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SERM. II.

IIdly, The peculiar Advantages of Affliction, to bring us to a just Sense of God, and our Duty.

It, I am to shew the Happiness and Reasonableness of turning our Thoughts to God in general.

To repair to God only, when under Affliction, is to use Him as some conceited Philofophers have done, who never have Recourse to Him, and take Him into their Schemes, but when they are in Distress, when they meet with some Difficulty, which they cannot plausibly account for, or get over, without calling Him in to their Aid.

Befides, never is there more Occafion for Good-Humour, Chearfulness, and an undisturbed Serenity of Mind, than when we form our religious Notices. For, though the brightest Ideas of the Deity may be retained and cherished under any Indispofition of Mind or Body; yet, to retain and cherish them at that Juncture, they must be imprinted in indelible Characters on the Soul, when it was in an easy Situation : Otherwise, Religion will not brighten up our Minds, and lighten the Darkness of them;

them; our Minds will darken and disco-SERM. II. lour Religion. And what has given fome People a Distaste for it, is; that having never applied themselves seriously to it, but when they were in a dull, joyless, fullen Humour, which represented every Thing they were conversant about to be dull and joyless; the Notions of Religion, and of a joyless State, have been, however unduly connected, ever after infeparable. By meditating on God only, or even chiefly, in a melancholy Hour, you will affociate the Idea of Gloominess and Horror with that of Religion: You will view Him, just as He was worshipped in old Gothic Buildings, in a dim folemn Light, which sheds a pensive Gloom over, and saddens every Object. You will not ferve Him with that Gladness, which he requires: For God loveth a chearful Worshipper, as well as a chearful Giver. But you will repair with Reluctance and Constraint to that Service, which is perfect Freedom.

We are indigent Creatures, infufficient of ourselves for our own Happiness, and therefore ever feeking it fomewhere else. But where we shall effectually seek for it, is the Question. Unless the Thoughtful

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SERM. II. and the Pensive direct their Thoughts to, and caft their Cares upon God; there will be little Difference between Them and the Gay and Unthinking, befides this; that the Latter will have more of the Vanity of Life; but They themselves more of the Vexations of it. If there were not another Life, our Business would be, not to alarm the Thinking Faculty, but to lay our too active and unquiet Thoughts to Rest. The Mind would be like a froward Child, ever fretful when fully awake; and therefore to be played and lulled asleep as fast as we Our main Happiness would be to forget our Misery and ourselves; to forget, that we are a Set of Beings, who, after we have toiled out the live-long Day of human Life, in Variety of Hardships ; are, instead of receiving our Wages at the Close of it, to fleep out one long eternal Night in an utter Extinction of Being.

can.

If Man had an ample Fund of Happiness in himself, without any Deficiency; whence is it, that he is continually looking out abroad for foreign Amusements; Amusements, which are of no other Use, but to keep off troublesom and ungrateful Impressions, and to make us insensible of the Tediousness of Living; Amusements, SERM. II. which rather suspend a Sense of Uneafiness, than give us any substantial Satisfaction; and keep the Soul in an equal Poise between Pleasure and Pain? And is this the great End which we have in View ? Supposing we could compass it; yet if it be better not to be at all, than to be miferable; then certainly just not to be miferable, without any positive Happiness, is much at one, as not to be at all. Whence is it, that that restless Thing the Soul, too enterprizing to trace every Thing else, yea the deep Things of God; is yet too cowardly to enquire into itself, and to view the Workings of that ever-loved, yet everavoided Object ? Whence is it, that the Mind, whose active Energy prompts her to give a free and unconfined Range to her Thoughts on other Subjects, nay, to make, if it were possible, the Tour of the whole Universe; yet, when she comes to dwell at Home, and to survey the little World within, flags in her Vivacity, feels herself in a forlorn Condition, and finds a Drowsiness and melancholy Gloom hanging upon her? Whence is it, but that the Soul, whenever it turns it's Thoughts inD 4 ward,

SERM. II. ward, finds within a frightful Void of folid Happiness, without any Possibility in itself of filling it up? Indeed, in a Circle of gay Follies, or in a Multiplicity of Pursuits, when a Succeffion of different Objects is continually striking upon the Mind, the Capacity of the Soul is taken up, and it forgets that inward Poverty and Indigence which nothing can effectually relieve but the unsearchable Riches of the Love of God: But when we step aside from the Noise and beaten Tracks of Life, into Solitude and Retirement; we foon perceive, that we are, without fome Business to engage, or some Recreation to divert our Attention, an insupportable Burthen to our selves. You fancy the Man, whose daily Labour serves for little else but to get his daily Bread, and whose daily Bread just refreshes and strengthens him to undergo his daily Labour, to be a very miferable Object; and perhaps he is fo. Would you make him more miserable ? Give him a Fortune, which shall set him at Rest from his Labours, and leave him nothing at all to do: And then the Wearisomness, which refulted from a continual Drudgery, will be nothing comparable to another Kind of