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SERM.
vni
FALLING
SHORT
OF
HEAVEN.
133
religion, and do
honour
to foul
iniquity; that it
should
be
enslaved to all the
arts
of
lewdness,
and dress up
the
shame
of nature
in the charms
of
language."
Or
if
it
be
not
debased to
so
exceeding
vile
purposes, yet
at
best,
it
is
pity
it
should
be all
employed
in
jesting and
trifle, in
mirth
and raillery,
and
vain
amusement.
Might
it
not
have been
laid
out
infinitely better,
to
allure
sinners to
the
love
of
God,
to
adorn
the
truths of our
holy
profes-
sion,
and
give
credit
to the gospel
of
Christ, even in the
eyes
of
the
witty
and profane
?
I
pity the man
of
lively
imagination without sanctify-
ing grace.
What
a
lovely
wilderness
of
blooming weeds
!
fair indeed
in
various
colours,
but
useless
and
unsavoury,
and
it
must
be
burnt
up with unquenchable
fire.
You
are
the persons
whose
happy talents
give
a relish
to
the
common
comforts
of
life;
you diffuse
joy
and
pleasure
through
all
the company,
and
enliven the
dullest hours
;
your
presence
is
coveted
by
all men,
and
you
are
belov-
ed
of
all
:
But how
dismal
is
your
state,
if
you
neglect
holiness,
and are
not
beloved
of
God
!
Can
you
ima-
gine
that
your
gay
fancy
will
brighten the
gloom
of
bell
?
or
give
airs
to yourselves,
or your
companions, in those
hideous regions
of
sorrow
?
It
is
a
most melancholy
re-
flection to consider,
that
persons
of
your accomplish-
ments
should increase the
number of
the
damned; and
there
is
no
sport
or amusement
admitted there,
to
divert
the anguish
of
the
tortured
mind, or to relieve
that
heavy
and
everlasting
heart
-ache.
I
pity the man
of
strong reason and
great
sagacity
of
judgment, that hath traced nature
in
her
most
secret
re-
cesses;
that
has
sounded the depths
of
the
sea,
and mea-
sured the
heavens;
but
has
spent
no time
in searching
the deep things
of God,
and lets the
mysteries
of
reli-
gion lie
unregarded
as
obscure and
useless things.
He
has never sounded the depth
of
his own misery
and
guilt,
as
he
is
a son
of
Adam
:
Nor
is
he
acquainted
with
the
way
of
climbing to heaven
by
the
cross
of
the
Son
of
God. Reason
is
a
faculty
of
supreme excellence among
the
gifts
of
nature,
and
it
is
dreadful
to
think
that
it
should ever
be
engaged in opposition to divine grace.
How
great and
wretched are the men
of
reason,
who
strain
the nerves
of
their
soul to
overturn the doctrine
of Christ!
who
labour
with all
their intellectual
powers
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