tening to an impenitent World. Whereas a moderate share of NATURAL THEOLOGY would have taught them, that though these warnings by disasters were indeed the operations of the physical system, yet they were providentially connected with the moral, and pre-ordained to support its sanctions. But where was the wonder that that which began in Superstition should end in Irreligion? for, by a strange and monstrous kind of conception, extremes, in the moral world, are always begetting their opposites.

2. But now, in the last place, let us take a view of the state and situation of those men, who suppose that God does not uphold the World as the moral Ruler of it, but as the physical Dispenser only; and it is certain, that those, who deny these natural disasters to be connected with the moral system, can have no other idea of God's Government.

Such men, amidst all these dreadful warnings of alarming Nature, will find their condition to be most disconsolate and forlorn; their Principles having bereft them of those hopes which are ever springing in the breast of the religious man who is taught both by Reason and Revelation to conclude, that these effects of God's displeasure against sin may be averted by sincere repentance. For though the irreligious Naturalist acknowledges a Governor of the universe, yet, as he supposes this Governor to direct all things by his natural attributes of power and wisdom, and not by his moral, of goodness and justice, his acknowledgment of a God affords him

no

no more security against his fears than if there were no God at all; and that the universe lay entirely at the mercy of Chance or Destiny; because a mere physical Director having no respect to the system of Rationals, their preservation or destruction will not be dependent on their behaviour, but on the purposes of the physical system; the support of which (for aught this Philosopher can tell) may require the destruction of Mankind, instead of their preservation and the very next shock of the disordered Globe work those necessary changes in Matter and Motion which may conclude in the ruin and annihilation of its inhabitants.

Thus the hapless Unbeliever, while disordered Nature is sounding in his ears, hath no where to fly for refuge from his terrors: he sees himself in a fatherless and abandoned World, exposed to all the rage of deaf and unrelenting Elements: He may find, indeed, support and comfort in Religion; but it is below the dignity of his Philosophic character to seek it along with the superstitious herd: it being unworthy a man of Science to suppose, that the system of Nature was created, and is conducted, to serve any other Purposes than its own; or that the SUBLIME PRINCIPLE OF ATTRACTION was im. pressed upon Matter to bring about any other revolutions than of those vast bodies which are the objects of his learned contemplation.

In a word, every rational reflexion serves to establish the religious Principle of my text, as here explained.

It is shewn to be agreeable to Reason and to Religion, under the present constitution of things.

It

It is shewn to tend most to the glory of God, and to the peace and happiness of Man.

It is shewn that that vain philosophy, which discards this Principle from its creed, dishonours Providence, and most distresses Human life.

What have we then to do, but to regulate our practice, and repose our confidence, on a Principle so well established. A sincere, a speedy, and a perfect reformation will not fail to avert the anger of the Lord, now gone out against the sinful inhabitants of the Earth. I mean, a reformation of the general manners, where each of us, in our several stations, must concur to heal the breaches made in our excellent Constitution by our party-follies; to oppose the enormous progress of avarice and corruption; to check the wasting rage for pleasure and amusement; to shake off those unınanly luxuries crept into domestic life, some for the gratification of our appetites, but more, for the display of our vanities.

When we have done this, we have done our part. And then these terrors of the Lord will cease; or they will become harmless and even salutary to us. We shall, if it be our lot to meet that great day of his coming, foretold by our sacred Oracles, not only stand, with the man of morals, serene and fearless amidst the crash of falling worlds, but, with the religious man, become partaker of the glories of the Lamb, rise triumphant over them in those happier regions of perpetual stability and peace.

SERMON XIX.

Preached before the Right Honourable the House of Lords, January 30, 1760.

ISAIAH xix. 13-14.

THE PRINCES OF ZOAN ARE BECOME FOOLS, THE PRINCES OF NOPH ARE DECEIVED; THEY HAVE ALSO SEDUCED EGYPT-THE LORD HATH MINGLED A PERVERSE SPIRIT IN THE MIDST THEREOF.

THE

HE Prophet is here foretelling the disgraces and calamities which God was then about to bring upon a sinful People, at that time the most renowned for the wisdom of their civil Policy.The Counsel of the wise Counsellors of Pharaoh is become brutish, saith the Prophet: for the JUDGMENT was attended with all those circumstances of savage brutality, which most disgrace Civil Wisdom: I will set (says GoD) the Egyptians against the Egyptians; and they shall fight every one against his Brother, and every one against his Neighbour; City against City, and Kingdom against Kingdom. How great a resemblance this denunciVOL. X. C

ation