our appetites, and spread our tables, or form our apparel or our furniture but a little beyond our income, if we once begin to admit such a manner of life and expence as exceeds our estate, in order to please our own sensual or vain inclinations, or to vie with our neighbours, we expose ourselves to most evident temptations of injustice, and lead our souls into sinful snares. "We cannot live frugal, as our fathers did; the fashion is altered, and we must follow it, whether the purse can bear it or no."

Hence arise the impetuous desires of hasty and extravagant gains by gaming, in order to recover what is lost by luxury. Men venture largely upon the turn of a die, and defraud their honest creditors of their bread and life, to pay (what they call in their cant) the debts of honour. A wanton sort of justice and illegal equity!

It is this luxurious fashion of life that hath filled our land with the itch of gaming; and if the turn of a wheel can intitle them to thousands, they despise the slow and tedious ways of supplying their wants by labour, business, or traffic. Thus honest industry is discouraged, and trade, which is the political life of our nation, lies groaning and expiring.

Hence proceeds the wicked custom of breaking promises to those whom we deal with, and long delays of payment, till we imagine the debt is cancelled, by being almost forgotten. A vain and criminal imagination! As though the daily increase of interest, and the patience of the creditor, could. make the principal cease to be due! As though time, and unjust delay, could pay debts without money.

Hence flows the unrighteous practice of borrow❤ ing without any design to pay, which is gross and shameful iniquity; I would hope none of the professors of religion have so far abandoned all sense of

righteousness. Yet there are too many, who, when once they have borrowed, grow so careless and negligent of payment, that it brings a disgrace upon their profession, and a blot upon their character. Profuse and thoughtless sinners, who run in debt to every one that will trust them for the daily conveniencies of life! Though they have no reasonable prospect of paying, yet they ask their neighbour to lend, with a free and courageous countenance, and put a bold face upon their venturous iniquity, being too proud to let their poverty be known. But the God of justice beholds the crime, and writes their names down in his book among the unrighteous. Psalm xxxvii. 21. "The wicked borroweth, and

payeth not again."

Hence it comes to pass that there are so many bankrupts in our days, even among the professors of strict religion; a shameful and an ungodly practice, if it arise from luxury and profuseness, or from a careless neglect of their proper affairs! It was thought sufficient, in the days of our fathers, to deserve an expulsion from the church of Christ, unless they could evidently make it appear, that it was merely by the unforeseen and frowning providences of God, they were reduced to this extremity. There is many a man hath groaned away his latter years in poverty, and perhaps in a cold prison, and in most forlorn circumstances of life, by means of the profuseness of his youth and he hath been taught to read the guilt of his luxury and injustice in a long and painful lesson.

But a profuse and sensual humour is not only the spring of unrighteousness among persons of better rank and circumstance in the world, but it tempts seivants also to be unjust to their masters; they will now and then provide a treat for themselves and their friends; they must eat nicely, and drink to excess; and thus they waste their master's substance.

They must keep good company in the world, and now and then spend a licentious hour or two, while their just and reasonable service at home is neglected; and perhaps the purse of the master must pay for all.

Under the same head I may bring a charge of injustice against the careless and wasteful servant, who persuades himself that his master is rich enough, and therefore he is not solicitous to buy or sell, or manage any affairs for him to the best advantage. He permits the goods of his master to be wasted or embezzled, he grows liberal and generous at his master's cost, and has no thought of the golden rule of our Saviour, to manage his master's concerns with the same frugality and conduct, as he would expect a servant should do for him. But it is time I proceed to the next particular.

The fourth occasion of injustice is sloth and id eness. For the slothful man is a brother to him that is a great waster; Prov. xviii. 9.

Whosoever wants the necessaries, òr the conve niences of life, is bound to obtain them by labour and diligence, if he is not possessed of them by any other methods of favourable providence. In the sweat of thy brows shalt thou eat thy bread, was the command given to Adam, when he was turned out of paradise, and forfeited his property in the fruits of Eden. But when once a person gets an aversion to business, when he finds a pleasure in sauntering and trifles, and indulges idleness and a lazy life; then he is tempted to seek the supports and comforts of nature by some practices of unrighteousness. The slothful man will be clothed with rags, unless he procure better clothing by fraud or violence. Prov. xxiii. 21.

Hence it is that persons learn the art of stealing, and possess themselves of the goods or the money of their neighbour by thievery. They mark out

the houses in the day, and break them up at midnight for plunder. They remove the antient landmarks, to enlarge their own borders; they violently take away flocks, and feed upon them. They go forth to their unrighteous work in the morning, and rise betimes for a prey. They reap down the corn in their neighbour's field, and the wicked gather the vintage. They cause the naked to lodge without clothing, and take away the sheaf from the hungry. These are they that rebel against the light, they abide not in the paths thereof. Though God does not lay folly to them, nor punish their crimes by his immediate judgments, yet his eyes are upon their ways; Job xxiv. 2-23. And many times his providence brings their crimes to light, and they are punished for their iniquity by the sentence of the judge. O what a shame and scandal is it, that in a nation professing Christianity, there should be such multitudes trained up to the pilfering trade, and educated for infamy, for transportation, and the gibbet!

There are others, whose hands refuse to labour, and whose temper of mind delights in idleness, but they venture not upon these bolder crimes; they learn other unrighteous arts of cheating and falsehood, and fall into the same evil practices, which I have just before described under the head of luxury. But when luxury, pride and sloth join their forces together, the temptation to injustice becomes exceeding strong, and there are few who have power to resist it.

Such was the unjust steward, whom our blessed Saviour represents in a parable, procuring himself a way of living by cheating his Lord. Luke xvi. 1, 2, 3, 4. He had wasted his master's goods, and he was to be cashired from his service. What shall I do, said he, I have not been used to work, I cannot dig; there is the sloth of the man; he had lived

well in his stewardship, and was grown proud, to beg, I am ashamed. Well, I can purloin no more of my Lord's estate for myself, but I can do it for his debtors; I will cheat him in his accounts, and make all his debtors my friends, by cancelling a good part of their obligations, and then I shall get a livelihood amongst them. O that all such practices had been found no where but in parables!

Some that have been reduced to poverty by idleness, and have borrowed boldly what they could never pay, yet wipe their mouths, and think themselves innocent and righteous, because they have not a sufficiency to make payment; whereas, in truth, it is their own sloth that makes them poor, and keeps them so. Some of these idle creatures waste their days in drowziness and inactivity. A little more sleep, a little more slumber; so poverty comes upon them like an armed man without resistance. Others are a little more sprightly, and they spend their hours in an inquisitive impertinence, in public news and private slander, in searching and tattling of the affairs of other persons and their families, while they eat, and drink, and live upon the labour of the diligent, and unjustly serve themselves out of the industry of their neighbour. So the worthless drone wastes the summer's day in buzzing and trifling, he gads abroad, and wanders with idle flight; then he returns, and feeds upon the honey that the bee has gathered, and abuses the industry of a better animal.

St. Paul takes notice of this sort of people at Thessalonica, who called themselves Christians, and reproves them with just severity; we hear there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busy-bodies. Now them that are such, we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread; for even when we were with