BX 5133 .S22 1821 
 
 Sadleir, Francis, 1774-1851 
 
 Sermons and lectures 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/sermonslecturesOOsadl 
 
I 
 
 SERMONS AND LECTURES. 
 
D. GRA1SBEKRY, 
 PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
TO HIS GRACE, 
 THE MOST REVEREND FATHER IN 60D, 
 THE RIGHT HONORABLE 
 
 JOHN GEORGE, 
 
 BY DIVINE PROVIDENCE 
 
 LORD ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN, 
 PRIMATE OF IRELAND, 
 
 AND VISITOR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN, 
 
 THESE SERMONS 
 
 ARE MOST RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED, 
 BY HIS GRACE'S MOST HUMBLE SERVANT, 
 
 FRANCIS SADLEIR. 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 THE author of the following Discourses 
 having been appointed to the Lectureship 
 established by the Provost and Senior Fel- 
 lows, under the will of Mrs. Anne Donnel- 
 lan, is obliged, by one of the regulations 
 of the establishment of the Done] lan Lec- 
 tures, to publish four of his Lectures. He 
 has taken the opportunity of publishing 
 some of his other Sermons at the same time ; 
 partly, for the purpose of filling up the vo- 
 lume to a moderate size, and partly, to serve 
 as a kind of preface to the Lectures; or, at 
 
vi 
 
 least, to obviate any misconception of his 
 principles, which the particular and con- 
 tracted path of discussion, to which his 
 subject naturally led him, and unavoidably 
 confined him, might possibly give occa- 
 sion to. 
 
SERMON I. 
 
 I. Corinthtans, Chap. hi. Verse 3. 
 
 For ye are yet carnal \-—for whereas there is 
 among you envying, and strife, and divisions , 
 arc ye not carnal, and walk as men ? 
 
 THE Epistle, from whence I have taken my 
 text, is addressed to the Church of God which 
 was at Corinth, to them that were sanctified in 
 Christ Jesus, called to be saints, who are after- 
 wards described as coming behind in no gift, 
 waiting for the coming of the Lord, who should 
 confirm them blameless, that all things, whether 
 present or to come, should be theirs, that they 
 should be Christ's, even as Christ is God's. — 
 And yet among a people thus highly characte- 
 rised, there are said to be divisions ; and the 
 vol. i. B 
 
2 
 
 effects of these divisions are described to be such 
 as to render them incapable of being addressed 
 as spiritual, — incapable of being instructed by 
 the Holy Spirit in the higher truths of the Gos- 
 pel, or as we have it figuratively and beautifully 
 expressed, being as yet but babes in Christ, to 
 be fed with milk, and not with meat, forasmuch 
 as they were unable to bear it, forasmuch as 
 they were yet carnal.—" For whereas there is 
 " among you envying, and strife, and divisions, 
 " are ye not carnal, and walk as men ?" 
 
 I have called your attention, my fellow Chris- 
 tians, to this passage, because it shews us, that 
 even among the sanctified of God, there may be 
 divisions, that on the same true foundation, which 
 is Christ Jesus, may superstructures somewhat 
 varying from each other be raised ; but that if 
 envyings and strife and factions arise therefrom, 
 the effect is, not only to endanger the very sal- 
 vation of the Teachers, but also to debase the 
 spiritual character, to degrade the Christian 
 rank, of the hearers, and render them, while 
 they seek after the wisdom of man, foolishness 
 before God. 
 
 The consideration of the first of these, name- 
 ly, the possibility of divisions among even the 
 very elect, may lead us to be lenient to the 
 misconceptions of our weaker brethren, who, 
 
3 
 
 agreeing with us in the essentials of Christianity, 
 appear to us to err on points of less vital im- 
 portance.— And the consideration of the second, 
 namely, the debasing effect of the envying and 
 strife arising from these divisions, may tend to 
 keep us from that anxiety, which has from age 
 to age influenced too many in the Christian 
 Church, the desire of being discovers and sup- 
 porters of some doctrine, some meaning in the 
 Holy Scriptures, which had before escaped the 
 vulgar eye, — fancying that they were guides of 
 the blind, and lights of them which sat in dark- 
 ness. — It may preserve us from the eagerness 
 for being leaders of sects, from devoting our 
 talents and lives to the support of some mysti- 
 cal speculation, some ceremonial observance, 
 unto the obscuration of our Christian love, and 
 peace, and joy, unto the neglect of the weigh- 
 tier matters of the law, judgment, justice, and 
 mercy. — And thirdly, my fellow Christians, the 
 consideration of both may lead us to search the 
 Scriptures, to seek out from some criterion be- 
 tween those speculative doctrines which are es- 
 sential, and indispensable to the Christian, and 
 those which are of minor importance, — between 
 those without which no man can come to God ; 
 and those subjects of doubtful disputations to 
 which the 1 weak in faith are desired, by the 
 Apostle, not to be admitted. 
 
 b 2 
 
4 
 
 That there should be divisions respecting a 
 system whose practical injunctions are intimately 
 implicated with the passions and affections of 
 the human heart, sometimes exciting, always 
 controlling, and often directly opposing the 
 warmest feelings and strongest propensities of 
 our nature, whose speculative doctrines concern 
 subjects far above the measure of our faculties, 
 and which, until that which is perfect be come, 
 we can know but in part, — respecting such a 
 system, I say, it is no way surprising that there 
 should be divisions ; that passion should not only 
 influence the judgment, and diversify the opi- 
 nions of mankind, but also that it should dis- 
 proportion the importance which they attach to 
 the several points of disagreement. — It is not sur- 
 prising, that when we attempt to speculate be- 
 vond the guidance of revelation, when we at- 
 tempt to remove from our eyes the darkened 
 glass by the protecting aid of which we imper- 
 fectly behold the Glories of the spiritual world, 
 we should be struck with mental blindness, and 
 err and stumble as though we had been in utter 
 darkness. In addition to these causes of dis- 
 agreement which arise from the nature of the 
 system, and the weakness of the creature to 
 whom it is addressed, we must consider that 
 being delivered to us in human language, an 
 abundant source of divisions results from the 
 imperfection of the vehicle of its communication. 
 
5 
 
 I shall not delay you by expatiating on so trite 
 a subject as the imperfection of human language, 
 or the various possibilities of misunderstanding 
 any communication conveyed from man to man. 
 I shall only remark, that the more important 
 the subject, the more apt are we to differ in 
 our mode of understanding. Sovereigns, when 
 speaking on the ordinary affairs of life, as a well 
 known author observes, are easily understood ; 
 but when speaking to their subjects in laws, 
 must express themselves in volumes, and even 
 so, can but partially remedy the uncertainty. — 
 In matters of religion councils have sat, creeds 
 have been devised, the utmost wisdom of man 
 has been employed to obviate the possibility of 
 misconception, and yet that wisdom has failed, 
 those creeds have been variously interpreted, 
 and the authority of those councils has been 
 quoted by sects hostile to each other. — Even the 
 articles of our own Church, which were formed 
 by men whose zeal, whose integrity, whose tem- 
 perance of mind, whose patience under perse- 
 cution, whose boldness in Christ, strongly recall 
 to our recollection the characters of those who 
 first preached to mankind the glad tidings of 
 Salvation, and scarcely leave in our minds a 
 doubt, that they, as well as their great exam- 
 ples, were under the immediate influence of the 
 Holy Spirit ; having the advantage of the expe- 
 rience of fifteen centuries, the knowledge of the 
 
e 
 
 various misconceptions of Scripture, which f rom 
 time to time had divided the Christian Church ; 
 having before them the histories of Councils, 
 the comments of the Fathers ; having every 
 point of Christian doctrine, every text of Scrip- 
 ture, analysed, as it were, in the furnace of con- 
 tending opinions ; — even the articles of our own 
 Church, I say, have been differently understood, 
 though the imagination can scarcely conceive a 
 more happy coincidence of integrity ability and 
 opportunity, than that to which we owe their 
 formation. 
 
 It is however a consoling reflection, that 
 most of the divisions of the Christian Church 
 have been principally concerning matters of 
 theoretical speculation, not concerning practical 
 doctrine ; and only connected with it, as the 
 opinions of the head must in many cases in- 
 directly and accidentally influence the heart and 
 conduct. — Each sect indeed rather strove, by 
 the purity of their lives, to evince the su- 
 periority of their principles.— To this however 
 we have a few melancholy exceptions, sufficient 
 to make us duly appreciate the importance of 
 orthodoxy of tenet, and prevent us from being 
 misled by the external professions or decorum of 
 any incipient heresy, for the exceptions, to which 
 I allude, although, they ended in moral depravity, 
 began with apparent sanctity. It is moreover 
 
7 
 
 worthy of remark, that an advantage of no in- 
 considerable value has resulted to us from these 
 divisions in the Christian Church, I mean that 
 of having the Scriptures handed down to us free 
 from variation, or corruption, or even from the 
 suspicion of it, by the mutural watchfulness and 
 jealousy of the contending parties. 
 
 Another and frequent occasion of disagree- 
 ment as to the meaning of the Scriptures, is the 
 propensity which men have for busying them- 
 selves about the religious prospects of others, 
 rather than about their own. If the indi- 
 vidual asks the question, what shall / do to be 
 saved ? he can scarce open the Bible at hazard, 
 but where he will find his answer written, so that 
 he who runs may read. — If he asks what shall I 
 believe so that I may come to God ? — Let him, 
 having washed his hands in innocency, approach 
 the altar of the Lord ; — let him with an honest 
 and humble heart consult that Gospel, which 
 was preached, not to the learned, not to the 
 noble, but to the poor in spirit ; — let him do the 
 will of the Father which is in Heaven, and he 
 shall know of the doctrine whether it be of 
 God. — What he understands let him believe ; 
 what he does not, let him credit as a proposition 
 of which, though true, he does not comprehend 
 the terms j let him humbly wait for the en- 
 lightening influence of the Holy Spirit, which 
 
8 
 
 if it be requisite for his salvation, he undoubtedly 
 
 will have. There is a distinction, and one 
 
 which in these matters should be carefully re- 
 collected, between believing a proposition to be 
 true, and actually seeing the truth of it ; though 
 for the latter it be absolutely requisite, that we 
 perfectly understand the terms, it is not so for 
 the former \ we may, without fully understand- 
 ing it, believe it to be true, on the credit of the 
 proposer. — If the individual, with this humble 
 disposition of mind, seeking for a rule for his 
 own conduct, and anxious for the regulation of 
 his own faith, search the Holy Scriptures, in 
 them will he find eternal life, and (to use the 
 language of our Church) all that is requisite 
 for salvation j — if he approach the rock of living 
 waters, he shall not depart unrefreshed. But, 
 if, satisfied with his own religious profici- 
 ency, he proceed to enquire into the fate of 
 others, from a wish perhaps to convince himself 
 that he is not as other men are in these matters, 
 if passing over the obvious doctrines of Chris- 
 tianity, both practical and speculative, he pro- 
 ceed to the exposition of curious questions re- 
 specting the higher mysteries of our religion, 
 if he proceed to explain what perhaps to mortal 
 hearers cannot be fully explained, it is no wonder 
 that he should involve himself in ambiguity and 
 obscurity. — If he proceed to preach, not the 
 Gospel, but these his own inventions,— not 
 
9 
 
 Christ, but himself, unto the world, and to es- 
 tablish a secondary kind of faith, namely an 
 acquiescence in his own expositions, as requisite 
 for salvation, it is no wonder if he meet with 
 others, whom a similar line of enquiry may have 
 led to different inventions, who will oppose him 
 with emulation and strife and faction. — The 
 ranks of the contending parties have been, and 
 always will be, increased by the hypocritical, 
 and the interested, who arrange themselves as 
 their desires, their hopes, their fears, respecting 
 worldly advantage and fame may influence 
 them, who are ever most violent, whether it 
 be in the defence of truth, or the support of 
 error. — These help to give a body to their re- 
 spective sects, and afford an example and pro- 
 vocation to their sincere though deluded bre- 
 thren, both to those who are speculatively right, 
 and to those who are speculatively wrong, for 
 the exercise of an unchristian spirit. 
 
 Need I point out to you, my friends, the de- 
 grading influence of these divisions j and the 
 envy and emulation and strife and wrath which 
 they produce are not the fruits of the Holy 
 Spirit. — How strong, how powerful is the con- 
 demnation of them by the Apostle from whom 
 I have taken my text ; when he describes them 
 as rendering the Corinthians incapable of re- 
 ceiving that wisdom which the Holy Spirit 
 
10 
 
 teacheth. — How apt are they to lead us from 
 that humility, which ought to be the Chris- 
 tian's great characteristic, and that practical 
 piety, which evinces our devotion to God, 
 by our benevolence to man, by doing justice, 
 and loving mercy ! — There cannot be a greater 
 obstacle to the progress of Christianity among 
 the unconverted, than this spirit of conten- 
 tion among professing Christians.— We are 
 commanded to let our light shine before men, 
 that they may see our good works, and glo- 
 rify our Father which is in Heaven : but if we 
 be full of division, and emulation, and strife, 
 do we not present to the world darkness, and 
 confusion, instead of light ? Do we not pre- 
 sent to them the works of a hardened and un- 
 changed heart, instead of the fruits of the 
 spirit ? Do we not discredit the religion we 
 profess, by exposing it to be considered as 
 cherishing, or at least insufficient for coun- 
 teracting, the natural malevolence, and des- 
 perate wickedness, of the human heart ? 
 
 Whence proceeds it that the purity and ex- 
 cellence of the lives of the generality of Chris- 
 tians bear so little proportion to the excellence 
 and superiority of the faith which they pro- 
 fess ? It is, because, that satisfied with pro- 
 fession, satisfied with fancied accuracy of 
 tenet, they neglect integrity of practice ; satis- 
 
11 
 
 fied with the rectification of their intellect, 
 they neglect the culture of their affections. — 
 It is easier far to sway the opinions of others, 
 than to govern our own hearts ; to arrange or 
 support a system, to be good polemics, good cru- 
 saders in the war of speculation, than to be 
 good Christians ; and that easier task do too 
 many prefer ; — forgetful of the fate of those 
 who in the last day, from having persuaded 
 themselves that they had prophesied and 
 wrought wonderful works in the name of their 
 Redeemer, shall claim,— -but unsuccessfully 
 claim, his acceptance. — It is therefore well 
 worth while to'seek for some discriminating line, 
 between those doctrines of religion, which are 
 essential to Christianity, which, except a man 
 hold pure and undefiled, he cannot be saved, 
 and those which are rather matters of philoso- 
 phical speculation, than of religious import- 
 ance. There is a philosophy of religion, as 
 well as of other arts, and, as is the case with 
 them, in some parts intimately connected with 
 practical efficacy, and in others wandering 
 widely from it into the mazes of theory, but 
 with this difference, that, in other enquiries, our 
 means of investigation are almost unlimited : — 
 in the philosophy of religion, if we step beyond 
 the bounds of revelation, beyond the actual 
 text of Scripture, we find ourselves in a chaos 
 of ignorance and obscurity ; we experience, 
 
12 
 
 that the natural man receiveth not the things 
 which are of God, save where the Spirit of 
 God has moved on the face of the waters, and 
 his illuminating word has brought forth life and 
 light through the Gospel.— -Yes, my fellow 
 Christians, the Scripture is the great criterion, 
 by which we are to decide on the importance of 
 any doctrine. Any thing not contained therein 
 cannot he requisite for salvation : any thing not 
 fully and clearly contained therein, so that the 
 poor to whom the Gospel was preached could 
 apprehend it, ought not to be a shiboleth of ex- 
 clusion, in that flock which ought to be one, 
 as it is under one Shepherd, and into which 
 even the weak in faith are received.— If we 
 search the Scriptures we shall find some of the 
 speculative principles of religion ordained as the 
 express means of salvation ; delivered with the 
 accompanying declaration, that, except through 
 them, we cannot come to God ; while others 
 are alluded to, or indirectly implied, without 
 any such sanction ; — and if we wish to enquire 
 into their relative importance, we must take 
 into consideration their probable influence on 
 human conduct : nor should we make them 
 a ground of separation from those who appear 
 to us to err concerning them, except we can 
 shew that their errors have corrupted, or most 
 probably will corrupt, the heart, and debase 
 the conduct ; until we can do that, though we 
 
13 
 
 may shew them to be physically improbable, 
 or critically erroneous, we cannot prove them 
 to be dangerous heresies. — We should always 
 recollect, that on points of religious difference, 
 two sorts of arguments only are admissible ; the 
 authority of the Scriptures, and the obvious 
 influence of the tenet on practice : we cannot 
 argue a priori, for we have not perfect ideas of 
 the subjects concerned, and human authority, 
 as being liable to error, though it may influence, 
 should never decide us. — Of the admissible ar- 
 guments, the authority of Scripture is leading 
 and decisive ; — that from practical influence, is 
 subsidiary and explanatory, furnishing us with 
 a perpetual comment on the former, in the 
 principle, that Scripture can have no meaning 
 inconsistent with purity and charity ; can con- 
 tain no doctrine, but what will tend to promote 
 peace on earth, good will to man, and glory to 
 God in the Highest. 
 
 Were we to search the Scriptures, with this 
 recollection in our minds, and pray for the aid 
 of that Spirit whose fruits are love and peace 
 and joy ; were we to enquire concerning every 
 subject of dispute, whether the rightly under- 
 standing it be expressly declared to be requisite 
 for salvation, and if not, whether it be evidently 
 influential on conduct, and postpone all such 
 curious questions as are not so, until we found, 
 
14 
 
 by the practical effect of the obvious doctrines 
 of Christianity on our own lives, and those of 
 our hearers, that neither they nor we were weak 
 in faith, neither they unfit to receive, nor we 
 unfit to examine the spiritual things of God 
 we should be more ready to judge our own 
 hearts, than to condemn the errors of others, we 
 should feel that we may differ, without being 
 divided, and that, if we be followers of Christ, 
 we should love one another, preferring far above 
 any superiority in doubtful disputations, far 
 above any pharisaical spirit of separation, far 
 above any imaginary exclusive sanctity, the 
 unity of Christian spirit in the bond of Christian 
 peace. 
 
 May the Lord make you to increase in love 
 one towards another, and towards all men j to 
 the end that he may establish your hearts un- 
 blameable in Holiness before God, even our 
 Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ 
 with all his saints. 
 
SERMON II. 
 
 Mark, xvi. — 15, l6. 
 
 Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel 
 to every creature ; he that believeth, and is bap- 
 tised, shall be saved. 
 
 To a man of common understanding who had 
 never before heard of the Gospel of Christ, 
 perhaps there could not be offered a more im- 
 pressive predisposing argument for its reception, 
 than the history of the command recorded in 
 my text, and its astonishing fulfilment. It is 
 now eighteen hundred years since an obscure 
 company of ignorant mechanics, the followers 
 of an humble individual, declared that he had 
 appeared to them after his public execution, and 
 had commanded them to preach his Gospel to 
 every creature.— Could they have imagined an in- 
 
16 
 
 junction more seemingly beyond their powers to 
 comply with ? And yet, unlikely as it appeared, 
 that Gospel has been preached more widely than 
 the fame of the greatest conqueror, or the glory 
 of the most mighty empire, has ever extended. — 
 Kingdoms have risen and sunk and been for- 
 gotten ; the triumphs of the hero and the labours 
 of the philosopher have perished even from the 
 page of memory ; but the history of the life and 
 Crucifixion of the lowly Jesus has survived the 
 wreck of ages ; the history of the Gospel's pro- 
 gress has become a leading outline in the annals 
 of civilized mankind ; the precepts which ac- 
 companied it have supplied a foundation to the 
 moralist, and a rule to the legislator. And yet 
 this Gospel came not with wisdom of words, it 
 possessed not the ornaments of style, to fix the 
 admiration of the critic ; it recurred not to the 
 strength of composition to kindle the fancy, or 
 excite the passions in its cause ; like its author 
 it was meek, and lowly, without comeliness, or 
 beauty : — mankind had already histories of far 
 more attractive interest, and moral codes of 
 more imposing, more systematic, structure. To 
 what then shall we attribute its progress ; to 
 what can we attribute its progress, but to the 
 power of God ? — In it has he placed the glory 
 of the sun of righteousness ; — its line is gone out 
 through all the earth, and its word to the ends 
 of the world. Were we even to assert that the 
 
17 
 
 entire series of human events, the various revo- 
 lutions of power, the rise and fall of empires, 
 seem to have been adapted by an overruling 
 Providence, first to prepare the way for that 
 Gospel, and afterwards to forward its progress, 
 the proposition, so far from being indefensible 
 or visionary, would be one which those who 
 have taken the most comprehensive views of 
 history would perhaps be the most ready to ad- 
 mit. How interesting therefore must every 
 enquiry concerning that Gospel be ? But there 
 is one enquiry, namely, what that Gospel is ? 
 wherein the preaching of it consists ? which is 
 more than interesting, for it is important. To 
 you, my fellow Christians, is the enquiry import- 
 ant, to all of you, for all of you will be hearers 
 of the Gospel, or what is presented to you 
 under the name of the Gospel, is it most highly 
 important to draw the line between what you 
 are to receive as the voice of your God, and 
 those oppositions of science falsely so called, 
 which under the authority of that same voice, 
 you are bound to avoid. Nor let me be deemed 
 presumptuous in attempting the task ; daring 
 indeed should I be did I do so relying on my 
 own judgment or my own ingenuity ; impru- 
 dent should I be did I rely on any human au- 
 thority when I have the word of God within my 
 reach — to that alone shall I look for truth, on 
 that shall I depend lor information j — bear with 
 vol. r. c 
 
me therefore my fellow Christians while I re- 
 peat what my elders already know, and what 
 many of my youngers I trust need only be re- 
 minded of. And yet the enquiry is not super- 
 fluous, for from the days of the Apostles to the 
 present time, many have preached Christ of 
 contention, many have preached not Christ but 
 themselves, their own conceits, their own in- 
 ventions to mankind — to those who fancied 
 themselves the peculiar people of God, have 
 the mercy and humility of the Gospel been a 
 stumbling block ; to those who sought for the 
 intricacies of philosophical theory, has its sim- 
 plicity been foolishness — while to such as be- 
 lieved and trusted, has it been the power of 
 God unto salvation. 
 
 Let us therefore with humility of mind ap- 
 proach the sacred fountains of divine instruc- 
 tion, and learn from thence what the Gospel is, 
 and wherein the preaching of it consists, deter- 
 mined to esteem nothing the Gospel but what 
 the Scriptures describe as such, and mindful of 
 the impressive denunciation of the Apostle, 
 " though we or an angel from heaven preach any 
 " other Gospel to you than that which we have 
 " preached let him be accursed." 
 
 The earliest account we meet with of the 
 preaching of the Gospel is that by the heavenly 
 
\9 
 
 host to the Shepherds of Bethelhem, when the 
 glory of the Lord shone around them, and the 
 angel of the Lord said unto them, fear not, for 
 behold I declare to you a Gospel of exceeding 
 joy, which shall be to all people, for unto you 
 is a Saviour born, which is Christ the Lord. 
 This dawning of the day spring from on high 
 was accompanied by the praises of those supe- 
 rior beings who rejoice to behold the mystery 
 of redemption — they sung the highest glory of 
 their God, the message of his peace and good 
 will to mankind. The description here given 
 of this first declaration of the Gospel, or joyful 
 tidings of Christ, naturally recalls to our me- 
 mory the prophetic vision of the same glorious 
 event. Bearing precisely the same meaning, 
 and declaring precisely the same incident, the 
 anticipation of the prophet being more detailed 
 and copious may serve as an explanatory para- 
 phrase on the song of angels. For unto us a 
 Child is born ; unto us a Son is given ; and the 
 Government shall be on his shoulder, and his 
 name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the 
 Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince 
 of peace. Oh ! Zion, thou that bringest the Gos- 
 pel, get thee up into the high mountain ; oh ! Je- 
 rusalem, thou that bringest the Gospel, lift up 
 thy voice with strength, be not afraid ; say unto 
 the cities of Judah, behold your God, for the 
 
 C 2 
 
20 
 
 Lord God shall come with power, his reward is 
 with him, and his work is before him. 
 
 Here, my fellow Christians, is the first outline 
 of the Gospel. Its contents are simple, that a 
 Saviour has come, that this Saviour is the 
 Almighty God — that his coming is a cause of 
 joy to all people, a declaration of peace and 
 good will from God to mankind, that he bears 
 with him the reward of righteousness, and has 
 begun the work of salvation. — Strongly marked, 
 and clear, and plain, so that he that runs may 
 read, is this outline ; and yet most earnestly 
 would I point it out to the attention of many 
 who call themselves Christians. — Let those who 
 deny that Christ is the Almighty God, let 
 •those who would limit the joy of his coming 
 to the few who agree with themselves in me- 
 taphysical tenets, let such I say, consider well 
 how they can adapt this outline to their re- 
 spective systems. 
 
 The next preaching of the Gospel is by the 
 "Saviour himself. — We find him described by 
 the Evangelists in his various addresses to his 
 disciples, or to the people at large, as sometimes 
 preaching, sometimes teaching, and these two 
 seem to be distinct from each other.— When 
 he taught he delivered moral precepts, when 
 
21 
 
 lie preached he proclaimed facts ; — his teaching 
 and preaching sometimes followed each other, 
 but were never confounded. He is never said 
 to have taught that the kingdom of God was at 
 hand, nor to have taught the Gospel to the poor ; 
 his teaching is always represented either as the 
 authoritative delivery of moral precepts, or as 
 appears in a few instances, the explication of 
 these prophecies which related to the future 
 events of his mission. When we find him de- 
 scribed as preaching, he universally confines 
 himself to the declaring, or proclaiming of 
 certain facts certain joyful tidings. — In this, 
 therefore, consisted the preaching of the Gospel 
 as preached by the Redeemer himself. — Would 
 we know what that Gospel was, we have only 
 to look to the Scriptures for what those facts 
 were. It is no cunningly devised system of un- 
 intelligible speculations, no dream of mysticism, 
 no ingenious deduction of abstract metaphysi- 
 cal reasoning — but a plain and clear message of 
 peace and reconciliation from God to man, a sim- 
 ple publication of interesting facts, easy to be 
 apprehended, and joyful to those who received 
 it. One fact was that the kingdom of Heaven 
 was at hand, the meaning of which appears to 
 be that God was about to assume a controlling 
 influence over the human mind, was about to 
 establish his kingdom in the hearts of his chosen, 
 that to those who love the Redeemer, would 
 
22 
 
 the Father come, and take up his abode with 
 them, that he would put his law into their inward 
 parts, taking from them their heart of stone, 
 and giving them an heart of flesh. — Connected 
 with this Christ also preached repentance, pro- 
 claimed the joyful tidings that this change of 
 heart was about to be effected. — I need not, I 
 believe, prove to my present audience that 
 scriptural repentance signifies a change of mind 
 — I shall only remark that where mere sorrow 
 for sin is meant, a different word, as in the case 
 of Judas, is used to express it. — This change of 
 mind, being the work of God, is a matter of 
 fact, the declaration of it is the intelligence of 
 a joyful occurrence, and therefore an appro- 
 priate part of the preaching of the Gospel, of 
 the proclamation of joyful tidings. — But while 
 it is wholly the work of God, it is a work in 
 which though man cannot originally assist, he 
 must afterwards cooperate — though he cannot 
 in any degree produce the effect, he must join 
 in the exertion ; though God works in him both 
 to will and to do, yet he commands him also to 
 work out his own salvation ; — repentance there- 
 fore, or change of mind, becomes an object of 
 teaching and exhortation, in this point of view, 
 as it is of preaching, when we consider it merely 
 with reference to God. — I mention this to pre- 
 vent you from thinking that preaching and 
 
23 
 
 teaching are confounded with each other, when 
 we find repentance the subject of both. 
 
 Another fact, another part of the glad tidings 
 which Christ proclaimed to the world, is that 
 the Father hath given him authority to execute 
 judgment because he is the Son of Man, that 
 he has committed all judgment to the Son, 
 because he had taken our nature upon him, 
 that we have an high priest who is capable of 
 being touched with the feeling of our in- 
 firmities — to this joyful intelligence he superadds 
 another, that he is our mediator with God — 
 the door, the way by which we can approach 
 the Father, that he is the light of the world, the 
 life and the truth, that he has given himself 
 for the life of the world, that he has given him- 
 self a ransom for many, and that whosoever 
 believeth on him hath everlasting lite ; — this 
 declaration of these joyful facts he crowns by 
 that of the dignity of the ransom, though he 
 had not assumed the external characteristics of 
 Deity, but had taken on him the form of a 
 servant, and had made himself of no reputation. 
 — Yet, in the midst of his humiliation he de- 
 clares himself one with the Father ; I and the 
 Father am one ; he that hath seen me hath seen 
 him that sent me ; I am in the Father and the 
 Father in me ; — I am hath sent you, said the 
 God of Abraham to Moses, from the burning 
 
24 
 
 bush — before Abraham was I am, said God 
 manifested in the flesh, to his disciples. 
 
 Is not this a glorious Gospel, my fellow 
 Christians ? is not this Gospel of peace, this 
 Gospel of the grace of God, this Gospel of 
 jour salvation tidings of exceeding joy to all 
 people ? — Ordained, as the law was of old, by 
 angels in the hand of a Mediator, it was a light 
 to lighten the Gentiles, as well as the glory of 
 the people Israel. It proclaimed joyful tidings 
 to the poor, it healed the broken hearted, it 
 proclaimed deliverance to the captives and 
 recovering of sight to the blind, it set at liberty 
 the wounded, and published the acceptable year 
 of the Lord ; ; — in it, as in the blessed messenger 
 of it's covenant, the numerous families of the 
 earth were blessed. The poor in spirit were 
 blessed, for the reign of God was established 
 within them, the mourners were comforted, 
 those who lmngred and thirsted after righteous- 
 ness were filled, the merciful obtained mercy, 
 and the pure in heart beheld their God. 
 
 Such is the outline of the Gospel as preached 
 by him who declared, that for the purpose of 
 preaching it had he come forth from God. — 
 The other facts of the Gospel, namely, the 
 actual sacrifice of the Redeemer, his resurrec- 
 tion, and the pouring out of the Spirit on all 
 
25 
 
 flesh, though he had adverted to them as future 
 events, cannot with propriety be considered as 
 part of his preaching, nor are they mentioned 
 as such by the Evangelists. — We must consider 
 them under the head of the Gospel as preached 
 by the Apostles. 
 
 As the Apostles had been sent before by their 
 blessed master, during his ministry, to preach 
 the Gospel of the kingdom to the surrounding 
 cities, so after his resurrection did he command 
 them to publish that same Gospel, with its ad- 
 ditional facts, which at once completed and 
 confirmed it, to all the nations of the earth — 
 they were to evince the divinity of their mis- 
 sion, by miraculous powers ; they were to bear 
 testimony to their sincerity, by martyrdom. — 
 Let no one be surprised that miracles and mar- 
 tyrdom should have been exclusively appropri- 
 ated to the first age of Christianity. Miracles 
 constantly repeated cease to be considered as 
 such, lose the effect which at first they are cal- 
 culated to produce, therefore in order that they 
 should operate towards the establishment of the 
 Gospel, they must have had a period. — Mar- 
 tyrdoms also are only efficient to prove the 
 truth of any fact, when they are those of the 
 individuals who actually witnessed that fact, the 
 voluntary death of any other person in testimony 
 of his sincerity, proves only that the same evi- 
 
26 
 
 dence which is presented to us, has influenced 
 him to conviction. — Christian martyrdom must 
 therefore naturally have ceased with those who 
 beheld the Redeemer's death, and witnessed his 
 resurrection. — Thus exclusively authorized by 
 miracles, and sealed with the blood of its 
 preachers, the Gospel of the Apostles comes to 
 us with the most powerful evidence that any 
 publication of facts is capable of having. In 
 the treatises which the Evangelists have left us 
 we find combined with the account of the teach- 
 ing and other discourses of our Saviour, the de- 
 tail of those facts which form that Gospel which 
 they were commanded to preach to the world;— 
 in them therefore are we to look for the facts, 
 in them therefore are we to look for the Gospel. — 
 In the Acts of the Apostles are we to look for 
 their manner of preaching the Gospel. In their 
 Epistles are we to look for their comments on 
 this Gospel, the inferences which they made 
 from this Gospel, the teaching which they 
 grounded on this Gospel, the teaching which 
 they had of God. 
 
 The pursuit of this part of the subject, too 
 important to be hurried over, would carry me 
 beyond the time usually allotted to discourses 
 from this place. I shall therefore defer it to 
 some other opportunity. Suffer me for the pre- 
 sent to call your attention to a consideration re- 
 
27 
 
 suiting from the nature of the Gospel. — The 
 Gospel is the message of love from God to man, 
 the tidings of reconciliation, the promise of the 
 presence of the Holy Spirit — it is to be pub- 
 lished, it is to be perpetuated, not merely so as 
 to be capable of being occasionally referred to 
 by the eye of historic curiosity, but so as to be 
 ever present to our hearts. — The memory of the 
 love of God should, like God himself, be about 
 our path, and about our bed, and accompany 
 us in all our ways ; — to effect this has the Sacra- 
 ment of the Lord's Supper been instituted, a rite 
 which at once conveys and cherishes the me- 
 mory of him that loved us, and is the outward 
 and visible sign of an inward and spiritual gift. 
 The last act of our Redeemer was to command, 
 to entreat his Disciples, to continue this rite in 
 remembrance of him ; he has sanctioned it by 
 no ordinary declaration, " except ye eat the 
 " flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, 
 " ye have no life in you ; he that eateth my 
 " flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me 
 " and I in him. "-—Will you, my fellow Chris- 
 tians, neglect this offered means of perpetuating 
 in your hearts the memory of your Redeemer's 
 love ; will you neglect the gift of life, the con- 
 dition, the symbol, the vehicle of spiritual bles- 
 sing — will you account the blood of Christ's 
 atonement an unholy thing, by turning your 
 backs on his gracious invitation ? You have 
 
28 
 
 heard from the table of the Lord, that on the 
 approaching Sabbath the Sacrament of the 
 Lord's Supper will be there administered. — Let 
 me entreat you not to be absent yourselves from 
 it. — Let me entreat you to avail yourselves of 
 every opportunity of partaking of it.— -Do not 
 misunderstand the denunciation of Scripture, 
 that whoso eateth and drinketh the same un- 
 worthily, eateth and drinketh his own condem- 
 nation. There is a difference between being 
 worthy to eat thereof, and eating worthily. 
 Worthily! my fellow Christians ! who is worthy? 
 who can be worthy ? we are not worthy so much 
 as to gather up the crumbs under thy table, but 
 thou art the same Lord, whose property is al- 
 ways to have mercy. To communicate wor- 
 thily, requires not so much previous sanctity, 
 as present disposition of mind, not the expe- 
 rience of justification, not the confidence of 
 righteousness, but the desire of pardon. Had 
 the Bread of Life been presented to the Pub- 
 lican, though perhaps previously as unworthy 
 as the Pharisee, or as we, he would have re- 
 ceived the same not unworthily. If you receive 
 it with reverence, with humility, with faith, 
 with an earnest anxiety to be freed from the 
 dominion of sin, and presenting yourselves, 
 your souls and bodies to be a reasonable, holy, 
 and lively sacrifice to your God, you will re- 
 ceive the same not unworthily. If you have 
 
29 
 
 malice in your heart, and are determined to 
 cherish it, then indeed come not to that ta- 
 ble — but then also abstain from imprecating the 
 wrath of God on your heads, by beseeching him 
 to pardon you in the same manner as you for- 
 give those that trespass against you. If you 
 have impurity in your hearts, and are deter- 
 mined to cling to it — then indeed come not to 
 that table — but then T tremble for your danger 
 — you live in the midst of death — thousands fall 
 beside you, and ten thousands at your right 
 hand — perhaps this night may your soul be re- 
 quired of you ; and if you are not fit to appear 
 at the table of the Lord, oh ! how shall you ap- 
 pear before his judgment seat. 
 
 But, my fellow Christians, I have far differ- 
 ent hopes of you. In your tender years the 
 glow of anger, 1 would willingly persuade myself, 
 has never yet kindled into permanent malice — 
 the depravity of nature has not yet been strength- 
 ened by habitual indulgence — the seeds of im- 
 purity have not as yet hopelessly rooted them- 
 selves in your hearts. Come, before the world, 
 before pleasure, before sin have sealed you as 
 their servants, and offer to your God the morn- 
 ing sacrifice of your life, the grateful incense 
 of your youth. Come and partake of the offered 
 means of cherishing the love of God in your 
 hearts. Beneath its sacred influence, shall you 
 
30 
 
 be safe from future pollution, under its guid- 
 ance shall you tread securely the furnance of 
 temptation, and enter into the joy of your Lord 
 —who shall pluck you out of his hand ? who 
 shall separate you from the love of God ? 
 
 May he accept and preserve you— and to his 
 holy name be glory now and for ever. 
 
SERMON III. 
 
 Mark, xvi. — 15, 16. 
 
 Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel 
 to every creature ; he that believeth and is bap- 
 tised shall be saved. 
 
 IT has been imagined I fear, by many, that ab- 
 stract and abstruse speculations concerning the 
 nature of God and man form a principal part of 
 the Gospel, and constitute what have been de- 
 nominated the higher doctrines of Christianity. 
 To the value and merits of this opinion I was 
 anxious to direct your investigation, and there- 
 fore on a former occasion, I called your atten- 
 tion to the enquiry ; " what the Gospel is, and 
 wherein the preaching of it consists." It ap- 
 peared to me expedient to propose and partly 
 
32 
 
 to enter on the subject then, but to defer the 
 prosecution of it both that we might have suf- 
 ficient opportunity for its full discussion, and 
 also that, in the intervening time, you might 
 search the Scriptures, satisfy yourselves whe- 
 ther what I had advanced was authorised, and 
 be ready to appreciate the observations which I 
 shall now submit to you. 
 
 In the preaching of the Gospel antecedent 
 to the sacrifice of the Redeemer, as described 
 by the Evangelists, we find merely a proclama- 
 tion of certain joyful tidings, we find facts, and 
 nothing but facts, speculative tenets are never 
 described as the object of it. So exclusively is 
 the word which has been rendered " Preaching 
 the Gospel," confined to this meaning, that it 
 is never applied even to the publication of the 
 moral precepts which accompanied and were 
 grounded on that Gospel ; this was denominated 
 teaching, and its object was called doctrine. I 
 am aware that the word doctrine has, by com- 
 .mon use, acquired a very different, or at least a 
 much more general signification ; but we are at 
 present concerned only with its Scriptural 
 meaning, and I believe if you search the Bible 
 you will find that its general import is moral 
 precept, that in all passages it may signify that, 
 and in almost all can signify nothing else. 
 
S3 
 
 Tin* teaching of morality, this doctrine which 
 was according to Godliness, accompanied and 
 was grounded for its authority on the Gospel. 
 Combined with the preaching of the Gospel it 
 formed the substance of the various addresses 
 of our Saviour whether to the people, or to his 
 disciples. We never find him entering into de- 
 tails of speculative theory, or adverting to those 
 points of doubtful disputation, which have since 
 so widely polluted the peace and purity of the 
 Christian Church. 
 
 Even with respect to the glorious events 
 which he announced, we never find him at- 
 tempting to explain how these things could be. 
 He declared that he who is one with the Fa- 
 ther, who is before Abraham was, had been 
 sent by the Father to make atonement for our 
 sins ; but never even hints at an explanation of 
 how he could at once be both God and man, 
 nor of the manner in which his death could be 
 efficacious for washing us from our sins, or his 
 resurrection for ensuring our justification. Per- 
 haps we may even justly doubt whether an ex-, 
 plication would have been possible to human 
 hearers. If every explanation of any fact be 
 but the referring it to some general law, any 
 fact which is single and exclusively of its own 
 kind, cannot be explained. 
 
 We find him declaring the relations of God 
 
 VOL. I. D 
 
34 
 
 to man, which we can understand ; not the ab- 
 solute natures of either, which are beyond the 
 measure of our faculties. He declares even 
 these, not in abstract propositions, but by the 
 publication of facts, which expressed and result- 
 ed from them, and on these relations, on the 
 Gospel of these facts, he grounds not theory but 
 precept. " The kingdom of God is at hand, be ye 
 " therefore changed in your minds; bring forth" 
 (as the Baptist had before exhorted) " fruits 
 " meet for a changed heart — " Be ye perfect, 
 " even as your Father which is in heaven is per- 
 " feet." He proclaims the love of God to man, 
 and apeals to the hearts, not the heads of his hear- 
 ers ; requires the exercise of the affections, not 
 the labour of the intellect. By the Gospel of the 
 remission of sins he awakens the hope of the 
 sinner ; by the Gospel of a change of heart, he 
 inspires him with confidence ; by the Gospel of 
 the " Kingdom of God, which is within us," 
 and the promise of redemption, which he was 
 about to accomplish, he excites his gratitude ; 
 and by a teaching, which was with authority, by 
 a word, which came with power, he points to 
 obedience as the appropriate expression of that 
 faith which was the gift of God, that love which 
 the Holy Spirit had shed abroad into the hearts 
 of the redeemed. — " If ye love me, keep my 
 c< commandments." 
 
35 
 
 Conformable to this, as we may naturally sup- 
 pose they should have been, were the preach- 
 ing and the teaching of the Apostles. Their 
 mission was to teach and to baptise all nations, 
 to preach and to testify, by the highest proof of 
 persuasion and sincerity that man can give, the 
 facts asserted in the Gospel. It is a great mis- 
 take to confound the martyrdoms of these first 
 preachers of Christianity with the voluntary 
 deaths of its professors in after ages.—" Mar- 
 tyrdom," says a learned author, influenced by 
 this misconception, " is no proof ot the truth 
 of any system, it only evinces the sincerity of 
 its reception by the martyr." True, if by 
 " system" be meant system of tenets ; but it 
 is perhaps the strongest possible proof of the 
 truth of testimony as to tact, and its appropri- 
 ate province in the Christian dispensation is to 
 witness, not opinions, but facts, not a system of 
 speculation, but the Gospel of our redemption ; 
 — and there is reason to believe that every wit- 
 ness of the facts which constituted that Gospel 
 sealed his testimony with his blood. 
 
 Examine the addresses of these witnesses to 
 the people recorded in the Acts of the Apos- 
 tles, and you will find that they consist of the 
 proclamation of certain facts, and the proposi- 
 tion of a certain doctrine, a certain teaching 
 sanctioned hytho, authority which Utey Itei " 
 
36 
 
 from the existence of* those facts. They first 
 proclaimed the coming, the death, the resur- 
 rection of the Redeemer, the pouring forth of 
 the promised Spirit, and thence they deduced 
 the authority of command ; " Be ye therefore 
 " changed in your mind, and be converted from 
 " the evil of your ways." They first declared faith 
 in the Redeemer to be the means, and the only 
 means, of salvation from the power and conse- 
 quences of sin, and then they reasoned of righ- 
 teousness, temperance, and judgment to come. 
 They first preached the kingdom of God, pro- 
 claimed the redemption, testified the influence 
 of the Spirit, and then taught the things con- 
 cerning the love and obedience which are due 
 to the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 As in the Acts of the Apostles we find an 
 account of some of the addresses of those mes- 
 sengers of God to the Jews and Gentiles at 
 large ; so in their Epistles do we possess a re- 
 cord of their manner of renewing the memory 
 of the Gospel which had been preached, and the 
 doctrine which had been taught. We may con- 
 sider them as a comment on that Gospel and 
 doctrine, and a pattern of what would have 
 been their preaching and teaching to Churches 
 already established, had they been present. In 
 them therefore, if the understanding of mys- 
 teries be of essential importance, we would na- 
 
37 
 
 turally expect to find their explication. If spe- 
 culative tenets constitute the higher and more 
 perfect doctrines of Christianity, we might ex- 
 pect to find them at least proposed, and expli- 
 citly detailed in these Epistles. If without the 
 reception of them we cannot come to God, 
 surely they would have been clearly imparted 
 to those who were already grounded in the faith, 
 and had already received the Holy Spirit. We 
 cannot suppose that they would have been left 
 to the research of future professors, to deduce 
 them, by the assistance of metaphysical system, 
 from the occasional allusions to a knowledge too 
 wonderful for man, which occur in Scripture, 
 without being declared to be either parts of 
 the Gospel, or connected with the command- 
 ment. 
 
