and it would be a very prefumptuous, as well as a fruitless attempt, to perfuade a man to live without fear, who apprehends himself to be in such a state. Weak and fuperftitious minds do often indeed form very wrong judgments concerning their own ftate and condition towards God; in which cafe, though the judgment itself be erroneous, yet the fear is natural, and connected to the judgment by just consequence. It is a great work of charity to affift fuch weak perfons, and to enable them to think better of God than they do, and not worse of themselves than they deferve; and by fuch means to reftore peace and quiet to their minds: but to endeavour to remove their fears, without correcting the false opinions from which they proceed, muft be the effect of great folly or great impiety. If you imagine the case capable of comfort and confolation, the conceived opinion of having merited God's wrath not being removed, it is a fign of great weakness, and ignorance in the nature both of God and man: or, if you would raise a courage to encounter these fears, and infpire finners with an hardiness against the apprehenfions of futurity, you can only hope to throw them into the other extreme; for fuch an hardy contempt of God's judgments cannot confift with a rational sense of religion. These fears, proceeding from guilt, are both natural and rational; it is impoffible therefore that either nature or reafon fhould afford any affiftance, or fufficient remedy against these terrors; unless we fuppofe reason and nature to be made up of contradictions. Is it a natural ftate of the mind to be at ease when real dangers furround us? Is it rational to be

unconcerned for ourselves when we are within view of endless mifery? If not, he must be in a very unnatural state who can separate between his guilt and his fears.

The power of conscience is feen in all men; it is common to all countries, to all religions; to the learned and unlearned, to rich and poor: it is an effential character of a rational mind; and therefore to man, who is a rational creature, it is natural. When we offend wilfully against our sense of good and evil, confcience never fails to reproach and torment us with the apprehenfions of evil and misery to befall us: and though nature has not furnished us with a diftinct knowledge of the mifery prepared for the wicked, yet natural conscience gives every wicked man a certain expectation of it.

These natural fears of confcience are also rational fears there are some natural fears planted in us for wife purposes, which yet our reason will teach us in great measure to overcome. Such is the natural fear of death: all men have it; but the more we confult our reason and religion about it, the less will our fear be: they will furnish our minds with comfort against this terror, and enable us to expect it with calmness and tranquillity of mind. But the cafe is otherwife in the fears of guilt; the more we advise with our reafon, the better ground we shall find for these fears; the more we confult the principles of religion, the more certainly we fhall be perfuaded that the fears of the guilty are no delufions, but real terrors. How then fhall we escape thefe terrors, which nature, reason, and religion have bound upon the guilty mind with fo ftrong cords?

So hard is it to get rid of thefe terrors, that, in many cafes, they grow up to the full ftature of dif traction; and are too ftrong for all the affiftance and comfort that can be administered. When this is the cafe, a finner is a woful fpectacle; the grief of his foul may be read in his countenance, from which all cheerfulness is banifhed, and nothing to be feen but melancholy and defpair. His days are without pleasure, and his nights without reft: he hates the company of his friends, and if he retires, it is to converse with the worst enemy he has, that is, with himself: his life is one fcene of mifery, and he lives only because he is afraid to die. The horrors of his mind no words can defcribe, all his thoughts work together to torment him; his imagination calls him every day to judgment, and fends him back condemned: amidst these tortures his ftrength faileth, and his life draweth nigh unto the grave, and he dies of a guilty confcience; a diftemper which no medicine can reach, no art can fuccour.

Now this mifery being fo great and unfupportable, and all men fo liable to it in confequence of fin, we may well imagine that the wit and invention of mankind have been conftantly at work to find a remedy for this fore disease. Natural confcience and reason make the connection between guilt and fear; remove these, and the fears muft vanish; as is evident in the cafe of ideots and madmen, who often do great mischief without fhewing any concern or trouble for their actions. This is one of the devices which profligate finners have found out to ease their burden: they bid defiance to confcience

and reason, and set themselves resolutely to despise both God and man. Where there is great ftrength of body, joined with a rude and brutish courage, this method may do for a while, but time will always fhew the folly of it.

Others, who are not capable of fuch outrageous impiety, and yet can as little bear the reproaches of confcience and reafon, are often tempted to give themselves up to excefs of vice and intemperance; they find ease in lofing their understanding, and their pains abate as they grow incapable of reflection. How miferable are the terrors of guilt, which can make men willing to forget themselves, that they may forget their fears!

But these are very unnatural methods, and which but few, in comparison, are capable of ufing; and yet the cafe before us is a general cafe, concerning all men, as they are finners, and have more or less offended against the light and reason of their own minds. Let us confider then, what more general and rational methods have been approved for the cure of this evil: thefe are to be found in the feveral forms of religion, which do or have prevailed in the world; all of them pretending to reconcile finners to God, fome by one kind of expiation, fome by another. It would be endless to set before you the particular methods ufed under the feveral forms of religion: it is a queftion of much more importance to inquire, whether reason and natural religion can poffibly furnish a remedy for this evil or no.

All methods applicable to this purpose may be reduced to two general heads; to external rites and ceremonies, and to internal acts of the mind.

As to external rites and ceremonies, they are to be found in great abundance: we meet with facrifices, oblations, washings, and cleansings, in almoft all parts of the world, both among Jews and Heathens. How these feveral rites came to be applied to the purposes of religion, is a matter not easily to be accounted for: it will be allowed, I fuppofe, that nothing ought to be efteemed a part of the religion of reason, for which no reason can be asfigned and yet, who can fay upon what principle he proceeded, who first killed a lamb, or a kid, and offered it to God as an expiation for guilt, or as a proper means of obtaining his bleffing and protection? What connection is there between the fin of a man, and the facrifice of an ox? If I deferve to be punished for iniquity, can I deferve to be pardoned for fhedding the blood of fome poor fenseless animals? Or what is God, that he should accept fuch gifts? what are divine juftice and mercy, that they should be moved by fuch oblations? If these questions cannot be answered, the consequence must be, that these external performances are no part of natural religion.

The facrifices and oblations under the law of Mofes were of divine inftitution; and whatever virtue they had in them, they had it in consequence of the institution, and the promise annexed to it; which is a point in which mere natural religion can have no concern: and the author to the Hebrews has affured us, that even these facrifices did not make him that did the fervice perfect, as pertaining to the confcience. The use he affigns to them is, that they fanctified to the purifying of the flesh, that is, they