the prejudice of the Lawyer carried him in these circumstances to a right judgment; for, knowing how inveterately the Jew hated the Samaritan, he could not but the more admire and approve the Samaritan's kindness to the Jew. Upon this cafe our Lord puts him to determine which was neighbour to the man in diftrefs; or, which is the fame thing, which of the three acted moft agreeably to the law of God, commanding that we should love our neighbour as ourself: the Lawyer answers, He that shewed mercy; confeffing that the Samaritan had fulfilled the law; which was condemning the Jewish expofition, and his own prejudices: for if a Jew was rightly forbidden to fhew kindness to a Samaritan, because of the difference in religion between them, the fame reafon made it unlawful for a Samaritan to affift a Jew. Our Saviour approves his judgment, and bids him only apply it to himself, Go thou, and do likewife; that is, fince you commend the Samaritan for acting like a neighbour to the Jew, do you learn to act like a neighbour to the Samaritan: for this is the true force of the word likewife. For a Jew to be kind to a Jew only, is not to do like the good Samaritan, who was kind not to a Samaritan only, but to a Jew alfo. And thus you fee the cafe led to a full determination of the queftion propofed, and fhewed that no reftrictions were to be laid upon the law of God; that even thofe whom he accounted as his worst enemies, the very Samaritans, were entitled to the benefit of it, and ought to be treated with the love and kindnefs which is due to our neighbours.

From our Lord's conduct in this cafe, we may

learn how to apply to the paffions and prejudices of mankind, and by what art truth is best and most fuccessfully introduced, where error has been long in poffeffion. Were it a defect in our reafon and understanding that made us difagree, and judge and act differently, in cafes where we have one and the fame rule to go by, no human application could reach the diftemper; fince it is not in our power to enlarge the faculties which are bounded by God and nature. But our reason and our understanding are not in fault; they want only to be fet free, and to be delivered from the bondage of paffion and prejudice, to judge rightly in cafes of morality and natural juftice. If you look into the world, you will fee men as much diftinguished by their vices, as by the features of their faces. Few men have many reigning vices at once: covetousness, well planted in the mind, will ftarve out all other paffions; it will fuffer hardly any other vice to live by it. The fame may be obferved of luxury and intemperance, and of lewdness, and of ambition: where any of them flourish, they take up the whole man : other vices are admitted only accidentally, and at fpare hours, or as they may be fubfervient to the main inclination. I obferve this, because, upon examination, you will find that men's reason and judgment fail in the very fame proportion that vice and paffion prevail.

Did men judge perverfely in all cafes alike, we should not easily affign any other cause but want of judgment and reafon; fince nothing lefs would account for the total abfence and defect of it but when we find men to have reason in most cases, and

VOL. III.

to be dark only in fome few; when we fee them exercifing their minds freely and impartially, generally speaking, but in fome few inftances obftinately bent to hug and to maintain a lie; it puts us to a neceffary inquiry to search out fome other cause, that may anfwer this odd appearance, and account for a man's want of reafon and judgment in one or two instances, who acts and judges as reasonably as his neighbours in all others. Now, if from the experience of human life you find that a man's reafon and his virtue forfake him in the fame inftances; that he judges perversely in the fame cafes in which he acts perverfely, and remarkably fo in them only; this will teach you what it is that mifguides, or, rather, enflaves the mind, and by what methods the freedom and liberty of reafon may be reftored. If the covetous man rightly condemns all vice, and perversely defends his own: if the voluptuous man abhors covetousness, fraud, and deceit, whilft he looks on his own pleasures as innocent and harmless, and can devoutly bless himself that he is no extortioner, that he does not devour the widow's houfe, and yet thinks himself under no great condemnation for feducing the widow's daughter, which is her richest treafure if the ambitious man equally and juftly condemns both, and yet fees no harm, no reason to be displeased with himself, for all the wild havoc which his ambition makes in the world: if these things, I fay, are fo, and that they are so daily experience witneffeth, it is evident what bias influ ences the judgment of men, when they obftinately maintain and defend the cause of error or of vice, It is felf that always lies at the bottom: it is not fo

much the vice, as felf, that is to be defended; and if you can but feparate felf from the vice, the vice will foon fall under the common fentence of reafon, and be left to be condemned with its fellows.

By this honeft, this holy art, our Lord convinced the Lawyer who put the queftion of the text to him. He afked the queftion, intending that none fhould be admitted into the number of his neighbours who were not nearly allied to him; of the fame nation at leaft. Our Saviour ftates a cafe to him, and puts it fo, that his prejudices were all thrown out and filenced. The confequence was, that he who wanted to exclude almost all mankind from a right to his good offices, in a few minutes owns even the Samaritan, his most hated enemy, to be the Jew's neighbour; and, by owning and accepting the Samaritan's good offices done to the Jew under the relation of a neighbour, he confeffed the Samaritan's right, in that relation, to expect and receive the good offices of the Jew.

By the fame method the prophet Nathan made David, in the very height of fin and extravagance, give fentence upon himself and his iniquity. The wretched King had taken the wife of Uriah to his bed, and had flain the hufband by the fword of the children of Ammon. When he received the meffage of Uriah's death, which ought to have filled him with horror and confufion, he fent this comfort to the Captain of the hoft, which, no doubt, his falfe heart had firft adminiftered to himfelf; Let not this thing difpleafe thee, for the fword devoureth one as well as another: and fo fatisfied he was with his reafoning upon this accident of war, as he was willing

to esteem it, that he foon fent for the unfortunate brave man's widow, and fhe became his wife. In this ftate of fecurity and enjoyment the prophet Nathan comes to him: had he openly taxed him with the murder, perhaps the King had justified himself, and faid to the Prophet, as he did to his Captain, The fword devoureth one as well as another; or perhaps the Prophet had been rebuked for his faucy intrusion, and been forced to fly the presence of the angry King: but the Prophet came with a coinplaint to the King of a great oppreffion, which a very rich man had been guilty of towards a very poor one. David was ready to hear and redress fuch wrong; for this cafe ftirred no prejudices; himself seemed unconcerned in it. The Prophet's cafe was this: A rich man had a friend come to vifit him; and for his entertainment he fent and killed a poor neighbour's folitary ewe lamb, which had been bred tame among his children, and was a great fondling, though he had large flocks of his own, and many herds, which would have yielded him any entertainment for his friend; but he fpared his own numerous flocks, and robbed his poor neighbour of his one lamb, to feast his friend. The cafe was hard in itself, and the Prophet had represented it with all the moving and tender circumftances that could be thought on. David, fired at fuch flagrant injuftice and oppreffion, fwore, As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing fhall furely die. When the King had paffed fentence, then the Prophet opened the fecret, and faid, Thou art the man: the ewe lamb was the wife of Uriah, whom thou haft taken from her husband, though thou hadst wives and concu