 That such allusions should occur was both na- 
 tural and necessary. The Apostles had to com- 
 bat the prejudices of the Jew, and to meet the 
 argument of the Greek ; they had to guard the 
 faith of their infant Churches pure and unde- 
 filed by the mystic figments of a luxuriant fan- 
 cy, the theories of a vain philosophy, and the 
 oppositions of science, falsely so called. We 
 find Saint Paul disputing with the Grecians, 
 reasoning with, and mightily convincing the 
 Jews, persuading the things concerning the 
 kingdom of God. In such contests as these, 
 
3S 
 
 objections would naturally be offered, and ar- 
 guments advanced, connected with speculative 
 opinions ; they were therefore to be answered 
 by a declaration of the truth on these points, 
 how obscure and incomprehensible soever that 
 truth might be. In some instances, it is possi- 
 ble the objectors might have been silenced by 
 appealing to their own received opinions, with- 
 out by any means establishing the importance 
 of those opinions. 
 
 Hence, as we may observe, the Epistles ap- 
 pear to contain three distinct topics, a repeti- 
 tion of the facts of the Gospel, a delivery of 
 precepts to direct the exertion of the love, 
 the grateful wish for conformity and obedience, 
 which faith in those facts produced, and the 
 Holy Spirit rendered perfect j and thirdly, a 
 disclosure of certain divine truths sufficient to 
 obviate the objections, and remove the doubts 
 whether of the Judaizing Christian, to whom the 
 humility and simplicity of the Gospel were still 
 a stumbling block, or of the Gentile convert, 
 who being weak in faith, spoiled through phi- 
 losophy and vain deceit after the rudiments of 
 the world, hesitated in his belief, because he 
 could not fathom all the counsels of God, and, 
 like Thomas, would not believe, except he had 
 actual perception of every thing connected with 
 his redemption. These truths, however, arc 
 only used for their appropriate purpose ; — they 
 
39 
 
 arc not declared to be part of the Gospel. — The 
 Gospel had been preached before they were 
 disclosed, and was in itself sufficient for salva- 
 tion. The reception of them is not declared to 
 be the means of rendering us righteous here, 
 and causing us to be accounted so hereafter ; 
 And this, my fellow Christians, is the great cha- 
 racteristic oj the Gospel. 
 
 Are we then to esteem them as of little im- 
 portance ? By no means. — They have been de- 
 livered by the voice of inspiration, and are 
 therefore true and worthy to be received.— 
 They enable us .to give a reason of the hope 
 which is in us, and are therefore valuable. But 
 they are to be used for this purpose with meek- 
 ness and fear. They concern subjects above 
 the measure of our faculties ; they have not 
 been fully explained, therefore beyond the let- 
 ter of the inspired authority, we must not go. 
 We must not make them the grounds of meta- 
 physical theory ; we must not even deduce mo- 
 ral doctrine from them, for the Gospel is of that 
 the only sure foundation. We must not re- 
 quire that others should agree with us in our 
 arbitrary exposition of them. He who suffers 
 theoretical zeal to produce in him unchristian 
 feelings, or unchristian conduct towards his bro- 
 ther, excludes, not his imagined victim, but 
 himself from the flock of his Redeemer. — 
 
40 
 
 Though we have the knowledge of all myste- 
 ries, and have not charity, we are nothing. 
 
 On such points, my fellow Christians, it is 
 safest not to speculate at all. They may be con- 
 sidered as a kind of philosophy connected with 
 religion, but it is a philosophy which should not 
 be pursued. And if we do pursue it, we should 
 not be surprised if we differ from each other in 
 our deductions, or even in our manner of un- 
 derstanding the principles themselves, nor should 
 we make those differences the ground of separa- 
 tion. We should remember that these truths have 
 been advanced for a particular purpose, to si- 
 lence objections, and for this, and only for this, 
 should they be used. We must receive and use 
 them, but we must give them their due estima- 
 tion ; true, but not practically operative, sub- 
 sidary, not principal, and necessary only where 
 the question has been started. The Gospel and 
 the precept, the word and the commandment, 
 that which was preached and that whicli was 
 taught are the essentials ; theoretical opinions 
 are only subordinate. Philosophy is not reli- 
 gion, but to walk humbly with our God. The- 
 ry is not religion, but to visit the widow and 
 the fatherless in their affliction. Rectitude of 
 speculation is not religion, but to lay hold on 
 the hope which is set before us, the salvation 
 which is offered to us, and thereby to keep our- 
 
41 
 
 selves unspotted from the world. He that would 
 substitute an imagined accuracy of mystic tenets, 
 for that living faith in Jesus, which is unto obe- 
 dience, would give to those who seek for bread, a 
 stone, and to those who require meat, a scorpion. 
 And yet, in all ages of the Church, has the 
 anxiety for forming a perfect system of religious 
 philosophy been prevalent, and mankind seem 
 not to have been aware, that imperfect as are our 
 ideas on all things, those connected with reli. 
 gious theory are, and from their nature must 
 be, of all the most imperfect. We ought to re- 
 collect that the Scriptures contain every thing 
 which is necessary for salvation, and therefore 
 if completion of system were requisite, in them 
 should we have found it ; we should have seen 
 not as through a glass darkly, but know as we 
 are known. 
 
 Nothing can form an essential part of the 
 Christians faith but what has been preached by 
 Christ and his Apostles as the Gospel j nothing 
 can be of indispensable importance to him but 
 what has been used as the foundation of their 
 moral doctrine ; and for this purpose we know 
 that nothing has been used, but what had been 
 previously preached as the Gospel. When 
 therefore the question arises respecting the re- 
 ception of any thing as a part of religious 
 faith, we are_to consider, has it been declared in 
 
Scripture as part of the joyful tidings of our sal- 
 vation j has it been used by the Apostles to ex- 
 cite our hearts to obedience. If it has not, we 
 may safely suspend our investigation as to its 
 meaning and consequences ; and should it be 
 merely a human deduction, asserted to follow 
 from Scripture, we may even suspend our as- 
 sent as to its truth. It may be true, it may be 
 ingenious, it may be sublime, it may be philo- 
 sophy, but it is not religion. 
 
 Had the propensity for making sacred things 
 the subjects of theoretical research been produc- 
 tive only of theoretical obscurity and error, the 
 evil would have been comparatively of little 
 importance. But alas! it has not merely de- 
 ceived the Church in their expectations of spi- 
 ritual food, it has not merely given them that 
 which was useless, but also that which was de- 
 structive. Whence have arisen those various 
 divisions which have from time to time dis- 
 graced the Church, banished the unity of the 
 spirit, and broken the bond of peace. The facts 
 which constitute the Gospel are easy to be ap- 
 prehended, the precepts grounded thereon are 
 clear, all who deserve the name of Christians 
 agree on them. What therefore divides them ? 
 Matters of doubtful disputation. Oh my fellow 
 Christians are we not carnal ? while one says I 
 am Paul, and another I am of Apollos, are we 
 
43 
 
 not carnal, and walk as men ? On the facts of the 
 Gospel, and on the precepts of the doctrine, all 
 who even call themselves Christians would have 
 agreed, had they not grasped after a wisdom 
 too wonderful for man, had they not, like the 
 first who fell, thirsted for a knowledge which 
 had not been vouchsafed by God. Proposing 
 questions respecting the nature of the Beings 
 concerned in the facts of the Gospel, because 
 they could not adapt their systems to the Scrip- 
 ture, they forced the Scripture to their systems. 
 Resorting to the arbitrary supposition of figu- 
 rative language, and where that failed relying 
 on erroneous criticism, and even voluntary false- 
 hood, putting away a good conscience, they 
 make shipwreck of their faith. 
 
 Christ had declared himself both God and 
 Man, an assertion which contained not even 
 the appearance of contradiction, and was there- 
 fore easily apprehended, and which was testi- 
 fied in such a manner as to be easily received on 
 the credit of the proposer, who felt the affec- 
 tions and weaknesses of the flesh, and yet com- 
 manded the powers of nature, who lived and 
 died as man, wrought miracles and triumphed 
 over death as God. Cerinthus, however, could 
 not conceive the manner in which the divine 
 and human natures could be united, that is he 
 could find no other fact with which to classify 
 
44 
 
 it. Therefore, with the Gospel in his hands, he 
 denied that Christ was man, denied that Christ 
 had suffered in the flesh. Socinus could not 
 satisfy himself on the same point of speculation, 
 he therefore had recourse to the beginning of 
 John's Gospel to prove that Christ was not God 
 —that God had not visited his people. And 
 his followers at this day, with the pretension of 
 sincerity and simplicity, profess that they can 
 find in Scripture no assertion of his divinity. — 
 The Arian imagined that by wisdom he could 
 know his God, and where he found the Scrip- 
 ture inconsistent with his inventions, explained 
 away its meaning, and denied the equality of 
 the persons of Jehovah. The Antinomian could 
 not reconcile the necessity of the moral law to 
 his ideas of election, and therefore denied its 
 obligation. The Gnostic of the first age, and 
 the mystic of later periods, imagined that ob- 
 scurity could consecrate the dreams of a dis- 
 ordered fancy, and converted into one vast sys- 
 tem of barren mystery that living word of God 
 which is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for 
 instruction in righteousness, that the man of 
 God may be perfectly furnished into all good 
 works. Sects became as numerous as tenets, 
 and all in their zeal for what God had not re- 
 vealed, forgot that brotherly love which he had 
 commanded. 
 
45 
 
 Such, my fellow Christians, have been the 
 fruits of a theorising spirit in religion. Be as- 
 sured there never was a more fatal mistake, than 
 to imagine that contemplation is piety, or that 
 speculative tenets can form the higher doctrines 
 of Christianity. I again repeat to you, on the 
 authority of the Bible, that the doctrines of the 
 Apostles were moral precepts, and their higher 
 doctrines nothing but a more full and impres- 
 sive disclosure of those rules of obedience, 
 strong in hope, grounded in faith, rooted in 
 brotherly love. Great was faith, great was hope, 
 but greater was charity. 
 
 Let us, says the Apostle to the Hebrews, 
 laying by the account of the beginning of Christ, 
 and of the precepts of baptism, and the impo- 
 sition of hands, go on to perfection. And what 
 is this perfection ? What is this higher doctrine 
 of Christianity ? After having declared to them, 
 after having preached to them that Jesus ever 
 liveth to make intercession for us, that he is a 
 mediator of a better covenant, established on 
 better promises, a covenant which puts the law 
 of God into the minds of his people, writes it in 
 their hearts, and purges their conscience from 
 dead works to serve the living God, that unto 
 them that look for him shall he appear the se- 
 cond time without sin unto salvation, he draws 
 from thence these practical conclusions, he 
 
grounds thereon this perfection of doctrine, 
 
 " let us therefore holding fast the profession 
 of our faith, provoke one another to love and 
 good works. Follow peace and holiness, look- 
 ing diligently, lest any man fall from the grace 
 of God." And then he proceeds to deliver com- 
 prehensive precepts of charity, purity, obedience 
 to superiors, and thanksgiving to God, and 
 beseeches the God of peace to make them per- 
 fect in every good work to do his will, working 
 in them that which is well pleasing in his sight. 
 
 This, my fellow Christians, is the perfection 
 of teaching ; these, according to Saint Paul, 
 are the higher doctrines of Christianity. Re- 
 pentance from dead works is the first precept of 
 that teaching which is of God ; works meet for 
 repentance are the more advanced. No obscure 
 mysticism, — no barren speculation, — no root of 
 bitterness and division, but holiness and joy 
 and peace in the Lord ; good will to mankind in 
 its progress ; glory to God in its perfection. 
 
 Bearing in our minds these ideas of the 
 preaching and teaching of Christ and his 
 Apostles, we immediately see the unreasonable- 
 ness of those religious parties who mutually 
 condemn each other, one for enthusiasm, in con- 
 stantly preaching to the people the sufferings 
 and death and promises of our Redeemer, and 
 
47 
 
 dwelling, without change or variety, on the facts 
 which constitute the Gospel of our Redemp- 
 tion ; and the other for want of saving know- 
 ledge, in delivering moral sermons, which their 
 adversaries venture to stigmatise as unscriptural 
 doctrine. 
 
 To preach the Gospel, my fellow Christians, 
 is not enthusiasm. To teach morality is not un- 
 scriptural. Both should be combined, as by the 
 Apostles. In their writings we find frequent 
 repetitions of the Gospel, and frequent exhorta- 
 tions to holiness. Every revival of the memory 
 of our redemption is followed by a call to 
 righeousness of life ; every call to righeousness 
 is preceeded by a recapitulation of the redeem- 
 ing mercies of God. The Gospel is the soul, 
 the precepts are the organs of our religion. 
 Excluded from the precept, the Gospel wants 
 its means of operation ; cut oft' from the Gospel 
 the precept is dead. 
 
 Would any one conversant in the Scripture 
 blame a minister of the Gospel for preaching 
 that Christ died for our sins, and rose again for 
 our justification, that he is of God, made unto 
 us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctific^'on, 
 and redemption ; that he has entered by his 
 blood into the holy of holies, and has sent us 
 another comforter, who shall abide with us for 
 
48 
 
 ever. But shall we preach this constantly ? 
 Shall we dwell on it ? Will not the repetition 
 be wearisome to our hearers ? — Constantly, my 
 fellow Christians, always, and ever. Write it 
 upon thine heart ; bind it for :i sign upon thine 
 hand ; let it be for frontlets between thine 
 eyes ; let is be seen, like the blood of the Pas- 
 cal Lamb, on thy posts, and on thy doors ; it is 
 the power of God unto salvation. Though the 
 Gospel be the same, though Jesus Christ be 
 the same, to the sinner it appears in lights per- 
 petually changing. Every departure from the 
 evil of our ways, e\ery fluctuation of hope, 
 every encrease of faith presents to us our Re- 
 deemer under some new and endearing aspect, 
 and gives to his Gospel the charm of variety, 
 the fascination of newly awakened interest. 
 
 And again, my friends, who shall blame a 
 teacher of nations for following the example of 
 the Apostles, and instructing them in righteous- 
 ness, for calling on them to walk as becometh 
 those those who have put on Christ Jesus. ? 
 
 If indeed he ground his teaching on expe- 
 diency ; on any natural obligation to virtue ; 
 on any moral fitness of things ; on any founda- 
 tion save Christ Jesus ; then indeed he becomes 
 a mere moral essayist. If he call his hearers 
 first to good works, as if change of mind and 
 
49 
 
 faith would follow,as if works would render them 
 worthy of the grace of God, then indeed he hews 
 out cisterns which will hold no water ; he builds 
 his church on the sand ; he raises an edifice, 
 not on the rock of ages, not on the sure foun- 
 dation. No, my fellow Christians, the teaching 
 which is of God rests on the Gospel which is 
 of God ; its aids are not the cold, the slow 
 decisions of the head, but the energetic, the 
 irresistible feelings of the heart. He that 
 rightly divideth the word first preacheth Christ, 
 then teacheth righteousness. This is the word 
 which cometh with power ; the word at which 
 Felix trembled ; to which the sinner bows ; 
 which the savage receives with joy ; which the 
 ignorant and those who were out of the way 
 feel to be efficacious ; a light to lighten the 
 nations, and the glory of God's chosen people. 
 
 VOL, I. 
 
SERMON IV 
 
 I. Corinthians, ix. — 16. 
 
 For necessity is laid upon me ; yea, 'woe is unto 
 me if I preach not the Gospel. 
 
 IT would justly be deemed superfluous, my fellow 
 Christians, were I to enter on a detailed proof to 
 you, that the same necessity which was laid on 
 Paul is also laid on every Minister of the Gospel. 
 It is a truth which the faithful servant of Christ, 
 who trusts that he is called to the ministry by the 
 Holy Spirit, is ever mindful of, which the sloth- 
 ful and negligent who have drawn nigh to God 
 with their lips, though their hearts are far from 
 him, cannot but admit. General however as 
 may be its admission, when we come to inquire 
 
51 
 
 into its meaning, and the manner in which it 
 should be complied with, there may be, and I 
 fear have been, considerable differences of opi- 
 nion. — Many have thought that the Gospel is a 
 system of speculative truth, deducible by 
 human reason from certain principles detailed 
 in the Bible ; but while all are agreed on the prin- 
 ciples, while all admit the divine authority of 
 the Scriptures, the attempt to raise a structure 
 thereon, to raise by human power a structure 
 which should reach the Heavens, has divided 
 presumptuous man into a thousand languages. 
 
 A conviction that these divisions among pro- 
 fessing Christians present an obstacle of fre- 
 quent and fatal operation to the progress of true 
 religion in the hearts of mankind, furnishing to 
 those who are without objections from our want 
 of unanimity, and supplying those who are 
 within with shadows, which they may mistake 
 for the substance of Christianity — a conviction 
 that completion of system is not essential, that 
 we may be wise unto salvation without being 
 wise beyond that which is written ; led me to 
 investigate the value of the points on which 
 Christians have been divided, and to call your 
 attention, as I did on a former occasion, to the 
 enquiry what the Gospel really is and wherein 
 the preaching of it really consists. I en- 
 deavoured to point out to you that the Scripture 
 
 e 2 
 
52 
 
 describes the preaching of it as the declaration 
 of the joyful tidings of our redemption, and 
 that it also indicates another office of the Mi- 
 nisters of Christ, namely, to be teachers of 
 righteousness, but that in neither capacity, whe- 
 ther as preachers, or teachers, was it their office 
 to search into the deep things of God farther 
 than he has revealed them. I endeavoured to 
 impress on you, that neither the knowledge of 
 what was not contained in Scripture, nor the 
 explication of what was farther than it was 
 there explained could be essential to salvation ; 
 in short, that Christianity is not an understand- 
 ing with the head unto abstract truth, but a 
 believing with the heart unto righteousness. In 
 these former addresses to you I confined myself 
 to a general manner of expression in treating 
 the subject ; I asserted that facts form the Gos- 
 pel, the belief of which was indispensable to 
 salvation, and that speculations form the philo- 
 sophy of religion, subsidiary indeed, but not 
 essential, useful while we confine ourselves to 
 the sure word of inspiration, but dangerous 
 when we venture beyond it. I shall at present 
 enter into a more particular disquisition, and as 
 I fear my distinction between facts and specu- 
 lations may be liable to be misconceived, I 
 shall attempt to draw the line between what we 
 are to consider as facts and what as speculations ; 
 and again, with respect to the latter, between 
 
what are of scriptural authority and what of 
 only human invention. 
 
 The Gospel, in the scriptural sense of the 
 word, appears to signify the glorious tidings of 
 our redemption, and as such to consist of the 
 declaration of certain events already accom- 
 plished, and also that of other events, the ac- 
 complishment of which is promised to the peo- 
 ple of God, Those already accomplished are 
 the coming, the death, the resurrection of the 
 Saviour; — those promised are the salvation, the 
 justification, the sanctification of those who 
 come to God through Christ, the imputation 
 of his righteousness to them, the pouring forth 
 of the Holy Spirit into the hearts of the re- 
 deemed, and the establishment of the kingdom 
 of God within them. 
 
 Perhaps these latter may appear to some to be 
 of the nature of matters of speculation, but 
 they are by no means to be confounded with 
 such ; they are events, they are facts, they are 
 actions of God on his people, which imply a 
 particular and definite time of existence and 
 accomplishment. 
 
 By speculations on the other hand I under- 
 stand either the explication of the manner of 
 the Gospel facts, and these explications may be 
 
54 
 
 either scriptural, or human ; or secondly, pro- 
 positions respecting the nature and state of 
 man, the nature and counsels of God, which 
 have not been preached as the Gospel, but 
 have been mentioned in answering objections j 
 or thirdly, similar propositions supposed to be 
 colligible from Scripture. 
 
 With respect to the events, the tidings of 
 which as accomplished, and the promises of 
 which as future, constitute the Gospel of our 
 salvation, they are as to fact easy to be ap- 
 prehended, and therefore neither need those 
 who preach hesitate as to what they shall 
 declare, nor those who hear as to what they 
 shall receive. — And indeed all who sincerely 
 receive the Scriptures as the word of God, all 
 who deserve the name of Christians do both 
 receive and preach the occurrence of those 
 events : all are agreed that the word was made 
 flesh and dwelt among us, that he died for our 
 sins, and rose again for our justification ; that 
 he has promised to his chosen the continued 
 influence of the Holy Spirit ; that he has pro- 
 mised to those who love the Son the presence of 
 the Father, the power to become the children 
 of God. What they differ concerning is the 
 manner of these events, not perceiving that 
 the explication of the manner is by no means 
 essential to our believing the fact. Though the 
 
55 
 
 manner be not explained to us, though we be 
 unable even to conjecture it ourselves, still if 
 the authority for the occurrence of the fact be 
 sufficient, we may and must receive it. Every 
 day's intercourse with the world presents to us 
 innumerable instances of our believing facts on 
 authority, though we be totally ignorant of the 
 manner of them, and of our considering such 
 belief as full and sufficient for all its purposes. 
 We believe that water has been frozen, that 
 organized beings have advanced to maturity, 
 without being able even to conjecture, much 
 less to know the manner of the process. — Who 
 would be so absurd as to tell the mariner that 
 his belief in his tables was insufficient, because 
 he knew not the manner of the force which 
 retained the stars in their places, or that his 
 compass would fail to direct him on the ocean, 
 because he could not explain the reason of its 
 tendency ?— And shall we tell the humble 
 Christian who believes what his God has de- 
 clared to him, that his faith is insufficient, except 
 he understand the manner of the facts which 
 are its objects ? — Shall we tell him that hope 
 and trust and confidence in his Saviour cannot 
 lead him to God except he understand the 
 manner of his new birth, that the outstretched 
 hand of his Redeemer cannot save him except 
 he know how that hand sustains him ? 
 
56 
 
 It is remarkable that with respect to the 
 accomplished events which are declared in the 
 Gospel, there is scarce even a hint given towards 
 the explication of their manner. — Though we 
 are called on to believe that God was manifested 
 in the flesh, and took our nature upon him, yet 
 there is not the slightest intimation given of 
 the mode of union. Though we are called on 
 to trust in the atonement by the blood of 
 Christ for the remission of our sins j yet we 
 find no description of the manner in which that 
 atonement effected our reconciliation with God, 
 or remedied the corruption of our nature : the 
 silence on these points, while it bears testimony 
 that the Scripture is not the work of an en- 
 thusiastic or vain imagination, suggests also the 
 conclusion that if God has left us in ignorance 
 concerning these most prominent objects of our 
 faith, the understanding of others which are 
 less so cannot be of indispensible importance. 
 
 With respect however to the promised events 
 the case is different. While those which have 
 been already accomplished, and in the pro- 
 duction of which man was by no means con- 
 cerned, have been left unexplained, those which 
 were promised, and in which he was to be con- 
 cerned, have had their manner and their pro- 
 gress clearly and fully detailed. — How sublime 
 how interesting soever an explication of the 
 
57 
 
 manner of the former might have been, yet, 
 resting solely in theory, implicating no duty, 
 incapable of adding ought to that love of God 
 which a belief of the facts themselves must 
 produce, it was not requisite, and therefore has 
 not been given ; — but in the promised events, 
 the justification of the people of God, where 
 man was called on to be an agent, to be a 
 worker out of his own salvation while the spirit 
 wrought in him both to will and to do j — where 
 he was commanded to look diligently lest he 
 should fall from the grace of God, where he 
 was enjoined to make his calling and election 
 sure, there the path of the progress is marked 
 out and the manner of the operation accurately 
 described. 
 
 It was necessary that man should know to 
 whom he should fly for refuge, on whom he 
 should rely for support, from whom he should 
 expect salvation ; it was requisite that he should 
 know the means, the condition, the evidences of 
 his justification.— Christ is pointed to as the 
 Saviour, the Holy Spirit, as the sustaining Com- 
 forter ; and faith, as the instrument or means 
 by which we are raised from the bondage of sin 
 to the glorious liberty of the sons of God.— 
 Obedience is represented as at once the condi- 
 tion and the effect of salvation, holinesss of life 
 
I 
 
 58 
 
 at once the evidence and the fruit of justifi- 
 cation. 
 
 When the sinner feels his own corruption, 
 when he experiences within himself the sources 
 of misery even in this life, and the daily increase 
 of these causes excites a fearful looking out for 
 that which is to come; — had the way of sal- 
 vation been undescribed he might have trusted 
 to his own powers of amendment, depending 
 on his reason for the regulation of his heart, 
 and the power of his will to choose that which 
 reason represented as good ; he might have 
 fancied that years of self righteousness were not 
 only possible but requisite before he could 
 presume to hope for grace from the throne of 
 mercy. — The Scriptures, however, at once re- 
 move this groundless apprehension, and obviate 
 these deceitful misconceptions, by describing the 
 Saviour as the door, the way by which we must 
 come to God; he who died for our sins rose again 
 for our justification. By the atonement are we 
 freed from the corruption of our nature, from the 
 dominion of sin in this life, and its wages in that 
 which is to come. By the imputation of his 
 righteousness, who is of God, made unto us 
 righteousness and sanctification and redemp. 
 tion, has he given to us the right to become the 
 sons of God.— Observe here, my fellow Chris- 
 tians, a distinction corresponding with that 
 
59 
 
 which I have before remarked ; the effect of the 
 sacrifice of Christ appears to be double, atone- 
 ment and justification ; the results of the former 
 exclusively respecting God are like the atone- 
 ment itself merely stated as to fact, not ex- 
 plained as to manner, while with respect to jus- 
 tification, the resurrection of Christ is de- 
 scribed to be the object of faith, the foundation 
 of our confidence, the evidence of our Re- 
 deemer's power and truth. — If Christ be not 
 risen, then is our preaching vain and your faith 
 is vain ; — this faith is described to be the instru- 
 ment used in our salvation, by faith are ye 
 saved; love is pointed to as the means by which 
 faith produces its effects, and that effect is 
 stated to be obedience. — I am aware that jus- 
 tification by faith only has appeared to some 
 absurd and indefensible, and to others a tenet 
 not admitting of explication, but to be con- 
 sidered as one of the mysteries of our religion. 
 These opinions perhaps may have had one com- 
 mon origin, namely, a misconception of the 
 meaning of some scriptural terms. — "Being jus- 
 tified" has been by some considered to mean 
 merely the being acquitted, and thereby ex- 
 empted from punishment at the final judgment ; 
 salvation has been thought to be merely a state 
 of future enjoyment and glory consequent on 
 that acquittal, and faith only a belief of the 
 veracity of the authors of the Bible as his- 
 
60 
 
 torians, and an acquiescence in their wisdom as 
 moralists how such a faith could produce such 
 justification, or why it should procure such a 
 reward would be indeed a mystery.— If we search 
 the Scriptures, however, we shall find that the 
 faith, the justification, and salvation there men- 
 tioned, are not such as these, and that their 
 mutual relation is not mysterious. 
 
 The best way of ascertaining the signification 
 in which any word has been used by any 
 author or set of authors, who were employed 
 on the same subject with the same views, and 
 were contemporary and conversant with each 
 other, is to examine all the passages of their 
 works, in which the term under its several 
 varieties of inflection may occur, and to seek 
 what is the general meaning which will satisfy 
 the sense in all. — Let us apply this criterion to 
 the term salvation in its scriptural use. — On a 
 comparison of the passages we shall find that 
 in some few it is referred to something future, 
 but in the great majority to something present. 
 They therefore who would consider it as im- 
 plying only preservation from present evil, 
 would be more near its real meaning than those 
 who confine it to a future state of blessedness. — 
 But may there not be a meaning which will 
 satisfy both ? — Suppose we consider it as signi- 
 fying preservation from the power of the wicked 
 
61 
 
 one, from the influence of the tempter, from 
 the dominion of sin ; — this meaning will answer 
 in all the passages in which it is spoken of as 
 present, and also in all those in which it is al- 
 luded to as future — And indeed these two 
 branches of its meaning are most intimately 
 connected; — there cannot be a surer ground 
 for hope of future salvation than present sal- 
 vation from the misery and guilt of sin. — If 
 God preserves us from crime in this world, no 
 doubt he will preserve us from its effects and 
 wages in that which is to come ; — if he endows 
 us with the graces of the Spirit here, no doubt 
 he will call us to glory and immortality here- 
 after. 
 
 Being justified, in like manner, is not confined 
 to the future, it is frequently, I had almost said 
 constantly, spoken of as something present, and 
 would appear to mean our being made and 
 accounted righteous, our being made and ac- 
 counted conformable to the image of Christ, 
 our being made and accounted conformable to 
 the law of God in our hearts, not merely at 
 the final judgment, but also here, not merely 
 here but also at the final judgment, when the 
 secrets of all hearts shall be made known. We 
 are by no means to separate righteousness from 
 justification, they are both in some places 
 where they occur only different renderings of 
 
62 
 
 the same word, and in others, of words imme- 
 diately derived from the same root. Perhaps 
 this difference of translation may have given 
 occasion to these pernicious errors which have 
 resulted from that separation ; and it is remark- 
 able that the original Greek, in which the re- 
 lation of the terms is unavoidably obvious, was 
 not the authority referred to, nor indeed un- 
 derstood by at least some of the chief sup- 
 porters of the Antinomian errors respecting 
 justification. Yet surely it is most absurd and 
 unscriptural to imagine that God will declare 
 us righteous without having made us so, or that 
 he will make us so without afterwards declaring 
 and treating us as such. 
 
 Faith, from a like comparison of passages, 
 appears to mean a belief of the scriptural cha- 
 racter and office of Christ, a conviction of his 
 truth and authority, and a confident reliance on 
 his love and mercy, casting all our care on him 
 who has so cared for us. 
 
 Now, my fellow Christians, is the connection 
 between faith and justification left by the in- 
 spired writers an object of mystery ? Is it an 
 incomprehensible tenet which we cannot receive 
 without the exertion of a blind credulity ? — Is 
 it inconceivable that the Almighty, who applies 
 to the production of every effect its most appro- 
 
63 
 
 priate cause, who gives to the mighty masses 
 which compose the universe, a simple and uni- 
 form tendency to preserve them in their courses, 
 who regulates his living creation by instincts 
 proportioned to their scale of being, Is it in- 
 conceivable that he should guide man, whom 
 he had made but little lower than the Angels, to 
 his perfection and happiness, by the strongest 
 of feelings and the most rational of moral 
 motives ?— " By faith are ye saved, and that not 
 " of yourselves, it is the gift of God." — This 
 passage has been said of late to be of doubtful 
 meaning. — Of doubtful construction it may be, 
 but not of doubtful meaning, for both con- 
 structions have one and the same import, that 
 God is the author of our salvation, and that 
 faith is the instrument by which he effects it. 
 Does pleasure present itself and tempt us to 
 forget our God ? He that believes that Christ 
 died to purify to himself a people zealous of 
 good works, will not yield to the solicitation. 
 Does passion add its overwhelming strength to 
 temptation? Faith has excited a stronger feeling 
 in the Christian's heart, and presents to him a 
 way whereby he may escape. Does fear of 
 temporal evil assail his integrity ? Faith worketh 
 by love, and from that love neither tribulation 
 nor anguish, nor famine, nor the sword can 
 separate the believer. Does a sense of un- 
 worthiness and inability discourage our efforts ? 
 
64 
 
 He that believes that the strength of God is 
 made perfect in our weakness, that our suffi- 
 ciency is of God will not despair, will not be 
 remiss — he that believes himself called to righ- 
 teousness and glory, will press forward for the 
 prize of his high calling. 
 
 If, as some philosophers have imagined, the 
 will is necessarily determined by the appear- 
 ance of the slightest preponderance of reason, 
 what must the effect be, when reason and 
 duty, gratitude and love, hope and fear, am- 
 bition and self anxiety arising from faith as 
 from their source, present themselves.— The 
 Spirit of God aiding our unbelief, putting into 
 our hearts holy desires, good counsels, just 
 works, instructing us in all righteousness, and 
 causing us to know that the doctrine is of God ? 
 Thus are we saved from sin by faith j thus are 
 we made righteous ; thus are we led from 
 strength to strength, by him who is the author 
 and finisher of our faith ; thus do we take on us 
 the light burden, the easy yoke of Christ ; thus 
 are we conformed to his image, called, justified, 
 glorified. 
 
 Now may the God of all grace, who hath 
 called us to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, 
 make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle 
 you. — To him be glory and dominion, for ever 
 and ever. Amen. 
 
SERMON V. 
 
 Luke, xvii. — 20, 21. 
 
 And when he was demanded of the Pharisees 
 when the kingdom of God should come, he ati- 
 swered them and said, The kingdom of God 
 cometh not with observation ; neither shall they 
 say, lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the 
 kingdom of God is within you. 
 
 THROUGHOUT the several discourses of our 
 blessed Saviour, which are recorded by the 
 Evangelists, we find frequent mention of the 
 kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven, 
 expressions which seem to be used indiscrimi- 
 nately for each other. At the commencement 
 of his ministry we find him declaring, as the 
 vol. r. F 
 
66 
 
 Baptist had shortly before, that the kingdom of 
 heaven was at hand ; — in almost every address 
 to the people, every private conference with 
 his disciples, he introduces the same subject, 
 sometimes proclaiming the glad tidings of its 
 approach, sometimes alluding to its mysteries, 
 or describing its nature in figurative language 
 and apposite parables : " the kingdom of hea- 
 " ven is like a grain of mustard seed, — like a 
 " piece of leaven, — a pearl of great price, — a 
 " field containing a hidden treasure, — a blade 
 " of corn which riseth up from the seed we 
 " know not how — again, we find him declar- 
 ing it to be the inheritance of those who suffer 
 persecution for righteousness sake, who do the 
 will of the Father, and stating also, that to 
 preach these glad tidings was the great object 
 of his mission; we afterwards find him asserting, 
 that there were some of those who heard him 
 who should not taste of death, until they be- 
 held the kingdom of God established ; that it 
 was a kingdom not of this world, into which a 
 man cannot enter except he be born again, and 
 at the same time holding it up to his disciples, 
 as the object of their pursuit, their hopes, and 
 assured expectations. — " But rather seek ye the 
 *' kingdom of God j" — and again — " Fear not 
 " little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure 
 '* to give you the kingdom." 
 
67 
 
 The meaning of an expression so frequently 
 the subject of our Saviour's preaching must, to 
 the Christian, be an object of most interesting 
 enquiry. — It is the great promise of God to his 
 faithful children, the object of our prayers when 
 we address the throne of mercy. — Is it not 
 most important to us to know what is that which 
 has been promised to us, and what is that for 
 the approach of which we are taught to sup- 
 plicate, to enter into which we are directed to 
 strive, and for the sake of which there is no 
 man who hath left this world's dearest posses- 
 sions or fondest ties, who shall not receive ma- 
 nifold more in this present time, and in the 
 world to come life everlasting. To these cir- 
 cumstances, which shew the importance of the 
 enquiry, we may I believe add a farther, which 
 is that the misunderstanding of the term has, I 
 fear, been the secret ground work of some dan- 
 gerous errors and unchristian dissensions. 
 
 It appears to have in different places three 
 several meanings, which although intimately 
 connected, are yet distinguishable from each 
 other. 
 
 In some passages it appears to mean a place 
 or state of happiness, where we shall enjoy that 
 exceeding weight of bliss, and glory, such as 
 eye hath not seen, nor hath it entered into the 
 
 f 2 
 
68 
 
 heart of man to conceive, which the All-merci- 
 ful hath prepared for those who love him ; — that 
 state which is elsewhere alluded to by entering 
 into the joy of the Lord, or by entering into 
 life. — In this sense it appears to have been used 
 where our Saviour tells the Jews, that, " many 
 " shall come from the east, and from the west, 
 " and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, 
 " and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven." — And 
 again, — that, " he that is least in the kingdom 
 " of heaven is greater than John the Baptist." 
 And again, where he tells the mother of Zebe- 
 dee's children, that, " to sit on his right hand 
 " and on his left in his kingdom shall be theirs 
 " for whom it is prepared by the Father." And 
 again,— where, in his description of the last 
 great day, he represents himself as addressing 
 his chosen flock, " come ye blessed of my Fa- 
 ** ther, inherit the kingdom prepared for you 
 " before the foundations of the world" — these 
 are, I believe, the principal, if not the only pas- 
 sages in which the terms " kingdom of heaven 
 " or kingdom of God" are used in this signifi- 
 cation. 
 
 There is another meaning in which we some- 
 times find it used, and that is God's method of 
 dealing with his creatures. Thus where the 
 kingdom of heaven is likened unto a certain 
 king that would take an account of his servants ; 
 
69 
 
 again, where it likened to the householder who 
 went out early to hire labourers ; again, where 
 it is likened unto a certain king which made a 
 marriage for his son ; again, where it is likened 
 unto ten virgins ; — in all these it obviously 
 means God's method of dealing with his crea- 
 tures, his requiring the existence and cultiva- 
 tion of certain dispositions of mind in them, 
 his gratuitously bestowing mercy upon them,, 
 not according to their own measure or estimate 
 of their works j but according to his good and 
 gracious pleasure ; — his indiscriminately calling 
 all unto salvation, and yet chastising both those 
 who neglect his merciful invitation, and also 
 those, who being constrained to obey it, after- 
 wards behave unworthy of the vocation where- 
 with they are called. In all these passages I 
 say the terms kingdom of God, evidently sig- 
 nifies the manner, the method, the system of 
 God's government and treatment of his rati- 
 onal, his moral creatures. And, if I mistake 
 not, these are the only passages in which the 
 terms in question arc used in this meaning. 
 
 I now come to the third, and by much the 
 most frequent signification of tiie expression, — 
 namely, the influential dominion of God over 
 the inward man, the powerful efficacy of the 
 Spirit of Christ in our hearts, whereby we are 
 inspired with the devoted, the dutiful affection 
 
70 
 
 of children towards our heavenly Parent, — the 
 controlling presence of the Holy Spirit within 
 us, residing faith sovereign sanctity in his tem- 
 ple, subjugating our passions, ruling our affec- 
 tions, originating every good counsel, matur- 
 ing every holy desire, perfecting every good 
 work, leading captive what before had been in 
 captivity unto sin, and inspiring us with that 
 love which is the fulfilling of the law, and that 
 faith which is unto obedience. Such is the king- 
 dom of God for which we pray that it may come 
 on earth j such is the kingdom of God which, 
 not only shall be, — but even is the inheritance 
 of those who suffer persecution for righteous- 
 ness sake, under the salutary government of 
 which we cannot come except we be born again, 
 except we become as little children in unpre- 
 suming humility and affectionate obedience. — 
 Such is the kingdom of God which our Saviour 
 declared was at hand, and which is now near 
 unto every one of us, if so be, that we have 
 not received the grace of God in vain. 
 
 Degraded by original sin, man had been 
 driven not only from Paradise, but even from 
 the presence of God. — Left to that fancied wis- 
 dom which he had chosen in preference to obe- 
 dience, to that knowledge of good and evil 
 which he had purchased at the price of his 
 faith in God, he was surrendered to the coun- 
 
71 
 
 sels of a vain imagination, the guidance of a 
 deserted heart, the lusts of a depraved nature, 
 until at length when the time which seemed 
 good unto the wisdom of God was fulfilled, the 
 crooked ways were made straight, an highway 
 was prepared through the wilderness for the 
 Lord to visit his people, to declare deliverance 
 unto the captives, recovering of sight unto the 
 blind, and to set at liberty them that were bruised. 
 And when Christ by his blood had made 
 atonement for sin, and opened unto us the holy 
 of holies, re-admitted us unto the presence of 
 God, then was the dominion of God over the 
 human heart reassumed ; then was the great 
 work of our redemption from the dominion of 
 sin, (as our Saviour declared on the cross) then 
 was it finished j man was reconciled to God, 
 rendered capable of loving him, rendered ca- 
 pable of being temples of the Holy Ghost, and 
 to those who love Christ and keep his command- 
 ments, God has graciously promised that he 
 will love them, and come unto them, and take 
 up his abode with them. 
 
 This reign of God over the hearts of his be- 
 loved, over the wills of his chosen, is that king- 
 dom which is like a grain of mustard seed, ori- 
 ginating indeed from a small beginning, but 
 encreasing gradually by the bounty of heaven 
 into grandeur, beauty, and protection. — This 
 
72 
 
 is that harvest which springeth up, man cannot 
 discover how. This is that hidden treasure, 
 that pearl of great price, for which the merchant 
 might well give all that he is worth. — Shall I 
 remind you of more passages in which the king- 
 dom of God is described in this sense ? — I would 
 have to bring you through almost all the several 
 discourses of our blessed Saviour, for there is 
 scarcely one of them in which it is not al- 
 luded to. 
 
 Nor is this meaning of the kingdom of God 
 unconnected with the former. God's govern- 
 ment of the hearts which he has chosen, may 
 be considered as a part of bis treatment of man- 
 kind in general ; which is the second of the 
 meanings I have enumerated. — And it is re- 
 lated to the first of them, namely, the everlast- 
 ing bliss and glory which God has promised to 
 them that love him, not only as being the means 
 which the Almighty uses to fit us for it, but 
 also as being actually a part of the happiness 
 which he declares to be the everlasting re- 
 ward of faith unto obedience ; " behold, saith 
 " the Lord, I am thy exceeding great reward." 
 But although we observe that the three mean- 
 ings of the terms in question are thus closely re- 
 lated, yet we must carefully remember that they 
 are not to be confounded, that we are not every 
 where to understand them in the first meaning, 
 
73 
 
 or consider them as exclusively referring to a 
 future state of glory beyond the grave. A mis- 
 take which I fear has been too generally preva- 
 lent. — From hence seem to have originated many 
 errors and dissensions respecting the necessity 
 of good works. — To our inheriting the kingdom 
 of God in the first sense, they undoubtedly are 
 absolutely requisite, for at the final judgment 
 every man shall be judged according to his 
 works ; they that have done well shall go into 
 life everlasting, and they that have done ill into 
 everlasting fire.-— But to our entering into the 
 kingdom of God in the third sense, to our re- 
 ceiving the easy yoke, the light burden of 
 Christ, to our hearts and affections coming un- 
 der the government of God, good works cannot 
 be requisite, for they cannot be antecedent, 
 they cannot be causes, for they are the effects, 
 the fruits of the reign of God within us. There 
 is a salvation from the power of the wicked one 
 on this side the grave, there is a blessedness in 
 following the guidance of the love of God, even 
 antecedent to our future glorified justification, 
 and inferior to the joys of Heaven, perhaps only 
 because less perfect. And of these, abstinence 
 from sin and following after active righteous- 
 ness, cannot in propriety of language be said 
 to be the causes, because they are the things 
 themselves. — They do indeed strengthen our 
 habits, enlarge our faith, encrease our love, 
 
74 
 
 perfect our obedience, but they are the means 
 used for these purposes, not by ourselves, — but 
 by God.— They are the gratuitous gift of God, 
 and the instruments used by him in our rege- 
 neration. — Our part is only the unmeritorious 
 one of receiving, of not resisting our own ad- 
 vantage, of suffering ourselves to be led by the 
 Holy Spirit to work out our own salvation with 
 fear and trembling.— In the last sense of the 
 kingdom of God, I say it is an impropriety of 
 language to state, that good works are requi- 
 site, — so that the two propositions respecting 
 the necessity of good works for our entering 
 into the kingdom of God, which when we take 
 the terms in either sense exclusively, are direct 
 contradictions, are when we understand them in 
 the different meanings which they appear to 
 bear in Scripture, not only perfectly reconcile- 
 able, but even closely connected, and entirely 
 consonant with each other. 
 
