not invariably, except in the case of the Jews, to temporal success or disaster. The notion that it is requisite for the vindicaof the divine justice to expect a distribution of national reward and punishment distinct from what is enjoyed or suffered by individuals, I have endeavoured to refute as fanciful, and as growing out of men's tendency to mistake the conceptions of their own minds for real beings possessing an independent existence. And I have endeavoured to shew, likewise, that the confirmation which this notion has been supposed to derive [from the sacred writings is founded on a mistaken view of the Inature and design of the Mosaic dispensation.

If the view which I have taken of this subject be correct, it need not be apprehended that the profit to be derived from the contemplation of the events recorded in history will be thereby diminished. On the contrary, all human affairs, both public and private, being under the guidance and control of an allwise Providence, which has appointed that the general tendency of good and bad conduct shall be to produce temporal advantages and evils, but which has also permitted many exceptions to the general rule, ordaining among the trials of this present world the occasional prosperity of the wicked and affliction of the righteous, we shall be enabled, by taking a right view of the existing constitution of the world, to receive the moral lessons it is calculated to afford, without being dismayed at the chastenings with which the good are visited, or misled as to the justice of any cause by the success of its adherents;-without being puffed up with national pride on account of the advantages we have obtained, and without judging rashly and uncharitably of those whose present lot has been less fortunate; and lastly, without incurring the triumphant scoffs of infidels, by maintaining an untenable notion of Divine Pro*vidence.

If then our judgment is guided by right principles, we may derive useful, religious, and moral instruction, from the contemplation of human affairs; and more especially of such political <events as history records: not that these are under any different system of divine government; but because, from their being more conspicuous and better known, we are enabled to take a wider and more comprehensive survey of them. And of these, such as are, like the event we this day commemorate, remote from the times in which we live, may in this point of >view be the most useful to us; because we are more likely to take an unprejudiced, dispassionate, and just view of them, than

of those recent transactions in which we have a more immediate personal interest. Many profitable lessons may be drawn from a view of the event now before us; but none more evident or more valuable than this: that extreme violence in any cause generally and naturally tends to produce such a violent reaction as ultimately defeats the proposed object. The deposition and murder of the king may be traced, in great measure, to intemperate violence in the support of the royal prerogative : similar violence in the opposers of the encroachments of sovereign power led to the establishment of a usurping sovereign, and subsequently to the restoration of the royal family: and finally, the inconsiderate eagerness with which the restored king was welcomed, without due precautions being taken for securing public liberty, led to a series of fresh encroachments, which ended in the final expulsion of that family.

It is our own fault if we fail to learn from this, that the truest friend to liberty is the supporter of regular and moderate government; and that the firmest bulwark of royal authority is the judicious advocate of the subject's rights.

By adhering to such principles, and keeping clear of the violence of opposite parties, we shall be taking the best means *within our reach to prevent the recurrence of such national calamities as revolution and civil war. But whatever may be the events which it may please God in His unsearchable wisdom to bring about in this world, we have His assurance that "all things work together for good to them that love Him;" and that in the next life, if not in this, the day of retribution will come, in which He will judge the world in righteousness, and "reward every man according to his works."

APPENDIX.

Ar the present time, when so much alarm prevails in respect of an apprehended pestilence, it is likely that such as entertain opinions opposite to those of the preceding discourse, will take occasion to set them forth the more strongly, and to represent a national judgment as about to be sent, by a special interposition of Providence, to punish the sins of the people, or of their governors.

It is undoubtedly as judicious, as it is a pious course, to avail ourselves of such an occasion as the present, for impressing on men's minds the muchneglected considerations of the shortness and uncertainty of life, and the importance of preparing for another world during the period of youth and health. The apathy with which these things are usually contemplated, is only an instance of the disregard which is the proverbial offspring of familiarity; and accordingly, the awfulness of the idea of death is augmented beyond all proportion when it is presented in any unusual form. It is useful, therefore, to

take advantage of the impression thus produced, to induce men to think seriously of their eternal interests.

And it is very profitable also, to contrast the alarm, the anxiety, and the sedulous caution, which are usually called forth by the expected inroads of a bodily disease, with the carelessness too commonly manifested in respect of what is incalculably more important,-those disorders of the soul which concern our condition for ever in the next world.

