forms of worship were practised; and among those you have signalized yourselves by the exactness of your attendance, by the zeal with which you have espoused their cause, and by the earnestness with which you have contended for such principles and practices.”—O sinner, I much fear that this zeal of thine, about the circumstantials of religion, will swell thine account, rather than be allowed in abatement of it. He that searches thine heart, knows from whence it arose, and how far it extended. Perhaps he sees that it was all hypocrisy; an artful veil, under which thou wast carrying on thy mean designs for this world; while the sacred name of God and religion was profaned and prostituted in the basest manner; and if so, thou art cursed with a distinguished curse, for so daring an insult on the divine omniscience, as well as justice. Or perhaps the earnestness with which you have been "contending for the faith and worship, which was once delivered to the saints," (Jude, ver. 3.) or which it is possible you may have rashly concluded to be that, might be mere pride and bitterness of spirit; and all the zeal you have expressed might possibly arise from a confidence of your own judgment, from an impatience of contradiction, or some secret malignity of spirit which delighted itself in condemning, and even in worrying others; yea, which (if I may be allowed the expression,) fiercely preyed upon religion, as the tiger upon the .amb, to turn it into a nature most contrary to its own. And shall this screen you before the great tribunal; shall it not rather awaken the displeasure it is pleaded to avert?

But say, that this zeal for notions and forms has been ever so well intended, and, so far as it has gone, ever so well conducted too; what will that avail towards vindicating thee in so many instances of negligence and disobedience, as are recorded against thee in the book of GOD's remembrance? Were the revealed doctrines of the gospe to be earnestly maintained, (as indeed they ought,) and was the great practical purpose for which they were revealed to be forgot? Were the very mint, anise, and cummin, to be tithed, and were

"the

weightier matters of the law to be omitted;" (Matt. xxiii. 23.) even that love to GOD, which is its "first and great command?" (Matt. xxii. 38.) O how wilt thou be able to vindicate even the justest sentence thou hast passed on others for their infidelity, or for their disobedience, without being "condemned out of thine own mouth!" (Luke xix. 22.)

Will you then plead, "your fair moral character, your works of righteousness and of mercy?" Had your obedience to the law of God been complete, the plea might be allowed, as important and valid. But I have supposed, and proved above, that conscience testifies to the contrary; and you will not now dare to contradict it. I add farther, Had these works of yours, which you now urge, proceeded from a sincere love to God, and a genuine faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you would not have thought of pleading them, any otherwise than as an evidence of your interest in the gospel covenant, and in the blessings of it, procured by the righteousness and blood of the Redeemer; and that faith, had it been sincere, would have been attended with such deep humility, and with such solemn apprehensions of the divine holiness and glory, that instead of pleading any works of your own before God, you would rather have implored his pardon for the mixture of sinful imperfection attending the very best of them. Now, as you are a stranger to this humbling and sanctifying principle, (which here, in this address, I suppose my reader to be,) it is absolutely necessary you should be plainly and faithfully told, that neither sobriety, nor honesty, nor humanity, will justify you before the tribunal of God, when he "lays judgment to the line, and righteousness to the plummet," (Isa. xxviii. 17.) and examines all your actions, and all your thoughts, with the strictest severity. You have not been a drunkard, an adulterer, or a robber. So far it is well. You stand before a righteous God, who will do you ample justice; and therefore will not condemn you for drunkenness, adultery, or robbery; but you have forgotten him, your parent, and your benefactor; you have "cast off fear and restrained prayer before him;" (Job

xv. 4.) you have depised the blood of his Son, and al. the immortal blessings that he purchased with it. For this therefore you are judged, and condemned. And as for any thing that has looked like virtue and humanity in your temper and conduct, the exercise of it has in a great measure been its own reward, if there were any thing more than form and artifice in it; and the various bounties of divine Providence to you amidst all you numberless provocations, have been a thousand times more than an equivalent for such defective and imperfect virtues as these. You remain therefore chargeable with the guilt of a thousand offences, for which you have no excuse; though there are some other instances, in which you did not grossly offend. And those good works, in which you have been so ready to trust, will no more vindicate you in his awful presence, than a man's kindness to his poor neighbours would be allowed as a plea in arrest of judgment, when he stood convicted of high treason against his prince.

