to come.

gifts and powers, which they at present have, God will increase and enlarge them. And the truth of all this is confirmed to us by that memorable saying of our Saviour, which we find in his mouth at several times, and upon several occasions: To him that hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have an abundance; but from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he hath. Let it then, above all things, be our great and constant endeavour to make him our friend, who is the best of beings, the sovereign good and happiness of all his creatures, and the fountain and foundation of all our comforts and enjoyments in this life, and of all our hopes and expectations in that which is Let us make religion the great business of our lives, and while we have time and opportunity, let us prepare ourselves by a life of virtue and righteousness, for that great account which we must one day give. Let not the pleasures and vanities of this world, which will shortly have an end, make us unmindful of the great and momentous concerns of eternity. There shall in nowise enter into that holy place any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie; but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life. And those only are the good and virtuous, who have kept themselves from the pollutions of this wicked world, and have led a life of piety and renewed obedience toward God, and of love and charity toward their neighbours.

THE PRAYER.

O GOD, the protector of all that trust in thee, who was pleased to accept the death and passion of thy dear Son Jesus Christ as an expiation for the sins of mankind, and a ransom of their guilty souls from the torments of hell; grant that I may duly weigh the efficacy of his merits, and faithfully improve the benefits of my redemption. Let not the pleasures of sin betray me, nor the craftiness of Satan deceive me: but do thou guard and protect me with thy blessed spirit against all spiritual temptations; and let me always have the danger and care of my soul before my eyes, and the torments of the wicked fresh in my memory, so that, by contemplating upon the misery of others, I may hate their practices, and avoid their punishments, through the all-sufficient merits of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviou Amen..

THE

FIRST PART

OF THE

NEW WHOLE DUTY OF MAN

CONTAINING

OUR DUTY TO GOD.

SUNDAY İ.

I. Of true morality and of the duty of man, as taught by natural and revealed religion; containing the three great branches of our duty to GOD, to our NEIGHBOUR, and to OURSELVES. II. Our duty to GOD is to believe in him, and in his affirmations, commands, promises, and threatenings. III. To hope in him, without presumption or despair. IV. To love him for his excellencies and kindness. V. To fear him rather than men. VI. To trust in him in all dangers and wants. VII. To submit to his divine will, both in respect of obedience and patience, in all his commands and disposals.

1. THE Christian religion being the means, which God has appointed for the restoring mankind to his favour, which man had forfeited by his wilful disobedience; and for his recovering the image of God; the Almighty does therein give us a new hope and title to that everlasting happiness, for which man was at first created but this is only to be hoped for on certain conditions*, namely, our lively faith, and sincere and hearty endeavours to obey his will; on the performance or neglect of which depend our eternal happiness and misery: therefore it is of the greatest importance for us to inquire, what that faith is, and what those

* See page 19.

several things are to which God requires our obedience. But, first it will not be improper to consider what we are to understand by true morality.

True Morality, in the largest sense of the word, consists in acting agreeably to those relations, which we bear to our Creator, and fellow-creatures. It takes in even our duty to our blessed Saviour and Redeemer; unless either gratitude be no part of morality, or that he, who was the author of our eternal salvation, be entitled to no gratitude from us. Yet nothing is more common, than to substitute some part of our duty for the whole. Of this we have an evident instance in those, whom the world miscals mere moral men. A mere moral man, in the language of the world, is one who lives in a state of open disregard, or at least of fashionable indifference, to religion in general; yet shall do some generous and good-natured actions, and never be guilty of any flagrant breach of honesty. He shall condemn the man who is wanting in proper returns of gratitude and affection to his fellow-creatures; but he never condemns himself, who continually receives, and never acknowledges the favours he receives from the author of every good gift. It is ab surd to pretend a love for benevolence; and yet to be regardless of the most benevolent being that is. And it is likewise absurd to pretend to love him, without a serious examination into his will; never dismissing what bears that venerable stamp, without a fair and impartial hearing of the evidences for the truth of it. For, on whomsoever the world may bestow the title of moral men, yet an indifferent carelessness, and a wilful neglect to examine into his will and pleasure, is no part of morality. Nay, his will, whose pleasure we must either do, or whose displeasure we must unavoidably suffer, ought to be the uppermost consideration of every man. Yet some may urge, that there are several of strict probity, generosity, and worth, without the least tincture of piety. To which I answer, several have from their infancy associated the ideas of happiness and esteem; of misery and disgrace. This makes them decline those actions, which may entail infamy and disgrace upon them; and pursue those, which may beget an esteem for them; esteem being to them an essential ingredient of happiness. For which reason they are impatient to have the favourable verdict, which they pass upon themselves, seconded and confirmed by the approbation of others, and are unwilling to do any thing, that may lessen them in the opinion of their fellow-creatures. It is then the desire of fame, not the love of virtue, which is their incentive to good

