ture, as not to be touched with a grateful affection to the author of his life, when lions and tigers, the most untractable beasts of the forest, are by an innate principle so tenderly inclined to their dams? It unspeakably enforces our obligation, that beside the inherent excellencies of nature, he made us by privilege above all creatures in this sensible world, and furnished it with innumerable objects excellent in their beauty and variety, that are not mere remedies for necessity but for the delight of this present life. And having tasted the good of being, and the fruits of his magnificent bounty, can we be coldly affected to our great benefactor? The moralist advises, as the best expedient to make a person grateful, encompass him with thy benefits, that whereever he turns, something may recal his fugitive memory, and render thee visible to him. This cannot be done by men. But wherever we turn our thoughts, or fix our eyes, either on our persons or comforts, on the present state or the future, (for he has given eternity to our duration) we find ourselves encircled with innumerable and inestimable benefits from God. It is impossible we should ever forget them without the greatest guilt. Every minute he renews our lives and all our enjoyments. For the actual influence of his power is as requisite to preserve our being, as at first to produce it. The creature has nothing of its own, but a simple non-repugnance of coming into act. How frozen is that heart that is not melted in love to so good a God? Let us look into the depth of our native nothing, that we may understand the height of the divine love, in raising us from the pure possibility of being into act, and that merely for his sovereign pleasure, and most free benignity. There was no necessity that constrained him to decree the making the world, or man in it for it is a plain contradiction that there should be a superior power to determine a being of infinite perfections. † And for that reason also he gives all his benefits without the least possible advantage to himself. It was commended as a miraculous virtue in Theodosius the emperor, that he was bountiful merely to satisfy his own goodness: but it is the propriety of God's nature. Is

Beneficiis tuis illum cinge, quocunq; se convertit, memoriam tui fugiens ibi te videat. Senec.

A te nova benignitate is honos amicis tuis habitus est, qui totus esset illorum quibus deferebatur, nihilque ad te redundaret nisi dandi voluptas.

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he not then worthy of all our thoughts, all our affections, for his most free and admirable favours? If there be but a spark of reason, we must judge that the immense liberality of God to us, without respect to his own interest, is so far from lessening, that it increases our duty to correspond in all possible thankfulness.

Consider further, that which adds to the greatness of the gifts we receive, is the greatness of the giver. The price of a benefit rises in proportion to the worth of the person that bestows it. A small gift from a great hand, may be justly preferred before a richer from a less estimable donor. Now if we consider that the glorious God (in comparison of whom the greatest kings are but vain shadows of majesty) has made a world full of so many and so excellent creatures for our refreshment, that our being on earth may not be tedious in the short space of our journey to heaven, will it not overcome us with an excess of wonder and affection; and cause us to break forth, "What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour; thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands, thou hast put all things under his feet."

And as our most ardent love, so entire obedience as the inseparable effect of it, is due to the Creator, both in active service for his glory, and an absolute resignation to his will. The strongest title to acquire dominion according to the law of nature, is that of the cause to the effect. The mind cannot rebel against the light of this principle. It is most just therefore we should employ all our powers, even from the early rise of reason to the setting point of life, wholly in his service from whom we received them. It is an excellent representation of St. † Austin; if a sculptor, after his fashioning a piece of marble in a human figure, could inspire it with life and sense, and give it motion, and understanding, and speech, can it be imagined but the first act of it would be to prostrate itself at the feet of the maker, in subjection and thankfulness, and to offer whatever it is, and can

* Illa quanto gratiora sunt, quantoque in partem interiorem animi descendunt cum delectat cogitantem magis a quo, quam quid acceperis, Senec, de benefic. lib. 1.

+ Sicut dedit figuram, cor daret, & spiraculum vitæ, Ser. de verb. Dom.

do, as homage to him? The almighty hand of God formed our bodies, he breathed into us the spirit of life; and should not the power of love constrain us to live wholly according to his will? Methinks nothing should be pleasing to us but as we make it tributary to him. If we only regard him as our Creator, that one quality should for ever engage us to fidelity in his service, zeal for his interest, obedience to his laws, and an inviolable respect for his honour. And this duty binds us the more strongly, because as God made the world for man's profit, so he made man for his own glory. And what the load-stone is to the steel, or the sensible good to the appetite, the same attractive is the end to the intelligent nature. And the higher the end is, and the more the mind is fitted to understand its excellence, the more powerfully it should excite the faculties, in pursuit of it according to their uttermost capacity. Now what horrid unthankfulness is it to be insensible of the infinite debt we owe to God? What disloyalty to pervert his favours, to slight his commands, and cross the end of our creation? The serious consideration that God has given us such a noble nature, capable to know, love, serve and enjoy him, and that we have so little improved our faculties for these excellent ends, should put us into two contrary excesses of spirit, the one of joy, for his unspeakable goodness, the other of confusion, for our most unworthy neglect of it.' Our duty and our disobedience have the same measure. The goodness and bounty of our great benefactor regulates the one and the other. The more we have received from him, the more we are engaged to him, and the more we are engaged, the more guilty and worthy of punishment will our neglect be. Among men an ungrateful perfidious person is an object of horror; and favours abused become motives of hatred. To employ our faculties rational or sensitive to the disservice of our Maker, is the same kind of villany, though of incomparably greater guilt, both in respect of the object and degree; as if a traitor should turn the very same weapons against his prince, that he received from him for his defence. To turn his benefits into occasions of sin, and by the same things to dishonour him by which we should glorify him, is extreme perverseness. In this, unthankful man imitates the earth from whence he was taken: for that makes use of the heat of the sun to send up vapours that obscure the beams of light he communicates to it. This is to despise the

