what is he but a vile factor to libertinism and sacrilege? He that propagates suspected doctrines, such as praying for the dead, auricular confession, and the like, whose sole tendency is the gain and power of the priest, what is he but a negotiator for his partisans abroad? what does he but sow the seeds of Popery in the very soil of the Reformation?

But if we are to watch against the silent tide of Popery in the small rivulets at home, much more against its inundation and deluge from abroad, which always meditates, and now threatens, to overwhelm us. If foreign Popery once return, and regain all the provinces that it lost at the Reformation, O the terrible storm of persecution at its first regress! O the dark prospect of slavery and ignorance for the ages behind! In tract of time it will rise again to as full a measure of usurped hierarchy as when the hero Luther first proclaimed war against it. For then was Popery in its meridian height it was not raised up all at once, but by the slow work of many centuries. In all the steps and advances of its progress, the good men of the several ages opposed it, but in vain; they were overborne by a majority, were silenced by the strong arguments of processes and prisons; for it first subdued its own priests, before it brought the laity under its yoke. Good letters became a crime even in the clergy or heresy or magic, according to the different turn of men's studies, was a certain imputation upon all that dared to excel. And though Popery, since the Reformation, has even in its own quarters permitted learning and humanity, and prudently withdrawn some of its most scandalous trumpery; yet if once again it sees itself universal, the whole warehouse, now kept under key, will again be set wide open; the old tyranny will ride triumphant upon the necks of enslaved mankind, with certain provision against a future revolt. The two instruments, the two parents of the Reformation, ancient learning and the art of printing, both coming providentially at one juncture of time, will be made the first martyrs, the earliest sacrifice to popish politic. The dead languages, as they are now called, will then die in good

earnest. All the old authors of Greece and Italy, as the conveyers of hurtful knowledge, as inspirers of dangerous liberty, will be condemned to the flames; an enterprise of no difficulty, when the pope shall once again be the general dictator. All these writings must then perish together; no old records shall survive to bear witness against Popery, nor any new be permitted to give it disturbance. The press will then be kept under custody in a citadel, like the mint and the coinage; nothing but mass-books and rosaries, nothing but dry postils and fabulous legends, shall then be the staple commodities, even in an university.

For the double festivity, therefore, of this candid and joyful day; for the double deliverance obtained in it, the one from the conspiracy of Popery, the other from its tyranny; for the happy preservation of our religion, laws, and liberties, under the protection of pious and gracious princes; for the flourishing estate of learning, and the prosperity of our nursing mother,—be all thanks, praise, and glory to God, for ever and ever. Amen.

A SERMON

PREACHED BEFORE KING GEORGE I.*

On February the third, 1716-7.

ROM. xiv. 7.

For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. OUR apostle having in this chapter and before discoursed of the mutual duties and obligations in human life, concludes the whole with the words above, sententiously in way of aphorism, That no one liveth to himself, and no one dieth to himself. Which without doubt must seem a harsh paradox to a narrow-minded person, that is wholly involved and contracted within his own little self, and makes his private pleasure or profit the sole centre of his designs, and the circumference of all his actions. Indeed, the heathen poet in the epigram, a man of that very stamp, as sitting in pagan darkness and the shadow of death, teaches the downright reverse to our text: Vive tibi, says he, nam moriere tibi.† He took it as self-evident, That every one dies to himself; and therefore infers it as a consequence both plain and profitable, That every one ought to live to himself. But our inspired writer has here taught us a new and Christian lesson, a doctrine which is the source and spring of all true piety to God, of justice and beneficence to men, of public spirit, and all the other ingredients of heroic and godlike virtue; a doctrine, too, so pregnant of sense and truth, that it may be considered in various views, all different from each other, and all worthy

[* The 1st ed. adds, "at his Royal Chapel of St. James's:" it was delivered by Bentley in the capacity of chaplain to his Majesty.-D.]

[+ "Uni vive tibi, nam moriere tibi,"—the last line of an epigram by an unknown author: see it in Anth. Vet. Lat. Epig. et Poem. t. i. p. 510. ed., Burmann.-D.]

of our serious speculation. I cannot now undertake to exhaust them all, in so short a discourse as is prescribed by the occasion; but I shall place before you some of the principal, at least some of the most general and obvious, which may furnish a proper hint and rise to your own further meditations.

I. None of us, says the apostle, liveth to himself. To live to a man's self, when considered at large, is to do all the actions of life with regard to himself alone; as a true freeborn son of earth, not accountable to any other being for his behaviour and conduct, but carving out his own satisfaction in every object of desire, without any obligation or relation to a higher power. Now, in this sense, I conceive it's sufficiently plain, that none of us liveth, ought to live, or can live, to himself. "Tis the thoughtless atheist alone that can be guilty of such absurdity, to imagine the first parents of human race sprung naturally out of the mud, without the foresight and efficiency of an intelligent cause. Every one, I say, but an atheist, (if an atheist can now possibly be, under the powerful light of the Gospel, and the late advances in natural knowledge, which directly lead and guide to the discovery of the Deity,) every one else must needs see and acknowledge that an almighty and all-wise God was our Creator; and consequently, that we live to him, the sole author of life, and not to ourselves. All our powers and faculties, all the properties and perfections of our nature, were gratuitously given us by the good will of our Maker, without our own asking or knowing. We neither produced our own being, nor can we annihilate it; we can neither raise it above, nor depress it below, the original standard of its essence, derived to the whole species. Which of you, says our Saviour, Luke, xii. 25, which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature? And so also may we say, which of us creatures, by all our thought and industry, can add one specific power to our beings more than God has bestowed upon them? "Tis true, indeed, we may either exert or clog our native faculties in different degrees; we may either in

vigorate them by exercise and habit, or damp and stifle them by sloth and neglect; so that the same person under one education and tour of life would extremely differ from himself had he fallen under another. But with all our endeavours we can exalt none of our faculties above their original pitch; we can never raise the aqueduct above the level of the fountain-head; we cannot advance our species, or change our human nature to a superior class of being; we must all continue in our settled rank and degree, as God was pleased to place mankind in the great scale of the creation: 'tis the will and decree of God that we are what we are; and as we are all his creatures, the work of his hands, his servants of such particular station, we do all live to him, and not to ourselves.

II. But then, secondly, besides the title of creation, even on the account of our conservation, we so entirely subsist upon the power and will of God, that in this view also we must needs confess that none of us liveth to himself, but to him. For as God at first by his almighty power produced the world and all creatures out of nothing, so by a perpetual efficacy and emanation of the same power he sustains them all from relapsing into nothing. "Tis concluded, I think, among all those that have well considered these matters, that the same divine energy which gave a being to any creature must be constantly and incessantly exerted to continue it in being. Could we suppose the great Creator but for one single moment to suspend and interrupt the communication of that power, the whole frame and system of nature must immediately drop and vanish into its primitive nullity. Every essence therefore, except his own eternal and immutable essence, is solely supported by him, and owes to him not only the first production, but the continuance of its being. From him alone depend not only the breath of our nostrils, the operations and instruments of mortal life, but the very existence of our souls and bodies: upon his invariable will, upon his inviolable promise, rest all our hopes of future glory, and all the prospect of happy immortality. This the