DISCOURSE XII.

ON THE COMMISSION OF SMALL FAULTS.

MATTHEW, CHAP. XXIII.-VERSE 23.

These things ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.

It was a point much labored with the ancient Jews, to establish the distinction between the weighty and the lighter duties of life, and settle which was the great commandment of the law; and many of them thought it honorable to their religion, as well as favorable to their own practice, to confer that distinguishing pre-eminence on one or other of the peculiar institutions of the Mosaic covenant; some of them giving the preference to sacrifice, and others to circumcision; some to the punctual observance of the sabbath, and others to the scrupulous payment of the tithes allotted for the support of the temple and public worship of God. In opposition to these absurd opinions, which were founded on prejudice and passion, and could be maintained on no better principles, our Saviour informs them, that the great precepts of revealed religion are the precepts of nature,—the love of God and the love of man ; that positive institutions must not be wantonly neglected, but that moral and religious duties are always invariably and indispensably necessary. • Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart; and thy neighbor as thyself: there is none other commandment greater than these." * These things ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.'

* Mark xii. 30, 31.

We have seen the absurdities of the Jews; and if we considered the conduct only of Christians, we should not be led to conceive that their sentiments on this subject were in general much more reasonable: the natural conclusion, I fear, might rather be, that the carnal inventions of the Jews had been improved and perfected by the refinements of their more enlightened successors; that not only the tithe of mint, anice, and cummin, but many even of the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith, were reckoned among the lighter obligations of life, which are violated without danger, and observed without praise.

It is not meant, nor indeed is it necessary to assert, that the greater vices are ever seriously defended; though there have not been wanting instances even of that last disgraceful effort of unblushing profligacy for it is of small moment what our opinions may be, while they fail in directing our conduct: they fail indeed in some measure with respect to the most essential duties; but in the less important offices of life they are often totally ineffectual; they are there not only contradicted in practice, but contradicted without reluctance and without regret. Such are the offences, which, under the title of the failings and follies of human nature, plead for the forgiveness of God; and under the sanction of custom and fashion, command the compliance of man. Such are the sins which most constantly beset us, and most easily foil our vigilance: and even when we are warned and convinced of the dangers to be dreaded from the greater vices, when we see the terrors of the Lord set in array against them, when fear and prudence persuade and compel our flight;--we still weakly linger on the borders of sin, we still fix our eyes on some prohibited retreat, some favorite indulgence, and cry out, in the language of the patriarch, O let me escape thither is it not a little one ?'*

:

Instead of attempting to trace out the nice line which separates faults from vices, or to discriminate those offences which are at least comparatively small, from those which the world usually holds, or wishes such; it shall be the business of the present discourse to show the importance of unremitted atten

Gen. xix. 20.

tion to the least duties; and it must be remembered, that the same arguments, which recommend these, will enforce the higher obligations of life with superior weight.

In treating this subject the following points are to be considered:

I. That the limits of these lighter offences are vague and indeterminate.

II. That the commission of them is dangerous in itself, as exposing us to punishment.

III. That it is dangerous also, as it peculiarly exposes us to the allurements of greater vices.

I. The limits of these offences are very indeterminate.

Even the boundaries of vice and virtue are not always so distinctly marked, that we can clearly and infallibly pronounce, in what particular circumstances an action ceases to be laudable; where for instance generosity expands into profusion, or frugality is contracted into avarice. The same sort of difficulty will be found in comparing the different degrees of the same vice and it is a difficulty, which, if it be not more formidable than the former, is certainly much more frequent; for all vices are capable of degrees, but all vices have not their kindred virtues. In this case also, errors are not only more probable, but more dangerous: by imprudently venturing to the extremity of virtue, we may indeed touch on the borders of vice; but, if we once carelessly wander within her territories, we know not how far we may be seduced, what pleasures may invite our stay, and what obstacles may impede our retreat.