 But, my fellow Christians, I had a more im- 
 portant motive in entering on this subject, than 
 merely to remark on these speculative errors.— 
 My motive was, that I might take occasion to 
 press upon you the conviction of what you are, 
 and what you ought to be. — Bought with a 
 price, — redeemed from being the servants of 
 sin, — vindicated out of the house of bondage 
 into the glorious liberty of the sons of God,,— 
 
75 
 
 taken out of that deserted state, in which the 
 world could not by means of wisdom know their 
 God, — having the vail removed from your 
 hearts, and being thus re-admitted to the influ- 
 ential presence of the Almighty, — having the 
 reign of God renewed within you— the revival 
 of which the Father had promised by his Pro- 
 phets, the Son had purchased through his blood, 
 the Comforter is constantly employed in pro- 
 moting and perfecting. — As at the production 
 of the material world, the spirit of God diffused 
 itself throughout the vast abyss, so in the cre- 
 ation of the spiritual kingdom of Christ, is he 
 poured into the void and formless heart, that 
 light and life may spring forth at the creative 
 word of Jesus. — Being, my fellow Christians, in 
 such a progress of redemption and reconcilia- 
 tion, having the glad tidings declared to us that 
 we are the subjects of such a kingdom, shall we 
 become rebels against God ? Shall we quench 
 the influences of the Holy Spirit within us ? Shall 
 we procrastinate our obedience, to some more 
 convenient opportunity ? 
 
 But what are these influences of which we 
 speak ? — Open your Bibles, and you will find 
 what are the fruits of the spirit. Love, Joy, 
 Peace, Long suffering, Gentleness, Goodness, 
 Fidelity, Meekness, and Temperance. 
 
76 
 
 When therefore you feel yourselves prompted 
 by opportunity, incited by an internal desire 
 to acts of benevolence, of sympathetic feeling 
 for the wants, whether temporal or spiritual 
 of your fellow creatures, when you perceive 
 yourselves influenced by a feeling of duty to 
 bless them that revile you, and to do good for 
 evil, when you experience a persevering gen- 
 tleness, a powerful meekness inducing you to 
 triumph over your rudest passions, checking 
 the fury of wrath, breaking the determination 
 of revenge, — when you find yourselves inclined 
 to postpone every consideration to those of 
 fidelity and truth, — when your breasts kindle 
 with the love of God, and the ardent desire to 
 be perfect as he is perfect, and pure even as he 
 is pure, do not imagine that these are the sugges- 
 tions of your own unaided heart, — they are the 
 voice of that God of whom you are the temple, 
 they are the commands of that kingdom which 
 is established within you, — and it is destruction 
 to disobey them. But perhaps you will say 
 these influences are all in the ordinary course 
 of nature, we all from time to time experience 
 them, without feeling that they proceed from 
 any supernatural cause. — If by the course of 
 nature be meant, the course by which God ad- 
 ministers all things both in heaven and earth, 
 I fully agree with you, that they are the ordi- 
 nary course of this part of nature. — Since the 
 
77 
 
 sacrifice of Christ's atonement for the world, I 
 trust there is no one who has not received of 
 these spiritual gifts according to the measure of 
 his faith. — With us they cease to be superna- 
 tural, though perhaps before that blessed aera, 
 they might well be called so ; when mankind 
 were given over to their own heart's lusts, 
 filled with all unrighteousness, devoid of na- 
 tural affection, implacable, unmerciful. Do not 
 imagine that the exertions of the spirit are 
 confined to prophecy, speaking with tongues, 
 and working miracles. — These, being no longer 
 requisite for the diffusion of the Gospel, have 
 ceased, but there are others which I have men- 
 tioned above, which are in Scripture equally 
 referred to the Holy Ghost, and which, being of 
 eternal necessity, must be of eternal influence. 
 Do not imagine that God cannot reign in your 
 hearts, except you have some unusual, some 
 miraculous experience of his approach and ener- 
 gy.— The kingdom of God is like to the plant 
 which springeth up and groweth to maturity by 
 the incomprehensible workings of Providence.— 
 The wind bloweth when and where it listeth, 
 and we know not whence it cometh, or whi- 
 ther it goeth, so is every man who is born 
 of the Spirit. Do not expect to be able to 
 ascertain the measure of its progress, — for " the 
 " kingdom of God cometh not with obser- 
 " vatibn, neither shall ye say lo here or lo 
 
78 
 
 " there — for behold the kingdom of God is 
 " within you." When therefore you feel such 
 dispositions, encourage them, cherish them, 
 yield yourselves to them. They are the seals 
 of your acceptance with God, the evidences of 
 his kingdom, the pledges of your future glori- 
 fication. Do not imagine, that as being the 
 suggestions of your own heart, it is a matter 
 of no great importance, whether you hear, or 
 whether you forbear, — that if you follow it is 
 well, — it is more than well, it is meritorious, — 
 but that if you neglect, it is only the absence 
 of merit.-— Be assured they are talents com- 
 mitted to your charge, of which you must 
 give an account at the last great day, as though 
 it had been to an austere master.. — They are 
 the voice of the kingdom of God within you,— 
 beware how you disobey. — Be assured that (as 
 Saint James has declared) " every good and 
 " every perfect gift is from above, and co- 
 " meth down from the Father of lights, with 
 " whom there is no variableness, neither sha- 
 " dow of turning. — Follow therefore after that 
 " which is good, and putting away from your- 
 " selves all impurity and superfluity of naugh- 
 " tiness, receive with meekness" — the com- 
 mand of God imprinted on your hearts, — which 
 speaks in the still small voice of conscience, the 
 strong deep sense of reverence and duty, the 
 warm, the overpowering pleadings of natural 
 
79 
 
 affection ; — receive, I say, with meekness " the 
 engrafted word which is able to save your 
 souls." 
 
 SERMON VI. 
 
 I. Corinthians, v.— 11. 
 
 But now I have written unto you not to keep 
 company, — if any man that is called a brother 
 be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolator, or 
 a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner ; 
 with such a one no not to eat. 
 
 I HAVE chosen this passage for my text, my 
 fellow Christians, because it gives us, in a com- 
 prehensive and determinate form, the strength 
 and substance of many other accordant scrip- 
 tural authorities, which declare to us the neces. 
 sity of the separation of the righteous from the 
 wicked. — I have chosen it also, because it points 
 out to us explicitly what are the scriptural 
 grounds of separation, and because, when com" 
 
80 
 
 pared with the context, it indicates what were 
 the reasons for its injunctions, and of course 
 affords us a rule for the degree to which the se- 
 paration should be carried, and the manner in 
 which it should be exercised, as the. knowledge 
 of the end must always regulate the adminis- 
 tration of the means. I the more readily enter 
 on this subject, as I know the precepts for se- 
 paration have been misapplied by several sec- 
 tarists, and by some I fear who do not consi- 
 der themselves as such, to the breaking of the 
 bonds of Christian peace, and the closing of the 
 avenues of Christian charity. — The passion for 
 distinction which is natural to the human heart, 
 the affectation of being something uncommon, 
 something separate from the generality, has at 
 all times influenced mankind in their religion, 
 as well as in their temporal conduct, not recol- 
 lecting that we may differ without being more 
 wise, and separate without being more holy. 
 
 A comparison of my text with other similar 
 passages, by ascertaining what are the scriptu- 
 ral grounds for separation, will indicate at the 
 same time what are not. — Had it stood single, 
 had it been the only precept on the subject, we 
 should be authorized in considering that nothing 
 was so, except immoral conduct, or absolute 
 idolatry. — If there be any other scriptural 
 ground, it must be authorized elsewhere. Let 
 
81 
 
 us therefore see what the other parallel autho- 
 rities of Scripture are ;— " Mark those," says 
 the same Apostle to the Romans, " which cause 
 " divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine 
 " which ye have learned, and avoid them, for 
 " they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus, 
 " but their own belly/' — It is here to be ob- 
 served, that the divisions, the differences of 
 doctrine, which are stated as a ground of sepa- 
 ration, are those which are coupled with of- 
 fences, those which are upheld by men who 
 serve not our Lord Jesus, but their own carnal 
 inclinations. Saint John declares that, " who- 
 " soever transgresseth and abideth not in the 
 " doctrine of Christ hath not God — such a one" 
 (says he) " receive not into your houses, bid 
 *' him not God speed, for he that biddeth him 
 « God speed, is partaker of his evil deeds." — 
 Here again we may observe, that the departure 
 from the doctrine of Christ, which is made the 
 ground of prohibiting social intercourse, is a de- 
 parture accompanied by transgression, and the 
 danger apprehended is that of being partakers 
 of evil deeds. " If any man" saith Paul to Ti- 
 mothy " consent not to the words of our Lord 
 " Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is ac- 
 " cording to godliness, doting about strifes of 
 " words, and perverse disputings of men of 
 " corrupt minds, supposing that gain is godli- 
 " ness, from such withdraw thyself, for they 
 
 VOL. I. G 
 
82 
 
 " that will be rich fall into many hurtful lusts, 
 " which drown men in destruction and perdi- 
 " tion." — Here it is to be remarked, that the 
 error of those from whom Timothy is cautioned 
 to withdraw himself, is the error of men of cor- 
 rupt minds, who suppose that they can make 
 the profession of godliness a source of gain, that 
 they can at once serve God and Mammon, who 
 anxious after money are led into temptation, 
 and a snare, and many foolish, and hurtful 
 lusts. These three are the principal, if not the 
 only passages in Scripture, in which speculative 
 error is pointed to as a ground for separation, 
 and in all of them the error is strongly marked, 
 and grievous, and accompanied by proportion- 
 ably flagrant sinfulness. All the other texts re- 
 specting separation, are nearly the same in sub- 
 stance with that which I have chosen for my 
 present subject, and confined exclusively to 
 impurity and depravity of conduct. " Blessed 
 " is the man," saith the Psalmist, " who walk- 
 " eth not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor 
 " standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in 
 " the seat of the scornful." — " Have no fel- 
 " lowship," saith the Apostle to the Galatians, 
 " with the unfruitful works of darkness, but ra- 
 " ther reprove them." — And again, when ad- 
 dressing the Corinthians, " Come out from 
 " among them, and be ye separate, saith the 
 " Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and 
 
83 
 
 *« I will receive you." The other passages on 
 the same subject, are of a similar complexion.— 
 Are we not therefore warranted in concluding, 
 that error, except it be such as that characte- 
 rised above, is not a scriptural ground for sepa- 
 ration. — Any error indeed, which comes short 
 of this, is rather a disease of the mind, which 
 calls for the kind offices of Christian compassion, 
 and the healing influence of Christian love. — 
 It is not the incurable leprosy which separates 
 from the camp. — It is not the hopeless plague 
 inevitably destructive to its victim, and almost 
 equally so to those who approach, which should 
 drive him from the haunts of men, and interdict 
 the exertion of human feeling. — It is the com- 
 mon hazard of mankind, to which we are all ex- 
 posed, and which therefore demands sympathy, 
 rather than alienation.— The Physician who de- 
 serts his patient will never heal him ; nor will 
 the Christian who flies from his brother, ever 
 convert him from darkness unto light, nor from 
 the power of Satan unto God. 
 
 If being weak in faith be not a sufficient 
 ground for rejection from the Church of Christ; 
 if no error, but that which is obviously and 
 fruitfully productive of sinfulness of life, be a 
 scriptural ground for separation, what shall we 
 say to those who descend to the ordinary, the 
 insignificant amusements of the world, the un- 
 
 g 2 
 
84 
 
 important peculiarities of dress or phraseology, 
 for marks to distinguish a Christian spirit, and 
 direct them to whom they shall stretch forth the 
 hand of brotherhood, and from whom they shall 
 withhold it, — -judging of the inward man by marks 
 which any hypocrite may assume, and refusing 
 their countenance to those who cannot see, and 
 will not pretend to see, any importance in the 
 peculiar texture of a sentence, the form of a 
 habit, or the nature of an exercise whether of 
 mind or body with which they recreate their 
 leisure hours. — Is not there a presumptuous 
 ostentation in all this ? is there not a tacit pro- 
 fession that they have so regulated their hearts, 
 so perfected themselves in the weighter matters 
 of the law, that they have now nothing to em- 
 ploy their Christian vigilance but these trifles ? — 
 Be not misled, my fellow Christians, the king- 
 dom of God is not meat and drink, not trivial 
 observances, nor the inventions of the day, but 
 holiness, and peace, and joy in the Lord. — It 
 is a melancholy reflection to consider, how prone 
 men have been in all ages to devise for them- 
 selves fancied forms of holiness, and to choose 
 for themselves individual lines of obedience. 
 The Pharisee placed his religion in strict cere- 
 monial observance, he gave tithe of mint and 
 anise, and lengthened the corners of his gar- 
 ment, mistaking the prohibition of an obsolete 
 idolatrous custom, for a permanent moral pre- 
 
85 
 
 cept, these observances he called righteousness. 
 The Gnostic placed his claim to superiority over 
 his fellows, in the entertainment of mystical 
 speculations, and imagined he saw, in the vi- 
 sions of a disordered fancy, the glories of the 
 unsearchable God ; — this he called holines. — 
 The Ascetic fled from the enjoyments, the la- 
 bours, and the duties of social life, deserted 
 the theatre of moral obedience, forsook the 
 post assigned him by the Captain of his salva- 
 tion, — and persuaded himself that this living 
 suicide was the sanctity of consecration. 
 
 But, my fellow Christians, the separation which 
 the Apostle enjoins is on none of these grounds. 
 — The description of people from whom we are 
 to turn away are here, and in many other parts 
 of Scripture, described to be selfish, cove Lous, 
 blasphemers, unholy, incontinent, despisers of 
 those that are good ; — lovers of pleasure more 
 than lovers of God, professing a religion by 
 the power of which they refuse to be led ; turn- 
 ing the grace of God into lasciviousness ; deny- 
 ing our Lord Jesus Christ, and walking after 
 their own ungodly lusts.— -And the reason of 
 the injuction is given in another place, where, 
 after the conclusion of some moral precepts, the 
 Apostle says, " If any man obey not our word, 
 ** note that man, and have no company with 
 " him, — that he may be a ashamed, yet count 
 
86 
 
 " him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a 
 " brother." And in another place, " Know ye 
 M not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole 
 " lump ? be not deceived, evil communication 
 " corrupts good morals." — So that the motives 
 of the injunction seem to be, no apprehension 
 of ideal profanation of our Christian sanctity, 
 no assumption of that vengeance which belong- 
 eth unto the Lord, no officious vindication of 
 the offended majesty of God, — but merely, and 
 soberly, the reformation of the offender, and 
 the avoidance of the real contamination likely 
 to ensue from evil example. 
 
 And for the reformation of the sinner him- 
 self, perhaps there cannot, humanly speaking, 
 be imagined a more powerful instrument, than 
 the strongly marked feeling of disapprobation, 
 which is expressed by abstaining from his com- 
 pany and social intercourse. Half the power 
 of sin is derived from the countenance which it 
 receives, and the withholding of the merited 
 expression of abhorrence. Mankind naturally 
 look for the society, the countenance of each 
 other, and would sacrifice any thing rather than 
 have their estimation in the eyes of their fel- 
 lows depreciated. This, as it is often on the 
 side of sin, so it may be made to act on the side of 
 virtue. — And the Scriptures recommend it.— 
 " Be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers," 
 
87 
 
 says Saint Paul, " for what fellowship hath 
 " righteousness with unrighteousness, what 
 " communion hath light with darkness ?" And 
 again, " Them that sin, rebuke before all, that 
 " others also may fear *** and again, " Be in- 
 " stant in season, and out of season, reprove, 
 " rebuke, exhort, with all long suffering."— 
 And again, " Withdraw yourselves from every 
 " brother that walketh disorderly." — Such, my 
 fellow Christians, are the words of Scripture 
 recommending the sanction of social censure. 
 
 This discountenancing of vice applies itself 
 to one of the most powerful of our passions, 
 shame. What man, except the most abandon- 
 ed, perhaps not even the most abandoned, 
 would wish to have his sins known to those who 
 he is convinced would, in consequence, despise 
 and fly from his society ? What wretch would 
 make ostentation of his impurity to some com- 
 pany of venerable clergy, or some society of 
 religiously dignified females ? — And my friends* 
 did every Christian dignify his character, by 
 openly and boldly discountenancing vice, — did 
 he render himself respectable, and venerable^ 
 by declaring that he not only would not commit 
 those things, against which he knew the judg- 
 ments of God, but also that he would not have 
 pleasure in them that do them, — did every 
 Christian manifest that he rejoiced not in ini- 
 
88 
 
 quity, but rejoiced in the truth, — every assem- 
 bly would be then too venerable, too reverend, 
 too sanctified for sinners. — To whom then should 
 the slanderer seek to make himself agreeable ? — 
 From whom should the deceiver expect the 
 praise of superior wisdom ? — To whom should 
 the seducer boast himself? — From whom should 
 the duellist seek his reward for the sacrifice of 
 his natural feelings, of his reason, and of his 
 conscience ?— The law of opinion operates with 
 sovereign power, not only because its sanctions 
 are inevitable, but because they are immediate, 
 and because they are irresistible. — The seducer 
 who regards not man, nor God, nor even his 
 own heart, who values not truth, nor honesty, 
 nor sincerity, will yet be true to any public pro- 
 mise, because though he fears neither the phy- 
 sical nor the civil power of man, he cannot bear 
 his contempt. — The duellist who sets the law of 
 God and of the state at defiance, will yet do 
 nothing which the world calls unfair, because he 
 is not bold enough to defy the law of opinion. — 
 There is no wretch however abandoned, how- 
 ever hardened, however dead in trespasses and 
 sin, who does not cling to the countenance 
 of some society, and while he is sinking in the 
 abyss of self condemnation, catch at some straw, 
 some particle of public esteem. 
 
 And why should we not comply with the re- 
 
89 
 
 peated injunctions of the Apostle, and use 
 these sanctions on the side of religion ?-— The 
 sinner who is made ashamed of his sins, will be 
 likely soon to wish for the grace of God to en- 
 able him to forsake them.— The transition is 
 easy, from shame to sorrow, from sorrow to re- 
 morse, and from remorse to repentance. 
 
 Exclusive of these obvious and salutary effects 
 on the sinner, the consequences of discounten- 
 ancing vice are to ourselves highly beneficial. 
 It most completely obviates the contagion of 
 evil example, and in this excels the solitude of 
 the recluse, as it removes us from the vices of 
 society, without abstracting us from its duties. 
 — The monastery or the desart never presented 
 such a barrier to the intrusion of sin, as the 
 manly reprehension, the discountenancing ab- 
 horrence of depraved character, which while it 
 consecrates us to the service of God, in turn- 
 ing the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom 
 of the just, inscribes on our own breasts, " ho- 
 " liness to the Lord."— The man who sets his 
 face against sin in others, will be strengthened 
 in his power of resisting it himself. — He that 
 walketh not in the way of the ungodly will have 
 his delight in the law of the Lord ;— -he will 
 feel with full force the glaring absurdity which 
 our Lord describes— of plucking out the mote 
 out of our brother's eye, while there is a beam 
 
90 
 
 in our own. — He that wields the sanctions of 
 opinion against irreligion and ungodliness in 
 others — will feel himself more strongly pledged 
 to purity of life.— The fear of absurdity is not 
 one of the least powerful springs of human con- 
 duct, and what greater absurdity could there be, 
 than after we had preached to others, ourselves 
 to become cast away ? — No, my fellow Chris- 
 tians, what we consider in others as a just cause 
 of contempt and censure, we will be very slow 
 to admit in ourselves. — And the habitual repre- 
 hension of sin will make us more fully sensible 
 of the abhorrence which it merits. 
 
 But perhaps you will say we cannot exer- 
 cise this sanction of opinion, without setting 
 ourselves against the voice of the world.— 
 While society is constituted as it is, we cannot 
 take on ourselves the office of censors. — Why 
 not ? — There are sectarists who do it. — I never 
 heard of a duellist Quaker, I never heard of an 
 avowed profligate Methodist, who was associ- 
 ated with by his brethren. — Their speculative 
 opinions are wrong— yours are right. — but what, 
 I beseech you, is there in rectitude of specula- 
 tion to prevent your compliance with the Apos- 
 tolical precept ? But farther, you yourselves do 
 in part comply with it. If any man is a known 
 thief who would associate with him ?— Why 
 then company with an open blasphemer, with 
 
91 
 
 an avowed profligate, with a declared duellist ? 
 except, perhaps that blasphemy, and fornication, 
 and murder, are less degrading sins than theft. — 
 Open your Bibles, my fellow Christians, and try 
 if you can find them so. — You can withhold 
 the hand of fellowship from those who are your 
 inferiors in temporal rank, though perhaps your 
 equals in the eyes of God, — and will you not at 
 his command, withdraw your countenance from 
 those who are degrading their spiritual rank, 
 who are resting on that countenance to plunge 
 themselves into eternal ruin ? — Be assured you 
 cannot do an act of greater kindness to your 
 best friend, than to set your face against his 
 vices. — How many a sinner in the beginning of 
 his career, or even when farther advanced, 
 would have been saved, had some kind and 
 sincere friend told him, in the manly language 
 of Christianity, that there could be no fellow- 
 ship between a follower of Jesus Christ and the 
 children of Belial.— Advice he might have con- 
 sidered as an unsanctioned, and perhaps insin- 
 cere common place, but he would have felt the 
 alienation of his friend, so strongly, so power- 
 fully, throughout his moral system, as that it 
 might have awakened him from the paralisis of 
 sin, to the intellectual vigour of righteousness. . 
 
 But you will say, what can we do individually 
 against the voice of the world ? we have no 
 
92 
 
 authority, no influence of situation. After hav- 
 ing rendered ourselves suspected of hypocrisy, 
 —after having excited the indignation, and 
 perhaps, what is worse, the laughter of our 
 friends— we shall lose our labour.— You know not, 
 my fellow Christians, the power of even a single 
 voice in directing public opinion. — You know 
 not the power of a single voice, where it is on 
 the right side, and is accompanied with the 
 blessing of God. — Ten righteous men could 
 have preached repentance, exemplified holiness, 
 to the inhabitants of Sodom, and have stopped 
 the torrent of fiery indignation from Lord, 
 which. overthrew that devoted city. — One pro- 
 phet preached and successfully preached repent- 
 ance to the inhabitants of Nineveh, and one 
 single voice crying in the wilderness was deemed 
 sufficient to prepare the way of the Lord. Pub- 
 lic opinion is powerful, because it is considered 
 as universal, but where it is erroneous, one manly 
 voice is oftentimes sufficient to kindle the spark 
 of truth, which shall flash throughout all its 
 mazes, and the pestilential vapour which threat- 
 ened destruction shall cease to exist. 
 
 But my fellow Christians you are not so few, 
 though you bear but a small proportion to the 
 numerical population of your country, you bear, 
 and will bear, a great one to that body, which 
 shall sway its opinions, and direct its judg- 
 
t 
 
 93 
 
 merits. — I will not remind you that a Christian 
 ought not to be put into competition with each 
 other, the voice of the world and the com- 
 mands of God. — But I will tell you, that com- 
 petition is little likely to offer itself ; — for you 
 yourselves are the world. — Some of you are to 
 be the legislators, many the lawyers, many the 
 pastors, of your country, many the instructers 
 of her youth. — All of you are to be those cha- 
 racters which will give tone to private society, 
 and expression to public sentiment. Ye are 
 the lights of the world, let not that light be 
 darhness. Let me entreat you, by the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, that you be Christians in your se- 
 veral capacities, — that you confine not your re- 
 ligion to your closets, that ye dapart not from 
 Christ when you shut your Bibles or rise from 
 your knees. — What you say in the seat of jus- 
 tice, say in the tenor of your lives and conver- 
 sation to the world. What you say to the con- 
 gregation, say in your conduct outside the 
 walls of your church. — What you say to those 
 whom you instruct, confirm by your example 
 and general indication of sentiment, — that vice 
 is the greatest degradation,— that sin is the most 
 legitimate object of abhorrence, and that from 
 those who will not forsake it — the Christian 
 ought to turn away. So shall ye bring the voice 
 of public opinion to the side of religion, so shall 
 ye contribute, as far as in you lies, to the sanc- 
 tification of God's name, the establishment of 
 
94 
 
 his kingdom, and the obedience to his will, on 
 earth, as it is in heaven. 
 
 Now unto hinl that is able to keep you from 
 falling, and to present you faultless before the 
 presence of his glory, to the only wise God our 
 Saviour be glory, majesty, dominion, and power, 
 both now and for ever. 
 
 SERMON VII. 
 
 II. Corinthians, xiii. — 5. 
 Examine yourselves. 
 
 THE duty of self examination, so necessary to 
 every man, and so frequently recommended by 
 the Scriptures to every Christian, is generally 
 thought to refer principally to actions, and those 
 
95 
 
 thoughts of our hearts, and indulged propen- 
 sities of our nature which exemplify themselves 
 in external conduct. — Here, however, the Apos- 
 tle directs us to a species of self examination 
 which, however it may be ultimately reducible 
 to the same general description, is at first view 
 apparently very different, and perhaps for this 
 reason less attended to than its importance re- 
 quires—" Examine yourselves whether you be 
 in the faith." — This, my friends, is a question 
 which we find it very difficult to see the neces- 
 sity of asking ourselves, and still more difficult 
 to bear its being asked by others. — We readily 
 admit that perhaps we are occasionally deficient 
 in practice, that our love to God is not so 
 strongly influential on our conduct at some 
 times as at others ; but we are very slow to sus- 
 pect the possibility of our not being in the faith, 
 or even of our being not perfectly competent 
 to declare to others what the right faith is. 
 And yet my fellow Christians, Charity, and love 
 to God, and Christian faith, are reciprocally 
 indications of each other, mutually commensu- 
 rate, and inseparably connected. — Hence^ the 
 vital importance of the inquiry. 
 
 C >A dtaiitw ,ftv>i.;; - : *r>u(:r> oil '. s nul*t aflttb sqjilL 
 Were Faith a mere assent to abstract truth on 
 the demonstrations of reason, — a mere admission 
 of historical relation on a satisfactory proba- 
 bility, it would be referrible rather to philoso- 
 
96 
 
 phical accuracy, than to religious excellence, 
 and the scriptural injunction of it as a condition 
 for salvation would be superfluous. We should 
 then believe with the head unto conviction, and 
 not with the heart unto obedience. — Be assured 
 that the faith which has power to purify our 
 hearts from sin, to fill them with the love of God, 
 to lead us to all righteousness, to crown us with 
 everlasting life as the sons of God and joint 
 heirs with Christ, is something more than this. 
 — How important, how interesting is the en- 
 quiry whether we be in it ? — whether we be in 
 that which is the exclusive gift of the spirit, 
 the peculiar mark of our adoption, and the only 
 means of our salvation. 
 
 What is Faith, is a question which we must 
 first solve, before we proceed to the enquiry of 
 whether we be in it. — Let no man represent to 
 you what Christian Faith ought to mean accord- 
 ing to the intricate speculations of human inge- 
 nuity, the fancied measures devised by man to 
 estimate the things which be of God. — Let no 
 man represent to you Christian Faith as a mys- 
 tical name for something he knows not what, 
 something which he cannot express, which he 
 himself and those who join themselves to him 
 are possessed of, to the exclusion of all others j 
 but search the Scriptures humbly, dispassion- 
 ately, and soberly, for the genuine description 
 
97 
 
 of that Faith which is required of you. — Search 
 them, I say, humbly, that ye may have the aid 
 of that Spirit who resisteth the proud, and giveth 
 grace unto the humble ; dispassionately, that ye 
 may be of Christ, rather than of Paul, or of 
 Apollos, and soberly, that ye may not seek to 
 be wise above that which is written. 
 
 Faith, as described in Scripture, appears to 
 be naturally resolvable into three branches, dis- 
 tinguishable from each other, though united in 
 their origin and correspondent in their effects. 
 It contains the belief that God has performed a 
 certain act, for a certain purpose, namely, that 
 he has sent his Son into the world, to save us 
 from the abandoned misery of sin on this side of 
 the grave, and to redeem ns from that everlast- 
 ing destruction which is its just wages hereafter. 
 It contains a firm persuasion of the efficacy of 
 the rules of life which he has proposed to us, 
 and of the certainty of the sanctions by which 
 they are accompanied ; and it also contains a 
 firm reliance on the mercy of God, a strong as- 
 surance of his love, a casting all our care on 
 him who has so cared for us. 
 
 With respect to the first of these, namely, the 
 facts which are the objects of Faith, it may per- 
 haps seem to some, that we ought to class with 
 them the authority of the Scriptures themselves, 
 
 VOL. I. H 
 
98 
 
 and the truth of the relation which they contain, 
 considered as a mere history of events subject 
 to human observation and capable of human 
 testimony. — But this is the distinction which of 
 all others I would most particularly wish to im- 
 press on you, that our reception of these latter 
 is mere historical assent, and though it prepares 
 the way for, is perfectly distinct from, religious 
 Faith. — I would wish, I say, to call your atten- 
 tion to this distinction, because it will enable us 
 to answer a favourite objection of infidelity, 
 grounded on our assent not being in our power, 
 and to justify the ways of God to man, in re- 
 quiring faith as an indispensable condition, and 
 proposing it as a sure means of salvation.— 
 Preserved with an almost superstitious venera- 
 tion through successive ages, handed down to 
 us through innumerable and independent chan- 
 nels, perpetually referred to by hostile sects, 
 and contending disputants, unquestioned, as to 
 authority, even by its enemies who rejected its 
 tenets, the history of the New Testament comes 
 to us, with a mass of evidence which no other 
 history has to boast. — What other history has 
 been the constant study of so many individuals 
 through successive ages from its first production 
 to the present time, and all of them watching 
 each other, so as to prevent the possibility of 
 any alteration, or forgery ? — Of the authenticity 
 of what other history have so many men who 
 
99 
 
 were in every respect qualified to judge been so 
 firmly persuaded, as to give up the strongest 
 desires of the human heart, and even life itself, 
 rather than reject it ? — No, my friends, there 
 can be no doubt that these Scriptures are the 
 unadulterated productions of the early Chris- 
 tians who were eye witnesses of the facts therein 
 related. — If we merely attend to the proofs, our 
 assent to the authenticity of these writings is 
 necessary, not elective ; historical, not religious ; 
 and we are placed in the same situation, as if 
 we heard the relation from the Evangelists 
 themselves. — Let me now ask you, my friends, 
 if you had lived in the age of the Evangelists, 
 and heard their narrative from their own lips, if 
 you had witnessed the integrity, and compe- 
 tency, and sincerity which it is evident they 
 were possessed of, would your assent be con- 
 tingent? Could you withhold it from the facts 
 contained in that narrative, as far as they came 
 under human observation, namely, that there 
 was such a person as Jesus Christ, who lived, 
 and spoke, and acted, and died as the Evan- 
 gelists have described him, that he performed, 
 or at least appeared to perform, certain mira- 
 cles,— that he conversed with them after his 
 crucifixion, and appeared to be finally taken 
 from their sight, in a miraculous manner, — and 
 that his Disciples, after his death, appeared to 
 perform miracles resembling his ? 
 
100 
 
 These facts are related, not by one single 
 witness, but by many whose competency is un- 
 questioned, and whose sincerity is confirmed 
 by their conduct, and sealed with their blood. — 
 So far our assent cannot be contingent, cannot, 
 if we attend to the proofs, be in our own power ; 
 it must be stronger than that which we give to 
 any other history, because no other history is 
 so strongly attested. To speak of such a faith 
 being required of us by God, is superfluous; to 
 think that such of itself is able to save us is ab- 
 surd. — It is a faith which many, if not all of the 
 Jews, most assuredly had, — a faith which Simon 
 Magus must have possessed, although in the 
 bond of sin, and very gall of bitterness. 
 
 But there are other facts, declared by the 
 Evangelists, which are not the immediate ob- 
 jects of human observation, and of which there- 
 fore they can give — not their testimony — but 
 their opinion, their judgment, their persuasion; 
 — namely, that God sent his Son into the world, 
 that the purpose for which he sent him was to 
 redeem mankind, that the Word was God, that 
 his miracles, his resurrection, his ascension, 
 the pouring out of his spirit at Pentecost were 
 real, and consequently confirmations of his di- 
 vinity. — These are the appropriate objects of 
 Christian faith ; assent to these is voluntary in 
 its entertainment, though in its commence- 
 
101 
 
 merit and perfection it be the gift of God. — 
 It is voluntary in its entertainment, I say, for 
 many of the Jews to whom it was first pro- 
 posed received, many rejected it ; — and many 
 of those who call themselves Christians, in the 
 latter and present times, reject it, contenting 
 themselves with that historical faith, which I 
 have above described, and justly doubting how 
 faith, as they understand it, a faith which is not 
 in our own power, can be required of us by 
 God, or become a cause, or condition of our 
 future salvation. 
 
 Our assent to the assertions of Scripture re- 
 specting the person, the office, and the powers 
 of Jesus Christ, is naturally related, and may 
 be considered as extending to the assertions 
 concerning the nature and attributes of the 
 Deity, which occur in the sacred w ritings. — Our 
 belief in these, as far as the authority goes, is 
 requisite ; — but no farther. — Let me anxiously 
 caution you against endeavouring to be wise 
 above what is written, against endeavouring to 
 form philosophical theories respecting the na- 
 ture of God, the manner of his existence, and 
 attributes, beyond what his condescension has 
 revealed to our weakness. — It is dangerous thus 
 to attempt to put forth our hand to the ark of 
 the Lord ; it is presumptuous thus to draw the 
 veil from before the Holy of Holies. — But should 
 
102 
 
 we make these our differences of speculation the 
 means of weakening our Christian charity, and 
 bursting the bonds of Christian peace, the pre- 
 sumption becomes wickedness, and the danger 
 becomes destruction. — Surely this is hating our 
 brother without a cause. — Let me also here take 
 occasion to caution you against what appears to 
 me to be a mistake on the subject of faith ; 
 though I do it with respectful diffidence, because 
 I know it to be the opinion of some learned and 
 worthy men, that our religious faith is prima- 
 rily founded on a demonstration of the exist- 
 ence and attributes of God derived from the 
 principles of metaphisical reasoning, or that we 
 believe in Christ, because we have first believed 
 in God.— To me it appears that no man can 
 come to the Father except through the Son, — 
 that the world by wisdom cannot know their 
 God. — They may, perhaps, have some faint idea 
 that there is a superior being, but of his attri- 
 butes they can have scarce any ; — and what is 
 God without his attributes ? In what God did 
 the gentiles, to whom Saint Paul so success- 
 fully turned himself, believe ? — In Jupiter. — Do 
 you think that believing in Jupiter is believing 
 in God ? — Or that Demetrius of Ephesus would 
 have been more open to the preaching of Paul, 
 than Diagoras the Athenian atheist had he lived 
 in his day ? — The opinion is in itself unimport- 
 ant, but I caution you not to receive it with- 
 
103 
 
 out enquiry, because it appears to me to be sub- 
 servient to a delusion, which has, and docs 
 mislead too many, that while they believe in a 
 narrative which they can historically substan- 
 tiate, and a God whose being and attributes 
 they can rationally prove, they fancy they have 
 all the faith which is required of us for salva- 
 tion. 
 
 But, my fellow Christians, we are no where 
 told, that a belief in the veracity of the Evan- 
 gelists as to the external facts which they re- 
 late, will procure for us salvation. — Were it so, 
 salvation would have been very general in the age 
 of the Apostles, for most of their hearers knew 
 these facts to be true. — What we are told is, 
 that if we believe that Jesus Christ came forth 
 from God, was the Son of the most high God, 
 that the words which he spake and the works 
 which he wrought were the words and works 
 of God, we shall be saved, — we shall have, or 
 rather actually have within us, the principle and 
 
 cause of everlasting life. This is the faith 
 
 which the very brethren of Jesus had not, when 
 they are described as not believing in him, — 
 which those of his disciples had not, who are 
 described as leaving him and walking no more 
 with him, — a faith which is given, rather than 
 acquired, which was revealed to Peter, not by 
 flesh and blood, but by the Father which is in 
 
104 
 
 heaven, and impressed on the unwilling mind 
 of Paul, by the miraculous manifestation of the 
 Son of God. Historical assent is related to 
 this faith, only as a subservient preparation, a 
 condition which we must presuppose, as the 
 Apostle describes hearing to be ; — " how shall 
 " they believe if they have not heard ?" — we 
 cannot have faith without having historical as- 
 sent, but we may have historical assent without 
 having faith. 
 
 Faith is farther characterised by its being in- 
 fluential on conduct, by being a faith unto obe- 
 dience, by our believing with our whole hearts 
 unto righteousness. — And this leads me to the 
 consideration of what I stated to be the second 
 part of the description of religious faith, name- 
 ly, belief of the efficacy of the rules of life 
 which Christ has proposed to us, and the cer- 
 tianty of the sanctions by which he has autho- 
 rized them ; — a belief naturally connected with 
 and resulting from our assurance, that in him 
 dwelt the fulness of the Godhead. — If we be- 
 lieve Christ to have been the Son of God, wlio 
 so loved the world, that he sent his Son to be its 
 Redeemer and Judge j if we believe him to be 
 God, who so loved us, that he gave himself for 
 us, we must receive with full and heartfelt and 
 effective conviction, his authority and compe- 
 tency, arising from infinite power and infinite 
 
105 
 
 benevolence, to propose to us such rules of life, 
 as shall be most certainly conducive to his gra- 
 cious purpose, of saving us from the bondage of 
 sin, and regenerating us to a life of holiness ; — 
 we must also admit his power to sanction, and 
 his veracity to perform his promises and de- 
 nunciations. — The rules which he has left us 
 form no abstruse, nor intricate, nor voluminous 
 code of legislation. He that runs may read ; 
 he that reads cannot forget ; he bears it about 
 with him written on his heart, and illumined by 
 the Spirit of God, as an unerring guide for his 
 external conduct ; it is briefly comprehended in 
 this saying, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
 " God with all thy heart, and with all thy 
 " mind, and with all thy strength, and thou 
 " shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." On this 
 have the Apostles commented, declaring the in- 
 separability of its parts and their efficacy to a 
 life of holiness, calling the love of God the ef- 
 ficacy of the Spirit of Christ within us, and de- 
 scribing the results of love to man as the fruits 
 and graces of the same holy Comforter. — How 
 beautifully, under the name of Charity, does 
 Saint Paul enumerate the effects of this heaven- 
 ly precept ? How succinctly does he prove, in 
 another place, that love is the fulfilling of the 
 law ?— A belief of the efficacy and an obedience 
 to the authority of these precepts, is as neces- 
 sary and as constituent a part of Christian faith, 
 
106 
 
 as a belief of the nature and office of our Re- 
 deemer. — In the ordinary use of language, be- 
 lieving in any person immediately and prima- 
 rily signifies believing the truth of what he 
 says. In many parts of the Scripture it is de- 
 clared under various forms of expression, that 
 without holiness no man shall see the Lord ; — 
 in many others, faith is asserted to be of itself 
 sufficient for salvation ; propositions which it is 
 impossible to reconcile, if we admit any thing 
 to be faith, except that which is faith unto obe- 
 dience. Indeed the impossibility of believing 
 Christ to be the Son of God, and not feeling 
 the indispensable necessity of following the 
 path of sanctification which he has marked out 
 for us, is so great that it would seem absurdly 
 superfluous to attempt to prove the inseparabi- 
 lity of faith and obedience, were it not a me- 
 lancholy truth, not merely that some heretics 
 have attempted to disjoin them ; — but that we 
 all are too ready to flatter ourselves, that our 
 faith is pure, unshaken and uncorrupted, though 
 we may occasionally defer or be deficient in our 
 obedience ; — not knowing, or at least not in- 
 fluentially feeling, that such as is the one, such 
 will be the other also. 
 
 The time usually allotted to discourses from 
 this place would not allow me to enter, as fully 
 as I would wish, into the proof, that trust and 
 
107 
 
 confidence in God and casting all our care on 
 him who has so cared for us, forms an essen- 
 tially constituent part of Christian faith. — Nor 
 would it allow me to call your attention, suffi- 
 ciently for the importance of the subject, to 
 what may be the best criterion for proving whe- 
 ther we be in the faith. — I must therefore defer 
 these considerations to a future opportunity. 
 
 Now unto him that is able to keep from fall- 
 ing, and to present you faultless before the pre- 
 sence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the 
 only wise God our Saviour, be glory, and ma- 
 jesty, and dominion, now and for ever. 
 
SERMON VIII. 
 
 II. Corinthians, xiii. — 5. 
 
 Examine yourselves, whether you be in the Faith; 
 'prove your own-selves. Know ye not that Jesus 
 Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates ? 
 
 WHEN I addressed you on a former occasion 
 concerning the nature and effect of Christian 
 faith, I endeavoured to prove to you, that it 
 consists, not so much in an assent to the ge- 
 nuiness of the Scriptures, and the sincerity of 
 their authors, not so much in a belief of the 
 facts therein related, as far as they could natu- 
 rally be the objects of human testimony, as in 
 a firm persuasion, that the opinions of these au- 
 thors concerning the person and office of Jesus 
 
109 
 
 Christ are well founded, a conviction that he 
 was sent by the Father, was God manifested in 
 the flesh, that in him dwelt the fulness of the 
 Godhead bodily, and that consequently the 
 rules of life, which he has left us, and the pro- 
 mises which he has bequeathed to us, are the 
 laws and promises of God, perfectly sufficient 
 to produce our sanctification in this life, and to 
 insure our everlasting glory in that which is to 
 come. I also proposed to endeavour to shew 
 you, that Christian faith includes a trust and 
 confidence in God's mercy, a laying hold of the 
 hope which is set before us, a casting all our care 
 on him who has so cared for us ; and I stated, 
 that after shewing, that this faith is voluntary 
 in its entertainment, although in its commence- 
 ment and perfection it be the gift of God, and 
 therefore as justly required as it is graciously offer- 
 ed, I would proceed to enquire, what is the most 
 appropriate criterion for ascertaining whether 
 we be in it,— what are the best means for exa- 
 mining and proving our own-selves, and exer- 
 cising that judgment, which we are invited by 
 Christ and his Apostles to exercise on ourselves, 
 though forbidden to extend to others, these 
 considerations shall be the subject of my pre- 
 sent discourse. 
 
