His sermon on the “Reformation of Manners,” to which Southey has referred, not in his life of Watts but in one of the volumes of his “Common-place Book,” as “an extraordinary piece,” is an illustration of this. It was preached at the time when we were in conflict with Louis XIV. He gives the following side-glance to the wars in Flanders, and on the borders of the Rhine, and he refers to the importance, not only of fighting the enemy abroad, but resisting vice at home. He exclaims, in a remarkable passage: “But was there ever any war without danger, or victory without courage? Besides, the perils you run here are almost infinitely less than those which attend the wars of nations, where the cause is not half so Divine. The fields of battle in Flanders, and almost all over Europe, have drunk up the blood of millions, and have furnished graves for large armies; but it can hardly be said that _you_ have hitherto ‘resisted unto blood striving against sin.’ In a war of more than twelve years’ continuance (_i.e._, against vice at home) there has but one man fallen. The providence of God has put helmets of salvation upon your heads. Some of you can relate wonders of deliverance to safety when you have been beset by numbers, and their rage has kindled into resolutions of revenge; the Lord has taken away their courage in a moment, the ‘men of might have not found their hands;’ thus He has caused ‘the wrath of man to praise Him, and the remainder of wrath He hath restrained.’[55] Read over this psalm, and with Divine valour pursue the fight. But if your life should be lost in such a cause as this, it will be esteemed martyrdom in the sight of God, and shall be thus written down in the book of the wars of the Lord. Believe me, these red lines will look well in the records of heaven, when the judgment shall be set, and the books opened in the face of men and angels.”