But it does appear to me a dangerous, as well as an unwarranted procedure, to represent all cases of disease, defeat, famine, or other temporal affliction, as instances of divine vengeance, for the sins, either of the sufferers themselves, or of their fellow-citizens; and to lead men to suppose that worldly prosperity and adversity are allotted regularly, and in exact proportion, either to individuals or to nations, as signs of the divine favour and disfavour. In respect of nations, the argument from the supposed necessity of apportioning rewards and punishments to them in this world, on account of their having no existence in the next, has been fully treated of in the foregoing discourse; in which I have endeavoured to clear away that confusion of thought, which results from the careless employment of figurative language.

But I would further suggest, that the argument is as unsafe in practice, as it is in itself unsound. If we presume to represent, as altogether necessary to the vindication of the divine justice, a certain course of dispensations, which yet experience shews does not uniformly take place, at least (to take the lowest ground), which we cannot satisfactorily prove to have uniformly taken place, we are going so far towards shaking men's confidence in the divine providence; and they may even be led to suspect that the doctrine of rewards and punishments in the next world, is as untrue, or as doubtful, as they will have found, or appeared to find, that of the regular apportionment of temporal prosperity and adversity.

Whole nations of the unfortunate South-American Indians were consigned to bitter slavery-were massacred-were hunted down like wild beasts, and most of them finally extirpated by the Spaniards, who took possession of the treasures, and of the fertile lands of these poor wretches, and have since multiplied into a great people. Now, whether it be true or not, few will be induced to believe that these unhappy Indians, ignorant though they were of true religion, were especial objects of divine displeasure, compared with their Spanish oppressors, who achieved such victories over them.

The same may be said of the unhappy Africans, as compared with the slavedealers; who, for generation after generation, carried on (as some still do) a gainful trade, by tearing these poor creatures from their country, crowding them on board unwholesome slave-ships, where multitudes of them were swept off by infectious diseases, and finally consigning them and their posterity to bondage.

It is true that the Philistines, the Babylonians, and other Pagan nations, were often employed as a scourge to punish the backslidings of God's peculiar people, when those nations themselves were, perhaps, equally or more wicked, except for the circumstance that they did not sin against the light of revelation. But such cases are the very reverse of those just mentioned; viz. the infliction of the most horrible cruelty and injustice by those who were called to be God's people,-by professed Christians, on such as had not received the light of revelation, and were comparatively inoffensive.

If again, any one studies the accounts of the Vaudois, one of the most interesting nations on the earth, when he sees the members of a pure and apostolical church enduring for successive generations every species of calamity (which they might have excaped by apostacy), subjected to rapine, imprisonment, exile, slaughter, and every refinement of cruelty, all which they endured with unflinching fortitude, for the truth's sake, always ready to re:urn

good for evil to their persecutors, he will hardly be brought to think that these men could be (compared with their Romanist neighbours, who escaped these afflictions) peculiarly the object of divine displeasure.

These, and many similar instances, which history can supply, must lead men either to doubt the reality of a divine Providence, or to conclude that such a view of it as I have adverted to, is erroneous. But if men adopt that view, there is this further danger: that if they escape visitations of disease, and other temporal afflictions, they will be likely to exult uncharitably over those who suffer them; and to regard their own exemption (by parity of reasoning) as a proof of their being acceptable in God's sight. If, for instance, this country should escape (as it has for the last 160 years) the attacks of pestilence, to which other nations have been exposed, there is surely reason to fear, that the principle I have been speaking of, may lead us to a dangerous self-conceit ;-to a belief, that so long an exemption is a sign of our having surpassed, in morality, to a much greater degree than we have, the rest of the world.

If, again, the apprehended calamity should fall on us, there is a danger of another kind to be apprehended, from the inculcation of the doctrine that a whole people are subjected to such a visitation for the sins of a part; that divine vengeance falls indiscriminately on the most, and on the least guilty, as a punishment for the wickedness of the generality. For under such a persuasion, each man's natural self-partiality will be apt to lead him to look to the sins of his neighbours, or of his rulers, rather than to his own, as calling down the divine vengeance. And many may thus be led to think it meritorious to cut off those “who trouble our Isreal :" even as the covenanters did in the time of the civil war ; who began by confessing, with apparent humility, the national sins, and proceeded next to depose and put to death their rulers, whose criminality they thought exposed themselves to judgments from heaven. Such a procedure seems perfectly consistent with such a principle. Among the Israelites, such a dispensation was established; and a corresponding procedure was naturally and rightly founded on it. Divine judgments were sent on the people, including the innocent, for such violations of the divine law by individuals, as could be distinctly ascertained; and every one, accordingly, was authorized and called on, to avert the divine wrath by " executing judgment" on those individuals. When a plague raged among the Israelites, on account of the corrupting intercourse of some of them with the Moabites, Phinehas without any special commission, " arose and executed judgment, and so the plague ceased." When, again, their army was defeated through the transgression of Achan, he was consistently and rightly, put to death. When they were afflicted with famine, " for Saul and his bloody house," seven men of his family were put to death, and "the Lord was intreated for the land." These, and numberless similar instances, were cited as precedents, and acted on by the covenanters; with perfect fairness, supposing we are under a like dispensation. Let us at least consider to what our principles, if consistently followed up, will lead us.

