with reason go, and thank God that he had not made him like others. It is. not to be questioned, but through force of this error, the pharisee might think himself to be, what he pretended, a religious and upright man. - For how ever he might be brought to act a double and infincere part in the eyes of men upon worldly views - it is not to be fuppofed - that when he stood by himself, apart in the temple, and no witnesses of what passed between him and his GOD - that he should knowingly and wilfully have dared to act so open and barefaced a scene of mockery in the face of Heaven. This is scarce probable and therefore it must have been owing to fome delufion in his education, which had early implanted in his mind false and wretched notions of the effen tials of religion which as he grew up had had proved the feeds of infinite error, both in practice and speculation. With the rest of his fect, he had been fo principled and instructed as to observe a fcrupulous nicety and most religious exactness in the lesser matters of his religion-its frequent washings - its faftings and other external rites of no merit in themselves but to be exempted, from the more troublesome exactness in the weightier matters of the law, which were of eternal and unchangeable obligation. So that, they were in truth blind guides - who thus would strain at a gnat and yet swallow a camel, and as our SAVIOUR reproves them from a familiar instance of domestic inconsistency would make clean the outside of the cup and platter - yet suffer the inside the most material part, to be full of corruption ruption and excess. From this knowledge of the character and principles of the pharifee, 'tis easy to account for his sentiments and behaviour in the temple, which were just such as they would have led one to have expected. Thus it has always happened, by a fatality common to all fuch abuses of religion as make it to consist in external rites and ceremonies more than inward purity and integrity of heart. - As these outward things are easily put in practice and capable of being attained to, without much capacity, or much oppofition to flesh and blood-it too naturally betrays the professors of it, into a groundless perfuafion of their own godliness and a despicable one of that of others, in their religious capacities, and the relations in which they stand towards GOD: which is the very definition of spiritual pride. When When the true heat and fpirit of devotion is thus lost and extinguished under a cloud of oftentatious ceremonies and gestures, as is remarkable in the Roman church where the celebration of high mass, when set off to the best advantage with all its scenical decorations and finery, looks more like a theatrical performance, than that humble and folemn appeal which dust and ashes are offering up to the throne of GOD, when religion I say, is thus clogged and bore down by such a weight of ceremonies it is much easier to put in pretentions to holiness upon such a mechanical system as is left of it, than where the character is only to be got and maintained by a painful conflict and perpetual war against the paffions. 'Tis eafier, for inftance, for a zealous papist to cross himself and tell his beads, than for an humble proteftant to fubdue the lufts of anger, anger, intemperance, cruelty and revenge, to appear before his maker with that preparation of mind which becomes him. The operation of being sprinkled with holy water, is not so difficult in itself, as that of being chaste and spotless within conscious of no dirty thought or dishonest action. 'Tis a much shorter way to kneel down at a confessional and receive absolution than to live so as to deserve it - not at the hands of men - but at the hands of GOD - who fees the heart and cannot be imposed on. The atchievement of keeping lent, or abstaining from flesh on certain days, is not fo hard, as that of abstaining from the works of it at all times - especially, as the point is generally managed amongst the richer fort with such art and epicurifm at their tables and with fuch in dulgence to a poor mortified appetite that an entertainment upon a fast is much more |