vengeance upon a people. The first in enormity are those committed directly against God; which are, in religion, what the crimes of high treason are in the state: I mean the sins which immediately attack the Deity, and aim at the destruction of his worship; I mean the impious and detestable sentiments of those who deny the doctrine of a superintending Providence, and resolve all events in this world into second causes; as if God did nothing, and the universe were left to the established laws of nature, or the uncontrolled devices and machinations of frail fallible mortals. This evil spirit of impiety and unbelief pervaded the Jewish nation a little before it was destroyed. The freethinkers of those days said, "Let the Lord make speed, and hasten his work, that we may see it; let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it ;" thus blaspheming the prophetic threatenings, as fabricated terrors to awe the vulgar. But never were infidel opinions more daringly or more dangerously broached than in this our day; never was more overt hostility displayed against the supremacy of that Power who doeth according to his will in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. And it is an alarming symptom peculiar to the present time, that our infidels

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age;

confine not their baneful speculations to their own societies, as did their predecessors of the last but diffuse them among the common people, introduce them to the acquaintance of peasants and mechanics, and seek to draw the multitude to their standard.

The next general sin provoking most justly the divine vengeance, is the contempt of the word of God. As the greatest blessing God could bestow upon men, was the revealing of himself to them by his word, so is the contempt of that word one of the greatest outrages offered to his divine majesty. The contempt shown by the Jews to the word of the Lord, was evidenced in their treatment of his prophets and his ministers. Isaiah describes them as a rebellious people, that would not hear the law of the Lord, "saying to the seers, see not; and to the prophets, prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits." By the author of the book of Chronicles, it is assigned as a principal cause of the destruction brought upon them, that they treated the ministers of God as enemies, because they told them the truth. Nor is this contempt of the word and ministers of God, a sin less prevailing among Christians, who, living within the sound of the gospel, show an open contempt for

its dispensation and ordinances. As the choicest productions of nature are least valued in the countries that produce them, so fares it with God's inestimable gift; in the land in which it is preached in its greatest purity, like its blessed author, the gospel "is despised and rejected." Nor can it be matter of surprise, though of deep concern, that the enemies of good order and of the established worship extend their enmity to the persons invested with the ministerial functions. My brethren, I trust you will bear me witness that it has always been my study in my discourses to you to avoid all circumstances of a political nature; but on this solemn occasion of a national humiliation before God, when we who are commissioned to lead the devotions of the national church; when we ourselves are denounced by a large portion of the community, as instrumental to the difficulties of the nation, as enemies to all reform, and supporting parties and principles unfriendly to liberty; when wicked and designing men, in their insidious attempts to overthrow our happy constitution, and to destroy the order and government of the church established by Christ and his apostles, are, by the most calumnious aspersions in the daily journals, holding us up to public obloquy and odium, I feel myself

called upon in a particular manner at this momentous crisis, to declare that the clergy have stood firm to the excellent constitution and government of their country; have, as taught in the gospel, asserted the equality of men, in the proper sense of that expression, with more energy than all the chimerical doctrines which have of late distracted the world; have urged the precepts of universal charity; and been the warm advocates of liberty, of virtue, and of religion, Their enemies know this full well; and consequently are assiduous, by artful accusations and impious ridicule, to silence those whose eloquence and learning, as a body, carry so powerful an influence upon the public opinion. But let them be told that the ministers of religion will never shrink from their duty; having their commission from God, and assisted by the spirit of his grace, they will discharge it undauntedly, reckless of what man can do unto them, when their hopes are in God, and his approbation is their joy and their crown. Even in the confession of ingenuous separatists from our church, it is to the pastoral labours of our parochial clergy throughout the land, we owe the preservation of the great mass of the people from general corruption. They by their lives and doctrines arrest the progress of

that popular licentiousness which would otherwise quickly overspread the land, and turn this fair garden of the Lord into the blasted desert and howling wilderness.

Ingratitude to the favours of God is a third sin which exposes a people to his judgments. It is a sin of the first magnitude, because it outrages that perfection of the Deity, which ought principally to attach us to him, I mean his loving-kindness. God pours down his mercies upon a people; he preserves them from calamities under which another nation groans; he grants them peace, and liberty, and prosperity; but they regard not the operation of his hands; their hearts never rise in grateful feelings to the giver of all good; on the contrary, they take every occasion to offend him, they turn his own gifts against him, they profligately abuse them in making provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof. But gross as is this sin of a nation's ingratitude for God's temporal blessings, it assumes its deepest dye when combined with the abuse of religious privileges and the desecration of religious worship. Such was the state of the Jewish nation, when God through the mouth of his prophets so cuttingly upbraided their accumulated ingratitude: "I have nourished and brought up chil