are they too reputable to be denied. Dishonour, disgrace,
and shame present images of horror too dreadful to be faced; they are
evils, which it is thought the mark of a generous spirit to consider as
excluding every idea of comfort and enjoyment, and to feel, in short, as
too heavy to be borne.

The consequences of all this are natural and obvious. Though it be not
openly avowed, that we are to follow after worldly estimation, or to
escape from worldly disrepute, when they can only be pursued or avoided
by declining from the path of duty; nay though the contrary be
recognized as being the just opinion; yet all the effect of this
speculative concession is soon done away _in fact_. Estimating worldly
credit as of the highest intrinsic excellence, and worldly shame as the
greatest of all possible evils, we sometimes shape and turn the path of
duty itself from its true direction, so as it may favour our acquisition
of the one, and avoidance of the other; or when this cannot be done, we
boldly and openly turn aside from it, declaring the temptation is too
strong to be resisted.

It were easy to adduce numerous proofs of the truth of these assertions.
It is proved, indeed, by that general tendency in Religion to conceal
herself from the view, (for we might hope that in these cases she often
is by no means altogether extinct) by her being apt to vanish from our
conversations, and even to give place to a pretended licentiousness of
sentiments and conduct, and a false shew of infidelity. It is proved, by
that complying acquiescence and participation in the habits and manners
of this dissipated age, which, has almost confounded every external
distinction between the Christian and the Infidel, and has made it so
rare to find any one who dares incur the charge of Christian
singularity, or who can say with the Apostle that "he is not ashamed of
the Gospel of Christ." It is proved (how can this proof be omitted by
one to whose lot it has so often fallen to witness and lament, sometimes
he fears to afford an instance of it?) by that quick resentment, those
bitter contentions, those angry retorts, those malicious triumphs, that
impatience of inferiority, that wakeful sense of past defeats, and
promptness to revenge them, which too often change the character of a
Christian deliberative Assembly, into that of a stage for prize
fighters: violating at once the proprieties of public conduct, and the
rules of social decorum, and renouncing