Every man, who has either applied himself to the examination of his own conduct with care proportioned to the importance of the inquiry, or indulged himself in the more frequent employment of inspecting the behaviour of others, has had many opportunities of observing, with how much difficulty the precepts of religion are long preserved in their full force; how insensibly the ways of virtue are forsaken; and into what depravity those, who trust too much to their own strength, sometimes fall, by neglecting to press forward, and to confirm their resolution by the same methods as they at first excited it. Innumerable temptations continually surround us, and innumerable obstructions oppose us. We are lulled with indolence, we are seduced by pleasure, we are perverted by bad examples, and we are betrayed by our own hearts. No sooner do we, in compliance either with the vanities, or the business of life, relax our attention to the doctrines of piety, than we grow cold and indifferent, dilatory and negligent. When we are again called to our duty, we find our minds entangled with a thousand objections; we are ready to plead every avocation, however trifling, as an exemption from the necessity of holy practices; and, because we readily satisfy ourselves with our excuses, we are willing to imagine that we shall satisfy God, the God of infinite holiness and justice, who sees the most secret motions of our minds, who penetrates through all our hypocrisy, and upon whom disinclination can be never imposed for inability.
With regard to the duty of charity, it is too common for men of avaricious and worldly dispositions, to imagine that they may be saved without compliance with a command so little agreeable to their inclinations; and, therefore, though perhaps they cannot always resist the force of argument, or repel conviction at its first assault, yet, as they do not willingly suffer their minds to dwell upon reasonings which they scarcely wish to be true, or renew, by frequent recollection, that sense of their duty which they have received, they quickly relapse into their former
