SECTIÓÑ Ilh 33 fewforms of behaviour, and we publish our scornof them to shew our breeding. Foolish insolence and preposterous vanity, which the well-bred and polite are never guilty of ! But tell me, man, how long hast thou learned thy genteel and elegant behaviour, these arts add forms of {Masted ,decency ? Caítst thou not remem- ber the time when thy gait, and thy mein, thy speech and all thy airs were almost-as awkward and uncouthas the very creature thou deridest ?, And wouldst thou have been willing to have had thy former awkwardnesses made the ridicule of the company? Couldst thou so well bear to have been the jest of the man above thee, that thou spendest' thy jests so freely upon one in low life, who is the very figure of what thou hast been ? Hast thou not humility, nor prudence, nor goodness enough to re- member this ? Or perhaps thou art dressed finer and art a favourite among the great'. But is this sufficient reason to scorn the poor ? Re- member also that he is thy brother by nature: Naked and cast out of the favour of God together with thee : All sons and daughters of Adam the great sinner, all by taatüre the children of wrath, strangersto the blessed God; outcasts of paradise, and averse to all that is holy ì And if we behold ourselves in this state, what is there in one little lump of this wretched and pol- luted mass of human nature, that it should exalt itself upon any littlepretences over the rest of the mass, wherein it lay in com- mon pollution and wretchedness ? Or if we hope that we are called and sanctified and become the Children of God, who wasit made the difference ? Was it not the free mercy of God that Called us and wrought the divine change in us ? What is there ihr us to boast of? Let us allow those who we think are yet un- Called and unchanged by grace, all the natural excellencies and moral qualifications thatbelong to them, and not sully anddarken the evidences of our own christianity by a haughty and scornful Carriage toward our neighbours. Let us remember yet further, that many others are called and renewed and sanctified as well as we, and perhaps have brighter evidences of their graces, and bear úp the character of tite children of God with more honour than we do : And we should think so too, if our pride and conceit would but suffer us to see their shining virtues, their exalted piety. If we couldbut maintain such thoughts as these, we should not assume such haughty airs, such insolence of language over our fellow-worms, that have crept out of the same bed of meanness and defilement, and someof them perhaps have a larger share of purifying grace thanourselves. Or had I-but a due degree of self- abasement, how swift and ready should I be to spy out the virtues which my neighbour possesses, and to pay due honour to all his valuable qualifications ; even as theproud, the envious, and the malicious Vox.. lit. C
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