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SERM. if he should occasionally fall into them. It

VIII.

requires uncommon firmness, and it is indeed almost impossible to arrive at once, after a long course of sinning, at perfect obedience. But let him persevere in his exertions, and he will rise superior to his falls; he will grow by degrees more and more firm, will be continually making new accessions in holiness, till at length he is freed from this life of probation by death, and will attain that state where there is assurance of righteousness and happiness for evermore.

SERMON

SERMON IX.

ON CONTENTMENT.

PHIL. iv. II.

I bave learned in whatsoever state I am,

therewith to be content.

In all situations of life, discontent is very SERM. IN

unreasonable; happiness is dealt out to IX. mankind with an equal hand; and though the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the old and the young, are subject each of them to particular evils, from which they see others perhaps exempt, yet, if they

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would

SERM. would view the matter impartially, they

IX.

would perceive that they are made amends for these evils by particular advantages which others do not enjoy. Discontent is, notwithstanding, very universal, and the poor in particular, by which I mean the labouring part of mankind, are apt to think that they complain with the greatest reason, and their murmurs, if not the deepest, are at least the loudest, and the most known.

Of these there are some who are so absurd as to think it unjust that there should be any such thing as inequality among mankind; there are others who see the impossibility of all being equal, yet think it an hardship that it should fall to their lot to be at the bottom of the scale; while a third set look on the evils of poverty as so intolerable, that they would be willing to hazard a general confusion of their country for the hopes of improving their condition.

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Lhope

129

I hope, in this discourse, to shew the folly SERM. and injustice of these ways of thinking, by IX. proving,

First, that it is a thing impossible that inequality of rank and riches should not prevail, and that this being the case it is no more an hardship on one man to be low and poor than it would have been upon another. Secondly, that the poor are free from many evils which the rich suffer, and enjoy many comforts which the rich want;-so that there is the greatest reason to believe that their state is as happy, on the whole.

Thirdly, that supposing any violent convulsion of the state was to bring about a change of conditions, many would be made miserable by it, and none would be made happy.

First, I am to prove that it is a thing impossible that inequality of rank and riches should not prevail.

It is clearly a great argument in favour

VOL. I.

K

of

SERM. of this assertion, that we know to a cer IX. tainty that in all ages of the world there

ever has been this inequality. Read the Bible; from the very earliest times, at least after the flood, and you will meet with the mention of kings and princes and masters, and of subjects, servants and slaves:—you may remember the names of Nimrod, Melchisedec, Abimelec, Pharoah; all of them kings, or men of great rank and power :—~ you may remember also, that Abraham and Lott, Isaac, and Esau, Jacob and Laban, had each of them his herdsmen and his servants: there is then a great presumption that what always has been is in the course of nature, and that it could not be ordered otherwise.

But I think, without having recourse to what always has been, the assertion may be proved to you from common sense and rea son. For supposing this equality, so deşired by many, to take place, it is not pos

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