greatly in their understanding of spiritual excellence. Their imperfections will cast their shadows upon the brightest objects, and with all their desire to understand them aright, with their greatest readiness to suspect and accuse themselves, they cannot attain to this perfection; they will sometimes greatly disparage God by their unworthy, though their best, thoughts of him. Under pretence of celebrating one of his perfections, they may depress and wrong others, and make them repugnant the one to the other. What then shall be thought of the difficulties which sinners have with the character and dispensations of God? What shall be thought of their competence as judges of either? What concern should they have, lest, while they endeavour to frame a consistent notion of God, they leave out of it every thing that is truly a perfection; and, lest, through their proneness to make their conception of him agree with themselves, they cause it to disagree with him? As an absolutely perfect Being, he comprehends in himself all real perfections, without contradiction or repugnance, and they can neither add to, or take from, him, without sullying his character, and abstracting from it less or more of that salutary influence which it is adapted to exert upon their hearts. It is suggested by all they know of themselves and others, and most consonant with

their caution in other cases, that they should be wary, lest they speak too hastily concerning what he does; lest they magnify the greatness of his mercy so as to lose sight of their guilt and danger in it, or make it exclude other attributes which are essential to his perfection, and which concern them not less than that which they are most forward to extol. When difficulty with him occurs, it is but decent and modest to defer our opinion; it is stupid and arrogant not to suspect and inquire whether the fault be not wholly in our own minds; in that narrowness which cannot commodiously entertain the boundless perfections of the Deity, and comprehend their points of union, or their union which completes the glory of each; in that indolence which declines patient investigation and prevents us from doing what we can, or that self-conceit which disposes us to be satisfied with our convictions, right or wrong, and imposes on us an ability of doing what we cannot, of understanding that which is incomprehensible, of appreciating that which is so excellent that we do not relish it, and could not even bear to behold it aright.

It is difficult to express the rashness of a sinner, who treads confidently, and figures largely, on this holy ground: more difficult to conceive that he can think it rational to confide in the worthiness and

adequacy of his thoughts of God, especially if they do not disaffect him with himself and his sins. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon: that which excels, he has never seen; the other is but a reflection of it; it serves indeed to relieve the darkness of the night, but is not sufficient for the purposes of the day; nothing minute can be seen in it, and he, who should attempt to frame by it a nice and complicated structure, would be guilty of great presumption, and might be ruined, if not by the needless expense, yet by the dangerous action, of it. When a man has once established a character for holiness and virtue, if a known impostor brings even plausible accusations against him, and endeavours, not without argument, and with great apparent sincerity, to show that he is no better than his corrupt and lawless neighbours, nobody would believe him. To entertain for a moment such testimony, would not only be esteemed weak and uncharitable, but a just ground for charging us with a desire to believe it, or a likeness to the character falsely ascribed to the innocent. And when it is considered what an impostor the human heart is, what sinners experience of its impositions in themselves and others, and what inducements they have, or rather imagine they have, to extenuate its

wickedness, or shut their eyes to it, (which is so great that none but God can know it,)1 how shall they justify it to their reason, or make their conduct consistent with the rule of their judgment in other cases, when they arbitrarily confide in their perception and appreciation of the attributes of God; in the testimony of their deceitful hearts to his spotless holiness and untainted righteousness, which alike prove his displeasure with them, and require their displeasure with themselves!

1 The prophet Jeremiah, when contemplating the wickedness and deceitfulness of the heart, exclaims, 'Who can know it?' as much as to say, no man can.

CHAPTER III.

Various modes in which human character is disclosed-Prevalence of hypocrisy-Its tendency to self-deception and infidelityMorality of secular men a proof of their infidelity-Devotees of fashion-Dignity of their vocation-Their irreligion-Their freedom from the affectation of goodness-Their errors-The best virtues of unconverted men seem not to acknowledge a God— They infer the greatest misconception of personal characterThey centre in creatures, and afford the clearest evidence of a faithless heart-Peculiar depravity of such persons-Their sinning without a motive-Things which try men's souls-Their complaints and their pretensions illustrate their infidelity-Their selfimportance and misery-Contrast of their reasoning and conduct with the suggestions of faith-Happiness of a mind resting on God.

MEN disclose their real character in many ways. Small incidents, rightly considered, are very decisive of it. They show by signs and complaints, to which they are apt to attach little or no import, what is in them, and what they think of God and of his word. And what individuals disclose from any cause or event, is adequate proof of what all others, having the same principles, would do in a similar case. It is true that we are apt to look with surprise upon the conduct of others, as though we were incapable of doing what they have done, yet this is a feeling which universal observation condemns as founded