the truth is, mankind is so strangely compounded, that it is very hard to restrain ecclesiastical tyranny on the one hand, without running to a lawless licentiousness on the other: so strangely does the world love extremes, and avoid a temper.

Now I have gone through the public functions of a priest; and in speaking of the last of these, I have broke in upon the third head of his duty, his private labours in his parish. He understands little the nature and the obligations of the priestly office, who thinks he has discharged it by performing the public appointments; in which if he is defective, the laws of the church, how feeble soever they may be as to other things, will have their course. But as the private duties of the pastoral care are things upon which the cognizance of the law cannot fall, so they are the most important and necessary of all others and the more praiseworthy, the freer they are, and the less forced by the compulsion of law. As to the public functions, every man has his rule; and in these all are almost alike; every man, especially if his lungs are good, can read prayers, even in the largest congregation; and if he has a right taste, and can but choose good sermons, out of the many that are in print, he may likewise serve them well that way too. But the difference between one man and another shews itself more sensibly in his private labours, in his prudent deportment, in his modest and discreet way of procuring respect to himself, in his treating his parish, either in reconciling such differences as may happen to be among them, or in admonishing men of rank, who set an ill example to others, which ought always to be done in that way, which will probably have the best effect upon them; therefore it must be done secretly, and with expressions of tenderness and respect for their persons: fit times are to be chosen for this; it may be often the best way to do it by a letter; for there may be ways fallen upon of reproving the worst men in so soft a manner, that if they are not reclaimed, yet they shall not be irritated or made worse by it, which is but too often the effect of an indiscreet reproof. By this a minister may save the sinner's soul; he is at least sure to save his own, by having discharged his duty towards his people.

One of the chief parts of the pastoral care is, the visiting the sick; not to be done barely when one is sent for: he is to go as soon as he hears that any of his flock are ill; he is not to satisfy himself with going over the Office, or giving them the sacrament when desired: he ought to

inform himself of their course of life, and of the temper of their mind, that so he may apply himself to them accordingly. If they are insensible, he ought to awaken them with the terrors of God, the judgment and the wrath to come. He must endeavour to make them sensible of their sins; particularly of that which runs through most men's lives, their forgetting and neglecting God and his service, and their setting their hearts so inordinately upon the world. He must set them on to examine their dealings, and make them seriously to consider, that they can expect no mercy from God, unless they restore whatsoever they may have got unjustly from any other, by any manner of way, even though their title were confirmed by law. He is to lay any other sins to their charge, that he has reason to suspect them guilty of; and must press them to all such acts of repentance as they are then capable of. If they have been men of a bad course of life, he must give them no encouragement to hope much from this death-bed repentance; yet he is to set them to implore the mercies of God in Christ Jesus, and to do all they can to obtain his favour. But unless the sickness has been of a long continuance, and that the person's repentance, his patience, his piety, has been very extraordinary during the course of it, he must be sure to give him no positive ground of hope; but leave him to the mercies of God. For there cannot be any greater treachery to souls, that is more fatal and more pernicious, than the giving quick and easy hopes, upon so short, so forced, and so imperfect a repentance. It not only makes those persons perish securely themselves, but it leads all about them to destruction, when they see one, of whose bad life and late repentance they have been the witnesses, put so soon in hopes, nay by some unfaithful guides made sure of salvation: this must make them go on very secure in their sins, when they see how small a measure of repentance sets all right at last. All the order and justice of a nation would be presently dissolved, should the howlings of criminals, and their promises of amendment, work on juries, judges, or princes: so the hopes that are given to death-bed penitents must be a most effectual means to root out the sense of religion of the minds of all that see it. And therefore though no dying man is to be driven to despair, and left to die obstinate in his sins; yet if we love the souls of our people, if we set a due value on the blood of Christ, and if we are touched with any sense of the honour or interests of religion, we must not say any thing that may encourage

others, who are but too apt of themselves to put all off to the last hour. We can give them no hopes from the nature of the gospel-covenant; yet after all, the best thing a dying man can do is to repent; if he recovers, that may be the seed and beginning of a new life and a new nature in him. Nor do we know the measure of the riches of God's grace and mercy; how far he may think fit to exert it beyond the conditions and promises of the new covenant, at least to the lessening of such a person's misery in another state. We are sure he is not within the new covenant; and since he has not repented, according to the tenor of it, we dare not, unless we betray our commission, give any hopes beyond it. But one of the chief cares of a minister about the sick ought to be to exact of them solemn vows and promises of a renovation of life, in case God shall raise them up again; and these ought to be demanded, not only in general words, but if they have been guilty of any scandalous disorders, or any other ill practices, there ought to be special promises made with relation to those. And upon the recovery of such persons, their ministers ought to put them in mind of their engagements, and use all the due freedom of admonitions and reproof, upon their breaking loose from them. In such a case they ought to leave a terrible denunciation of the judgments of God upon them; and so, at least, they acquit themselves.