The vices increase by slow and imperceptible gradations from the little wrongness, at which the mind is dissatisfied, to the murder, at which it shudders. Where then shall we place the line of separation? Most men perhaps will be inclined to place it a little beyond the point they have already reached, the sin they have already committed: the imaginary limit flees at their approach; they go on with heedless steps; till at last they arrive at an eminence in vice, where, if they see the danger of proceeding, they see too the difficulty of returning.

Farther, in fixing the limit between small and greater offences, beside the difficulties which rise from the nature of the

subject itself, there are others also which spring from the nature of man. We are all of us partial to our own defects; and many will treat the merest foibles of others with a harshness and asperity, which scarcely any crimes should provoke ; while their own vicious excesses are viewed with a favor and indulgence, which the most pardonable failings cannot either deserve or excuse. Under the bias of these selfish propensities, it is absolutely impossible that any man should constantly see and acknowlege the subtile distinctions, which even the clear eye of unprejudiced reason cannot always easily or certainly discover.

Nor is this all: to the mistakes insinuated by self-deceit, must be added the more numerous and more fatal errors obtruded by public opinion. Man is the slave of habit; what he sees constantly, he sees without concern; and the vices, which in one age excite his abhorrence, are in another committed without reluctance or remorse, not because they are less heinous, but merely because they are more frequent. The nations of the world seem to have supposed, that the divine laws resemble their own, where universal neglect amounts to a formal repeal. It would be painful to enumerate the many gross instances, in which the opinion of mankind, as well as their practice, has been unaccountably perverted. Even in the most moral writers of Greece and Rome, some of the most detestable crimes are placed in a light, which shows not the smallest sense of their guilt but what need is there of recurring to ancient or distant nations, when even in our own age and country, directed as we are by the united light of human learning and divine revelation, we can behold, with unmoved indifference, the public conduct of men governed almost universally by no better motive than the narrow views of sordid interest, and directed to no higher object than the support of a friend, or the success of a party and in private life, the opportunities to every excellence lost in dissipation, in the thoughtless pursuit of frivolous or forbidden pleasure; time, fortune, every blessing, and every virtue, destroyed in gaming; and even life itself sacrificed at the shrine of that relentless idol, which modern folly has set up and worships, false honor?

We trust the day will yet come, when these representations

of Christian manners will cease almost to be believed: in the mean time, if we wish, I do not say to destroy, but to resist the tyranny of fashion, we must guard with unwearied attention against the gradual encroachments of the smaller vices; for while we can reconcile ourselves to those sins which we call trivial, we shall not preserve any lasting aversion to those which are called so by others.

Since then the limits of these lighter offences are so uncertain in themselves, and so capriciously altered by private affection or public opinion, the only prudent as well as virtuous alternative left, is, to dismiss the whole train, and resolve on universal and unreserved obedience.

To this conduct we shall see farther inducements, if we consider,

II. That the commission even of light offences is in itself dangerous, as exposing us to punishment.

That every indulgence of the least vicious inclination, and every neglect of the smallest duty, when not incompatible with some more essential obligation, is in itself, if not deeply, yet really and truly criminal, cannot be denied in words, however it may be disregarded in practice. The only question which merits our attention is this; whether the law, which declares them crimes, has also declared them such crimes as will be punished. Now, from revelation, which is our rule of conduct, we learn that, on the due performance of certain conditions, the greatest crimes will be forgiven; and, without the performance of those conditions, I know not on what authority we can pronounce, that the least will be wholly unpunished.

The general assertion, that every vice requires our repentance, must indeed be understood with some reserve; for such is the nature of man, that he is perpetually guilty of errors, which he perhaps neither at the time perceives, nor afterwards recollects; and in this case he cannot so properly be answerable for the crimes themselves, as for the habit of inattention which produced them.

Now that, with this restriction, every deviation from moral rectitude will come under the notice and censure, of the great Governor of the world, is not only clear from the general holiness of the Christian precepts, which require us to endeavor at