actions, for fear of a surprize. For if once, thro' the force of any particular temptation, he should fall back into his former vicious courses, and his former disposition should return, his case will probably be desperate. He will plunge himself still deeper in wickedness; and his having abstained for a time will only, as it were, have whetted his appetite, and make him swallow down the poison of sin by larger and more eager draughts than

ever.

Such persons may be so entirely in the power of vicious habits, that they shall be in no sense their own masters. They may even see the danger they are in, wish to free themselves from the habits they! have contracted, and yet find they have no force, or resolution, to relieve themselves. They are not to be rescued from the snare of the destroyer, and brought to their right mind, but by some uncom mon and alarming providence, which is in the hands of God, and which he may justly withhold, when his patience and long-suffering have been much abused. Justly may he say to such an habitual sinner, as he did to Ephraim in the text; He is joined to idols, he is joined to his lusts, let him alone. He is determined to have the pleasure of sin, let him receive the wages of sin also.

U 3

This

This brings me to the third head of my discourse, in which I propose to consider the equity of the proceding with rsspect to God.

It may be said that it is not agreeable to equity for God to favour some with the means of improvement, and suffer others to abandon themselves to destruction without a possibility escaping. But I answer, that the persons whose case I have been describing have had, aud have outlived, their day of grace. God has long exercised forbearance towards them, but they have wearied it out; and it could not be expected to last for ever. They have had gracious invitations to repentance, but they have slighted them all: they stopped their ears, and refused to return. They have been tried with a great variety both of merciful and of afflictive providences, but they made no good use of them. Why then, as the prophet says, should they be siricken any more, when they will only revolt more and more?

A day of trial and probation, or what is frequently called a day of grace, must necessarily have some period; else when would the time of retribution, when would the time of rewards and punishments, take place? A state of trial necessarily respects some future state, in which men must re

teive according to their deeds. But this state of trial it has pleased God to make of uncertain duration, no doubt to keep us always watchful, having our accounts always in readiness, because in such an hour as we think not our Lord may come, and require them. The state of trial, therefore, is with some of much longer duration than it is with others and God is the sovereign arbiter of every thing relating to it. He makes our lives longer or shorter, as seems good in his sight, and at death a state of trial ends of course. We may, therefore, as well pretend to question the justice and equity of God's cutting us off by death when and in what manner he pleases, as arraign his justice in sealing up our doom, though while we live, whenever he pleases.

No doubt God gives to every person a sufficient trial; for he is not willing that any should perish, but had rather that all should come to repentance. We may therefore assure ourselves, that he will not cease to endeavour to promote the reformation of a sinner by all proper means, until he shall become absolutely incorrigible, and the methods taken to reclaim him would be abused and lost. And if we consider that every means of improvement neglected adds to a man's guilt, and aggravates U 4 his

his condemnation, it may even appear to be mercy in the Divine Being to grant a person no farther means of improvement, after it has been found, by actual trial, that they would only have been abus ed, and therefore have proved highly injurious to him. Not but that it might have been sufficient to silence every cavil of this kind, to say, as Paul: does, on a similar occasion, Who art thou, O man, that repliest against God; or with Abraham, Shall not the judge of all the earth do that which is right? But it is proper to shew that in the midst of judg ment God remembers mercy.

There is a very pathetic description of the case of a sinner who, after a relapse into vicious courses, is justly abandoned of God, to seek his own de-1 struction, in a parable of our Saviour's, formed upon the popular opinion of the Jews of his age concerning demons, or evil spirits, Matt. xii. 43, &c. When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking "rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will "return to my house from whence I came out; "and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept,

and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with "himself seven other spirits, more wicked than "himself, and they enter in, and dwell there, and

"the

"the last state of that man is worse than the first." The application of this parable either to the case of the Jews (for whom it seems to have been origi nally intended) or to particular persons, who, after a seeming reformation, have relapsed into vicious. courses, is too obvious to be particularly dwelt upon.

To come, therefore, to a general application of this doctrine, let all persons who are sensible of the folly and evil of sinful courses, and of the danger of persisting in them, make a speedy and effectual retreat. Let us do nothing by halves. To be lukewarm in religion, is in effect to have no religi on at all. We must give God our hearts; we must give him an undivided affection; for we can not truly love God and mammon, or the world, at the same time. In this unsettled and fluctuating disposition, temptations will have a great advantage over us. We shall ever be in danger of throwing off all restraint, and of running into every kind of riot and excess, 'till nothing on the part of the divine providence shall occur to reclaim us.

In reality, my brethren, and to every valuable end and purpose, the term of our trial and probation does generally expire long before the term of our natural lives. For how few are there whose