wretched, and defpicable; or, however they escape here, undone to eternity.

:

But not only our children fhould be led to esteem and practife the obligations of piety, but our fervants and dependants. We cannot indeed force them to it, and we need not. But we can give them opportunity, and advice, and encouragement: we can remove the obftinately bad, to preserve the rest: we can put the inftruction of good books in their way: we can call them to family-devotions, from the lamentable omiffion of which duty, a very great part of our fins and follies proceeds; and we can likewife bring fome of them at one time, and fend the reft at another, to the house of God. It is very true, praying and reading at home, and going to church, are neither the whole nor the main of their duty; and they will be faithfully told fo, when they come here. But these are parts of the first and great commandment, regard to him that made us; and they are fuch parts as, if they neglect, they will too eafily think they may as well neglect the reft. Most of them would be glad of this kind attention to them; all of them would refpect us for it and were ever so many of them indifferent about it, or worse, ought it to be an affair indifferent to us? When poor, ignorant, thoughtless creatures come to live under our roof; is it chriftian, is it human, to let them go on, juft as they will, to their own deftruction of body and foul? They contribute a great deal to our happiness: why should not we contribute, fince we fo eafily may, in this important point, to theirs? But indeed, is not our own, prefent as well as future, deeply concerned in it too? Our ease, our characters, our fortunes, our lives, depend on the honefty, the veracity, the fobriety, the diligence, of thofe about us. And what can fecure these qualities in them fo well, as their being perfuaded, that God requires them at their hands, and will treat them, as they treat us? Were this motive weaker than it is, no real one ought to be defpifed. Loud complaints of the ill-behaviour of the lower part of the world, are made continually; but whom have the upper part to thank for it but themselves, if they take no care to prevent or mend it? With the best care, it will happen too frequently; but, without it, what else can happen?

Upon the whole, it is aftonishing, that any, who pretend to be good, can fail to endeavour, that their children and fervants

VOL. II.

U

may

1

may be religious; when not a few, confeffedly bad, take fuch precautions as they can to make them better than they are willing to be themselves. And undoubtedly this is very prudent, fo far as it goes. But, as the prudence of fuch people is throughout eflentially defective, fo this inftance of it, ordinarily fpeaking, can go but a very little way. For what likelihood is there, that a few right exhortations, or directions, from the head of a family, will make the members of it modeft and fober, juft and regular: while his exaurple authorizes them to be lewd and intemperate, unjuft and diforderly? Or that fending them to church will teach them to reverence God; whilft, perhaps, the table-talk that they hear daily, teaches them to defpife him? Our conduct therefore must be all of a piece; elfe we shall neither fucceed, nor will it avail us to our own eternal happiness, if we do. But let us first refolve to ferve God ourselves; and then we may infift, that they who belong to us fhall, both with a good grace, and good hope of his bleffing: to which we cannot acquire a stronger title, than by that method, which procured, as we read in fcripture, to the father of the faithful and his descendants, a bene. diction fo diftinguished, both temporal and spiritual: Abraham fhall furely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth fhall be bleed in him. For I know bim, that he will command his children and his boufhold after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do juftice and judgement, that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that, which he bath Spoken of him*.

• Gen. xviii. 18, 19.

SER

SERMON LV.

OF LOVE TO GOD AS THE FIRST AND GREAT COMMANDMENT.

MATT. xxii. 37, 38.

ffus faid unto him, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy foul, and with all thy mind.

This is the first and great commandment.

THESE words contain the former part of our bleffed Lord's

anfwer to the queftion, mafter, which is the great commandment in the law? It was put to him by one of the Scribes or lawyers, the authorized inftru&tors of the people, tempting bim: that is, defigning to make trial of his knowledge, and the foundnefs of his doctrine. For the man's intention plainly appears to have been no worfe than this, from his immediate approbation of our Saviour's judgement; and the gracious affarance he received in return, that he was not far from the kingdom of God, as we read in the parallel place of St. Maik*.

