A beastly intemperance in the use of spirituous liquors makes the same ravage in the lowest ranks that luxury and gaming do in the higher. Both aim at that supreme blessing, a life of dissipation, and each has its respective attendant, ruined fortune and a diseased body. But here lies the difference; property transferred is not lost to the public; but the general health destroyed brings ruin on society. Hence we may understand how Government without much other injury than of private morals, may connive at the vice of gaming, since its direct and immediate effect is only the transferring property from one worthless set of hands to another-generally from fools to knaves; but the commission of daily murders by the use of spirituous liquors is cutting away the very nerves of society, and desolating the community.

These are the three characteristic vices, each of which is peculiar to the three ranks of men amongst us. But there is one which is common to them all, and goes under the more general name of CORRUPTION; which consists not (as it did of old, and in its ordinary course,) in preferring our own private interests to the interests of the public, but in advancing our own private interests at the expense of the public; the several branches of which being now formed into a system, it is become almost as difficult to detect as to reform.

Such is the depraved state of the general manners; a people turbulent and servile, mutinous

and corrupt; impatient in want, improvident in abundance; and equally unawed by the wrath of Providence or the laws of society :-evils which have now driven us on the very brink of the precipice. Here the most inconsiderate must take the alarm, and the most profligate be forced to stop.

We have fallen into our distresses by the wanton abuse of God's two greatest blessings, civil liberty and the religion of Jesus. In the days of sunshine and prosperity the rank weeds of license and impiety sprung up, and have laid waste and desolated the heart. But now it will be expected of us, unless we be content to become the scorn and outcasts of mankind, that calamity and distress should do their proper office, and by their severe but wholesome discipline restore sobriety and recollection to the giddy and dissipated mind.

Let us, at length, attend to the common dictates of reason and religion; let the libertine shake off his impiety as a hideous dream, and let the gay victim of his vanity and his pleasure fly to the horns of the altar,-to that only support of miserable humanity, RELIGION. For sure, we should not (after having abused all God's former blessings) abuse this last of them, his fatherly correction, likewise, and suffer adversity to harden our hearts, instead of amending our ways, when it has that salutary and sovereign use to restore the decayed powers of piety and virtue: which, &c. &c.

397

SERMON IV.

FRUITS OF SIN.

[Preached at Lincoln's Inn, Feb. 8. 1746-7.]

ROM. vi. 21.

WHAT FRUIT HAD YE THEN OF THOSE THINGS, WHEREOF YE ARE NOW ASHAMED? •

Christian Religion hath discovered to us, for reasons unknown to philosophy, that sin and wickedness are the absolute disgrace and degradation of our nature.

But the Apostle's purpose in my text was to remind his followers, that the practice of it was before found as unprofitable, as it was now seen to be dishonourable. What FRUIT (says he) had ye THEN in those things whereof ye are NOW ashamed? implying that vice and immorality produced fruits very different from the expectations of its deluded victims. And this truth the whole history of mankind confirms.

Happiness is the natural and necessary aim of all rational beings; but in pursuit of this great end, men, partly from the constitution of their faculties, and partly from the disadvantage of their situation, are very apt to be fatally misled. The deluded votaries of happiness seeking for it either

in ambition or pleasure, as the vivacity of their mental or the vigour of their corporeal faculties happen differently to excite them; the schemes of ambition being carried on by injustice, and those of pleasure by luxury. Under this view, therefore, it is, that we are to examine what fruits these mistaken species of happiness are wont to produce.

First, then, to consider the issue of ambition carried on by injustice, whether its object be power or riches. Let us examine the former, even in its most favourable state, then, when it has attained what it aimed at; whether it be by circumventing particulars through false insinuations, or the public through false pretences ;whether it be by pretended zeal for the prince's service, or clamour for the people's liberty.

The ambitious man is now possessed of the power he aspired to: but he is still as far from his end, the quiet enjoyment of it, as when he first set out. He has raised up in his road to it several powerful enemies, become more free and implacable by his success. If in his way to power he rose by circumventing the rivals of his views, his enemies are personal: and amongst such, there is no relaxation or remission. If by deserting the confederacy of a faction, his enemy then is a party, which if less violent than the other, is much more formidable and lasting. These, by traversing all his schemes and designs,

make the exercise of his power uneasy and bitter to him; which frequently ends in his destruction.

For

But suppose him superior to all opposition: yet as he maintains his power by the same evil arts by which he procured it, he will become the object of general odium and aversion; the public growing still more and more inflamed by his successful support of his power. He will see his fame and reputation mangled by the clamours and libels of the populace; which, to an ambitious man, will be the cruellest of mortifications. that turn of mind which inspires men with ambition, makes them most sensible of their fame and glory. But the punishment will not stop here; his very eminence will convey him down in all these odious colours to posterity, and perpetuate his ignominy to future ages. And as much a phantom as this is, it is no more so than the popular breath of his contemporaries, which was one of the principal ends for which he laboured through so much opposition and misery; and which consequently we must suppose him equally to feel.

But ambition has rarely the lot of this splendid misery. Its whole course is commonly spent in buffeting with adverse weather, which still keeps it from its desired port. For the storms of ambition drive from all quarters: and though it be the first principle of this adventurer to veer