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and actions laid open and canvaffed before an affembled world?

I fhall not fuppofe you guilty of grofs acts of wickednefs. Perhaps the influence of education, the power of natural confcience, and the restraints of Providence, have hitherto kept you back from these. I at prefent charge you with nothing worfe than the omiffion of duty, and the neglect of opportunities for cultivating and improving the talents which God hath given you. You have been thoughtless and inconfiderate, unmindful of the God who made you, and of the Redeemer who bought you with his blood. You have forgotten the end for which you was fent into the world. You have fuffered the cares and pleafures of the prefent life, the bufinefs or amusements of this fleeting scene of vanity, to divide your hearts, and engross your time, as if the soul had been destined to ferve the body; or as if this earth had been designed for

refidence and portion.

your only

Can you then review fuch a life without blushing and fhame? When you think of it, doth it not appear mean and despicable

even in your own eyes? And can it then be pleasing; or rather, must it not be highly offenfive to that Almighty Being, who gave you a nature fitted for the performance of nobler fervices, and for the relish of higher enjoyments, than any with which you have been hitherto acquainted?

For the Lord's fake open your eyes, and take a ferious and impartial view of your condition. Bleffed be God, it is not yet too late. The door of mercy is ftill open; and though, like the prodigal fon, you have hitherto been feeding upon hufks; yet when, like him, ye fhall return to your Father's house, and to the faithful and affectionate duty of children, your past wandering and unprofitable life fhall be forgiven, and ye may yet enjoy the honours and privileges of your Father's fons.

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Having thus confirmed and illustrated the first propofition contained in the text, namely, that men fin, not only when they pofitively tranfgrefs the law of God; but alfo, when they do not fulfil the duties which the law requires to the utmost of their

their power;-I proceed now to fhow you, as was proposed,

Secondly, That our guilt is more highly aggravated, when we neglect the duties which are known to us; or when we decline opportunities of doing good, though we are convinced that it is our duty to embrace them.

He who doth not feek for opportunities of doing good, is a finner; that is, he counteracts the obvious intention of his Maker in fending him into the world: and therefore fhall be dealt with as an unfaithful fervant, who hath not applied his talents to the purpofes for which they were given him. And, if this is the cafe, then furely the perfon who hath a known opportunity of doing good, and yet wilfully neglects it, must contract greater guilt, and be liable to a feverer punishment. If that man be culpable, who is careless of doing all the good which by an exertion of his talents he is able to do; is not that man much more culpable, who prefumptuously omits to do the good to which he has opportunities to folicit him?

But

But why fhould I spend time in establishing fo plain a truth, efpecially when it is already confirmed by the highest authority? Our bleffed Lord himself exprefsly tells us, (Luke xii. 47.), that "the fervant who knew "his Lord's will, and prepared not himself, "neither did according to his will, shall be "beaten with many stripes."

The only queftion that remains then is, Whether this be a fuppofition that can be made? Is it to be thought, that any man is capable of deliberately refifting his own conviction, and of declining obedience to a law which he both knows and believes to be binding on him?

I confefs, indeed, that a fuperior Being, if we could imagine him to be altogether unacquainted with human affairs, might reject this supposition as improbable. But furely we have no cause to object against the representation as forced, or beyond the life. Our own obfervation, unless we have been extremely inattentive, cannot fail to furnish us with numberless proofs of this determined neglect of duty. We need not go from home, to bring our examples from

perfons

persons in high and public truft, who have been known to facrifice the acknowledged intereft and honour of a whole nation to their own private refentment or personal advantage. They are farther feen, for no other reafon but because they are placed higher. The importance of their station renders their faults the more confpicuous, while a groaning community points out, as with the finger, the authors of its diftrefs. But let each of us look into his own breast; and if conscience is not afleep, it will fay to us as Nathan faid to David, "Thou art the "man." Thou thyself haft neglected the fairest opportunities of doing good, when thou hadst the strongest conviction that it was thy reasonable duty.

I mean not to pry into the fecrets of your hearts, any more than to divulge the fecrets of my own. But I fpeak from a thorough conviction, that all of us pafs too flightly over our omiffions, even in the most ferious review which we take of our conduct. We are, alas! too fruitful in excuses, and too ready to glofs over our most culpable neglects, with the fpecious colour of ig

norance

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