ferving it in a condition for honeft industry, SERM. and for virtuous and useful employments

To conclude this explication, I obferve, that fobriety, as all other virtues, is feated in the mind. The appetites take their rife from the body, but the regulating and restraining them belongs to the higher faculties of the foul. It is in the fuperiority of the foul in its freedom, and in the dominion of reafon and confcience over the lower defires and paffions, that the virtue chiefly confifts. Still I know not how it comes to pafs, though the other branches of religion are acknowledged to lie in the heart, a man for inftance, is not accounted pious for mere external acts of devotion, without fuppofing him inwardly a fearer of God, yet he paffes for fober and temperate by the mere outward regularity of his life, and by an abstinence from the groffer acts of debauchery and fenfual wickedness in his converfation. Let us not however, fo judge of ourfelves, but principally and with the greateft exactnefs obferve the inward difpofitions of our minds. If a man by any outward neceffity, or by a regard to worldly confiderations, is led to preserve an outward decorum in his behaviour, and to abftain from diffolute and vicious courfes, yet unless his affections be fet

not

VI.

VI

SERM. not on things on the earth, not on the pleafures and cares of life, but the things above, on holiness, on the perfection of righteoufnefs and innocence in the heavenly state, unless, I fay, it be so, he has not attained to the chriftian virtue of temperance, in order to which it is neceffary that we mortify the deeds of the body, and crucify the flesh with its tufts and affections. Some indeed have run into the extream of voluntary feverities, faftings and abftinencies, with other things of like nature, in which they place religion, which, as the apostle fays *, have indeed a fhew of wisdom and bumility, and neglecting the body, but the error lies in a fond imagination that fuch uncommanded aufterities please God, and make attonement for fin, whereas he is a most beneficent Being who delights in the happinefs of his creatures, especially in the profperity of his fervants, he imposes no arbitrary hardships upon them, nor requires them to impofe any upon themselves, or to exercife any discipline over their bodies with their appetites and paffions, but fuch only as may minifter to the purposes of virtue, which is their greatest felicity. He allows them the free ufe of his creatures, which the fcripture declares

Col. ii. 23.

declares to be all good, and none of them to be SERM. refused, if received with thanksgiving, and IV. improved to good ends, preserving still a good and ingenuous temper of mind, with vigo rous affections to the best objects, and not brought under the power of any thing in this world.

I come now in the fecond place to propofe fome motives to fobriety or temperance, and tho' what I intend chiefly to infift upon, are thofe confiderations which the gofpel contains, yet we ought not to pafs over the arguments which reafon itself fuggefls. Indeed the infpired writers themfelves do not neglect them, the apostle St. Paul exhorts chriftians to think on whatever things are true, and pure and honeft, and lovely, and of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, which in effect is an appeal to the common fense of mankind concerning the amiableness and excellence of virtue. This particular virtue of temperance ftands upon the fame foot with the reft, and is like them recommended by its own native beauty and intrinfic worth, which at firft ftrikes any mind which attends to it. It is impoffible for any one,

Phil. iv.

8.

upon

SERM. upon a deliberate comparison, not to acknowVI. ledge in his heart, that the fober man is more excellent than his neighbour who is intemperate; that it is a more lovely character and more worthy of the human nature to have the rule over one's own fpirit, to keep a steady discipline over the appetites and paffions, and have them in due fubjection, which spreads a decency and regularity over the whole behaviour, and preferves a man. always in a preparation for the most important affairs, and all the proper offices of a religious virtuous, and focial life; that this, Ifay, is a more lovely character than to live in luxury and carnal pleasures, and fo to be dead while one lives, as the apoftle fpeaks. We look down with contempt on the brutal kinds which have no higher principles of action than their appetites, and therefore indulge them without any reproach. But is it not melancholy to see men voluntarily turn themselves into natural brute beafts, according to St Jude's expreffion, to fee the glory of huma nity fo dismally reverfed, that the beaft rules over the man, and the understanding no otherwife used than if it was made for no other purpose than to be a flave to the appetites and paffions, and to ferve them? One would think that a juft refentment of fuch indignity

to

to the honour of their fpecies, and a regard SERM. to the prerogatives of their Being, might roufe VI.

the most voluptuous of mankind out of their reproachful ftupidity, that it might engage them to shake off the inglorious yoke, and reftore the fovereignty of reafon, which is their true glory.

Befides, intemperance naturally tends to make life not only mean and contemptible, but miferable. Perhaps vicious men will not be convinced that they deprive themfelves of the truest and most substantial pleafures, thofe of the mind, which arife from the practice of virtue and the approbation of confcience. But, this at least one would think should affect them, that their vices are accompanied with many outward inconver niencies, that they bring on mortal diseases, grievous pains and fufferings, poverty and difgrace in this world; fo that upon a fair computation of the lofs and gain of temperance and intemperance, judgment must be given for the former; and it will appear that to live soberly, is the way to live happily, even abstracting from the confideration of a future state. Solomon in the book of Proverbs, among many other useful obfervations on human life, infifts largely on the unhappy prefent effect of debauchery,

he