SECTION V. 57 giving too great a loose to many of these diversions. Can you not name the dissenters who waste that time at á play - house, or a vain assembly 'of merriment, at a public gaming table, or a dancingroom, that time, I say, which belongs to God or their families ? Who spend those seasons in late visits and private balls or at cards, whereby evening devotion is excluded utterly? Who can wear out whole hours in these foolish and perilous re- creations, and complain they have no time for prayer ? Can you pointtono persons who are members of dissenting churches, who entice their acquaintance to these vanities ? Do you know no mothers who lead their little daughters thither, nor fathers who permit their sons to go without controul ? And do they know, or will they not believe, that the road to lewdness and impiety, to ruin and beggary, lies through these scenes of dan- gerous diversion ? The loss of religion, the loss of time, the loss of virtue, the loss of reputation, the loss of estate in many families of the nation, bear a loud and lasting testimony to the dismal influencesof these practices, and, methinks, a protestant dissenter, who professes to maintain greater degrees of purity in public worship, should also be solicitous to keep himself pure from these appearances of evil in public life, and to abstain from those stages of vanity'wherein there is so much danger of defile- ment and mischief. To sum up all in general, your fathers had an honourable character, and a very great reputation, even among the looser parts of the nation, for strict virtue, for exemplary and sincere godliness'beyond the common bulk and multitude of those who called themselves the established church ; for if any person ap- peared to be strictly religious and fearful of indulging any sin or compliance with evil company, if he were scrupulous of any doubtful practice, or attempted to give au admonition to the sons of vice, lie was presently called a puritan, or afanatic, orpres- byterian by wayof reproach. This honour was a frequent tri- bute paid by the ungodly world to the superior virtue and merit of your ancestors and their profession of nonconformity. What is become of this your reputation, this honourable character! Have you lost your good name ? Have you sold your glory for the indulgence of the follies and vanities of life ? Have you fallen into such a neglect of strict religion as leaves no other dis-, tinction between you and your neighbours, besides your worship once a week in adifferent place and manner ? It is time, my friends, when religion is sunk into such an universal decay in the nation, it is time to enquire whether we have not suffered it to decay amongst us also, whether we are not sharers in the com- mon degeneracy. It is high time to awaken our souls, and en. quire, what do we more than others ? If the bulk of the nation he gone far m the neglect of virtue and godliness let us not dare
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