heard with effect. And sin will sometimes do it, when outward righteousness will not: I mean by outward righteousness, external decency of manners, without any inward principle of religion whatever. The sinner may return and fly to God, even because the world is against him. The visibly righteous man is in friendship with the world: and the "friendship of the world is enmity with God," whensoever, as I have before expressed it, it soothes and lulls men in religious insensibility.

But how, it will be said, is this? Is it not to encourage sin? sin? Is it not to put the sinner in a more hopeful condition than the righteous? Is it not, in some measure, giving the greatest sinner the greatest chance of being saved? This may be objected: and the objection brings me to support the assertion in the beginning of my discourse, that the doctrine proposed cannot, without being wilfully misconstrued, deceive or delude any. First, you ask, is not this to encourage sin? I answer, it is to encourage the sinner who repents; and, if the sinner repent, why should he not be encouraged? But some, you say, will take occasion, from this encouragement, to plunge into sin. I answer, that then they wilfully misapply it: for if they enter upon sin intending to repent afterwards, I take upon me to tell them, that no true repentance can come of such intention. The very intention is a fraud: instead of being the parent of true repentance, it is itself to be repented of bitterly. Whether such a man ever repent or not is another question, but no sincere repentance can issue, or proceed, from this intention. It must come altogether from another quarter. It will look back, when it does come, upon that previous intention with hatred and horror, as upon a plan, and scheme,

and design to impose upon and abuse the mercy of God. The moment a plan is formed of sinning with an intention afterwards to repent, at that moment the whole doctrine of grace, of repentance, and of course this part of it amongst the rest, is wilfully misconstrued. The grace of God is turned into lasciviousness. At the time this design is formed, the person forming it is in the bond of iniquity, as Saint Peter told Simon he was— in a state of imminent perdition; and this design will not help him out of it. We say, that repentance is sometimes more likely to be brought about in a confessed, nay, in a notorious and convicted sinner, than in a seemingly regular life: but it is of true repentance that we speak, and no true repentance can proceed from a previous intention to repent, I mean an intention previous to the sin. Therefore no advantage can be taken of this doctrine to the encouragement of sin, without wilfully misconstruing it.

But then you say, we place the sinner in a more hopeful condition than the righteous. But who, let us inquire, are the righteous we speak of? Not they, who are endeavouring, however imperfectly, to perform the will of God; not they, who are actuated by a principle of obedience to him; but men, who are orderly and regular in their visible behaviour without an internal religion. To the eye of man they appear righteous. But if they do good, it is not from the love or fear of God, or out of regard to religion that they do it, but from other considerations. If they abstain from sin, they abstain from it out of different motives from what religion offers; and so long as they have the acquiescence and approbation of the world, they are kept in a state of sleep; in a state, as to religion, of total negligence and unconcern. Of these righteous

to his human creation: so that when we conceive of God as a merciful being, we think of him very truly. But then the question is, in what manner, and to what extent, we may apply this consideration to our own conduct.

First, then, when we apply it to console ourselves under any imperfection of character, owing to invincible weaknesses either of body or mind, we apply it rightly. God has not fixed a certain measure or standard of virtue, which every person of every sort and degree must come up to, in order to be saved; that were not the part of a merciful judge. He proportions his demands of duty to our several capacities, justly estimated, and faithfully exerted. It may be true, that he who has employed extraordinary endowments well, will be recompensed with a higher reward than he who has employed inferior endowments well; but still one as well as the other will be rewarded. He who had doubled the ten talents which were entrusted to him was set over ten cities; whilst he who had doubled the five talents was set over five cities; but both were rewarded, both also highly rewarded, though differently. Therefore, any inferiority to others in our natural abilities, any difficulties or disadvantages we labour under, which others do not labour under, need not discomfort us at all. They are made up to us by God's mercy, who will finally accommodate his judgement to those difficulties and disadvantages so far as they are real. And the same allowance, which we hope will be vouchsafed to our constitutional infirmities (so far as they are both real infirmities and invincible infirmities), will also be extended to the difficulties we labour under, by reason of the circumstances and condition in which we are placed; whether these difficulties be ignorance for want

of education and opportunity; or prejudice by reason of a wrong education, and a dependance upon those into whose hands we were committed; or error or superstition arising from these causes: for all such defects, so long as they are, properly speaking, involuntary, and not brought on or increased by our own act, we humbly rely upon the mercies of God, and we are not going too far in our reliance.

Secondly: When for any sin into which we have been unhappily betrayed-yet without a course and habit of sinning in the same manner, or at least without a regular plan of a sinful life-we trust for pardon in God's mercy through Christ, our trust is well founded. This is the very case, as I apprehend, which St. John had in his thoughts, when he tells us, that "if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, and he is the propitiation for our sins." "If any man sin" (that is, if any man be accidentally betrayed into single instances of sin without a plan or system of sinning), we have Jesus Christ interceding for our forgiveness.

Thirdly: When our past life has not only been chequered by casual omissions and commissions, but has been stained and polluted even by habits of licentiousness, or by a course of unjust and iniquitous conduct; still, if we look up to God's mercy, only so as to quicken and inspirit us to a speedy and resolute breaking off of our vices, I believe and trust that we do not abuse that mercy, let our past case or our past conduct have been ever so bad.

The true and sound distinction which we should continually bear in our mind, is no other than thiswhilst we think of God's mercy only with a view to sins which are past strictly and exclusively, then it can hardly happen but that we shall judge rightly of it, and

according to truth; but when we think of it with relation to our future sins, then we are in very great danger of mistaking and of misapplying it; and the mistake may have, indeed necessarily must have, the most dreadful effects upon our final welfare.

I cannot mark this distinction more strongly, than by desiring you to compare attentively what is said in the text with what is said by St. John in the passage just now quoted from his Epistle. Both passages speak of propitiation; that is, of the means whereby we may obtain pardon. Hear what St. John says of it: "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father; and he is the propitiation for our sins." Next hear what the text says of it: "Concerning propitiation, be not without fear to add sin unto sin." You will observe, that one passage speaks in terms of encouragement; the other in terms of warning. And the truth is, that one passage speaks in relation to sins which are past, strictly and exclusively; the other speaks in relation to sins that are yet future. When St. John tells us, that "if any man sin, we have in Jesus Christ an advocate and a propitiation," he supposes a person to be reviewing his past life, to be distressed by the memory of his former sins; and then he points out a relief and source of comfort to his distress, by telling him that he has with God an advocate and a propitiation for the sins under the sense and recollection of which he is sinking. When the author of Ecclesiasticus warns us solemnly "concerning propitiation" (the same subject of which St. John speaks), by bidding us "not to be without fear to add sin unto sin, and not to say, his mercy is great, he will be pacified for the multitude of our sins;"-and when he farther reminds us, that "wrath as well as mercy came from him ;"-he applies his