to flattery, are no more. Then indeed it were fome alleviation of wretchedness, if the profligate and the foolish in general were fuffered to fly each other's hated fociety, and to mantle themselves up in impenetrable darkness. But what reason is there to hope, that those double offenders, who, not satisfied with their own undoing, perfist in seducing and hardening others at prefent, shall escape so natural a punishment as their future accusations and bittereft curfes? Let me conjure you, my beloved hearers, not to venture on the dreadful experiment; and let us quit a confideration fo big with horror. ADDRESS XIII. O N A MANLY SPIRIT, AS OPPOSED TO EFFEMINA C Y. E that, in times like thefe, when a HE mafculine virtue and deportment are become fo unfashionable, attempts to recommend them, may lay his account with being deemed by the greater part sufficiently aukward, or at beft romantic, in his notions. Even of the few, whofe minds and manners are not yet enervated by the furrounding contagion, fome will probably apprehend that he takes the subject on too high a key. They are willing, for their own share, to be as good and wife as they can in private, and perhaps fecretly to cultivate the feeds of internal greatness: but to avow thefe difpofitions openly, in the present state of the world, they would confider as the certain way to draw upon themselves a ridicule, which they are not fo well prepared to fuftain. The truth is, that the fentiments of an undaunted and uncomplying probity are now-a-days regarded by the many as mere theatrical rant, or fictitious heroifm to be found only in books, and the imagination of here and there an idle vifionary, dreaming in his clofet, and wholly ignorant of life and nature. But if a Scipio, if a virtuous heathen, without any other aid than that of innate magnanimity, would not despair of the commonwealth in a dangerous conjuncture, and was juftly applauded for his fortitude, fhall a chriftian believer, who trufts in the power of God, and in the operation of truth upon the fouls of men, hall He be thought to blame, for hoping that numbers of his fellow-citizens, degenerate as they are from the fober and manly character of their forefathers, may |