the night, nor the most impenetrable depths of the heart can conceal any thing.

. Our ideas of a minister of Jesus Christ are not formed on our fancies: but on the descriptions, which God hath given us in his word; and on the examples of the holy men, who went before us in the church, whose glorious steps, we wish (although alas! so far inferior to these models,) whose glorious steps we wish to follow. See how these sacred men announced the truth. Hear Samuel to Saul; "Wherefore didst thou not obey the voice of the Lord, but didst fly upon the spoil, and didst evil in the sight of the Lord. Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold! to obey is better than sacrifice; and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness, is as iniquity and idolatry," 1 Sam. xv. 19. 22. Behold Nathan before David. "Thou

art the man. Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord, to do evil in his sight? Thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house. Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy, neighbor. For thou didst it secretly but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun," 2 Sam. xii. 7-12. See Elijah before Ahab, who said to him, "Art thou he that troubleth Israel? I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Baalam, " 1 Kings xviii. 17, 18. and not to increase this list by quoting examples from

:

the new testament, see Jeremiah. Never was a minister more gentle. Never was a heart more sensibly affected with grief than his at the bare idea of the calamities of Jerusalem. Yet were there ever more terrible descriptions of the judgments of God, than those, which this prophet gave? When we need any fiery darts to wound certain sinners, it is he, who must furnish them. He often speaks of nothing but sackcloth and ashes, lamentation and woe. He announceth nothing but mortality, famine, and slavery. He represents the earth without form, and void, returned, as it were, to its primitive chaos; the heavens destitute of light; the mountains trembling; the hills moving lightly. He cannot find a man; Carmel is a wildernesss, and the whole world a desolation. All the inhabitants of Jerusalem seem to him climbing up upon the rocks, or running into thickets to hide themselves from the horsemen and the bowmen. When he strives to hold his peace, his heart maketh. a noise in him, Jer. iv. 23. 24. 26. 29. 19. His whole imagination is filled with bloody images. He is distorted, if I may speak so, with the poison of that cup of vengeance, which was about to be presented to the whole earth. A minister announcing nothing but maledictions seems a conspirator against the peace of a kingdom. Jeremiah was accused of holding a correspondence with the king of Babylon. It was pretended, that either hatred to his country, or a melancholy turn of mind, produced his sorrowful prophecies; nothing but punishment, was talked of for him, and, at length, he was confined in a miry dungeon, chap. xxxviii. 6. In that filthy dungeon the love of truth supported him.

3. But when a pastor is called to attend a dying person, he is more especially called to remember 3 F

VOL. II.

this precept of Solomon, Sell not the truth. On this article, my brethren, I wish to know the most accessible paths to your hearts; or, rather, on this article, my brethren, I wish to find the unknown ärt of uniting all your hearts, so that every one of our hearers might receive, at least, from the last periods of this discourse, some abiding impressions. In many dying people a begun work of conversion is to be finished. Others are to be comforted under the last and most dangerous attacks of the enemy of their salvation, who terrifies them with the fear of death. In regard to others, we must endeavor to try whether our last efforts to reclaim them to God will be more successful than all our former endeavors. Can any reason be assigned to counterbalance the motives, which urge us to speak plainly in these circumstances? A soul is ready to perish; the sentence is preparing: the irrevocable voice, Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, will presently sound; the gulphs of hell yawn; the devils attend to seize their prey. One single method remains to be tried: the last exhortations and efforts of a pastor. He cannot entertain the least hope of success, unless he unvail mysteries of iniquity, announce odious truths, attack prejudices, which the dying man continues to cherish, even though eternal torments are following close at their heels. Woe be to us if any human consideration stop us on these pressing occasions, and prevent our making the most of this, the last resource!

It belongs to you, my brethren, to render this last act of our office to you practicable. It belongs to you to concur with your pastors in sending away company, that we may open our hearts to you, and that you may open your's to us. Those visitors, who, under pretence of collecting the last words of an expiring man, cramp, and interrupt him, whe

would prepare him to die, should repress their unseasonable zeal. If, when we require you to speak to us alone on your death-bed, we be animated with any human motive; if we aim to penetrate into your family secrets; if we wish to share your estate; pardon traitors, assassins, and the worst of murderers but let national justice inflict all its rigors on those, who abuse the weakness of a dying man, and, in functions so holy, are animated with motives so profane. In all cases, except in this one, we are ready to oblige you. A minister, on this occasion, ought not only not to fall, he ought not to stumble. But how can you expect that, in the presence of a great number of witnesses, we should fully enpatiate on some truths to a sinner? Would you advise us to tell an immodest woman of the excesses, to which she had abandoned herself, in the presence of an easy credulous husband? Would you have us in the presence of a whole family discover the shame of its head?

Here I finish this meditation. I love to close all my discourses with ideas of death. Nothing is more proper to support those, who experience the difficulties, that attend the path of virtue, than thinking that the period is at hand, which will terminate the path, and reward the pain. Nothing is more proper to arouse others, than thinking that the same period will quickly embitter their wicked pleasures.

Let every person of each order, to which the text is addressed, take the pains of applying it to himself. May the meanness of flatterers; may the pious frauds of indiscreet zealots; may the fear of persecution, and the love of the present world, which make such deep impressions on the minds of apostates and Nicodemites; may the partiality of judges; may the sinful circumspection of states

men, may all the vices be banished from among us. Above all, we, who are ministers of truth! let us never disguise truth; let us love truth; let us preach truth; let us preach it in this pulpit; let us preach it in our private visits; let us preach it by the bed-sides of the dying. In such a course we may safely apply to ourselves, in our own dyingbeds, the words of those prophets and apostles, with whom we ought to concur in the work of the ministry, in the perfecting of the saints. I have coveted no man's silver, or gold, or apparel. I have kept back nothing that was profitable. I have taught publickly, and from house to house. I am pure from the blood of all men. I have not shunned to declare the whole counsel of God. O my God! I have preached righteousness in the great congregation: lo, I have not refrained my lips, O Lord thou knowest. I have not hid thy righteousness within my heart; I have declared thy faithfulness and thy salvation; I have not concealed thy lovingkindness, and thy truth from the great congregation. Withhold not thou thy tender mercies from me, O Lord; let thy loving-kindness and thy truth continually perserve them, Eph. iv. 12. Acts xx. 33. 20. 26. &c. Amen.

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME,

SM