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ous when or how we fhall die? What properly concerns us, is, to wait our appointed time, until our change. fhall come, that we may die the death of the righteous.

O death! it is thine to "tread out empire, and to «quench the stars." The laft enemy to be deftroyed, thy wide dominion fhall end with the frame of nature. He who tafted death for the human race hath fet bounds to thy fway. He is alive for evermore; and hath the keys of hell and of death. He redeemeth from death, and ransometh from the power of the grave.

"death, I will be thy plagues: O grave, I will be thy "deftruction. The fea, and death, and hell fhall de"liver up the dead which are in them." The heavens, earth and elements fhall be diffolved. New heavens and a new earth fhall be created: And time shall be no longer.

SERMON XXIII.

JUDGMENT.

ECCLESIASTES, xi. 9.

BUT KNOW THOU, THAT FOR ALL THESE THINGS GOD WILL

BRING THEE INTO JUDGMENT.

351

THESE

HESE words, though alike applicable to all ftages of life, are immediately addreffed to the young. In a course of fermons to this clafs of my hearers, on various fubjects, the laft was on death. To remind and affure them of a judgment to come, an event equally certain as death, the text now read has been chofen for the fubject of present contemplation.

The evidence from fcripture of this folemn and weighty doctrine is clear and incontrovertible. But we will attend, first, to some confiderations which the light of NATURE fuggefts on the subject.

Firft, the fenfe of moral obligation and capacity for religion in man fhews that he is accountable to a moral Governour and Judge. He can enquire, "Where is "God my Maker, who teacheth us more than the "beafts of the earth, and maketh us wiser than the "fowls of heaven?" Why is man thus diftinguished, but that he might glorify God, and purfue an happiness fitted to his elevated rank? He was, doubtlefs, defigned for enjoyments as much fuperior to thofe of fenfe as he excels the animal creatures in the scale of beings. He can furvey the frame of nature, which declareth the wisdom, power and Godhead of its author-can furvey his own frame. The Spirit within him is the can

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dle of the Lord, fo that he discerneth between good and evil, revieweth the past, looketh forward to the future, and obferveth the afpect which his temper and conduct have on his own ftate and that of others. He can cultivate divine and focial affections. He feels that he is a probationer. The confcience within him fummoneth him to its bar; affuring him that he hath acted under the eye of a Being who loveth righteousness, and is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity; who will judge the righteous and the wicked. Hence these oppofite characters, on the review of themselves, have inward joy and hope, or grief and fear. No abftract view of the beauty of virtue or deformity of vice can yield the perfect peace which the virtuous man feels, or the perturbation which agitates the vicious. They are confcious that they have to do with a Being to whom all things are naked and open-who will reward the good, and not fuffer the bad to go unpunished.

The heathen expected rewards and punifhments in another world according to men's behaviour in this, as appears from the places of happiness and mifery which they contrived for men after death. All their religious rites fhew the fame thing. To enforce civil fubjection, their legiflators had recourfe to the retributions of another world. The man who faith, There is no God, at least fears there is one, who weighs his actions and principles.

Some maintain, that God is the only agent in the universe. Yet every intelligent creature feels that he himself is an agent, the author of his own volitions and actions; and therefore accountable for them. He is confidered and treated by others as an agent, and views and treats other intelligent creatures as fuch. Confcience does not applaud or reproach us for our volitions and actions, confidered merely or principally as they affect our outward state in this world: For when we obey its dictates, at the expence of worldly reproach and fufferings, we most approve our conduct upon re

flection: We connect the approbation of confcience with that of God. How much foever men's worldly intereft may be promoted by violating their confcience, its reproaches, whenever they reflect, fhew their folly. They therefore believe that they must give account to

God.

Secondly, The objects of God's love or hatred are not diftinguifhed, uniformly, by the prefent diftribution of his providence.

Retributions, doubtlefs, take place in this world in more inftances, and to an higher degree, than we perceive. In many cafes we find that we had misjudged. The prefumption is, that in a much greater number our judgment is wrong. We judge from what appears, and frequently from detached parts of a character. It is eafier, in fome cafes, to determine, from appearances, who are vicious than who are virtuous. All who may feem to be virtuous are not fo. The character of the upright may also, from various causes, lie under suspicion. Moreover, happiness or mifery depends much more on the ftate of the mind than on outward circumftances. A little with virtue and inward peace is to be preferred to an abundance with vice and vexation of fpirit. The circumftances which fome may confider as eligible and enviable, others would neither defire nor enjoy. Let it be added, there are various instances wherein thofe, whofe fins are open beforehand, are fignally punished upon earth, and the eminently virtuous as fignally rewarded.

These things notwithstanding, no certain and manifeft difference is made between the righteous and the wicked. Some of the openly profligate and impious flourish in health and affluence, are in a manner exempt from outward croffes, and (fo far as appears) from inward perturbation. Others, who are the excellent of the earth, live in poverty and neglect—are perfecuted, it may be, for their firm and unblemished virtue. Or they are exercised with acute pains, of long

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