. A sound heart is the life of the flesh, says Solomon, but envy the rottenness of the bones.

Is it not certain, that anger, hatred, and malice, occasion more misery to those who entertain them, than to those against whom they are directed? The heart in which such dispositions have fixed their abode, is emphatically compared to a troubled sea. It has no rest. It foams, it is violently agitated with every blast, it is dashed against the rocks, it casteth up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked. But is there any happiness independent of peace? There may be mirth, and noise, and riot, and a violent ebullition of the animal spirits, but there cannot be any sincere enjoyment without tranquillity. It has pleased the benevolent Creator to render the malignant passions painful to the bosom which harbours them; evidently with a design to stimulate men to divest themselves of their influence, by suggesting the most powerful of all motives, those of self-interest and self-satisfaction. If you will persist in bearing hatred, anger, and malice, against those whom reason, nature, and religion, teach you to love, you shall be the first to suffer. So have ordained the law of nature, and the word of God. Miserable man that thou art, thou impotently and diabolically endeavourest to diffuse misery on all who are so unfortunate as to be connected with thee; but, by a just and merciful dispensation, it falls first, and principally, on thyself; a merciful dispensation, because it may chastise thee till thou art led to seek and to effect a reform in thy heart, a purification of that source from which happiness and misery must be derived.