Great calamities of every kind attend the breaking up of established governments: yet there are some forms of government, especially when they happen to be badly administered, so exceedingly destructive of the happiness of mankind, that a change of them is not improvidently purchased at the expence of the mischief accompanying their subversion. Our government is not of that kind: look round the globe, and see if you can discover a single nation on all it's surface, so powerful, so rich, so beneficent, so free and happy as our own. May Heaven avert from the minds of my Countrymen the slightest wish to abolish their Con stitution!

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Kingdoms," observes Mr. Locke, "have been overturned by the pride, “ambition, and turbulency of private ἐσ men; by the people's wantonness and "desire to cast off the lawful authority of "their rulers, as well as by the rulers inso"lence, and endeavours to get and exercise "an arbitrary power over the people."

The

The recent danger to our constitution was in my opinion small; for I considered it's excellence to be so obvious to men even of the most unimproved understandings, that I looked upon it as an idle and fruitless effort, either in foreign or domestic incendiaries, to endeavour to persuade the bulk of the people to consent to an alteration of it in favour of a republic. I knew, indeed, that in every country the flagitious dregs of a nation were always ripe for revolutions; but I was sensible, at the same time, that it was the interest, not only of the opulent and powerful; not only of the mercantile and middle classes of life; but even of honest labourers and manufacturers, of every sober and industrious man, to resist the licentious principles of such pestilent members, shall I call them, or outcasts of society. Men, better informed and wiser than myself, thought that the constitution was in great danger. Whether in fact the danger was great or small, it is not necessary now to inquire; it may

may be more useful to declare, that, in my humble opinion, the danger, of whatever magnitude it may have been, did not originate in any encroachments of either the legislative or executive power on the liberties or properties of the people; but in the wild fancies and turbulent tempers of discontented or ill-informed individuals. I sincerely rejoice that, through the vigilance of Administration, this turbulency has received a check. The hopes of bad men have been disappointed, and the understandings of mistaken men have been enlightened, by the general and unequivocal judgment of a whole nation; a nation not more renowned for it's bravery and it's humanity, though justly celebrated for both, than for it's loyalty to it's princes, and, what is perfectly consistent with loyalty, for it's love of liberty, and attachment to the constitution. Wise men have formed it, brave men have bled for it, it is our part to preserve it.

R. Landaff.

London, Jan. 25, 1793.

SERMON VI.

Preached before The Bible Society, at St. Bride's, Fleet-street, 9th February 1800.

2 TIM. i. 10.

BUT IS NOW MADE MANIFEST BY THE APPEARANCE OF OUR SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST, WHO HATH ABOLISHED DEATH, AND HATH BROUGHT LIFE AND IMMORTALITY TO LIGHT THROUGH THE GOSPEL.

THE

HE expectation of a life after this is so common a thing amongst Christians, that we are apt to think the discovery of it to be a matter of no great difficulty; we seem to suppose that all mankind are and ever have been as much persuaded of it as we ourselves are, and like the other great blessings of Providence,

Providence, such as light, and air, and rain, and food, and sleep, it is overlooked for it's being common.

1

Now and then, indeed, when sickness excites our attention, and our sins alarm our consciences, we endeavour to quiet their apprehensions by an expectation of a very different sort, by an hope that the nature of man is similar in all it's parts to that of the beast of the field. We see that they are both propagated in the same way, both nourished by the same food, that both grow up from infancy to maturity, that both become infirm and old, and go down into the pit together, where the bodies of both are in a short time reduced to the same principles; and hence in an evil hour we endeavour to argue ourselves into a belief, that the spirits which animate them both are of the same stamp, both annihilated by death.

This subject, of life and immortality being brought to light by the Gospel, cannot be better explained, nor the great