fteeled and obdurate in their minds, and, with a profligate contempt of the opinion of the world, enter calmly and without remorfe into any mischief, to which intereft, revenge, or any other mean pasfion, fhall invite them.

IV. It is a farther aggravation of this evil, to confider, that this infamous conduct feldom fails of being fuccessful. When the malignity of inteftine divifion is far fpread, it becomes a fhelter for all iniquity. Party zeal ufurps the place of Christian charity, and covers a multitude of fins. And when once men find that there is so short a way to credit and efteem, they will be tempted, through laziness, and a natural depravity, which will be ever ready to lay hold on fuch encouragement, to decline the honourable and laborious methods of rifing to reputation in the world, and to truft their hopes and their fortunes to the merit of their zeal; which hopes feldom fail them. For,

V. As credit and reputation, the natural rewards of virtue, are perverted and mifapplied by the blind spirit of divifion; fo are the rewards which the public has provided and deftined to the encouragement of true merit, diverted into a wrong channel: the worthieft are often driven into obfcurity, and others called into employments and preferments, in which they can do themselves no honour, their country no service.

There is not a place in church or state of fo mean a confideration, but that the public has an intereft in having it supplied by a proper, and, in proportion to the duty of the office, an able man.

When this is the cafe, the work of government is A carried on regularly and steadily, and the influence h of it are duly communicated, and felt in every part: as the blood, which moves from the heart, cherishes and warms the extreme parts of the body, as long as the little veffels which convey it are in due order: fi but if these small channels are obftructed, or lofet their proper tone, coldness and numbnefs will enfue, and fometimes greater evils, not to be borne, nor to be cured but by the lofs of a limb.

These are the fteps by which divifion corrupts the manners and morality of a nation. And what hopes are there of feeing a people grow great and confiderable, who have loft not only the fenfe of virtue, but even the fenfe of fhame; who call evil good, and good evil; and are prepared to fa crifice their reafon, their true intereft, the peace and profperity of their country, to their own and their leaders' refentments? Can it be expected that men fhould form themselves by a virtuous and laborious course of life for the fervice of a country, where real worth and merit are fo far out of confideration, that the affections and regards of the people are tied, like the favour of the Roman circus, to the colour of the coat which distinguishes their faction.

These general obfervations, which I have laid before you, might be juftified by numberless inftances, drawn from the hiftory of the late times; but perhaps they may weigh more ftanding fingle by themfelves, than being coupled with facts, in which the paffions of the present age are not unconcerned.

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And fufficient they are of themselves to warn all honeft men how they begin to foment the divifions of their country.

But yet, to do juftice to my subject, and the folemn occafion of this day, it is neceffary to take one step into the hiftory of former times, and to view the works of divifion in its utmost rage.

I am fenfible how difficult it is to speak of any thing relating to that unhappy time which this day calls to mind; and how hardly truth can be borne on any fide: yet shall not this discourage me from bearing my teftimony against the unnatural and barbarous treafon of this day, and the acts of violence which prepared the way for it a treafon long fince condemned by the public voice of the nation, in the most folemn acts of Church and State.

I shall go on therefore to illuftrate my subject by fome examples, which the history of the late times affords, and which will reach to the full extent of the observation of my text, that a kingdom divided against itself cannot ftand.

To put a stop to innovations, to correct the errors or abuses in government, to redress the grievances of the people by the known rules of parliament, is the true and ancient method of preferving the conftitution, and tranfmitting it fafe with all its advantages to pofterity. But when this wholesome phyfic came to be administered, as at length it did, by the fpirit of faction and divifion, it was fo intemperately given, that the remedy inflamed the diftemper; and the unhappy conteft, which began about the rights of the King, and the liberties

of the people, ended fatally in the deftruction of both.

The contest about civil rights was rendered exceeding hot and fierce, by having all the disputes and quarrels in religious matters, under which the nation had long fuffered, incorporated with it. By this means confcience was called in, to animate and inflame the popular refentments. The effect was foon felt the Church of England, which had long been the glory and the bulwark of the Reformation, fell the first facrifice; and many who had ferved long and faithfully at her altars, were driven out to feek their bread in defolate places. What came in the room of the Church fo deftroyed, time would fail me, fhould I pretend to recount; fo many and fo various were the forms of religion, which arofe out of the imaginations of men fet free from go

vernment.

The bishops of those days were generally inclined to fave and support the crown. The confequence drawn from thence was, that epifcopacy itself was an ufurpation. My meaning is not, that this argument. was ever used in the form of logic, to convince any man's judgment; but it influenced the affections of thousands, and prevailed fo far as to exclude the bifhops, not only from this house, where they had fat from the earlieft foundation of the monarchy; but from their churches alfo, where they had been received and reverenced as rulers and governors, for as many ages as can be counted from the days of the Apostles.

But why do I mention the exclufion of the bi-. fhops from the House of Lords, when so much more

fatal a blow was given to the liberties and conftitution of England, by declaring the Houfe of Lords itself to be useless, and excluding the peerage from a fhare in the legislature; a right derived to them through a long feries of ancestors, from time immemorial.

The nobility were not free from the infection of those times; and yet, to their honour be it remembered, that the execrable fact of this day could not be carried into execution fo long as the peerage of England had any influence in the government. But when once they were removed, and this laft fupport of the finking crown taken away, the crown, and the head that wore it, fell a victim to the rage of defperate and merciless men.

It is faid, (and the partiality I have for the honour of my country makes me willingly repeat it,) that few, very few in comparison were wicked enough, and bold enough, to dip their hands in royal blood. But then, how fatal to kingdoms is the spirit of faction and divifion, which could in the course of a few years throw all the powers of the kingdom into the hands of a few defperate men ; and enable them to trample under foot the crowns and the heads of princes, the rights and honours of the ancient nobility, the liberties and properties of a free people, and to tear up the very foundations of our once happy and envied conftitution!

Could these acts of violence, and the caufes which produced them, be fuffered to lie quiet in hiftory, as fo many marks to point out to us the rocks and shelves on which our fathers made shipwreck, we their fons might be the wifer and the