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by confequences which we do not forefee, SERM. and followed by advantages which we never hoped for, or expected.

In a former difcourfe on the advantages of affliction, I obferved to you, that a mixture of good and evil in this life is (abftracted from all other confiderations) abfolutely and indifpenfibly neceffary. Sorrow is to joy what vice is to virtue, the best foil to its beauties; the comelinefs of the one, is fet off and recommended by the deformity of the other: the heart which hath never groaned under calamity, will not fo truly enjoy the tranfports of felicity; paft flavery gives a double zeft to prefent freedom. Thus a fine taste of happiness can only be acquired by affliction, and he alone is to be pitied, who hath never known what it is to be miferable. But for the truth of this we have, in the words of my text, the

testimony

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SERM. teftimony of divine wifdom, and the fanction of divine authority. Our Saviour hath here exprefsly declared, that those who mourn, fo far from being unhappy, are truly bleffed.

We are not to understand by the words before us, that all thofe who mourn, generally and indifcriminately confidered, must therefore be happy; that because they have been oppreffed by grievous fufferings, they are entituled to reward; that because they have been miferable, they must be bleffed: that would be to confound good and evil, merit and demerit; to fet the wife, virtuous, and religious, on a level with the foolish, the vicious, and the irreligious. He who mourns for the lofs of what he neither wants nor deferves, who weeps when he fhould rejoice, and complains when he

fhould be thankful; he who mourns.

from

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from fordid envy, or unreasonable difap- SERM, pointment, because he cannot prejudice another, to promote his own intereft and advantage; fuch men, be their afflictions ever so sharp and poignant, can never hope to be bleffed, or expect to be comforted.

The bleffedness spoken of by our Saviour will be the reward only of virtuous and godly forrow; of thofe, and those alone, who mourn, either,

First, For a heavy and more than ordinary weight of human afflictions, which, unmerited by them, God hath in his wifdom thought fit to inflict upon them: or,

Secondly, Thofe who fincerely mourn for, and lament the burthen of their iniquities, the fins and offences which they have committed: or,

Thirdly, Those who charitably feel for, and fympathife with, the forrows

and

SERM. and calamities of others, who weep with

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them that weep.

These will undoubtedly inherit that bleffed happiness which our Saviour hath here predicted; these will be relieved, bleffed, and comforted, both here and hereafter.

Man, as the Pfalmift faith, is born unto forrow, even as the fparks fly upwards; it is the common lot, the appointed portion of human nature.

A heavy yoke is upon the fons of Adam, from him that fitteth on a throne of glory, to him that is humbled in earth and ashes. To what a variety of diseases is the body of man continually subject? by what an infinity of pangs is his mind perpetually oppreffed? Want, pain, difappointment, fickness, and adversity, like -fo many powerful tyrants, fubdue and

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reign by turns over us : scarce a day paffes SERM. but we feel something to remind us of mortality, and the hard condition of it.

Some, moreover, are visited in a peculiar manner, and groan with unremitted anguish under the iron hand of calamity. Some there are who perpetually feed on the bread of affliction, and drink the bitter cup of forrow. He, doubtless, who inflicted these evils, never intended, never wifhed or defired to find us infenfible of them: to mourn therefore is the indifputed privilege of our nature; grief therefore is innocent, and only when immoderate, exceffive, or ill-placed, can partake either of guilt or folly. Redeemer himself, with the form of man, took upon him his infirmities, his griefs and calamities, and lamented them alfo 3 even he, we know, groaned in the spirit, and was troubled. It is no fin therefore

Our