at the service of his enemy. Herein is true wisdom. Herein is greatness and dignity of soul. The self-pleaser, the devil-pleaser, is a most stupid, abject, and contemptible soul; a soul, excommunicated by common sense, and reprobated by infinite wisdom. Who is so great a fool, as not to wish for a better guide than himself? Or who does not believe, that the guidance of his divine Master is absolutely infallible? Or who will reject the offer of this, and trust himself to his own, in the pursuit of happiness, on a road he knows little or nothing of? Did the Master of the universe claim our service purely for his own sake, we could not dispute the right of a Creator and Redeemer in so doing. But his claim is the demand of pity; and we may freely embrace, or reject it. How gracious is the claim! How infatuated the rejection!

171. We are told, that know thyself' was written in capital letters over the gate of Apollo's temple at Delphos. Wise as the words are in themselves, they were foolishly placed in that situation, for surely no man, who had the sense to know himself, would have gone in to worship, as a god, a thing far inferior to himself, made by some other man out of a block of wood or stone; or to inquire about futurity of a woman, half distracted by the noxious fumes of a cavern, on the mouth of which she sat, and from whence she belched out the windy injections of her scurvy god in bad verses, and fanatic equivocations, for which they were amply paid by the superstition of their stupid votaries. But had they been only middling guessers, not to say prophets, they ought to have been aware of the golden harvest which the needy and knavish Ætolians were to reap among their tripods and vases. But I should think, there were no small propriety in writing the words, Know thyself,' on the front of a church-porch, and Know thy God,' over the inner door. Take my inducements for so thinking. There is more reason that wisdom should begin at home than charity; and that which consists in the knowledge of one's self is by no means the easiest of acquisitions. An object may be too near to be seen; and the last thing we see is a defect or fault in ourselves. At the same time our understandings and virtues, if we have any, appear to us through magnifying optics. Were it not for these two hinderances, we should soon perceive how little beauty there is in our persons, how weak, how liable to accidents and distempers are our bodies; but especially we should quickly be made sensible, that our minds are still more exposed

to errors; that we know little or nothing, but as we are taught; and that we have a thousand biasses to the worst sort of instructions, particularly as to matters of religion, wherein we are infinitely more concerned, than in all other branches of knowledge. It is impossible for us to know any thing of God, but by analogy to ourselves, who are formed in his image, and by divine revelation. But as this image is miserably distorted and mutilated, that distortion is too apt to impart itself to our conceptions of revelation. Hence are generated an infinity of heresies and schisms; and hence again infidelity, with all its brood of vices. The first step to a deliverance out of this wilderness is to be made by a knowledge of ourselves, and that humility in a due sense of our wants, which lays the sole possible basis in us of true religiou. Before we can come to God for either direction or help, we must be sensible we want both, and that he alone is able and willing to furnish them. Having by self-examination learned this humility in the porch, we may then enter the house of God, where we shall be taught to know ourselves still more perfectly, and become fit disciples for that Master, who holds forth the wisdom, which is from above.' The inquiry into ourselves will not be difficult, if it is not distracted by vain philosophy, for instance, how our souls and bodies are united; how they act and re-act on each other, what rolls the eye, or bends the finger; whether moral freedom is seated in the understanding or the will; and how the divine assistances operate on either; matters far too high for human comprehension. If vanity and presumption are laid aside, such researches will vanish with them, and we may then easily find, that we are in ourselves ignorant, weak, and lost creatures, if he that made us does not take us into his gracious guidance and protection. Man, in his best state, was made to be guided and governed by his Maker; but, now that his very nature is corrupted, to imagine that he can sufficiently guide and govern himself, is the worst effect of that corruption, and the most desperate thought that can possibly enter into his degenerate soul. It renders him utterly incapable of knowing himself, and, if possible, still more incapable of knowing God. God alone can teach us the knowledge of himself. But God will not make himself known to the self-sufficient, nor will the self-sufficient condescend to be taught by him. This double, this mutual repugnance, places an eternal bar against all communication between the source of light, and the benighted soul; an eternal bar against the happiness of a soul, thus self

sequestered from the fountain of all good. The man who addresses his king for a favour, knowing himself to be but a subject, approaches with humility, and is graciously received. The poor Christian, knowing himself to be an unworthy creature, approaches the King of kings with fear and trembling, and his prayers are granted, if fit for God to grant, and him. to receive. But the self-sufficient hath nothing to ask or fear at the hands of God. His confidence is in his own understanding and power; and he therefore scoffs at churches, sacraments, and prayers, wherein we lower creatures repose some trust. This man saith 'to God, depart from me; for I desire not the knowledge of thy ways. What is the Almighty, that I should serve him? And what profit should I have, if I should pray unto him?' From the height, to which his imagination hath raised him, he looks down on us with contempt; and we on him with pity from that to which our humility, we hope, entitles us on the strength of his declaration, who is the greatest and humblest of all beings, namely, he that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.'

