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in the enjoyment and promotion of peace and con cord, in benevolence and beneficence towards all men, in magnanimous facrifices for truth and integrity. Seek it in whatever is profitable to you and promises you pleasure, not only in this world, but alfo in that which is to come, in whatever has the approbation of your conscience, the approbation of all the wife and upright, the approbation of God, and fecures to you the loving-kindness and the gra cious retributions of your lord and judge, your father in heaven. Seek in fhort not to feem happy, but actually to be fo. Be not fo merely in the opinion and in the judgment of others, but in deed and in truth. Prefer the quiet, unobserved, enjoyment of real and lafting privileges and endowments, the enjoyment of rational, fedate and cheerful reflection, the enjoyment of a good, quiet confcience, the enjoyment of a virtuous heart and life, the enjoyment of the pleasures of beneficence, the enjoyment of a fervent devotion, the enjoyment of an affured, delightful profpect into a better world, prefer these enjoyments to all the marks of respect, all the pleasures and amusements that occupy the fenfes more than the mind, gratify the eyes more than the heart, produce more tumult than ferenity, and shed more falfe luftre than genial light around them. Seek only that, revere and love only that, ftrive only for that which can calm, rejoice and bless you at every time, in every state, in filence as well as in noife, in the hour of reflection and devo

tion as in the hour of recreation, in death as in life, in the future as in the prefent world. By thefe means, with such fentiments and efforts, ye will as certainly be happy and always become more happy, as certainly as God, the father and giver of all hap piness, has promised it by his fon Jefus,

SERMON XLVII.

Arguments against Vanity.

GOD, our appointment is truly great; and thy goodness leaves us in no want either of means or encouragements for being and continually more completely becoming that for which thou haft defigned us. Intelligent, wife, virtuous beings; creatures, raifing themfelves from one stage of perfection and bleffedness to another, thus ever coming nearer to thee, their creator and father, and ever farther qualifying themfelves for a fuperior better life, and for communion with thee: are what we all might and fhould become. Hereto haft thou called us as men and as chriftians. Hereto haft thou given us, in thy fon Jefus, the most perfect precurfor and leader. But alas, too frequently, o God, too frequently we lofe fight of him and of our appointment, and of the dignity of our nature and the grand purposes of thy wife bounty; forget what we are and ought to be; think, judge, act, as ignobly, as meanly as though we were creatures

of a quite different, far inferior fpecies; instead of allowing ourselves to be guided by that generous ambition, that avidity for real, durable perfection, which thou haft planted in our hearts, fubmitting to be governed by childish vanity; and thus, instead of rising, are ever falling lower! God of all mercies, do thou preferve our nature, the work of thy hands, from its total downfall. Do thou raise it again, by teaching us to think more juftly, to aspire after better and worthier objects, and to run with glad precipitance, with unabated ardour towards the glorious mark which thou haft fet before us. Let us always perceive more plainly the folly and the danger of whatever has a tendency to divert us from it, and ever avoid it with greater caution. Blefs to this end the inftruction now to be delivered. Grant that we may thoroughly perceive and feel its truth, accept it freely, lay it up in a good heart and make a faithful use of it. For all this we beseech thee as the votaries of thy fon Jefus, addreffing thee further in his name and words: Our father, &c.

PHILLIPP. ii. 3.

Let nothing be done through vain-glory.

THERE are faults and vices, my pious hearers,

which fo manifeftly appear to be what they really are, and the fhameful nature and injurious effects whereof present themselves fo clearly to the eyes of every one not totally thoughtless, that none will venture a word in their behalf; which whereever they are found, and under whatever form they affume, we immediately pronounce to be faults and vices, and abhor them as fuch, or at least account them worthy of deteftation and abhorrence. This is the cafe, for example, with robbery, murder, perjury, avarice, lying, open vengeance, the groffer and more depraved kinds of intemperance and voluptuoufnefs. Their very name is infamy; the bare fufpicion of them pollutes; and their baleful influence on the welfare of the whole community is fo undeniable and apparent, that they are uniformly oppofed by the majority, and therefore can never become univerfally prevalent, nor dare to hold up their heads in public without exciting horror.

But there are alfo other faults and vices, my pious hearers, that are fo feldom entirely taken for what they are; that artfully lurk under fuch a variety of harmless, or agreeable and feducing forms;

and