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your head, and making up that great re- SERM. cord of your thoughts, words, and actions, from which at laft you are to be judged. Think that you are never lefs alone than when by yourselves; for then is He still with you, whose inspection is of greater confequence than that of all mankind. Let these awful confiderations not only check the diffipation of corrupt fancy, but infuse into your spirits that folemn composure which is the parent of meditation and wisdom. Let them not only expel what is evil, but introduce in its stead what is pure and holy; elevating your thoughts to divine and eternal objects, and acting as the counterpoise to those attractions of the world, which would draw your whole attention downwards to fenfe and vanity.

SERMON

SERMON

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The fame SUBJECT continued.

1

III.

PROVERBS, iv. 23.

Keep thy heart with all diligence: for out of it are the iffues of life.

SERM. HAVING treated, in the foregoing discourse, of the government of the thoughts,I proceed to confider the government of the paffions, as the next great duty included in the keeping of the heart.

Paffions are ftrong emotions of the mind, occafioned by the view of apprehended good or evil. They are original parts of the constitution of our nature; and therefore, to extirpate them is a mistaken aim. Religion requires no more of us than to

moderate

moderate and rule them. When our bleff

ed Lord affumed the nature, without the corruption of man, he was subject to like paffions with us. On fome occafions he felt the rifings of anger. He was often touched with pity. He was grieved in fpirit; he forrowed and he wept.

Paffions when properly directed, may be fubfervient to very useful ends. They rouze the dormant powers of the foul. They are even found to exalt them. They often raise a man above himself, and render him more penetrating, vigorous, and masterly, than he is in his calmer hours. Actuated by fome high paffion, he conceives great designs, and furmounts all difficulties in the execution. He is infpired with more lofty fentiments, and endowed with more perfuafive utterance, than he poffeffes at any other time. Paffions are the active forces of the foul. They are its highest powers brought into movement and exertion. But, like all other great powers, they are either useful or deftructive, according to their direction and degree: as wind and

SER M.

III.

SERM. fire are inftrumental in carrying on many

III.

of the beneficent operations of nature; but when they rife to undue violence, or deviate from their proper courfe, their path is marked with ruin.

It is the present infelicity of human nature, that thofe ftrong emotions of the mind are become too powerful for the principle which ought to regulate them. This is one of the unhappy confequences of our apoftacy from God, that the influence of reafon is weakened, and that of paffion ftrengthened within the heart. When man revolted from his Maker, his paffions rebelled against himself, and from being originally the minifters of reafon, have become the tyrants of the foul. Hence, in treating of this fubject, two things may be affumed as principles: first, that through the prefent weakness of the understanding, our paffions are often directed towards improper objects; and next, that even when their direction is juft, and their objects are innocent, they perpetually tend to run into excefs: they always hurry us towards their gratification

III.

gratification with a blind and dangerous SERM.. impetuofity. On these two points then turns the whole government of our paffions: first, to ascertain the proper objects of their pursuit; and next, to restrain them in that pursuit when they would carry us beyond the bounds of reafon. If there be any paffion which intrudes itself unfeasonably into our mind, which darkens and troubles our judgment, or habitually dif composes our temper; which unfits us for properly discharging the duties, or difqualifies us for cheerfully enjoying the comforts of life, we may certainly conclude it to have gained a dangerous afcendant. The great object which we ought to propose to ourselves is to acquire a firm and ftedfaft mind, which the infatuation of paffion fhall not feduce, nor its violence. shake; which, refting on fixed principles, fhall, in the midft of contending emotions, remain free, and mafter of itself; able to liften calmly to the voice of confcience, and prepared to obey its dictates without hefitation.

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