It is

with reafon go, and thank God that he had not made him like others. not to be questioned, but through force of this error, the pharifee might think himself to be, what he pretended, a religious and upright man. For how

ever he might be brought to act a double and infincere part in the eyes of men upon worldly views it is not to be supposed that when he ftood by himfelf, apart in the temple, and no witneffes of what paffed between him and his GOD that he fhould knowingly and wilfully have dared to act so open and barefaced a scene of mockery in the face of Heaven. This is fcarce probable and therefore it must have been owing to fome delufion in his education, which had early implanted in his mind falfe and wretched notions of the effentials of religion which as he grew up

had

had proved the feeds of infinite error, both in practice and fpeculation.

With the rest of his fect, he had been fo principled and instructed as to observe a fcrupulous nicety and most religious exactness in the leffer matters of his religion-its frequent washings- its fastings and other external rites of no merit in themselves but to be exempted, from the more troublesome exactness in the weightier matters of the law, which were of eternal and unchangeable obligation. So that, they were in truth blind guides at a gnat and yet fwallow a camel, and as our SAVIOUR reproves them from a familiar inftance of domeftic inconsistency

who thus would ftrain

would make clean the outside of the cup and platter yet fuffer the infide

the moft material part, to be full of corruption

ruption and excefs. From this knowledge of the character and principles of the pharifee, 'tis easy to account for his fentiments and behaviour in the temple, which were just such as they would have led one to have expected.

Thus it has always happened, by a fatality common to all fuch abufes of religion as make it to confift in external rites and ceremonies more than inward purity and integrity of heart. As these outward things are easily put in practice

and capable of being attained to, without much capacity, or much oppofition to flesh and blood-it too naturally betrays the profeffors of it, into a groundless perfuafion of their own godliness and a despicable one of that of others, in their religious capacities, and the relations in which they ftand towards GOD: which is the very definition of spiritual pride.

When

When the true heat and fpirit of devotion is thus loft and extinguished under a cloud of oftentatious ceremonies and geftures, as is remarkable in the Roman church -where the celebration of high mass, when fet off to the best advantage with all its scenical decorations and finery, looks more like a theatrical performance, than that humble and folemn appeal which duft and afhes are offering up to the throne of God, when religion I fay, is thus clogged and bore down by fuch a weight of ceremonies it is much easier to put in pretentions to holinefs upon fuch a mechanical fyftem as is left of it, than where the character is only to be got and maintained by a painful conflict and perpe'tual war against the paffions. 'Tis easier, for inftance, for a zealous papift to cross himfelf and tell his beads, than for an humble proteftant to fubdue the lufts of anger,

..

anger, intemperance, cruelty and revenge, to appear before his maker with that preparation of mind which becomes him. The operation of being fprinkled with holy water, is not fo difficult in itfelf, as that of being chafte and spotlefs within confcious of no dirty thought

or dishonest action. "Tis a much shorter way to kneel down at a confeffional and receive abfolution than to live fo as to deferve it not at the hands of men -but at the hands of GOD

who fees the heart and cannot be impofed on. The atchievement of keeping lent, or abstaining from flesh on certain days, is not fo hard, as that of abftaining from the works of it at all times-efpecially, as the point is generally managed amongst the richer fort with fuch art and epicurifm at their tables and with fuch indulgence to a poor mortified appetite that an entertainment upon a faft is much

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