manners; which was both regular in point of confiftency, and not so much beneath the dignity of our Lord's miffion as may at first sight be supposed, for bad manners are bad morals.

It is sufficiently apparent, that the precepts we have recited, or rather the difpofition which these precepts inculcate, relate to personal conduct from personal motives; to cases in which men act from impulse, for themselves, and from themselves. When it comes to be considered, what is necessary to be done for the fake of the public, and out of a regard to the general welfare, (which confideration, for the most part, ought exclusively to govern the duties of men in public stations) it comes to a case to which the rules do not belong. This distinction is plain; and, if it were less so, the confequence would not be much felt, for it is very feldom that, in the intercourse of private life, men act with public views. The personal motives, from which they do act, the rule regulates.

The

The preference of the patient to the heroic character, which we have here noticed, and which the reader will find explained at large in the work to which we have referred him, is a peculiarity in the Christian inftitution, which I propose as an argument of wisdom, very much beyond the situation and natural character of the perfon who delivered it.

II. A fecond argument, drawn from the morality of the New Testament, is the stress which is laid by our Saviour upon the regulation of the thoughts. And I place this confideration next to the other, because they are connected. The other related to the malicious passions; this to the voluptuous. Together they comprehend the whole cha

racter.

"Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, &c. These are the things which defile a man." Mat. xv. 19.

"Wo unto you scribes and pharifees, hypocrites, for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. - Ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness ; even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrify and iniquity." Mat. xxiii. 25. 27.

And more particularly that strong expression, (Mat. γ. 28.) "Whosoever looketh on a woman to luft after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart."

There can be no doubt with any reflecting mind, but that the propenfities of our nature must be subjected to regulation; but the question is, where the check ought to be placed, upon the thought, or only upon action. In this question, our Saviour, in the texts here quoted, has pronounced a

decisive judgment. He makes the control

of

of thought effential. Internal purity with him is every thing. Now I contend that this is the only difcipline which can succeed: in other words, that a moral system, which prohibits actions, but leaves the thoughts at liberty, will be ineffectual, and is therefore unwife. I know not how to go about the proof of a point, which depends upon experience, and upon a knowledge of the human constitution, better than by citing the judgement of persons, who appear to have given great attention to the subject, and to be well qualified to form a true opinion about it. Boerhaave, speaking of this very declaration of our Saviour, "Whosoever looketh on a woman to luft after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart," and understanding it, as we do, to contain an injunction to lay the check upon the thoughts, was wont to say, that " our Saviour knew mankind better than Socrates." Haller, who has recorded this saying of Boerhaave's, adds to it the following remarks of his own*: "It did not escape the obser

vation of our Saviour that the rejection of anyevil thoughts was the best defence against vice; for, when a debauched perfon fills his imagination with impure pictures, the licentious ideas which he recals, fail not to stimulate his defires with a degree of violence which he cannot resist. This will be followed by gratification, unless some external obstacle should prevent him from the commiffion of a fin, which he had internally refolved on." " " "Every moment of time (says our author) that is spent in meditations upon fin, increases the power of the dangerous object which has poffefsed our imagination." I suppose these reflections will be generally affented to.

1

III. Thirdly, had a teacher of morality been afked concerning a general principle of conduct, and for a short rule of life; and had he instructed the perfon who confulted him constantly to refer his actions to what he believed to be the will of his Creator, and conftantly to have in view, not his own interest and gratification alone, but

66

the