No doubt all the dispensations of Providence, whether adverse or prosperous, are sent for some wise and good purpose. Sickness, and other afflictions, may serve as a profitable chastisement, by awakening a sinner from his careless and irreligious state, and checking his devotedness to the present life and its enjoyments. Health and prosperity, again, may serve as a useful moral discipline, no less than their contraries; but CHASTISEMENT is a very different purpose from RETRIBUTION. The allotment of good and evil, according to the character of each man (which is properly retribution), is reserved, under the Christian dispensation, for the next world. Before the Gospel was revealed, the Israelites were regularly, and other nations occasionally, punished by temporal inflictions, proportioned to their transgressions; but the Apostle Paul

'points out, as one of the characteristics of the Gospel, that in it God has " com*manded all men everywhere to repent, inasmuch as He has APPOINTED A DÂY in which He will judge the world in righteousness.

The novelty and peculiarity of this announcement consisted, not in declaring the Deity to be the judge of the world (for this the Jews knew, and most of 'the Pagans believed), but in declaring that he had appointed a day for that judgment, before Christ's tribunal in the next world. Men were thenceforth to look for a retribution, not, as before, irregular and uncertain, but prepared for all men, according to the character of each ;-not, as before, immediate, in the present life, but in the life to come.

Let Christians then be exhorted, conformably to the Apostle's doctrine, habitually to turn their thoughts to that GREAT DAY; and to wean their affection from "the things of the earth, and set them on things above." It is *true that some men, who are nearly strangers to such a habit, may be for a *time more alarmed by the denunciation of immediate temporal judgments for their sins, than by any considerations relative to "the things which are not seen, and which are eternal." But the effect thus produced is much less likely to be lasting, or to be salutary. In the first place, if they escape the pestilence, or other visitation with which they have been threatened, there is danger of their relapsing irretrievably into carelessness, if not into disbelief, or contempt of a religion, whose denunciations (as they will have been taught to apprehend) of temporal judgment, they will have seen not regularly fulfilled.

And besides this, such an alarm, while it lasts, is not calculated to produce the most salutary effects, because it does not tend to make men spiritually. minded; and any reformation of manners it may have produced, will not have been founded on Christian principles. He who is temperate for the sake of avoiding sickness,-honest and industrious, for fear of discredit and poverty, &c., will be the more likely to attain the temporal objects he aims at; but is not the more acceptable in the sight of God, if he is acting on no higher motive than the goods and evils of the present world can supply. "Verily, I say unto you they have their reward.”

Now, since the general tendency of mankind is towards an over-devotion to the good things of this world (which, after all, are not promised to the Chris'tian), while there is a comparative carelessness about the things which "eye *hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to <conceive, which God hath prepared for them that love Him,” in the next world; every effort should be made, by each Christian and by each Christian -pastor, to counteract this tendency. We should carefully impress on our own minds, and those of our hearers, that to look for temporal retribution, is inconsistent with the profession of a religion whose Founder was persecuted and crucified, and whose first preachers were exposed to "hunger, and thirst, and cold, and nakedness,” and every kind of hardship, and "were made the Offscouring of all things," so that they declared that "if in this life only they had hope in Christ, they were of all men most miserable." We should consider, too, that these very sufferings proved a stumbling-block to the unbeAlieving Jews; not merely from their being unwilling to expose themselves to <the like, according to the forewarnings of Jesus, "in this world ye shall have tribulation," &c. ; but still more, from their regarding these sufferings as a mark of divine displeasure, and consequently a proof that Jesus could not have come from God. Because He was "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," they "did esteem Him stricken, SMITTEN OF GOD, and afflicted," and they hid their face from Him."

And it should be remembered, that the Jews, who had been brought up under a dispensation sanctioned by temporal rewards and punishments, were less inexcusable in this their error, than those Christians, who presume to measure the divine favour and disfavour by temporal events.