cafe is wrong; for though it be just to punish all finners, yet to punish them immediately would destroy the very reason, which makes it just to punish them. It is just to punish them, that there may be a difference made between the good and the bad according to their deferts, that their punishment may be a difcouragement to vice, an encouragement to virtue. Now our Lord fhews in this parable, that the immediate punishment of the wicked would quite destroy these ends of juftice; for the righteous and the wicked, like the wheat and tares growing together in one field, are fo mixed and united in intereft in this world, that, as things ftand, the wicked cannot be rooted out, but the righteous muft fuffer with them: confequently, the immediate deftruction of the wicked, fince it must inevitably fall upon the righteous alfo, would make no proper diftinction between the good and the bad; could be no encouragement to virtue, for the virtuous would fuffer; could be no difcouragement to vice, for vice would fare as well as virtue and therefore it is not only reasonable to delay the punishment of the wicked, but even neceffary to the obtaining the ends of juftice, fince they cannot be obtained in their immediate deftruction.

This then is a full juftification of God in his dealings with men; and fhews his justice, as well as his mercy, in not executing wrath and vengeance as foon as finners are ripe for them. But if this be the height of juftice in God, how is it not the height of injuftice in men to deal with one another quite otherwise? Temporal punishments, even those which are capital, are executed immediately; though

often it happens that many innocents fuffer in the punishment of one injurious perfon. The law does not confider who fhall maintain the children, when it feizes the father's eftate as forfeited; nor does juftice relent for fear the fhould make a miferable widow, and many wretched orphans, by the severe blow which cuts off the guilty husband and father. Nay, farther; this very method of juftice is ordained by God, and magiftrates are not at liberty totally to fufpend the execution of juftice; and how comes God to pursue one method of juftice himself, and to prescribe another to his vicegerents? The plain anfwer is, because the reafon of these two cases is very different. The punishments of this world are not the final punishments of ini quity; but are means ordained to fecure virtue and morality, and to protect the innocent from immediate violence. Offences which difturb the peace of fociety, and the security of private perfons, will not bear a delay of juftice; for the end of justice, in this cafe, is to fecure peace: but this end can never be served by permitting thieves, and murderers, and rebels, to go unpunished; and though, whenever they fuffer, many innocents may fuffer with them, yet many more would fuffer in their impunity; and this world would be fcarcely habitable, were fuch crimes as these to wait for their punishment till another world fucceeded this. Our Saviour's reafoning, when applied to this cafe, leads to another conclufion; that the righteous may not fuffer, God delays the final punishment of the wicked; for the fame reason, that the righteous may not suffer, he has commanded the magiftrate

to cut off all the fons of violence, all difturbers of the public peace and quiet. And, in fo doing, he has followed the fame reafon in both cafes, namely, that the righteous may be preferved and protected: in one cafe, preferved from the violence of the wicked; in the other, from the contagion of their punishment. In a word, offences against men muft be corrected and difcouraged by prefent punishment, or else this world will be a scene of great woe and misery to the best men: violence will prevail, and the meek, far from inheriting the earth, will be rooted out of it. Offences against God, though of a deeper die, yet have not in them the fame call for immediate vengeance: for God fuffers not from the wickedness of men; the ends of justice are best ferved by the delay, and his goodness is at present displayed in his forbearance; and his honour will foon be vindicated in a more public theatre than that of this prefent world, in the fight of all the dead, as well as of all the living.

DISCOURSE XLI.

MATTHEW Xxvi. 41.

1

Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the Spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

FOR the better understanding of these words, I muft defire you to reflect a little upon what occafion they were spoken, and in what circumstances our Saviour was, when he made this exhortation to his difciples. The time of his crucifixion was now near at hand, and he had foretold his difciples that they should all be offended because of him; upon which St. Peter made a very forward profeffion of conftancy, as did likewife all the difciples. But it does not appear that they clearly understood our Saviour, or were apprehenfive that they fhould fo foon lose their Mafter; if they had, they could not have been fo fupinely negligent and unconcerned for his welfare, as immediately to fall asleep, as we read they did. But our Saviour, as he had a different sense of what he was to undergo, so was he differently affected: he began to be forrowful, and very heavy; and expreffed himself to his difciples, that his foul was exceeding forrowful, even