even oppose him, and hate him, and rise up in arms against him, for an attention to their welfale, and a desire of promoting their reformation and improvement. Vice, wherever it is found, has an interest against the ministers of the gospel; it therefore always was disobedient, contradictory, ungrateful and unmerciful; and such we must expect to find it at this day. What? are we greater than St. Paul? No, we are not to be named with him; our powers in the ministry are nothing when compared with his it must therefore follow most certainly, that where he could make no impression, we shall make none: the same sort of persons who would have killed him, will neglect and despise us; and such there will be, more or less in all places; persons of no breeding, of no feeling; who having not God himself in all their thoughts, have no regard to any thing, or any person that belongs to him; who, if you were to save their lives, could never be won over to any decency or respect. Men are as different from men, as men from brutes; and the gift of God's grace, or the want of it, makes all the difference. My dear brethren, when we consider these things, our duty, as deducible from the whole, is, to be thankful to God for the labours, and sufferings, sufferings, and example of St. Paul, by whose preaching we Gentiles have been brought to the knowledge of the Gospel: and if we should be called upon to suffer contradiction, or reproach, or shipwreck, for the truth's sake, the same God that delivered him, can own and deliver us in all dangers and adversities: he that rescued his apostle from the fury of the waves, and the cruelty of unthinking heathen soldiers, can deliver all those who are engaged in the same undertakings, and bring them safe from a tempestuous sea of trouble in this world to his heavenly land; there to reign in peace with apostles and martyrs, under the captain of their salvation, Jesus Christ our Lord. VOL. V. SERMON SERMON VIII. IF IT BE POSSIBLE, AS MUCH AS LIETH IN YOU, LIVE PEACEABLY WITH ALL MEN, THE first and greatest design of the Chris tian religion, is to reconcile man to God: the next, is to reconcile men to one another, and to abolish, if it were possible, all enmity from the earth. That this will actually be possible, the Apostle does not affirm: and, as things are now constituted, it certainly is not. The world is a mixture of good and evil: it is a field, wherein wheat and tares grow up together; a plantation, in which trees that bear good fruit are surrounded with briars and thorns, offensive to the flesh, and fit only to be cut up and burned in the fire. Peace, whether public or private, is to be maintained by endeavours which are mutual: mutual as the roof of an house is kept up by a wall on each side. If either of these be withdrawn, ruin must be the consequence. No single person can secure that peace, which must arise from the joint endeavours of other people: but he must do his own part, and contribute what he can towards it. The duties which a man owes to society, will depend much on that state of life, to which it hath pleased God to call him. Men in society differ from each other in their offices, as the limbs and members of the same body dif fer in their uses. We do not expect that the hands should speak, or that the feet should see : all men cannot perform high and eminent services to the public: but if every man keeps his own place and rank in quietness, he performs the duty enjoined in the text. And let not him that can do much, despise him that can do little; for mean as the offices of some men may appear, their help can as ill be spared, as that of the lower and weaker members in the body. The Providence of God hath tempered the world together with so much wisdom, that we are all necessary to one another: and supposing we were not so, there is no member of society so insignificant as to be incapable of doing mischief, and disturbing the peace of others, Every man can do what vermin and creeping things, and insects are able to do; that is, every man if he sets about it, can make himself hateful and troublesome to other people. They who are placed in a lower station, should therefore submit to the offices which Providence requires of them; and if they cannot do any great good, they should at least be careful to do no harm. But they whose character in life gives them any influence over others, are bound to study the peace of society in a more particular manner. It is frequently in their power to moderate the unhappy differences of contending brethren, or to sow the seeds of hatred, and to foment strife, till it spreads into a wide and destructive flame. God, who is the common father of us all, hath given us many precepts, which ought to lead us to peace and unity amongst ourselves. The reasons upon which they are grounded, are such as these; that a contentious disposition is not only sinful in itself but is the occasion of a multitude of sins. Who, that has any knowledge of the world, does not see what strange opinions are kept up, what perverse actions are defended, and applauded, only for the purpose of supporting an opposition, when it hath been once begun. Where envying and strife is, saith the |