gentle and easy to be entreated; fo far from making, ourselves, the first advances towards a reconciliation, that not only the mediation of mutual friends is often rejected; but even the voluntary submission of our adversary, and his proffers of a full and ample fatisfaction, nay his entreaties and his tears, are all of them, too often, unable to fatisfy and appease our refentment. And when we do vouchfafe to liften to terms of accommodation; with what haughtinefs do we condefcend to hear them; falfely estimating our own dignity, and imposing as great humiliation, as if we were feated on the throne of heaven, and all the inhabitants of the earth were as grafhoppers before us. And, laftly, when the powerful folicitations of our friends, the shame

of appearing inexorable, and the conceffions of our adversary beyond all that we could reasonably expect, have forced us to a reconciliation; how formal is our compliance, how cold our expreffions, how forced our fmiles, how lifeless our actions, and how languid our affections? And how foon doth the fire, which is only covered over, with the leaft breath of air, rekindle and burst out into a flame?

Thus far have I ventured to contraft the cruelty of man with the mercy of God; from whence the wifdom of David's choice is fully evident.----Before this tranfaction, that monarch had been taught this lesson, that man is cruel and God infinitely merciful by his own experience of both. The hatred and perfecution

of

of Saul; the perfidiousness of his most intimate and familiar friends; and the rebellion of his beloved fon had convinced him of the former; and he, who took him from the sheepfold and fet him on the throne of Ifrael; who delivered him from the paws of the lion and the bear, from the hand of the Philiftine, and from his strongest and most inveterate enemies; who established his kingdom, and fecured it to his feed for ever; he, I fay, left him no room to doubt the continuance of his mercy. was with a well-grounded affurance, therefore, that David fo ftrenuously pronounced the words of the text, "Let us fall now into the hand of "the Lord (for his mercies are great) " and let me not fall into the hand " of man."

It

But why need we recur to the experience of former ages, when our own is fufficient to inspire us with the same sentiments? Every person in the lowest and most private station in life, hath daily evidence of the goodness of God, in the prefervation of himself and family, and of his long fuffering in forbearing to punish him for his repeated offences: Nor can he be ignorant of the cruelty of man, from those terrible effects of hatred, malice, envy, and revenge, which he either feels himfelf, or fees others oppressed with. Witness the lies and fcandals daily invented and industriously propagated; and the cheats, the frauds, and the oppreffions, which are some

times

times more prejudicial to society than robbery and murder.

*

These inftances of cruelty in common life ftrongly impeach the benevolence of human nature; and were it poffible for us to take a view of the horrid fcenes of ruin and bloodfhed that have lately been exhibited, and are now acting in the field of battle; could we count the number of fouls that the injustice or ambition of contending princes hath hurled, unprepared, out of this world into the next, their widows and children vagabonds and begging their bread: could we fee others, with naked mangled limbs, almost fainting with hunger, thruft into

Preached in the year 1759.