snatched at some fugacious and innocent pleafures, till he was fuffered to take up his final repofe. This is no improbable account, and the many invitations we find in Scripture to à grateful enjoyment of the bleffings and advantages of life, make it evident. The apoftle tells us in the text, That God's commandments are not grievous. He has pleasure in the profperity of his people, and wills not that they should turn tyrants and executioners' upon their minds of bodies, and inflict pains and penalties on them to no end or purpose:- That he has proposed peace and plenty, joy and victory, as the encouragement and portion of his fervants, thereby instructing us,

that our virtue is not neceffarily endangered by the fruition of outward things but that temporal blessings and advantages, infteads of exting guishing, more naturally kindle our love and gratitude to God, before whom it is no way inconfiftent both to worship and rejoice. not hos

If this was not fo, why, you'll fay, does God seem to have grade. fuch:provifion for our happiness? Why has he given us so many powers and faculties for menjoyment, and adapted fo many objects to gratify and entertain them ?++Some of which he has created fol fair, with fach wonderful beauty, and has formed them fo exquifitely for this endjan that they have power, for a time, to

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charm away the fenfe of pain, t cheer up the dejected heart under poverty and fickhefs, and make it go and remember its miferies no more. Canvall this, you'll fay, be reconciled to God's wifdom, which does nothing in vainor can it be accounted for on any other fuppo firion, but that the author of our Being, who has given us all things. richly to enjoy, willst us a comfort able existence even here, and seems : moreover fo evidently to have ordered things with a view to this, that the ways which lead to our future happi» · ness, when rightly understood, he has made to be ways of pleasantnefsy and all her paths peaceupxe of 'madı i OF 2011 E Tet Öving oved ysdı tanı:

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-From this reprefentation of things we are led to this demonftrative truth, then, that God never intended to debar man of pleasure, under certain limitations. di card or

Travellers on a bufinefs of the last and most important concern, may be allowed to please their eyes with the natural and artificial beauties of the country they are paffing through, without reproach of forgetting the main errand they were fent upon

--and if they are thot led out of their road by variety of profpects, édifices and ruins, would it not be a fenfeless piece of severity to shut their eyes against fuch gratifications? For who has required fuck fervice at their bands 3 bus soarylebon

The humouring of certain appetites, where morality is not con

cerned, feems to be the means by

which the Author of nature intended to fweeten this journey of life-and bear us up under the many fhocks and hard jostlings, which we are fure to meet with in our way.—And a man might, with as much reafon, muffle up himself againft fun-fhine and fair weather,—and at other times expose himself naked to the inclemencies of cold and rain, as debar himfelf of the innocent delights of his nature, for affected referve and melancholy.

It is true, on the other hand, our paffions are apt to grow upon us by indulgence, and become exorbitant,