faned by licentious conversation, pronounce the words of righteousness, and of salvation! What can proceed from a mouth so dishonoured, which can either terrify the sinner, or comfort the righteous? The language of piety must, in such lips, "be a strange language.;" insomuch, that the Holy Word, designed to confound the wicked, and to console the good, excites, in the one, contempt, and impresses the other, with sorrow. Let no one depart out of our company without deriving from it, some degree of edification, without feeling an additional respect for Religion, and its Minis

ters.

Let all men learn, in conversing with us, how to render society, at once instructive and holy; let them learn, that circumspection, prudence, and charity, in conversation, that an amiable allowance for the faults of our neighbour, tend to make society more agreeable and desirable, than the calumny, the levity, the indecency, of ordinary discourse. Let us not, my Reverend Brethren, be afraid of losing the friendship of the Great, and the patronage of the Powerful, by the observance of these rules; they expect, from us, the observance of them. They will not send to us to partake of their amusements, and join them in their diversions, I acknowledge; but they will send to us when they want edification; when, weary of the world, and its vanities, they shall form the resolution of leading a more regular and Christian life; when, overwhelmed with adversity, they shall have need of consolation; when, struck by the hand of God with sickness or infirmity, they shall

have recourse to our ministry, in order to appease his wrath, and repent of those offences, by which they may have become subject to his indignation*.

The next reflection to which I shall solicit your attention is, that our very relaxations are to be such as to give no offence.

That both the body and the mind have need of relaxation is attested by general experience; but this indulgence is only proper and allowable, when it disposes us to fulfil our professional du. ties, and when it facilitates a compliance with the observance of them. Repose is necessary, to supply us with new powers to continue our course all the avocations which alienate us from it, which draw us aside, which create in us a dislike of our calling, propriety forbids, and Religion condemns the sports of the field, gaming, giddy company, any of these delights, which powerfully engage our mind, and chiefly occupy our time, are surely unbecoming. For, independent of the impropriety of an employment, so indecent in a Clergyman, as addicting himself, from day to day, to the destruction of an animal or a bird, is it an exercise congenial to the humanity and gravity of our character? Does a Clergyman, with weapons

*The Second Part of this Discourse is confined to censures respecting the dress of the French Clergy, which, not being at all applicable to us, I òmit.

of destruction in his hand, breathing only blood and slaughter, represent the Great Shepherd, employed in conducting his flock in peace; or the wolf, prepared to devour, and to destroy it? "The arms of our warfare," says the Apostle, "are not carnal, but spiritual, designed to com"bat pride, avarice, and every high thought which "exalts itself against God;" faith is our buckler; zeal for the salvation of men our sword; these are the arms committed to us by the Church, when we become her Ministers. How indecent, then, in a Pastor, to devote his time to diversions! He neglects his flock; he does not deign to succour those sheep who are perishing; and he observes with vigilant attention, and pursues, with keen impatience, the flight of a bird, or the course of an animal. After indulging himself in this barbarous exercise, does he feel disposed to go and present his person, and pour out his prayers, for the souls committed to his care, at the Throne of Grace? Do not the recollection, the seriousness, the holy fervor, essential to the proper discharge of his spiritual avocations, suffer, by the riotous dissipation, in which he has lately been so unholily engaged? What veneration can the people have for their Pastor, when they see in his hands the consecrated elements, the pledge of our salvation, whilst their minds are impressed with the reflection that they had, perhaps, on the preceding day, seen those hands employed in bearing destructive arms, directed to carry terror and death to the wild and anoffending inhabitants of the field?

What I have said of rural diversions, I may say, also, of frequent play. A Clergyman, who is a professed gamester, is a disgrace to the Church; he loses at the gaming table, the time designed for the salvation and the sanctification of the souls redeemed by the blood of the Son of God; he loses then, the attachment to whatever is serious and sacred in his profession; the respect and the confidence of his flock; the quiet and tranquillity of his mind: he loses there his soul, by the passions inevitably attendant upon play; What does he not lose, since he there loses the spirit of his vocation, and the whole advantage of his ministry? Such are the losses which can never be repaired, with which the loss of money, however severely it may be felt, can never be put in competition.

Permit me, my Reverend Brethren, to conclude this discourse with the words of the Apostle-" Ye "have not so learned Christ; ye, who are our glory "and joy," do not thus dishonor your ministry; ye do not thus prostitute that sacred character which ye have received of the Lord Jesus; ye have not thus learned Christ. Continue then, my brethren, to conduct yourselves before your respective flocks, in a manner becoming the holiness of your calling; "See that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, "but as wise, redeeming the time, because the

days are evil." The reserve, the circumspection, interwoven in your whole deportment, cannot

be too much guarded; what may be lawful, may not be expedient: consider the people who surround you, as so many censors, whose eyes, always upon you, pardon nothing, and are more disposed to construe a slight dissipation into a crime, than to excuse it, as an allowable relaxation. Let us not encrease the blindness of the world, by confirming it in its profligacy, its errors, or its prejudices, through our example; let us not become stones of stumbling, to those, to whom we are to be guides in the paths of salvation; and let us not be the severest scourge with which the Church can be afflicted;-us, whom it has honoured with its choice, and distinguished by its confidence, to become the oracles of its truth, and the dispensers of its blessings.