out confufion and anxiety:

"This SERM.

" is not to fear God as reafon and reli

แ

.4

gion dictate, but really to dishonour "him. It is forming a character which "exifts no where, but in our distempered imaginations;” and a character that is as difparaging to the glorious perfections of the Deity, as it is fatal to our own peace and comfort. For the religious Fear of God is nothing else, but the reverence due to a Being fupremely and immutably perfect. If therefore we are afraid of him as a ftern defpotic Sovereign, we are miftaken in the very ground of our Fear; For he is a righteous and moft merciful Governor. And if we confider his irrefiftible power only, and are frighted at the thought of it, as what is capable of making the whole creation completely miferable, our Fears are equally unreafonable; because there is no fuch Being in "the univerfe, as one poffefs'd of an un"bounded power, that is not under the "conduct of unerring Wisdom, and most "perfect Goodness." So that it appears, that the great God is the juft object of our reverence, and yet infinitely amiable; or, in other

C 3

I.

SERM. other words, that the Love and the Fear of I. God are infeparably connected, and that they fpring, indeed, from the fame general principles.

AND it is for want of confidering the matter in this view, that men have been fo apt to run into one, or other, of these two extremes, equally mischievous to the cause of virtue and true religion: Either conceiving of the Deity as all goodness, without taking at all into their idea his infinite wisdom, by which the exercise of his goodness is always directed and regulated; or else, entirely dropping his goodnefs, and thinking on him only as a Being abfolute in power, and rigid in justice, Whereas the only way, in which we can have a right and worthy notion of him, is to confider all his perfections as in a neceffary union and harmony with each other. Otherwife we may love him, or rather, fince fuch a weak character cannot be the object of a rational efteem and complacency, we may take a pleasure in representing him to our minds as an eafy Being, who has no refentment of the violation of his laws and contempt of his authority, and

from

I.

from whom we apprehend no evil, how- SERM. ever irregular our behaviour may be ;but we cannot reverence him:Or else, he will be so terrible to our imaginations, that we shall always be distracted, and filled with averfion and horror, at the thought of him;And if this be the cafe, it is in the nature of things impoffible we fhould love him.

SERMON II.

གས་རྒྱབ་ནས་རྒྱ་ནས་ཁྱབ་ནས་རྒྱན་

Of the true Happiness of Man.

There be

PSALM iv. 6.

many that fay,

that say, who will

fhew us any good?--LORD, lift thou up the light of thy counte

nance upon us.

3

HE all-wife God hath in- SERM, terwoven a defire of Hap- II.

T

piness, and an averfion to

Pain and Mifery, with the

very constitution of Human

nature. This is a principle implanted in the animal creation, as well as in mankind: But there is this difference between us and them; that whereas they are determined