Imatges de pàgina
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concerning the faith of Christ. And, without doubt, they had no serious desire of information. It is likely they proposed to themselves some entertainment from questioning the prisoner; and the presence of Drusilla makes it credible that the entertainment was chiefly designed for her; who might be a bigot to her religion, though she scorned to live up to it; and therefore wanted, we may suppose, to insult Jesus in the person of his disciple.

However, let their purpose be what it would, such were FELIX and DRUSILLA, before whom Paul reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and a judgment to come.

Paul was not in the number of those complaisant preachers, who take a text, in which their hearers have no concern. He had to do with persons, who bade defiance to religion in all its forms; and his subject was well suited to the occasion. They expected an amusing tale of Jesus Christ: but the Apostle, who knew how unworthy they were of being instructed in the faith, as not yet possessing the first principles of morals, took up the matter a great deal higher; and, discoursing to them on the natural duties of justice and temperance, which they had grossly violated, and on the

natural doctrine of a judgment to come, which they had never believed or respected, gave them to understand, that they had much to learn, or practise at least, before they were fit hearers of what he had further to say concerning the Christian revelation.

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Being taken at this advantage, we may easily conceive their surprise and disappointment: and, as the speaker knew how to give an energy to his discourse on these interesting topics, we cannot wonder, that one or both of them should be much discomposed by it. Of Drusilla the sacred text says nothing: she was, perhaps, the more skilful dissembler of the two; or her rage and indignation might, for the moment, get the better of her fears but Felix had not the address, or the fortune, to disguise his feelings; he trembled before this plain, intrepid speaker.,

This event is instructive, indeed, as it sets before us the power of conscience over the worst of men; and, at the same time, the meanness of guilt, which, in such place and dignity, could not help shrinking at the voice of truth, though speaking by the mouth of a poor dependant prisoner. But when we have made the proper use of these reflexions, on the

case of Felix, we shall find a still more instructive lesson in the subsequent conduct of this affrighted sinner.

When the fit of trembling came upon him, he said hastily to the preacher: Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient› season, I will call for thee.

How striking a picture of that fatal disposition which men have to put off repentance, even under the fullest conviction of guilt; and that too, on the most frivolous pretences! What Felix should have done instantly, when his conscience was so much alarmed, he omits to do: Go thy way for this time: and yet, to quiet that conscience, he would not be thought to lay aside all purpose of reformation: When I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.

With this famous example in my eye, I shall attempt to shew in the following discourse: 1. That PROCRASTINATION is the usual support of vice: 2. That false reasoning, or, what we may call, the SOPHISTRY OF VICE, is the great support of procrastination: 3. That a FINAL IMPENITENCE is the too common effect of this pernicious confederacy. And

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1. PROCRASTINATION is the main support of vice; the favourite stratagem, by which the grand deceiver himself ensnares the souls of men, and maintains his empire over them.

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There are few persons so desperately wicked but they resolve, secretly at least, and in their own minds, to amend their bad lives, at some time or other. But that time is rarely the present. They have other business in hand: some scheme of interest to manage, some project of ambition to pursue, some intrigue of pleasure to accomplish; in short, some darling sin or other to gratify, before they can be at leisure to execute this intended work of reformation.

Nay, there are seasons of recollection, in which the memory of their past lives afflicts and torments them; there are hours of melancholy, or ill health, in which the necessity of repentance seems pressing and instant; there are certain moments of terror, in which the final resolution is on the point of being taken : yet still, this delusive idea of to-morrow steps in: the memory, the necessity, the terror, are over-ruled: the ungrateful task is, for the present, deferred; to-morrow laid aside, and the next day forgotten.

This was the case of Felix in the text. When bad men are clothed with power, it is not easy for truth of any kind, especially for moral truth, to gain access to them. Yet it made its way to this potent governor, and with a force which nothing could resist. esist. It borrowed the thunder of Paul's rhetoric to speak home and loudly to his affrighted conscience. It shook his guilty mind with the sense of his crimes, his incontinence and injustice, his riot and rapine, his lust and cruelty; and still more, with the apprehension of a judgment to come, armed with terror, and ready to take vengeance of his multiplied iniquities.

You expect now, that, in this agony, he should take the part, which duty and pru dence, his conviction and his fears, equally recommended to him. You expect, that he should apply to his instructor, who had raised this storm, to compose it; and that, leaving his chair of state, he should spring forth and accost his prisoner, as the honest jaylor at Philippi had done, on a similar occasion: What must I do to be saved? But, no; it was not yet convenient to put that question. His pleasures, his fortune, his ambition, might be

c Acts xvi. 30.

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