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SERM, and carefully avoid, those unruly passions,

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envy, hatred, and malice, and all kinds of uncharitableness, which are the usual steps that lead to it.

Adultery is prohibited by the seventh commandment. By many civilized nations this crime was punished with death, and even by the divine law which was given to the Jews, and that to both the parties concerned in it, and surely very deservedly; for there is no offence by which the order of society is more disturbed, none by which the peace of individuals is more cruelly wounded. On the side of the married person there is perjury added to impurity, and in every case there is the greatest immorality and the basest selfishness. What can shew a more total want of generosity than, for a transient satisfaction to ourselves, to destroy the peace of a fellowcreature perhaps of a friend-for his whole life! The punishment among us is

not

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not now so great, at least not by the law; SERM. but let us not be deceived; the guilt is still the same, and the penalty is only delayed, to be exacted with greater severity by the hand of God. I must just observe that this commandment has been judged to comprise every deviation from chastity whatever; nor is the Christian law, which threatens adultery, less severe against every other species of impurity-" Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.”

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In the eighth commandment, the prohibition of all kinds of injustice, by which the property of another is invaded, is comprised; not only he who robs me openly on the highway, or who breaks into my dwelling and bears off my goods, but he who, in any other less notorious and observable manner, defrauds me, is guilty of disobeying this precept against stealing.The great man, who avails himself of superior power to deprive me of my right,

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SERM. and sets me at defiance, because I have not

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the means of applying to the law for protection; the worldly wise man, who takes advantage of superior cunning to overreach me in our bargains; and the tradesman, who makes improper profits, either by adulterating the commodity in which he deals, by a deficiency in his weights and measures, or by any other manner of injustice, are all of them no less guilty of a breach of the eighth commandment, than the highwayman or the house-breaker.

When understood in this extensive manner, which it certainly ought to be, it is to be feared that there are too many who would be shocked at the name of stealing, who are too intimate with the offence.

As the sixth commandment aims to guard our life, and the eighth our property, the ninth is intended for the preservation of our characters-" Thou shalt not bear "false witness against thy neighbour."

The

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The most heinous violation of this pre- SERM. cept is that of those infamous persons

who, in a court of justice, and with the solemnity of an oath, assert what they know to be untrue, against an innocent man, and bring perhaps his life, perhaps his property, but certainly his good name, into danger. This is a crime of so deep a dye, that I trust there is no need to warn any of my present audience against it: the commandment is, however, too often transgressed, even in the best regulated societies, in less eminent degrees;-and such transgressions are the source of very much of the unhappiness of social life.

Next to his guilt, who swears publicly to my prejudice what he knows to be false, is that of him who affirms the same falsity in private, with a design to traduce my reputation. It is something, that the forms of justice are wanting-it is something, that Almighty God is not immediately

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SERM. diately affronted by solemn appeal;-but,

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in every other respect, the injury to the party defamed is often as great, and the stroke as wounding, as that which is given. by the hand of the executioner. There are many other ways of infringing this commandment, where the degree of criminality, though still inferior, is yet great; as when we speak ill of others on suspicion only- -on slight grounds-or on vague report-or when we do it unnecessarily-or take a pleasure in it-or do not speak in their defence, when we hear them unjustly or maliciously attacked. It is, besides, ungenerous and unjust-ungenerous, to sport with the characters of our fellow-creatures, on which their reception in the world, and sometimes their bread, depends — unjust, because it is not doing unto them as we would wish them to do unto us.

The laws of the last table conclude with "Thou shalt not covet."-The actual in

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