SERMON XVI.

PREACHED DECEMBER 1, 1765.

ROM. xvi. 19.

I would have

you

wise unto that which is good,

and simple concerning evil.

IN considering the first part of this precept, I endeavoured to give some general description of Religious or CHRISTIAN WISDOM; both in respect of the END it has in view, and of the MEANS employed by it: I further exemplified some of those subordinate WAYS, in which the prudent application even of those means is seen and expressed: And all this, for the sake of those sincere, but over-zealous persons, who

are apt to think that wisdom hath little to do in the prosecution of honest and upright pur

poses.

It now remains to treat that other part of the text, which requires us to be INNOCENT, as well as wise, to be SIMPLE CONCERNING EVIL. And this, perhaps, will be thought the more important branch of the subject. For, generally speaking, the ways of wisdom, when our purposes are the very best, are not only the most effectual, but the safest and most convenient. So that prudence is likely to be a favourite virtue with us. But the case is different with regard to simplicity concerning evil; which is often found a hard and disagreeable injunction; as it may happen to cross our passions and the more immediate views of self-interest. So that this SIMPLICITY will sometimes seem, what the world is ready enough to call it, folly: and therefore, for the credit of our sense, as well as virtue, we should be well apprized of the worth and excellence of this Christian duty.

The virtue of SIMPLICITY consists, in general, in following the plain ingenuous sense of the mind; in taking our measures according to the dictates of conscience, and acting, on all occasions, without reserve, duplicity, or self

imposture, up to our notions of obligation. It is the office of WISDOM to see that our conscience be rightly informed: But our INTEGRITY is shewn in doing that which conscience, be it erroneously informed or no, requires of us. It, consists, in a word, in whatever we understand by an honesty of nature; in observing, universally, that which we believe to be right, and avoiding what we know, or but suspect to be wrong.

a

This simplicity of mind may be almost said to be born with us. It is the bias of nature on our young minds; and our earliest instructions, as well as the first efforts of reason, strengthen and confirm it. But the impression lasts not long. We are scarcely entered into life, when we begin to treat it as one of those childish things, which it is beneath the dignity of our riper age to be amused with. The passions put forth and grow luxuriant; and why, we say to ourselves, should this tender apprehension of evil check their growth, and restrain their activity? We are now in the season

Bene præcipiunt, qui vetant quidquam agere, quod dubites, æquum sit an iniquum æquitas enim lucet ipsa per se; dubitatio cogitationem significat injuriæ.

Cic. de Off. L. I. ix.

of pleasure; and can there be any hurt in taking a little of it, out of that narrow path, which our early prejudices have prescribed to us ?

Still, as we advance in years, fresh objects arise, and other passions engage us in the pursuit of them. Wealth and honour, or what we improperly call our interests, have now an ascendant over us; and the passion for each is rarely gratified but at the expence of some virtue. And thus it comes to pass, that, though we set out in the world with a warm sense of truth and honour, experience by degrees refines us out of these principles; and our hearts, instead of retaining that infant purity, the grace and ornament of our nature, and which Christ so especially requires in the professors of his religion, are all over stained with fraud, dissimulation, and disingenuity. We are even proud of the acquisition, and call it a knowledge of life so dextrous are we in giving a good name to our worst qualities!

But effects follow their causes; and the vice we are now considering is not the less opera

b Matth. v. 8.

tive, nor the less hurtful, for the specious terms in which we dress it up, and present it

to each other.

Of its malignity I shall give two or three instances; and, to fit them the better for use, they shall be taken from very different quarters; from the cabinets of the wise, and the schools of the learned, as well as from the vulgar haunts of careless and licentious men. We shall learn, perhaps, to reverence the Apostle's advice, when we find that the neglect of it has DEGRADED RELIGION; RELAXED MORALITY, and

POLLUTED COMMON LIFE.

To begin with an instance which shews how dangerous it is to depart from this simplicity concerning evil, in the great concerns of RE

LIGION.

I. When the priest, the sage, and the politician joined together in the days of heathenism to propagate among the people a superstition, which themselves condemned and detested; when they did their utmost to support a senseless, an immoral, an irreligious worship; when they strove, by every seducing artifice, to keep up that strong delusion, which God, in his just indignation, had sent among them, to