feel themselves fo horribly ftung with the guilty sense of fome frightful fin, that they cannot die with any tolerable peace, till they have revealed it; finding it some small relief (it feems), an easement of their load, to leave the knowledge of their fin behind them, tho' they carry the guilt of it along with them.

THESE are fome of the chief ways, by which a man's fin finds him out in this world. -But what now, if none of all these should reach his cafe, but that he carries his crimes all his life closely, and ends that quietly: and perhaps, in the eye of the world, honourably too; and fo has the good luck to have his fhame buried in the grave with him?-Even yet, for all this, the man has not escaped; but his guilt ftill haunts, and follows him into the other world, where there can be no longer a concealment of it, but it must inevitably find him out; when the judgment shall be fet, and the books fhall be opened; when all the villanies that ever were committed, fhall be difplayed and published before men and angels.

What fruit then can we now have, of those things, whereof we fhall be then afhamed?

shamed? What advantage can the finner promise to himself from any fin, that can be laid in the balance, against that infinite and incredible weight of reproach, with which it will certainly pay him home at that day?

For, could he perfuade the mountains to cover him; or could he hide himself in the bofom of the great deep; or could he wrap himself in the very darkness of hell; yet ftill his fin would fetch him out of all, and present him naked, open, and defenceless before that tribunal, where he must receive the sentence of everlasting confufion.

AND now, for a conclufion; this whole discourse is a strong recommendation of virtue and innocence; of innocence, which makes a man's face to fhine in publick, whofe actions and behaviour it governs in private.

For the innocent perfon lives not under the continual torment of doubts and fears, left he should be discovered: for the light is his friend; and to be seen and looked upon, is his advantage.

We have seen, how poor a thing fecrecy is to corrupt a rational man's behaviour;

how many ways there are, whereby the most wife and just governor of the world is pleased to defeat, and befool the confidence, of the fubtileft, and the flyeft finners; how flight and tranfparent all their finest contrivances of fecrecy are; while, notwithstanding all the private receffes, and dark closets, which they fo much truft in, the windows of heaven are still open over their heads.

And now, what should the confideration of all this do, but every minute of our lives remind us, fo to behave ourselves, as under the eye of that God, who seeth in fecret, and will reward us openly,

SERMON

XVI.

Measures of Charity.

[From Dr. PELLING on Charity.]

COL. III. 14.

Above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.

T

HAT infinitely wife and beneficent

being that made the world, to communicate himself to his creatures, and to make them partakers of his goodness, hath given fuch laws of virtue to mankind, as ferve, not only to prepare us for the endlefs happiness of another life, but also tô make us in a great measure happy in this life.

For those virtues are copies of God himfelf, tranfcripts of his own most bleffed nature; and therefore they must necessarily tend to make us happy, because God himself is happy in them.

God's happiness confifteth in the admirable perfections of his nature; and the higher

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higher we rife in these perfections, the greater degrees of happiness we must needs attain to, because we approach the nearer unto God, in the resemblance of whom the true and folid happiness of mankind doth confift, tho' the corrupt part of the world doth evermore place it in other things.

Those virtues that I now fpeak of are the divine perfections, which are the rule of God's actions towards mankind: As, the purity and holiness of his nature, by means whereof he hateth all manner of iniquity; his effential truth, by reason whereof he cannot deceive; his faithfulnefs in the performance of all his promises, upon which account he is called in scripture the faithful God; his patience and longfuffering towards the greatest criminals, not willing that any should perish; the exact rectitude of his will, by means whereof he offers not the leaft injury to any part of the creation, but is righteous and juft in all his proceedings; but above all, his infinite compaffion (-a God full of compaffion, he is called), by virtue whereof he is gracious, merciful, flow to anger, and plenteous in goodness.

Thefe