but even sit at their table and reprove them not. Why then, thou also art one of the "dumb dogs that cannot bark, sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber." I fix this charge upon every Preacher, in particular upon those who saw a young woman, daughter to one of the Quakers in London, going to be married in apparel suitable to her diamond buckle, which cost a hundred guineas. Could you see this, and not call heaven and earth to witness against it? Then I witness against thee, in the Name of the Lord, thou art a "blind leader of the blind:" thou "strainest at a gnat and swallowest a camel." Verily the sin both of teachers and hearers, is herein exceeding great. And the little attempts towards plainness of apparel, which are still observable among you, (I mean, in the colour and form of your clothes, and the manner of putting them on,) only testify against you, that you were once what you know in your hearts you are not now.

. 8. I come now to your main principle, "We are all to be taught of God, to be inspired and led by his Spirit. And then we shall worship him, not with a dead form, but in spirit and in truth." These are deep and weighty words. But many hold fast the words, and are utterly ignorant of their meaning. Is not this an exceeding common case? Are not you conscious, abundance of your friends have done so? With whom the being taught of God, and led by his Spirit, are mere words of course, that mean just nothing. And their crude and undigested accounts, of the things they did not understand, have raised that deep prejudice against these great truths, which we find in the generality of men.

Do some of you ask, "But dost thou acknowledge the Inward Principle?" I do, my friends: and I would to God every one of you acknowledged it as much. I say, all religion is either empty show, or perfection by inspiration; in other words, the obedient love of God, by the supernatural knowledge of God; yea, all that which is not of faith, is sin: all which does not spring from this loving knowledge of God; which knowledge cannot begin, or subsist one moment, without immediate inspiration: not only all public worship, and all private prayer, but every thought in common life, and word, and work. What think you of this? Do you not stagger? Dare you carry the inward principle so far? Do you acknowledge it to be the very truth? But, alas! what is the acknowledging it; dost

It is easy to discern how your people fell into this snare of the Devil. You were at first a poor, despised, afflicted people. Then, what some of you had to spare, was little enough to relieve the needy members of your own Society. In a few years you increased in goods, and were able to relieve more than your own Poor. But you did not bestow all that you had to spare from them, on the Poor belonging to other Societies. It remained either to lay it up, or to expend it in superfluities. Some chose one way, and some the other.

Lay this deeply to heart, ye who are now a poor, despised, afflicted people. Hitherto ye are not able to relieve your own Poor. But if ever your substance increase, see that ye be not straitened in your own bowels, that ye fall not into the same snare of the Devil. Before any of you either lay up treasures on earth or indulge needless expense of any kind, I pray the Lord God to scatter you to the corners of the earth, and blat out your name from under heaven!

thou experience this principle in thyself: what saith thy heart? Does God dwell therein? And doth it now echo to the voice of God? Hast thou the continual inspiration of his Spirit, filling thy heart with his love, as with a well of water, springing up into everlasting life?

9. Art thou acquainted with the leading of his Spirit, not by notion only, but by living experience? I fear very many of you talk of this, who do not so much as know what it means.

How does the Spirit of God lead his children, to this or that particular action? Do you imagine, it is by blind impulse only? By moving you to do it, you know not why? Not so. He leads us by our eye, at least as much as by the hand; and by light as well as by heat. He shows us the way wherein we should go, as well as incites us to walk therein. For example. Here is a man ready to perish with hunger. How am I led by the Spirit to relieve him? First, by his convincing me, it is the will of God I should; and, secondly, by his filling my heart with love towards him. Both this light and this heat are the gift of God; are wrought in me by the same Spirit; who leads me, by this conviction as well as love, to go and feed that man. This is the plain, rational account of the ordinary leading of the Spirit. But how far from that which some have given! Art thou thus led by the Spirit to every good word and work? Till God hath thereby made thy faith perfect? Dost thou know what faith is? It is a loving, obedient sight of a present and reconciled God. Now where this is, there is no dead form; neither can be, so long as it continues. But all that is said or done is full of God, full of spirit, and life, and power.

