tions. In a word, reduce all your appetites, all your affections and desires to that calm temperature; and in the various relations of life, behave with that equity and candour, that gentieness and goodness, that mutual respect and honour, as will best subserve the great ends, for which human nature was constituted social,-and of human society at large for as men, we are all members one of another.*

:

Having so far endeavoured to shew that the social instincts and affections of human nature are universal and mutual, and directed in their exercise, throughout the whole system, from man to man; and as this most certainly infers, that all mankind are, in the disposition and order of nature, one great and closely compacted body; we may, and must, conclude upon the whole, that their social state and character were intended not barely for good, but for universal good: And this must be the true aim, and should be the natural and direct subserviency, of every relative and social obligation.

Besides, the idea of men, as a community, necessarily implies in it, that there is a governor of this community; to whom the whole, and every individual member of it, is

Eph. iv. 25.

account

uble. A society without laws, and laws without government, and government without a supreme administrator of government, and dispenser of justice, are as much contradictions, as a living body without a head. The governor therefore, who, in the present case, can be no other than the Creator of mankind, and the Father of their social frame, must be like a constituent vital member of the society, without whom the whole woull instantly dissolve.

And from hence it appears, that the authority of God is most properly introduced, to support the obligation of all relative duties. The social nature from whence they spring, the motives by which they are enforced, the pleasures which they yield at present, the happiness to which they ultimately tend, are all His wise contrivance and constitution. Without Him, nature and all its laws are no more than empty sounds without a meaning. By his influence and power, they are invigorated; separated from Him, they die, or are reduced to a state of norexistence.

Can we then, without renouncing our reason, consider anything as a natural, and not regard it likewise as a divine, law? Can any office in society be a dictate of nature, which is not at the same time a duty of piety?

Can we esteem

ourselves to be truly moral men for treating with a becoming tenderness and respect the inferior members of the great community to which we belong; when God, the founder, the head, the life of it, is not in all our thoughts? It is most surely an inexcusable omission, to drop the consideration of God, in any branch of human duty; on whose being, preservation, and government, the universe, and all its parts, do continually depend. In the same sense that covetousness and other vices, alienate the heart from the Father and sovereign Ruler of spirits, it is an impious, and a kind of idolatrous practice, thus to centre our ultimate views in nature, or any other creature, to the neglect of the Creator, who is over all, and blessed for evermore.*

So that, upon the whole, we are hereby plainly taught the gross absurdity of endeavouring, in any instance whatever, to separate morality from religion; since even in relative duties, to which the notion of morality is chiefly confined, it is impossible to exclude a reverence of God, and a serious regard to His will and constitution: or, if we act reasonably and wisely, to avoid corsidering them in a religious, as well as in an abstracted moral light.

• Rom. i. 25.

OF THE

DUTIES OF THE MARRIED STATE.

IN TWO PARTS.

PART I.

OF THE DUTIES OF HUSBANDS.

CHAPTER I.

MARRIAGE A DIVINE INSTITUTION.

HAVING Considered the social nature and character of man, it cannot be better followed than by explaining the duties of the married state,— because this was actually the first relation contracted, the first special tie, and bond of union, established in human life. And ever since its primitive institution in Paradise, it has continued to be, in the order of nature, the first. It is necessary to be supposed, before parents or children could regularly exist; and consequently, long before the distinct offices of masters and servants: and these latter might, and it is reasonable to imagine would, in many instances, have taken place, before mankind could have multiplied to such a degree, as to form larger

societies; or to settle any of the various forms of civil government, from whence the duties of magistrates and subjects are derived.

And as the matrimonial relation is the root of all others, and has therefore, if we follow nature, a claim to our chief attention and regard; so the husband's duty, in the same order and train of priority and consequence, appears to me, most proper to be first insisted on. But as it is utterly impossible to know what his duty is, or what sort of behaviour may reasonably be expected from him, without fixing in general what rank he holds, what character and office in society; I shall endeavour to state this matter distinctly, in a chain of connected and dependent propositions which will enable us to settle the grand point, by which the whole duty both of husbands and wives must be finally adjusted, and which is interwoven, throughout, with every branch of each.

And here, charitably presuming that I address myself, by far the greater part at least, to a nation of Christians, I shall produce the testimony of revelation as an unexceptionable authority; but corroborated in every part, for universal conviction, by the concurring voice of nature, and the surest dictates of reason.

And, in the first place, revelation teaches,