CHAPTER II. Of the duty which God requires of TO THE YOUNGER PART OF THE CONGREGATION OF PROTESTANT DISSENTERS, AT MILL-HILL, IN LEEDS. My young Friends, IT T was on your account that I compofed religion, and to you I take the liberty to dedicate them. It is the earneft wish of my heart, that your minds may be well established in the found principles of religious knowledge, because I am fully perfuaded, that nothing elfe can be a fufficient foundation of a virtuous and truly refpectable conduct in life, or of good hope in death. A mind deftitute of knowledge (and, comparatively speak VOL. I. a ing, ing, no kind of knowledge, befides that of religion, deferves the name) is like a field on which no culture has been bestowed, which, the richer it is, the ranker weeds it will produce. If nothing good be fown in it, it will be occupied by plants that are useless or noxious. Thus, the mind of man can never be wholly barren. Through our whole lives we are subject to fucceffive impreffions; for, either new ideas are continually flowing in, or traces of the old ones are marked deeper. If, therefore, you be not acquiring good principles, be affured that you are acquiring bad ones; if you be not forming virtuous habits, you are, how infenfibly foever to yourselves, forming vicious ones; and, inftead of becoming those amiable objects in yourselves, and thofe valuable members of society, which nature, and the God of nature intended that you fhould be, you you will be at beft, useless cumberers of the ground, a dead weight upon the community, receiving fupport and advantage, but contributing nothing in return; or you will be the pefts of fociety, growing continually more corrupt yourselves, and contributing to the corruption of others. Finding yourselves, therefore, in fuch a world as this, in which nothing is at a stand, it behoves you feriously to reflect upon your fituation and profpects. Form, then, the generous refolution (and every thing depends upon your refolution) of being at prefent what you will certainly with you had been fome years hence, what your best friends now with you to be, and what your maker has intended, fitted, and enabled you to be. Above all things, be careful to improve and make use of the reafon which God has given you, to be the guide of your lives, to check the extravagance of your paffions, and to afsist you in acquiring that knowledge, without which your rational powers your rational powers will be of no advantage to you. If you would diftinguifh yourselves as men, and attain the true dignity, and proper happiness of your natures, it must be by the exercise of thofe faculties which are peculiar to you as men. If you have no higher objects than the gratification of your animal appetites and pafsions, you rank yourselves with the brute beafts; but as you will ftill retain that reflection, which they have not, you will never have that unallayed enjoyment of a sensual life which they have. In fact, you are incapable of the happiness of brute animals. Afpire, therefore, to thofe fuperior purfuits and gratifications for which you were formed, and which are the prerogative and glory of your natures. Let |