172. It hath, I think, been asserted by some writer of eminence, that we derive from our ignorance a large share of those comforts and pleasures which we enjoy in this world. Sure I am, that since the days of Eve, the mother of philosophy, he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow;' and yet, in many instances, the sorrows of knowledge are preferable to the pleasures of ignorance. During the last war, a gentlewoman in a stage-coach having expressed to a young officer the most anxious fears about her son, whom she expected from Gibraltar, was comfortably freed from all her apprehensions by an assurance from the officer, that there had been lately made an excellent bridge from Gibraltar to Ireland, and that he himself had just arrived on furlough upon that very bridge, having but touched at that garrison in his way from Port Mahon.

173. A real Christian will never, as such can never, swear to do that which is sinful and unlawful in itself. A real Christian having, whether to save his life, or otherwise, sworn to do that which is lawful for him to do, will keep his oath inviolate, though it were to his own hinderance or loss. To this latter maxim it is objected, that a compulsory oath is not obligatory, as for instance, in the case of an oath taken to save the swearer's life; that, if such oaths were universally deemed obligatory, they would put

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the honest part of mankind, and their property, into the hands of robbers and cut-throats, with impunity, for the most part, to the latter; and that the oath of God must, by that means, be prostituted into a tool in the hands of the devil and his servants, to oppress the servants of God. To these objections a full and satisfactory answer is here given. In the first place, there neither is, nor can be, any such thing as a compulsory oath, because, if the man to whom the oath is tendered may take or refuse it as he pleases, he is not compelled to take it; even if he must take it, or die; there is a choice given him, and he is not, nay cannot be, forced. This was the case with all the ancient martyrs, who had a choice, and chose to die, rather than offer incense to an idol. Every man must die some time or other, and it is certain, no man can die better, than as a martyr to God and his conscience; this however is said, in case the matter of the oath is unlawful. when the oath tendered is only for the surrender of a man's worldly substance, or some part of it, such surrender is lawful, and the man may save his life, if he pleases, by that surrender. If however the robber should threaten him with immediate death if he does not swear to conceal the fact, here again he hath a choice, to swear or die, and is not compelled to either; and is only to consider whether the concealment is lawful, or not, and to die, if it is not in his judgment, for he must not do evil, that good may come of it.' And by the same maxim of the Holy Spirit, he is not to swear, and violate his oath, to save the honest part of mankind from the hands of robbers. He should leave them to the protection of Providence, and not impiously suppose, that they cannot be otherwise defended, but by the violation of his conscience. Codrus might die for his country; but who would be damned for it? It is farther to be considered, that if the oath of secrecy in this case is generally to pass for nothing, the robbers will provide for secrecy and impunity another way, that is, by murdering all they rob. Hence it may appear, that the oath of secrecy, both taken and kept, will contribute more to the safety of honest men, than thousands of prosecutions. In answer to the last objection, that keeping the aforesaid oaths would prostitute them into tools in the hands of the devil, &c. it is granted, that good men would suffer in their property by it, but would save their lives. If honest and good men were not, by providential permission, exposed here below to thousands of other hardships and trials, we might with the more reason think it our duty to

provide against this, if to be done with a safe conscience. But is the conscience no way concerned in an oath? In solemnly calling on God to attest our truth and sincerity, when, to save our lives, we engage to give up our property, and to be silent as to an injury, which our religion obliges us to forgive, and to return with a benefit? It is to be feared, the devil may rejoice in the conversion of an instrument, lately pointed at our worldly goods, into a dagger, that pierces the very soul. If at the time we take the oath we mean to break it, which the objectors themselves apparently suppose, nothing can be more horribly impious. Although it was by craft and lies, that the Gibeonites obtained a covenant and oath of peace from Joshua and the Israelites, yet, that covenant was kept by the latter, for some hundreds of years, and not violated, but by Saul, whose family were punished for the infraction, and the Israelites afflicted, afterward, with three years' famine, for the part they took with him in the breach of their oath, considered as the descendants of those that had sworn. But acting according to my arguments is, it may be said, compounding a felony, and exposing a man to the penalty of the law. It may be so. I am not a lawyer, but only a clergyman, whose duty it is to prefer the laws of God to those of men. If the good Christian is sued and amerced, he will let the fine go with that which the robber carried off, and be content that his life and conscience are still left him. But how he can be sued if he holds his tongue, I cannot see, as the robber will not appear against him in a hempen cravat. The law against compounding felonies is certainly a wise and excellent law; but if in this case it clashes with the law of God, as I hope it does not, I cannot allow it to be pleadable in foro conscientia. The good man, of whom I have been speaking, swears, to save his life, which the laws of his country could not ensure to him, and keeps his oath, to save his soul. So far I may speak as a barrister in my own line, and must add, that all other barristers may as well hold their tongues, if the sacredness of oaths is not preserved inviolable.

174. A very sensible gentlewoman, having read the two first volumes of sermons I had the presumption to publish, asked me, If my own life and conversation were strictly conformable to the rules I had laid down in those discourses? Startled at the question, I answered, No; but that I did my best to act, as well as I wrote; and that I sometimes read over my own discourses, not that I thought them equal to those of other writers on the same