persuasion, to place that spirit in sourness, contention, and hatred, and then to love it.

Under this general perversion of religion, it is no wonder, if all the virtues, justice, modesty, temperance, by a little additional discountenance of custom, should be suppressed; or all the vices, oppression, luxury, lewdness, dishonesty, by the help of numerous examples, especially from the upper end of the world, should be encouraged and supported. The daily observation, if not the consciences, of you all may save me the trouble of particularizing on this disagreeable, perhaps, offensive topic.

There was once a good being who went by the name of custom, and made it a title of honour. He was the son of right reason, and the brother of true religion, and as such you cannot mistake his father. During the reign of reason and religion, his interest with mankind greatly strengthened the hands of that government. Whether he is dead, or to what distant part of the universe he is banished, we cannot tell, we hear no more of him.

Very different is the pedigree, as well as disposition, of him who is now on the throne. He is the incestuous offspring of pride, and his bastard daughter culpable emulation. The head of the whole family is spoken of, Gen. iii. He was nursed at a vast expense by vanity and folly in that court, where the mint of fashion is kept. He arrived to his present height of power by successfully inculcating two short maxims. Do as others do; follow the many, and of those, especially the great. Wealth is his element, but he can subsist in poverty. As wisdom or piety approach him, he shrinks and dwindles into almost nothing; and if the latter repeats my text, he instantly vanishes into vapour. When pride, imagination, and wealth only are with him, his size and strength increase to such a degree, than he can turn and tumble the whole world, which way he pleases, with as much ease as a little ball. Although he is exceedingly starched and stiffened up to forms, and, when it makes for 'his purpose, pleads antiquity as decisive in all things; yet he is perpetually contriving new fashions and ceremonies; and is said to be the inventor of innumerable arts, such as fraud, lying, oppressing, thieving, robbing, together with

those of cooks, tailors, tiremen, and milliners; and of one science, which consists in the discovery and inforcement of a new necessity, the necessity of unnecessary, useless, and pernicious things. Others say, it was the God of this world who revealed these inventions to him, and ordered him to institute them as a sort of mock sacraments for the more effectually urging on the minds of mankind his two goodly maxims already mentioned.

This is but a very imperfect account of that usurper and his practice, to whom this world bows, as to its second God; that seducer of individuals; that corrupter of magistrates; that prostitutor of legislators; that overturner of states; that destroyer of kingdoms; that oppressor, and at the same time, mocker of mankind; that waster of this world, and peopler of hell.

What need of any more, but this and your own experience, to set you at liberty? To a sound understanding, to know and abhor him; and to a manly resolution, to abhor and utterly renounce him, is but one and the same thing. There is no power which it is so slavish to submit to, as that of custom, because whosoever blindly resigns himself to it, resigns, at the same time, all right to choose for, and act of himself. He puts himself under the direction of a thousand guides at once, all leading different ways in the dark, and each to some unhappy end, in a path so foul, so craggy, so full of pitfalls, that the road which is above to the wise, though narrow, is not half so troublesome as this which leads downward; yes, downward, for notwithstanding that it is the path of pride, and crowded with great ones, it is not the path of true honour, unless it is honourable to have neither will nor choice of one's own, but to be hedged into one track, and either led by the knaves before, or driven by the fools behind, like other beasts of burden; proud, however, to shake the fringes and tinkle the bells, though a groan now and then at the weight of the load makes the base of the consort.

Do as others do, and be not singular, saith custom. Go with the stream, saith the world, that is, do good or evil, go to heaven or hell, with the multitude.

But Christ tells you which way the multitude is going; and the spirit saith, follow not after a multitude to do evil.

Be not conformed to this world; but be changed, be transformed in the renewing of your mind; if you mean to prove what that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God is,' which he hath declared, as the rule of your behaviour now, and the measure of his love to you hereafter. Whatsoever is good and fit to be done, that do with all your might, though no mortal does it but yourself. Whatsoever is foolish or wicked, avoid as you would eternal misery, though all mankind joined in the practice of it.

Temporal good and evil are fixed by the unchangeable nature of temporal things. Moral or spiritual good and evil are fixed by the indispensable laws of God. The happiness of man here follows a right choice of the former. His happiness hereafter is tied to a right choice of the latter. Could custom change the nature of things, such as light and darkness, food and poison, sickness and health, pleasure and pain, or could it repeal and transpose the laws of God, concerning fit and unfit, right and wrong, rewards and punishments; it might also change the nature of happiness in both worlds, and justify all its conformists. But nature must have her way, and God will have his. Distress, sickness, death, would pursue those who trample on nature, though there were more of them than there is of the sand on the sea-shore; and guilt, shame, despair, damnation, those who rebel against God, though they could outnumber and outshine the stars of heaven.

