and impression of this truth. Is it consistent with humility to suppose that you can stand where others, and some of them far superior to yourselves, have fallen? Is it consistent with a proper sense of your own weakness to rush into extreme perils, confident, not only that you shall be secure there, but even do good? The very imagination forebodes ill. It looks like the pride that goes before destruction, and the haughty spirit that precedes a fall. Indeed, it is righteous in God to suffer us to fall, when, disobeying his command, we renounce his protection, and venture to proceed without him.

Again. As you conclude that your companion being ungodly will not be able to make you irreligious; what authorizes you to think that your being godly will be able to make him religious? Surely out of your own mouth you are condemned; for the very principle upon which you proceed with regard to yourself should reduce the confidence you indulge with regard to him. If you have no fear that he can impress and influence you, you should have no hope that you can impress and influ

ence him. If

you believe that your love to him will not alter you, you ought not to believe that his love to you will alter him.

And do you consider what human nature is? Do you consider what real religion is? If so, surely you would not think so lightly of accomplishing the conversion of a soul as you now seem to do. If the process be so easy, why are so few converted at all? Why do not all those, who have dear connexions, convert those whom they love and by whom they are beloved?

But you say, You do not expect the result independent of God's influence and blessing: but is not he able to convert them? He is. And we have reason to believe he has in some cases employed his power. For we cannot go the length of Dr. Doddridge, who has remarked, that where Christians have knowingly espoused irreligious characters, he never knew an instance of the conversion of one of them afterwards. But I ask, would you take up an affair so important on a ground so slender? On a mere possibility? For probability there is none.

You would not like to marry

a condemned criminal, because he may be pardoned or reprieved. God can make a beggar a gentleman, and yet I presume you would not like to take him on this presumption; you would rather reckon certainly upon a little wealth. Why then marry an unconverted sinner, because God may, because God can, call him by his grace?

Besides, if the acceptance and success of all our endeavours depend wholly upon his favour, can it be a rational way to attain our wishes, to slight his authority, and to provoke his anger by disobedience?

But, to conclude. Even if God should overrule such a connexion for good, you will remember that this is his work, and the glory belongs to him. It does not prove that you have done right; nor can it free the mind from distress in review. For you cannot be so ignorant as not to be able to distinguish between your unrighteousness, and the divine goodness that has thus blest you, notwithstanding all your desert.

CHAPTER VI.

IN WHAT CASES THIS LAW IS NOT BROKEN, THOUGH BOTH THE PARTIES BE NOT RELIGIOUS.

We have thus endeavoured, by placing the subject in various points of light, to prove, that Christians in the business of marriage ought to confine their choice to pious characters only. But to relieve the minds of some who deserve pity rather than censure, let me remark two or three instances in which the rule laid down is not transgressed.

First. It sometimes happens that both parties are ignorant of divine things at the time of marriage, and one is called afterward. When this is the case, the blame does not attach. But the individual renewed by divine grace, now feels pains and anxieties, to which he was before a stranger. It is the nature of grace to excite, with a concern for our own welfare, a concern for the salvation of others, especially of those to whom we are tenderly connected by blood, friendship, or affinity.

How can I endure the thought of being severed forever from her in whom my happiness is so much bound up? 'How can I bear,' will such an Esther say, 'to see the destruction of my kindred?' She will therefore pray, and use every persuasive method to allure. She will endeavour to render her religion lovely and attractive. It is what the scripture enjoins. Ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands, that if any obey not the word, they also, may without the word, be won by the conversation of the wives: while they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.' And for the consolation of such, be it remembered, that after a trial, and perhaps a long one, of their faith and patience, God has frequently heard their petitions, and succeeded their endeavours. After performing religious exercises alone, they have gone to the house of God in company; and have walked together as heirs of the grace of life.

Secondly. Persons may be mistaken after due examination. Every thing admits of counterfeit. There is a specious imitation of every Christian grace as well as of every moral