Which of the commandments is the greatest, may seem to us a question of more curiofity than importance: because undoubtedly the leaft, as well as the greateft, ought to be ob ferved. Yet ftill it was a point of fome confequence in itfelf: fince two precepts might interfere; and men be obliged to omit one in order to obey the other: now in fach cafes it was material to know, which they should prefer. But the notions entertained amongst the Jews increased the neceffity of a right decifion of this doubtt. They divided the injunctions of the law, as appears from their books yet remaining, into weighty and light

U 2

Mark xii 31 † Vid. Schoetgenii Hor. Heb. & Talm. in loc.

light ones. The former, they held, a man must keep strictly, if he would enter into life eternal: but the latter, fome of them affirmed, had only a fmall recompence belonging to them, and that in this world; fo that a man might neglect them, one Rabbi faith, trample upon them, without much danger. Nay, there were teachers of confiderable reputation amongst them, who afferted, that God had given his people fo great a number of precepts with this view, that, by obferving any one, meaning probably any of the weighty ones, they might obtain falvationt. This was very bad: but their opinions, which were the weighty ones, made it worse yet. Some infifted that thefe alone were weighty, the tranfgreffors of which, it was exprefsly threatened in the law, fhould be cut off; and all the reft light. Some held the third commandment, fome the fifth, fome the obfervation of the fabbath, fome that of circumcifion, to be the weightieft. In our Saviour's time, it seems by the reply which the Scribe made him, that facrificing was commonly thought the principal article of the law. And indeed, many paffages, not only in the gospels, but in the prophets, evidently fhew, that the nation in general were fond of exalting the ceremonial precepts above the moral ones, because they found them lefs difagreeable. In themselves, it must be owned, the former were a heavy yoke, though in their circumstances it had long been a needful one. But to bad men nothing is fo heavy, as reforming their hearts and lives. It is true, their facrifices, and all their observances, rightly interpreted, required this in order to their final acceptance with God. But the outward act being a matter of great form and punctuality, and fometimes expence too, they eafily perfuaded themselves of what they had a great mind to believe, that a fcrupulous performance of fuch troublesome and fhewish duties would certainly be fufficient, whatever their inward difpofitions and common behaviour might be. Yet, at the fame time, the Effenes, no inconfiderable fect amongst them, though affe&ing privacy, and probably therefore not appearing in the hiftory of the gofpels, ran into the contrary extreme: and, profeffing great fanctity of manners, omitted the temple-facrifices intirely.

Matth. xix. 18.

1. iii. c. 29.

† Pocock on Hof. xiv. 2. cites this from Ikarim, Philo, liber, quifquis virtuti ftudet, vol. ii. p. 457. ed.

Mang. Jofeph. Ant. 1. xviii. c. I.

In

In such a state of things as this, it was natural to ask the fentiments of fo remarkable a teacher as our bleffed Lord and very important, both for the inftruction of the people and for his own character, that he should declare them. Undoubtedly he had now a fair opportunity of fecuring the applause of the multitude and their leaders, by an answer fuitable to the notions in vogue; instead of gaining, as he did, by contradicting them, only the fingle approbation of one good man. But for this caufe came be into the world, that be fhould bear witness of the truth: which yet he did with fuch prudence, as never to prejudice the leaft part of it in his zeal for the greatest. When he blamed the Scribes and Pharifees for preferring the minutest of ritual obfervances to the weightier matters of the law, judgement, mercy and faith, he added immediately, thefe ought ye to bave done, and not to leave the other undonet. In the text he proceeds with the fame caution: and, well knowing how prone men are to draw falfe confequences from the truest doctrines, not content with deciding which was the first and great commandment, he affures them that the fecond, a very comprehenfive one, was of the fame nature and obligation with it: nay, for yet fuller fecurity, fubjoins a declaration, that, though to these were fubordinate, yet with these were connected, whatever things elfe the fcripture hath required. Jefus faid unto bim, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy foul, and with all thy mind. This is the firft and great commandment‡. And the fecond is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments bang all the law and the prophets. Here then we fee the whole fyftem of our duty, ftanding on its proper foundation, and exhibited to our view in its natural order: begining with the love of God, proceeding to the love of our fellow creatures, and perfected in a careful attention to every regard of every kind owing to either; which we cannot pay, without a virtuous government of ourselves.

The love of God is the fubject to be explained at prefent: which I fhall do by fhewing,

John xviii. 37. † Matth. xxiii 23.

Aben Ezra faith, the love of God is the root of all the command ments. Buxt. Floril. p. 278.

I.