nefs, does he tranfact no affairs by which he promotes the general welfare? And has he always been thy enemy? Has he been perpetually injuring thee? Has he not perhaps formerly been of some benefit to thee and lent thee his fervices? Canft thou know to a certainty, that thou shalt never be in want of him? May he not become thy friend, thy patron, thy benefactor? - And has he not elementary qualities, has he not capacities, faculties, gifts, and endowments, that give room for farther hopes and expectations from him? Is he not as well as thou, a being in whom his fuperior origin and his grand defignation cannot fail of being recognized, and who is valued and loved by God, his and thy father in heaven? Is he not as well as thou defigned for immortality, and to what degrees of wisdom, of virtue, of perfection, may he not arrive? And fhalt thou not be able to behold and treat him with kindness and complacency, as God beholds all his works? No, enlarge and refine thy notions as well as thy heart; think and judge lefs partially; be not blind to the good, the honourable, the respectable even in thy enemy; and dwell more upon that than upon the oppofite bad and faulty: fo will it never be a hardfhip to thee to embrace him with fincere benevolence, with real affection. From what has been faid, my pious hearers, draw this conclufion, that all the pretexts and fubterfuges of the paffions against the love of enemies are invalid, that they cannot ftand the test of reafon and reflec ye ac tion, and that nothing can exempt us from the performance of a duty, not lefs effentially just and reafonable than beneficial in its effects: and if knowledge this, then follow willingly and steadily the precept of Jefus in our text: Love your enemies, bless them that curfe you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which defpitefully ufe you and perfecute you; that ye may be the children of your father which is in heaven: for he maketh his fun to rife on the evil and on the good, and fendeth rain on the juft and on the unjust. SERMON XXVII. Love the fulfilling of the Law. GOD, thou art love. This all thy works declare, all thy commands. This is announced by nature and religion, reafon and fcripture, benefits and chastisements; this our own heart proclaims within us. Love was and is the eternal fource of thy fovereign perfection and happiness: love thou haft decreed to be alfo the fource of ours. To love thou haft incited us both as men and as chriftians; for it thou haft defigned us both in the present and in the future world. By love thou haft taught us to foothe all the troubles of life, and to render the feveral duties of our station and calling a delight: by love we are to testify that we are difciples and followers of thy fon Jefus, and that his spirit lives and governs in us; by love we are to approach ever nearer to thee, our creator and father, and as beings formed after thy image, to resemble thee more and more. And thy love, o God, is wife, is universal, impartial, immensely efficient, unwearied, always confiftent. And fuch fhould our love alfo be: by that model of perfection fhould we regulate our conduct. conduct. But how far are we ftill from it! How ungodlike, how narrow, how felfifh, how dead and inactive is often that which we call love, and whereon we build our glory of being thy children and difciples of Jefus ! Ah teach us to perceive this truth, to perceive it with conviction, that we may not boast of a distinction that we do not poffefs, imagine ourselves better than we are, and thus be no longer prevented from becoming truly good and continually better. Blefs to this end the confiderations in which we are now about to engage. Grant that we may liften to them with attention and docility, apply them impartially to ourselves, and pay a willing obedience to what the spirit of truth and love fhall tell us. We pray unto thee for these benefits as the votaries of thy fon Jefus, and addrefs thee farther in his name: Our father, &c. ROM. xiii. 10. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. THE fame virtues and vices do not uniformly bear fway among mankind. Sometimes one kind gets the upper hand, fometimes another, according as one fort of principles or another are more or less popular, according as the inftruction, the education, the way of thinking, the taste, the external circumftances of a people are bent and modified. — Our faviour reproved the pharifees of his time and their adherents adherents for paying tithes of mint and anise and cummin with fcrupulous punctuality, for making clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, and strictly obferving the traditions of the elders, while they neglected the weightier matters of the law, mercy and beneficence. Of our times and of the society to which we belong, we might in regard to the prevailing temper and the general conduct, affirm the direct contrary. Love, mercy, beneficence seem now with many to be every thing, while piety, devotion, public worship, church ceremonies, are of little or no account. We are become more acutely fenfible, more compaffionate, more bountiful, we form perhaps jufter eftimates of the value and true end of temporal property, we prefer enjoyment to mere poffeffion, and allow others to partake more of it. The change, on the whole, is unquestionably good, and our chriftians, take them for all in all, are certainly better than those pharifaical hypocrites. I might even venture to affert, that God loves the human race fo well, is fo liberally difpofed towards them, that he had rather fee us neglect his fervice than their's, trespass against him than trespass against them. Properly speaking, however, the two kinds of duties are so closely linked together, that one cannot fubfift without the other. And why should we therefore pretend to put them afunder? Why not endeavour in all points to be virtuous, to be entirely good? The only confequence that can poffibly attend this feparation is, that we shall not be truly good and |