 W ere faith however to be limited to a belief 
 
110 
 
 in the person and office of Christ, and an as- 
 surance of his competency and authority as a le- 
 gislator, it would be incomplete, and conse- 
 quently insufficient for being a faith unto sal- 
 vation. Such a faith Judas probably had when 
 he hanged himself. — Such a faith have the de- 
 vils, of whom it is said, that they believe and 
 tremble, and who are described as bearing wit- 
 ness to Christ, not merely that they believed, 
 but that they knew him to be the Son of God. 
 Why did Judas hang himself? Because his 
 faith did not contain hope. — He madly sought 
 to atone for his guilt, because he imagined he 
 could expect no part in the atonement of our 
 Redeemer. — Why is the faith of Devils repre- 
 sented as enhancing their misery, rather than 
 producing any good effect ? Because it does 
 not contain hope. — Because they do not believe 
 themselves to be objects of a Redeemer's love. 
 — No, my fellow Christians, it is not enough 
 that we believe that Christ has died. — We must 
 also be persuaded, that he has died for us. We 
 must feel an assurance, that we are the objects 
 of the love of that God who gave himself for 
 us. — We must apply to ourselves individually 
 those gracious promises of mercy and salvation, 
 which he has addressed to his chosen, that glo- 
 rious Gospel, those tidings of exceeding joy, 
 before we can feel a reciprocal affection, a 
 grateful devotement of the heart unto God, be- 
 
Ill 
 
 fore we can have that faith which worketh by 
 love, which bringeth forth fruit unto righteous- 
 ness, and whose end is everlasting life. — In 
 many parts of Scripture love of God is describ- 
 ed as the perfection of faith, as the proximate 
 cause of our righteousness and sanctification. If 
 a man love me, saith our blessed Redeemer, if 
 a man love me, he will keep my commandments, 
 and my Father will love him, and we will come 
 unto him, and take up our abode with him. — 
 AVe are again told by the Apostle, that our 
 love to God is the natural consequence of our 
 conviction that he first loved us. — " Herein is 
 " our love to God manifested, not that we first 
 " loved him, but that he first loved us." — So 
 that it appears, that in order to form a perfect 
 idea of Christian Faith, such a Faith as shall be 
 capable of producing its appropriate fruits, we 
 must superadd to our belief of the divinity and 
 authority of Christ, a persuasion that we are 
 the objects of the love of God, and a conse- 
 quent trust and confidence in his mercy. — This 
 is the Faith, the deficiency of which our Sa- 
 viour so often blames in his disciples. — When 
 he would repress that excessive anxiety con- 
 cerning the things of this world, which is so 
 natural to the heart of man ; calling their at- 
 tention to the unconflned bounty of their hea- 
 venly Father diffused throughout even the hum- 
 blest parts of his creation, he exclaims against 
 
112 
 
 their want of Faith. When he would reprove 
 that distrustful fear which imminent danger of 
 a tempest had excited, he addresses them by 
 the chiding epithet, " Oh ! ye of little Faith." 
 When he beheld the momentary confidence of 
 Peter failing, that momentary confidence in his 
 Master, which had at first miraculously sup- 
 ported him on the waters, he refers this failure 
 to the deficiency of his faith. " Oh ! thou of 
 " little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt ?" In 
 these passages, and others of a similar descrip- 
 tion, Faith must immediately and primarily 
 signify a trust and confidence in the protecting 
 mercy of God. They therefore afford full evi- 
 dence, that our Saviour considered that trust 
 and confidence as essential and discriminating 
 characteristics of that Faith, which he required 
 of mankind. And indeed if we examine into 
 the nature of the Faith, which is stated to have 
 been frequently the instrument or operative 
 cause of the miraculous cures performed by our 
 blessed Lord, we shall find that it was of the 
 same description. — As to the nature and office 
 of our Lord, even his disciples themselves were, 
 in a great measure, ignorant during his life 
 time, and what they did know, he had strictly 
 charged them, that they should tell no man. 
 What therefore could have been the nature of 
 the faith of those individuals who were the ob- 
 jects of his healing mercy ? — They could not be 
 
113 
 
 said to believe, for they had never heard those 
 sublime truths, which afterwards contributed to 
 form the speculative part of Christian Faith. — 
 But they did believe what they had heard, — that 
 he was sent by God to be the Saviour of his 
 people, — was the messenger of divine mercy, 
 and in that mercy did they trust, and therefore 
 were they healed ; affording at once, as being 
 the objects of the miraculous exertion of a be- 
 nevolent power, an evidence of the divinity of 
 his mission, and a typical example to his fol- 
 lowers, that they should lay hold on the hope 
 that was set before them, and trust in the mercy 
 of their God for salvation from their sins, and 
 the renewal of a right spirit within them. — 
 What is meant by the speech of the woman who 
 reminds our Lord, that the dogs eat of the 
 crumbs, which fall from their master's table? 
 What is meant, I say, but that she believed, that 
 however humble she might be in the sight of 
 God, she was still the object of his mercy ? — 
 And yet of her, our Saviour declares, " Oh ! 
 " woman, great is thy Faith." — When the blind 
 Bartimeus struggled with every obstacle, that 
 he might have the opportunity of beseeching 
 our Lord to restore him to sight, what did this 
 earnestness imply, but, that he believed in his 
 power, and had reliance on his compassion ? — 
 To him, our Lord declares, as he did also to 
 many others who had evinced a similar hope in 
 
 VOL. I. I 
 
114 
 
 his mercy, " Thy faith hath made thee whole." 
 So that it appears, that one of the principal 
 characteristics of Faith, that property by which 
 it becomes capable of being the instrument of 
 divine mercy, that property by which it be- 
 comes capable of arresting the progress of mo- 
 ral corruption, is a hope, a trust, a confidence 
 in that mercy. 
 
 If we turn to the writings of the Apostles, 
 we shall find that their main design appears to 
 be, to evince to us, that we are to look to 
 Christ as the author and finisher of our faith, 
 the purifier of our hearts, the enlightener of 
 our minds, our guide to holiness, and the sa- 
 crifice by whose blood atonement is made for 
 our transgressions ; or if I may be allowed to 
 use Saint Paul's comprehensive form of expres- 
 sion, " that Christ is of God made unto us 
 " wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctifica- 
 R tion, and redemption." — So that, to believe 
 in Christ must be to believe, that he is, and will 
 be to us, the exclusive cause, the unerring 
 hope, the certain author of every valuable ac- 
 quisition. Do we wish to know the things which 
 be of God? It is to Christ, and to him alone, 
 we are to look for this illumination for the 
 natural man receiveth not the things which be 
 of God, neither indeed can he, — Do we wish 
 that sin should not reign in our members, but 
 
115 
 
 that we should walk in that righteousness in 
 which God hath commanded us ? It is to 
 Christ we are to look for the power ; for our suf- 
 ficiency is of him, and not of ourselves. — But, 
 to say that we believe all this, is only by a va- 
 ried form of language to express our trust and 
 confidence in the love of our Redeemer. 
 
 Having thus detailed what appears to me to 
 be the scriptural description of Christian Faith, 
 namely a belief of the divinity, a recognition 
 of the authority, and a confidence in the mercy 
 of Christ, I shall proceed to enquire how far 
 this faith depends on ourselves, an enquiry the 
 more important, as its result will, I trust, fur- 
 nish an answer to one of the most specious ob- 
 jections against our holy religion. 
 
 There are some unfortunate persons, who not 
 content with rejecting the revelation of Christ, 
 would wish to persuade themselves, or at least 
 others, that they disbelieve it on rational and 
 philosophical grounds. — These men maintain 
 that Faith, being a species of assent, must be 
 determined by preponderating reasons, is there- 
 fore not in our own power, cannot be voluntary. 
 They farther observe, that a great proportion of 
 Christians assert, and seem to be authorised by 
 Scripture in the assertion, that Faith is the ex- 
 clusive gift of God, and consequently is not in 
 
 12 
 
116 
 
 our own power, cannot be voluntary. But, say 
 they, to make that which is not in our own power 
 the meritorious condition of salvation is unjust, 
 to make that which is not within the sphere of 
 our will the object of exhortation and persuasion 
 is absurd, and the system which does so cannot 
 with propriety be considered as divine. I have 
 stated the objection as stronglyas I could, because 
 I think it may be a means of impressing on your 
 memories the answer I propose to give to it, and 
 may incite you to turn your own minds to the 
 subject, to search the Scriptures, and to supply 
 whatever may appear to be deficient in my mode 
 of answer. The manner in which I shall meet 
 it is this, first, by shewing that all kinds of as- 
 sent, and Christian Faith more than any other, 
 are in a great measure voluntary : secondly, 
 that though God be author and finisher of our 
 Faith, it is our own part to maintain and cherish 
 it ; and thirdly, that it is described in Scripture, 
 rather as the instrument or means used by God 
 for our salvation, than as any meritorious cause 
 or condition, whereby we become justly entitled 
 to it. 
 
 With respect to the first of these, I have to 
 remind you of the remark of a well known au- 
 thor, that our assent is partly necessary, partly 
 voluntary. Even the assent which the strictest 
 mathematical demonstration commands will not 
 exist, if we withhold what is perfectly in ou 
 
117 
 
 own power, namely, our attention from the 
 proofs, or refrain from the voluntary exertion 
 of our intellect in comprehending them and sa- 
 tisfying ourselves as to their connection. But 
 this is an extreme case. In matters of proba- 
 bility the sphere of the will becomes much wider, 
 the proofs to be considered are indefinitely mul- 
 tiplied, the connection between them imper- 
 fectly seen, and therefore capable of being ar- 
 bitrarily appreciated. Were the assent to be de- 
 termined, in such cases, necessarily by prepon- 
 derating reasons, all men of equal intellect and 
 equal opportunities of observation would form 
 the same conclusions on the same subjects, 
 which we all know is by no means the fact. 
 The truth is, it is not so much from our oppor- 
 tunities of information, as from the voluntary 
 use which we make of those opportunities, it is 
 not so much from our sagacity of intellect, as 
 from the voluntary use we make of that sagacity, 
 it is not so much from the preponderancy of 
 reasons, as from the appearance of preponde- 
 rancy, which our passions, those varied emotions 
 of the human will, can occasionally give to them, 
 that we form our conclusions in matters of pro- 
 bability. — And in matters of religious proba- 
 bility, how much more powerful must be the 
 influence of passion. — On a subject so totally 
 unconnected with worldly interest or worldly wis- 
 dom, how much wider must be the range of the 
 
118 
 
 will in the investigation of reasons, and the ex- 
 ertion of intellect ? In other matters of proba- 
 bility, the urgent necessity of action forces us 
 in a manner to a speedy decision, and interest 
 impels us to make the best use of our opportu- 
 nities, the greatest exertion of our intellect. 
 But in matters of religion, we can fancy a 
 slighter enquiry may suffice, or perhaps that we 
 may defer it entirely to some more convenient 
 season. Our voluntary power of suspending 
 our assent is greater in those matters, than in 
 any others. And if we do apply ourselves to 
 the enquiry, our passions, our pride, our self 
 sufficiency, the lusts of our own hearts, are in 
 arms against the reception of religious truth. 
 Whether we encourage those passions or whe- 
 ther we struggle with them is in our own power, 
 the grace of God is offered to us, to enable us 
 to come off victorious ; but whether we hear or 
 whether we forbear, whether we submit our- 
 selves to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, or 
 whether we receive him in vain, resist and grieve 
 him, is our voluntary act. If therefore we ad- 
 mit our assent to any abstract matter of proba- 
 bility to be partly voluntary, because our appli- 
 cation to the proofs, the exertion of our facul- 
 ties, and the regulation of the interference of 
 passion are in our own power, we must on all 
 these grounds admit, that religious faith is in a 
 much higher degree a voluntary act.— But, say 
 
119 
 
 the objectors, you yourselves assert Faith to be 
 the gift of God, how then can it be voluntary ? 
 —Without doubt our Scriptures do describe 
 God as the author and finisher of our Faith, 
 but they also repeatedly call on us to hold fast 
 the profession of our Faith, to keep our Faith 
 pure and undefiled, to stand fast in the Faith, 
 to hold the beginning of our confidence stead- 
 fast unto the end ; they speak of men of having 
 made shipwreck of their Faith ; expressions, 
 which when compared with each other evidently 
 imply, that although Faith be the gift of God, 
 it is our part, our duty, and consequently in 
 our power, to maintain and cherish it; that it is 
 a talent committed to our charge, the preser- 
 vation and encrease of which we must give an 
 account of, as though it had been to an austere 
 master. It is the seed sown in our hearts, of 
 which though God be the sower, it depend:, 
 upon the soil whether it be sown in vain, or 
 whether it bring forth fruit ; and yet if it do 
 bring forth fruit, it is God that giveth the en- 
 crease. — There are many, I had almost said all, 
 of the gifts of God, which are of exactly a si- 
 milar character. Though the utmost art and 
 labour of the husbandman could not create a 
 single blade of grass, it is left to his power, to 
 his voluntary choice, whether he will preserve 
 or neglect the harvest which divine bounty has 
 placed before him. Though our intellectual fa- 
 
120 
 
 culties be the gift of God, and none of their 
 glorious fruits could ever exist but for him, yet 
 it is our own voluntary act whether we will im- 
 prove them or indolently suffer them to waste 
 away. Even our very life itself, though in its 
 origin and preservation it be the gift of God, 
 yet depends on ourselves whether we will retain 
 or whether we will destroy it. In the same way, 
 though Faith be the gift of God, yet the main- 
 taining of that Faith is partly our own volun- 
 tary act. And being voluntary, (in order that 
 we may come to the next part of the objection) 
 there can be no injustice in making it a condi- 
 tion of our salvation, an instrument for effecting 
 it, nor no absurdity in its being the object of 
 exhortation and persuasion. With respect to 
 our Faith being a meritorious condition of sal- 
 vation, an act for which we are rewarded by 
 eternal life, that we neither assert, nor even 
 admit ; nor are we any where in Scripture told, 
 that we are saved for our Faith. The expression 
 is, by our Faith, through our Faith ; a form of lan- 
 guage which evidently indicates Faith to be the 
 means, the instrument used in arresting the 
 progress of moral corruption in our hearts, and 
 destroying the reign of sin in our members. It 
 by no means implies, that Faith is any merit, 
 for which we are rewarded, for which we be- 
 come justly and intrinsically entitled to salva- 
 tion. We are saved for the merits of Christ, 
 
121 
 
 and through the instrumentality of our Faith in 
 his blood. In those merits, in that Redeemer 
 we can have no part, except we wish, except 
 we hope, except we believe that we have : for 
 except we so believe, that love by which Faith 
 is described as working will be wanting. In 
 this respect Christian Faith admits perhaps of 
 greater fluctuations, of more progressive variety, 
 than in any other. Being the vital principle of 
 the new man, of the child of God, it grows with 
 his growth and strengthens with his strength. 
 Beginning in anxiety, it goes on to hope j from 
 hope it rises to expectation ; from expectation 
 to belief: I had almost said, to conviction. — 
 But let no man presume to describe beyond 
 his own experience. It strengthens with his 
 strength. — Every triumph over temptation, every 
 salvation from sin, every holy thought, every 
 just work conveys to his heart unspeakable com- 
 fort, and additional assurance to his faith, by 
 being a proof to him, that he is an object of 
 the love of God, that he has a part in his Re- 
 deemer. 
 
 This would naturally lead me to the last head 
 of my subject, " what is the criterion by which 
 " we may best ascertain whether we be in the 
 " faith ?" But as the limitation of time would 
 prevent me from entering into it so fully as its 
 importance would demand, I shall defer its 
 
122 
 
 consideration to some future opportunity. — Now 
 may the God of all grace, who hath called us 
 unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, make 
 you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you. 
 To him be glory and dominion for ever and 
 ever. 
 
 SERMON IX. 
 
 L Corinthians, xiii.— 5. 
 
 Examine yourselves whether ye be in the Faith. 
 Prove your own selves. Know ye not that 
 Christ Jesus is in you, except ye be repro- 
 bates ? 
 
 I HAVE proved to you, I trust, in a former 
 discourse, that Christian Faith consists in a be- 
 lief of the divinity of Christ, a recognition of 
 his authority, and a confidence in his mercy. 
 Therefore, though the enquiry whether we be 
 
123 
 
 in the faith, naturally presupposes, that we re- 
 ceive the Scriptures as the revelation of God, 
 though it be evident, that if we deny them, the 
 enquiry is ended ; — yet, on the other hand, the 
 mere admission of their authority does not ne- 
 cessarily evince, that we are in the faith. Be- 
 cause there have been, and unfortunately yet 
 are, many, who though they admit the authen- 
 ticity of the Bible, are yet deficient in some, 
 if not all, the characteristics of Christian Faith. 
 The enquiry therefore presents itself to such 
 as do admit the divine authority of the Bible, 
 whether they have that faith which is necessary 
 for salvation. 
 
 One mode of investigation, and perhaps that 
 which is most frequently applied to, is to en- 
 quire what are the speculative tenets of Chris- 
 tianity, how its mysteries are to be understood, 
 how both are to be accommodated to the re- 
 ceived systems of human philosophy, and to 
 ask ourselves do we believe them, do we ac- 
 quiesce in these received explications ? We 
 imagine there is no intermediate state of the 
 mind between belief and rejection, and if we 
 find nothing in these tenets which we are in- 
 clined to deny, we fancy we are in the faith. — 
 If, on the other hand, we meet with any thing 
 which is inconsistent with our preconceived 
 opinions, we attempt to prove that this cannot 
 
124 
 
 be the meaning of Scripture, we reconcile it, by 
 some ingenious explication, to our own system ; 
 and while perhaps we wrest it to our destruction, 
 we still persuade ourselves we are in the faith. — 
 And in order to satisfy ourselves of the com- 
 parative rectitude of our belief, of our spiritual 
 superiority oves the rest of the world, we pro- 
 ceed to apply our standard to measure the faith 
 of others. This, my fellow Christians, to say 
 the best of it, may be philosophy, but it is not 
 religion.— We are no where told that except we 
 understand all mysteries, except we have all 
 knowledge, we cannot be saved. What Saint 
 Paul says on that point is something very dif- 
 ferent from this. — No, my fellow Christians, 
 the Gospel was preached to the poor, the tid- 
 ings of exceeding joy are written so that he 
 who runs may read. — Mysteries there undoubt- 
 edly are in the nature of God and his relation 
 towards his creatures. — These may occasionably 
 be alluded to in the Scripture, but the under- 
 standing them is no where declared to be a con- 
 dition of salvation. Hear what Christ saith in 
 his conference with Nicodemus. " God so 
 " loved the world, that he gave his only be- 
 u gotten Son, that whosoever believed on 
 " him should not perish, but have everlasting 
 " life." And again, " This is the will of him 
 " that sent me, that every one that believ- 
 " eth on the Son may have everlasting life." 
 
125 
 
 And again, " He that believeth on me hath 
 " everlasting life." — Here we find no intricacy 
 of speculation described,— it is not the exertion 
 of a strong imagination, nor the labour of an 
 acute understanding which is called for, but the 
 exercise of an humble belief, But what are we 
 to believe ? What is the proposition to which 
 we are to give our assent ? " Believe me," saith 
 our blessed Lord to Philip, " that I am in the 
 " Father, and the Father in me." — " If," saith 
 Saint Paul, "thou shalt confess with thy mouth 
 " the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine heart 
 " that God hatli raised him from the dead, thou 
 " shalt be saved." In these passages, and many 
 others of a similar description, which declare 
 the efficacy of faith towards salvation, and the 
 nature of the propositions which form its spe- 
 culative part, there is nothing abstruse. We 
 are called on to believe the fact, not to be able 
 to explain the manner in which it took place. 
 This last is no where said to be necessary for 
 salvation. — God forbid it should, for if we can- 
 not attain to the full knowledge of the humblest 
 part of God's material creation, how shall we 
 expect to comprehend the unspeakable glories 
 of its infinite Creator ? What we are called on 
 to assent to, as conditionally requisite for sal- 
 vation, is simple as to fact ; That Christ was 
 sent by the Father, was the Son of God, was 
 one with the Father, that God raised him from 
 
126 
 
 the dead. — These are, as to fact, propositions 
 on a level with the meanest capacities. The ex- 
 plication of how these things can be is a totally 
 different matter, and as unconnected with Chris- 
 tian faith, as it is above the reach of human in- 
 tellect. Mark our Saviour's reply to Nicode- 
 mus. He had declared to him the necessity of 
 being born again, or as it might have been 
 translated, being born from above •, — and in an- 
 swer to his objecting question, " How can these 
 " things be ?" by no means attempts to ex- 
 plain how they are, but leaves merely the mat- 
 ter of fact for his belief, and expresses his won- 
 der, that a man who was a master in Israel, 
 and was therefore used to the consideration of 
 the things which be of God, should not receive 
 it. Why did our Saviour neglect explaining to 
 him the manner of this regeneration ? Perhaps 
 because it cannot be explained to human hearers, 
 perhaps because it can be known only in its ef- 
 fects. And most assuredly if it cannot, and at 
 all events has not been explained, the under- 
 standing of it cannot be requisite for salvation. 
 The same remark will apply to many other mys- 
 teries of our religion ; they have not been ex- 
 plained in Scripture, therefore the understand- 
 ing them cannot be requisite for salvation. Let 
 us not therefore refer to any such mystic intri- 
 cacies of speculation for ascertaining whether 
 we be in the faith. Open your Bibles, turn to the 
 
127 
 
 passages which describe what we are called on to 
 assent to, and you will find that I have quoted 
 the principal of them, and that the rest are ex- 
 pressed in nearly the same words, and I believe 
 they will satisfy you, that speculation forms 
 but a very small proportion of Christianity. 
 
 If we refer to what I stated to be the second 
 of the characteristics of Christian faith, namely, 
 the recognition of the authority and compe- 
 tency of Christ as a legislator, at first view it 
 appears to contribute but little towards a crite- 
 rion for examining ourselves, whether we be in 
 the faith, and to be merely tantamount to the 
 speculative admission of his divinity. Every 
 one will be ready to ask, how can any who ad- 
 mit that Christ is God, hesitate as to the obli- 
 gation or sufficiency of those rules of life which 
 he has left us ? And yet, my fellow Christians, 
 strange as it may sound, I fear that this is very 
 possible. I fear it is possible to abstain from 
 denying Christ with our lips, to fancy we do 
 not deny him in our hearts, though we refuse 
 to take his easy yoke and light burden upon us. 
 — I fear there may be a speculative faith which 
 is not a believing with the heart unto righte- 
 ousness. 
 
 But perhaps you will say this is the general 
 declamation, which we every day hear, against 
 
128 
 
 the depravity of the age.— No, my fellow Chris- 
 tians, I will not deal in generals, in abstract 
 considerations of our admission or rejection of 
 the competency of Christ's commandments for 
 the regulation of life ; let us descend to parti- 
 cular instances. Christ hath said, " Resist not 
 " evil. Love your enemies. Do good to them 
 '* that hate you. Bless them that curse you. 
 " Pray for them that despitefully use you and 
 " persecute you."— Could he have used stronger 
 language, to prohibit the indulgence of resent- 
 ment ? And yet, do all, who profess and call 
 themselves Christians, receive these precepts as 
 the rules of their conduct ? How many will 
 tell you, that they cannot be understood liter- 
 ally ! — that, so, they would be totally incon- 
 sistent with the present state of society ! — that 
 they are merely strong forms of language, figu- 
 rative expressions, which mean only, that we 
 should not be very vindictive, that we should 
 not resort to the utmost means of revenge, 
 which the laws of civilised or polished society 
 would authorise, and certainly, that we should 
 not go beyond them ! Ask these men, are they 
 in the faith ? They will be indignant at the 
 implication of the question, and yet they will 
 tell you, that society cannot be carried on, un- 
 der what appears to be the principles of the 
 Gospel ; they will connect them with ideas of 
 debased spirit, and degraded character, and 
 
129 
 
 perhaps will rise from the very table of the Lord 
 with feelings of hatred unsubdued, determina- 
 tions of resentment unbroken. 
 
 But perhaps I am drawing an ideal picture. — 
 Look round you, my friends, into the world,— 
 or, rather, look every one of you into his own 
 heart. — You no doubt are in the faith, — you 
 have approved the things which are most excel- 
 lent, — are qualified for being guiders of the blind, 
 and lights to those who sit in darkness.— Do you 
 indeed believe ? Perhaps the time is now ap- 
 proaching, — no one can say how near it can be, 
 when you will fly from the party of your Re- 
 deemer. — To-morrow, — this moment, should in- 
 jury or insult be offered to you, slight I fear 
 must that injury be, — trivial that insult, which 
 would not sink deeper into your hearts, than 
 the authority of your God. — And do you yet 
 believe ? — Trust me, there are few instances, 
 in which it is more apparent, that the friendship 
 of the world is enmity with God, — few stronger 
 instances of the law in our members waring 
 against the law of the spirit, — few more discri- 
 minating tests of whether we be in the faith. — 
 Look into your own hearts, my fellow Chris- 
 tians. — If any one of you feels, that he could 
 meet the contempt and scorn of the world, by 
 laying his injuries unresent^tl, his honorable 
 feelings of wounded pride unvindicated, con- 
 
 vol. r. K 
 
130 
 
 scientiously and sincerely at the feet of his Re- 
 deemer, let him be assured, that he is not far 
 from the kingdom of God. 
 
 But are there not other particulars, in which 
 we may try our recognition of the authority of 
 Christ ? If we abstain from the various crimes 
 against society, if we be regular in the discharge 
 of our prescribed religious exercises, if we be- 
 stow our goods to feed the poor, if we be ready 
 to give our bodies to martyrdom, are we not in 
 the faith ? Do we not thereby recognise the au- 
 thority of Christ ? Without doubt these are va- 
 luable tests — on one side. If they be absent, 
 our faith is absent also. — If they be only par- 
 tial, our faith can be only weak. — But, on the 
 other hand, they may be present without the 
 existence of that faith, which they would seem 
 to indicate. — Worldly prudence, affectation of 
 public opinion, party zeal may occasionally pre- 
 sent fruits, which, to the incautious eye, may 
 bear the semblance of those of the spirit ; and 
 where different motives are joined, or may be 
 joined, in producing an effect, it is not always 
 easy to determine to which we are principally to 
 refer it. We should therefore, in this exami- 
 nation of ourselves, rather look to those kinds 
 of obedience, in which worldly considerations 
 cannot interfere, and still more to those against 
 which they directly militate. Would we wish 
 
131 
 
 to know whether we recognise the authority of 
 Christ, let us ask ourselves, do we love our bro- 
 ther, with that active anxiety for his spiritual 
 welfare, which, to be influential, — must be un- 
 ostentatious ; with that bounty towards his tem- 
 poral wants, which, to avoid being injurious to 
 industry, must be secret ; that benevolent wish 
 for his temporal convenience and happiness, 
 which leads us to the unobstrusive practice of 
 doing unto others as we would they should do 
 unto us, in circumstances, where we would 
 neither be praised for doing, nor blamed for ne- 
 glecting. These are matters, in which worldly 
 considerations do not interfere, in which pub- 
 lic affection, if such a principle there be in the 
 natural heart of man, is balanced by indolence 
 and self love. — They are therefore well fitted 
 for being marks of our recognition of the autho- 
 rity of Christ.— But those, which I have men- 
 tioned before, are still more appropriate ; where 
 the voice of the world joins in alliance with the 
 most resistless passions of our hearts, and mili- 
 tates directly against the law of God.— The one 
 may be sufficient for ascertaining the existence 
 of the principle, but the other must measure its 
 strength and superiority. 
 
 To these means of judging whether we be in 
 the faith, which result from our conduct and 
 practical sentiments in our intercourse with the 
 
 k 2 
 
1.32 
 
 world, evidencing whether we recognise the au- 
 thority of Christ, in act, as well as in profes- 
 sion, whether we draw nigh unto him with our 
 lips only, while our hearts are far from him, we 
 may add others, derived from what I have stated 
 to be the third part of the description of Chris- 
 tian Faith, namely, confidence in the mercy of 
 God. Though this perhaps might at first view 
 appear to be difficult to ascertain, as being less 
 immediately connected with external exertion, 
 yet when we consider how totally different it is 
 from all our other sentiments, how powerfully 
 it is capable of influencing them, we perceive 
 that its presence is an easy and obvious object 
 of mental observation. — Its influence on our 
 other sentiments cannot well be mistaken. To 
 that love of God, which originates in admira- 
 tion, and is cherished by gratitude, it gives 
 that perfection and vigour, by which the Apostle 
 describes it as casting out fear. From that 
 anxiety, which the wants and dangers of this 
 life produce, it takes the sting which destroys 
 our contentment, and the poison which cor- 
 rupts our hearts. 
 
 He that relies on the mercy of God is re- 
 signed to the dispensations of Providence, whe- 
 ther the Lord giveth, or the Lord taketh away, 
 he blesseth the name of the Lord, and expe- 
 riences the truth of the Apostle's assertion, that 
 
133 
 
 godliness is great riches. Will such a man ever 
 resort to forbidden sources, for providing for 
 his wants, or to unchristian means, for protect- 
 ing himself from aggression ? 
 
 But confidence in the mercy of God has a 
 still higher object, it carries the believer's eye 
 beyond the bounds of this present world, his 
 heart beyond the gratitude for temporal pro- 
 tection, — beyond the hope which is in this life, 
 to that which is to come. He beholds the trans- 
 gressions of those that believe blotted out, their 
 sanctification produced, their eternal glory en- 
 sured, by the promises of God who cannot lie. 
 He receives these promises, he believes in them, 
 he trusts in them, he lays hold on the hope 
 which is set before him. — This is the confidence 
 which deprives the world of that poison by which 
 it would corrupt the heart. This is the victory 
 which overcometh the world. He that hath this 
 hope in him, purifies himself even as his Saviour 
 is pure. — Knowing that God hath ordained him 
 to walk in righteousness, he keeps his eye fixed 
 on the glorious path. — To what temptation 
 should he yield ? His God is with him, who will 
 not suffer him to be tempted above that which 
 he is able, but will with the temptation, also 
 make a way whereby he may escape. — There is 
 no firmer support in the struggle with sin, there 
 can be no stronger incentive to exertion, than 
 
134 
 
 confidence of victory. The bankrupt whose 
 debts are cancelled, who sees in his former mis- 
 fortune no clog on his future industry, no ob- 
 stacle to future success, but rather a beacon to 
 warn him from misconduct, — applies to his 
 worldly pursuits with renovated vigour, with re- 
 doubled energy. And will not the Christian, 
 whose transgressions are blotted out, in whom 
 past suffering of sin has generated experience 
 of the mercy of God, in whom this experience 
 has produced hope of future mercy and ripened 
 it into confidence, will not he give all diligence 
 to make his calling and election sure ? He who 
 trusts that much is forgiven to him, the same 
 will love much, he will not be content with 
 mere abstinence from sin, he will not be satis- 
 fied with washing his hands in innocency, but 
 will also go to the sanctuary of the Lord, that 
 he may behold the bright example for his imita- 
 tion, him whose mercy is overall his works, who 
 is the Father of the fatherless, the friend of wi- 
 dows, who looseth men out of prison, even God 
 in his holy habitation. Yes, my fellow Chris- 
 tians, the assurance of God's love naturally pro- 
 duces love towards him, and this as naturally 
 generates an anxious desire to please, a fervent 
 wish to imitate, and he that hath this hope in 
 him, not only purifies himself as He is pure, 
 but also endeavours to be perfect, even as He 
 is perfect. 
 
135 
 
 Behold here, my fellow Christians, the cri- 
 terion of faith which I would establish. Behold 
 how its parts naturally combine with, and indi- 
 cate each other. The love of God shed abroad 
 into your hearts, evidenced by purity of life, 
 and appreciated by active good will to mankind, 
 directing our attention principally to those in- 
 stances of conduct, where that obedience, that 
 patient continuance in well doing can proceed 
 from no other source.— Originating in senti- 
 ment, seated in the inward man, it is the ap- 
 propriate object of self examination. Expressing 
 itself in outward conduct where other sentiments 
 are not likely to intermingle in producing that 
 conduct, there is the less chance of our being 
 deceived, so long as we confine the enquiry to 
 ourselves. And to ourselves alone it belongs, 
 we cannot, we ought not to extend it to others. 
 Of their outward conduct we can judge but im- 
 perfectly, of their inward sentiments, scarcely 
 from even their own professions. Be assured 
 that the wish for estimating the faith of others, 
 of seeking a criterion by which we may exclude 
 them, rather than by which we may examine 
 ourselves, arises from a Pharisaical spirit, and 
 is injurious to the cause of religion. Let us 
 therefore ask ourselves, whether we love our 
 Redeemer ?— If we do not, we assuredly are not 
 in the faith, for faith worketh by love. — If we 
 do, we assuredly are, for Christ saith, " if a 
 
156 
 
 " man love me, my Father will love him, and 
 " we will come unto him, and take up our 
 " abode with him." If we think we love our 
 God, let us ask ourselves, do we love our bro- 
 ther also ? for if we do not, we have deceived 
 ourselves in our former opinion. — " He that 
 " loveth not his brother is not of God." — Let 
 us ask ourselves have we kept the command- 
 ments of God ? for Christ hath said, " if a man 
 " love me he will keep my sayings Paul de- 
 scribes the faith unto which we are called, as a 
 " faith unto obedience and James declares, 
 that by works, is faith made perfect. Let us 
 ask ourselves, are we given over to a reprobate 
 mind ? Do we feel that professing to know God, 
 in works we deny him, being disobedient, and 
 to every good work reprobate ? God gave over 
 the old world to a reprobate mind, because they 
 held the truth in unrighteousness j if we be not 
 so, no doubt our salvation is due to our Re- 
 deemer's love. Know ye not that Christ Jesus 
 is in you, except ye be reprobates ? 
 
 I anticipate your remarks. — This is all com- 
 mon place, what we all know. — I trust it is. — 
 It is the language of the Bible. — I trust that 
 daily use has made you familiar with it ; — yet, 
 nevertheless, most anxiously do I call your at- 
 tention to it. — There are many things which we 
 all well know, and yet in our familiarity with 
 
137 
 
 them, forget their importance. — Let me there- 
 fore entreat you, ever to bear in mind the en- 
 quiry whether you be in the faith. It is not the 
 investigation of a day, it should be the business 
 of your lives. Mistaken is the man, who ima- 
 gines, that his faith once established, flourishes 
 constantly with unchanged vigour. It varies 
 from day to day, it strengthens with our 
 strength, and fails with our weakness, fluctu- 
 ating through the varieties of assent, and the 
 reciprocations of hope. — Bear the enquiry about 
 with you continually, in the activity of life, in 
 the seclusion of solitude, never lose sight of it. 
 In temptation it will supply you with a most 
 powerful motive for resistance, in prosperity it 
 will gift you with sober-mindness, in misfortune 
 it will inspire you with resignation. 
 
 May the God of all grace, who hath called 
 us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, make 
 you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you. 
 To him be glory and dominion, for ever and 
 ever. 
 
DONNELAN LECTURES 
 
 FOR THE YEAR 1816. 
 
 LECTURE [. 
 
 I. Corinthians, i. — 21. 
 
 For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world 
 by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God, by 
 the foolishness of preaching, to save them tliat 
 believe. 
 
 THOUGH the great object of religious en- 
 quiry with every man ought to be his own hopes 
 individually of salvation, the means which have 
 been afforded to him, and the use which he 
 may make of these means ; though the great 
 
139 
 
 question, which he should always have in view, 
 be, what shall J do that I may inherit eternal 
 life ? Yet still a propensity to enquire concern- 
 ing the salvation of others has been always pre- 
 valent among mankind. 
 
 This may arise sometimes from a spiritual 
 pride, which feels gratified when we persuade 
 ourselves, that our means and opportunities are 
 superior to these the of generality of mankind. It 
 may proceed from a sentiment allied to that 
 Pharisaical spirit, which would lead us to glory 
 before our God, " that we are not as other 
 men." Originating from such causes, the en- 
 quiry and its principles are alike dangerous, for 
 while they lead us to a false security in our- 
 selves, they are inconsistent with Christian hu- 
 mility, they are inconsistent with Christian cha- 
 rity, that charity, which, if it be genuine, ne- 
 ver faileth. 
 
 The enquiry, however, may proceed from a 
 different, and a praise-worthy source. If it ori- 
 ginate from a desire of strengthening our own 
 conviction and that of others, that the dispen. 
 sation, which we preach, is of God ; of prov- 
 ing to gainsayers, that it is strictly accordant 
 with that universal mercy, that unbounded love, 
 that unrestricted justice, that infinite wisdom, 
 Avhich the heart of man naturally and innately 
 
140 
 
 seeks to ascribe to the object of his adoration ; 
 then indeed, the enquiry, deriving a value from 
 its principle, becomes capable of producing the 
 noblest fruits, joy, and peace, and gratitude, 
 glory to God, and good will to mankind. 
 
 Such, I trust, are the motives, which influ- 
 ence me in the enquiry, which I now propose 
 to enter on. And if I can satisfy you, that the 
 various degrees of religious information, which 
 have been, from time to time, vouchsafed to 
 mankind, were such as were best suited to their 
 moral state at the peculiar period of each dis- 
 pensation, I trust it may be of service, in ob- 
 viating objections to revealed religion, from its 
 not having been at once general, and at once 
 perfect. If I can shew, that, consistently with 
 the general providence of God, revelation ought 
 to be gradual, and consequently, at first par- 
 tial and imperfect, growing with the growth of 
 society, and proportioned to its circumstances ; 
 and that the revelation, which we preach, has 
 been so ; I trust it may serve to strengthen our 
 conviction, that that revelation is of divine ori- 
 inal. 
 
 There is however a very generally received 
 opinion, which, if well founded, would render 
 the investigation I have proposed to enter on, 
 superfluous. I must therefore make it the sub- 
 
141 
 
 ject of preparatory enquiry, namely, that which 
 would maintain the sufficiency of human rea- 
 son to lead us to the knowledge of God, and of 
 our duty. — If it be sufficient, the infidel may 
 well ask, why was any farther aid, why was any 
 miraculous revelation given to mankind ? And 
 we shall in vain seek for the traces of divine 
 beneficence and wisdom, in proportioning the 
 degree of that revelation to the circumstances 
 of the recipient. 
 
 The first view of the subject would seem to 
 be rather favourable to this opinion. We find 
 the ancient philosophers forming theories con- 
 cerning the nature of God, some of which are 
 not entirely inconsistent with revelation. — We 
 find them framing systems of moral duty, which 
 still more nearly approach to that law which is 
 holy, just, and good. Among the moderns, 
 we meet with demonstrations of the existence 
 and nature of God, which profess to be inde- 
 pendent of Scripture, and to conclude with ma- 
 thematical certainty. — This conviction by rea- 
 son is even held by some to be a prerequisite 
 ground-work for our reception of revelation.— 
 We find also systems of Ethics grounded on the 
 nature of man, and the divine attributes so es- 
 tablished, to which revelation would appear to 
 be only subsidiary, — and with which, to the in- 
 fidel it seems superfluous. 
 
142 
 
 Has reason, unassisted reason, performed all 
 this ? The opinion is a dangerous one, let us 
 not embrace it without examination. — It is dan- 
 gerous, I say, to hold that man can of himself 
 arrive at the knowledge of his duty, for some 
 might think that the deficiency of theory, name- 
 ly sanction, might be supplied by civil society. 
 — It is dangerous to hold, that reason can of 
 itself, lead us to the knowledge of God, and 
 must do so before we can receive revelation ; for 
 those, on whose minds the absolute conclusive- 
 ness of the demonstration does not strike, may 
 thereby make shipwreck of their faith. 
 
 If we consider that uncultivated state of so- 
 ciety, which seems to have been the earliest lot 
 of all the nations of antiquity, we shall per- 
 haps be led to think that theories concerning 
 the being and nature of God were not very 
 likely to arise among them from the sole force 
 of unassisted reason. — Man, incessantly em- 
 ployed in providing for his natural wants, in 
 contesting with the beasts of the field for his 
 safety and subsistence, is little likely to theorise. 
 — If the magnificence of nature be oft unheed. 
 en even by civilized man, if with brute uncon- 
 scious gaze, he mark not the mighty hand that 
 moves the whole, much less does the savage.— 
 Savage life is remarkable for the absence of cu- 
 riosity, or that wonder which prompts to en- 
 
143 
 
 quiry. — For speculative research, that progress 
 of civilization is necessary, which confers on 
 some individuals an exemption from labour. — 
 Leisure, in fact, is the mother of philosophy. 
 Now let us consider society as something far- 
 ther advanced, and we shall find that even then 
 unassisted reason is not likely to lead man to the 
 knowledge and obedience of God, if there were 
 no previous information concerning him. — Rea- 
 son never acts without being excited. — The ne- 
 cessities of life have stimulated her to the inven- 
 tion of the various arts, whether by abstract 
 research, or by availing herself of accidental 
 observation. — The cultivation of the arts has 
 led to the various mathematical sciences. — The 
 ambition of dispute has produced logics and her 
 subsidiary attendants. — But where shall we find 
 a stimulus to excite reason to the consideration 
 of the question, whether there be a superior 
 power, and what are our duties towards such, 
 except we presuppose the remnant of some tra- 
 dition, however obscure, relative to the reveal- 
 ed existence of such a being ? The question 
 then addresses itself to the curiosity of the phi- 
 losopher, how far such tradition is accordant 
 with the dictates of reason.— Reason, I say, left 
 to itself would never invent a God, for there 
 would be nothing to direct it to the enquiry. 
 Even aided by obscure tradition, the question 
 belongs to the curiosity of philosophic leisure, 
 
o 
 
 144 
 
 not to the occupations and active life of the 
 vulgar. It is the revealed interference of God 
 in this present life, and the revealed exercise 
 of his dominion beyond the grave, which make 
 the question concerning his being of importance 
 to mankind in general. — Take away these, and 
 you remove the general interest ; take away tra- 
 dition, and you remove even the excitement to 
 philosophical curiosity. 
 
 But is not this reasoning contradicted by his- 
 torical fact ? Had not all nations of whom we 
 have any account, some idea, however imper- 
 fect, of a God ? Did not many of the ancient 
 philosophers devise theories concerning the 
 Deity, which nearly approach the truth ? With- 
 out doubt they had, without doubt they did. 
 And it is most worthy of remark, that those na- 
 tions, which emerged most early from the un- 
 cultivated state, and in which consequently phi- 
 losophical enquiry was removed by the shortest 
 interval from that period, which the Scriptures 
 state to be one of general revelation to man- 
 kind in the persons of Noah and his family, 
 those nations, I say, had the purest ideas of 
 the Deity, and their philosophers and those who 
 learned from them, the truest theories concern- 
 ing his nature. — A remark, which immediately 
 points out to us the source of whatever truth, 
 whatever excellence, those theories contain, 
 
145 
 
 and also converts their existence into a most 
 powerful argument in favour of the point I seek 
 to establish, that unassisted unexcited reason does 
 not theorise concerning a Deity, that the natural 
 man receiveth not the things 'which be of God, nei- 
 ther indeed can he.— The kingdom of Upper 
 Egypt, which was established considerably prior 
 to that of Lower, possessed a theology which 
 was much less erroneous.— Its Priests held the 
 unity of God, and did not worship idols, while 
 those of the Lower were proverbial for the gross- 
 ness of their idolatry. — Whence this difference ? 
 The inhabitants of Lower Egypt appear to have 
 been a wiser and more ingenious people ; to 
 them Greece owed, in a great measure, the 
 origin of her legislation, and her science.— If 
 reason alone were concerned in forming theolo- 
 gical theories, we should expect that theirs 
 would be most perfect. — But the others had be- 
 gun earlier ; — at a period when the original Re- 
 velation was less remote, and consequently less 
 forgotten, and less corrupted.— In the same way 
 the Persians, who were one of the most ancient 
 nations, possessed a theology so pure, that when 
 Zoroaster, who is said by some to have been 
 the disciple of Ezra, reformed their religion, he 
 had not much to change. — And yet his system 
 contained the existence of one supreme mer- 
 ciful and righteous God j — he taught, that there 
 would be a general resurrection, and a day of 
 
 VOL. It L 
 
146 
 
 judgment, wherein just retribution shall be ren- 
 der ed to all according to their works j — and all 
 this is stated to have been rather the revival of 
 the old theory, than the addition of any thing 
 new.— Compare this system with these of 
 Greece, polished, learned, and wise ; — with 
 those of Rome, the mistress of the world. — Be- 
 hold whatever of truth those of Greece con- 
 tained, borrowed from Eastern instruction ;— 
 behold those of Rome derived from Grecian 
 teaching ; — and assign, if you can, a reason for 
 the superiority, except that the Persians were 
 nearer to the source of truth, except that the 
 tradition of revelation, and not the acuteness of 
 reason, be the real origin of religious know- 
 ledge. 
 
