This is the crying guilt of many, and very commonly practised in this city, in greater or in less degrees; but perhaps the profuse wretch pursues a bolder course of injustice, and betakes himself to robbery and plunder: He lies at watch on the high-ways, he seizes and assaults the innocent traveller, and deprives him of his wealth and every thing valuable, in order to support his own wild and extravagant expences. Luxury must be fed, though justice be starved; and luxury must be clothed, though justice go naked.

My hearers perhaps will think themselves unconcerned in all this story, and take no share of conviction to themselves, nor do I know any of them to whom half this charge belongs. But let it be considered, that men do not usually rise to this degree of madness all at once. Unrighteousness has several steps and stages in its race; if we indulge our appetites, and spread our tables, or form our apparel or our furniture but a little beyond our income, if we once begin to admit such a manner of life and expence as exceeds our estate, in order to please our own sensual or vain inclinations, or to vie with our neighbours, we expose ourselves to most evident temptations of injustice, and lead our souls into sinful snares. "We cannot live frugally as our fathers did: The fashion is altered, and we must follow it, whether the purse can bear it or no."

Hence arise the impetuous desires of hasty and extravagant gains by gaming, in order to recover what is lost by luxury. Men venture largely upon the turn of a dye, and defraud their honest creditors of their bread and life, to pay, what they call in their cant, the debts of honour. A wanton sort of justice and illegal equity! It is the luxurious fashion of life that hath filled our land with the itch of gaming; and if the turn of a wheel can entitle them to thousands, they despise the slow and tedious ways of supplying their wants by labour, business, or traffic. Thus honest industry is discouraged, and trade, which is the political life of our nation, lies groaning and expiring.

Hence proceeds the wicked custom of breaking promises to those that we deal with, and long delays of payment, till we imagine that the debt is cancelled, by being almost forgotten. A vain and criminal imagination! As though the daily increase of interest, and the patience of the creditor, could make the principal cease to be due! As though time, and unjust delay could debts without money. pay

Hence flows the unrighteous practice of borrowing without any design to pay, which is gross and shameful iniquity! I would hope none of the professors of religion have so far abandoned

all sense of righteousness. Yet there are too many, who, when once they have borrowed, grow so careless and negligent of payment, that it brings a disgrace upon their profession, and a blot upon their character. Profuse and thoughtless sinners, who run in debt to every one that will trust them for the daily conveniencies of life! Though they have no reasonable prospect of paying, yet they ask their neighbour to lend, with a free and courageous countenance, and put a bold face upon their venturous iniquity, being too proud to let their poverty be known. But the God of justice beholds their crime, and writes their names down in his book among the unrighteous. Ps. xxxvii. 21. The wicked borroweth and payeth not again.

Hence it comes to pass that there are so many bankrupts in in our days, even among the professors of strict religion: A shameful and ungodly practice, if it arise from luxury and profuseness, or from a careless neglect of their proper affairs! It was thought sufficient, in the days of our fathers, to deserve an expulsion from the church of Christ, unless they could evidently make it appear, that it was merely the unforeseen and frowning providences of God, they were reduced to this extremity.There is many a man hath groaned away his latter years in poverty, and perhaps in a cold prison, and in most forlorn circumstances of life, by means of the profuseness of his youth: And he hath been taught to read the guilt of his luxury and injustice in a long and painful lesson.

But a profuse and sensual humour is not only the spring of unrighteousness among persons of better rank and circumstance in the world, but it tempts servants also to be unjust to their masters: They will now and then provide a treat for themselves and their friends; they must eat nicely, and drink to excess : And thus they waste their master's substance. They must keep good company in the world, and now and then spend a licentious hour or two, while their just and reasonable service at home is neglected; and perhaps the purse of the master must pay for all.

Under the same head I may bring a charge of injustice against the careless and wasteful servant, who persuades himself that his master is rich enough, and therefore he is not solicitous to buy or sell, or manage any affairs for him to the best advantage. He permits the goods of his master to be wasted or embezzled, he grows liberal and generous at his master's cost, and has no thought of the golden rule of our Saviour, to manage his master's concerns with the same frugality and conduct, as he would expect a servant should do for him. But it is time I proceed to the next particular.

The fourth occasion of injustice is sloth and idleness. For the slothful man is a brother to him that is a great waster; Prov.

xviii. 9.

Whosoever wants the necessaries, or the conveniencies of life, is bound to obtain them by labour and diligence, if he is not possessed of them by any other methods of favourable providence. In the sweat of thy brows shalt thou eat thy bread, was the command given to Adam, when he was turned out of paradise, and forfeited his property in the fruits of Eden. But when once a person gets an aversion to business, when he finds a pleasure in sauntering and trifles, and indulges idleness and a lazy life; then he is tempted to seek the supports and comforts of nature by some practices of unrighteousness. The slothful man will be clothed with rags, unless he procure better clothing by fraud or violence; Prov. xxiii. 21.

