such a tyrant, or such a rebel? And who passed his life with more affluence and jollity, than such an epicure, such a money-monger, such a talley-broker and cheater of the public? And have not some dexterous accomptants got estates, and made their fortunes, by a clever stroke or two of their pen? And by a skilful mistake, wrote themselves forty or fifty thousand pounds richer than they were before, in a trice? And did not that discreet Roman Verres, lighting into a wealthy province, carry off from thence enough to serve himself, his friends, and his judges too? And why may not others, whose parts lie the same way, follow such lucky examples? And the thriving hypocrites of the present uge find as fair quarter from God and man, as any of the former? With such considerations as these, (if they may be called so,) men commonly arm themselves against all the threatenings of the divine judgments; and think that, in the strength of them, they can warrant the most resolute pursuit of their vices for safe and rational. They see not the smoke of the bottomless pit, and so dread not the fire.

Flourishing sinners are indeed plausible arguments to induce men to sin: But, thanks be to God, that for a sinner to spend and end his days flourishing, is a privilege allowed by him to very few; and those only such, as are likely to be much lower in the other world, than ever they were high in this.

God sometimes makes one sin the means of discovering another; it often falling out with two vices, as with two rogues; of whom it is hard to say, which is worse, and yet one of them may serve well enough to betray the other. How many have by their drunkenness disclosed their thefts, their lusts, and murders, which might have been buried in perpetual silence, had not the sottish committers of them buried their reason in their cups? For the tongue is then got

loose from its obedience to reason, and commanded at all adventures by the fumes of a distempered brain and a roving imagination; and so presently pours forth whatsover they shall suggest to it, sometimes casting away life, fortune, reputation, and all in a breath.

And how does the confident sinner know, but the grace of God, which he has so often affronted, may some time or other desert, and give him up to the sordid temptations of the jug, and the bottle, which shall make the doors of his heart fly open; and cause his own tongue to give in evidence against him, for all the villanies which had lain so long heaped up, and concealed in his guilty breast? For let no man think, that he has the secrets of his own mind in his own power, while he has not himself so; as it is most certain that he has not, who is actually under a debauch: For this turns all the faculties of the soul topsy-turvy; like a storm tossing and troubling the sea, till it makes all the foul, black stuff, which lay at the bottom, to swim upon the top.

In like manner, the drunken man's heart floats upon his lips, and his inmost thoughts write themselves upon his forehead; and therefore, as it is an usual, and indeed a very rational saying, that a liar ought to have a good memory; so upon the like account, a person of great guilt ought to be also a person of great sobriety; lest otherwise his very soul should, some time or other, chance to be poured out with his liquor: For commonly, the same hand which pierces the vessel, broaches the heart also, and it is no strange, nor unusual passage from the tavern to the jail.

God sometimes infatuates, and strikes the sinner with frenzy and distraction, as causes him to reveal all his hidden baseness; and to blab out such truths, as will be sure to be revenged upon him who speaks them. In a word, God blasts his understanding, for having used it so much to the dishonour of him who gave it; and delivers him over to a sort of madness,

too black and criminal to be allowed any refuge in bedlam. And for this, there have been several fearful instances of such wretched contemners of heaven, as having, for many years, outfaced all the world, both about them, and above them too, with a solemn look and a demure countenance, have yet, at length, had their loathsome inside turned outwards, and been made an abhorred spectacle to men and angels.

Some sorts of sin there are, which will lie burning and boiling in the sinner's breast, like a kind of Vesuvius, or fire pent up in the bowels of the earth; which yet must, and will (in spite of all obstacles) force its way out of it at length; and thus, in some cases of sin, the anguish of the mind grows so fierce and intolerable, that it finds no rest within itself, but it is even ready to burst, till it is delivered of the swelling secret it labours with: Such kind of guilt being to the conscience, like some offensive meats to the stomach, which no sooner takes them in, but it is in pain and travail, till it throws them out again.

God sometimes takes the work of vengeance upon himself, and immediately, with his own arm, repays the sinner, by some notable judgment from heaven: Sometimes, perhaps, he strikes him dead suddenly ; and sometimes he smites him with some loathsome disease, (which will hardly be thought the gout, whatsoever it may be called,) and, sometimes again, he strangely blasts him in his name, family, or estate, so that all about him stand amazed at the blow; but God and the sinner himself know well enough the reason and the meaning of it too.

Justice, we know, uses to be pictured blind, and therefore it finds out the sinner, not with its eyes, but with its hands; not by seeing, but by striking: And it is the honour of the great attribute of God's justice,

which he thinks so much concerned, to give some pledge of itself upon bold sinners in this world; and so to assure them of a full payment hereafter, by paying them something in the way of earnest here.

These are some of the chief ways by which God finds out the sinner in this life. But what now, if none of all these should reach his case, but that he carries his crimes all his life closely, and ends that quietly; and perhaps in the eye of the world, honourably too; and so has the good luck to have his shame cast into the same ground with his carcass? Why yet, for all this, the man has not escaped; but his guilt still haunts, and follows him into the other world, where there can be no longer a concealment of it, but it must inevitably find him out. For, when the judgment shall be set, the books shall be also opened; even those doomsday books, (as I may so call them,) wherein God has kept a complete register of all the villanies that were ever committed against him, which then shall be read aloud in the audience of that terrible court. The consideration of which, surely, may well put those excellent words of the apostle, (Rom. vi. 21.) with this little alteration of them, into our mouths. What fruit can we [now] have of those things, whereof we shall [then] be ashamed!

DISCOURSE X.

of delight in OTHER MEN'S SINS.-Rom. i. 32.

This is so great a master-piece in sin, that no man begins with it: He must have passed his tyrocinium, or noviciate, in sinning, before he can come to this, be he never so quick a proficient. No man can mount so fast, as to set his foot upon the highest step of the ladder at first. Before a man can come to be pleased with a sin, before he sees his neighbour commit it, he must have had such a long acquaintance with it himself, as to create a kind of intimacy between him and that; and then, we know, a man is naturally glad to see his old friend, not only at his own house, but wheresoever he meets him. It is generally the property of an old sinner to find a delight in reviewing his own villanies in the practice of other men; to see his sin, and himself (as it were) in reversion; and to find a greater satisfaction in beholding him, who succeeds him in his vice, than him who is to succeed him in his estate. In the matter of sin, age makes a greater change upon the soul, than it does or can, upon the body. And as, if we compare the picture of a man, drawn at the years of seventeen or eighteen, with a picture of the same at threescore and ten, hardly the least trace of one face can be found in the other so for the soul, the difference of the qualities of the inner man, will be found much greater. Compare the harmlessness, credulity, tenderness, modesty, and ingenious pliableness to virtuous counsels, which is in youth, as it