 But have not the moderns given us demon- 
 strations on these matters perfectly independent 
 of revelation, by the mere force of reason ? — 
 On this part of the subject it is to be remarked, 
 that there is a wide difference between being 
 able to accommodate to the dictates of reason a 
 truth, which we already know by other means, 
 and reasons being sufficient to lead us to the 
 enquiry concerning this, truth, and the means 
 for satisfying it. We should also consider, what 
 the nature of the reasoning is, which has been 
 advanced on this subject.— If it be only such as 
 leads to a high degree of probability, its pro- 
 
147 
 
 vince would seem to be rather to shew the rea- 
 sonableness of a truth already delivered to us, 
 than to engage in any original investigation. — 
 If it be such as shall carry with it demonstrative 
 certainty sufficient to produce general convic- 
 tion, its premises ought to be self evident, not 
 with probability, but with certainty; not to some 
 minds, but to all minds.— The first step of the 
 argument is, that the material world and the 
 succession of mankind cannot have been eter- 
 nal. — This we know to be true from revelation, 
 but would we know it without revelation ? — It 
 would be highly probable, but would it be cer- 
 tain ? — It may be self evident to the minds of 
 some, but has it been so to all ? — We find many 
 of the Pythagoreans, we find Aristotle and his 
 followers, we find the followers of Plato, and it 
 is doubted whether we may not add Plato him- 
 self, holding a contrary opinion, and proving, 
 from the preestablished eternity of God, that 
 the world, as being the necessary effect of an 
 eternal cause, must itself be eternal. — How 
 then did they arrive at the knowledge of the 
 being of a God ! — not from reason, for the rea- 
 son which Cicero assigns, namely, " there must 
 must be something superior to man, and this 
 superior we call a God," is plainly a petitio prin- 
 cipii, not from reason, I say, but from Eastern 
 tradition, to which we know they had access. — 
 Another of the premises of the argument, to 
 
 l « 
 
148 
 
 which I allude, is, that we must either admit 
 one first cause, or an infinite succession of 
 causes, which last it states to be absurd, and to 
 prove it so, recourse is had to reasonings ground- 
 ed on the nature of infinity, a subject probably 
 above all human comprehensions, and confes- 
 sedly above those of the generality of mankind, 
 and therefore unfitted for general use, reason- 
 ings which might seem to common minds, equal- 
 ly to prove, that there could be no infinite du- 
 ration, nor infinite space. — If then one of the 
 premises of this argument be such as not to 
 have been self evident to a great proportion of 
 the most learned of mankind ; and another be 
 one whose proof involves ideas above general 
 comprehension, — what becomes of the boasted 
 all-sufficiency of unassisted reason for leading 
 man to the knowledge of God ? — It may per- 
 haps be of use to remember, that the philoso- 
 phers of antiquity by no means overlooked the 
 argument taken from the consideration of the 
 universe. They were not prevented from mak- 
 ing the use of it, it has since been applied to, 
 by ignorance, or carelessness, but seem to have 
 been fully sensible of its real scope ; — I mean, 
 the shewing the reasonableness of a truth al- 
 ready suggested. — In a passage of Aristotle 
 preserved by Cicero, we find him supposing the 
 imaginary case of a number of rational beings, 
 educated, cultivated, arrived at the maturity of 
 
149 
 
 reason, in subterranean habitations, and having 
 been merely told that there were Gods. — If 
 these, says he, were on a sudden, brought forth 
 to behold the beauties of the earth, the glories 
 of the firmament, the splendid order of the 
 universe, without doubt they would be imme- 
 diately persuaded, that what they had heard 
 was true, and that the world, which they be- 
 held, was the workmanship of those superior 
 beings. Here, he evidently points out, that a 
 previous intimation of the being of a Deity is 
 necessary to prepare the human mind for the 
 reception of that argument, which, from the 
 consideration of the universe, would persuade 
 us to believe that intimation, and to acknow- 
 ledge the goodness and wisdom of the Creator. 
 — And here we may proceed to a much higher au- 
 thority, I mean that of Saint Paul, who describ- 
 ing, in his Epistle to the Romans, the state of the 
 old world, adverts to this very argument as one 
 which was offered by God to mankind, for making 
 manifest, not his being, but his power, and divi- 
 nity. God (saith he) hath made it manifest to 
 them, for the invisible things of him are clearly 
 seen from the creation of the world, being un. 
 derstood by the things that are made, even his 
 eternal power and divinity.— -Here the Aposlle 
 does not represent mankind as arriving at the 
 being of God by ratiocination, but on the con. 
 trary describes them in a subsequent verse as 
 
150 
 
 being vain in their reasonings, as rejecting, not 
 the traditionary belief, which we know they had 
 of his being, and which the Apostle evidently 
 presupposes, but the partial manifestation of 
 his attributes, which the material world afford- 
 ed them. For this is obviously the meaning of 
 holding the truth in unrighteousness, becoming 
 vain in their reasonings, changing the truth of 
 God into a lie, not liking to retain God in their 
 knowledge. And the passage, which I have 
 chosen for my text, expressly declares, that the 
 world by wisdom did not know their God. 
 
 Perhaps if we consider the nature of human 
 assent, and of the propositions which the know- 
 ledge of God implies, we shall find reason to 
 think, that the world not only did not, but that 
 they could not know God by wisdom ; but, that 
 by preaching, that is by the diffusion of a reve- 
 lation throughout the world, and by that alone, 
 could they be brought to believe unto salva- 
 tion. — The truths to which the human mind as- 
 sents, in the course of its action, are of two 
 kinds, those which concern the existence of ex- 
 ternal beings, the properties of those beings, 
 the actions of those beings ; and secondly, those 
 which concern the relations of our own ideas. 
 This later class is the appropriate province of 
 demonstration, and the certainty we arrive at 
 in it is applicable to external things, only on the 
 
151 
 
 supposition of their being conformable to the 
 ideas we have of them. — The former class be- 
 longs to probable proof, the evidences we have 
 in it are our senses, and the testimony of others. 
 No ratiocination however ingenious could con- 
 vince us, with certainty, of the existence of any 
 individual, of whom we had neither the evi- 
 dence of sense, nor of testimony. It might 
 make it highly probable, but still it would be 
 only probability, and a probability totally inca- 
 pable of exciting the same assurance in our 
 minds, which our senses, or unquestionable tes- 
 timony would produce. But if the evidence of 
 sense or testimony have gone before, then the 
 theoretical probability may add tenfold weight 
 to that evidence. Take a particular instance, 
 for general assertions are often best examined 
 by considering them in particular cases. Sup- 
 pose a person were to undertake to prove by 
 theoretical arguments that there must be a great 
 Emperor resident in the midst of Africa, that 
 he was of certain character, and had performed 
 certain actions. We can conceive no ingenuity 
 of argument which could produce certainty. — 
 But it might produce an high degree of proba- 
 bility, a probability, however, which could ne- 
 ver equal that which would arise from the tes- 
 timony of a number of witnesses of unimpeached 
 character, whose opportunities of observation 
 were proved to have been sufficient, by their 
 
152 
 
 bringing with them the language and arts of the 
 country, by their possessing a knowledge and a 
 power, which they could not elsewhere have ac- 
 quired.— After this would come the proper 
 place for speculative argument, to shew, if it 
 were thought useful, that the fact, which they 
 declared, was not only possible, but even highly 
 probable. 
 
 It is a point, I believe, which will be easily 
 admitted, that the nature of our knowledge de- 
 pends in a great measure on the nature of our 
 ideas ; that where our ideas are obscure, inde- 
 finite, and imperfect, our science cannot be 
 complete. We at once perceive that the ex- 
 istence, character, and actions of an individual 
 man, of which we may have comparatively clear 
 ideas, are the appropriate objects of testimony, 
 not of demonstration. — Shall we then expect to 
 be able to establish by argument possessing ma- 
 thematical certainty, and independant of reve- 
 lation, the existence, and character of a being, 
 of whom our ideas are, and must be, most im- 
 perfect. 
 
 How imperfect they are, the supporters of 
 such theories themselves declare to us. His du- 
 ration excludes the idea of succession, his im- 
 mensity excludes extension, even his moral at- 
 tributes are not what their names would express 
 
153 
 
 in the common use of language. And yet in- 
 volving these indefinite, these incomplete ideas, 
 they have devised a chain of reasoning, which 
 they think concludes with mathematical cer- 
 tainty, independant, prerequisite, and therefore 
 superior to, the evidence of Scripture. — They 
 are not however entirely agreed on the deduc- 
 tions from this reasoning ; some maintain that it 
 establishes the unity of God ; others hold that 
 there might be a plurality of independent beings. 
 They disagree also in some other respects, on 
 which I shall not now enter, farther than to re- 
 mark, that, we never find different commenta- 
 tors deducing contradictory corrollaries from the 
 same mathematical proposition. 
 
 I have dwelt thus long on the opinion of the 
 self sufficiency of reason ; not only as prepara- 
 tory to my subject, but also because I think it 
 a most dangerous one. — It is dangerous. — It has 
 been injurious.— What led the Gnostics, those 
 earliest of heretics, to hold opinions which they 
 themselves admitted were no where expressed 
 in Scripture, and to seek for authority in ab- 
 surdly mystical expositions of parts of Scripture, 
 which bear not the slightest obvious relation to 
 the doctrines in question ? — What but the opi- 
 nion, that the word of God should be grounded 
 on the wisdom of man, and his revelation ac- 
 commodated to philosophical system ? — What 
 
J 54 
 
 made shipwreck of the faith of Socinus, and 
 drove him to seek, in tlie beginning of John's 
 Gospel! ! for arguments against the divinity of 
 our Saviour ? — What forced Priestly to deny the 
 inspiration of Scripture, to discredit its history, 
 to despise its reasoning, to depreciate the evi- 
 dence of prophecy ? — What but because they in- 
 dependently made a God for themselves, — and, 
 measuring the Almighty by the measures of a 
 man, they esteemed the incarnation of Jesus, 
 and the obvious scriptural account of God, as 
 unworthy the dignity of the idol of their imagi- 
 nations ? — What led Clarke to disbelieve the 
 Scripture doctrine of the Trinity ? It was his 
 demonstration. — He did not see how to accom- 
 modate his demonstration of the unity, to the 
 obvious meaning of Scripture, therefore he 
 sought to accommodate Scripture to his demon- 
 stration.— Perhaps were we to examine the opi- 
 nions of some other sectarists, in the same point 
 of view, we should find, that their errors arose 
 from a similar source, from forming premature 
 ideas of God, and seeking, by a perversion of 
 Scripture, to establish an ideal being in the seat 
 of the most Holy.— Be assured, my fellow Chris- 
 tians, that testimony is the appropriate evidence 
 of fact; that revelation is the appropriate 
 ground of faith ;— that unassisted independant 
 reason never could arrive at the knowledge of 
 our Creator.— /That every good gift is from the 
 
155 
 
 Father of light, and above all, that most excel- 
 lent of gifts, to know thee, oh God. — Yes, my 
 fellow Christians, search the Scriptures, for 
 those are they, that testify of him. They are 
 profitable for doctrine, for instruction. — They 
 are perfect, converting the soul. — They are 
 sure, giving wisdom unto the simple. — Now to 
 God, &c. 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 I. Corinthians, iii. — 10, 11. 
 
 Let every man take care how he buildeth thereon, 
 for other foundation can no man lay, save that 
 which is laid in Jesus Christ. 
 
 I ENDEAVOURED, in my last address to 
 you, my fellow Christians, to combat the opi- 
 nion, that unaided, unenlightened human rea- 
 
156 
 
 son is, of itself, all sufficient to lead us to the 
 knowledge of God. — In my present, I shall en- 
 deavour to convince you, that it is also inade- 
 quate to direct us to the rules of duty. It is 
 requisite I should do so, for if reason be of it- 
 self sufficient for the government of passion and 
 the regulation of life, the infidel may with plau- 
 sibility doubt the need of a revealed will of God, 
 and deny the manifestation of Providence in 
 proportioning that revelation to the varying cir- 
 cumstances of mankind. 
 
 If we admit, as I trust I have satisfied you 
 that we may, that unassisted reason is insuffi- 
 cient to lead us to the knowledge of God, it 
 will afford a strong presumption, or perhaps 
 more than a presumption, that it is also insuffi- 
 cient to lead us to the rules of morality.— My 
 text expressly declares, that other foundation 
 can no man lay, save the word of God. — Even 
 profane authors have borne testimony, that re- 
 ligion is the true foundation of morality. The 
 words of Cicero on this question deserve our 
 attention ; a man whose information, whose op- 
 portunities, whose intellect must give the great- 
 est weight to his opinion. I know not, says he, 
 whether a belief in the gods being removed, 
 justice and temperance and the other virtues 
 will not also be taken away. Cicero surely, if 
 any man, was capable of appreciating the 
 
157 
 
 grounds of a system of Ethics. We find him 
 describing successively the various philosophies 
 of antiquity with all the interest of an advocate, 
 so that we can scarcely decide to which he him- 
 self belonged ; a versatility which perhaps arose 
 from his being satisfied with none, from his en- 
 tertaining the same sentiments respecting them, 
 which he expresses concerning one of their best 
 supported opinions. — While I read, says he, I 
 am convinced j when I close the book I relapse 
 into unbelief. — Thus intimately conversant in 
 these boasted structures of human ingenuity, 
 was the man who declares it probable, that re- 
 ligion is the only ground-work of morality. 
 
 Strong as is the authority both sacred and pro- 
 fane, on this subject, it may be useful to su- 
 peradd the enquiry, what reason has done in 
 this respect, and what she may naturally be sup- 
 posed to be capable of effecting. — It may be 
 useful to convince those who would not attend 
 to the argument from authority, and we may 
 all, in passing, derive this advantage, that when 
 we find that the wisdom of this world is foolish- 
 ness before God, that those, who have departed 
 from the living fountain, have hewed themselves 
 out cisterns, which will hold no water, we may 
 rely more devotedly on that word, which alone 
 is able to make us wise unto salvation, that 
 
158 
 
 fountain of living waters, which shall spring up 
 in us unto everlasting life. 
 
 If the opinions of the ancient philosophers 
 respecting the Deity were in such great vari- 
 ety, as to render the enumeration of them, as 
 Cicero remarks, a matter of difficulty ; — their 
 opinions respecting moral subjects were still 
 more various, still more inconsistent, — the dis- 
 ciple frequently differing from the master he 
 professed to follow, and even the master occa- 
 sionally differing from himself, advancing opi- 
 nions which his principles would not seem to 
 authorize, and which his former opinions appear 
 to contradict ; — so that any attempt at an ac- 
 curate classification of the systems, from the 
 names of their professors, would be hope- 
 less. 
 
 We may however arrange them according to 
 their foundations and general character. And 
 in this point of view, we shall find three more 
 remarkable classes, first, those which took as 
 their ground work that kind of instinctive per- 
 ception of virtue and vice, which has by the 
 moderns been denominated moral sense ; se- 
 condly, those who reasoned from supposed es- 
 sential differences of actions, intellectually per- 
 ceived ; and thirdly, those who grounded the 
 obligations of morality in the arbitrary will of a 
 
159 
 
 superior existence. — To the first class we may 
 generally refer (as Warburton remarks) the 
 school of Plato ; to the second that of Aristotle ; 
 and to the third, the followers of Zeno, a divi- 
 sion more remarkable, as it seems to be nearly 
 applicable to our modern systems. — To these 
 three we may add two others, one, which holds 
 virtue and vice to be merely arbitrary and de- 
 pendant on law and custom ; to this the Cy- 
 renaic school and the Atomists are mostly re- 
 ferable : and another which grounds the obli- 
 gations to moral duty on the natural self love of 
 man, and his innate desire for pleasure or hap- 
 piness, — a system first maintained by Epicurus, 
 but which afterwards, in the hands of his fol- 
 lowers, degenerated most shamefully from a ra- 
 tional beginning, a system to which neverthe- 
 less the best of our modern bears a resemblance 
 in principle, as does the worst to that before 
 mentioned. 
 
 With the two last, I shall not concern my- 
 self. — The majority of their professors were such 
 men as will scarcely be thought proofs of the 
 excellency of unassisted reason in morality.— 
 The few who were not totally corrupt displayed, 
 according to their contemporaries, that the force 
 of nature was superior to that of philosophical 
 principle, a most wretched reliance surely for 
 virtue. — I shall therefore confine myself to the 
 
160 
 
 three former. — They possess many deduced opi- 
 nions in common. — Individuals frequently fluc- 
 tuated between them, and the Ecletic philo- 
 sophy, that philosophy which attempted a com- 
 petition with the infancy of Christianity, was 
 formed by a selection from their various tenets. 
 — They are therefore most proper for examina- 
 tion, in an enquiry into the sufficiency of human 
 reason for the discovery of moral truth and the 
 enforcement of moral duty. 
 
 I the more readily enter on this part of the 
 subject, as it has been asserted by two writers 
 of considerable character, that there is no evan- 
 gelical precept or duty of Christian practice, 
 which natural men, by mere strength of reason, 
 have not taught — as just and reasonable j — and 
 a similar opinion has been indirectly insinuated 
 by many others. — Let us examine the wisdom 
 which bears such high pretensions. — Its first 
 appearance is highly imposing. Its advocates, 
 like the Ecletics, have collected from every part 
 what was praise-worthy, and possessed a touch- 
 stone, to aid them in the selection, which its 
 antient hearers were not possessed of; I mean a 
 reason regulated, and a heart improved, by the 
 teaching of Gospel morality. They represent 
 it, as considering man as an intellectual and 
 social animal, and all mankind as kinsmen and 
 fellows, not indeed as deriving their origin from 
 
161 
 
 one race, but from the same parental mind, of 
 which their minds are so many branches plucked 
 off, directed, according to some, by an instinc- 
 tive love of virtue, according to others, by an 
 intellectual perception of the essential differences 
 of actions, according to a third sect, by the dis- 
 covery of the divine will, which philosophic con- 
 templation deduces from nature; — collecting 
 from these several sources the various virtues 
 which embellish human life, give happiness and 
 dignity to the possessor, originate and close the 
 bonds of society, and render it permanent, se- 
 cure, and tranquil j— recommending to man- 
 kind to be contented with what God allots, to 
 confide in him, to be devoted to his commands. 
 — " The mind of the universe," say the Stoics, 
 " is social, therefore the social design must be 
 " the great object in the constitution of men. — 
 " It is proper to a man," say they, " to love 
 " those that hate him, not to be angry with the 
 " stupid or ungrateful, but to teach them bet- 
 " ter, or to bear with them. — He that divideth 
 " himself from his neighbour by hating him, 
 " divideth himself from the whole body of man- 
 " kind ; as a branch, divideth from its neigh- 
 f( hour branch, is thereby separated from the 
 " whole tree. — Injustice to man, " say they," is 
 " impiety to God." — Sucli sentiments are scat- 
 tered through the writings of the old philoso- 
 phers. It is easy to collect them. — It is easy to 
 
 VOL. I. M 
 
162 
 
 make beautiful assemblages. — Bui who shall make 
 the selection ? who shall separate the gold from 
 the dross ? the flower from the noxious weed ? 
 Though a Christian may, a heathen could not. — 
 The very philosophers themselves, we know, 
 did not; for we find them, not merely com- 
 mitting the grosest crimes, and having pleasure 
 in those who did the same, but even expressly 
 permitting and authorising them in their writ- 
 ings. — The sin of drunkenness, that mother of 
 all other crimes, is allowed by Plato to those 
 who have passed the age of forty, and that in a 
 work where we should expect the greatest ex- 
 ertion of philosophy, the greatest accuracy of 
 morals. — For the same vice has Seneca pleaded. 
 — In it did Zeno live. — In it did Chysippus die. 
 They held that there was a right and prudent 
 use of drunkenness. I shall not profane this 
 place with the mention of some other crimes, 
 which Plato has recommended in his republic, 
 and which Zeno and Chysippus have coun- 
 tenanced. I almost fear to allude to what So- 
 crates, Plato, Xenophon, Cebes, and Cicero 
 have approved of, and which ought not so much 
 as to be named among us. 
 
 But, were even the praise-worthy features of 
 the ancient morality to be attributed to the sole 
 force of unassisted reason ? We know there was 
 a traditional morality, as well as a traditional 
 
163 
 
 theology j and can we suppose, that Pythagoras 
 and the other originators of Grecian science did 
 not avail themselves of Eastern instruction in 
 this, as well as in other branches. — Indeed we 
 know from history that he did receive commu- 
 nications on these subjects from the ^Egyptian 
 priests j and we are told that the precepts of 
 morality, which he transmitted to his successors, 
 were not claimed by him as his own invention ; 
 — but that he stated, " that he had received 
 them from a Priestess of Delos, and that they 
 t* were therefore to be considered as of divine 
 " authority." 
 
 That the inhabitants of the East were very 
 early in the practice of making collections of 
 moral precepts, is evident from the writings of 
 Solomon, which were composed at a date long 
 anterior to the oldest Grecian philosophy, which 
 contain all that is practically valuable in any of 
 the Grecian systems,— and which bear evident 
 marks of being, not the result of the ingenuity 
 of the writer, not the deductions of his reason, 
 but rather a collection of the wisdom of former 
 ages, and sanctioned, not by argument, but by 
 the divine authority of the source, from whence 
 that wisdom had originated. — The transition 
 from Solomon to Moses, and from Moses to 
 Noah, who was ordained of God a preacher of 
 righteousness to a sinful world, is obvious ; so 
 
 M ( 2 
 
164 
 
 that if we admit, that Grecian ethics, as well as 
 her other sciences, originated in the East, for 
 which we have both internal evidence, and the 
 testimony of history, we must admit, that what- 
 ever pure, whatever intelligible, whatever va- 
 luable they contain, is derived from a much 
 higher source than the acuteness of unassisted 
 reason. — To this morality, which the Greeks 
 seem to have derived from the East, they super- 
 added the method, of attempting to establish its 
 maxims by argument, and thereby both weak- 
 ened and debased it. — The Eastern system, if 
 I may so call it, taught as one having autho- 
 rity ; it proposed the alternative between obe- 
 dience and crime. The Grecian offered that 
 between compliance and absurdity. — " Be per- 
 " suaded, or you will act unreasonably." A 
 motive little calculated to combat with the vio- 
 lence of passion, and vanquish the depravity of 
 our nature. — The earlier sages of Greece, Py- 
 thagoras himself, had preserved the Eastern 
 method. The early legislators, who perhaps 
 may be considered among the oldest teachers of 
 morality, were sensible of its value, and we 
 never find them attempting to add to the au- 
 thority of their laws by the force of argument ; 
 and yet Cicero declares, that he preferred the 
 twelve tables to all the libraries of the philo- 
 sophers. 
 
165 
 
 In fact, the only truly efficient motives to 
 human action or forbearance, are hope and 
 fear ; and these the philosophy, of which we 
 now speak, expressly and totally rejects. It 
 teaches, that hope and fear are unworthy mo- 
 tives of action, that the first requisite to a wise 
 man is not to fear the Deity. — It ridicules the 
 fear of death or torture or infamy. — Plato and 
 Socrates affirm, that death is better than life, 
 not to some only, but simply to all. — A future 
 state of rewards and punishments this philo- 
 sophy totally denies ; though it might well have 
 availed itself of it, for " antient current and 
 famous were the traditions concerning it." — 
 In no country, in no religion of the old world, 
 were they not prevalent. And yet they were 
 left merely to the fancy of the poets, and treated 
 by philosophers with ridicule as vulgar errors. — 
 A notable instance of the advantage of unas- 
 sisted reason in enforcing morality. Though 
 possessed of a tradition concerning the only ge- 
 nuine sanction of moral rules, that tradition they 
 totally rejected. 
 
 This method of grounding moral rules on ra- 
 tiocination, as it weakened, so it also debased 
 morality. — However just we may suppose the 
 principle, it is the lot of few human minds to 
 be secure from error in the deductions. — When 
 man is left to legislate for himself from proposed 
 
166 
 
 principles however just, he is most apt to be 
 misled by selfishness and passion ; and the mis- 
 fortune is, that such errors become duties. — 
 Hence we find the masters of this philosophy 
 not merely permitting crimes, as I have before 
 remarked, but even recommending them. — We 
 find them also deriving from their principles the 
 most impious the most blasphemous arrogance 
 against the Supreme Being. — The fault of their 
 system seems to be, that where it is not false, 
 it is too abstract, where it descends to particu- 
 lars, it is frequently erroneous,_where it is right, 
 it is often paradoxical, as well as abstract, — and 
 a paradoxical morality is by no means fitted for 
 common use ; for the world will never believe 
 its teachers sincere. Does the system discoun- 
 tenance resentment, it also declares, that a wise 
 man never forgives ; it declares, that none but 
 the vain and foolish ever commiserate ; that it 
 is not the property of a man to be exorable or 
 placable.— -Does it command us to be content 
 with what God allots, it teaches also to be un- 
 concerned at calamity whether public, or pri- 
 vate, or our own ; to be careless about prevent- 
 ing, or remedying the crimes of others ; to be 
 above all sorrow for our own representing all 
 these things as matters " indifferent," and as 
 the " fatal" course, the will of nature j not 
 seeing, that there may be such a conformity 
 with the divine will of events, as may clash 
 
167 
 
 with the divine will of duty.— At the same 
 time, to those who found lite a burden, they 
 recommended self murder. — I shall not delay 
 you by recounting more of their inconsisten- 
 cies, more instances of how erroneously they 
 applied principles, which when rightly under- 
 stood, are perhaps well founded; — but shall close 
 my observations on the ancient Ethics, by re- 
 marking, that it did not bring forth in its profes- 
 sors the fruit of good living, — that the two most 
 virtuous characters of Heathen antiquity, Aris- 
 tides and Phocion — were not philosophers — and 
 that when and where philosophy was most pre- 
 valent, then and there was immorality most 
 abundant. 
 
 With respect to the modern systems, I shall 
 say but little. Their framers had before them 
 that law which is holy just and good, to guide 
 them in their researches, and to guard them in 
 their deductions.— However excellent we may 
 admit all or any of them to be, still, they are 
 not the result of unassisted reason. — Shaftes- 
 bury and Hucheson adopted the fundamental 
 principle of the Platonic Ethics, and deduced 
 from thence the various Christian virtues, and 
 
 many of the Christian duties. Cudworth, 
 
 Clarke and Price, from that of the School of 
 Aristotle, arrived at the same conclusions. 
 Hume blended the intellectual and instinctive 
 
168 
 
 systems, and though he denied and affected to 
 despise Revelation, yet he accommodated his 
 conclusions to its practical dictates. — Paley and 
 others, who have combined the Stoic ground- 
 work with what the Epicurean had originally 
 been, — by approaching nearer to religion pro- 
 duced a more perfect system. — They all how- 
 ever differing in principles arrived at the same 
 conclusions, because they had the same light 
 to direct them.— In the few, the very few in- 
 stances, in which their deductions have been 
 questioned, they have confessedly departed from 
 the guidance of Gospel morality. To their 
 principles perhaps it may be objected, that they 
 would sometimes appear to authorize unsound 
 conclusions, though their authors have not so 
 applied them, and perhaps it might justly be ques- 
 tioned, how far a morality, which wants una- 
 nimity among its professors, can be adapted to 
 general use. — But, waving all such objections, — 
 such systems are not the work of unassisted rea- 
 son, and therefore can afford no argument for 
 its self sufficiency to guide us to the rules of 
 duty. — If you wish for a criterion in this re- 
 spect, turn to the ancient systems which were 
 grounded on the same foundations, — and behold 
 whatever is good in them probably derived from 
 a traditionary Revelation ; behold the wisdom 
 of this world proving itself to be foolishness be- 
 fore God, by reasoning wrong from just princi- 
 
169 
 
 pies ; — behold the structure, which human rea- 
 son has raised on a respectable foundation, ab- 
 stract and useless, paradoxical and inconsist- 
 ent, weak, fruitless, and contaminated, bearing 
 the evident marks of the workmanship of that 
 heart, which is deceitful above all things and 
 desperately wicked. 
 
 I know not a more profitable exercise for a 
 young mind, than to compare the ancient with 
 the Christian morality ; the one outwardly in- 
 deed beautiful, the other converting the heart ; 
 — the one vainly seeking to extirpate our natu- 
 ral feelings, the other making them the minis- 
 ters of the grace of God ; — the one resting on 
 motives devoid of general influence, the other 
 addressing itself to the most powerful senti- 
 ments of our nature, teaching that the fear of 
 the Lord is the begining of wisdom, strength- 
 ened by hope, cherished by gratitude, perfected 
 by love. 
 
 The modern systems, as I have said, want 
 unanimity as to principle. The existence of 
 moral sense has been questioned by some, who 
 hold that it cannot be distinguished from the 
 prejudices of early education. The exclusion 
 of it has been blamed by others, as removing 
 the generally admitted idea of conscience. 
 
170 
 
 Hume, who united the two principles of sense 
 and intellect, is represented as faulty in his cri- 
 terion of merit, which would give the same ap- 
 probation to constitutional qualities, as to vo- 
 luntary actions, provided they were of the same 
 general utility. — The system of Paley, which 
 declares, that happiness is the object of man, 
 that the revealed will of God is the criterion of 
 virtue, and that hope and fear are the motives 
 to duty ; by approaching more nearly to exact 
 coincidence with the Gospel system, is perhaps 
 more perfect than any other. And yet even 
 this has been blamed for its laxity of applica- 
 tion in some instances.— Yes, my fellow Chris- 
 tians, the Bible is the true criterion of Ethical 
 system, coincidence, accurate coincidence with 
 it, is the great characteristic of moral excel- 
 lence. Beyond it there is no security from er- 
 ror. Without it there is no salvation from sin. 
 — As well might you hope to verify the first in- 
 sinuation of the tempter, and render mankind 
 like gods, by the knowledge of good and 
 evil ; as well might you attempt to realise the 
 kindred and arrogant boast of the Stoic, and 
 transform our nature from human to divine, by 
 the cultivation of an imaginary wisdom, — as ex- 
 pect to render man virtuous or even innocent, 
 to turn the human heart from the depravity of a 
 corrupted nature, by any efforts of human rea- 
 
171 
 
 son, any dictates, any theories, unenlightened 
 by the Revelation of God, undirected by his 
 Holy Spirit. 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 Genesis ii. — 17. 
 
 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil 
 thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou 
 eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. 
 
 IF the contemplation of the material universe 
 serve to excite and perpetuate in the human 
 mind admiration and awe for its all-powerful 
 Creator j if the philosopher, when he traces with 
 the utmost stretch of intellect the effects of that 
 single power which God impressed on matter 
 to sustain and regulate his vast creation, feel 
 that the heavens declare his glory, and the fir- 
 mament sheweth his wisdom ; if while he muses 
 on even the lowliest works of our Almighty 
 
172 
 
 Father, and beholds diffused throughout the 
 gay creation light and life and beauty and en- 
 joyment, he finds his tongue inspired with praise, 
 his heart with gratitude and love ; — how much 
 more shall the view of God's moral creation, his 
 moral government, his progressive providence, 
 his making man a free, and therefore a moral 
 agent, the independant originator of thought 
 and action, and yet turning these thoughts, 
 these actions, even the very excesses and crimes 
 of mankind, to the purposes of a merciful and 
 predetermined arrangement, his ruling the pride, 
 of the mighty ones and the rage of the people, his 
 interposing by miracle, where miracle alone 
 could be efficient, his turning the hearts of 
 the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, and 
 crowning man, whom he had made but little 
 lower than the Angels, with glory and immor- 
 tality, how much more shall the consideration 
 of these things, of these his glorious works, 
 excite us to gratitude and praise for his creative 
 bounty, his preserving mercy, his redeeming 
 love? 
 
 Had man been created as the fatalists would 
 represent to us, bound to a predetermined chain 
 of action thought and will, he might be a grand 
 and wonderful fabric, but the grandeur would 
 be that of mechanism : The beast of the field 
 which instinct leads would be as wonderful, the 
 
173 
 
 comet which rolls and shall roll its path pre- 
 scribed by the Almighty fiat, much more so. — 
 There would be no more room for divine justice, 
 divine indignation against sin, divine mercy to 
 those that love him and keep his command- 
 ments, in the moral, than in the material world. 
 — As reasonably would the tempest be punished 
 for its devastation, or the genial shower reward- 
 ed for its bounty, as man for his crimes or vir- 
 tues. — That kind of wisdom, which we under- 
 stand to be displayed by a progressive Provi- 
 dence adapting itself to the varieties of contin- 
 gent action, would no longer have scope for ex- 
 ercise, and yet this, my fellow Christians, is a 
 species of wisdom, which to minds untutored in 
 the oppositions of science, seems more wonder- 
 ful and more excellent than any other. It is a 
 species of wisdom, which the Bible, from Ge- 
 nesis to the Revelations, persists in attributing to 
 the Deity. — I cannot bring myself to consider 
 the various assertions of Scripture on this point 
 as merely figurative language because that phi- 
 losophers have proved that the Deity must fore- 
 know from eternity every action of human in- 
 tellect or will, and that therefore these actions 
 cannot be contingent, it may be true, but I have 
 not yet found Scripture authority for it ; fore- 
 knowledge may be reconcileable with contin- 
 gency though they cannot reconcile it. — I shall 
 therefore in my present enquiry consider God 
 
174 
 
 literally as the Bible represents him, possessed 
 of affections similar to those of human nature, 
 but without its weaknesses, capable of being 
 touched with the feeling of our infirmities, in 
 whose sight the righteous and faithful find fa- 
 vour, from whom sinners meet with wrath and 
 indignation, capable of being influenced by con- 
 trition, by amendment, by supplication, to re- 
 pent him of the evil he had purposed, ruling 
 all things both in heaven and earth, occasionally 
 interposing miracles in furtherance of his moral 
 government, and sometimes declaring to man- 
 kind beforehand what he is about to do. — Pro- 
 claiming himself to the children of Israel, " the 
 Lord, the Lord God, merciful, and gracious, 
 long suffering, and abundant in goodness and 
 truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving 
 iniquity, transgression, and sin, but that will 
 by no means clear the guilty," — declaring by his 
 prophet, that he should be called wonderful, 
 counsellor, the almighty Father, the prince of 
 peace, — publishing by his holy apostle, " that God 
 is love," — describing himself thus by his moral 
 attributes, but leaving his essential glories un- 
 discovered 5 glories which Moses could not be- 
 hold and live, which are hopelessly removed 
 from human conception, until that blessed state 
 when that which is perfect shall come, when 
 we shall behold him face to face, and know even 
 as we are known. 
 
175 
 
 With such ideas of God, and man, derived I 
 trust fiom the teaching of the Bible, do I enter 
 on my present enquiry ; — satisfied with the de- 
 scription which the Almighty has given of him- 
 self, and seeking not to be wise above that 
 which is written, we shall avoid the various con- 
 troversies, and the multiplied difficulties, which 
 have arisen from the metaphysical notions of the 
 Deity. — Taking man as the Scriptures have de- 
 scribed him, an accountable, and therefore a 
 free agent, incapable of himself of thinking any 
 good thought, or doing any good work, inca- 
 pable of arriving by the force of unassisted rea- 
 son, at the knowledge of God, or of his duty, 
 and yet capable of working out his own salvation 
 with fear and trembling, while God worketh in 
 him both to will and to do ; — taking man, I say, 
 as the Scriptures have described him, we shall 
 the better and with more safety approach the 
 history of God's moral government in propor- 
 tioning his revealed dispensations to the circum- 
 stances of mankind. — While we keep the Scrip- 
 tures in view, our observations, though they may 
 fall short of the truth, cannot go beyond it, 
 though they may be imperfect, they cannot be 
 erroneous, if they tend to increase our love and 
 gratitude to God, the fruit which tltey cherish, 
 the end which they promote will confer a value 
 on the means. 
 
176 
 
 The inspired historian of the beginnings of 
 the heavens and the earth, describes God as 
 having formed man originally in a state of in- 
 nocency, ignorant of the distinction between 
 good and evil. — He saw no evil, for behold every 
 thing was very good ; the blessing of God had 
 rested on the new creation ; he had committed 
 no evil, and as experience is the appropriate 
 inlet of human knowledge, must naturally have 
 been ignorant of the distinction. How he ac- 
 quired this fatal information, the history pro- 
 ceeds to describe. It was by an act of disobe- 
 dience. — The Lord God had said unto him, of 
 the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou 
 shalt not eat, for, in the day that thou eatest 
 thereof, dying thou shalt die. — Of that fruit did 
 he eat. That punishment of protracted death, 
 which human life has since exemplified, did he 
 incur. — He then, by dreadful experience, ac- 
 quired a knowledge which was torment, a mo- 
 ral sense, which had before lain unexcited, arose 
 in his heart.— Conscience presented to his view 
 the good which he had forsaken, the evil which 
 he had embraced. Thus did he acquire the 
 knowledge of good and evil. 
 
 In this relation, I can see no room for the re- 
 marks, which some have stated as difficulties, 
 others as objections. — I can see no reason, from 
 the apparently figurative name of the tree, to 
 
177 
 
 treat the whole as allegory. — [f the act of dis- 
 obedience naturally produced the knowledge of 
 good and evil, surely the object of that act 
 might well be called the tree of that knowledge. 
 Any other tree, as well as that which stood in 
 the midst of the garden, had it been specified 
 in the command, would have equally merited 
 the name. 
 
 Still less can I perceive any absurdity, any 
 thing inconsistent with the dignity of God, in 
 imposing on Adam only a single, and appa- 
 rently trivial command. — On the contrary, with- 
 out recurring to the extreme argument, that I 
 know of no dignity, except the scriptural dignity, 
 of God, and therefore cannot receive any imagi- 
 nary dignity in contradiction to the relations of 
 the Bible; — it appears to me that the simplicity of 
 the injunction, was most expressive of the mercy 
 and goodness of God, and most wisely propor- 
 tioned to the then circumstances of man. — The 
 other parts of the creation had been formed at 
 once in their best possible state. They were to 
 go no farther. Man alone was formed a being 
 fitted for indefinite progress, unlimitted increase 
 in wisdom, in virtue, and in happiness. — In 
 this course he was to be led, not at once, but 
 gradually, not by constraint, but with his own 
 consent ; because the excellence of virtue can- 
 not exist, except it be voluntary. — For that pro- 
 
 VOL. I. N 
 
17* 
 
 gressive improvement, discipline was requisite. 
 For the exercise of that discipline, law was ne- 
 nessary. — And surely, the simpler the law, the 
 easier the command, the greater was the mercy, 
 surely, the more powerful the sanction, the 
 greater the nisdom of its author.— God did not 
 implant in the heart of Adam overpowering pas- 
 sions, and command their restraint. Human 
 nature was not yet debased by sin, the excess of 
 passion did not yet exist, and where evil pas- 
 sions did not exist, the gratification of evil pas- 
 sions could not be forbidden. Where no evil 
 was, there the object of any command must have 
 been something innocent in itself. Had the 
 command been to refrain from injuring his wife, 
 from destroying the animals which were his com- 
 panions, or even the trees whose beauty and 
 whose produce formed his enjoyment and sub- 
 sistence, exclusive of his having no temptation 
 to violate the command, he would have had the 
 strongest reasons, even from selfish consider- 
 ations, to have obeyed it ; so that the principle 
 of his obedience would not have been of that 
 unmixed, that single nature, which is charac- 
 terized as " the fear of the Lord the beginning 
 " of all wisdom." — There is also another and 
 kindred source of holiness, which the command 
 given to Adam was calculated to exercise, and 
 by exercising to strengthen.— -I mean faith in 
 God — which has, and is, and ever shall be, the 
 
179 
 
 great means of sanctification in man. — God de- 
 clared to him that if he transgressed, that dying 
 he should die — The tempter was permitted to 
 insinuate, that he should not. — Think you, my 
 fellow Christians, that the exertion of faith 
 here required was inconsiderable ?— -Adam had 
 never beheld death, he could conceive it only 
 from the similitude of sleep, or as a negation of 
 which he could form no idea. If his posterity 
 who live in the valley of darkness and the sha- 
 dow of death, in the midst of mortality, where 
 thousands fall beside them, and ten thousands 
 at their right hand, forget in the hurry of oc- 
 cupation, in the transient gleam of enjoyment, 
 in the momentary glow of fancy, and the pride 
 of life, forget the certain the gloomy march of 
 dissolution ; if they find it so hard to persuade 
 themselves, that the hour is fast approaching, 
 perhaps even now is, when they must become 
 tenants of the grave, and inferior to the worm 
 that shall be their companion; — how much more 
 readily must Adam have listened to the voice of 
 the tempter, " thou shalt not surely die."— 
 Behold then in the command the most appro- 
 priate scope and exercise for those two graces, 
 which are the ground-work of all godliness, — 
 the only possible trial for that obedience, of 
 which the Almighty declares, that " to obey is 
 *« better than to sacrifice, and to hearken than 
 ff the blood of rams," perhaps the beat chosen 
 n 2 
 
180 
 
 test, which his situation would admit, of that 
 faith, which is the grand instrument of our sal- 
 vation from sin, that faith, by which Abel's sa- 
 crifice was rendered acceptable, by which Enoch 
 pleased God, by which Noah found grace in his 
 sight, by which Abraham became the heir of 
 righteousness, by which Christ is made unto us 
 sanctification, and redemption, namely, that 
 faith which is unto obedience. Had he with- 
 stood the temptation, his habits of obedience 
 were begun, his faith was strengthened by ex- 
 ertion,— he was ready for farther trial to con- 
 firm his obedience, to increase his faith, to lead 
 him in gradual progress from strength to strength, 
 till he should arrive at the fullness of the sta- 
 ture of the sons of God. — For this progress a 
 strengthened faith was absolutely requisite.— If 
 human reason be insufficient of itself to lead us 
 to the information of virtue, and the knowledge 
 of God's moral attributes, — that information, 
 that knowledge, could Adam have derived only 
 from the teaching of God himself, and for that 
 teaching he would have been totally unfit with- 
 out a lively faith, — so that, without faith, it was 
 as impossible for Adam to make advances in a 
 holy and virtuous life, as it is for us, my fellow 
 Christians, under the present dispensation. But 
 this bright course, the cultivation of these spi- 
 ritual graces was prevented in its very beginning. 
 Eve had not heard the commandment immedi- 
 
181 
 
 ately from God ; it had been uttered before she 
 was formed ; she knew it only from the declara- 
 tion of her husband ; she therefore more readily 
 listened to the voice of the tempter inciting her 
 to disbelieve its sanction. — She did not attempt to 
 persuade her husband, until her own escaping 
 without immediate death had strengthened her 
 unbelief. That escape Adam beheld. — He saw 
 that she had eaten, and yet lived. — The first 
 moment shook his belief in God's denunciation ; 
 the next overthrew it.— She gave unto Adam, 
 and he also did eat.. — Is not this natural, my 
 fellow Christians ? How many of his posterity are 
 there who, because vengeance is not instanta- 
 neous, persuade themselves that the sinner shall 
 not surely die. — I have dwelt on the description, 
 because it has been represented to be impro- 
 bable. — It has been objected, that we cannot 
 conceive that Adam, created in the full per- 
 fection of intellect, would incur such a penalty 
 as death, for such a trivial object. — I think I 
 have shewn you, that it was not the penalty 
 which he weighed against the object, but a 
 shaken, a weakened, an overthrown faith, (a 
 process which not only would probably, but al- 
 most constantly does, triumph over human na- 
 ture;) — and that the temptation to which he was 
 exposed was not only best proportioned to his 
 situation, but also best calculated to make 
 trial of his faith and obedience, and to have 
 
182 
 
 strengthened that faith and obedience, had he 
 resisted. 
 
 I shall conclude by entreating you, ever to 
 bear in mind, that the cause of Adam's fall was 
 the deficiency of his faith. Not that he dis- 
 believed the being of God, for that was impos- 
 sible. Not that he formed erroneous specula- 
 tions respecting his nature, for he had no need 
 of theorising, he enjoyed the presence of his 
 God, and beheld his glory.— -It was the bounty, 
 the sufficiency, the truth of God, which he dis- 
 believed.— He imagined that God was with- 
 holding some good thing from him ; he sought, 
 by his own strength, to add a wisdom to his 
 other perfections, which should exalt his nature 
 from human to divine. — He listened to the in- 
 sinuation of the tempter, rather than to the 
 voice of God, and flattered himself that though 
 disobedient, he should not perish. — How justly 
 then is faith made the grand feature of the 
 Christian dispensation ! How justly are we called 
 on to believe that God will withhold no good 
 thing from those who love him, to confess that 
 our sufficiency is of God! — to be persuaded 
 that without obedience no man shall taste of 
 the tree of life, without holiness no man shall 
 see the Lord.— Let us therefore, my fellow 
 Christians, ever mindful of what first produced 
 the degradation of our nature, and ofthe means 
 
183 
 
 of retrieval prescribed by a Redeemer's love, 
 cast all our care on him who hath so eared for 
 us.— Let us be satisfied with the wisdom which 
 the Scriptures contain, being assured that they 
 contain all that is necessary for making us wise 
 unto salvation, — being convinced that faith unto 
 obedience is that from which Adam fell, and to 
 which we are called. 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 Romans, v. — 14. 
 
 Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to 
 Moses, even over those that had not sinned in 
 the similitude of Adam's tra?isgression. 
 