divine majesty, power, wisdom, goodness, that are united, and so eminently appear in his works, and will provoke his severe vengeance. Let us therefore every day revive the sense of our obligations, and by intense thoughts kindle the affections of love and reverence, of praise and thankfulness, that in them, as flames ascending from an altar, we may "offer ourselves a holy living sacrifice, which is our reasonable service." Our all is due to him, whatever we are, whatever we have, our bodies, our souls, our time and eternity.

And an humble resignation to his will in all things is the essential duty of his creatures. It is true that upon the account of his wisdom and power, it becomes us with the most respectful submission to yield ourselves to his pleasure. Authority and dignity naturally result from their union in a person. Therefore it is supreme in him who possesses them in their greatest excellence. When God himself speaks to Job of his transcendent majesty, and of his right to dispose of men according to his will; he produces his works as the conspicuous testimonies of his great power and exquisite wisdom: but the reason of our submission will be more convincing if we remember that God has an absolute unalienable propriety in us, and all that we enjoy; for our being and comforts are the liberal gifts of his hand. If therefore he shall please to take away any of his favours, even life itself, though not to exchange it for a life infinitely better, it would be the most unnatural rebellion to resist the dispositions of his providence, the most vile unthankfulness, to be stormy and passionate, or to consent to any secret murmuring and discontent in the heart, as if our own were taken from us, either unseasonably or unjustly. And though our troubles immediately proceed from second natural causes, yet according to right reason, we must esteem them but as instruments of his invisible hand, and governed by his counsel, in order to such effects, and in the time he pleases. It is our duty, even in the saddest circumstances, with an entire readiness of mind, and conformity of desires, to say to our Maker, Thy will be done.

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IV. Trust and reliance on God is our duty and privilege. Every being has a necessary dependance on him for its subsistence; but man of all the visible creatures is only capable of affiance in him, by reflecting upon his own impotence, and by considering the perfections of the Creator, that render him the

proper object of trust. It is the incommunicable honour of the Deity, to be acknowledged and regarded as the supporter of all things. To put confidence in ourselves, in the advantages of body or mind or estate, as if we were the architects of our own felicity, is a sacrilegious usurpation. Yet vain man foments a secret pride and high opinion of himself, as if by his own prudence and conduct he might acquire an happiness, till experience confutes his pleasing but pernicious error. The truth is, were there no God, whose powerful providence governs all things, and has a special care and respect of man, he were of all creatures the most miserable. So that besides the wickedness, we may clearly discover the folly of atheism, that deprives man of his chiefest comfort at all times, and his only comfort in the greatest exigences. For in this mutable state he is liable to so many disasters and wretched accidents, that none can have an assurance of prosperity one day. How frail and uncertain is life, the foundation of all temporal enjoyments? It depends upon só many things, that it is admirable it subsists for a little time. The least vessel in the body that breaks or is stopped, interrupting the course of the blood and humours, ruins its economy. Sometimes in its vigorous consistence, when most distant from sickness it is nearest to death. A little eruption of blood in the brain is sufficient to stop the passages of the spirits, and deprive it of motion and life. And the changes of things without us, are so various and frequent, so great and sudden, that it is an excess of folly, a dangerous rest to be secure in the enjoyment of them. The same person sometimes affords an example of the greatest prosperity, and of greater misery in the space of a few hours. Henry the fourth of France, in the midst of the triumphs of peace, was by a blow from a sacrilegious hand dispatched in his coach, and his bloody corpse forsaken by his servants, exposed to the view of all; so that as the historian observes, there was but a moment between the adorations and oblivion of that great prince. "All flesh is grass, and the glory of it as the flower of the grass." Whatever disguises its imperfections, and gives it lustre, is but superficial, like the colour and ornament of a flower, whose matter is only a little dust and water, and is as weak and fading. Who then can possess these things without a

* Mazeray.