[Sund. 1. actions. And if we look abroad into the world, we find it thus in fact. Persons of this stamp will scorn to do a little thing, through the abhorrence of any thing that may make them cheap and contemptible in the eye of the world; but they will not scruple to commit a sin, upon which the fashionable world has stamped a credit, and given a sanction to. A person who is ungrateful, much more ungrateful to his sovereign benefactor, must be void of every thing which is great, glorious, and beautiful in the soul. He may indeed be actuated by the love of applause, by caprice, by the prevailing mode and fashion of the age, in which he lives; but his mind is too narrow, contracted, and ungenerous, to be swayed by any fixed and determined principle of goodness. You may wonder at this motley mixture in his character: but why should you expect a consistency of life and manners from a man who has no religious principle, and therefore no consistent one, to act upon? He who observes the rules of morality for the sake of temporal pleasures, will never perform any act of duty that is highly distasteful to him, or forego any vice that is pleasant and palatable. This is the moral man in the language of the world; but, in the language of reason, as immoral a man as can be conceived. For he lives daily in the uninterrupted practice of immorality of the deepest dye, namely, ingratitude to his sovereign benefactor; from whom he has received every thing, and to whom he can return nothing, but obedience and thanksgiving, the tribute of a grateful heart.

ન

What shall we think of this set of men? It would be uncharitable to suppose them determined atheists: what is most likely, is, that they imagine God will accept the social duties, in lieu of piety. And yet true substantial morality is inseparably connected with the highest regard to the Deity; and it is an unnatural divorce to part them asunder. For the only sure groundwork of morality is the prospect of heavenly bliss. But, to

return:

It is certain, that the light of nature discovers to us the being of a God, and so much of his infinite perfection, as to teach us that he is all good, and hates every thing that is evil; that he loves those who avoid the evil and choose the good; and will with severe justice punish the evil-doers. So that the light of nature searches out the goodness and justice of God; man's duty and subjection to his Creator; and disposes us to receive the perfect will of the Almighty. This is called natural religion; which all men might know, and should be obliged unto, by the

mere principles of reason, improved by consideration and experience, without the help of revelation. And they who live by it shall also be judged by it, their consciences accusing or else excusing one another. Yet natural religion, or that religion, which the light of nature dictates, is not sufficiently calculated for the generality of mankind, as may be inferred from hence; that to trace a considerable number of doctrines up to the fountain head from which they flow, by the strength of unassisted reason, and to pursue them to their remotest consequences, is a task at least extremely difficult to men of letters, but I may venture to say impracticable to the ignorant. Besides, pure natural religion may perhaps have existed in the minds of some few recluse contemplative men, but was never in fact established in any one nation from the foundation of the world to the present times. But,

The dimness of this is cleared up by revealed religion; or that method by which God makes himself, or his will, known to mankind, over and above what he hath made known to us by the light of nature. Not that hereby God did mean to put out any part of that natural light, which he had set up in our souls; but to give greater light unto men. And therefore the possibility of revealed religion is evident from the nature of God, and the eapacities of men; as well as from that proof, which is produced to satisfy us concerning a mission from God. An infinite Being, who created our souls capable of knowing him and loving him, can never want power to communicate further light to our minds, and to make brighter discoveries of his will and pleasure: it carries no opposition to natural light, that God should reveal his mind by some particular persons to the world: forasmuch as the great ignorance and corruption of human nature, and that misery and guilt which mankind had contracted, made it both necessary and expedient for man. For, though natural light ascertains the being of a Deity, and shows us how reasonable it. is to pay our adorations to that power, which created and preserves us; yet it does not sufficiently direct us in the way and manner of performing it: and though it gives us some hopes of pardon upon our repentance, from the general notion of God's goodness; yet it prescribes us no certain method for the obtaining our reconciliation. So that revealed religion was necessary both to relieve the wants of men in a natural state, and to

See Sunday 3. Sect. 1.