paffions while they are temperate, while they flow with a gentle and equal current in their proper channel; but knowing how apt they are to rise with sudden impetuofity, we should always be attentive to prevent the violence of the ftream from breaking down thofe bounds wherein it ought to be confined.

We should obferve, with a watchful eye, all our paffions, defires, and affections, keep a constant guard on every avenue to the heart, and be careful to oppose the admittance of any wrong inclination: and though evil thoughts and defires may fometimes escape our vigilance, and intrude unexpectedly upon us; though it may not always be in our power to keep the paffages to the heart fo well guarded, as to prevent irregular paffions from fometimes entering uninvited into the mind; yet we may always refufe to receive or entertain them; in which lies our chief fecurity; for if we once admit, and give them a favourable reception, or comply with their firft counfels, we know not where they will ftop, or to what fatal and

danger

dangerous exceffes they may feduce us. It highly concerns us, therefore, to “keep our hearts with all diligence."

And in order to fucceed in this arduous, but important work, let us to our own efforts add our fupplications to HIM who alone can order the unruly wills and affections of finful men; who formed the heart, and can turn as he pleases all its springs of action: and let us implore his affistance in regulating its movements, and reducing all our fentiments, inclinations, and paffions, into an habitual fubordination to reafon; that, after having enjoyed the prefent advantages of a virtuous mind, of a regular state of the heart and affections, we may hereafter be deemed worthy of a place in that Kingdom of Reason to come, that region of moral and intellectual felicity, where the inferior principles of our nature shall never again rebel against the fupreme; where the law of Sense shall no more war against the law of our Mind; and where the prefent conteft, between Reason and Paffion fhall terminate in everlasting harmony and peace.

SERMON XIII.

On AFFLICTIONS.

JOB V. 6, 7.

Although affliction cometh not forth of the duft, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground: yet man is born unto trouble, as the Sparks fly upward.

VERY man, by a proper use of

EV

thofe powers of understanding and difcernment which are common to our nature, may clearly difcover, not only that there is a GOD, who created and governs the world, but also that he is a Being fupremely good and beneficent. We need not feek far for evidences of his

good

goodness: for to it we owe ourselves, our being; nor can we justly ascribe our Creation to any other principle. The Almighty did not create us by neceffity or compulfion; for he is himself fupreme. He did not confer on us our being without fome plan or defign; for his wifdom is infinite. He did not fend us into the world for any advantage to be derived to himself; for, infinitely fuperior, his happiness cannot be dependent on us. It was, then, the redundancy of his own goodnefs that gave birth to creation. The happiness of his creatures was doubtless his object, when he gave them their existence; nor can we conceive any other end he can have in view in his providence and government of them.

Why then, it has been often afked, why is misery permitted to enter into the creation, to interrupt its harmony, to deface its beauty, and counteract the plan of the Creator? If affliction cometh not forth of the duft, nor trouble fpring out of the ground, (i. e. if they are not the effects of chance

and accident, or of fate and neceffity), whence is it that man is born to trouble, which is as natural to him as it is for Sparks to fly upwards;—as it is for heavy bodies to fall, and the lighter to afcend? Whence all thofe numerous tribes of dif eases, and those various fpecies of affliction, which we may often obferve in others, and often feel in ourselves? Is it poffible, that a world which exhibits fuch a multiplicity of scenes of forrow, can be under the care and fuperintendence of a Being whose attributes exclude every poffibility of delighting in the miseries of his creatures? Can fuch numberlefs ftreams of evil be ever flowing from the Fountain of Good? How different is the face of things from what we should previously and without experience have expected to fee in a world created, conducted, and fuperintended by infinite and unerring Goodness?

To obviate these difficulties, fome of the Heathens, obferving what to them appeared careless and irregular strokes of chance and fortune in the plan of nature, infeṛ

red,