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DISCOURSE XXVII.

PART I.

PSALM lxxxviii. 15.

While I fuffer thy terrors, I am diftra&ted. As the comforts which true religion affords are the only fure fupport against the evils and calamities of the world, to which every condition of life is more or less expofed; fo the terrors of religion, being very grievous in themselves, exclufive of these comforts, add weight to all our miseries, and are a burden too heavy for the spirit of a man to sustain. But furely there is fomething monftrous in fuch terrors! They come not from religion by natural birth for it is much easier to believe that all we fee is chance and fortune, and religion itself a vain thing, than to believe that an all-wife, all-powerful Being has formed us to be miserable, and given us a fenfe and knowledge of himself, that we may live in perpetual terror and diftraction. And yet, in fact, this is often the cafe; we see many rendered unhappy by fuch fears and jealoufies: and of all the fears incident to man, these are the most fear

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ful, and give us the quickest sense of mifery; they are, what the Pfalmift has described them to be, diftraction. A man in this fad ftate employs all his reason to his own deftruction; he is fagacious in finding out new torment for himself, and can give a thousand reasons to justify his unreasonable fears : if you offer a thousand more for his comfort and confolation, he rejects them all; his mind is under so thick a cloud, that no ray of light can find admittance. This evil is the more to be lamented, because virtue and innocence are not always a fecurity against it; nay, fometimes the very defire to be better than we are, and to render ourselves more acceptable to God, makes us think ourselves to be worse than we are, and quite out of his favour. What a wretched ftate is this! to fuftain at once the burden of the righteous, and of the wicked; to deny ourselves and the world for the fake of God, and yet to fuffer under the foreft evils, which can befal even the wicked in this life, the torments of a diftracted mind!

But bad as this cafe is, it is not always the worft of the cafe: for, as to fuch who fuffer under these terrors, and yet retain their integrity, there is this comfort, which, whether they can receive it now or no, they will one day find, that however they deal with themselves, yet God will judge a righteous judgment; and, for the fake of their innocence, deliver them from the fears of the guilty. But others there are, who, not able to bear these fears of religion, in the hafte they make to run from them, leave religion itself behind them; and, imagining that they cannot be good enough to obtain

the rewards of religion, take effectual care to be bad enough to deserve the punishment of it. This is evidently their condition, who fortify themselves against the apprehenfions of futurity by vice and intemperance; and seem to have no greater concern upon them in this life, than to fecure themfelves from thought and reflection. This may likewise, in fome measure, be their cafe, who employ all their reafon in hardening their minds against the sense of religion; who seem to think it an easier matter to arrive at peace, by rejecting the belief of a God, than to come to any reasonable terms with him, and to find comfort and fecurity under the apprehenfions of his power and majefty. This irreligious phrenfy is, of the two, the greateft; and will, in its confequences, be more fatal than the other. A weak man, who fears God more than he should do, may be worthy of compaffion; but the bold man, who despises him, has no reason to expect any.

In whatever view we confider the effects of thefe terrors of religion, they afford us but a melancholy profpect it is a fad thing to fee the wicked defperate, or the righteous in defpair. Were these terrors the natural effects of that fear of God which is the foundation of all true religion, religion itself would be distraction, and not the reasonable service of a reasonable creature; unless you can imagine, that he who made us reasonable creatures, and diftinguished us by the nobler faculties of the mind, can take pleasure in feeing us lofe our reafon and understanding.

But fince thefe terrors do often affume the shape

and form of religion, and are almost always charged to its account; it may be fome service to true religion to fhew the feveral kinds of these terrors, and the real causes of them: and it will be for our common inftruction to confider, at the fame time, the vanity of those remedies which men often have recourse to under these evils; and, as far as the generality of the cafe will permit, to point out the true. cure for them.

As to the causes and kinds of these terrors, they may be reduced, I think, to the following heads: they are fuch as arise, either, firft, from uncertainty in religion; or, fecondly, from false notions of God, and of the honour and worship due to him; or, thirdly, from a confcience wounded with a sense of guilt; or, laftly, from fome accidental infirmities of mind or body.

It is a matter of doubt, whether there be any of human race so absolutely degenerate, as to be void of all fenfe of religion: that there are any such has not yet been proved, though the point has been much laboured: but if any fuch there be, they are evidently out of the prefent question: for, whatever anxieties may reach men in such a state of stupidity, they cannot be ascribed to religion, from the fense of which the sufferers are fuppofed to be exempted. But many there are whofe minds are difturbed with perpetual variety of opinions, and enjoy no more reft than a fhip left to the mercy of the winds in a tempeftuous fea. The concern which every man has in the iffue of religion, is too great to be fubmitted with indifference to chance and uncertainty: for the question before him is, Whether he must die

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