that, by voluntary compliance, he has given to his passions that haughty ascendant which they now exercise over him; has forged the chains with which he is bound, and sold himself to do iniquity. Lastly, The servitude of vice is accompanied with this farther aggravation, that it is subjection to our own servants. Those desires and passions which the sinner has raised to lawless rule, were given us as instruments of self-preservation; but were plainly designed to be under the direction of a higher power. Of themselves, they are headstrong and blind; they bear all the marks of intended subordination; and conscience is invested with every ensign of authority and supremacy. But sin inverts the whole frame of human nature. It compels reason to bow down before T authority to which they had no rig and so it is found to hold in this insta The desires and passions of a vicious having once obtained an unlimited sv trample him under their feet. make him feel that he is subject to div and contradictory as well as imperi masters, who often pull him differ ways. His soul is rendered the re tacle of many repugnant and jar dispositions; and resembles some ba rous country, cantoned out into diffe principalities, who are continually wag war on one another. Such is the s into which sinners have brought th selves, in order to be free from the s posed confinement of virtue. Where had promised themselves nothing but and pleasure, they are made to experi restraints more severe, and mortificat more painful, than any which they w under the description of atrocious sinners. They imagine that a certain moderate course may be held in vice, by means of which, men, without throwing altogether aside the restraints of reason, may enjoy an easy and pleasurable life. By rea soning thus, my friends, you flatter and deceive yourselves to your own destruction. Be assured that, by every vicious indulgence, you are making an approach to a state of complete slavery; you are forfeiting a certain share of your liberty; how soon the whole of it may be forfeited, you are not aware. It is true, that all which has now been said of the servitude of sin, applies only to a character corrupted in the extreme. But remember, that to this extreme no man ever arrives at once. He passes through many of those intermediate stages, in one of which you On the Slavery of Vice. 204 SERMON you are now perhaps found. Vice always creeps by degrees; and insensibly twines *James, i. 25. + Psalm cxix. 45. PSALM XVI. 8. Lord, I have loved the habitation of thy house, and the place where thine honour dwelleth. GOD is a spirit, and they that worship SERMON him, must worship him in spirit and in truth. That religion chiefly consists in an inward principle of goodness, is beyond dispute, and that its value and efficacy are derived from its effects in purifying the heart, and reforming the life. All external services, which have not this tendency, are entirely insignificant. They degenerate XI. |