 IN my last address to you, my fellow Chris- 
 tians, I considered the first state in which man 
 was placed by his Creator, and endeavoured to 
 trace the relation between that state and the 
 
184 
 
 means of religious improvement afforded to him 
 by the Almighty. — We found him described as 
 possessing a nature as yet undepraved, free 
 from the sinful excess of passion, sharing in 
 common with the whole creation the eulogium 
 of its God, that behold every thing was very 
 good. — We found him placed in the simplest of 
 all societies, that of a person who was litterally 
 his second self, bone of his bone, and flesh of 
 his flesh, exempt from all temptation to the pro- 
 duction of physical evil, exempt from the ex- 
 perimental knowledge of that which was moral. 
 We found him enjoying the presence of his 
 Creator, and knowing from God himself, that 
 the heavens and the earth were the work of his 
 hands, and that beside him, there was no 
 other ; — incapable of crime towards man, in- 
 capable of adoring any other God j — with be- 
 nevolence impressed on his heart in its first — its 
 strongest — its dearest form, with the faith and 
 love of him who beholds his benefactor, his fa- 
 ther, his Creator ; — nought was wanting to the 
 perfection of his nature, but the perfection of 
 those heavenly sentiments by gradual cultiva- 
 tion. — For the commencement of this process 
 a single command was given him, — the matter 
 of which had nothing to recommend it, but the 
 authority of God, and was therefore the better 
 calculated to exercise his faith, his reverence, 
 his obedience. — The temptation, to which it was 
 
185 
 
 the means of exposing him, was addressed to 
 the noblest desires of human nature, and there- 
 fore at once the more powerful and the more 
 appropriate to an undepraved heart. — It was 
 strengthened by the suggestion of the most sub- 
 tle of all other created beings, that God's jus- 
 tice was uncertain, and his mercy incomplete. 
 Could there be a better exercise for man's be- 
 lief in that justice, and confidence in that mer- 
 cy ? A better aid in his progress to that per- 
 fect love, which casteth out suspicion ? 
 
 From this bright course, these happy pros- 
 pects, Adam by disobedience fell ; and involved 
 himself and his posterity in sin and misery, just- 
 ly liable to the punishment denounced against 
 his transgression, and during the suspension of 
 the sentence, the short — the transient respite of 
 human life, exposed to the desperate wicked- 
 ness of a heart depraved by sin, to the violence 
 of evil passions, which disobedience had engen- 
 dered, and which causes to us unknown, 
 though the melancholy fact be unquestionable, 
 continue to perpetuate, and would, perhaps, if 
 left to the ordinary course of nature, augment, 
 until they produced the total extinction of our 
 species. — Left to that wisdom, which he had 
 preferred to obedience, to that knowledge of 
 good and evil, which he had purchased at the 
 expense of his faith, Adam and his posterity 
 
186 
 
 became the children of wrath, and over those 
 even, who, from the time of Adam to that of 
 Moses, did not sin after the likness of his trans- 
 gression, nevertheless did death reign. — The 
 religious dispensation of God to mankind dur- 
 ing this state must become our next object of 
 enquiry. We must seek in the sacred records 
 what information, what means of improvement 
 he afforded them, and endeavour, with humble 
 reverence, to point out the proportion, which, 
 whether our weak faculties can discover it or 
 not, we know must have existed, between the 
 means applied by Almighty wisdom, and the 
 state of that being, that was the object of un- 
 limited mercy. — And here it may be requisite to 
 make a few remarks on the Scripture account of 
 original sin j — as there are perhaps few points in 
 religious speculation, concerning which there 
 has been a greater variety of opinion, or which 
 have more frequently been made occasion of 
 objection by infidels. Not content with the 
 simple fact, which the Scripture asserts, that 
 by one man's disobedience many were made 
 sinners ; from the earliest ages of the Church, 
 to the time of the Reformation, those who were 
 zealous to understand all mysteries, and to be 
 leaders of the blind, have been devising vari- 
 ous conjectural systems to explain how these 
 things can be. Not content with the plain 
 transfusion of Scripture, which the article of 
 
187 
 
 our Churcli possesses ; from the sera of the Re- 
 formation to the present day, those, who would 
 seem to possess all knowledge, have contrived 
 
 inventions if possible more diversified. On 
 
 these systems, on consequences drawn from 
 these inventions, have unbelievers fastened, and 
 raised objections, which, as one of the most 
 orthodox writers of our Church has remarked, 
 are more readily offered than answered.— These 
 various systems, and the objections which they 
 have given occasion to, owe their origin to one 
 common principle, namely, the opinion, that 
 conceivableness is the criterion of truth and the 
 measure of assent. The one party could not 
 at once conceive how, by the offence of one, 
 judgment come upon all men to condemnation, 
 and therefore had recourse to conjectural the- 
 ory to aid them in this conception ; the other 
 party could not conceive, how the consequences 
 of these theories could consist with reason or 
 even with each other, and while they success- 
 fully combated them, imagined they were tri- 
 umphing over religion. — Let us try the merits 
 of their common principle, conceivableness. 
 The opinion of its being the legitimate measure 
 of truth is both prevalent and plausible, it is 
 therefore worthy of examination. 
 
 With respect to those things, to which our 
 faculties are proportioned and our reason com- 
 
188 
 
 mensurate, conceivableness ought to be, and 
 actually is, one of the principal guides of our 
 assent j in such matters what we cannot con- 
 ceive, we ought not, we do not, nay we cannot 
 believe.— But here we must carefully recollect 
 the distinction, which has been established in a 
 valuable work which has been, or shortly will 
 become, the study of my hearers, between 
 those things to which our faculties are commen- 
 surate, and those to which they are not ; be- 
 tween what is according or contrary to reason, 
 and what is above it. And most assuredly of 
 the latter description are the relations between 
 a Creator and his creature, between the father 
 of a race and the souls which are created to ani- 
 mate his progeny, and the connection between 
 the actions of one man and the state of ano- 
 ther. — These are matters, in which the nature 
 of the relation between the terms is unknown 
 to us. They are isolated facts, for which we 
 can find no others with which we may classify 
 them, which we therefore cannot conceive, be- 
 cause our only mode of conceiving any thing is 
 either by knowing the actual nature of it, or by 
 conjecturing it to be similar to something which 
 we do know. — And yet these three things must 
 we be able to comprehend, before we can con- 
 ceive the effect of original sin, the imputation 
 of Adam's transgression. — On matters of this 
 nature we are called for our belief, and for the 
 
189 
 
 affections of our hearts consequent on such be- 
 lief—if they be declared in Scripture. — If God 
 has told us that in Adam we have died, and 
 that in Christ we are made alive, we are called 
 on to faith, to gratitude, and to love ; — but by- 
 no means, to be able to explain how these 
 things can be, to understand what is obviously 
 above the reach of our understandings. Had 
 the framers of the theories above mentioned 
 attended to this distinction, they would have 
 seen how totally superfluous all theory was on 
 such a subject. — Had the objectors attended to 
 it, they would have seen how impossible it was 
 to draw consequences, where the principles 
 were beyond the reach of our intellectual vi- 
 sion, how absurd it was to charge the defects of 
 human inventions on the pure the perfect word 
 of God. We should not then have heard of an 
 imaginary contract between God, and Adam 
 as the representative of the whole future hu- 
 man race, as if their souls were virtually con- 
 tained in him, because their bodies may in some 
 sense be said to have been so, nor if the vari- 
 ous other conjectural aids for conceiving the in- 
 fluence and effects of original sin, which are 
 neither contained in, nor countenanced by, 
 Scripture. We should not have heard of ob- 
 jections to these systems being considered as 
 objections against religion. The belief in them 
 would not have been identified with the bedief 
 
190 
 
 of Scripture. Both parties would have felt and 
 admitted, that, though inconceivableness is no 
 argument against any thing contained in Divine 
 Revelation, it is a most fatal one against any 
 thing which is not. — The sincere defenders of 
 religion could at once have replied to object- 
 ors ; if your objections be against any thing as- 
 serted in Scripture, we are ready to answer 
 them ; if they be against any human theory of 
 however high authority, we are not concerned 
 with them ; if they be against consequences de- 
 rived by either you or others from assertions in 
 Scripture, which concern matters obviously 
 above human comprehension, we deny the 
 power of man to go a single step beyond what 
 is revealed, to add ought thereto, to draw a 
 single consequence from propositions concern- 
 ing matters confessedly above the measure of 
 
 his faculties. Taking the tenet of original 
 
 sin in this point of view, our knowledge con- 
 cerning it is reduced to the compass of a few 
 plain texts of Scripture. All theories become 
 superfluous, all objections become irrelevant, 
 except, that objectors shew, that the authority 
 of Scripture can be questioned, or that its asser- 
 tions on this momentous point are not calcu- 
 lated to address themselves to the affections of 
 the human heart, that great object of all reli- 
 gion, to work by love, and to regulate the 
 whole conversation of our lives. 
 
191 
 
 We are told in Scripture, that at the creation 
 every thing was very good. We are afterwards 
 told, that the human heart is deceitful above 
 all things, and desperately wicked ; that is, our 
 nature has been depraved. We are told, that 
 by one man's disobedience many were made 
 sinners ; that is, that mankind are accounted 
 guilty before God. We are told that death, 
 that death which is the wages of sin, reigned 
 over those even who had not sinned in the 
 likeness of Adam's transgression; that is, that 
 this guiltiness this original sin consists in some- 
 thing more than merely the following of Adam's 
 example. We are told, that from this curse, 
 from this bondage of sin, are we freed by the 
 sacrifice of Christ, who is made both redemption 
 and sanctification to them that believe. Shall 
 we discredit all this, and strive to explain away 
 its obvious meaning, because we cannot con- 
 ceive how it can be. Adam perhaps could not 
 conceive how the fruit of a tree, which seemed 
 pleasant to the sight, and good for food, could 
 produce inevitable destruction. — 'And yet 
 that destruction was certain. — Cain perhaps 
 could not conceive why the fruits of the earth 
 should not be as worthy an offering as the first- 
 ling of the flock. And yet by faith did Abel 
 offer a more acceptable sacrifice. — Noah per- 
 haps could not conceive how the order of na- 
 ture could be changed for the chastisement of 
 
192 
 
 an impenitent world. And yet his faith in the 
 declarations of God became at once the occa- 
 sion of his rinding favour, and the instrument 
 of his preservation. Abraham, when he pre- 
 pared to sacrifice the son of his old age, could 
 not conceive how the promises of God could 
 then be fulfilled. And yet he repressed those 
 suspicions, and his faith was accounted to him 
 for righteousness. His posterity could not con- 
 ceive how the meek, the lowly Jesus could be 
 the Son of Jehovah. And yet, beyond all con- 
 troversy, was that Jesus— God manifested in the 
 flesh. — The theorising Christian and the free 
 thinking philosopher cannot conceive how the 
 sin of Adam could deprave the nature of his 
 posterity, and render them the objects deserv- 
 ing of the wrath of God. And yet the asser- 
 tions of Scripture on these points are too plain, 
 too much interwoven with the whole body of 
 Revelation to be explained away. 
 
 In such a state must we therefore consider 
 man from the time of Adam to that of Moses. 
 Actuated by a depraved elation of his natural 
 affections, a morbid energy of his faculties, he 
 filled the earth with violence. Possessed by a 
 moral insanity, which was perpetuated by de- 
 scent and augmented by exertion, he became a 
 vessel fitted for destruction. — In such a thral- 
 dom of sin, living thus in the midst of death, 
 
193 
 
 what was the first exertion of Divine goodness 
 which man experienced ? — The earliest step to- 
 wards the reformation of a criminal is to hold 
 out to him the hope of mercy. And that hope 
 was held out to man in the promise of a Re- 
 deemer. — The declaration, " That the seed of 
 the woman should bruise the serpent's head," 
 appears to have been expressed to our first pa- 
 rents in such a manner as to convey to their 
 minds its mystical meaning, for both they and 
 many of their immediate descendants appear to 
 have laid hold on the hope which was set before 
 them. Eve, at the birth of her first born, 
 seems to have flattered herself, that she had 
 gotten the promised man from the Lord. Abel 
 offered that species of sacrifice, which was pro- 
 bably then, as well as afterwards, commanded 
 as a type of Christ's atonement, for we are told 
 he did so through faith. — Enoch by faith walk- 
 ed with God, that is, his faith was a faith unto 
 obedience, and in consequence thereof, he was 
 taken by God and exempted from the curse of 
 mortality.— If the promise of a Redeemer had 
 not been understood by him, and if, except 
 through Christ, no one can come to God, in 
 what could that faith have been which produced 
 so glorious a reward ? — Behold then the second 
 dispensation of religious discipline consisted in 
 the promise of a Redeemer. — This promise ap- 
 pears, from the single account we have of it, to 
 vol. r. o 
 
194 
 
 have been as to its form ambiguous and there- 
 fore obscure, and yet sufficiently clear to excite 
 a lively faith in such as chose to receive it. — 
 As to the manner of its communication, its au- 
 thority was unquestionable. It was God him- 
 self in person who announced it. So that we 
 may here perceive two peculiarities of the dis- 
 pensation in question, namely, that the form of 
 the promise was obscure, and the manner, the 
 authority of its communication unquestionable. 
 — To these we may perhaps add a third, that 
 there does not appear to have been a positive 
 law of any considerable extent given to man- 
 kind before the time of Moses. — God supplied 
 the place of law by his actual presence, his ac- 
 tual intercourse with mankind ; at first with all, 
 afterwards when many had added to the sin of 
 Adam their own multiplied transgressions, had 
 like Cain, despaired of the promised mercy, and 
 like him gone forth from the presence of the 
 Lord ; the Deity appears to have restricted his 
 presence to those who are termed the sons of 
 God, who are said to have called themselves 
 after the name of Jehovah, who like Enoch 
 pleased God by faith, and like Noah found fa- 
 vour in his sight. — The rest were left with no 
 other direction than the example of those vir- 
 tuous few, the influence of the rewards which 
 they received, and the dictates of their own 
 
195 
 
 hearts, whereby the Gentiles, not having a la\v» 
 are a law unto themselves. 
 
 Let us compare those three peculiarities with 
 the state of mankind during the existence of 
 the dispensation, and I think it will not require 
 very deep research, to observe the traces of di- 
 vine beneficence and wisdom. 
 
 It is well remarked by the Apostle, that, be- 
 fore we can come to God, we must believe that 
 he is. — Before we can have that love which is 
 the fulfilling of the law, we must have that faith 
 which is unto us obedience. And before we 
 can have that faith in the promises and threat- 
 enings of God, that confidence in his mercy, 
 which produces obedience, we must believe that 
 he exists, and has really made those promises, 
 issued those denunciations, and offered that 
 mercy.— So that this passive assurance of the 
 existence of God, this historical assent to the 
 facts of his having made certain promises of 
 mercy and promulgated certain rules of life, 
 though it be distinguishable from that active, 
 that religious faith, whose fruits are righteous- 
 ness, and whose end is everlasting life, is yet its 
 prerequisite groundwork and foundation. Now, 
 in the infancy of our species, how could this 
 conviction of the being of God be produced, ex- 
 cept by his actual presence ? Had Adam never 
 
 o 2 
 
196 
 
 heard the voice of his Creator blessing him, and 
 gifting him. with dominion over the new cre- 
 ation, had the history of the stupendous six 
 days work never been related to him by the 
 Almighty framer, he would have known as little 
 of his God, as the solitary infant whom the 
 chance of shipwreck has cast on some deserted 
 shore.— Of the universe he would only know, 
 that it probably extended beyond the bounds of 
 his observation. Of its duration, he might per- 
 haps conjecture, that it was antecedent to his 
 recollection. — If his posterity, though aided by 
 the suggestions of traditionary revelation, waited 
 for some thousand years, before they devised a 
 proof of the being of a God, if to this present 
 day, multitudes of the human race dwelling 
 amidst the works of God, blind to the holy idea, 
 which the glorious view suggests, bow down to 
 the absurdity of some ridiculous idol, how long 
 might the infancy of human reason, how long 
 might Adam and his immediate offspring have 
 remained ignorant of their God, ignorant of this 
 sacred spring of every thing valuable in life, 
 had he not been actually present to their senses. 
 —But perhaps it may be supposed, that his ac- 
 tual presence to Adam would have been suffi- 
 cient, and that Adam might have communi- 
 cated to his posterity the knowledge of God's 
 existence and his will. — Of his will, and the his- 
 tory of the creation, no doubt he might, and 
 
197 
 
 probably did. But, before even these could be 
 fully credited, his existence must be established 
 by something more than bare assertion. — By 
 something more than bare assertion, I say, be- 
 cause it was a fact totally unlike any other ob- 
 ject of knowledge, incapable of being classified 
 with any tiling else. How then should his as- 
 sertion have been confirmed? Should he have 
 addressed to them the demonstration which his 
 descendants have since invented ? — This de- 
 monstration has never been appealed to either 
 by Moses, or the Prophets, or by our Saviour, 
 or by his Apostles. When they wish to confirm 
 the authority of their revelations, they appeal 
 to miracles, the only legitimate, the only ap- 
 propriate evidence of the existence and trans- 
 mission of Divine authority.— Should Adam 
 then have confirmed his assertion by miracle ?— 
 In the first age of the world miracle was impos- 
 sible. — Where every thing is new, every thing 
 is equally wonderful, but nothing can be mira- 
 culous. Had Adam, in proof of his veracity, 
 recalled the murdered Abel from the sleep of 
 death, — the miraculous nature of the act would 
 not have been perceived. Had the waters of 
 the sea risen on an heap, or the sun stood still 
 at his controlling word, — these facts would have 
 appeared no more miraculous to the infant world, 
 than the darkness of an eclipse, or the swell of 
 some unusual tide. — Had he anticipated every 
 
198 
 
 miracle recorded in Scripture, the finger of God 
 would not have been distinguished from the ef- 
 fect of natural causes. The existence of mira- 
 cle presupposes an established, a matured expe- 
 rience. If miracle be an incident contrary to 
 our established experience of the order of na- 
 ture, in the childhood of that experience there 
 can be no miracle. There could have been no 
 means of confirming the testimony of Adam, 
 which being single, would have been in- 
 sufficient to have produced an operative con- 
 viction.— Such a conviction could be produced 
 (humanly speaking), only by the Deity's being 
 actually present to the senses of mankind. 
 
 With respect to the other peculiarities of this 
 second dispensation, namely, the obscurity of 
 the promise, and the simplicity of the law, we 
 may perceive how they were proportioned to 
 the state of mankind, by considering their con- 
 nection with the actual presence of the Deity. 
 — In no age of religion have the grounds of re- 
 ligious faith been so constituted as to be over- 
 powering. — That faith which hp the gift of jus- 
 tifying must be voluntary. — By* a voluntary dis- 
 belief in God did man become disobedient.— 
 By a voluntary faith in his promises, by a vo- 
 luntary laying hold of the hope of a Redeemer, 
 must man be regenerated and sanctified. — Now 
 when the promise came immediately from God 
 
199 
 
 himself, had it been explicit, fully descriptive, 
 and circumstantial, it would have been over- 
 powering. No one could have neglected it. 
 It would have afforded an evidence of things 
 not seen stronger than Divine wisdom has ever 
 vouchsafed to mankind, totally disproportioned 
 to a state of voluntary assent and progressive 
 trial. 
 
 With respect to the limited extent of moral 
 precepts under this second dispensation, its pro- 
 portion to the state of mankind may also be 
 derived from the consideration of the actual 
 presence of God. — While God was actually pre- 
 sent to one family of mankind, an extensive 
 code of precepts to them would have been su- 
 perfluous ; to the rest of mankind, who had gone 
 forth from the presence of the Lord, it would 
 have been useless. — To those who live without 
 God in the world, who go forth from his pre- 
 sence, and will not have him to reign over them, 
 in vain are the injunctions of morality held forth. 
 The swine will trample on the pearls which are 
 cast before them, and the deafned reptile will 
 close his ears to the incantations of wisdom. 
 To those on whom the example of Enoch and 
 the preaching of Noah failed of effect, in vain 
 would that law which is holy just and good, 
 have been addressed. — Now to God, &c. 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 Exodus xix. — 5 and 6. 
 
 Now, therefore, if you will obey my voice, indeed, 
 and keep my covenant, then shall ye be a pecu- 
 liar treasure unto me above all people. For 
 all the earth is mine, and ye shall be unto me a 
 kingdom of Priests, and an holy nation. 
 
 WHEN I addressed you on a former occasion, 
 my fellow Christians, I endeavoured to point 
 out to you the nature of the patriarchal dispen- 
 sation, and its proportion to the infancy of hu- 
 man society. — I endeavoured to shew you, that 
 it consisted in the establishment of a succession 
 of individuals, an holy generation, emphatically 
 stiled the sons of God, and preserved, by his 
 immediate intercourse, from the errors and the 
 
201 
 
 corruptions of the surrounding world; that they 
 might be, to that world, a light of spiritual wis- 
 dom, an example of righteousness, receivers of 
 the promises, preservers of the oracles, and pro- 
 phets of the will of the Almighty. — I endea- 
 voured also to shew you, that to them, and to 
 the entire world by their intervention, was de- 
 livered a promise of redemption, obscure as to 
 its form, but unquestionable as to the manner 
 of its communication ; and a positive law of 
 comparatively small extent. And I attempted 
 to satisfy you, that, in the infancy of human 
 experience, this communication by the Deity in 
 person was best calculated for the conviction of 
 reason ; this obscurity of expression best adapted 
 to the cultivation of faith ; and, that the sim- 
 plicity of positive law was at once best suited to 
 the then state of mankind, and the natural re- 
 sult of the other features of the dispensation. 
 
 The Mosaic dispensation, which we have 
 next to consider, appears to have been an en- 
 largement of the Patriarchal, having in view the 
 same objects, availing itself of similar means, 
 and differing from the former, only in those re- 
 spects, in which the altered circumstances of 
 human society required a variation. — ■ While the 
 descendants of Adam were but few, their lan- 
 guage the same, and their journeyings, first 
 from the neighbourhood of Eden*, and afterwards 
 
202 
 
 from that of Ararat, of comparatively small ex- 
 tent ; a single family of Priests, a single suc- 
 cession of Patriarchs, was sufficient for preserv- 
 ing the knowledge of God and the memory of 
 his promises, for being the intermediate instru- 
 ments of communication between God and the 
 world, for affording to mankind, in the length- 
 ened space to which human life and vigour were 
 then protracted, those promises of redemption, 
 which were to be the objects of their faith, those 
 lessons of righteousness, which were to be the 
 rules of their obedience, those examples of ho- 
 liness, which were to be the paterns of their 
 imitation. But, when the human race had mul- 
 tiplied itself on the face of the earth, a corres- 
 ponding enlargement of the religiuus dispensa- 
 tion became requisite. When the sons of men 
 had been driven asunder, by the confusion of 
 languages which their impiety had provoked, — 
 and the parts into which they had been thus 
 separated, still farther subdivided themselves, 
 and, in search of subsistence for their encreas- 
 ing cattle, had passed the river, or the moun- 
 tain, which till then had limited their wander- 
 ings, — the extent of Asia was gradually reple- 
 nished with human inhabitants, and mankind, 
 which before had been an assemblage of fami- 
 lies, became a system of nations, and of tribes. 
 —The variety of soils, over which they had 
 spread themselves, led to an interchange of 
 
203 
 
 their different products ; and this infant com. 
 merce gaining strength and experience, daring 
 the extensive river, the inland sea, and even 
 the mighty ocean itself, diffused the super- 
 abundant population, as far as navigation could 
 reach. — Hence we find the various nations, 
 which at present cover the globe, referable to 
 Asiatic origin, their various languages evidently 
 formed by gradual corruption from Asiatic 
 sources, their arts and sciences confessedly of 
 Asiatic extraction. And in Asia itself, we may 
 remark, that its old nations seem to have been 
 divided by the natural divisions of the country, 
 ■ — indicating a gradual spreading of a race des- 
 titute at first of the means of crossing those na- 
 tural barriers, indicating, I say, their gradual 
 spreading, from some central spot: while among 
 the languages of Asia, we find three, or perhaps 
 more, which, while they seem to have been the 
 roots of all the rest, are so totally different from 
 each other, that we can by no means suppose 
 them to have had a common origin ; nor could 
 we account for their difference, but for the 
 scriptural history of the confusion at Babel. 
 
 But mankind thus dispersed, thus scattered 
 over the face of the earth, did not cease to be 
 the objects of Almighty mercy. — That consum- 
 ing fire, which attended by Cherubim, had kept 
 the way to the tree of life, vouchsafed to rest 
 
204 
 
 between the figures of those same mysterious be- 
 ings, and to dwell among the sons of men. — 
 A single family was no longer sufficient for be- 
 ing the means of moral promulgation, the mes- 
 sengers of spiritual knowledge.— -The influence 
 of their example could not have reached be- 
 yond the tribe to which they belonged, nor their 
 preaching extended beyond the language which 
 they spoke.— The contracted duration of human 
 life at once weakened the authority, and en- 
 dangered the purity, of traditionary instruc- 
 tion. It was requisite, that there should be a 
 written law, an established record of the his- 
 tory of God's dealings with mankind, a public 
 memorial of his promises. — It was requisite, that 
 these should be promulgated and entrusted, no 
 longer to the limited succession of a single fa- 
 mily, whose transactions could excite only little 
 observation ; but to the permanence and pub- 
 licity of a civil establishment, to a Nation, whose 
 history should attract an universal interest, and 
 form a grand object in the records of the hu- 
 man race. The descendants of Abraham, who, 
 by his faith in the promises of God, had found 
 favour in his sight, were gratuitously chosen to 
 be the instruments of this dispensation. The 
 entire of their moral law is a promulgation to 
 mankind in general, of that perfect doctrine, 
 which converts the soul, those sure testimonies, 
 which give wisdom unto the simple.— The whole 
 
205 
 
 of their institutions were a memorial of the 
 promises of redemption, the shadow of good 
 things to come. The series of their political 
 history was calculated to attract general obser- 
 vation, and to afford to that observation so at- 
 tracted, full evidence of God's interference, 
 and consequently of the Divine authority of 
 their institutions. They were to be a kingdom 
 of Priests and an holy nation, not only for their 
 own advantage, but because, as my text de- 
 clares, the whole earth is the Lord's ; not for 
 their own private agrandisement or even exclu- 
 sive instruction, but that the whole world might 
 know, from the rising of the sun, to the going 
 down thereof, that " Jehovah was God, and 
 that beside him there was no other." — If they 
 obeyed his voice, they were to have been to 
 him a peculiar treasure, an example to the sur- 
 rounding world, of his tender mercies to those, 
 who love him and keep his commandments. — 
 If they disobeyed, they were to be to the same 
 ■world, an example of his vengeance against un- 
 righteousness.— But in either case, they were 
 to be the instruments of religious dispensation 
 to the rest of mankind. — Whether they should 
 be voluntary or involuntary instruments, whe- 
 ther they should be rewarded or punished, de- 
 pended on themselves. — But, on the immuta- 
 ble councils of the Almighty, did it depend, 
 that in the law and the promises, which were 
 
206 
 
 theirs, and in Christ, who, according to the 
 flesh, was to arise among them, were all the fa- 
 milies of the earth to be blessed.— Hence, we 
 may observe, how totally irrelevant is the objec- 
 tion of some infidels, who affect to consider it 
 incredible, that such a perverse and disobedi- 
 ent nation, as the Jews, could have been God's 
 chosen people. They were chosen, not to ex- 
 clusive salvation, but to be the means of offer- 
 ing salvation to others. — They were chosen for 
 this purpose, not for their merits, but gratuit- 
 ously ; their obedience and their disobedience 
 being made equally to contribute towards the 
 one grand object, and the outline of their his- 
 tory being so conducted, as most eminently to 
 qualify them for the office to which they were 
 elected. 
 
 As the history of the Patriarchal family con- 
 cludes with the settlement of Joseph and his 
 brethren in Egypt j so the history of their de- 
 scendants as a nation begins in the same coun- 
 try. 
 
 That Egypt was the earliest kingdom, which 
 was erected after the confusion of Babel, may 
 be collected, not only from sacred, but also 
 from profane history ; while its stupenduous 
 architectural monuments afford an additional 
 testimony to its antiquity. Indeed, the fabu- 
 
207 
 
 Ious nature of its early annals would lead us to 
 the same conclusion, because, such can only ex- 
 ist, among a people whose history is more anci- 
 ent than the use of letters, — and where the 
 minds of its early annalists have neither been 
 aided nor controlled by the influence of the 
 Holy Spirit. Egypt, as she was thus the first 
 in establishing a political society, appears also 
 to have been the foremost in commerce, and the 
 originator of science. Her situation led to the 
 one, and that gave birth to the other. So that 
 she appears to have been as if the metropolis of 
 the rising world, and the centre of its civiliza- 
 tion.— But, while she diffused her arts, and af- 
 forded, to the rest of the world, an example of 
 civil government, she also diffused an idolatrous 
 departure from the simplicity of early tradi- 
 tion. — This had probably originated from her 
 hieroglyphical mode of recording past transac- 
 tions ; an aid apparently the greatest which early 
 ingenuity could contribute towards the improve- 
 ment of society, and yet eventually productive 
 of its greatest evil : — as if to evince the insuf- 
 ficiency of unaided mankind ; to shew, that hu- 
 man genius, while she stretches after science, 
 may sink into ruin ; — while she desires that, 
 which seems good to make one wise, may incur 
 the sentence of inevitable destruction. 
 
 On such a theatre, did the history of God's 
 
208 
 
 chosen people begin. In the very cradle of ido- 
 latry, did Jehovah triumph over idols ; — and, 
 while he permitted the exercise of magical 
 power, convert the hearts of its instruments by 
 the manifestation of his superiority. — In the 
 very spring of human science, did he infuse 
 that balm, by which its waters become the 
 health of society. — In the very centre of human 
 intercourse, did he write the record of his ven- 
 geance against hardened and impenitent sinners, 
 of his mercv towards the afflicted, — of his 
 power and Godhead, that they might be known 
 as far as that intercourse extended. 
 
 For this purpose, was Pharoah rescued for a 
 time, from that destruction, which his former 
 oppression had merited. For this purpose, was 
 he raised up, as the respited criminal is raised 
 up out of prison. — For this purpose, did the 
 dealings of God, at this crisis, by their mira- 
 culous nature, address themselves most power- 
 fully to the attention and memory of mankind ; 
 — while the air, the river, and the reptiles, 
 which were the objects of Egypt's idolatry, 
 were made the instruments of her chastisement. 
 -—For this purpose, was there a distinction made 
 between those of the Egyptians, who feared 
 Jehovah and believed the word of Moses, and 
 those, whose hearts were hardened like that of 
 Pharoah, or perhaps, like too many, who fear- 
 
209 
 
 ed man more than God ;— -the latter perishing 
 with their master in the Red Sea ; the former 
 having their lives, and even their cattle, spared 
 to them.— A circumstance, to which, though 
 history does not authorise us, we may perhaps 
 refer the purity of the religion, which for a 
 long time afterwards, prevailed in one part of 
 Egypt, while the inhabitants of the other were 
 sunk in the most debased superstition. 
 
 If we follow the history of the chosen peo- 
 ple, in their wanderings in the wilderness, and 
 their subsequent conquest of Canaan, we shall 
 find that it was most admirably adapted to the 
 promulgation of that law and those promises, 
 which had been committed to their charge. 
 And here an objection, which has been advanced 
 by infidels against the credibility of this part of 
 the Mosaic history, naturally presents itself. — 
 Could not the transfer of the chosen people 
 from Egypt to Syria have been effected by or- 
 dinary means ? And if so, where exists that 
 sufficient cause for those continual interruptions 
 of the established rules of natural action, which 
 this history records, that sufficient cause, which 
 we must always establish, or at least suppose, 
 before we admit the reality of any miracle ? Had 
 the object of Providence been merely the esta- 
 blishment of Abraham's descendants in the pro- 
 mised land, the objection perhaps might be 
 
 vol. i. p 
 
210 
 
 plausible. — But when we consider, that the 
 object was the authoritative promulgation 
 of the law and promises of God to mankind 
 in general, we see the absolute necessity 
 there was for a departure from the ordinary 
 course of nature. — Such communication could 
 not have been made, except in a superna- 
 tural manner, could not have been autho- 
 rised, except by some evident and notorious 
 miracle. — And the more frequent, the more no- 
 torious the miracles which accompanied it, the 
 more diffused and the more impressive would 
 that promulgation be. No doubt the children 
 of Israel might have acquired the promised land, 
 by one of those ordinary revolutions, which 
 transfer the sovereignty of a country from one 
 people to another.— But would the surrounding 
 world then have been assured, that the rules of 
 life, which through them were declared to man- 
 kind, and the promises, which through them 
 were held out as objects of faith, had originat- 
 ed from that being, who could command that 
 world which he had created, and control those 
 laws of nature, which he had established ? 
 —And accordingly, we find this part of the 
 Mosaic history a series of natural and also of 
 moral miracles.— That a people, debased by 
 servitude, and weakened by oppression, should 
 escape from the midst of their masters, and 
 those masters the then most powerful nation in 
 
211 
 
 the world, is a moral miracle. That they should 
 pass the Red Sea dry shod, is a natural one. 
 That six hundred thousand men should remain 
 for forty years in the wilderness, is a moral 
 miracle. That they should be guided by a 
 cloud and pillar of fire, is a natural one. That 
 such a nation, after such a wandering, should 
 subdue the powerful tribes and warlike kings of 
 Palestine, is a moral miracle. That the lights 
 of Heaven should stand still over the valley of 
 Ai to give time for their victory, is a natural 
 one ; one, in which there could be no decep- 
 tion, nor no defect of universal observation. — 
 In short, every thing belonging to this period 
 of their history was miraculous. Their raiment 
 was miraculous, for it waxed not old. Their 
 meat was miraculous, for it fell from Heaven. 
 Their drink was miraculous, for it proceeded 
 from a rock, which, as we may collect from the 
 Apostle, was not confined to one situation, but 
 followed them in their wanderings. Every 
 thing, I say, connected with this period of their 
 history was miraculous, because, it was the pe- 
 riod of promulgation from God to man. 
 
 Every a?ra of promulgation, except the first, 
 (and to that, I have shewn, miracle would have 
 been disproportioned,) every aera of promulga- 
 tion must be, and has been, that of miracle. 
 Because, miracle is the appropriate evidence of 
 
212 
 
 Divine authority. — The promulgation by Noah 
 attended the stupendous miracle of the flood. — 
 The promulgation by Christ was confirmed by 
 miraculous exertions of benevolence and mercy, 
 performed, not in a corner, but in presence of 
 an assembled people. — Did the Deity declare 
 himself to the children of Israel ? — It was in fire 
 from Sinai's top, while the lightnings of heaven 
 issued from the sides, and its thunders pro- 
 ceeded from the recesses of the mountain. — 
 Did he, by the intervention of his chosen peo- 
 ple, declare himself to mankind in general ? It 
 was by the sea through which he led them, the 
 iiery pillar which guided them, the sun which 
 stood still over their battle.— Not only this com- 
 mencement, but the entire series of their his- 
 tory, seems most surprisingly calculated, for 
 their being the means of general promulgation 
 of the will and promises of God to mankind. — 
 We find them at the conclusion of their forty 
 years wandering, driving out from before them 
 the inhabitants of Canaan, who, from their con- 
 nection with the Phenicians, who were then a 
 commercial and a roving people, were qualified 
 to spread the history of every thing connected 
 with their miraculous expulsion, to the remotest 
 habitation of mankind. — And there is reason to 
 to believe, that they were actually widely scat- 
 tered over the world. 
 
21.3 
 
 We find the chosen people afterwards, though 
 of inconsiderable political importance, yet impli- 
 cated in the transactions of the most powerful 
 empires ; their misfortunes and their successes 
 alternately contributing to the diffusion of the 
 precepts and promises of the Almighty. Were 
 they led into captivity by the Assyrians, we 
 find the knowledge of their institutions thereby 
 spread over the extensive empire, — the know- 
 lenge of Jehovah impressed on its sovereigns, 
 and his worship enjoined, by public edict, to 
 its numerous subjects. Were they restored by 
 the victorious Cyrus, the accomplishment of a 
 prophecy, which had long been known as far 
 as the Jewish captives had been scattered, served 
 to establish the credit of the accompanying 
 predictions, to make known the ways of God 
 to men, and his saving health to all nations. 
 Were they, according to the denunciation of 
 the Prophet, again subjected to ^Egyptian do- 
 minion, we find that subjection the occasion of 
 their history their laws and their prophecies be- 
 ing translated into the most general language 
 of human intercourse, diffused as exclusively as 
 Grecian literature could reach, and secured, 
 by the multiplicity of copies, from corruption, 
 or even the suspicion of forgery. In later 
 times, we find the Jews, by becoming the ob- 
 jects of Roman ambition, rendered the in- 
 struments of diffusing the knowledge of Di- 
 
214 
 
 of Divine Revelation through the western as 
 well as the eastern regions, and exciting through- 
 out the whole world that expectation of a Re- 
 deemer, which was prevalent before the birth of 
 our Saviour. — I have passed but slightly over 
 these considerations. What I have said is, I trust, 
 sufficient to shew you, that God's dealings with 
 the Jews were adapted to the promulgation of 
 his will to mankind in general, and that this 
 mode of promulgation was well proportioned to 
 the coexisting progress of human society. I 
 shall at present delay you with only one remark, 
 that what the Jews were of old, that are the 
 Christians at present, the instruments of the 
 promulgation of God's mercy to mankind.— 
 " Ye are the lights of the world," says our Sa- 
 viour, to his disciples. Let us beware, that 
 we do not neglect the talent committed to our 
 charge, that we do not conceal or vitiate that 
 light, which should so shine before men, that, 
 beholding our good works, they should glorify 
 our Father, which is in heaven. It is not in- 
 deed incumbent on us all to assume the office of 
 preachers, but it is incumbent on us to promote 
 the diffusion of religious knowledge, to adorn 
 the doctrine, which we profess, and bear tes- 
 timony of the hope, which is in us, by the pu- 
 rity of our lives ; to walk worthy of the voca- 
 tion, wherewith we are called. Not every pro- 
 fessor of Christianity, not every instrument of 
 
215 
 
 salvation to others, shall himself be saved. — 
 Not all, that have borne testimony to the Di- 
 vinity of the Saviour, nor even those, who have 
 prophesied and wrought miracles in his name 
 shall themselves be saved, but such as do the 
 will of their God. Balaam beheld the visions 
 of the Almighty. — Caiaphas exercised the gift 
 of prophecy. — Judas declared the glad tidings 
 of salvation, and confirmed them by supernatu- 
 ral acts of mercy. — Let us, my fellow Christians, 
 be obedient to the voice of God, and observant 
 of his covenant, that we may be a peculiar 
 treasure to him, whose mercy is over all his 
 works, that we may be, not only the instruments, 
 but also the objects, of his love, a Kingdom of 
 Priests, and an holy nation. 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
LECTURES 
 
 DELIVERED IN 
 
 THE CHAPEL 
 
 OF 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN. 
 
 BY FRANCIS SADLEIR, D. D. F. T. C. D. 
 
 V DONNELLAN LECTURER FOR THE YEAR 1817. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 DUBLIN: 
 
 RICHARD MILLIKEN, GRAFTON-STREET, 
 
 BOOKSELLER TO HIS MAJESTY, 
 HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF CLARENCE, 
 HIS EXCELLENCY THE MOST NOBLE THE 
 MARQUESS WELLESLEY, 
 AND THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN. 
 
 1822. 
 
D. GRAISBERRY, 
 TR1NTBR TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
EXTRACT 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 Registry of Trinity College Dublin* 
 
 WHEREAS a legacy of ^1243 has been be- 
 queathed to the College of Dublin, by Mrs. 
 Anne Donnellan, for the encouragement of re- 
 ligion, learning, and good manners ; the. parti- 
 cular mode of application being entrusted to 
 the Provost and Senior Fellows : 
 
 " Resolted, 
 " L That a Divinity Lecture, to which shall 
 be annexed a salary arising from the interest of 
 £1200, shall be established for ever, to be 
 called Donnellan's Lecture. 
 
iv 
 
 " IT. That the Lecturer shall be forthwith 
 elected from among the Fellows of said College, 
 and hereafter annually on the 20th of Novem- 
 ber. 
 
 " III. That the subject or subjects of the 
 Lectures shall be determined at the time of elec- 
 tion by the Board, to be treated of in six Ser- 
 mons, which shall be delivered in the College 
 Chapel after Morning Service on certain Sun- 
 days, to be appointed on the 20th of Novem- 
 ber next after the election of the Lecturer, and 
 within a year from said appointment. 
 
 " IV. That one moiety of the interest of the 
 said ,£1200 shall be paid to the Lecturer as 
 soon as he shall have delivered the whole num- 
 ber of Lectures, and the other moiety as soon 
 as he shall have published four of the said Lec- 
 tures ; one copy to be deposited in the Library 
 of the College ; one in the Library of Ar- 
 magh j one in the Library of St. Sepulchre ; 
 one to be given to the Chancellor of the Uni- 
 versity ; and one to the Provost of the Col- 
 lege." 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 Page Line 
 
 19 20 For read " For 
 
 20 2 him: him." 
 
 21 9 these those 
 
 23 25 I " I 
 
 28 me ; me.'' 
 
 30 2 furnance furnace 
 
 34 14 apeals appeals 
 
 40 17 subsidary subsidiary 
 
 ... 24 Thery Theory 
 
 48 22 those those those 
 
 56 20 indispensible indispensable 
 
 64 13 themselves themselves, 
 
 80 2 injunctions injunction 
 
 85 25 injuction injunction 
 
 29 be a ashamed, be ashamed ; 
 
 91 26 paralises paralysis 
 
 93 13 darhness darkness 
 
 16 dapart depart 
 
 102 14 metaphisical metaphysical 
 
 124 7 oves over 
 
 20 occasionalbly occasionally 
 
 26 believed believeth 
 
 125 6 beleif, belief. 
 
 129 12 can may 
 
 22 waring warring 
 
 137 16 sobermindness ... sobermindedness 
 
 139 9 these ... those 
 
 159 11 referrable referrible 
 
 163 3 Ecletic Eclectic 
 
 21 Ecletics Eclectics 
 
 161 25 divideth divided 
 
 171 10 serve serves 
 
 15 feel feels 
 
 172 8 independant independent 
 
 205 1 were was 
 
 21 J 24 exclusively extensively 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 Page 
 
 Line read 
 
 
 18 
 
 16 
 
 
 confounded 
 
 , - 
 
 
 
 cause 
 
 28 
 
 19 
 
 indispensible 
 
 indispensable 
 
 47 
 
 If 
 
 
 sons 
 
 52 
 
 9 
 
 
 were 
 
 62 
 
 3 
 
 
 indispensable 
 
 67 
 
 2 
 
 te 
 
 to 
 
 68 
 
 22 
 
 
 comeliness 
 
 72 
 
 25 
 
 
 with all 
 
 77 
 
 / 
 
 
 description. 
 
 89 
 
 37 
 
 without hypocrisy 
 
 without partiality, and 
 
 
 
 without hypocrisy 
 
 91 
 
 4 
 
 
 unpolluted 
 
 
 21 
 
 
 indispensable 
 
 96 
 
 4 
 
 
 these 
 
 97 
 
 24 
 
 
 these 
 
 112 
 
 48 
 
 J O 
 
 lying 
 
 114? 
 
 26 
 
 
 those 
 
 123 
 
 16 
 
 
 paralyse 
 
 124 
 
 14 
 
 
 authorizes 
 
 128 
 
 8 
 
 
 there 
 
 129 
 
 4 
 
 
 those 
 
 6 
 
 
 become 
 
 
 15 
 
 copy of the Bible, 
 
 copy, 
 
 143 
 
 16 
 
 
 pert'ecter 
 
 146 
 
 8 
 
 
 those 
 
 151 
 
 15 
 
 
 paralyzed 
 
 154 
 
 24 
 
 
 beautiful 
 
 156 
 
 12 
 
 
 sinning 
 
 157 
 
 20 
 
 
 selections 
 
 166 
 
 5 
 
 
 not after 
 
 
 25 
 
 
 withheld 
 
 170 
 
 8 
 
 
 surface 
 
 173 
 
 26 
 
 
 selfishness 
 
 177 
 
 19 
 
 be 
 
 are 
 
 23 
 
 
 there 
 
 195 
 
 23 
 
 
 desirable 
 
 196 
 
 10 
 
 
 independent 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 Genesis, xviii — 19. 
 
 And they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do 
 justice and judgment, that the Lord may Wing 
 upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of 
 him. 
 
 THE history of God's chosen people might 
 seem, to a superficial observer, to afford but 
 little evidence of their having derived much 
 preeminence or advantage from the promises 
 of the Almighty. Their protracted wander- 
 ings, their slow and incomplete conquest of the 
 promised land, the oppressions which they suf- 
 fered from their neighbours, the division of 
 their kingdom, and their successive captivities, 
 might seem to belong to the annals of some 
 unhappy and ill-regulated nation, rather than 
 
 VOL. II. B 
 
4 
 
 to those of heaven's peculiar favourites ; and 
 to indicate, if any interference of the Deity, 
 an interference rather to punish than to bless. 
 
