“The wicked is often known, to others and to himself, by his injustice, oppression, cruelty, deceit, and unfair dealing. Did you ever make a prey of the poor and helpless? Are you like the horse-leech, crying, ‘Give, give,’ still wanting more profit, and never thinking you have enough? Do you take more care to lay up treasures on earth than in heaven? Have you got the unhappy secret of distilling silver out of the poor man’s brow, and gold out of the tears of helpless widows and friendless orphans? Or, which is rather worse, do you, directly or indirectly, live by poisoning others, by encouraging the immoderate use of those refreshments, which, taken to excess, disorder the reason, ruin the soul, and prove no better than slow poison to the body? If your business calls you to buy or sell, do you use falsehood? do you equivocate? do you exaggerate or conceal the truth, in order to impose upon your neighbour, and make a profit of his necessity or credulity? If any of these marks be upon you, God’s word singles you out, and drags you to the bar of Divine justice to hear your doom in the text, ‘The wicked shall surely die.’ O, see your danger; repent, and make restitution! Why should you meet the unjust steward in hell, when you may yet follow Zaccheus into heaven?” “There is another fearful sin, which has in it no profit, no pleasure, no, not sensual sweetness enough to bait the hook of temptation. The only enticement to it is the diabolical disposition of the wicked man, and the horrid pride he takes in _cutting a figure_ among the children of Belial. I speak of oaths and curses,—those arrows shot from the string of a hellish heart, and the bow of a Luciferian tongue, against heaven itself; these are some of the sparks of hell-fire, which, now and then, come out of the throat of a wicked man. Do they ever come out of thine? A year ago, I laid before you the horror of that sin, and besought you to leave it to Satan and his angels, and to act no more the part of an _incarnate devil_. Have you strictly complied with that request? Has not heaven been pierced with another fiery dart? Have not good men, or good angels (if any attend you still) shuddered at those imprecations, which you have used, perhaps without remorse?”