Hence it is that persons learn the art of stealing, and possess themselves of the goods or the money of their neighbour by thievery. They mark out the houses in the day, and break them up at midnight for plunder. They remove the ancient land-marks, to enlarge their own borders; they violently take away flocks, and feed upon them. They go forth to their unrighteous work in the morning, and rise betimes for a prey. They reap down the corn in their neighbour's field, and the wicked gather the vintage. They cause the naked to lodge without cloathing, and take away the sheaf from the hungry. These are they that rebel against the light, they abide not in the paths thereof. Though God does not Jay folly to them, nor punish their crimes by his immediate judgments, yet his eyes are upon their ways; Job xxiv. 223. And many times his providence brings their crimes to light, and they are punished for their iniquity by the sentence of the judge. O what a shame and scandal is it, that in a nation professing christianity, there should be such multitudes trained up to the pilfering trade, and educated for infamy, for transportation, and the gibbet!

There are others, whose hands refuse to labour, and whose temper of mind delights in idleness, but they venture not upon these bolder crimes; they learn other unrighteous arts of cheating and falsehood, and fall into the same evil practices, which I have just before described under the head of luxury. But when luxury, pride, and sloth join their forces together, the temptation to injustice becomes exceeding strong, and there are few who have power to resist it. Such was the unjust steward, whom our blessed Saviour represents in a parable, procuring himself a way of living by cheating his Lord: Luke xvi. 1, 2, 3, 4. He had wasted his master's goods, and he was to be cashiered from his service: What shall I do, said he, I have not been used to work, I cannot

dig; there is the sloth of the man: He had lived well in his stewardship, and was grown proud, to beg I am ashamed. Well, I can purloin no more of my Lord's estate for myself, but I can do it for his debtors; I will cheat him in his accounts, and make all his debtors my friends, by cancelling a good part of their obligations, and then I shall get a livelihood amongst them. O that all such practices had been found no where but in parables!

Some that have been reduced to poverty by idleness, and have borrowed boldly what they could never pay, yet wipe their mouths, and think themselves innocent and righteous, because they have not a sufficiency to make payment: Whereas, in truth, it is their own sloth that makes them poor, and keeps them so. Some of these idle creatures waste their days in drowsiness and inactivity. "A little more sleep, a little more slumber, so poverty comes upon them like an armed man without resistance." Others are a little more sprightly, and they spend their hours in an inquisitive impertinence, in public news and private slander, in searching and tatling of the affairs of other persons and their families, while they eat, and drink and live upon the labour of the diligent, and unjustly serve themselves out of the industry of their neighbour. So the worthless drone wastes the summer's day in buzzing and trifling, he gads abroad, and wanders with idle flight; then he returns, and feeds upon the honey that the bee has gathered, and abuses the industry of a better animal.

St. Paul takes notice of this sort of people at Thessalonica who call themselves christians, and reproves them with just severity; We hear there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busy bodies. Now them that are such, we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread: For even when we were with you this we commanded you, that if any would not work neither should he eat; 2 Thess. iii. 10, &c. And in his letter to the Ephesians, he exhorts the thief to diligence. Let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labour, working with his hands, the thing which is good; and that not only for his own support, but that he may have to give to him that needeth; Eph. iv. 28. How little do those christians read their bibles! Or how little do they mind what the great apostle tells them! They profess they were never brought up to work, and give that answer roundly as a sufficient excuse for idleness: And therefore when they become poor and necessitous, they think it the duty of others to maintain them, without stretching out their hand for any thing but to beg and receive. They will apply themselves to no employment, though they are told their duty continually Their pride, indolence, and sloth withhold them from labour, though they are called to it daily in the loudest language in which God now-a-days speaks

to his creatures; and that is the voice of reason, of scripture, and of providence.

But there is another sort of sloth and idleness, that leads on to the practice of injustice too, and that is when men are busy in their trades, and the affairs of life, but seldom look into their accounts, or perhaps keep none at all: And thus they live upon the spend, and are utterly ignorant whether their income will support it. They eat and drink with daily chearfulness, and sleep sound upon their pillow, while they know not whether their food and raiment, and even the bed they rest on, be their own or no. Perhaps they have let their accounts run long behind, they are a little jealous of their circumstances, and then it is an unpleasant and tedious task to take a thorough review of them. By this means they run on venturing and heedless, till justice overtakes them, and ruin seizes them at once. Then they see what a shameful and cruel inroad they have made upon their neighbour's property: They find then that they have fed and clothed themselves aud their household out of their neighbour's estate. What shall I say to persons of this character? Their souls are generally hardened on all sides against conviction, and it is with much difficulty they are ever brought to confess their own folly, their sloth and unrighteousness. Ask thyself, O man, O woman, ask thyself this short and solemn question, "Am I willing my neighbour should deal thus with me, and spend my substance for his daily support?"

Here let it be observed, that I would always except from this accusation such as are mere children and cannot work, or such as are aged, and past all ability of labour, such as are weak and sick, and rendered thereby utterly incapable of working, and such as seek work with honest diligence, and would be glad to be employed in any thing they can do, if they could find others to employ them. Some of these indigent and necessitous persons are in every city, and they seem to be marked out by providence as the proper objects of compassion and bounty, and are not to be blended with the slothful and idle creatures in the general charge of unrighteousness.

Fifthly, The next spring of injustice is malice and envy. This is the vilest of all, and the most like the devil; for it contrives mischief, and brings injury upon others, without seeking gain and advantage to self. This is a vile iniquity, and has a great deal of the spirit of cruelty and of hell in it, where ill-nature and spite reign and triumph.

Though envy and malice awaken and excite the sinner to acts of unrighteousness and violence, and tempt us to rob our neighbour of what is his due; yet these vicious principles aim more frequently to disturb the peace, or health, and good name of