 To obviate this misconception, which has 
 already been made a ground of obj ection to the 
 sacred records, it will be useful to distinguish 
 between God's declared purposes with respect 
 to the posterity of Abraham as a nation, and 
 as individuals ; — and to consider how the me- 
 chanism of their history was subservient to the 
 one, and the nature of their religious dispen- 
 sation to the other. 
 
 As a nation they were to be the depositories 
 of the oracles and promises of God, — an holy 
 of holies, in which was to dwell the manifesta- 
 tion of pure and undefiled religion, — a nation 
 of Priests and Prophets, whose institutes should 
 be a promulgation of the will of God to the 
 world at large, whose history should be an ex- 
 ample, to mankind in general, of his moral 
 government j — that the world might know, from 
 the rising of the sun, and from the west, that 
 beside Jehovah there was no other and, that 
 in the posterity of Abraham, should all the 
 families of the earth be blessed ; — blessed in 
 that religious and moral knowledge, which their 
 perfect their soul converting law afforded, and 
 their history diffused j — blessed in that hope, 
 
I 
 
 5 
 
 which their testimonies held out, — testimonies, 
 which were sure, giving wisdom unto the 
 simple ; — and above all, blessed in that atone- 
 ment, by which Christ, who was to be of them 
 according to the flesh, should perfect the re- 
 demption of mankind. 
 
 On a former occasion [ endeavoured to shew 
 you, how the events of their history were sub- 
 servient to these purposes ; that their misfor- 
 tunes as well as their successes, their captivi- 
 ties as well as their establishment, their disper- 
 sion through the inhabited world as well as 
 their consecrated separation from its customs, 
 contributed to render them instruments for the 
 promulgation and diffusion of God's holy law 
 and merciful promises, and permanent and no- 
 torious monuments of his moral government. — 
 I shall therefore, at present, proceed to the 
 consideration of God's treatment of them as 
 individuals, and the nature of that dispensa- 
 tion, which he afforded them, as a means for ex- 
 ercising their faith, and perfecting their holi- 
 ness in the fear of the Lord, that they might 
 keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and 
 judgment, that he might confer on them those 
 rewards of obedience, which he had promised, 
 and bring upon Abraham that, which he had 
 spoken of him. And here we must remark, 
 that the prosperity of a nation, and the happi- 
 
 b 2 
 
6 
 
 ness of its individuals, though frequently and 
 strongly connected with each other, are not 
 always and entirely so. The nation may be 
 triumphant, and the individual wretched. The 
 nation may sink in the scale of fortune, and 
 yet the individual may retain many of the more 
 material blessings of life, his personal safety, 
 his health, his estimation, his affluence, per- 
 haps even his friends and kindred, the objects of 
 his tenderest affections, may remain to him 
 and while he laments over the misfortunes of 
 his country, his sorrow may be alleviated by the 
 consideration of God's personal mercies towards 
 himself; — he may feel those mercies with 
 tenfold sensibility, amid the general devastation, 
 — with tenfold conviction, that they are the gifts 
 of a God who is able to save. — Full of gratitude, 
 of resignation, of confidence, his despair for his 
 country may be turned into hope, and his tears 
 into joy. The wretch who perishes in the 
 battle, which overwhelms his country, feels 
 not a greater pang, than he who falls in the 
 onset of her victory ; for he knows not what 
 comes after ; — he suffers individually, a less 
 calamity, than had he died the victim of some 
 protracted, some painful disease, even in the 
 midst of private affluence and public prospe- 
 rity. — The family, who are thrown outcasts on 
 the world, deprived of comfort and support by 
 some public calamity, feel it not more strongly, 
 perhaps less strongly, than had it arisen from 
 
7 
 
 private misconduct or private injustice.— No, 
 my friends, public prosperity and private happi- 
 ness, public misfortune and private misery, are 
 by no means to be confounded with each other. 
 — The springs of one are to besought for in the 
 military and political talents of the governors, 
 the sources of the other in the morals, in the 
 hearts of the people. — History supplies numer- 
 ous examples of the compatibility of public ag- 
 grandisement with private unhappiness, and of 
 public degradation with private respectability.— 
 We ourselves have beheld a nation triumphant 
 over Europe, the history of whose glory is unpa- 
 ralleled in the annals of mankind, yet mingling 
 with the shout of public exultation the cry of 
 private misery, affording as unparalleled a scene 
 of domestic misfortune and individual debase- 
 ment, and finally owing the remission of these 
 private calamities to their fall as a nation. 
 
 A recollection of this distinction furnishes us 
 at once with a mode of reconciling God's ap- 
 parently inconsistent declarations respecting 
 the seed of Abraham ; his promising, as in my 
 text, and other corresponding passages, that 
 they should do his will, and that blessing he 
 would bless them, and his describing, by the 
 mouths of his prophets, the outline of their 
 future history, of which disobedience, punish- 
 ment and degradation, seem to have been the 
 
8 
 
 characteristics. It was convenient to his pur- 
 pose of making them the vehicles of religious 
 and moral knowledge to mankind, that they 
 should be scattered throughout the world, and 
 implicated with those nations, who were its 
 masters ; he therefore permitted them to draw 
 down upon themselves the calamities of defeat 
 and captivity, by that disobedience, which is 
 natural to the unaided heart of man. As he 
 raised up Pharaoh to be a monument of his 
 glory, so he raised up a stiff-necked and diso- 
 bedient people to be the instrument of his mercy. 
 But, while by the fluctuations of their fortune 
 as a state, they fulfilled the designs of Provi- 
 dence, it was consonant to the faithfulness and 
 loving kindness of the Almighty, to bring upon 
 Abraham all that he had promised, to show 
 mercy on thousands of those that loved him 
 and kept his commandments. — And the appro- 
 priate object of human feelings, and conse- 
 quently of those, which whether figuratively or 
 otherwise, we apply to the Almighty, must be 
 the individual, not the state. — The state, ab- 
 stracted from the individual, is an ideal being, 
 a creature of the imagination. It may be an 
 object of the intellect, but cannot of the af- 
 fections. It may afford a type, a figurative re- 
 presentation, of the exercise of the affections, 
 but not a reality. If a state were dissolved, 
 and its members rendered happier, what breast 
 
9 
 
 would feel either compassion or indignation ? — 
 If a state were aggrandised, while its members 
 remained miserable, what breast would glow 
 with gratitude or love ? 
 
 And accordingly we find, that the posterity 
 of Abraham, while as a state they were the 
 instruments of God's providence, as individuals 
 they were the objects of his mercy. He gave 
 them faithful promises, and sure testimonies of 
 redemption, as an exercise for their faith ; he 
 gave them a law which was holy, just and good, 
 as an exercise for their obedience. He placed 
 them in a land flowing with milk and honey, 
 and under a government most conducive to in- 
 dividual tranquillity. The Spartan polity was 
 calculated for independence, the Roman for 
 conquest, but the Jewish for private happiness. 
 During the criminal folly of their kings, he re- 
 served to himself a remnant, a remnant that 
 had not bowed the knee to Baal. And when 
 driven from that land, in which he had placed 
 them» he caused them to find favour in the eyes 
 of their masters. They appear to have been 
 spread over the richest parts of the Assyrian 
 and Persian empires, to have abounded in num- 
 bers, and flourished in affluence and respecta- 
 bility. We find them afterwards honored and 
 protected by Alexander, and the Ptolemies, — 
 caressed, and even exempted from tribute, by 
 
30 
 
 the Romans, and possessing, almost during the 
 entire time from their first captivity to the com- 
 ing of our Saviour, the means of comfort, as 
 individuals, far above the generality of man- 
 kind. 
 
 With respect to their religious state, the dis- 
 pensation which was afforded to them, and by 
 their means, to the nations with whom they 
 were intermixed, demands our peculiar atten- 
 tion. As in the preceding dispensation, so 
 also in this, the promise of a Redeemer formed 
 the grand feature, as it necessarily must have 
 done in any dispensation antecedent to its ful- 
 filment, that promise being the great object of 
 faith, and faith being the exclusive instrument 
 of salvation, the appropriate and only source 
 of those affections, that gratitude and love, 
 which while they consecrate the heart of God, 
 give efficacy to our devotion, and value to our 
 obedience. 
 
 Let it not seem strange to any that I speak 
 of faith in Christ, as a means of salvation an- 
 tecedent to his coming. It is the language of 
 the Bible. " By faith, Abel offered a more 
 " excellent sacrifice than Cain. By faith, 
 " Enoch was translated. By faith, Abraham 
 " looked for a City, whose builder and maker is 
 " God. By faith, the Patriarchs, not having 
 
11 
 
 " received the fulfilment of the promises, but 
 " having seen them afar off, were persuaded 
 " of them, and embraced them, and confessing, 
 " that they were strangers and pilgrims on 
 " earth, desired a better country, that is a 
 " heavenly, wherefore, God is not ashamed to 
 " be called their God, for he hath prepared for 
 " them a City." 
 
 But while the Jewish dispensation agreed with 
 the Patriarchal in this its leading characteris- 
 tic, faith in the promises of a Redeemer ; it 
 exceeded it in the clearness and explicitness of 
 those promises. The declaration, that the seed 
 of the woman should bruise the serpent's head, 
 was of an ambiguous meaning, and apparently 
 bore a sense unconnected with its real signifi- 
 cation. 
 
 The prophecy, that Shiloh should come, be- 
 fore the sceptre should have departed from Ju- 
 dah, and, that to him, should the gathering of 
 the people be, was obscure as to the person de- 
 signated by Shiloh. How this ambiguity and 
 obscurity were adapted to the state of the Patri- 
 archal world I have, on a former occasion, dis- 
 cussed. Man had fallen through the want of 
 confidence in the bounty and wisdom of God ; 
 that confidence was therefore to be renewed by 
 exercise and humiliation of mind. Hope, ra- 
 
12 
 
 ther than assurance, was to be held out to man- 
 kind. While they enjoyed the personal pre- 
 sence of the Deity, had the promise been ex- 
 plicit, the evidence would have been overpow- 
 ering, and certainty would have precluded the 
 exertion of faith. But, under the Jewish dis- 
 pensation, as the personal intercourse of the 
 Deity became less frequent, and at length was 
 entirely suspended, the grounds of faith were 
 to be made up by the encreased clearness of the 
 promise. Accordingly we find all their cere- 
 monial law, all their sacrifices, typical of the 
 atonement of Christ, and prophetically pointing 
 to that single object. We find Moses declar- 
 ing, that the Lord should raise up a prophet 
 like unto him, and enjoining them to obedi- 
 ence. We find a series of prophecies describ- 
 ing the character of this star, which was to 
 arise out of Jacob, — anticipating almost all the 
 detailed history, and the very name, of this 
 branch, which was to spring from the stem of 
 Jesse. His lineage was ascertained, his mira- 
 culous birth described, his manners delineated, 
 his sufferings depicted, his triumph over death 
 and sin, and his Divine personality, foretold, 
 in all the glowing imagery, to which the in- 
 spired mind resorts, when it feels the common 
 power of language too weak to convey its 
 new ideas, or communicate its new sen- 
 sations ; light succeeding light, in gradual 
 succession, and forming the glorious dawn, 
 
13 
 
 which preceded and indicated the rising of the 
 sun of righteousness. The promises to the Pa- 
 triarchs ensured a Redeemer, but were silent as 
 to the mode of redemption. The promises by 
 the prophets described that mode, and pointed 
 to a vicarious atonement. The promises to the 
 Patriarchs described a powerful Saviour ; the 
 more explicit word of prophecy declared that 
 Saviour to be God, that salvation to be eternal. 
 " He shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the 
 " Mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince 
 " of Peace. Of the encrease of his govern- 
 " ment and of peace there shall be no end, from 
 henceforth, and for ever." 
 
 There is another feature of the Jewish dis- 
 pensation, to which I wish to call your most 
 earnest attention. That is, its being as to the 
 knowledge of the mysteries of religion less per- 
 fect than the Christian, though perhaps more so 
 than the Patriarchal. AVhile it declared the 
 unity of God, and that beside him, there was 
 no other, (a principle which seems to have 
 been not fully known to those, who mingled the 
 worship of Jehovah with that of idols,) his Tri- 
 nity in Unity does not appear to have formed an 
 express part of its theoretical information. The 
 same remark holds respecting the immortality 
 of the soul, and the rewards and punishments 
 of a future life ; they are not expressly declared, 
 
14 
 
 they are not pointed to as sanctions. Though 
 there occur many passages, which, now that 
 we know the doctrine of the Trinity, now that 
 we are assured of an hereafter, appear to have 
 been allusions to those things ; antecedent to 
 that knowledge, they must have been ambigu- 
 ous, obscure, and perhaps inexplicable ; ante- 
 cedent, I say, to that time, in which the day 
 spring from on high shone on those, who sat in 
 darkness and in the shadow of death, — when 
 God visited his people, and the Gospel, those 
 tidings of exceeding joy, brought to light both 
 life and immortality. 
 
 I am aware that there are some, who have 
 denied, that there were even any intimations 
 of those things under the Jewish dispensation, 
 and that others have endeavoured to prove, 
 that they were contained in it fully and expli- 
 citly. But, an humble perusal of the Holy 
 Scriptures will I trust convince you, that the 
 truth, in this case, as in many others, lies be- 
 tween the contending systems. With respect 
 to the nature of the Supreme Being, his moral 
 attributes alone are revealed in the Jewish dis- 
 pensation, as appears from the passing of his 
 glory before Moses, and the proclamation of 
 his name. The combination of three persons 
 in one God, though frequently alluded to, is 
 not expressly declared, nor held forth as an ob- 
 
15 
 
 ject of adoration. With respect to the immor- 
 tality of the soul, it is not expressly affirmed, 
 nor made that use of, which was reserved for 
 the Christian dispensation ; though it is hinted 
 at with sufficient strength, to have excited in 
 the breasts of the faithful a hope, that, some 
 how or other, they should enjoy the fruits of 
 the promised redemption. They therefore are 
 not to be heard, who assert, that the fathers 
 looked only to transitory promises. How could 
 it be so ? If it Were, what interest could they 
 take in the predicted atonement, what part could 
 they have in the Redeemer, what advantage could 
 they hope from an event, which was to happen 
 hundreds of years after they ceased to exist ? 
 That they should have an advantage in it, they 
 must have hoped and believed, because it was 
 held out to them as such. But how that ad- 
 vantage was to be, they could not conceive, be- 
 cause it was not revealed to them ; they could 
 not ascertain, though they might conjecture. 
 It might be by some natural immortality of the 
 soul. It might be by a partial resurrection of 
 those, to whom the promises were given. It 
 might be by some exertion of Omnipotence, 
 which had never entered into the heart of man 
 to conceive. Of the fact they were sure, be- 
 cause it was pronvsed j of the means they were 
 uncertain, because they were not declared. 
 And yet, one of these points which was left 
 thus ambiguous by the Holy Spirit, became the 
 
16 
 
 grand, I may say the only, object of sectarian 
 contention among the Jews. The Pharisee, 
 who could close his ears to the morality of the 
 Mosaic law, who could devour the property of 
 the widow and the orphan, who could insult 
 the majesty of God by substituting ceremonial 
 observance for purity of heart, and while lie 
 gave tithe of mint and anise, thought he might 
 neglect the weightier matters of the law, judg- 
 ment, justice, and mercy, yet on those specu- 
 lative points, maintained a right opinion, and 
 in his explication of those ambiguous allusions 
 to an hereafter, might pride himself on his ap- 
 proval of that which was more excellent. The 
 Sadducee, on the other hand, erred in theory, 
 but both erred equally in practice. Both erred 
 in preferring the fancied understanding of what 
 God had not fully revealed, to that justice, that 
 mercy, that brotherly love, which he had ex- 
 pressly and strictly commanded. And mark 
 the consequence, my fellow Christians. These 
 contending sects, when the light of the world 
 came unto his own, would not receive that 
 light. When the kingdom of God was offered 
 to them, would not receive the peace and hu- 
 mility of that kingdom. The Sadducee denied, 
 and the Pharisee despised, a religion, which, 
 though rich in speculation, was far richer in 
 practice ; though abundant in the wisdom of 
 the head, was far more abundant in the affec- 
 
17 
 
 tions of the heart. And mark the consequence, 
 I repeat, my fellow Christians. When that in- 
 nocent blood, which they had imprecated on 
 their heads, was visited upon them, when the 
 great and terrible day of God's indignation had 
 arrived, when the destroyer thundered at their 
 gates, those religious dissensions were made the 
 instrument of accelerating their ruin ; for the 
 city divided by their seditions could not exert 
 the obvious means of defence. 
 
 We shall all be ready to admit the absurdity, 
 and to condemn the folly, of this conduct. But, 
 my fellow Christians, has the spirit of the Pha- 
 risee and the Sadducee ceased to operate ? Are 
 there no longer men, who prefer being wise be- 
 yond that which is written, to the following of 
 God's commandments ? Who prefer a faith in 
 what is not revealed, to that faith, which is 
 unto obedience. I will not make the applica- 
 tion. Consider what has been said. And may 
 that Saviour, who gave himself for you, im- 
 press on your minds his great commandment, 
 that ye love one another, and inspire your hearts 
 with that most excellent gift of charity, which 
 is the very bond of peace and of all virtue. 
 
LECTURE VII. 
 
 Ephes-ians, i. — 9, 10. 
 
 Having made known unto us the mystery of his 
 will, according to his good pleasure, which he 
 hath purposed in himself, that, in the dispensa- 
 tion of the fulness of times, he might gather 
 together in one, all things in Christ. 
 
 AMONG the various modes, to which in- 
 fidelity has resorted, for discrediting the evi- 
 dences of religion, that of proposing questions 
 concerning points, on which Scripture has not 
 afforded us complete information, is one of the 
 most frequent, and one of the most plausible. 
 If left unanswered, they are considered as tri- 
 umphant objections, if replied to, the advocate 
 is counfounded with the casue, his imperfec- 
 tions are charged on his subject, and his adver- 
 sary, while he combats his weakness, fancies 
 
 i 
 
19 
 
 himself victorious over his religion. Of this 
 description, is the question, proposed by unbe- 
 lievers, concerning the time of the Christian 
 dispensation. — Why, say they, was the promise 
 so long delayed ? Why was the world left for 
 four thousand years, in darkness and the shadow 
 of death, their minds unenlightened, their sins 
 unpardoned, their souls unredeemed ? In many 
 cases of similar objection, perhaps the safest 
 and best reply may be, that such was God's 
 good pleasure, that such has been the decla- 
 ration of scripture, and beyond that we neither 
 know nor presume to speculate, that we will 
 not, uncalled for, dare to mingle our weakness 
 with the strength of God, nor fancy, like the 
 faithless Uzzah, that his ark would fall should 
 we with-hold our assistance. With respect 
 however to the present question, the passage 
 which I have chosen for my text directs us to 
 a farther reply. While it declares, that it 
 was God's good pleasure to gather all things 
 together in Christ, it also expresses, that there 
 was an appropriate time fore-ordained for that 
 act of mercy ; it enables us to give a reason of 
 the hope which is in us, by shewing, that the 
 time of Christ's appearance was that appro- 
 priate season, that predicted fulness of time, 
 not only from its agreement with the pro- 
 phetical character, which had been given, but 
 also from its proportion to the state of society 
 vol. ir. c 
 
20 
 
 and the occasions of mankind. Its agreement 
 with prophetical character is matter of fact, not 
 of argument ; it is written in the book of God 
 so, that he who runs may read. — The scepter 
 departed from Judah, — the seventy weeks of 
 years completed, — Simeon, and the entire peo- 
 ple of the Jews, waiting for the consolation of 
 Israel, — the whole East in earnest expectation 
 of that star, which was to arise out of Jacob, 
 evince at once, that the time of our blessed 
 Lord's advent agreed with prophetical charac- 
 ter, and that those, who were best qualified to 
 judge, recognised it. While the weak subter- 
 fuge of unbelieving Jews in the after ages, that 
 the Messias was kept back beyond the appointed 
 time, on account of the sins of their nation, 
 proves unquestionably, that even prejudice and 
 obstinacy cannot deny the agreement. 
 
 With respect to the other view of the fulness 
 of time, taken from the proportion of the Chris- 
 tian dispensation to the state of society, and 
 the progress of human improvement, (as it 
 belongs more appropriately to the subject I 
 have in hand,) I shall call your attention more 
 particularly to it. And, I trust, I shall be able 
 to satisfy you, that the Christian system, had 
 it been given to mankind at an earlier period, 
 would have been premature, and had it been 
 longer delayed, would have been too late for the 
 
21 
 
 occasions of mankind and the necessities of the 
 human heart. 
 
 The principle of gradual improvement and 
 progress towards excellence seems to be an 
 universal law in the works of creation.— While 
 the Philosopher, in the pride of reason, might 
 vainly imagine, that the effect of a perfect cause 
 should itself be perfect, the humble observer of 
 the works of God perceives, that none are per- 
 fect, but that all are progressive, thai: none are 
 at once produced in their best possible state, 
 but that all, whether by the mechanism of 
 nature, the instinct of life, or the guidance of 
 reason, are led through successive stages of 
 advancement. The insect has his day, the 
 nobler animals a more protracted duration, and 
 man, the last, best work of his Creator, requires 
 a still greater period, for the developement and 
 perfection of even his corporeal powers. But 
 his time for mental improvement is yet more 
 extended, and a prolonged old age finds him 
 still increasing in experience and in wisdom. — 
 As with the individual, so with the species. 
 The progress of the human mind, the march 
 of science, the advance of civilization, is gra- 
 dual. Shall we, therefore, be surprized, if the 
 dawning of religious light, its increase to the 
 perfect day be gradual also. — If it be the gift 
 of God, is it strange that it should bear an 
 
 c 2 
 
22 
 
 analogy to his other gifts ? Or rather, does 
 not its being proportioned to these other gifts, 
 prove that it also is the gift of God ? The tree 
 of the forest grows from a trifling seed to gran- 
 deur, to beauty, and protection. The influ- 
 ence of God's word on the individual, the do- 
 minion of the holy Spirit in his breast, increases 
 from small beginnings, until it subjugates every 
 thought of the heart, every motion of the will, 
 goes on from faith to faith, from strength to 
 strength, bringing forth abundant, and more 
 abundant, fruits unto righteousness. And 
 shall we be surprized, if the light, the aid, the 
 strength, vouchsafed to mankind in general, 
 to mankind as a body, as a race, be also pro- 
 gressive ? Such was the vision of the inspired 
 Ezekiel, when he beheld the waters break forth 
 from the holy of holies. " And he, that had 
 " the line, went forth, and measured a thousand 
 " cubits, and the waters were to the ancles. 
 " Again he measured a thousand, and the waters 
 " were to the kness. Again he measured a 
 " thousand, and the waters were to the loins. 
 " Again he measured a thousand, and it was 
 " a river, waters of swimming, a river that 
 " could not be passed over. — These waters go 
 " down into the desert, and into the sea, and 
 " heal the waters thereof, and every thing 
 " whithersoever they come shall live. — And on 
 " their banks shall grow all manner of trees, 
 
23 
 
 " which shall bring forth their fruit according 
 " to their months, because their waters have 
 " issued from the sanctuary." — Such is the 
 Prophet's description of the progress of those 
 living waters, which issuing from the throne of 
 God, brought life, and medicine, and abund- 
 ance, on their increasing streams, prefiguring 
 thereby the growth of the Kingdom of God, 
 the diffusion of the knowledge of his glory 
 over the earth, the establishment of his domi- 
 nion in the hearts of the human race, which 
 when completed, shall realize those holy ideas, 
 which the figurative style of prophecy has at- 
 tempted to convey. 
 
 But was the world, antecedent to the atone- 
 ment, left unenlightened, unpardoned, and un- 
 redeemed ? — The existence of God was known 
 to them by tradition ; his attributes, by his 
 works of Creation ; his promises, by the pro- 
 mulgation of the Jews, which was of sufficient 
 notoriety, its instruments being implicated with 
 the greatest nations of the earth, and the suc- 
 cession of universal monarchies, which began 
 almost immediately after the Patriarchal form 
 of government had ceased, conducing to that 
 notoriety. — As to a law, they had the example 
 of the Jewish institutions, and were, as the 
 Apostle declares, a law unto themselves. — " At 
 " their ignorance God winked j" for ignorance, 
 
24 
 
 where it is not voluntary, is not culpable ; 
 those who have not a law, are to be judged 
 without a law. 
 
 But were they left unredeemed ? The scrip- 
 ture declares, that Christ died for the sins of 
 the whole world ; and shall we deny, that by 
 virtue of that atonement, past transgressions 
 were pardoned, — pardoned, as justly, as those 
 of the world which was then present, for as to 
 both the mercy was gratuitous ; pardoned, as 
 justly, as those which were then future, — trans- 
 gressions against greater illumination and a 
 more perfect law. — We, my fellow Christians, 
 who sin against knowledge, have little reason 
 to shut the gates of mercy on the Gentile world. 
 -—But, it may be said, without faith, they could 
 have no part on the Redeemer. — I have, on a 
 former occasion, attempted to prove to you, 
 that they, as well as we, had an object for faith. 
 — "Wherever the Jews had been scattered, the 
 promises of redemption had been also dispersed. 
 — There therefore was opportunity for faith 
 in the promises, faith in the mercy, faith in 
 the efficacy of the law of God, the sound of 
 which had gone forth into all lands, and 
 its words into the ends of the world. — Thus 
 might all share in '^at atonement, which was 
 made for the sins of the whole world. Thus 
 was the lamb slain from the foundation of the 
 
25 
 
 world, for all periods had the benefit thereof- 
 — Thus was the gospel preached to them 
 as well as to us.— Were we indeed to take 
 our notions of antiquity exclusively from Greek 
 and Roman history, these opinions might 
 seem to have little foundation beyond bare con- 
 jecture. But when we consider, that these his- 
 tories, however famous and interesting, extend 
 but to a few centuries immediately preceding 
 the birth of Christ, that the period, during 
 which they were identified with the history of 
 civilized man, did not reach perhaps to one cen- 
 tury, that they contain the annals of govern- 
 ment and conquest, but not the history of the 
 human heart, we shall be inclined to look else- 
 where for the account of God's dealings with 
 mankind, and to seek, in the book of God, for 
 the history of his elect. There we find Jonas, 
 a prophet, whose authority is confirmed by our 
 blessed Saviour, while he does not even men- 
 tion Israel, preaching, and successfully preach- 
 ing, repentance to Nineveh. So that his book 
 appears to have been written to shew, that God 
 is merciful to those, that repent, of what na- 
 tion soever they be. And we find, that in an 
 assembly, to whom the Gospel had not before 
 benn preached, there were devout persons from 
 every nation under heaven. So that the know- 
 ledge of God's promises of redemption, ap- 
 pears to have been very generally diffused 
 
26 
 
 throughout the world ; perhaps as generally, in 
 proportion to the numbers of mankind then, as 
 the preaching of the Gospel has been since. 
 The objection then is reduced to the question, 
 why was not the light afforded to them abso- 
 lutely greater than it was ; for we have seen, 
 that its being comparatively less than what suc- 
 ceeded it, would in vain be urged, progression 
 being a natural characteristic of all the works of 
 God ? If however it be asked, why was not the 
 Revelation of religious mysteries more com- 
 plete, and the law more perfect? We answer, 
 that there is no degree of religious knowledge, 
 short of absolute perfection, to which the same 
 question would not apply ; and that, besides 
 this, it seems to have been the design of Pro- 
 vidence, to let mankind feel by experience, that 
 the world, by wisdom, could not know their 
 God, nor free themselves, by their own strength, 
 from the dominion of sin. Adam had trans- 
 gressed by seeking a knowledge beyond that 
 which God had vouchsafed him, and prema- 
 turely aspiring to a power of discerning good 
 from evil. — His posterity had sinned after the 
 likeness of his transgression, by seeking to have 
 more complete ideas of the Divine nature than 
 had been revealed to them, and being led there, 
 by, through gradual corruptions of true reli- 
 gion, to the grossest idolatry. — They sinned 
 also after the likeness of his transgression, in 
 
27 
 
 not resting satisfied with the simplicity of mo- 
 ral law, which tradition and the voice of nature 
 supplied them with, but seeking rather for false 
 foundations of morality, and hewing themselves 
 out cisterns, which would hold no water. — It 
 was consonant therefore to the merciful wisdom 
 of God, to let mankind feel their own weak- 
 ness, and experience the insufficiency of that 
 wisdom, which they had vainly hoped could ex- 
 alt their nature from human to divine. — To 
 this wisdom were they left ; not indeed entirely, 
 for then all flesh would have corrupted their 
 way, and even a single family could not have 
 found grace with Him, who is of purer eyes 
 than to behold iniquity. The history of the 
 world is a detail of the gradual progress of a 
 depraved nature to the destruction of the spe- 
 cies, partially counteracted by means sufficient, 
 though not overpowering, and occasionally re- 
 quiring to be arrested by supernatural inter- 
 ference. In the violence which filled the earth, 
 and the deluge which destroyed it, in the pre- 
 sumption which collected mankind displayed on 
 the plain of Shinar, and the miracle which dis- 
 persed them, in the impious cruelty of Pha- 
 raoh and his subjects, and the Red Sea which 
 overwhelmed them,— in the rise of successive 
 empires to grandeur and civilization, their con- 
 comitant increase in grossness of idolatry and 
 corruption of manners, and the sudden destruc- 
 
28 
 
 tion which came upon them, — we read the stu- 
 pendous trial of human pretensions, the testi- 
 mony of the hand of God against the power of 
 man, " thou art weighed in the balance and 
 " found wanting." 
 
 It is an acknowledged fact, that the arts of 
 civilization, that knowledge which is power, 
 those inventions which contribute to enjoyment 
 and security, have been constanly increasing. 
 Though they may have had their reciprocations, 
 they have been on the whole progressive. 
 Though the wave may have occasionally reced- 
 ed, the tide has been advancing over the shore. 
 Now in a low degree of civilization, a less per- 
 fect law is sufficient. Where manners are more 
 simple, restraint is less necessary. Where temp- 
 tations are less numerous, where the power of 
 sin is less abundant, there a superabundant 
 grace is less indispensible. The effects of the 
 Christian dispensation are the atonement for the 
 sins of mankind, the bringing in a more perfect 
 law, a more perfect knowledge of the mystery 
 of Godliness, and the more powerful assistances 
 of the holy Spirit. With respect to the atone- 
 ment, as it extended to the past, the present, 
 and the future, to those who were afar off, as 
 well as to those who were near, it mattered not 
 at what period of the world it was effected. 
 With respect to the greater perfection of its 
 
29 
 
 law, it seems adapted to the highest degree of 
 civilization, and therefore a less perfect law 
 might be judged sufficient for a less advanced 
 state of society. Its greater aids were less im- 
 periously called for, and its greater information 
 less commensurate with human intellect, not 
 yet arrived at its proper vigour. 
 
 We are by no means to judge of the civiliza- 
 tion of ancient times, by the proportion which 
 their acquirements bore to those of the present 
 day. This would only indicate the degree of 
 their advancement, but not its extent, which 
 is by much the more important circumstance. 
 The single art of printing, which we possess, 
 has entirely changed the face of the world with 
 respect to the extent of civilization. At pre- 
 sent whatever improvements, whatever disco- 
 veries some may have made, all may, and ge- 
 nerally do, enjoy. But in ancient times wis- 
 dom was confined to a few, the Priests of Egypt, 
 the Magi of Persia, the Philosophers of Greece, 
 held each their rank in the gradual scale of ci- 
 vilization, but the great body of mankind fell 
 immeasurably below the instructed few of their 
 respective periods. Now the Christian dispen- 
 sation, as I have said, does not seem adapted to 
 this low degree of intellectual advancement. 
 Even since its establishment, it may be remark- 
 ed, that where from external causes, those na- 
 
30 
 
 tions, in which it had been planted, have de- 
 cayed and fallen back from the place which they 
 had occupied in the march of improvement, re- 
 ligion has decayed also. Where the nation has 
 become barbarous, the spirit of Christianity has 
 departed, and, in most instances, even the name 
 been obliterated. Where is the Christianity of 
 those once flourishing nations, over which the 
 desolating tide of Turkish conquest has rolled ? 
 — Churches had been planted by the hands of 
 Apostles and Martyrs j they had heard with joy 
 every one in his own tongue the wonderful 
 works of God ; they had stood the fiery blast of 
 persecution j but when the nation was thrown 
 back to barbarism, the spirit of Christianity was 
 withdrawn. And yet apparently the same 
 cause, conquest by the followers of Mahomet, 
 where it was not accompanied by a destruction 
 of the arts of civilization, was not followed by 
 a similar effect. The Christians of India sunk 
 in the common ruin before the victories of a na- 
 tion professing the impostor's creed j and yet 
 Providence preserved to them their religion. 
 Their civilization was left undiminished, and 
 their Church, even the purity of their Church, 
 survived. Compare the Christianity of those 
 Indian Churches, with the religion of the mid- 
 dle ages of Europe ; compare it even with the 
 enthusiasm which arrogated to itself a place in 
 the lists of the Reformation ; and judge whe- 
 
31 
 
 ther Christianity and barbarism are compati- 
 ble. 
 
 Shall we therefore, some one may say, ab- 
 stain from preaching the Gospel to uncivilized 
 nations ? By no means, my brethren.—" Go, 
 " and teach all nations," is the command of 
 our blessed Master. I would only suggest to 
 you, that, while you preach the Gospel to them, 
 you also instruct them in the arts of life ; that 
 you meliorate the rocky soil whereon you sow 
 the good seed, else it will take no root and pro- 
 duce no harvest. That, when you send forth 
 missionaries, you choose such as add to their 
 faith, knowledge, and to knowledge, brotherly 
 love ; who can impart to their converts the be- 
 nefits of civilization, and lead them to conjec- 
 ture, by the temporal blessings they confer, the 
 value of those spiritual gifts which they offer, 
 gifts which must be received, voluntarily re- 
 ceived, before they are enjoyed, and enjoyed 
 before they can be appreciated. 
 
 But I will not pursue a train of thought 
 which would lead me from my subject. What I 
 have said is I trust sufficient to shew, that the 
 Christian dispensation is not adapted to the in- 
 fancy of society, but is fitted for those on whom 
 the ends of the world are come. On a future 
 opportunity I shall endeavour to shew you, that 
 
32 
 
 the state of mankind immediately preceding 
 the advent of our Lord was, not only that to 
 which Christianity was peculiarly commensu- 
 rate, but was also such as absolutely required 
 it. 
 
 Now to God, &c. 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 Hebrews, vii. — 19. 
 
 For the law made nothing 'perfect ; hut the bring- 
 ing in of a belter hope did, by the which we 
 draw nigh unto God. 
 
 THE Apostle proceeds, in the subsequent 
 verses, to declare the superiority of the Gospel 
 dispensation over those which had been before ; 
 that Jesus was made surety of a better testament ; 
 
33 
 
 that he is able to save to the uttermost them 
 that come to God by him, seeing he evei liveth 
 to make intercession for them ; and that such 
 an high Priest became us, who was not only 
 holy and undefiled, but also who was made 
 higher than the heavens. Why such a dispen- 
 sation did become us, why such a mystery of 
 Godliness was peculiarly adapted to the neces- 
 sities of human society, I shall endeavour to 
 shew you, by considering what was the state of 
 mankind at the time of its being vouchsafed, 
 and what are the natural effects of civilization 
 on the human heart. 
 
 At an earlier period, when the numbers of 
 the human race were comparatively small, and 
 the arts of life but little advanced, the single 
 circumstance of all mankind being of one speech 
 and one language, required a miraculous inter- 
 position of the Almighty, lest they should 
 restrain themselves from nothing, which they 
 might imagine to do. — That coalition of the 
 children of men, which was thus obviated by 
 the descent of Jehovah, because it was then 
 premature, had in effect been reproduced by 
 the course of events, which Providence had 
 graciously and wisely directed towards the con- 
 summation of all things. The parts of human 
 society which had been scattered abroad upon 
 the face of all the earth, gradually encreased 
 
34 
 
 into nations and kingdoms.— The necessities 
 of an augmented population gave birth to 
 the minor arts of life ; and the zeal for dis- 
 tinction produced the more exalted. — The am- 
 bition of the statesman, the pride of the war- 
 rior, the avarice of the trader, even the worst 
 passions of the human heart, were by that 
 mighty hand, which out of evil still educes 
 good, made to contribute towards the general 
 advancement of society. Empire succeeded 
 empire ; gradually recombining its scattered 
 parts, each more extensively than the former, 
 till at length the Roman dominion had reached 
 every part of the inhabited world, and the 
 whole earth was again, as it were, of one speech 
 and one language. Here then, were we even 
 to overlook the causes which obviously present 
 themselves, and reason merely from analogy, 
 we should see the necessity of a divine interfer- 
 ence. Either the sons of men should again 
 have been scattered asunder, or means, suffici- 
 ently powerful to counteract the resulting evils 
 of their coalition, should have been resorted 
 to. — But the proportion which their encreased 
 numbers now bore to the extent of the habita- 
 ble world, rendered their dispersion impossible. 
 — There was not space sufficient to break the 
 continuity of human society ; — and while the 
 continuity remained, a confusion of languages 
 would have offered only a temporary remedy. — 
 
.35 
 
 Reasoning therefore merely from the similarity 
 of the cases, we are authorised to conclude, 
 that if in the time of Babel, a descent of the 
 Almighty was necessary to check the presump- 
 tuous vanity, the desperate wickedness of the 
 human heart, which resulted from the combina- 
 tion of mankind j the state of the world, at the 
 time of our blessed Lord's appearance, required 
 the application of a more powerful system. 
 
 There is also another fact in sacred history, 
 on which we may ground a corresponding argu- 
 ment. — In the days of Noah, the earth was 
 filled with violence, and God saw that the wick- 
 edness of man was great, and every imagina- 
 tion of his heart continually evil. And it re- 
 pented the Lord that he had made man ; and 
 he deemed it necessary to destroy him from off 
 the face of the earth. — At the era at present 
 under consideration, another period of civiliza- 
 tion had been completed. — The steps of pro- 
 gressive society had, in nearly an equal interval, 
 been trodden over again.— Again were there 
 instructors of every artificer. Again were 
 there mighty men of renown. — The era of in- 
 vention had been succeeded by that of con- 
 quest ; and conquest by corruption.— The earth 
 was filled with violence, and all flesh had cor- 
 rupted his way.— It was necessary, therefore, 
 either that God should again destroy the 
 
 VOL. II. D 
 
36 
 
 world, or, that his spirit should return to strive 
 with man, and resort to unusually powerful 
 means for his subjection. — But the former was 
 inconsistent with his merciful promise, that he 
 would never a second time smite every thing 
 living.— Here, therefore, we are again autho- 
 rised to conclude from analogy, that, at the 
 time of our Lord's advent, it was requisite that 
 more powerful means should be resorted to, — 
 that the spirit of the Lord should raise up an 
 ensign against the encreasing power of sin, 
 lead captive its captivity, and give gifts to men. 
 — But these arguments, some one may say, can 
 have weight only with those who acquiesce in 
 the authority of sacred history ; but with such 
 as reject it, can be of no avail. — Even with 
 such, however, they may have their use ; for 
 they evince the consistency of the description, 
 which the scriptures have given us of God's 
 dealings with the world. The same God who 
 destroyed mankind in the days of Noah, and 
 who scattered them at Babel, would naturally 
 have visited and redeemed them in the days of 
 Christ. 
 
 If we direct our enquiry towards the natural 
 effects of civilization on the morality of man- 
 kind, the argument thence resulting for the 
 necessity of the Christian dispensation, will to 
 all persons, I trust, appear conclusive. In the 
 
.37 
 
 infancy of society, in the lower stages of human 
 advancement, where the occasions and induce- 
 ments to criminality are few, there minor re- 
 straints may be adequate, and inferior aids to 
 human weakness sufficient : — but in its maturity 
 they are not so. When the progress of science 
 has given to man that wisdom which is power, 
 — When the progress of arts has perfected his 
 dominion, — when the combination of society 
 has given to the individual the energies of the 
 many, — where every thing conspires to encrease 
 his powers, to excite his passions, to multiply 
 his temptations, — where sin does more abound, 
 there should grace be more abundant also. 
 
 But let us take the matter in detail. One of 
 the most obvious results of civilization is ine- 
 quality of condition. — Let theorists fancy what 
 they will, equality of rank, — of wealth, of la- 
 bour, can have place only in savage life j and the 
 greater the civilization, the greater the inequa- 
 lity the greater the civilization, the greater 
 will be the protection of property, the encour- 
 agement of industry, the respect for superiority 
 of intellect. — The appetite for wealth and 
 power, the variety of disposition towards indus- 
 try, the gradation of intellect, are inherent in 
 the nature of mankind, and thereon does civili- 
 zation ground a system of inequality, propor- 
 tioned to her own strength, and durable as the 
 
 D 2 
 
38 
 
 foundations which support it. — Now what are 
 the natural effects of inequality of rank, ad- 
 vanced to a considerable degree, and in the ab- 
 sence of the counteracting influence of religion ? 
 In the higher ranks, pride with all its destruc- 
 tive progeny, which strips the heart of its best 
 affections. — In the lower an abasement of spi- 
 rit, which degrades every manly principle, and 
 makes ready the way for every crime.— In the 
 middling orders, an union of those opposite, 
 yet compatible vices, oppression and servility. — 
 My hearers will recollect, that I speak of ine- 
 quality, where the controul of the word of God 
 is absent ; — of that pride, which in the heathen 
 world, spread desolation and division among 
 the families of the earth, esteeming the people 
 as formed but for the glory of their rulers ; — and 
 at the call of ambition, revenge, or caprice, 
 sending forth their myriads to inflict, and to 
 suffer misery. — I speak of the Eastern inequa- 
 lity, which exacted adoration ; of the Grecian 
 inequality, which sunk the servant below the 
 rank of mankind ; of the Roman inequality, 
 which taught the most virtuous of the citizens 
 to behold with apathy the torture of a slave, 
 and with enjoyment the death of a gladiator ; — 
 where there was no meek spirit of religion to 
 rekindle the feelings of nature, no Apostle to 
 beseech the master for mercy to his offending 
 servant. Would you know the effect of ex- 
 
39 
 
 treme inequality on the inferior, look to the 
 proverbial baseness of slaves, look to the sub- 
 jects of every despotical government, where 
 the greater the inequality, the greater is the 
 deterioration of character. — But these are ex- 
 treme cases, the comparison of the master and 
 the slave. — How are the various orders, which 
 lie between the rulers and the lowest of the po- 
 pulation, affected towards each other ? Among 
 these also, there must be gradation, there must 
 be superiors and inferiors ; and where there are, 
 there must be a proportionable degree of pride 
 and servility. — But perhaps this might be re- 
 medied by a republican form of government. — 
 Little does he know of human nature, and still 
 less of history, who imagines that such a form 
 of government is compatible with a high de- 
 gree of civilization. — It has been resorted to in 
 states, which were emerging from barbarism, 
 but perished when they came to maturity. — The 
 diffusion of philosophy, the cultivation of the 
 arts, the extension of commerce, ushered in, 
 or, at least, were accompanied by, the downfal 
 of the republics of Greece. That of Rome 
 perished, when Grecian science and Grecian 
 manners were ■ introduced. — Those of modem 
 Italy scarcely outlived the revival of literature : 
 — And all of them fell before that pride, which 
 the inequality, resulting from civilization, pro- 
 duced. The sufficiency of this remedy has been 
 
40 
 
 tried also lately, and tried to the exclusion of 
 Christianity, in a state, whose civilization was 
 already advanced, and the result has confirmed, 
 by a dreadful testimony, that the maturity of 
 society is not the age of republics, and that 
 nought can stay the pride of man from self de- 
 struction, but the power of God. No, my fel- 
 low Christians, there is no other remedy for 
 this evil but religion, and that the meek religion 
 of our humble Redeemer. From thence alone 
 can that moderation be derived, which is de- 
 scribed by a profound writer, as an essential 
 principle in that form of government, whjch 
 civilization naturally produces. Human society 
 contains within itself the seeds of future cor- 
 ruption, which the hand of Christ alone can 
 stay. — There is death in the waters of the ocean, 
 which nought can heal but those living streams, 
 which the prophet beheld proceeding from the 
 throne of God. 
 