10. But perhaps, as much as you talk of them, you do not know the difference between form and spirit; or between worshipping God in a formal way, and worshipping him in spirit and in truth. The Lord is that Spirit. The seeing, and feeling, and loving him, is spiritual life. And whatever is said or done in the sight and love of God, that is full of spirit and life. All beside this is form, mere dead form; whether it be in our public addresses to God, or in our private; or in our worldly business, or in our daily conversation. But if so, how poor, and mean, and narrow have your views and conceptions been! You were afraid of formality in public worship. And reason good. But were you afraid of it no where else? Did not you consider, that formality in common life, is also an abomination to the Lord? And that it can have no place in any thing we say or do, but so far as we forget God? O watch against it in every place, every moment, that you may every moment see and love God; and consequently, at all times and in all places, worship him "in spirit and in truth."

My brethren, permit me to add a few words, in tender love to your souls. Do not you lean too much on the spirit and power which you believe rested upon your forefathers? Suppose it did; will that avail you, if you do not drink into the same spirit? And how evident is this! That whatever ye once were, ye are now

shorn of your strength. Ye are weak and become like other men. The Lord is well nigh departed from you. Where is now the spirit, the life, the power? Be not offended with my plain dealing, when I beseech you who are able to weigh things calmly, to open your eyes and see multitudes even in the church, pursuing, yea, and attaining the substance of spiritual life, and leaving unto you the shadow. Nay, a still greater evil is before you; for if ye find not some effectual means to prevent it, your rising generation will utterly cast off the shadow as well as the substance.

11. There is an abundantly greater difference still, according to your own account, between us who profess ourselves members of the Church of England, and you who are members of the Church of Rome. But notwithstanding this, do you not agree with us in condemning the vices above recited? Profaneness, drunkenness, whoredom, adultery, theft, disobedience to parents, and such like ? And how unhappily do you agree with us in practising the very vices which you condemn? And yet you acknowledge, (nay, and frequently contend for this with a peculiar earnestness,) that every Christian is called to be "zealous of good works," as well as to "deny himself and take up his cross daily." How then do you depart from your own principles, when you are gluttons, drunkards, or epicures? When you live at your ease, in all the elegance and voluptuousness of a plentiful fortune! How will you reconcile the being adorned with gold, arrayed in purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day, with the "denying yourselves and taking up your cross daily?" Surely while you indulge the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, and the pride of life, the excellent rules of self-denial that abound in your own writers, leave you of all men most inexcusable.

12. Neither can this self-indulgence be reconciled, with the being zealous of good works. For by this needless and continual expense, you disable yourselves from doing good. You bind your own hands. You make it impossible for you to do that good which otherwise you might. So that you injure the poor in the same proportion as you poison your own souls. You might have clothed the naked; but what was due to them, was thrown away on your costly apparel. You might have fed the hungry, entertained the stranger, relieved them that were sick or in prison. But the superfluities of your own tables swallowed up that whereby they should have been profited. And so this wasting of your Lord's goods, is an instance of complicated wickedness; since hereby your poor brethren perish for whom Christ died.

I will not recommend to you either the writings or examples of those whom you account heretics, (although some of these, if you could view them with impartial eyes, might provoke you to jealousy.) But, O! that God would write in your hearts the rules of self-denial and love, laid down by Thomas à Kempis! Or that you would follow, both in this and in good works, that burning and shining light of your own Church, the Marquis de Renty! Then

would all who knew and loved the Lord rejoice to acknowledge you as the Church of the living God: when ye were zealous in every good word and work; and abstained from all appearance of evil: when it was hereby shown that you were filled with the Holy Ghost, delivered from all unholy tempers: when ye were all "unblamable and unrebukeable, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, showing forth" to all Jews, infidels, and heretics, by your active, patient, spotless love of God and man, "the praises of him who had called you out of darkness into his marvellous light."

