Excerpt from Sermons and Discourses on Several Subjects and Occasions, Vol. 2<br><br>That Virtue and Vice do in their own Na tures tend' to make thefe Men happy, or mi ferable, who feverally praétife them, is a Pro pofition of undoubted (and, I am fure, by me undi'fputed) Truth; as far as it relates to moral Virtue or Vice, properly fo call'd that is, to thefe Meafures of Duty, which Natural Reafon, unenlighten'd by Revelation, pre ffcribes: For as to thofe Rules of Evangelical Perfefiion, in which we Chrifiians are obliged to excel; they are (fome of them) of IO ex a] ted a Nature, fo contrary to Flefh and Blood, and fo far above our ordinary Capacities and Powers, lthat if there were no other Life than this, I fee not how our Happinefs could ge nerally' be faid to conflfi: in the Pradtice of them. -and therefore when God made them Matter of firiét Duty to us;.he at the fame 'time animated us to Obedience (not only by alluring us of the extraordinary Afliftances of his good Spirit, but) by a clear Difcovery of a Future State of Rewards and Punilhments; whereas the ffew's, whoahad the Promifes of this Life only, had alfo, in proportion to thofe Promifes, a lower and lefs excellent Scheme of Duty propos'd to them.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.