monly the vice of profligate people-fuch as have no fear of God before their eyes; noify, brawling, hardened fellows, who terrify those beneath them, and are difpifed by every body elfe. You hardly, I fuppofe, know any of thefe curfing and swearing people, who are not bad men in other refpects: they are drunkards, or they are given up to a loofe, diforderly life, or are, in fome way, a nuifance to their neighbourhood. And if ever this vice is found in better people, where there is fome good, it is always thought a great injury and blemish to them; and their neighbours cry out, how forry they are to fee fo many virtues clouded by fuch a vice. And when you give the character of a good man, you commonly fay, as a high praife, he was never heard to fwear an oath in his life. Swearing therefore, I fay, fits ill upon all people; but if there are any that should particularly avoid this fhocking vice, it is thofe who are at the head of families-who have children and fervants to inftruct, and keep in order. What a fhocking thing is it to breed up your own children in vice!—to train them up in wickedness by your own example!-- to be the devil's worst agents in

II

fitting

fitting your own offspring for deftruction! If you teach them no good, for God's fake teach them no ill. Is it not enough, think you, to leave them to pick up vice as they can, but muft you inftruct them in it?- Must you teach their infant tongues, by your example, till their lips begin glibly to form an oath ?—The cafe is the fame with regard to the fervants: it is the duty of masters to have an eye upon their behaviour -to keep them to their duty, and make them go regularly to church; but instead of that, if they teach them to fin by their example, I much fear that fuch mafters will not only have their own fins, but, in a degree, the fins of others to anfwer for.

THUS, I have endeavoured to deter you from the abominable practice of common fwearing.You will obferve, I am not calling you to any heights of religion-I am not calling you, in our Saviour's language, to pluck out an eye or cut off a hand; I am calling upon you only for one of the first steps of a Chriftian life that of not dishonouring your Maker's name. then hope that all who are addicted to this

K 3

Let me

wicked

wicked practice, or are in the way of it, will confider, and think upon what I have said against it; and for your own fakes, and for the fake of others, leave off a practice which can do you no good, and will moft undoubtedly, if you repent not, nor leave it off, in the end lead you to ruin.

SERMON X.

LUKE, XV. 10.

THERE IS JOY IN THE PRESENCE OF THE ANGELS OF GOD OVER ONE SINNER THAT REPENTETH,

Ν

IN the parable from which this verse is taken,

our Saviour intended to fhew the Jews that the Gentiles (reprefented by the prodigal fon) should be taken, on their repentance, into God's favour equally with themselves.

But though this was the chief intention of the parable, yet, like many of our Saviour's parables, it had two views; and the former part, at leaft is capable of a much more general interpretation. In this light I propofe to confider it, and shall point out the feveral pieces of instruction that arife from it.

In the first place, we obferve the conftant readiness we all fhew to leave our father's house. By our father's houfe is meant that kind protection which good men always receive from God. And we argue and act in this cafe moft commonly as the prodigal did. The fober difcipline of our father's houfe is too fevere a bondage we have paffions and appetites which must be indulged let us make an acquaintance with the world it is time now to enjoy a little of life: these are the common delufions that carry us all, more or lefs, into a far country — into the paths of pleasure and indulgence. The father, no doubt, remonstrated to the prodigal, as God does to us in the gospel, and fet before him the kind intention of all the restraints that were put upon him; and probably, with a prophetic figh, forewarned him, that fooner or later he fhould repent his rafhnefs. All being ineffectual, the father knowing there are fome people who can learn the leffons of wifdom only from experience, at length gave way; and the youth, we read, gathering all together, with a plentiful supply of folly and self fufficiency, took his journey into a far country and the farther from home the better: the greater diftance he went from his father's

house,