There is another sort of sick persons, who abound more in towns than in the country; those are the troubled in mind of these there are two sorts; some have committed enormous sins, which kindle a storm in their consciences; and that ought to be cherished, till they have completed a repentance proportioned to the nature and degree of their sin. If wrong has been done to another, reparation and restitution must be made to the utmost of the party's power. If blood has been shed, a long course of fasting and prayer; a total abstinence from wine, if drunkenness gave the rise to it; a making up the loss to the family, on which it has fallen, must be enjoined. But alas! the greater part of those that think they are troubled in mind are melancholy hypochondriacal people, who, what through some false opinions in religion, what through a foulness of blood, occasioned by their unactive course of life, in which their minds work too much, because their bodies are too little employed, fall under dark and cloudy apprehensions; of which they can give no clear nor good account. This, in the greatest part, is to be removed by strong and chalybeate medicines; yet such persons are to be much pitied,

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and a little humoured in their distemper. They must be diverted from thinking too much, being too much alone, or dwelling too long on thoughts that are too hard for them

to master.

The opinion that has had the chief influence in raising these distempers, has been that of praying by the Spirit; when a flame of thought, a melting in the brain, and the abounding in tender expressions, have been thought the effects of the Spirit, moving all those symptoms of a warm temper. Now in all people, especially in persons of a melancholy disposition, that are much alone, there will be a great diversity, with relation to this, at different times: sometimes these heats will rise and flow copiously, and at other times there will be a damp upon the brain, and a dead dryness in the spirits. This, to men that are prepossessed with the opinion now set forth, will appear as if God did sometimes shine out, and at other times hide his face; and since this last will be the most frequent in men of that temper, as they will be apt to be lifted up, when they think they have a fulness of the Spirit in them, so they will be as much cast down when that is withdrawn; they will conclude from it, that God is angry with them, and so reckon that they must be in a very dangerous condition upon this, a vast variety of troublesome scruples will arise, out of every thing that they either do or have done. If then a minister has occasion to treat any in this condition, he must make them apprehend that the heat or coldness of their brain is the effect of temper, and flows from the different state of the animal spirits, which have their diseases, their hot and their cold fits, as well as the blood has; and therefore no measure can be taken from these either to judge for or against themselves. They are to consider what are their principles and resolutions, and what is the settled course of their life; upon these they are to form sure judgments, and not upon any thing that is so fluctuating and inconstant as fits or humours.

Another part of a priest's duty is, with relation to them that are without, I mean, that are not of our body, which are of the side of the church of Rome, or among the dissenters. Other churches and bodies are noted for their zeal in making proselytes, for their restless endeavours, as well as their unlawful methods in it; they reckoning, perhaps, that all will be sanctified by the increasing their party; which is the true name of making converts, except they become at the same time good men, as well as votaries to a side or cause. We are certainly very remiss in

this of both hands; little pains is taken to gain either upon papist or nonconformist; the law has been so much trusted to, that that method only was thought sure; it was much valued, and others at the same time as much neglected; and whereas at first, without force or violence, in forty years time, popery, from being the prevailing religion, was reduced to a handful, we have now in above twice that number of years made very little progress. The favour shewed them from our court made us seem, as it were, unwilling to disturb them in their religion; so that we grew at last to be kind to them, to look on them as harmless and inoffensive neighbours, and even to cherish and comfort them: we were very near the being convinced of our mistake, by a terrible and dearbought experience. Now they are again under hatches; certainly it becomes us, both in charity to them, and in regard to our own safety, to study to gain them by the force of reason and persuasion; by shewing all kindness to them, and thereby disposing them to hearken to the reasons that we may la before them. We ought not to give over this as desperate, upon a few unsuccessful attempts; but must follow them in the meekness of Christ, that so we may at last prove happy instruments, in delivering them from the blindness and captivity they are kept under, and the idolatry and superstition they live in: we ought to visit them often in a spirit of love and charity, and to offer them conferences; and upon such endeavours we have reason to expect a blessing, at least this, of having done our duty, and so delivering our own souls.

Nor are we to think, that the toleration, under which the law has settled the dissenters, does either absolve them from the obligations that they lay under before, by the laws of God and the gospel, to maintain the unity of the church, and not to rent it by unjust or causeless schisms ; or us from using our endeavours to bring them to it, by the methods of persuasion and kindness: nay, perhaps, their being now in circumstances, that they can no more be forced in these things, may put some of them in a greater towardness to hear reason; a free nation naturally hating constraint: and certainly the less we seem to grudge or envy them their liberty, we will be thereby the nearer gaining on the generouser and better part of them, and the rest would soon lose heart, and look out of countenance, if these should hearken to us. It was the opinion many had of their strictness, and of the looseness that was among us, that gained them their credit, and made such