checks of your conscience which, if attended to, would have prevented the execution of your designs. Having once been ship-wrecked upon this coast, use your experience to avoid it for the future. Much have you suffered, and dearly have you purchased this trial of your strength. There is, however, a support that will not fail you in all your difficulties, if you apply to heaven for it. The advantage of this support the apostle thoroughly experienced, when he said, "I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me." Phil. iv. 13.

I shall conclude this discourse by recominending to you the means of procuring this support, and that is, fervent and diligent prayer. See we not in common life, with how much earnestness the hungry beg for food, and the naked for cloathing! Do we not behold the distressed, of every denomination, supplicating the relief of their wants, with an importunity not to be resisted? And shall we be less earnest, less importunate, in addressing the Father of mercies, "from whom every good and perfect gift descends," James i. 7. to relieve us from the tyranny of sin, the chains, and captivity of the devil? Ask, and ye shall have," says our Saviour himself," seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you," Matt. vii. 7. Can we imagine a sight more pleasing to a God of infinite goodness than to behold an assembly of reformed prisoners praising him from the depths of the dungeon? To see,

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those

those, who were the terrors of their neighbourhoods, joined together in bands of holy friendship to behold cruel fathers weeping over their affectionate children, or profligate children healing the wounds, and soothing the sorrows of their unhappy parents?

1

In hinting at these causes of domestic affliction, I hope none of you are so lost to all the feelings of nature, as to remain insensible to their impression. I might, indeed, probe deeper the wounds in your hearts-but rather, much rather, would I heal and alleviate your sorrows. But the affection I would now inspire, is not that which springs from sensibility alone-it is actual reformation of life; and the means I would propose for the relief of your bosoms, as well as a supply of your wants, is, prayer to God. "Whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive." Matt. xxi. 22. Happy would be your state if you could experience the comforts of true devotion; if you could open your whole heart to God, lay all your wishes and your wants before him, and humbly expect such a return as he shall think fit to grant you. Enclosed within these walls, you have, or at least ought to have, no interruption in performing the exercises of religion. These should be the employments of every leisure moment. You should prostrate yourselves before the throne of mercy, "bewail with strong crying and tears," Heb. v. 7. all your former transgressions, and seek pardon from

Him, who refuseth not to hear the groaning of the prisoner.

In addressing your prayers to God, you' should not only be fervent and zealous, but express and particular. The situation you stand. in requires this attention. General supplications may be very proper for public devotions, but when the world is shut out, when your own souls are the immediate objects of your cares, nothing less than the minutest scrutiny, the most sincere and express acknowledgment of your guilt, will be sufficient to render you accepted in the day of the Lord.

Retire then, to the solitude which this place affords-but think not that because you are removed from the open scenes of life, you may spend the live-long day in sleeping or in idleness, much less in vicious or profane discourse. Trust me, my unhappy friends, business presses upon you with greater earnestness. The time is precious to you. If you employ it in lamenting the profligacy of your former lives, in seriously resolving to live better for the future, and in diligently beseeching God, through the merits of your Saviour, to hear the sorrowful sighing of such as are in captivity, your prison doors will be thrown open, the chains will fall off from your hands, and you will finally be received into the company of glorified spirits, who will wipe away all tears for ever from your eyes," Rev. vii. 17. and conduct you to those regions, where sorrow and sighing will be heard no more.

SER

SERMON III.

THE NATURE OF SIN, AND THE PUNISHMENT THAT CERTAINLY FOLLOWS IT.

NUMB. XXXII. 23.

Behold, ye have sinned against the Lord: and be sure your sin will find you out.

THESE words may be rendered two ways; either as I now read them: "Behold, ye have sinned against the Lord, and be sure your sin will find you out :" or thus, "Behold, ye have sinned, and ye shall be sensible of it when evil overtakes you;" or, "Ye shall know your sin in the punishment thereof." From which words we may take a just occasion of considering, the nature of sin, and the punishment that certainly follows it.

Behold, ye have sinned, &c."—I think it may very truly be said, that most people, when they commit any sin, do hope that they shall never hear of it again. At least, there are few people engaged in sinful courses, who are persuaded that "no sin shall escape without its due reward."

Now; this is a truth which must of necessity be explained and made out, before ever we can hope to persuade people to keep out of the way C

of

of temptations, or to resist temptations when they meet with them against their will. For if a man be once persuaded that he cannot possibly escape the judgments of God, but that either in this world, or (which is much worse) in the next, they will certainly overtake him, if he sin presumptuously; that if in his own person which is not often, he should escape the avenging hand of God, yet, that his children, and his children's children, unto the third and fourth generation, may feel the smart of his folly and wickedness: if this could be so pressed upon men's minds as to be received and believed, it must certainly, in some measure, put a stop to a great many crying sins, which are but too common amongst us.

Let us therefore consider some of those most remarkable instances of God's displeasure against sin, and the punishments that have always attended it.

To begin with that of our first parents:And that this in some measure affected the whole creation and particularly their offspring, we have all reason to be sensible of by the many evils we are subject to. Their first-born son felt it with a witness; and he was more inexcusable, in that he had warning given him by God himself of what would follow, if he should go on to envy his brother as he did. "If thou dost well," that is, if thou repentest. of this. fault, "shalt thou not be accepted, and forgiven? But if thou dost not, sin lieth at the

door,"