PART III.

VIRTUE consists principally in moral restraint, or the due regulation of those passions and appetites which nature has implanted in us. Scripture self-denial.

This is what is called in

Man appears to be the lowest in the scale of Creation, or the first in the ascending scale of intellect, in whom a voluntary selfgovernment is required. The passions of other animals are generally restrained or regulated by nature: but man is required to restrain his own. Whilst we are children we are restrained by others: and as the restraints of others are gradually taken off, we ought to lay them voluntarily on ourselves. It never was intended that we should live without restraint at any time.

For nature prompts us to an unlimited indulgence; but reason, truth, and virtue, deny it to us. For this purpose reason is implanted in the breast of man in a higher degree than in all other animals: that by means of this faculty he may govern himself, and control that liberty with which it is accompanied. It is no excuse for our failings to say that they are natural, because our nature is corrupt. But God has given us reason and revelation as antidotes to this corruption; and if we refuse to make use of them, we are wilful transgressors, and have no apology. Almost the whole business of life is to master the corruptions of our nature; which has been so distorted by the transgression of our first parents, that we are naturally more inclined to evil than to good. The heathens were aware of this vicious propensity; but being ignorant both of God and of his laws, and destitute of that Divine light which has revealed to us the fatal secret, they neither knew how to account for it, nor how to correct it. They

were aware that the natural tendencies of the human mind were at variance with its own chief good, and that it was desirable to control them by practical restraints and moral discipline. But Revelation has unfolded to us both the cause and extent of man's degeneracy; and has confirmed the suggestions of reason and conscience on the necessity of restraining our natural liberty. The Scripture expressly says, that we are by nature born in sin; and that "if we "live after the flesh, (or nature) we shall "die: but if we through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, we shall "live." (Rom. viii. 13.)

What are the several virtues, recorded either by heathen or Christian moralists, but the restraints of natural propensities? What are temperance, chastity, meekness, justice, but the restraints of something to which nature is inclined? And even the active virtues, such as courage, industry, charity, &c. imply a conquest over natural selfishness.

Therefore be ever jealous of your liberty, and accustom yourself to habits of selfcontrol. Man is in no respect superior to the beasts, if he does not exercise this restraint. Nay, he is even inferior to them; because he acts no better with the faculty of reason than they do without it. He is accountable for what he does, because he can discern betwixt good and evil. But if he makes no use of this discernment, it were better for him that he did not possess it. God did not give us the two great lights of reason and Revelation to be disregarded. He will require at our hands the use we have made of them, and great will be our condemnation if we have neglected them. The precepts of religion are not arbitrary injunctions, to deprive us of the enjoyment of rational liberty; but the details of moral and social excellence, resulting from the, immutable laws of God, and the relations of social and created beings. It is probable that all rational creatures who have suffered no degeneracy obey them without

constraint, from the excellence of their nature and the rectitude of their affections. But since man has fallen from the state of innocence in which he was created, he is become a sort of anomaly in the Creation; and his natural propensities are repugnant to his highest interests, and to the relation in which he stands to God and to the uni

verse.

The principle of self-denial, even in necessary things, was known and acknowledged by the heathen moralist.

"Quanto quisque sibi plura negaverit,
"A Diis plura feret.”-

HOR.

Our Saviour has told us in express terms that every servant of His must take up his cross, and follow Him. And although it is not required of the generality of Christians to suffer for Him as the Apostles and martyrs did, I conceive there are three things in which every man is required to take up his cross daily and constantly.