Let me attempt then to rescue the sacred text from both these imputations. Permit me to shew you, that the observation, it contains, is neither so generally received, as to make all further discourse about it frivolous and unnecessary; nor yet, on the other hand, of so questionable a nature, as to justify the scorn with which it is sometimes rejected.
I. To those, who are such fastidious hearers of the word, as to disregard an important truth, because repeatedly inforced upon them, I might reply that such truths can never be insisted upon too much, that our duty is to inculcate them, in season, and out of season.
But the fact is mistaken. We are so far from nauseating our hearers, with a too common and superfluous truth, when we remind them perpetually, that, by the fear of God, men depart from evil, that, on the contrary, very many want to be informed, or at least convinced, of it.
What the text affirms, is, that the fear of God, or the RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE, is the proper guide of life. But look now into the world, at large: there the acknowledged rule of life, is FASHION. Look into the civil or political world: there the boasted rule of life, is THE LAW OF THE MAGISTRATE. Look into the learned world: there too commonly the only rule of life is each man’s own reason, or what he proudly calls PHILOSOPHY.
And will it now be said that the fear of God, is a principle too stale and too unquestioned to be discoursed upon and recommended to you from this place, when we see so large and so considerable a part of the world actuated by one or other of these different and discordant principles? But neither
II. Is the truth, though far enough from being generally received, so slightly grounded as to justify any man in the contempt of it.
It is a truth, taught of God, and revered by all wise men. It has nature, and reason, and experience on its side; and is only combated by the folly, the short-sighted policy, or lastly, the pride, of half-thinking and presumptuous men.
For to give, now, the godless principles, I before mentioned, a short and separate examination.
1. Tell the man of the world, that the religious principle is that by which alone he ought to govern himself, and you are presently told of the power and prerogatives of FASHION.
“The fear of God, he will say, may be the proper rule of monks and hermits; but must be qualified, at least, in many respects, by such as live in the world and mix in the society of it. They who have to converse with mankind, are to accommodate themselves to their notions and practices: they are to think with the rest of the world, or at least they are to act with them: they are to found their moral systems on the liberal and enlarged basis of approved use or custom. Their observation of human life must inform them of the ways that men take to conciliate the good will of their fellows, to prosecute their own advantages in the world, and to acquire the confidence and esteem of that society, in which they are stationed. What they find to be the rule of others, must be a rule to themselves. To do otherwise is not weakness, only: It is, besides, arrogance, incivility, inhumanity.”