But you will, perhaps, be ready to say, "You did not expect all this; you did not think the consequences of neglecting religion would have been so fatal." And why did you not think it? why did you not examine more attentively, and more impartially? why did you suffer the pride and folly of your vain heart to take up with such superficial appearances, and trust the light suggestions of your own prejudiced mind, against the express declarations of the word of GOD? Had you reflected on his character, as a supreme governor of the world, you would have seen the necessity of such a day of retribution, as we are now referring to. Had you regarded the scripture, the divine authority of which you professed to believe, every page might have taught you to expect it. "You did not think of religion!" and of what were you thinking, when you forgot or neglected it? had you too much employment of another kind? of what kind, I beseech you? what end could you propose by any thing else, of equal moment? nay, with all your engagements, conscience will tell you, that there have been seasons, when, for want of thought, time and life

have been a burden to you: yet you guarded against thought as an enemy, and cast up (as it were) an intrenchment of inconsideration around you on every side, as if it had been to defend you from the most dan gerous invasion. God knew you were thoughtless; and therefore he sent you "line upon line, and precept upon precept," (Isa. xxviii. 10.) in such plain language, that it needed no genius or study to understand it. He tried you too with afflictions, as well as with mercies, to awaken you out of your fatal lethargy; and yet, when awakened, 'you would lie down again upon the bed of sloth. And now, pleasing as your dreams might be, "you must lie down in sorrow." (Isa. l. 11.) Reflection has at last overtaken you, and must be heard as a tormentor, since it might not be heard as a friend.

But some may perhaps imagine, that one important apology is yet unheard, and that there may be room to say, "You were by the necessity of your nature impelled to those things, which are now charged upon you as crimes; whereas it was not in your power to have avoided them, in the circumstances in which you are placed." If this will do any thing, it indeed promises to do much; so much, that it will amount to nothing. If I were disposed to answer you upon the folly and madness of your own principles, I might say, that the same consideration, which proves it was necessary for you to offend, proves also that it is necessary for God to punish you; and that, indeed, he cannot but do it and I might farther say, with an excellent writer of our own age, * "that the same principles which destroy the injustice of sins, destroy the injustice of punishment too." But if you cannot admit this, if you should still reply in spite of principle, that it must be unjust to punish you for an action utterly and absolutely unavoidable; I really think you would answer right. But in that answer you will contradict your own. scheme, (as I observed above;) and I leave your conscience to judge, what sort of a scheme that must be which would make all kinds of

Bishop Butler's Analogy, page 135. 8vo. edit.

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punishment unjust for the argument will on the whole be the same, whether with regard to human punishment or divine. It is a scheme full of confusion and horror. You would not, I am sure, take it from a servant who had robbed you, and then fired your house: you would never inwardly believe, that he could not have helped it; or think, that he had fairly excused himself by such a plea. And I am persuaded, you would be so far from presuming to offer it to God at the great day, that you would not venture to turn it into a prayer even now. Imagine, that you saw a malefactor dying, with such words as these in his mouth: "O God, it is true, I did indeed rob and murder my fellow creatures; but thou knowest, that, as my circumstances were ordered, I could not do otherwise: my will was irresistibly determined by the motives which thou didst set before me; and I could as well have shaken the foundation of the earth, or darkened the sun in the firmament, as have resisted the impulse which bore me on." I put it to your conscience, whether you would not look on such a speech as this with detestation, as one enormity added to another. Yet if the excuse would have any weight in your mouth, it would have equal weight in his; or would be equally applicable to any, the most shocking occasion. But indeed it is so contrary to the plainest principles of common reason, that I can hardly persuade myself, any one could seriously and thoroughly believe it; and should imagine my time very ill employed here, if I were to set myself to combat those pretences to argument, by which the wantonness of human wit has attempted to varnish it over.

You see then, on the whole, the vanity of all your pleas, and how easy the most plausible of them might be silenced, by a mortal man, like yourself: how much more then by Him, who searches all hearts, and can, in a moment, flash in upon the conscience a most powerful and irresistible conviction. What then can you do, while you stand convicted in the presence of God? What should you do, but hold your peace under an inward sense of your inexcusable guilt, and prepare your