To produce this dispofition nothing appears requisite but quick sensibility, and active imagination; for, though not devoted to virtue, or science, the man, whole faculties enable him to make ready comparisons of the present with the past, will find such a constant recurrence of the fame pleasures and troubles, the fame expectations and difappointments, that he will gladly snatch an hour of retreat, to let his thoughts expatiate at large, and seek for that variety in his own ideas, which the objects of sense cannot asford him.

Nor will greatness, or abundance, exempt him from the importunities of this desire, since, is he is born to think, he cannot restrain himself from a thoufand enquiries and speculations, which he must pursue by his own reason, and which the splendour of his. condition can only hinder; for thofe who are most exalted above dependance or controul, are yet condemned to pay so large a tribute of their time to custom, ceremony, and popularity, that, according to the Greek proverb, no man in the house is more a slave than the master.

When a king asked Euclid the mathematician, whether he could not explain his art to him in a more compendious manner? he was answered, That there was no royal way to geometry. Other things may be seized by might, or purchased with money, but knowledge is to be gained only by study, and study to be profecuted only in retirement.

These arc some of the motives which have had power to sequester kings and heroes from the crowds that soothed them with flatteries, or inspiritedthem with acclamations; but their efficacy seems confined fined to the higher mind, and to operate little upon the common classes of mankind, to whofe conceptions the present assemblage of things is adequate, and who seldom range beyond thofe entertainments and vexations, which solicit their attention by pressing on their senses.

But there is an univerfal reason for some stated intervals of solitude, which the institutions of the church call upon me, now especially to mention; a reason, which extends as wide as moral duty, or the hopes of divine favour in a suture state; and which ought to influence all ranks of lise, and all degrees ofintcllect; since none can imagine themselves not comprehended in its obligation, but such as determine to let their Maker at defiance by obstinate wickedness, or whofe enthusiastick security of his approbation places them above external ordinances, and all human means of improvement.

The great talk of him, who conducts his lise by the precepts of religion, is to make the suture predominate over the present, to impress upon his mind so strong a sense of the importance of obedience to the divine will, of the value of the reward promised to virtue, and the terrors of the punishment denounced against crimes, as may overbear all the temptations which temporal hope or sear can bring in his way, and enable him to bid equal defiance to joy and sorrow, to turn away at one time from the allurements of ambition, and push forward at another against the threats of calamity.

It is not without reason that the apostle represents our passage through this stage of our existence by

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images drawn from the alarms and solicitude of a military lise; for we are placed in such a state, that almost every thing about us conspires against our chies interest. We are in danger from whatever can get possession of our thoughts; all that can excite in us either pain or pleasure has a tendency to obstruct the way that leads to happiness, and either to turn us aside, or retard our progress.

Our senses, our appetites, and our passions, are our lawsul and faithsul guides, in most things that relate solely to this lise; and, theresore, by the hourly necessity of consulting them, we gradually sink into an implicit submission, and habitual confidence. Every act of compliance with their motions facilitates a second compliance, every new step towards depravity is made with less reluctance than the former, and thus the descent to lise merely sensual is perpetually accelerated.

The senses have not only that advantage over conscience, which things necessary must always have over things chofen, but they have likewise a kind of prescription in their favour. We seared pain much earlier than we apprehended guilt, and were delighted with the senfations of pleasure, besore we had capacities to be charmed with the beauty of rectitude. To this power, thus early established, and incessantly increasing, it must be remembered, that almost every man has, in some part of his lise, added new strength by a voluntary or negligent subjection of himself} for who is there that has not instigated his appetites by indulgence, or suffered them by an unresisting neutrality to enlarge their dominion, and multiply their demands?

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From the necessity of dispossessing the sensitive saculties of the influence which they must naturally gain by this preoccupation of the foul, arises that conflict between oppofite desires, in the first endeavours aster a religious lise $ which, however enthusiastically it may have been described, or however contemptuously ridiculed, will naturally be selt in some degree, though varied without end, by different tempers of mind, and innumerable circumstances of health or condition, greater or less servour, more or sewer temptations to relapse,

From the perpetual necessity of consulting the animal saculties, in our provision for the present lise, arises the difficulty of withstanding their impulses, even in cafes where they ought to be of no weight; for the motions of sense are instantaneous, its objects strike unsought, we are accustomed to follow its directions, and therefore often submit to the sentence without examining the authority of the judge.

Thus it appears, upon a philofophical estimate, that, suppofing the mind, at any certain time, in an equipoise between the pleasures of this lise, and the hopes of futurity, present objects salling more frequently into the scale would in time preponderate, and that our regard for an invisible state would grow every moment weaker, till at last it would lofe all its activity, and become absolutely without effect.

To prevent this dreadsul event, the balance is put into our own hands, and we have power to transser the weight to either side. The motives to a lise os holiness are infinite, not less than the savour or anger of omnipotence, not less than eternity of happiness or misery. But these can only influence our conduct

duct as they gain our attention, which the business, or diversions* of the world are always calling off by contrary attractions.

The great art theresore of piety, and the end for which all the rites of religion seem to be instituted, is the perpetual renovation of the motives to virtue, by a voluntary employment of our mind in the contemplation of its excellence* its importance, and its necessity, which, in proportion as they .are more frequently and more willingly revolved, gain a more forcible and permanent influence, till in time they become the reigning ideas, the standing principles of action, and the test by which every thing propofed to the judgment is rejected or approved.

To facilitate this change of our asfections, it is necesfary that we weaken the temptations of the world, by retiring at certain seasons from it; for its influence arising only from its presence, is much lessened when it becomes the object of solitary meditatiom A constant residence amidst noise and pleasure, inevitably obliterates the impressions of piety, and a frequent abstraction of ourselves into a state, where this lise, like the next, operates only upon the reason, will reinstate religion in its just authority, even without thofe irradiations from above, the hope of which I have no intention to withdraw from the sincere and the diligent.

This is that conquest of the world and of ourselves, which has been always considered as the persection of human nature; and this is only to be obtained by servent prayer, steady resolutions, and frequent retirement from folly and vanity, from the 5 cares