mitted learning and humanity, and prudently withdrawn fome of its moft fcandalous trumpery; yet if once again it fees itself universal, the whole warehouse, now kept under key, will again be fet wide open: the old tyranny will ride triumphant upon the necks of enflaved mankind, with certain provision against a future revolt. The two inftruments, the two parents of the Reformation, ancient learning, and the art of printing, both coming providentially at one juncture of time, will be made the first martyrs, the earliest sacrifice to Popish politic. The dead languages, as they are now called, will then die in good earnest. All the old authors of Greece and Italy, as the conveyers of hurtful knowledge, as inspirers of dangerous liberty, will be condemned to the flames: an enterprise of no difficulty, when the Pope shall once again be the general dictator. All these writings must then perish together: no old records fhall survive, to bear witness against Popery; nor any new be permitted, to give it disturbance. The prefs will then be kept under cuftody in a citadel, like the mint and the coinage: nothing but massbooks and rofaries, nothing but dry poftills and fabulous legends, fhall then be the staple commodities, even in an university. For the double feftivity therefore of this candid and joyful day; for the double deli verance obtained in it, the one from the conspiracy of Popery, the other from its tyranny; for the happy prefervation of our religion, laws, and liberties, under the protection of pious and gracious princes; for the flourishing estate of learning, and the prosperity of our nurfing mother; be all thanks, praise, and glory to God, for ever and ever. Amen. A. SERMON PREACHED BEFORE KING GEORGE I, February 3, 1716-7. Rom. xiv. 7. For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. OUR Apostle having in this chapter and be fore difcourfed of the mutual duties and obligations in human life, concludes the whole with the words above, fententioufly in way of aphorifm, That no one liveth to himself, and no one dieth to himfelf. Which without doubt must seem a harsh paradox to a narrow-minded perfon, that is wholly involved and contracted within his own little self, and makes his private pleasure or profit the fole centre of his defigns, and the circumference of all his actions. Indeed, the Heathen poet in the epi gram, gram, a man of that very stamp, as fitting in Pagan darkness and the Shadow of death, teaches the downright reverse to our text; Vive tibi, fays he, nam moriere tibi. He took it as felf-evident, That every one dies to himJelf; and therefore infers it as a confequence both plain and profitable, That every one ought to live to himself. But our infpired writer has here taught us a new and Christian lesson, a doctrine which is the fource and spring of all true piety to God, of justice and beneficence to men, of public fpirit, and all the other ingredients of heroic and godlike virtue: a doctrine too fo pregnant of fenfe and truth, that it may be confidered in various views, all different from each other, and all worthy of our ferious fpeculation. I cannot now undertake to exhaust them all, in fo fhort a difcourfe as is prescribed by the occafion; but I fhall place before you fome of the principal, at least some of the most general and obvious, which may furnish a proper hint, and rife to your own further meditations. I. None of us, fays the Apostle, liveth to himfelf. To live to a man's felf, when confidered at large, is to do all the actions of life. with regard to himself alone; as a true freeborn fon of earth, not accountable to any other being for his behaviour and conduct; but carving out his own fatisfaction in every object object of defire, without any obligation or relation to a higher power. Now, in this sense, I conceive, it is fufficiently plain, that none of us liveth, ought to live, or can live, to himself. It is the thoughtless Atheist alone that can be guilty of fuch absurdity, to imagine the first parents of human race sprung naturally out of the mud, without the forefight and efficiency of an intelligent caufe. Every one, I fay, but an Atheist, (if an Atheist can now poffibly be, under the powerful light of the Gospel, and the late advances in natural knowledge, which directly lead and guide to the discovery of the Deity,) every one else must needs fee and acknowledge, that an almighty and all-wife God was our Creator; and, confequently, that we live to him, the fole author of life, and not to ourselves. All our powers and faculties, all the properties and perfections of our nature, were gratuitoufly given us by the good will of our Maker, without our own afking or knowing. We neither produced our own being, nor can we annihilate it; we can neither raise it above, nor depress it below the original standard of its effence, derived to the whole species. Which of you, fays our Saviour, Luke xii. 25. which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his ftature? And fo alfo may we say, which of us creatures, by all our thought and industry, can add one specific. power |