whole Ocean. And is it worth our while SERM. L. to strive to please a vain fantastic World, which will foon difregard us, and think itself full as well without us; instead of laying out our Endeavours to please that Almighty Being, whose inexhaustible Power and Goodness will make his Servants happy to all Eternity? How ridiculous are all our Aims; except this be the grand Aim, in which all the rest center! A Man, for Instance, makes it his Business to enfure to himself a Name after Death; that is, to save four or five Letters (for what is a Name befides?) from Oblivion: And yet shall be neglectful of fecuring immortal Happiness: He shall be fond of an imaginary Life after Death: and yet make no Provifion for that real Life, which is to last for ever and ever; folicitous to have bis Name written and preserved in any Book, but in that Book, where it will only be of Service to him, the Book of Life. O Virtue! when this folemn Pageantry of earthly Grandeur shall be no more, when all Distinctions, but moral and religious, shall vanish; when this Earth shall be difsolved, when the Moon shall be no more a Light by Night, nor the Sun by Day; thou

SERM. I. thou shalt still survive thy Votary's immortal Friend, thou shalt appear, like thy great Author, in perfect Beauty; thy Luftre undiminished, and thy Glory unperishable.

Let him therefore that glorieth, glory in the Lord. He alone, who gave and upholds all the Powers of Soul and Body, he alone deserveth the Glory of them. As we are Creatures, the Work of God's Hands, we have nothing to glory of: But as we are Sinners, and, in that Respect, the Work of our own Hands, we have much to be ashamed of. We then give the greatest Proof to God of our Worthiness, when we have a deep Sense, and make an humble Confeffion, of our own Unworthiness.

To God therefore, and to Him only, be ascribed, as is most due, all Might, &c.

SERMON

On the Advantages of Affliction.

Being a SERMON occafioned by the Death of Mr. Burton, of Montpelier-Row, in Twickenham.

Preached in Twickenham-Chapel, on Midlent Sunday, 1742; and published at the Request of the Audience.

Pfalm LXXVII. 3.

When I am in Heaviness, I will think upon God.

T

HE whole Pfalm is written with SERM. II. a very beautiful Spirit of Poetry; and if we confider it merely as an human Compofition, may justly challenge our highest Admiration. In the former Part, the Pfalmist vents an Heart overcharged with Grief, and writes with the deepest Emotions of Sorrow. In the Day VOL. II.

D

of

SERM. II. of my Trouble 1 fought the Lord, my Sore ran in the Night and ceased not, my Soul refused to be comforted. And again, at the seventh Verse, Will the Lord absent himself for ever, and will he be no more favourable? Hath God forgotten to be gracious ? Hath be in Anger Shut up his tender Mercies? Thus does he discharge the Fulness of his Soul; till, by a very natural, and yet very surprising Transition, from a Rehersal of his own Woes, he passes on to celebrate the marvellous Acts of God. For, to relieve himself under the Pressure of his present Afflictions, he has Recourse to the former Mercies, which God had vouchsafed to the Ifraelites. Surely I will remember thy Wonders of old. This ushers in those sublime Flights of Poetry, which are peculiar to the Genius of the Eastern Nations. The Waters faw Thee, O God; the Waters faw Thee : They were afraid : The Depths also were troubled, &c. Then, to represent the Unsearchableness of God, he compares him, by a very beautiful Allufion, to a Being walking upon the Waters, the Traces of whose Feet could not therefore be discovered: Thy Way is in the Sea, and thy Paths in the great Waters, and thy Footsteps are not known.

If

If we should fet afide the Sanction of SERM. II. divine Authority, which stamps an additional Value upon the Pfalm; yet it could not fail to affect every Reader of a refined Taste. And when we either confider those melting Strains, in which he describes his own Woes; or that exalted Vein, in which he represents the Majesty of God; we shall be at a Loss, whether to admire more the Greatness of that Genius, which could acquit itself with so masterly an Hand in both the pathetic and fublime Way of Writing; or the Justness of that Judgment, which could with so dexterous an Address, with so easy, and I had almost said, so natural an Art, glide from the one to the other.

The Author of the Pfalm had a Mind deeply tinctured with Piety. When his Heart was in Heaviness, he thought upon God: But to think on him then with Pleafure, he must have fet God constantly before him in the smooth Seafons of Life. This will lead me to shew,

Ist, The Happiness and Reasonableness of turning our Thoughts to God in general.