circumspection, he is unprofitable and false; or serves to mislead. If the instrument be not truly set, it will be harsh and out of tune; the diapason dies, when every string does not perform its part. Surely, without an union to God, we cannot be secure, or well. Can he be happy, who from happiness is divided? To be united to God, we must be influenced by his goodness, and strive to imitate his perfections. Diligence alone is a good patrimony; but neglect, will waste the fairest fortune. One, preserves and gathers; the other, like death, is the dissolution of all. The industrious bee, by her sedulity in summer, lives on honey all the winter. But, the drone is not only cast out from the hive, but beaten and punished.

OF INJUSTICE.

WERE right and justice preserved with exactness,

earth would be a heaven to live in, and the life of man would be like that of angels, where majores sine elatione præsunt, et minores sine vitio subsunt. No crowded throngs would fill our law-tribunals; nor armed troops devastate our fruitful fields. Every injury is a petty war, and a breach, at least, of God's grand commandments, against killing and stealing ; -and, though perhaps it may seem to prosper a little while, till the wheel of Providence has performed its round; yet, doubtless, it drags its own punishment after it. Injustos sequitur ultor à tergo Deus. It is one of God's peculiar attributes, that he is an

avenger of wrongs. There are but two parts of a Christian's life: to abstain from doing wrong, and to endeavour to do good. And though the first, in a bad world, be some progress in a Christian's voyage to heaven; yet, it is, in truth, but a dead and torpid virtue. It is no more than a negative piety, which reaches not to the civility of neighbourhood. Though we are commanded to be inoffensive, yet that is not all, which we are commanded unto. Eschew evil, and do good, is but one conjunctive precept. He is but the lesser part of his way, that forbears the doing an injury: yet, even this, is a mystery, which but very few attain unto. Either, we misapprehend it; or, blinded by a belief of our own perfections, we slide over this, and yet pretend to be pious. But I can never think him good, who is but temporally good to himself. How he can have a good conscience, either towards God or towards man, who fraudulently or violently takes away what is another man's just property, I am yet to learn. Offer violence to no man, is the injunction of our Saviour. And is it not such, to take away any thing from another, which is his? Let the act be ever so clandestinely performed, without either noise, or the owner's knowledge, under the covert of darkness, or in the silence of the grave; yet it is, by the law, held to be done, vi et armis. If force can give a title, then all I can catch and keep, is mine. If the rules of justice and property be laid aside, no man would own more than what he might be able to keep by his own craft, or might be left to him by another's courtesy! Take away but justice,

and what are kingdoms else, but fields of war and rapine? But the real signification of the passage is, terrify no man, which intimates that we ought not to come so near to taking any man's right, as to put him in fear. What law and civil right gives a man a just title to, I ought not to deprive him of. They are beasts and birds of prey, or else voracious fishes in the wild ocean, who live and fatten on the spoils of others. Man, by all the laws of nature, policy, and religion, is tied up to live, by his own fair industry, on what is justly his; and then he has the promise of a blessing with it. But he who rolls and ruffles in his neighbour's hold, has no protection but his own frail arm, or else his fraudulent head; against which, the prophet hath pronounced a woe. Even natural light, will shew us the blackness of wrong. The Offices of the orator will tell us; qui non defendit, nec obsistit si potest injuriæ, tam est in vitio quàm si parentes, aut patriam, aut socios deserat: he who does not hinder, or defend a wrong, when it is in his power, is in the same rank with those that basely desert their country, their parents, or their near associates. Surely, right-born nature is nobler than a bastard piety. They wound religion to the quick, that shew her to the world with such ugly spots, as to encourage vice instead of promoting virtue. The pagan tribune is to be preferred before some Christian conventions, which have appeared in the world.

A Christian dares not offer wrong even to an enemy. Religion from above, is pure and peaceable; but wrong, is the fuel of war; and, in the end, helps our

adversary, against ourselves. We engage God on his side; and by our injustice, injure our own cause. Nor may we do wrong, that good may come of it. Justice needs not injury to maintain itself. Though, in the way of hostility, the practice is far more common than commendable; yet, by honest and brave persons, injustice hath ever been abhorred. Themistocles

advised the setting fire to the Spartans' navy privately, as it lay in the harbour. Aristides allowed it to be profitable; but as he could not be satisfied that it was just or honourable, Themistocles was enjoined to desist from the project. And when some persons proposed to Alphonsus to entrap and cut off his enemy, the Duke of Anjou, Alphonsus told them, that if they did any such thing, he would proceed against them, as he would against a pack of parricides;— thus declaring to all, that the war he undertook, was not a war of fraud and treachery, but of virtue, of valour, and of noble fortitude. He is next to charity, who abstains from injury: but he is at oppression's threshold, who can dispense with it. Let no man think, he can purchase favour with either God or men, by the exterior formalities of religion, if he lets himself loose unto injury. One unjust and unworthy action, hurts not alone the man that does it; but, it transfers the scandal to the religion he professes, which for his sake groans, and grows suspected, if not contemned. The commission of one wrong, puts a man upon a thousand wrongs, perhaps, to maintain that one injury, with injury is defended; and we commit a greater, to maintain a less. A lie begets

a lie, till generations succeed. He who is once a rebel, hardens his own heart, involves his friends and relations, oppresses his fellows, murders the loyal, and, like a torrent, lets in all that can tend to confusion. As the powder once would have done the two Houses, so he, at once, blows up both tables of the Commandments.

OF FAITH AND GOOD WORKS.

I FIND not a greater seeming contradiction in the whole Gospel, than that which relates to faith and works. The Apostle St. Paul argues high for the former, and St. James as high for the latter. One, says Abraham and Rahab, were justified by faith. The other, that Abraham and Rahab were justified by works. One says, by the works of the law, shall no flesh living be justified; the other says, ye see then, how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. Nay, St. Paul may seem to contradict himself, when in one place he says, the doers of the law shall be justified; and in another, we know a man is not justified by the works of the law;-But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, is evident. Surely, though these appear to be contradictions, yet, rightly understood, they are not so; for, to pass over the niceties of those sharp disputes that exist upon the subject, I look upon it as a rule, that were the Scripture seems to run into contrarieties, there is a middle way between both,