notes the natural action of the mind, and is intended to guard against those idols of the affections, which alas! we are all too prone to set up, by an over fondness for the gifts of God's providence, as riches, friends and the like. But this is, in the language of scripture, to love the creature more than the Creator. If it be a matter of surprise to us why the love of the creature should be more spoken against than even the setting up of self-righteousness, it may not be amiss to consider whether it is really an object of more divine displeasure than the latter; and first we may observe, it is indeed guarded by a penal - sanction, even the visiting the sin upon the posterity of the offender: whereas it may be said of selfrighteousness, &c. that it is punished only in the offender himself; as it is the law of grace, that every man shall stand or fall by his own works, that is, that he shall be judged independent of the works of others: but then the latter is most tremendously awful in its consequences, being a sin against the Lord the Saviour in his glorious title. "I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of Egypt."

Sd. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

Oaths in the hands of mortals we observed in the beginning are solemn things: the name of God should be too much revered to be called in as a witness to the quarrels or crimes of wicked and fallible men: the spirituality of this precept includes

great importance attached unto it, in the Word of God, from the comment of St. Paul upon it when he says, "Honour thy father and mother, which "is the first commandment with promise," Ephés. vi. 2. and perhaps it may not be amiss to enquire a little into the reason thereof: and first, it may be observed, that parents are worthy of honour from the very nature of things; in which, 1st. Because they are our parents. Marriage is honorable to all, (says St. Paul) and if our parents are placed in an honorable situation from begetting sons and daughters in their own likeness, their children must partake of their parents honor, by deriving being through their honorable connexion. 2d. Because they watch over us in infancy, childhood, and up to man. Who can tell the anxiety of a parent's heart, watching, providing, preventing, succouring, defending, hoping, loving, fearing, lamenting, yearning over, and if godly, travailing over them again in birth, till Christ be formed in them the hope of eternal glory. And in this sense, who knows how often an anxious parent may go, with tears and prayers and sorrow of heart to a throne of grace, imploring pardon for the sins of the children, or to bless God for the kindlings of grace and the beamings of his Spirit in their heart. But more particularly, 3d. Because their parents are the honoured means of their being brought into the world. I distinguish this from the first particular, which relates simply to their begetting them into the world, in

which sense the brutes do with their offspring, though even there this difference arises, that whereas the offspring of brutes cast off their dependance, allegiance, &c. to their danis, as soon as they can, man is bound to his parents by ties of gratitude after -the tie of dependance ceases, and this further for this very reason, that when old visits their parents, their children may return the obligation with ten-fold tenderness, and bring down their grey hairs with comfort to the grave.

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Now every mean which God uses is honored by his use of it, and though in the mere use made of it, the brute and the man answer the same end, namely, that of producing their like; yet the end of the use is not the same in this, that they do not both produce their offspring in the likeness of God. This is designed of God to be confined to man. Alas! that man in this should not fill up his allotted station. But the fall hath done this through the sin of the fall. And though man in the ruins of his reason, and in his speech, carries yet a lordly appearance, and a tone of authority in some degree in the sight of other animals, yet in the sight of God, the wreck of his fallen nature is a miserable degraded and unworthy object, which nothing but the rich grace of the Father manifested in, through, and for the sake of the Son, prevents from falling for ever into hell. But 2d. This commandment is reasonable, because by the visible object of an earthly father, we ought to consider our duty to

our heavenly one. God in one sense is the Father of all flesh, as being the author of their being, and the giver of every mercy. Man has fallen and forfeited this right of having God for his father for ever, and if any new relationship is made to subsist it must be according to the good pleasure of God in the way of his appointment, agreeably to his justice as well as mercy, by means which he shall ordain, and in conformity (ás it respects the objects chosen) with his own free and sovereign choice: and all these things centre in Christ.

6th. Thou shalt not kill.

Alas! is man in arms against God's creation? In arms against the blessings which God has given him? Yea, and worse than all, in arms against his species. The boy at school, torturing a beetle or a butterfly, knows not the infernal malice of him who sheds the blood of his brother. And though cruelty to any dumb creature is insufferable, yet more especially that towards a brother, whose blood will from the ground cry aloud to God for vengeance. Murder it may be observed was the first open fruit of rebellion, and the first awful proof of man's obstistinate hatred to God in spite of offers of mercy : "For (says the apostle John) he that loveth not "his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love "God whom he hath not seen," 1 John iv. 20. and the first open act of sin after the fall that we have any account of in holy writ, was that of Cain slaying Abel, which arose from a cause intimately con

nected with the profession of religion and the worship and glory of God, for the same apostle adds, "And wherefore slew he him? Because his own "works were evil, and his brother's righteous," 1 John iii. 13.

7th. Neither shalt thou commit adultery.

As adultery, fornication, whoredom, and the like, are taken in different senses in holy writ, it may not be amiss to enquire a little into the nature of the terms which it may be observed are synonymous, at least so far as this, that they point out the same sin, though they may mark it out in different stages, or degrees of aggravation. Adultery is of two kinds, temporal and spiritual. The first of which comprises two things, 1st. A sin against the Holy Ghost, and 2d. viz. A sin against one's own body." What (says the apostle Paul with evident "marks of surprize and abhorrence) know ye not "that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost "which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye

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are not your own? Perhaps it will be said by some, that this passage refers particularly to God's elect people, who are more particularly temples of the Holy Ghost. I grant it from what follows: "Ye are bought with a price." But still every man breathing is a temple of the Holy Ghost? 1st.

* It hath been observed by many, that the first blood ever shed, was shed in the cause of religion; Alas! what a proof that fallen man till renewed by God's Spirit hates holiness, and every thing that aims at perfection in God's sight.