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So engaging an inftance of unaffected moderation and felf-denial, deserves well to be confidered by the bustlers in this world; because if we are to trust the face and courfe of things, we scarce fee any virtue fo hard to be put in practice, and which the generality of mankind feem fo unwilling to learn, as this of knowing when they have enough, and when it is time to give over their worldly pursuits.Aye! but nothing is more cafy, you will answer, than to fix this point, and fet certain bounds to it. For my own part, you will fay, I declare, I want and would wish no more, but a fufficient competency of those things, which are requifite to the real ufes and occafions of life, fuitable to the way I have been taught to expect from use and education."-But recollect how feldom it ever happens, when these points are fecured, but that new occafions and new neceffities prefent themselves, and every day as you grow richer, fresh wants are difcovered, which rife up before you, as you afcend the hill; fo that every ttep you take,-every acceffion to

your

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your fortune, fets your defires one degree further from reft and fatisfactionthat fomething you have not yet grasped, and poffibly never fhall;-that devil of a phantom unpoffeffed and unpoffeffable, is perpetually haunting you, and stepping in betwixt you and your contentment

Unhappy creature! to think of enjoying that bleffing without moderation! -or imagine that fo facred a temple can be raised upon the foundation of wealth or power! If the ground-work is not laid within your own mind, they will as foon add a cubit to your ftature, as to your happiness.-To be convinced it is fo,pray look up to those who have got as high as their warmest wishes could carry them in this afcent,-do you obferve they live the better, the longer, the merrier, or that they fleep the founder in their beds, for having twice as much as they wanted, or well know how to dif pofe of?Of all rules for calculating. happiness, this is the most deceitful, and which few but weak minds, and those unpractised in the world too, ever think. of applying as the measure in fuch an eltimation..

eftimation.Great, and inexpreffible may be the happiness, which a moderate fortune and moderate defires with a consciousness of virtue will fecure. Many are the filent pleasures of the honeft peasant, who rifes chearful to his labour;----why should they not?-Look into his house, the feat of each man's happiness;----has he not the fame domeftick endearments,----the fame joy and comfort in his children, and as flattering hopes of their doing well, to enliven his hours and glad his heart, as you could conceive in the highest station?---And I make no doubt in general, but if the true state of his joy and fufferings, could be fairly ballanced with thofe of his betters, whether any thing would appear at the foot of the accompt, but what would recommend the moral of this difcourfe.

This, I own, is not to be attained to, by the cynical stale trick of haranguing against the goods of fortune,--they were never intended to be talked out of the world.-----But as virtue and true wifdom, lie in the middle of extremes,-----on one hand, not to ne

glect

glect and defpife riches, fo as to forget ourselves,----and on the other, not to purfue and love them fo, as to forget God;--to have them fometimes in our heads, ---but always fomething more important in our hearts,

SERMON

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