13. Men and brethren, children of the stock of Abraham, suffer me to speak a few words to you also: you who do not allow, That Messiah the Prince is already come and cut off. However, you so far hear Moses and the Prophets, as to allow, 1. That "it is the inspiration of the Holy One, which giveth man understanding," and that all the true children of God are taught of God. 2. That the substance both of the law and the Prophets, is contained in that one word: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and thy neighbour as thyself." And, 3. That the sure fruit of love is obedience, "ceasing from evil, and doing good."

And do you walk by this rule? Have you yourself that inspiration of the Holy One? Are you taught of God? Hath he opened your understanding? Have you the inward knowledge of the Most High? I fear not. Perhaps you know little more, even of the meaning of the words than a Mahometan.

Let us go a little farther. Do you "love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength?" Can you say, "Whom have I in heaven but thee; and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee?" Do you desire God at all? Do you desire to have any thing to do with him, till you can keep the world no longer? Are you not content so you enjoy the good things of the earth, to let God stand afar off? Only calling upon him now and then, when you cannot do well without him. Why then you do not love God at all, though you will sometimes condescend to use him. You love the world. This possesses your heart. This therefore is your god. You renounce the God of your fathers, the God of Israel: you are still uncircumcised in heart. Your own conscience bears witness, you in this no more hear Moses and the Prophets, than you do Jesus of Nazareth.

14. From Moses and the Prophets it has been shown, that your forefathers were "a faithless and stubborn generation; a generation which set not their hearts aright, and whose spirit cleaved not steadfastly unto God." And this you acknowledge yourselves. If you are asked, how is it that the promise is not fulfilled? Seeing the sceptre is long since departed from Judah, why is not Shiloh come? Your usual answer is, "Because of the sins of our fathers, God hath delayed his coming." Have you then reformed from the sins of your fathers? Are you turned unto the Lord your God? Nay, do ye VOL. 8.—E e

not tread in the same steps? Except that single point of outward idolatry, what abomination did they ever commit, which you have not committed also? Which the generality of you do not commit still, according to your power? If, therefore, the coming of the Messiah was hindered by the sins of your forefathers, then, by the same rule, your continuance therein will hinder his coming to the end of the world.

"Brethren, my heart's desire, and prayer to God is," that he would "gather the outcasts of Israel." And I doubt not, but when the fulness of the Gentiles is come in, then all Israel shall be saved, But meantime is there not great cause that ye should say with Daniel, "O Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion of face, as at this day, to the men of Judah, and unto all Israel. O Lord, we have sinned, we have rebelled against thee, neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord our God. Yet, O our God, incline thine ear, and hear; open thine eyes and behold our desolations for we do not present our supplications before thee for our righteousnesses, but for thy great mercies. O Lord, hear! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, hearken and do! Defer not, for thine own sake; for thy city and thy people that are called by thy name."

15. I cannot conclude without addressing myself to you also, who do not admit either the Jewish or Christian Revelation. But still you desire to be happy; you own the essential difference between vice and virtue; and acknowledge, (as did all the wiser Greeks and Romans) that vice cannot consist with happiness. You allow, likewise, that gratitude and benevolence, self-knowledge and modesty, mildness, temperance, patience, and generosity, are justly numbered among virtues; and that ingratitude and malice, envy and ill-nature, pride, insolence, and vanity, gluttony and luxury, covetousness and discontent, are vices of the highest kind.

Now let us calmly inquire, how far your life is consistent with your principles. You seek happiness. But you find it not. You come no nearer it with all your labours. You are not happier than you were a year ago. Nay, I doubt you are more unhappy. Why is this, but because you look for happiness there, where you own it cannot be found? Indeed, what is there on earth which can long satisfy a man of understanding? His soul is too large for the world he lives in. He wants more room.

Estual infelix angusto limite Mundi,

Ut brevibus clausus Gyaris, parvaque Seripho.

He has already travelled through all which is called pleasure; diversions and entertainments of every kind. But among these he can find no enjoyment of any depth; they are empty, shallow, superficial things: they pleased for awhile, but the gloss is gone; and now they are dull and tasteless. And what has he next, only the same things again? For this world affords nothing more. It can supply him with no change. Go, feed again but it is upon one dish still. Thus,