earth. For now, no one can be so absurd to imagine, that the means of perfecting the fruit of faith, which is the love of God, is by shaking the root of charity, benevolence to man. I am aware, how certain propagators of the Faith, sometimes the despicable tools of others' impotency, but as often the viler slaves of their own ambition, have endeavoured to hide their corrupt passions under the thin covering of a School-distinction. While they would persuade. us, that it is pure charity to man which thus factiously engages them in, what they call THE CAUSE OF GOD: and that what plain honest men style a want of Charity, when they insult the fame, the fortune, or the person of their Brother, is the very height of this princely virtue, a Charity for his soul-So, indeed, it may be of the Hangman's Charity, who waits for your Clothes. But St. John's, or St. Paul's, it could not be. It could not be that Charity which was not easily provoked, which thought no evil; bore all things, hoped all things, believed all things. A Charity, which begins in candor, inspires good opinion, and rests in the temporal welfare of our Brother.

3. But the deceitfulness of the heart is ingenious in expedients to elude the commandments of God. And when Bigotry, by its coarse and butcherly violations of Charity, hath sufficiently discredited its own measures, FANATICISM, with equal rage, though with somewhat a milder aspect, steps in to divest us of our humanity, under pretence, to assimilate it to the divine nature, by annihilating all love of the Creature, VOL. IX.

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and

and resolving every other affection into the pure unmixed love of God; as if the least portion of benevolence, communicated to our Brother, was a robbery to our Maker. The fumes of spiritual madness disable these men from seeing so far into the order of things as to understand, that till we can throw off the condition of related Beings, as well as the passion of humanity which results from it, our fellow-creatures will always have a claim to our benevolence. In compassion therefore to such, Holy Scripture has provided a still easier instruction than this negative precept of my text, by the addition of the positive command, THAT HE WHO LOVETH GOD, LOVE HIS BROTHER ALSO *.

Such then is the Religion which Jesus came into the world to teach. Whose foundation being laid in the love of our Brother, provides for our peace and consolation here; and whose superstructure terminating in the love of God, secures and establishes our happiness hereafter.

1 John iv. 21.

SERMON IV.

THE LOVE OF GOD AND MAN.

PROVERBS Xvii. ver. 5.

WHOSO MOCKETH THE POOR REPROACHETH HIS

MAKER.

OF all the truths, for the direction of our conduct,

with which this royal treasury of ancient wisdom abounds, there is none fuller either of profitable use or profound science than this contained in my text; which so severely censures all expressions of contempt towards those whom Providence has 'thrown below us on the distressful stage of human life.

And, as we must first clear our corrupt nature from this rankness, before we can attempt to cultivate that immortal amarant of Paradise, Christian love and benevolence; it may not be improper to shew the reason and explain the use of the WISE MAN'S divine aphorism, Whoso mocketh the Poor reproacheth his Maker. As much as to say, "He who maketh the Poor the object of his contempt and ridicule, on account of those disastrous circumstances

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which

which attend the want of the goods of fortune, tacitly condemns and reproaches the wise and gracious order of Providence."

But it may not be amiss, previously to consider, In what state it is, that man becomes the object of this criminal mockery to his fellow-creature. It is plain, it cannot be in that where he lives uncivilized. For there, the distinctions between RICH and Poor, whereon the insolence of wealth formeth those odious comparisons, which conclude in the contempt of penury, have hardly any place; that sordid condition, which, now contrasted to pomp and grandeur, is become the subject of opulent scorn, being there so general as to admit no room for an unfavourable distinction: But, an universal parity, like darkness, blots out all difference between honourable and mean. Nay, should the civilized beholder be disposed to regard with contempt the wants and miseries of this state, it would not be the criminal contempt forbidden in my text: because the state of nature is not that in which Providence intended we should remain; as appears by the large assistance imparted to us, to free ourselves from the distresses of it. So that if, by a shameful indolence, man should neglect to improve those advantages, the sordid circumstances, inseparable from an uncivilized condition, would have no claim to be exempted from scorn and mockery: and, conse quently, however CHARITY might suffer, PROVIDENCE was not insulted.

It is only in SOCIETY, therefore, that the Poor become subject to this outrage. And, in this state

only,

For Civil

only, the outrage becomes IMPIETY. regimen, by inventing and improving the accommodations of life, and by securing, to the owner, what is so invented and improved, changeth the natural equality of conditions amongst men; and introduceth that invidious distinction of Poor and RICH; made far more bitter from the insolence of Wealth, than the envious longings of Poverty. For it is the vicious caprice of Riches to be impatient under a rivalship in the advantages of fortune, and yet, at the same time, insensible to the distresses, and contemptuous to the condition of those who have never striven with them for any of those advantages.

So that there is no circumstance in the distresses of want, but what insulting wealth can make the subject of its mockery. To some, their narrow Minds, their gross conceptions, their unimproved talents, are fruitful sources of contempt and merriment. Others, who cannot rise so high in their discoveries, can yet find matter of mirth in their impropriety of phrase, their unpolished manners, their ill air, and unformed figure. Nay to such excess of corruption have unblest Riches brought their possessors, that some can make that very SORDIDNESS itself, that miserable cloathing of poverty, a subject for their scorn and ridicule. So that whether it be for want of those advantages of mind and person which their poverty disabled them from procuring, or whether it be for that very poverty itself, they are sure never to escape the inhumanity of unfeeling wealth.

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But