No degree of power or superiority over inferiors ought to enforce an example beyond the reason of the thing to be done, or of the rule prescribed for it in the word of God. Great as the authority of a parent is, and ought to be, over his children, they are to obey him only in things lawful and honest; and surely his example should not go farther than his command; nay, not so far, for all things that are lawful are not expedient.' The son, modestly speaking, hath a right to be less a fool than his father; for no law, but that of custom, to whose sovereignty, principally as a law-giver, we premptorily demur, hath ever yet pretended to authorise an entail of folly.

It is enough for the duty of servants, if they obey, and more a great deal, than they are bound to, if they imitate their master, as children their parents, in all things lawful

and honest. Their service would not be worth his wages, had they not the sense to distinguish between right and wrong in his conduct, so far as that conduct may be either way a pattern for theirs; and if they have sense enough to serve a foolish master, God will expect they should use their sense in considering how to serve him, whose infinite goodness makes his a much easier service, and whose infinite authority supersedes, not only the examples, but the commands of all created masters.

The examples of the clergy, who are but men, and to my certain knowledge, sometimes the weakest of men, are to be limited by the same rule. Mankind are more severe, and justly, on their faults than the faults of others, and therefore less tempted, one should think, to be led astray by theirs, than by lay transgressions, especially as their sermons, or at least their texts, furnish antidotes as fast as their misconduct can scatter poisons.

The conduct of saints and persons inspired is not always to be followed, because being left by the spirit of God, in many cases, to themselves, they have, through human frailty, been guilty of such actions, as were beforehand expressly forbidden, or afterwards severely reproved by that spirit. Moses, David, Solomon, and Saint Peter, though distinguished by the most eminent gifts and graces, have proved sufficiently on some occasions, that they were but men. Now to imitate them in their evil and not their good actions, is to prefer sin to virtue in a character, where they shew each other in the strongest point of light. This therefore is a choice that can never be made, but by a mind equally lost to common sense and goodness.

The example even of Christ himself goes not beyond this rule. It only excites and shews us how to do what his precepts have already rendered right and fit to be done; and never becomes a law, but when his express command enacts it as such. He did many things, all of them infinitely good in him, which it would be presumption in us to attempt, or wickedness to do.

Much less surely are the customs that obtain among the rich and great to be imitated in all things, as is too common, without distinction. They may indeed give a countenance to folly, and bring wickedness into vogue in the upper

orders of men. But still it should be remembered, that those vices which are very fashionable in one of family and fortune, sufficient to bear him out in the wildest excesses, look but awkwardly and pitifully in a man of inferior condition. To what a state of beggary would one day of that magnificent wickedness, which is applauded in the great by all their flatterers, reduce a man of much narrower circumstances. Custom, forward as it is to propagate folly and wickedness in all ranks of men, forbids the vulgar nevertheless, yes, and upstarts, to tread on the heels of their betters in the highway of sin; nay, pronounces that very action wise in a great person of the best education, which it condemns of the grossest stupidity, though otherwise circumstanced alike throughout, in an indigent person, whose extreme ignorance hath always been as well the constant companion, as the necessary effect, of his poverty. A plain man for instance, is not to imagine, that absenting himself from the place of public worship, or neglecting the Lord's table, shall pass for a sign of shrewdness, or a mark of distinction in him, because they are admitted, and by many admired, as such, in a man of high rank and fortune. If he does, he will find himself wofully disappointed. Custom itself will hand him down to his place, and punish him with that contempt which is due to his presumption. To be irreligious and atheistical is that peculiar privilege which custom reserves for and appropriates to the great. Now if you whom Providence hath blessed with moderate or scanty circumstances, seeing the great man stop with his coach and six at the eye of the needle, as too narrow for so huge an equipage to pass through, should, therefore by a puff of your vanity, swell yourself to too great a bulk in your own imagination for that entrance, be assured, the whole world would laugh at your damnation. The world can well enough bear (because it is used to the show) to see the pomp and splendour of its lords descend in state along the broad way;' but how great is its indignation at your impudence, who being only one of the little, will needs thrust yourself in among such fellow-travellers, as if a straiter road were not wide enough for you who must foot it! In all this you most admire that impious pride in the wealthy, for which, of all things, God hath them most in derision; and this you get by setting your affection