than even poverty can be in this lower hemisphere. What villainies are daily committed to get it! What iniquities daily perpetrated by those who have plenty of it! Lead us not into temptation, should relate as well to too much of it, as to a total want of it; and it is well prayed,—In all time of our wealth, good Lord deliver us.
*In my opinion, neither poverty nor riches, but a middle state, is the thing we should desire. It is in this condition, we can best live soberly, or with a sound mind, and conduct ourselves as those who have an intelligent spirit to preside in body. Too much gold most commonly inverts this order, and produces an apostasy that sets the inferior powers in the throne, and enslaves the mind to the body: It gives the passions the commanding influence, and makes reason receive law from appetite.
If we look into the world, we find too often, in this case, that wealth is big with innumerable sins. The rich are filled with wine, wherein is excess, and shew an unbridled dissoluteness of manners. Their eyes behold strange women, and their hearts utter perverse things. Instead of regarding the common good, they commit the most extravagant

injuries. Of such a hardning nature is too much gold, that it tends to make conscience insensible and stupid, and renders it for ever unapt for impression. Then whoredom and wine, and new wine, take away the heart, and men are made to forget the law of God.
But having neither poverty nor riches, in the calm middle state, having all reasonable conveniencies, we can fairly come by; a vast variety of creatures for our food, and wine in its season, to make glad the heart; we may then partake of the bounties of providence, with a sober freedom, and at the same time, can best lay up for ourselves a good foundation, or secuity for the time to come, that we may lay hold of eternal life.
Tho' it is with a prospect of difficulties, that all must enter upon religion, and with labour and difficulty, maintain our ground, and acquit ourselves like christians, that is, resist the devil in all his assaults, overcome the world in its ensnaring influence, and mortify the irregular inclinations of nature; yet in the happy middle state, where there is no poverty nor riches, that is, great wealth, we can make everlasting glory and felicity our governing aim, and bound our ambition and desires by nothing short of the resurrection of the dead. We may