I. my text, the duty of visiting the fick, SERM. fo strongly and pathetically enforced by our bleffed Saviour himself, who not only recommended, but constantly and affiduously performed it: on the discharge of this kind and friendly office he hath more than once affured us, no less depends than our eternal happiness and falvation; thofe who do it shall be fet on his right hand, and those who neglect it, on his left, when he fhall come in his glory to judge the world, and these fhall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal. Permit me therefore, in the following difcourfe, to lay before you a few of thofe arguments which will most strongly recommend to you the serious confideration of this neceffary and important duty. SERM. I. 1ft, By pointing out to you the many benefits and advantages refulting from it to our fellow-creatures; and 2dly, The manifest tendency which it hath to promote our own interest and happiness, both here and hereafter. And first, therefore, I fhall take this opportunity to confider the benefits and advantages which will accrue to others, the relief and comfort which we bestow on our fellow-creatures. Whether it be owing to the false philofophy of fome pernicious writers, who have risen up of late years to confound virtue and vice, and put religion out of countenance, or to the natural depravity of mankind, heightened and enflamed by bad example, or both together, is hard to determine; but certain it I. it is, that we are at present so loft in the SER M. idle amusements, or corrupted by the follies of the age, that almost all the ties of nature are broken through and contemned, and focial love and affection banished from the breafts of men. We are fo deeply engaged in the vanities and impertinencies of life, that we have no time left for the duties of it; fo constantly employed in vifiting those who neither want nor defire it, that we totally neglect those who do; we partake, in fhort, of every table but the table of love, and go to every houfe but the house of mourning; men are but too well acquainted with the pleasures, the vices, and faults, of their neighbours, and are only ftrangers to their forrows and miffortunes. The loose and unthinking manner in which fo many fpend their irrevocable hours B 3 SERM. hours is not only the cause of half the I. cruel diforders which fall upon them, but tends alfo, in a great measure, to make the burthen heavier and more intolerable; the more habituated we are to pleasure, the more impatient shall we be under the difcipline of pain or fickness; and the greater the change is, the more intenfe must be our fenfation of it. How unhappy then must those be who fall from the fummit of health and plenty into the melancholy state of fickness or adverfity, and who at the fame time that they are depreffed are generally deferted also! for thousands who are glad to partake of the joys and happiness of others, will refuse to bear a part in their fufferings and affliction. The good and virtuous alone are capable of true friendship. Obferve I. Obferve the connections which arife SERM. between the gay and diffolute; connec tions which spring from casual scenes of mirth, luxury, and intemperance; mark how foon the knot is loofed, and how quickly the union is diffolved. It fpringeth up in the morning, and in the evening is cut down, dried up, and withered; the fame change which produced, frequently deftroys and puts an end to it; as the holy Pfalmift beautifully expreffeth it, It is like the grafs which groweth on the house-top, wherewith the mower filleth not his hand, neither he that bindeth the fheaves his bofom. Whilft on the other hand, No ties are fo ftrong and binding as thofe produced by fympathy and compaffion: forrow hath an attractive quality, which infenfibly draws together the minds of the tender and humane; and B 4 |