have not borne my cross, and you can have no part in my joy and glory.

All the analogies of human conduct lead us to infer, and we should not be surprised to find, that deception is sometimes practised in religion. If men can gain any advantage by it, it is not reasonable to suppose that they will abstain from it in this any more than in other cases. If they will do penance, cut and deform their bodies, perform pilgrimages, persecute and put to death 'the saints of the Most High' and think they do him acceptable services, why should it be doubted that they may do much to work out a righteousness of their own, make 'long prayers' and a great show of humility and zeal, by which the same end is to be effected with less expense and less pain to nature, when they have not a particle of the spirit of the Master they affect to serve? All, no doubt, do something in this way; but the wonder is that they do no more; though doing less or more would leave them alike faithless. The omission is only to be accounted for on the ground of their disrelish to spiritual virtues, and of the little profit they derive from the credit of them. Still, a selfrighteous, and therefore a faithless spirit, actuates the religion of many. Caring much for the reputation, and something for the reality, of piety, without perhaps intending deception they come by

degrees to claim stoutly the excellence which others, in their charity, presume them to have. No one is disposed to call in question their Christian pretensions; and being without that brokenness of heart and faith in Christ which cause them to fly from themselves for support and direction, they walk in the sight of their own eyes, and take the outside for the inward life of religion. This they can maintain without any modification of their natural desires; and, as it procures for them some peace of conscience, and much confidence and credit with others, no wonder if they trust it, value it, and think it acceptable to God, to whose perfections they are as olind, as to the miseries and plagues of an unsanctified heart.

CHAPTER V.

Error in estimating our own qualities a cause of our misconceiving the divine perfections—Obstacles to correct views of ourselves— Readiness with which men confess the evil of their hearts-Process by which men are reconciled to evil ways-Causes which perpetuate this delusion—Their unobserved operation-Tendency of worldly companions and amusements to foster infidelity-This danger inferred from our mental constitution-Presumption of those who disregard it-Delicacy of religious sentiment-Its easy decay-Peril of virtue and faith where the influence of religion is discouraged-Great changes in moral character occurring without our notice-Blindness to the infidelity consequent upon them-Difficulty of breaking from worldly society-Things implied in our attachment to it-The prospect presented to the mind-Worldliness-Practical atheism-Peculiar dangers of youth-Whether religion is an easy practice-What is essential to make it so-Its nature-Its requisitions agreeable to the truest philosophy.

WE have hitherto considered the influence of the depravity of our nature on our judgment and practice, with reference chiefly to the duties which we owe to God. This, too, is the principal object of every part of the present discussion. But whatever leads to such errors, either of opinion or practice, as we have contemplated, must evidently be the cause of great errors in our estimate of our own character. Indeed errors in the faith and practice of religion

always presuppose errors in our judgment of ourselves, if they do not proceed from them. We must rightly understand our own character, or we never can rightly understand the character of God and the wisdom and fitness of his proceedings with us. That, which is most apt to betray us into self-delusion, will be a chief cause of error in the concerns of religion. It is therefore pertinent to our object to consider the influence of our depravity on our views of ourselves. The mistakes of this description, which we may be able to detect, will assist us to determine what confidence we should have in the purity and adequacy of our conceptions of the moral perfections of God. The question for our decision will be whether, if erring and partial in our views of our own moral qualities, we shall be likely to be correct and impartial in our estimate of the requirements of the divine law?

A general obstacle to correct views of ourselves, as well as of God, is our self-ignorance; and this is ignorance which we are naturally too indolent to discover, and too self-complacent to suspect, before some glaring evidence of it has been forced upon the mind. Our intimacy with the subject seems to us to suppose knowledge,—and inquiry and solicitude are therefore not entertained; and what is most easy and necessary to be learned remains unknown. For this

reason, our knowledge of subjects rarely presented to the mind, and requiring much investigation to be understood, is often more perfect than our knowledge of those with which we are more familiar, and which may be more easily investigated; and as this ignorance is shameless, because common, and grateful, because it keeps us in favour with ourselves, it is no wonder if we assume the credit, while we are destitute of the life and proper operation, of knowledge. He, whose religion is something better than profaneness, will not find it difficult to believe that he is both good and knowing indeed, if they, whose hearts and heads he studies in the inferences of their conduct, can have countenance for these qualities; and this too, when they show in nothing that they have them not so much as in the extravagance of their pretending to them-adding to their destitution of the qualities so great dulness in the perception of them, that they need but to know them to be convinced that they have them not.

There is one thing with which we may always be familiar, which may be seen in every individual about us as in a glass, which shares in all our cares and affections and runs in every thing we do; and, though there be nothing more important for us to know well, there is yet nothing of which we gene