grades and circumstances of life. Are not the poor usually envious; do they not behold with a malignant eye the prosperity of others; are they not disposed to challenge the wisdom and justice and goodness of God in the distribution of outward blessings ?Are not the rich, on the other hand, proud, imperious, oppressive; glorying in their wealth as if their superior wisdom or excellence had acquired it? Is not civil authority, by those who are called to exercise it, frequently converted into an instrument of oppression; is it not rather employed for promoting the misery than the happiness of others; while those who ought to be subject are, in their turn, turbulent, envious, neither shewing a proper respect to the person nor authority of the civil magistrate? Is not man evidently at war with man, although they are connected to each other by relations the most intimate and endearing ?Have not all the laws which human wisdom could devise, or human power execute, proved insufficient to restrain them from devouring the persons and property of each other? What contentions often disturb the peace, and almost destroy the existence of families, and settlements, and nations? They must therefore be more than blind who cannot discern from observation, and more than obstinate who will not acknowledge the universal corruption of human nature; that the accursed leaven of sin has pervaded and

contaminated the whole mass. The heathen,* entirely destitute of any supernatural revelation, were convinced of the mournful truth, and were constrained to confess and deplore it. Their poets and philosophers were almost as explicit on this subject as christians can be with the bible before their eyes.

4. This truth is undeniably established if we advert to those miseries to which all are indiscriminately exposed. It may be laid down as an unquestionable maxim, that as God cannot consistently pardon the guilty, neither can he, neither will he punish the innocent; that suffering upon a rationał being can only be inflicted as a consequence of sin; that when the subjects of a Prince who is perfection itself, who can have no pleasure in their death, but is rather delighted in promoting their happiness, when the subjects of such a Prince are invariably under his frown, experiencing his displea

NOTE.

*To omit mentioning numerous proofs which might be adduced from historians and moralists among the heathen, I shall offer the following from a celebrated poet. Nam vitiis nemo sine nascitur; optimus ille est qui minimis urgetur. "For no man is born without faults; he is most perfect who has the fewest." Hor. Sat. b. 1. Sat. iii. v. 68, 9. Such a testimony from the lips of a heathen has, certainly, some weight towards the confirmation of this truth; especially when it is uttered by one the licentiousness of whose principles and practices forbade him to be very severe in criticising the conduct of others.

sure in one respect or another, there must be some fault in themselves; it must arise either from want of esteem to his person or obedience to his laws. If this principle be acknowledged, and all who entertain becoming conceptions either of the mercy or justice of Jehovah will readily acknowledge it, then the conclusion is obvious that all must have sinned. Is not misery co-extensive with man in all periods and circumstances of life? Not to mention those more public and awful scourges of the Almighty by which nations perish in an hour; not to mention the earthquake by which the lofty city is levelled with the ground, or the pestilence which walketh in darkness, wasting its ten thousands, or war which deluges a land in the blood of its inhabitants, does not misery in one form or another haunt the children of Adam while they continue upon.earth? Man that is born of a woman is of fen days and full of trouble. As the period of human life is short, this short period is a succession of sorrows and contrition.-He cometh forth as a flower, and is cut down. "He is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed of his hope." Does not misery assail the infant the very moment of its entrance on the theatre of life? And if any attain to three score years or four, is not their strength labor and sorrow? Wherever we cast our eyes around us are not spectacles of wretchedness presented to our

view? One pines in poverty, wanting even the necessaries of life; another is tortured with exquisite pain; in the morning he longs for the return of evening, and in the evening longs for the approach of morning, that another period of his torment may be past? Do we not taste some bitter ingredient intermingled with every cup of earthly enjoyment, as a plain proof that the curse denounced against the first transgression of Adam is now experienced by all his natural offspring? "Cursed be the ground for thy sake, in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life." What is the glare of the wealthy, or the majesty of the great but more splendid misery? Disquiet and anxiety rankle the bosom of the prince upon his throne, no less than of the beggar upon the dung-hill; disease tortures alike the body covered with purple and with rags; and death, with equal sternness, demands admission into the palace of the mighty and the cottage of the mean. "Although," as the plaintive patriarch expresses it," altho affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground; yet man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.' Vexation and disappointment meet us in every stage, and occupation, and enjoyment of life. On what principle, then, can we account for this universal reign of misery and death, unless from the universal reign of transgression? Who ever pe

rished being innocent? Or where were the righteous cut off? Will a tender parent deliberately scourge a child which uniformly obeys his commands? Will a righteous judge doom to punishment or death the citizen who has never broken the laws of his country? Or can it be consistent with the benevolence or justice of the Creator to pursue with constant marks of his indignation a being who always fulfilled his pleasure and answered the end of its existence ?There is no misery among the angels of light, those blessed spirits that kept their first estate and obey the will of their Lord; being perfectly holy they are perfectly happy: There will be no complaint either outward or inward among all the redeemed of the Lamb through eternity; being once freed from sin, they will be freed from suffering, its constant attendant; "they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain.' Their bodies which are now frail through corruption shall flourish in immortal youth. We therefore infer the apostacy of all men from that vanity, and those miseries to which they are now subjected; we may reasonably conclude that all must have sinned, because they actually suffer; that destruction and misery are in their paths, because there is no fear of God before their eyes. Such is the