SERM.

When this Day leads your Thoughts from XIII. a Dead Saint, whofe Virtues You ought to ce

lebrate, as far as the Hiftory of fo remote and dark an Age will permit, to that Living Example of Virtue, whofe Birth gives it its present

Luftre and Brightness; to a Saint, not dressed up in the Pageantry of a blind Superstition; but adorned with those real and fubftantial Graces, the Practice of which You can fee with Admiration, and the Effect of which the World feels with Happiness: When this Day directs your Thoughts in this Manner, the Honour You pay to Her is paid to Virtue : And the Pleasure you perceive, in paying it, arifeth from a Regard to the Public; when You are carried by the fame Thought to view Pofterity, made happy, perhaps in many Countries, by Thofe, whofe Minds and Manners She is now forming to every Thing Great, and Beneficent; as well as to remark the Influences of Wisdom and Goodness upon the prefent Generation.

When You confider Yourselves, as under the Prefidency of His ROYAL HIGHNESS, His Zeal for the Good of Great Britain, will animate and inflame your own, In the Calm of Prosperity, He will always praise and extol your Love of Your Laws and of your Country. In the Times of Hazard

and

and Distress, if any fuch fhould come, He s ER M. will lead You on to Glory by his Example. XIII. And if You follow Him through the Paths of Honour and Courage, You will make Your felves, and your Pofterity, as happy, as He wifhes You to be; and that is, as happy as You can wish yourselves to be.

Your Thoughts will now naturally lead you to that truly Great and Good KING, whom the particular Providence of God hath placed, and preferved, upon the Throne of these Kingdoms. If You confider Him in His Difpofition, His Temper, His Refolutions; how much Encouragement will You find in all these, to your improving and inflaming a true Public Spiritedness in Yourfelves? And how much need of it will you discover, if you reflect upon that Scene of Behaviour towards Him, to which our own Eyes have been, and are, Witneffes? He came to Us, clothed with all the Circumftances that could recommend Him, even to our Paffionate Love. Power and Authority He had enjoyed, in its Supreme Heighth, long before, in his own Country. But He always chofe to Reign, not by His Power, but by His Goodness: And They who lived under his Influences, loved Him too well, to be fenfible They obeyed Him. His Beneficence made every Part of

SER M. their Behaviour, refult from Affection, rather XIII. than Duty. And yet, tho' this was His 'known and experienced Conduct; and tho' He came hither disposed to cherish Our Happinefs, as His own; and to establish this Nation, by Justice, and Temper, and Wisdom: We have seen Thofe amongst Ourselves, who have been ready to prefer the Certain Enemies of their Religion and Liberties, before the Greatest Friend, Thofe invaluable Goods ever yet could boast of. They have been willing to call in the Bigotry and Revenge of Popery: And, when that alone hath failed, even to invite in a Deluge of relentless Destruction, and Defolation, in order to get rid of a State of Happiness, which they are confcious They do not deferve, and have fhewn themselves not able to bear.

But let not the Zeal of fome, to tear in Pieces that Scheme of Blessings which Heaven hath put into our Hands, exceed our Zeal to ftop its Paffage from Us, and to secure it to Ourfelves and all Pofterity. As We have a Prince upon the Throne, who, unlike most of the Princes of this World, defires nothing of Us, but to make ourselves happy; as We have all the Inducements that Men, and Chriftians, and Proteftants, can have; as We have all the Terrors, and Evils, that the

strongest

ftrongest Imagination can invent, to fear for SER M. our Country, if the Caufe of Religion and XIII. Liberty should be overturned and oppreffed ; as We are ourselves, in our own Perfons, deeply concerned in all the miserable Confequences of fuch an Event; and are under all the Obligations of Honour, and Confcience, to promote the Happiness of the Public, of which We are Members; and as We must expect to answer to God, as well as to our own Consciences, for our Stupidity and Madnefs, in neglecting fo great and invaluable Good Things: Let Us not permit the Zeal of a true Public Spirit to cool in our Breasts; let Us not only improve it in Ourselves, but let us kindle and increase it in Others; till it may come to be too powerful for that Narrow, Vicious, Selfishness, which is the Root of all Public Evil; and fettle Us at last upon the unmoveable Foundation of Peace and Happiness.

The

SERM.

XIV.

The Nature of the Kingdom, or Church, of

CHRIST.

SERMON XIV.

Preached before the KING, at the Royal Chapel at St. James's, on Sunday, March 31, 1717.

St. JOHN xviii. 36.

Jefus anfwered, My Kingdom is not of this

O

World.

NE of thofe great Effects, which Length of Time is seen to bring along with it, is the Alteration of the Meaning annexed to certain Sounds. The Signification of a Word, well known and understood by Those who first made use of it, is very insensibly varied, by paffing through many Mouths, and by being taken and given by Multitudes, in common Difcourfe; till it often comes to stand for a Complication of Notions, as diftant from the original Intention of it, nay, as contradictory to it, as Darkness is to Light. The Ignorance and Weakness of Some, and the Paffions and Bad Designs of Others, are the

great Inftruments