trial to govern and reftrain them within the bounds of temperance and justice, and you will nevertheless infer, that because God has given these appetites, we may therefore indulge them to the utmoft; what is it but making that a license to fin, which God and nature intended for a trial of virtue?

But you will infift farther perhaps, and ask, How it is confiftent with God's goodness to work fuch temptations as these into the very nature of mankind? A notable question! But if you attend to it, it comes to this: How is it confiftent with God's goodness to make any thing that is not abfolutely perfect, to make rational creatures, for inftance, capable of doing amifs? The queftion, I fay, comes to this, or else there is nothing in it: for if God may make creatures not abfolutely perfect, but capable of finning, there is no greater objection against putting the trial of their virtue upon their natural appetites, than upon any other weakness or infirmity and fome infirmity there must be in every creature capable of offending, and thereby capable of a trial. Had we no defires that could incline us to do amifs, we should be above a state of trial and if it is lawful to indulge all our defires upon this pretence, that they are natural, it is evident we cannot do amifs in following our defires, and confequently we are not in a ftate of trial, What hitherto we have called temptations to fin, are in truth juftifications of it; for temptations act upon our defires, and our defires cannot lead us wrong; and if fo, every base action is justified by the temptation that produces it: and no man can fin but when he is forced to do fomething against

his inclination. This plea, drawn from natural defires, is, I know, made use of to justify one kind of wickedness particularly: but furely this is very partial dealing; for I fee no reason why pride, ambition, and avarice fhould be excluded the benefit of it. Have pride, ambition, and avarice no defires; or are they all unnatural? It would be well for the world if they were, but the cafe is otherwife: mankind are of a nature fubject to thefe defires as well as others; and upon the foot of this plea we may make faints, as well as heroes, of all the great difturbers of the world.

To conclude: the defires of nature are ordained to ferve the ends of nature: reason is given to man to govern the lower appetites, and to keep them within their proper bounds: in this confifts the virtue of man: this is the trial to which he is called; and the prize contended for is nothing lefs than immortality. If we indulge ourselves to the utmoft in this world, our enjoyments must be very fhort-lived, fince we are ourselves but of a fhort continuance on earth; but the next scene that opens will present us with a state that never changes, either happy or miferable, according as we behave here. In this world we have little intereft, no abiding place; and ought therefore to pass through it with the indifference of travellers, whose affections are placed on their native country. This is the view the Apoftle had before him in giving the exhortation contained in the text, Dearly beloved, 1 befeech you as ftrangers and pilgrims, abftain from fleshly lufts, which war against the foul.

DISCOURSE XXIII.

PART II.

THE Apoftle in the text enforces his exhortation to abstain from fleshly lufts by two confiderations, which yet are near allied to each other. He calls upon us to remember that we are strangers and pilgrims here on earth, and confequently that we have a better and a dearer intereft in another country, which ought by no means to be neglected for the fake of the low and mean enjoyments which this world affords. Whoever allows the principle must needs allow the confequence. If we are related to two worlds, if this present be in all respects inconfiderable, compared to the other, no reafon can juftify or excufe us in facrificing our intereft in the other world to the allurements and temptations to be met with in this.

This being allowed leads us to an inquiry worthy of all the pains we can beftow on it, how far we may pursue the pleasures of this life, confiftently with our hopes and expectations of a better. Some enjoyments there are not below the care of a wife and good man in this world, though he forgets not

that he is related to another: fuch are the pleafures of the mind, arifing from the exercife of reafon: fuch are, in a lower degree, the pleasures which our fenfes furnish, whilft used within the bounds of temperance, and fo reftrained as not to be prejudicial to ourselves and others. Whenever our appetites become fo much too ftrong for our reafon, as to carry us into offences in either of these respects, then it is that our fleshly lufts do war against the foul. If we violate the laws of juftice and equity, to make way for the gratification of our pasfions; or if we render ourselves incapable of dif charging the duties of religion and morality, arifing from the relation we bear to God and man, we wound our own fouls, and, for the fake of momentary pleafures, expofe ourselves to death eternal.

It ought to be a fufficient argument to Chriftians, to fhew them the exprefs command of the Gospel against drunkenness, fornication, adultery, and vices of the like nature: for fince the command comes from him who has power to execute his decrees, and the penalty of them, upon every offender; to tranfgrefs fuch injunctions fo given muft discover a want of faith, as well as a want of virtue. But the Apostle in the text goes farther, and exhorts us to abftain from fleshly lufts, by laying before us the reafon in which the command to abftain is founded: was there no difference between abstaining and not abftaining; was the man who gives a loose to his paffions, and indulges them to the utmost, in as fair a way to happiness as he who governs and restrains them, and bounds them on every fide by the rules of juftice and equity; the

command to abstain would be merely arbitrary, and void of any reason to fupport itself. But the cafe is not fo: fenfual enjoyments have a natural tendency to debase the mind, to render it incapable of difcharging its proper functions, and unworthy of the happiness to which it is ordained; for fleshly lufts war against the foul: for which reason we are commanded to abftain from them: for which reason we ought to abftain from them, though the command had not intervened.

If you confider wherein the dignity of man confifts, and what are the means put into his hands to make himself happy, you will have a clear prospect of the ill effects of fenfual lufts, and fee how truly they war against the foul.

There is no occafion to carry you into any abftracted fpeculations upon this fubject; it will be fufficient to the purpose to make use of the observations which common sense will furnish.

There is no man fo little acquainted with himfelf, but that he fometimes finds a difference between the dictates of his reason, and the cravings of appetite; between the things which he would do, and the things which he knows he ought to do. This discord is the foundation of the difference to be obferved among men with regard to their moral character and behaviour. When men give themfelves up to follow their appetites, and have no higher aim than the gratification of their paffions, all the use they have of their reason is to adminifter to their fenfes in contriving ways and means to fatisfy them. Where this is the cafe, confider what a figure a man makes: he has appetites in common