rus, Daniel in that of Darius, the prophets in the palaces of the kings of Ifrael, were folely indebted to prayer for their life and falvation. If you live in retirement, pray: folitude itfelf becomes a rock, if a continual intercourse with God does not defend us against ourselves; and Judith, in the secrecy of her house, and the widow Ann in the temple, and the Anthonies in the desert, found the fruit and the security of their retreat in prayer alone. If efstablished in the church for the inftruction of the people, pray: all the power and all the fuccess of your ministry must depend upon your prayers; and the apostles converted the, universe folely because they had appropriated nothing to themselves but prayer and the preaching of the gospel. Laftly, Be whom you may, I again repeat it, in prosperity, or in indigence, in joy or in affliction, in trouble or in peace, in fervency or in defpondency, in luft or in the ways of righteousness, advanced in virtue, or ftill in the first steps of penitence, pray prayer is the safety of all ftations, the confolation of all forrows, the duty of all conditions, the foul of piety, the fupport of faith, the grand foundation of religion, and all religion itself. O my God! shed then upon us that spirit of grace and of prayer which was to be the diftinguishing mark of thy church, and the portion of a new people; and purify our hearts and our lips, that we may be enabled to offer up to thee pure homages, fervent fighs, and prayers worthy of the eternal riches which thou hast so often promised to thofe who shall have well entreated them.

SERMON

SERMON XIV.

FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES.

MATTHEW V. 43.

Ye have heard that it hath been faid, Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy: But I fay unto you, love your enemies.

Ir is commonly believed that a degree of indulgence and caution had been used by the legiflator of the Jews, in publishing the law on forgiveness of injuries, that obliged to accommodate it, in some respect, to the weakness of a carnal people, and otherwise persuaded that, of all virtues, that of loving an enemy was the most difficult to the heart of man, he was satisfied with regulating and prescribing bounds for revenge. It was only in order to prevent great exceffes, lays St. Auguftin, that he meant to give authority.] to fmaller ones. The law, like all the others, had its fanctity, its goodness, its juftice; but it was rather an establishment of polity than a rule of piety. It was calculated to maintain the internal tranquillity of the state; but it neither touched the heart, nor ftruck at the root of hatreds and revenge. The only effect proposed was either to reftrain the aggreffor, by threatening him with the fame punishment with which he had grieved his brother, or to put a check

upon

upon the irritation of the offended, by letting him fee that, if he exceeded in the fatisfaction required, he expofed himfelf to undergo all the furplus of his revenge.

Philosophers, in their morality, had also placed the forgiveness of injuries among the number of virtues; but that was a pretext of vanity, rather than the rule of discipline. It is because revenge seemed to them to carry along with it fomething, I know not what, of mean and paffionate, which would have disfigured the portrait, and the proud tranquillity of their sage: that it appeared disgraceful to them to be unable to rise fuperior to an injury. The forgiveness of their enemies was folely founded, therefore, upon the contempt in which they held them. They avenged themselves by difdaining revenge; and pride readily gave up the pleasure of hurting those who have injured us, for the pleasure which was found in defpifing them.

But the law of the gospel, upon loving our enemies, neither flatters pride nor spares self-love. In the forgivenefs of injuries nothing ought to indemnify the Christian, but the confolation of imitating Jefus Chrift, and of obeying him; but the claims, which, in an enemy, prove to him a brother; but the hope of meeting, before the Eternal Judge, with the fame indulgence which he fhall have used towards men. Nothing ought to limit him in his charity, but charity itself, which hath no bounds, which excepts neither places, times, nor perfons, which ought never to be extinguifhed. And, fhould the religion of Christians have no other proof against unbelief than the fublime elevation of this maxim, it would always have this pre-eminence in fanctity, and confequently in apparent truth over all the fects which have ever appeared upon the earth.

Let

Let us unfold, therefore, the motives and the rules of this effential point of the law: the motives, by establishing the equity of the precept through the very pretexts which seem to oppose it; the rules, by laying open the illusions under which every one juftifies to himself their infractions: that is to say, the injuftice of our hatreds, and the fallity of our reconciliations.

PART I. The three principles which usually bind men to each other, and by which are formed all human unions and friendships, are fancy, cupidity, and vanity. Fancy. We follow a certain propenfity of nature, which being the cause of our finding, in fome perfons, a greater fimilarity to our own inclinations, perhaps alfo greater allowances for our faults, binds us to them, and occafions us to find, in their fociety, a comfort which becomes weariness in that of the rest of men. Cupidity. We feek out useful friends; from the moment that they are neceffary to our pleasure or to our fortune, they become worthy of our friendship; intereft is a grand charm to the majority of hearts; the titles which render us powerful, are quickly tranfmuted into qualities which render us apparently amiable, and friends are never wanting, when we can pay the friendship of those who love us. Laftly. Vanity. Friends who do us honour are always dear to us; it would seem that, in loving them, we enter, as it were, into partnership with them, in that diftinction which they enjoy in the world; we feek to deck ourselves, as I may fay, with their reputation; and, being unable to reach their merit, we pride ourselves in their fociety, in order to have it fuppofed that, at least, there is not much betwixt us, and that like loves like.

These are the three great ties of human fociety. Religion and charity unite almost nobody; and from thence it

is, that from the moment men offend our fancy, that they are unfavourable to our interefts, or that they wound our reputation and our vanity, the human and brittle ties which united us to them are broken asunder; our heart withdraws from them, and no longer finds in itself, with respect to them, but animofity and bitterness. And behold the three moft general fources of those hatreds which men nourish against each other; which change all the sweets of society into endless inveteracies; which empoison all the delight of conversations, and all the innocency of mutual intercourse; and which, attacking religion in the heart, nevertheless present themselves to us under appearances of equity, which justify them in our eyes, and strengthen us in them.

I fay, from the moment that men offend our fancy; and this is the first pretext, and the first source of our withdrawing from, and of our hatreds against our brethren. You say that you cannot accord with fuch a person; that every thing in him offends and displeases you; that it is an antipathy which you cannot conquer; that all his manners feem fashioned to irritate you; that to see him would answer the fole purpose of augmenting the natural aversion which you have to him; and that nature hath placed within us hatreds and likings, conformities and averfions, for which fhe alone is to be an{werable.

To this I might at once answer, by establishing the foundations of the Christian doctrine upon loving our brethren : Is that man, in confequence of displeasing, and being disagreeable to your fancy, less your brother, child of God,, citizen of Heaven, member of Jefus Chrift, and inheritor of the eternal promises? Doth his humour, his character, whatever it may be, efface any one of thofe august tracts which he hath received upon the facred font, which