dents of life, but with the wickedness of men, with the violence of the oppreffor, with the fraud of the deceitful, with the envy of the malicious, and with the jealoufies and fufpicions of all about us? to * have all our hopes and expectations confined within this narrow scene of wickedness and confufion, and no power to overrule this disorder, no hand to guide us through the ftorm? Is it not still more wretched to live under the conftant dread of an incenfed power; in daily expectation of the time shortly to come, which will deliver us up to his wrath; a wrath which no repentance can appease, no tears can foften? No imagination can form to itself a mifery exceeding this.

These are the forrows to which we are expofed, when once we let go our truft and confidence in God, and render ourfelves incapable of his comforts. As long as we have hope in God, we fee our way through the world, and move within fight of a sure haven of reft and peace: if the wicked profper, we know there is a day of account; if the righteous fuffer, we know his reward is not far off: if all things about us feem difturbed, we know whose word can bring order out of confufion : whatever our state and condition are, we poffefs our fouls in patience, and in full affurance that all things are fubject to him, who is our God, and our Redeemer.

I fhall detain you no longer than to lay two confequences before you, arifing from what has been faid. First, Since the evils of life do fo neceffarily force us to have refort to the comforts of religion, being capable of no other cure or remedy, it may

1

fhew us fome marks of God's goodness and care of us, even in his permitting these many evils in the world: they are fo many calls to us, to fearch out and secure to ourselves that real happiness to which we are ordained. Had we been made for this world only, it would be impoffible to imagine a reafon, why a Being of infinite goodness should place us in the midst of so many fears and forrows: but as we are formed for a more lafting state than this, and are placed here for our trial only, it was neceffary and agreeable to the wife ends of Providence to furround us on all fides with warnings not to set up our reft here, but to remember, and with all our might to labour for the life that shall never perish. To this end the evils of the world are very subservient; they are diffused through all conditions of life, and are calls to perfons of all conditions to remember God in all their ways, and to keep a steadfaft eye upon the things which God has prepared for thofe who love him.

Secondly, Since the evils of life cannot be avoided, nor yet be cured without the helps and affiftances which religion alone can afford; let us confider, what a fad choice we make for ourselves, when we throw from us the hopes and comforts which flow from a due acknowledgment of God. If we have hope in this life only, we must be miferable. We are born to mifery, and we must die to be happy. But if we add to the terrors of death, by renouncing or forfeiting all hopes of futurity; if we corrupt the few pleasures of life by the fears of guilt, and give weight and fharpness to all our other afflictions, by a fearful looking for of judg

ment to come; our condition, even in this world, will be deplorable, and our life but one continued scene of hopeless mifery. As we value therefore even the pleasures of this life, and our fhare in the good things of the world, which the providence of God has placed before us, let us keep ourselves in a capacity of enjoying them, by holding faft the comforts of religion. Thefe only can give us a true relish of our pleasures; these only can enable us to bear like men our fhare of evil and affliction: our hearts will often be difquieted within us, and we fhall, in the multitude of our thoughts, find a multitude of forrows: let us therefore keep God our friend, whofe comforts will refresh our fouls.

DISCOURSE XXVII.

PART I.

PSALM lxxxviii. 15.

While I fuffer thy terrors, I am diftra&ted. As the comforts which true religion affords are the only fure fupport against the evils and calamities of the world, to which every condition of life is more or less expofed; fo the terrors of religion, being very grievous in themselves, exclufive of these comforts, add weight to all our miseries, and are a burden too heavy for the spirit of a man to sustain. But furely there is fomething monftrous in fuch terrors! They come not from religion by natural birth: for it is much easier to believe that all we fee is chance and fortune, and religion itself a vain thing, than to believe that an all-wife, all-powerful Being has formed us to be miserable, and given us a fenfe and knowledge of himself, that we may live in perpetual terror and diftraction. And yet, in fact, this is often the cafe; we fee many rendered unhappy by fuch fears and jealoufies: and of all the fears incident to man, these are the most fear