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lefs powerful, upon all occafions, than a bad quality is fometimes? I am fure no duty can be more plainly required, or ftrongly infifted upon, than this great duty is in the gofpel. If thy brother, fays our Saviour, trefpafs against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him; and if he trefpafs against thee feven times in a day, and feven times in a day turn again to thee, faying, I repent, thou shalt forgive him. Upon every interpretation that these words will admit, they fhow that the Christian muft carry this temper of forgiveness to the highest pitch. Again, Again, fays our Saviour, Love your enemies, bless them that curfe you, do good to them that hate you, pray for them that defpitefully ufe you, and perfecute you'. The fame virtue is strongly recommended in that parable which is contained in the 18th chapter of Matthew, where the king is reprefented as taking an account of his fervants, and punishing that one feverely who fhewed no mercy to his fellow. It concludes with these remarkable

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markable words: So likewife Jhall my hea venly Father do alfo unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trefpaffes.

Laftly: Let us confider the influence of Christian charity on our behaviour, with respect to the vicious and abandoned. A hatred of vice is natural to an upright mind, and the feeling this is one of the strongest symptoms of a good difpofition, and one of the fureft guards of virtue. That we should incline to affociate with the juft, and feel a ftronger attachment to them, and that, on the contrary, we should abstain from the company of the vicious, is furely lawful, prudent, and commendable. But there are many occafions in life, where unless, as the Apoftle fpeaketh, we were to go out of the world, we cannot avoid meeting with the impious, the unjuft, and the intemperate. It would, perhaps, be neither good for them, nor for ourselves, that we refolved never to meet with them. The worst are ftill connected with us while in this world, by the great tic of humanity; and when we confider the mifery of vice, and the future pu

nishment

nishment that awaits it, a charitable mind is apter to commiserate than to detest.

In these instances, charity, therefore, obligeth us to take all proper opportunities of inftructing, of admonishing, of reproving, of fhewing our difapprobation of the crime, and yet our love of the criminal. Of all the weapons ever yet devifed, to bend the wills, alter the temper, and fubdue the hearts of men, severity, fourness, bitterness, anger, are the least agreeable to a good mind, and the least successful in themselves. Whereas meekness, gentleness, and yet firmness, the awe and authority of virtue, without the forbidding air of ftubbornness, the foft and amiable charms of true goodnefs, the generofity of sympathy, the mild, yet penetrating words prompted by thefe difpofitions, prove the most powerful means, and have the strongest influence in gaining finners, in restraining them from vice, and in winning over willing fubjects to the interests of true religion.

SERMON IX.

PSALM li. 17.

The facrifices of God are a broken Spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not defpife.

IT is extremely probable that this Pfalm, in which the fentiments of a true penitent are fo ftrongly expreffed, was compofed by David, after a sense of his guilt had been raised by the affecting parable of Nathan, which we read in the xiith chapter of the fecond book of Samuel, and of which, the occafion and the confequences are fo well known. This whole compofition discovers a mind overwhelmed with forrow, agitated with remorfe, earnest for mercy, and penetrated with all that variety of emotions, which the reflection upon flagrant crimes, when it is neither blunted by obduracy nor irritated by defpair, fo naturally infpires.

In

In compofitions of this kind, we are not. to expect a strict connexion of thought. Such a connexion would totally destroy their beauty, and be a fure proof that the paffion of grief, and the feelings of penitence which they exhibit, were affumed, not real. Their true merit confists in the correspondence of the fentiments and expreffions, to that animated and varied tenour of foul, from which they are fuppofed to flow. Confidered in this light, the Pfalm before us abounds with beauties that must strike every fenfible reader.. In the 14th and 15th verfes, David implores, in the most fervent manner, deliverance: from the guilt of that blood, which he had fo causelessly and bafely fhed, the recollection of which crime, rendered him unable to address the God of purity with confidence and freedom, till he had received fome affurance of his pardon. Deliver me from bloodguiltinefs, O God, thou God of my falvation, and my tongue fhall fing aloud of thy righteoufnefs. O Lord, open thou my lips, and mouth fhall fhew forth thy praife. The reflection upon. his guilt naturally brings to his mind thofe facrifices which were commonly thought to be of an expiatory nature, but

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