 Combined with the inequality of condition, 
 and yet distinguishable from it in its effects, 
 there is another inequality resulting from civili- 
 zation, I mean that of riches. — Need I detail 
 to you its effects in the unconverted heart, — the 
 temptations, the snares, the foolish and hurtful 
 lusts, which drown men in destruction and per- 
 dition. — The luxury which riches produce, the 
 avarice which they cherish, the injustice which 
 
41 
 
 they give birth to, have been the theme of every 
 moralist, aucl principally of those of the most 
 civilized ages and nations. — On the other hand, 
 poverty has, if possible, a greater effect, in 
 blinding the heart, and darkening the under- 
 standing. The vices and crimes, which wealth 
 gives occasion to, find their instruments in the 
 haunts of poverty. — There the conspirator seeks 
 for his associates, the murderer and the robber 
 for partners in their guilt. — There is no wicked- 
 ness however degrading to human nature, or 
 destructive to society, to which poverty may 
 not tempt, or rather force mankind, when un- 
 redeemed by the influences of religion.—- Do 
 you not yourselves acknowledge this, in your 
 praiseworthy exertions for diffusing Christian 
 instruction among the lower orders, as the most 
 appropriate remedy for general corruption ? In 
 your following the steps of your Redeemer, and 
 preaching the Gospel to the poor, which binds 
 up the broken hearted, gives liberty to the cap. 
 tive, and heals their infirmities. — You are right, 
 — the poor of a civilized state cannot bear to be 
 without religion. — It is the only remedy for their 
 vices.— And, I beseech you to recollect at the 
 same time, that it is also the only remedy for 
 the vices of the rich. 
 
 The evils resulting from the unequal division 
 of labour, (and this inequality keeps pace with 
 
42 
 
 civilization) although less than those of rank 
 and wealth, are not entirely inconsiderable. — 
 The infancy of society may bear an exemption 
 from labour in many ; because the occupations 
 of the chace, and the anxieties of that petty 
 warfare which is natural to the half civilized 
 state, may obviate that indolence which is the 
 fertile source of crime, that idleness which is 
 the root of all evil. But in civilized society, 
 absence of employment is presence of tempta- 
 tion. — The pursuits of literature may indeed oc- 
 casionally fill the void ; but even these are not 
 always such as deserve their appellation of puri- 
 fiers of the soul, nor are their attractions influ- 
 ential on the many. — Nothing therefore remains 
 for those, whom their condition exempts from 
 employment, but exposure to sin. — The house 
 is swept and garnished, what shall prevent the 
 entrance of the evil spirit and his worse asso- 
 ciates into the empty habitation ? — Think if 
 there be any thing which can, except it be the 
 love of God shed abroad in the heart, calling 
 on the ransomed sinner to visit his Redeemer in 
 sickness and in prison, to feed him when hun- 
 gry, to clothe him when naked, to receive him 
 when a stranger, and to devote himself to the 
 occupations of mercy. — But what are the effects 
 of this inequality on those who eat the bread of 
 labour ? Envy, and hatred, and impatience of 
 their lot. — Civilization makes them feel their 
 
43 
 
 inferiority, and it also makes them know their 
 strength. — How long will they submit ? As 
 long as they can be kept in ignorance, and no 
 longer. — It is for religion alone, to give to la- 
 bour contentment, and to close the bonds of 
 love between the high and the low. — You 
 yourselves have seen what was the effect on the 
 labouring part of a civilized community, when 
 their masters, with impious folly, taught them 
 that Christianity was useless. — You all know 
 that, in the heathen world, the labouring part 
 of every nation was obliged to be kept in the 
 condition of slaves. Nothing but abasement 
 and terror and ignorance could secure their 
 submission. 
 
 But there are also other effects of civiliza- 
 tion which tend to augment the power of sin, 
 and therefore indicate the necessity of encreas- 
 ed means of resistance. — When many have run 
 to and fro, and knowledge has been encreased, 
 when the arts have been perfected, and have 
 created new sources of pleasure, new objects 
 of desire, passions are excited with enhanced 
 vigour, — temptations are multiplied, — even the 
 intellect is rendered more keen, and directed 
 to the pursuit of gratification. — Man beholds 
 himself as a creature formed for enjoyment. 
 The means are not at hand, the inclination is 
 ready. — Self sufficient in that security, which 
 
 i 
 
44 
 
 society confers, he deems himself a superior 
 being. — The world smiles round him like a se- 
 cond Eden. He has tasted largely of the tree 
 of knowledge ; and death— eternal death must 
 be his portion, except the tree of life be placed 
 within his reach. 
 
 But perhaps I have dwelt too long on the 
 elucidation of a principle, which, to many, 
 may appear self evident, that civilization is self 
 destructive without the accompanying influence 
 of religion. It might, perhaps, have been suf- 
 ficient to have exemplified it in those states of 
 antiquity, which after they rose to a moderate 
 degree of refinement, sunk beneath it ; — or in 
 China, which although emerged from barbar- 
 ism at a very remote period, although undis- 
 turbed by external wars, although aided by 
 every advantage of situation, has been station- 
 ary, or rather retrogressive in her civilization, 
 and lias never attained to that degree, which 
 even the most recent Christian countries have 
 arrived at. — On a future occasion I shall en- 
 quire how the distinguishing characteristics of 
 the Christian dispensation are peculiarly adapt- 
 ed to counteract those evils I have adverted to, 
 — to render possible, and easy, the progress of 
 civilization to maturity, and, by enabling us to 
 draw nigh unto God, — to ensure our perfection 
 in this world, and our glory in that which is to 
 come. 
 
LECTURE IX 
 
 Isaiah, xxxii — 17. 
 
 And the work of righteousness shall be peace ; 
 and the effect of righteousness, quietness and 
 assurance for ever. 
 
 IN the sure word of Prophecy, which God has 
 vouchsafed to mankind, we meet with repeated 
 and vivid descriptions of a promised state of 
 prosperity to the sons of men, when the wilder- 
 ness shall become a fruitful field, and the fruit- 
 ful field a forest, when enmity and violence and 
 oppression shall cease, the lion couch with the 
 lamb, and the weapons of war become the im- 
 plements of joyous husbandry j visions of glory, 
 which the Holy Spirit displayed, as a consola- 
 tion to those who sat in darkness and the sha- 
 
46 
 
 dow of death, a consolation to those whose 
 hearts were such, as to kindle at the happiness 
 of others, whose faith and confidence towards 
 God were such, as to trust, that they them- 
 selves should in some manner, though yet un- 
 revealed to them, witness and experience this 
 prosperity of future ages. 
 
 These descriptions, which have been alluded 
 to and repeated in the Revelations of the se- 
 cond Testament, have given occasion to some 
 persons of luxuriant fancy, to imagine an ac- 
 tual presence of the incarnate Deity on earth, 
 reigning, for a limited period, in temporal 
 grandeur, and correcting by some miraculous 
 interference, some instantaneous exertion of 
 Divinity, all the natural and moral evils of 
 mankind. Such theorists, however, seem to 
 forget, that the Jews erred by mistaking a spi_ 
 ritual for a worldly kingdom ; that the domi- 
 nion of Christ is now and for ever ; the heart 
 of man the declared throne of his power ; the 
 affections and the will the appropriate objects 
 of his sway. — They seem also to forget, that all 
 the works of God are done, not suddenly, nor 
 by miracles, which seem reserved for the evi- 
 dence of Revelation, but gradually, and pro- 
 gressively, by certain established laws, whether 
 of physical, or of moral action. — The earth, 
 which we behold decked with all the beauties of 
 
47 
 
 vegetable and animated nature, with all its ine- 
 quality of surface, all its arrangement of land 
 and sea, so admirably adapted to the purposes 
 for which it was designed, bears testimony, in 
 its various strata, that the Almighty architect 
 produced this wondrous beauty by the interven- 
 tion of second causes, and the progressive ope- 
 ration of these laws, which he has established 
 for nature. Nor is the creation of the new man 
 in righteousness after God, in the usual dispen- 
 sations of Providence, the work of a moment. 
 He is led from faith to faith, from strength to 
 strength, until he arrives at the fulness of 
 Christ, at the stature of the Son of God. — 
 The action of moral motives is resorted to. 
 While the spirit worketh in him, both to will 
 and to do, his own exertions are commanded, 
 and his life is the period of the mighty opera- 
 tion. — Shall we then imagine, that the general 
 perfection of the human race, the production 
 of that state of earthly happiness, on which the 
 eye of the Prophet has dwelt with rapture, is to 
 be effected by some sudden, some single mira- 
 cle, like that, which beyond the grave, shall in 
 the twinkling of an eye, change our mortality 
 to the likeness of our Redeemer's glory.— Or, 
 that being a natural effect, and within the com- 
 pass of natural causes, it is to be the result of 
 gradual operation ; the faculties, the affections, 
 the reason, and the industry of man, being in- 
 
48 
 
 struments in the work of God ; while the Al- 
 mighty ruler directs the action of those means 
 towards his gracious purpose ; he, who maketh 
 the winds his messengers, and the flaming fire 
 the minister of his will, obviating whatever evil 
 is in the efficacy of these second causes j say- 
 ing to the madness of the people, thus far shalt 
 thou go and no farther ; and counteracting the 
 influence of a depraved and lapsed nature. 
 
 This possibility of the melioration of man- 
 kind by the intervention of natural causes, has 
 produced in some minds a very opposite error. 
 Forgetful that the means, though powerful, re- 
 quire a Providence to direct them, and proudly 
 rejecting the account of the degradation of hu- 
 man nature, they imagine, that man can of him- 
 self produce the perfection of society, and by 
 the culture of his intellectual powers, the re- 
 search of science, and the extension of disco- 
 very, obviate the evils and imperfections of the 
 material world, correct his own defects, render 
 life a scene of virtue and of happiness, and at- 
 tain that excellence for which he seems to have 
 been designed. 
 
 I have, on a former occason, I trust, satisfied 
 you that this is impossible, and that civiliza- 
 tion contains a self destructive principle, which 
 gains vigour from its encrease, blasts the pro- 
 
49 
 
 mise of its spring, and forces mankind through 
 successive reciprocations of refinement and bar- 
 barism. To correct this evil, to render the 
 march of civilization secure, and capable of 
 passing from refinement to perfection, is the 
 work of Him of whom every good gift cometh ; 
 and the means he employs are the influences of 
 religion. 
 
 Let us consider the characteristic features of 
 the Christian dispensation, and we shall find 
 how admirably calculated they are to produce 
 the effect. The most prominent of these is the 
 principle of universal benevolence, which we 
 find so repeatedly recommended and enjoined 
 in the writings of the Apostles. While they 
 baptized, they also taught all nations ; and the 
 heavenly instruction was, that they should love 
 one another. 
 
 This St. Paul declares to be the breast-plate 
 of the Christian soldier, the fruit of the spirit, 
 the fulfilling of the law, that more excellent 
 gift, which is better than the power of mira- 
 cles, and surpasses even faith and hope. — St. 
 John points to it as the evidence, that the love 
 of God is perfected in us, the criterion, by 
 which we know, that we are passed from death 
 unto life. The united voice of inspiration re- 
 cognizes it, as the instrument whereby faith 
 
50 
 
 worketh, the spirit, the teaching, which we 
 have of God ; calling on us to love without dis- 
 simulation, therein to be rooted and grounded, 
 therein to walk, as Christ also loved us, and 
 gave himself for us. Our blessed Redeemer 
 himself marks it, as the characteristic of his 
 Church, the seal of his chosen. " Beloved," 
 said he, when on the eve of that sacrifice, by 
 which God was glorified in the Son of Man, 
 " a new commandment give I unto you, that 
 " ye love one another. By this shall all men 
 " know, that ye are my disciples." 
 
 This commandment was novel unto the Jew, 
 not indeed entirely as to its matter but as to its 
 extent and enforcement. Though the law com- 
 manded him not to hate his brother in his heart, 
 but rather, by the minor offices of humanity, 
 to advance towards conciliation ; to love his 
 neighbour as himself, and to be merciful to the 
 stranger, who sojourned with him ; yet it was 
 silent, as to the extension of this affection to- 
 wards mankind in general, and particularly, to 
 those, who had provoked hatred by aggression. 
 The silence on this point was such, as to admit 
 those of old time to imagine, that they should 
 hate their enemy, as well as love their neigh- 
 bour. The Preacher asserts, that there is a 
 time to hate, as well as a time to love, and even 
 the Psalmist expresses his piety, by declaring 
 
51 
 
 that he hates with a perfect hatred those that 
 forsake the Lord ; and suffers even his personal 
 feelings to excite a similar disposition when he 
 repeatedly professes his hope, that he shall see 
 his desire upon his enemies. 
 
 Nor indeed does the full extension of this 
 principle seem adapted to the Jewish system. 
 The Jews were, in the earlier part of their his- 
 tory, to be the ministers of God's vengeance 
 against sinners. They were neither to spare, nor 
 to have pity. Should transgression arise, even 
 in their own community, the whole people were 
 called on to be the executioners of the law. In 
 the after part, they were to be kept isolated - 
 from the customs of the nations among whom 
 they were scattered ; therefore, a principle of 
 attraction was not to be insisted on. The time 
 was not yet arrived for the Apostolical precept, 
 '* if any man obey not the word of God, ad- 
 " monish him as a brother ; yet count him not 
 " as an enemy." They were not yet strength- 
 ened by the spirit ; and should therefore, in ab- 
 horrence and hatred of the sinner, seek their 
 safety from the contagion of his sins. " Be ye 
 " separate, saith the Lord, touch not the un- 
 " clean thing, ajid I will receive you." — Mark 
 also the newness of this command, as to enforce- 
 ment. The Jews were enjoined to love each 
 other, that they might afford the beautiful spec- 
 
 VOL. II. E 
 
52 
 
 tacle of brethren dwelling together in unity. 
 They were enjoined to love the stranger, be- 
 cause they themselves had been strangers. But 
 Christians *are enjoined to love, because Christ 
 loved them, and gave himself for them. 
 
 Still more new was this command to the Gen- 
 tiles. The tradition of early Revelation point- 
 ed not to it. The voice of nature in their 
 breasts, by which they wore a law unto them- 
 selves, though it led them from domestic love 
 to that of kindred, and from thence to that of 
 country, a name, which with them, comprised 
 all the charities of human nature, yet there it 
 stopped ; and, taking the form of an exclusive 
 patriotism, bearing the exalted pretension of 
 virtue, taught them to consider every foreigner 
 as a foe, his strength as an object of their en- 
 mity, his weakness of their ambition. Even 
 the love of country often failed to include that 
 of individuals. They imagined they could love 
 their country, and yet exercise with each other 
 emulation and wrath, strife and seditions. 
 The contest of ambition they considered as 
 virtue, its success as glory j and while they di- 
 vided the spoil of their slaughtered adversaries, 
 faucied it was gratitude, friendship, and libe- 
 rality. 
 
 Perhaps it might not be difficult to shew, that 
 
I 
 
 53 
 
 the universality of the principle of love would 
 have been a gift disproportioned to the state of 
 the heathen world, as well as to tke Jews ; — 
 that the private partialities, the exclusive pa- 
 triotism, with which its limitation was connec- 
 ted, served to supply, in part, the place of 
 more exalted virtues ; while the ambition and 
 party spirit, which its absence permitted, tended 
 to excite the powers of half civilized man, to 
 effect those fluctuations of Empires, which the 
 hand of Providence could guide, and produce 
 that state of things, in which the Gospel sys- 
 tem was requisite, and to which it was propor- 
 tioned. 
 
 But, when this state was produced, what 
 were the effects of this new commandment ? 
 When the civilization of mankind was draw- 
 ing near to perfection, when the bonds of the 
 Roman dominion had effected a combination 
 and intercourse of the sons of men, which 
 though that dominion has ceased, has, and will 
 survive with encreasing, although fluctuating, vi- 
 gour ; what, I say, must the natural effects of 
 this new commandment be ? Can you imagine 
 any principle equally powerful to remedy the 
 evils resulting from civilization ? Antecedent 
 to its influence, the aggregation of Society 
 tends to corruption. The richer the parts, and 
 the greater accumulation, the more rapid is 
 
 E % 
 
54 
 
 the progress of natural decay. But let this 
 
 heavenly principle this breath of life be 
 
 breathed into the organised mass ; animation 
 and permanence and beauty supersede destruc- 
 tion, and it becomes a living soul. The evils 
 of inequality cease to operate. They are for- 
 gotten. Its advantages acquire tenfold vigour. 
 It becomes the cherisher of benevolence, the 
 inciter of industry, the minister of order, the 
 strength of civilization. — While mankind know, 
 that they are brethren, not by the evidence of 
 ancient history, but by the reciprocation of 
 Charity, the voice of God within their hearts, 
 they become a band of friends, each trusting 
 to eacli for protection, and forgetting all selfish 
 fear, in his anxiety for his neighbour ; a clan 
 of kindred, where inequality weakens not the 
 tie of love, but serves to secure common safety, 
 and to promote common advantage. He of 
 high degree no longer despises his inferior, no 
 longer insults, no longer oppresses, no longer 
 even neglects him. He feeis, that he is the 
 miuister of God appointed to him for good. 
 Pride has departed. Over whom should it 
 glory ? Ambition is no more. Over whom 
 should it triumph ? Duty has taken their place. 
 And that duty has become inclination. The 
 rich man ceases from the idolatry of covetous- 
 ness, though his wealth has acquired an en- 
 creased value. More fortunate than the East- 
 
55 
 
 ern Monarch, he has discovered a new avenue 
 of enjoyment, which, while it enhances the 
 value of his money, forbids all injustice in its 
 acquisition, all insolence in its possession. He 
 must restrain his luxury. There is that in his 
 heart, which calls more importunately than va- 
 nity; more powerfully than sensual pleasure; 
 and to the more urgent appetite he must sub- 
 mit. 
 
 He, whom his condition in life exempts from 
 employment, is no longer without occupation. 
 No longer does listlessness debase the powers 
 of his mind. No longer does idleness invite 
 temptation. He is called to a proud, an ex- 
 alted, a pleasing office. He is called to be the 
 Minister of Mercy ; to share the employment of 
 angels; to be an instrument in the hand of 
 God. Let the fastidious idler of polished an- 
 tiquity fly to expensive folly for occupation. 
 Let its monarchs seek, in trifling pursuits, ex- 
 emption from the weariness of inaction. Let 
 the profligate endeavour, by profusion of pa- 
 trimony, of health, of character, to dissipate 
 the indolence which affect him. The Christian, 
 in whom religion has kindled the love of his 
 brother, needs not such vanity. He can find, 
 in the house of mourning, a pleasure, which 
 the habitation of joy cannot supply. — In the 
 haunts of poverty, even beside the bed of death, 
 
56 
 
 are his enjoyments. To aid the struggles of 
 fainting industry, to cheer the afflicted, to 
 counsel the inexperienced, to be the orphans' 
 father and the widows' friend, are his occupa- 
 tions. And his reward is the extacy of in- 
 dulged benevolence, and the anticipation of his 
 eternal sentence, " well done thou good and 
 " faithful servant." 
 
 But, on the lower ranks of civilized and 
 Christian society what are the effects of bro- 
 therly love ? The poor man beholds in his su- 
 perior, not an oppressor, but a friend. He 
 feels himself treated, not as a servant, but as 
 a brother beloved. He beholds " the powers 
 " that be" ordained of God, for the common 
 good, and joyfully fulfilling the object of their 
 appointment. Against whom should he mur- 
 mer ? Against whom should he feel indigna- 
 tion ? Against whom shall revenge and suspi- 
 cion excite him to form the secret conspiracy, 
 or to resort to open violence ? Protection 
 begets respect. Assistance begets gratitude. 
 Love begets love ; and the sacred principle is 
 enforced by the command of his Redeemer, and 
 perfected by the spirit of his God. He beholds 
 the rich man obedient to the charge of Chris- 
 tian love, ready to give, and glad to distribute. 
 He beholds the wealth of individuals tending 
 to the excitement of industry, the promotion 
 
57 
 
 of the arts, which give occupation and beauty 
 to human life, while they increase and secure 
 its enjoyments. The advantages, which partial 
 accumulation diffuses throughout society, he 
 already shares. Shall he not bless, rather than 
 envy, the hand which imparts them ? Will he 
 not feel that the yoke is easy, and the burden 
 is light, which enjoins us to love one another ? 
 
 Will the poor man, whose lot is a life of 
 labour, feel indignant, that others are exempted, 
 when he beholds their leisure devoted to acts 
 of mercy ? I know not a more legitimate, a 
 more natural object of affection, than this vo- 
 luntary devotement, nor a more powerful re- 
 medy for envy, than the love of those, who 
 might have been its objects. And these are 
 the fruits of that meek spirit, which declares to 
 us, that we are members one of another, which 
 raises our natural affection to the rank of virtue, 
 and consecrates it to the imitation of God. 
 They are exclusively its fruits. The polished 
 nations of antiquity possessed no order of mercy. 
 — Beside their stately temples, no hospital, no 
 alms house, no school for the orphan, no retreat 
 for the widow arose. What Athens could give 
 to her glory, or to her policy, when she edu- 
 cated the sons of her slaughtered soldiers, she 
 never thought of giving to the call of mercy. 
 The sage who descanted on the beauties of vir- 
 
58 
 
 tue, a cold, a stern, an ideal virtue, never bent 
 over the bed of poverty and sickness, never 
 bound up the broken hearted, never loosed the 
 captive out of his dungeon. In the retreats of 
 science apathy was virtue. In the success of 
 victory mercy was a stranger, and glory de- 
 manded an accumulation of slaughter, an extent 
 of ruin. In the busy scene of life compassion 
 was unknown. The slave trembled, the debtor 
 groaned in prison, the infant perished, and 
 there was none to pity ; while civilized man 
 presented a gloomy picture, without natural 
 affection, implacable, unmerciful. 
 
 "But, some one may say, has Christianity re- 
 moved all this ? Has she produced all those 
 happy results, which a warm imagination may 
 describe, as the natural consequences of that 
 love, which she commands ? She is in the 
 progress of producing these results. In pro- 
 portion as her genuine influences have advanced, 
 they have been efficient. " There is no clime 
 " so inhospitable, no habitation of wretched- 
 " ness so disgusting, no prison so dark and 
 " deep, that Christian love cannot, and has 
 " not led its votary to seek therein for objects 
 " of mercy." When its diffusion shall have 
 been complete, its effects will be universal. I 
 draw no picture of an imaginary or impossible 
 state.— It is possible, for its foundations are in 
 
59 
 
 human nature. It will exist, when love shall 
 be perfect. 
 
 On a future occasion, I shall examine the 
 other characteristics of Christianity, and ne- 
 deavour to prove, that they also are highly con- 
 ducive to the production of universal refine- 
 ment. My argument is simple : civilization 
 cannot, of itself, arrive at perfection : aided by 
 Christianity it can. Jt has been asked, why 
 was not Christianity given sooner ? Its princi- 
 ples are not proportioned to the infancy of ci- 
 vilization, though the maturity of civilization 
 cannot exist without them. If, therefore, the 
 perfection of the human race be the design of 
 God, if civilization be its natural means, if that 
 means cannot take effect without Christianity, 
 and Christianity appears to have been given 
 precisely at the crisis, at which it was requi- 
 site, without doubt Christianity must be the 
 gift of God. So that the very circumstance on 
 which infidelity has grounded objections, af- 
 fords, when fully examined, a most powerful 
 proof in favour of our religion. 
 
LECTURE X. 
 
 Matthew, v.— 38 and 39. 
 
 Ye have heard, that it hath been said, an eye for 
 an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.— But I say 
 unto you, that ye resist not evil. 
 
 AMONG the various arguments which evince 
 that the religion we preach is of God, that, 
 which may be derived from its proportion co 
 the occasions of mankind, is not of the least 
 convincing importance. A dispensation con- 
 stantly breathing one and the same spirit, and 
 yet varying its precepts, its illumination, and 
 its aids, so as to adapt itself to the exigencies 
 of progressive society, growing with its growth, 
 and strengthening with its strength, must needs 
 be the work of thai God, who has willed the 
 
61 
 
 improvement of mankind, and directs the course 
 of their events towards the perfection of his 
 benevolence. While other systems, which the 
 folly or the fancied wisdom of man had framed 
 to satisfy the impulses of a natural devotion, 
 or to strengthen the bonds of social intercourse, 
 departing, by increasing intervals, from the 
 source of truth, and mingling with the work of 
 God, the fancies of a vain imagination ; — while 
 such have had a transitory existence, have failed 
 of their proposed effect, have even checked the 
 march of civilization, have perished self-de- 
 stroyed, and sunk before the beam of reason, 
 the religion of the Bible has stood like the rock 
 of ages, and Christianity is now the creed of 
 civilized mankind. Christianity and refinement 
 have gone hand in hand. Their advances have 
 been commensurate. Their diffusion, —the ex- 
 tent of the world over which they spread, is 
 the same. Where one is, there is the other also, 
 both as to time, and as to space. — They have 
 been, they are, they must be commensurate, 
 until in the perfection of both, shall all the 
 families of the earth be blessed. The reason 
 of this connection I on a former occa ion pro. 
 posed to show you, by enquiring into the pecu- 
 liar, the distinguishing characteristics of the 
 Christian dispensation, and examining their 
 proportion to the exigencies of civilized society. 
 On an investigation of the principle of univer- 
 
62 
 
 sal good will to mankind, I trust I satisfied you, 
 that it is peculiar to Christianity, and indispen- 
 sible to civilization. We have now to enquire 
 into another kindred grace of the renovated 
 child of God, to which our meek Redeemer has 
 exhorted us, " but I say unto you that ye resist 
 " not evil." 
 
 What system of human invention, what sys- 
 tem of philosophy, unenlightened by the sun 
 of righteousness, ever did, or ever would, adopt 
 such a precept. Ask even the wprdling of the 
 present day,— with his Bible in his hand, with 
 the name of Christian in his profession, with 
 the mark of Christ on his forehead, he will tell 
 you that the command of our meek Redeemer 
 is figurative language, that it does not mean 
 what it says. — He will tell you, that society 
 cannot exist without the exercise of private 
 vengeance, and will bear testimony to his opi- 
 nion by his own example. 
 
 Whether this be so, we shall presently en- 
 quire, and shall, I trust, find, that the reli- 
 gion of Christ accords with the dictates of 
 sound reason, while the fancied wisdom of man 
 is foolishness before God. But our immediate 
 business is to shew, that the precept is peculiar 
 to Christianity. And this its apparent unrea- 
 sonableness, which has been urged by those 
 
63 
 
 who were not Christians, and the labour which 
 some, who thought they were, have taken to 
 explain it away, its being one of the causes, why 
 the cross of Christ is an offence to the world, 
 indicate that it is not likely to be a part of any 
 other system ; while a slight retrospect will 
 confirm us as to the fact. — It is not found in 
 the code of Mahomet. When he stole a system 
 of morality from the Christian scriptures, he 
 left this neglected, this despised, virtue behind 
 him. — It forms no part of Indian ethics, though 
 untold ages are said to have thereunto contri- 
 buted their wisdom.— Antient superstition re- 
 cognized it not, but instead thereof raised a 
 temple to vengeance. Antient philosophy de- 
 spised even the forgiveness of injuries, as 
 weakness and folly, declaring that the wise 
 man never pardons, never commiserates. — Even 
 the Roman orator, whose comprehensive mind 
 had embraced the varied systems of Grecian 
 ingenuity, professes, that the injured man, 
 who will not assuage his own anguish in the 
 agony of the offender, is guilty of inhumanity ! 
 And, in another place, beholding the truth as 
 through a glass darkly, and grasping at the 
 distorted image, with the utmost energy of un- 
 aided intellect, " I know not" says he " whether 
 " there ought not to be moderation in venge- 
 " ance ; whether it be not enough, to make 
 
64 
 
 M the offender repent him of the injury, and 
 " to render others more slow to aggression." 
 
 But, perhaps, it may be supposed, that 
 though profane systems did not recognize this 
 virtue, it may yet have been enjoined in the 
 Jewish dispensation, and have formed a part 
 of that perfect law, which was to convert the 
 soul, those sure testimonies, which were to 
 give wisdom to the simple. — Here, however, 
 on enquiry, it is not to be found ; as indeed 
 our Saviour's expression, " it was said by them of 
 " old time," would seem to indicate. For, we 
 cannot suppose, that the tradition of the Jewish 
 teachers would pronounce any thing expressly 
 contrary to a direct precept of their law, had 
 any such existed. The virtue of abstinence 
 from private revenge, of refraining from resist- 
 ing evil with evil, seems to have been one of 
 those, which the Almighty did not consider as 
 adapted to the state of the old world, and, 
 therefore, neither led them to it by the light of 
 reason, nor commanded it by the voice of re- 
 velation. — Hardness of heart was the result- 
 ing characteristic of their degree of civiliza- 
 tion.— -And because of that hardness, was the 
 law of God silent as to this virtue. 
 
 In addition to the negative argument from 
 the non-existence of any such precept in the 
 
65 
 
 Jewish code, we may also add, that we find that 
 code recognizing the private avenger of blood, 
 in the appointment of the cities of refuge, 
 which, against a public avenger, would have 
 been superfluous, or absurd. — And we find 
 many expressions in the old Scriptures, which 
 evince that private revenge was not, by the 
 Jews, considered as criminal. — In Saul's com- 
 mendation of David's conduct, when he spared 
 his life, he implies, that he had shewed him 
 more mercy than he was obliged to, " When the 
 " Lord delivered me unto thine hand thou 
 " sparedst me ;" and appeals to common usage, 
 and common opinion, for the excellence of his 
 conduct. " If a man find his enemy, will he 
 let him go well away ?"— We find David, the 
 man after God's own heart, and who often 
 proved himself so by mercy towards his enemies, 
 turning away from vengeance against Nabal, 
 not as from the commission of a crime, but as 
 refraining from the exercise of an undoubted 
 right, through compassion towards a female. — 
 We find him, in other places, cursing his ene- 
 mies, and that most bitterly ; " Of thy mercy, 
 ** Oh Lord ! cut off mine enemies." We find 
 the author of Proverbs utteringt his counsel, 
 " Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, lest 
 " the Lord turn his wrath from him." And 
 again, in that passage, which the Apostle has 
 partially quoted, where he recommends doing 
 
66 
 
 good to our enemies, he does so, on the 
 grounds of prudence, not of duty. " If thine 
 " enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat ; if he 
 "be thirsty, give him water to drink ; for thou 
 " shall heap coals of fire upon his head, and 
 " the Lord shall reward thee." These passages 
 are, I believe, sufficient to shew, that resent- 
 ment was neither forbidden in the Jewish 
 code, nor considered as criminal by the Jew- 
 ish teachers. Their law seems to have gone 
 no farther, than merely to forbid the excessive 
 exercise of vengeance of Jew against Jew ; and 
 their teachers to have recommended the ap- 
 pearance of compassion, either as a means of 
 removing the hatred of the adversary, or else 
 of ensuring his destruction.— That heavenly 
 temper of mind, in which meekness, mercy, 
 and benevolence, unite to withhold the child 
 of God from the conflict of revenge, to lead 
 him to do good for evil, and in the perfection 
 of godliness, like his Father which is in heaven, 
 to love those that hate him, like his Redeemer 
 to confer blessings on those that despitefully use 
 him and persecute him, — seems to be peculiar to 
 the Christian dispensation, that better thing 
 which was reserved for us, on whom the ends 
 of the world are come. — Congenial with refine- 
 ment, because it gratifies the noblest feelings of 
 magnanimity, its fullness of time is, when the 
 progress of civilization, emancipating man from 
 
67 
 
 the continual necessity of self-protection and 
 self-support, gives opportunity te reflection, ex- 
 ercise to sentiment, and vigour to the sense of 
 moral beauty. — Adapted to civil order, because, 
 while it contributes to the perfection of that or- 
 der, it is injurious to the possessor, exactly in 
 proportion to its imperfection, — it would have 
 been unfitted for the old world, when the in- 
 fancy of police, and the weakness of law, left 
 room for the frequency of the utmost aggres- 
 sion, and rendered self-defence a duty, which 
 the individual owed to his country. — If it be 
 true, that laws are silent among arms, it is 
 equally so, that in the absence of law, arms be- 
 came necessary. — Had the virtue of forbear- 
 ance been enjoined to the Jews, antecedent to 
 the regal state, when every man did whatsoever 
 was right in his own eyes, they could not have 
 existed as a society, without the exertion of a 
 continued miracle in their favour. — Even in the 
 regal state, when the sovereign was the single 
 and sole dispenser of justice, and the capital 
 the only seat of its exercise, this virtue would 
 have been incompatible with that mixture of 
 public and private exertion, which was required 
 for general security. — In their captive state, 
 where they were often entirely, and always in a 
 great measure, out of the protection of the 
 laws of their masters, self protection was hu- 
 manly speaking the only means of preservation. 
 
 VOL. II. F 
 
68 
 
 And accordingly when permitted by Ahasuerus 
 to avenge themselves of their enemies, we find 
 them doing so with all the feelings of duty to 
 their God and to their nation. 
 
 As in the individual, the passion of anger is 
 implanted, to obviate the slowness of delibera- 
 tion in cases, where instantaneous action is re- 
 quisite for safety, so in the civil system, has the 
 exercise of private vengeance been permitted, 
 to obviate the imperfection of civil order. — 
 When reason in the one is perfected, whether 
 by the natural or supernatural influence of God, 
 anger ceases to be necessary. When civil order 
 becomes perfect in the other, private vengeance 
 becomes criminal. The grace of meekness is 
 thus adapted, not to the infancy, but to the ma- 
 turity of civilization.— And even in that matu- 
 rity, the individual, who has not partaken of 
 its benefits, cannot receive this grace. — The 
 man of uncultivated mind, unexcited sentiment, 
 unmeliorated heart, cannot receive it. — It has 
 no form of coinliness, whereby to attract him. — 
 It seems to him contemptible, and full of sor- 
 rows. — Even in the progress of the Christian 
 Church, every reciprocation of refinement was 
 attended by a proportionate ebbing of this vir- 
 tue.— When ignorance and barbarism, follow- 
 ing in the train of war, had spread their bale- 
 ful influence over Christian Europe, though 
 
69 
 
 Christians preserved in their hands the history 
 and the teaching of their mild Redeemer, yet 
 the meekness of that Redeemer had departed 
 from their hearts. — Even their very clergy ri- 
 oted in the gratification of a proud, vindic- 
 tive, and unmerciful spirit. — Such was the in- 
 compatibility of meekness with a barbarous state 
 of society, that Christian Churches were led to 
 imagine, that the infliction of misery on their 
 enemies, instead of being an abomination to a 
 God of mercy, would be a sacrifice pleasing in 
 his sight.— The prevailing party of the day put 
 their adversaries to the sword, as an act of re- 
 ligion — Personal vengeance received the fan- 
 cied sanction of consecration, and the soldier, 
 when he pledged himself at the altar of God to 
 aid the weak and defenceless, to protect the 
 cause of the orphan and the widow, pledged 
 himself also never to bear insult to himself un- 
 revenged. 
 
 So incompatible are meekness and barbarism. 
 — 'And mark the consequent arrangement of 
 Providence.—- -Though Christianity had been 
 preached to Europe, yet during this darkness 
 was its spirit withdrawn, its influence suspend- 
 ed. — The book of God was permitted to be 
 closed on the people, because it was not fit for 
 them.— Though the phantom of Christianity 
 sat enthroned in pomp and power, the reality 
 
 f 2 
 
70 
 
 was gone, had fled from the palace and the 
 busy haunts of men, to company with the re- 
 liques of literature and refinement, within the 
 walls of some neglected cloister ; until the 
 hand of God dispelled this gloom, and the sun 
 of righteousness burst through this thick dark- 
 ness. — It is a wonderful, but not an unaccount- 
 able coincidence, that the revival of civilization 
 should be contemporary with the revival of 
 Christianity ; — that when the heart of man had 
 been refined by restored literature, — ennobled 
 by restored order, — emancipated from the sla- 
 very of ignorance, — again should the beauties 
 of the Christian character be presented to his 
 view, and the book of God again committed 
 to his hands, declaring, that " blessed are the 
 " meek, for they shall inherit the earth," 
 
 Perhaps it may here be asked, would not this 
 view of the subject lead us to assert, that the 
 precept of non-resistance is imperative, only 
 
 where civilization is nearly perfect? This, 
 
 however, must not be admitted ; for though 
 the Almighty works our salvation from the 
 power of evil, by so ordering the course of the 
 world, so cherishing the improvement of man, 
 as to fit him for the reception of the Christian 
 character, by enjoining its graces as duties, and 
 perfecting them by the influence of his Holy 
 Spirit, — yet maa is himself called on for exer- 
 
71 
 
 tion, and while God gives him the power to do, 
 and excites his will to obedience, is required to 
 work out his own salvation with fear and trem- 
 bling. — Since the command has been uttered, 
 while the Bible is within our reach, we cannot 
 be a law unto ourselves, for we have the law of 
 God.-— The command must be obeyed, though 
 occasionally injurious to the agent. — The mercy 
 of God has given it under circumstances, where 
 obedience is comparatively easy. If it be not 
 entirely so, our part is resignation. 
 
 As an advanced state of civilization is best 
 adapted to the exercise of the virtue of meek- 
 ness, so is this virtue absolutely requisite, for 
 the preservation of that state, and its advance- 
 ment to perfection. — Civilization encreases the 
 avenues of injury. — Refinement sharpens the 
 feelings to insult. — Even the multiplication of 
 authority, which an improved civil order re- 
 quires, gives occasion to numberless instances 
 of the appearance of aggression. The exer- 
 cise of official duty must often, to its objects, 
 bear the semblance of harshness, injustice, or 
 even cruelty. The requisite assertion of rank 
 must sometimes appear like insolence. — And of 
 those, a meek and quiet spirit, that suftereth 
 long, is kind, that beateth all things, endureth 
 all things, and thinketh no evil, is the only al- 
 leviation. — Even real aggression, real injuries, 
 
72 
 
 must be frequent, which, if privately vindicated, 
 would bring us back to the times of feudal war- 
 fare, or the more polished era of Italian assassi- 
 nation. Is it not a remarkable fact, that the se- 
 veral nations of the heathen world, which rose 
 to the highest state of civilization, perished by 
 one and the same cause, the dissensions and 
 private animosities of their leaders ? Even in 
 our own days, when the experiment was tried, 
 of how a highly polished state could exist with- 
 out the Christian spirit,— the primary cause 
 which produced its failure, was the private ani- 
 mosities of its philosophical contrivers. 
 
 Shall we then, some one may say, leave ag- 
 gression unrestrained ?— By no means. — Nor is 
 this the meaning of our Saviour's precept.— All 
 the laws, all the exhortations to mutual protec- 
 tion remain in full force. — It is only from the 
 hand of the injured himself the vengeance is 
 taken j as is evident from the context. — And, 
 farther, it is only in cases of moderate injury, 
 that we are restricted from self-defence ; cases, 
 under which, to use the expression of the Apos- 
 tle, it may be possible for us to live peaceably 
 withal I men. 
 
 And yet this the philosopher of the present 
 day, too self-sufficient to be a Christian, or to 
 be proud to obey his Saviour, will not receive. 
 
73 
 
 — He declares private vengeance to be requisite 
 for society, and has devised a code of honor for 
 its exercise. — How is it requisite ? How is it 
 useful ? — It prevents the enactment of laws to 
 remedy the supposed injuries. — It prevents the 
 combination of others for the protection of the 
 injured. In short, it stops, instead of promot- 
 ing the empire of the laws and the perfection 
 of civil order. At present he extends it only 
 to the higher ranks, and proposes by it to re- 
 medy all contemptuous language. — Suppose he 
 were to extend the same remedy to all ranks ; 
 (and I see not what reason he can assign for not 
 doing so,) then all laws against slander, or at 
 least the enforcement of them, would cease; 
 for the disgrace of appealing to law would be 
 greater than the injury of the slander. — Sup- 
 pose he were to extend it to the remedy of 
 other offences ; laws against those offences 
 would cease to be appealed to. — I need not de- 
 scribe the progress, by which reason would lead 
 him, that has forsaken religion, from the ad- 
 mission of the necessity of private vengeance, 
 until she would leave society destitute of law, 
 and the individual in the condition of the sa- 
 vage, his hand against every man and every 
 man's hand against him. 
 
 There is another peculiarity of the Christian 
 dispensation, which supplies farther, and am- 
 # 
 
74 
 
 pie, evidence of the powerful efficacy of that 
 system towards the perfection and happiness of 
 mankind. I mean the strength and undivided 
 dominion, which it gives to the principle of 
 Love to God ; that principle which the Holy 
 Spirit sheds abroad into the hearts of his 
 chosen, awakened by gratitude and admiration, 
 perfected by the conviction of the antecedent 
 and everlasting love of the Redeemer. 
 
 It needs but little research to prove, that 
 this motive of obedience belongs exclusively to 
 the religion of the Bible, and that its perfection 
 is peculiar to the completion of that religion, 
 in the Gospel of the new and better covenant, 
 which writes the law of their God on the hearts 
 of his people. I shall not now however expa- 
 tiate on the perfection of this heavenly prin- 
 ciple ; as I have already, so often, from this 
 place, called your attention to its efficacy. 
 What I have said is, I trust, sufficient to sa- 
 tisfy you, that the progress and completion of 
 revealed religion, as detailed in the Holy Scrip- 
 tures, by the proportion which it has always 
 borne to the wants and weaknesses of mankind, 
 bears an internal evidence, that the Religion 
 of the Bible is assuredly the gift of the All-wise, 
 Almighty, and All-merciful God of Nature. 
 
SERMONS 
 
 PREACHED IN 
 
 THE CHAPEL 
 
 OI 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN, 
 IN THE YEAR 1817. 
 
SERMON I 
 
 James, iii. — 17. 
 
 But the Wisdom that is from above is Jirst pure, 
 then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, 
 full of mercy and good fruits, without parti- 
 ality, and without hypocrisy. 
 
 SUCH, my fellow Christians, is the description 
 of that wisdom, which is the gift of the Holy 
 Spirit, of that Spirit, which, the Prophet Isaiah 
 declared, should rest on Him, who was to spring 
 from the stem of Jesse : — " And the spirit of 
 " the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of 
 " wisdom and understanding, the spirit of 
 " knowledge and of the fear of the Lord." — 
 And as it rested on our blessed Redeemer, as 
 the Baptist beheld its descent, as the disciples 
 
78 
 
 of our Lord witnessed its effects in his life and 
 doctrine ; so, according to his gracious promise 
 * of sending a Comforter, did the spirit of wisdom 
 descend on the Church of Christ ; and so, 
 according to his gracious assurance that he 
 would not leave us comfortless, does it still rest 
 upon it, leading the humble Christian to be 
 wise unto Salvation, — pointing out to him, that 
 the knowledge of God and of his Son Jesus 
 Christ is, in its influence on our lives, purity, 
 mercy, and sincerity ; in its fruits, hope, and 
 joy, and peace unspeakable. 
 
 The sacred season, which we now celebrate, 
 in commemoration of the descent of the Holy 
 Spirit on the Church of Christ, suggests to me 
 the propriety of calling the attention of the 
 younger part of my hearers to a few of those 
 passages in Holy Writ, which more immediately 
 authorize us to consider the Holy Spirit is a 
 person of the Godhead. And I shall do this, 
 more to remind them, that there are abundance 
 of such authorities, should they ever be called 
 on to give a reason of the hope which is in them, 
 than through any fear of its being requisite for 
 their own private conviction. — No, blessed be 
 God ! the divinity of the Holy Spirit has never 
 been questioned by Christians never denied 
 but by those, who have also denied the Lord 
 who bought them. And, on the other hand, 
 
79 
 
 none, who have refused to admit the divinity of 
 our Redeemer, have ever acknowledged that of 
 the Holy Spirit.— It is a singular fact, that 
 among the numerous heresies, which from time 
 to time have obscured the truth of Christianity, 
 among all this caprice of tenet, partiality of ex- 
 position, and variety of error, none has ever 
 arisen, which has rejected the one, without 
 also rejecting the other. — Of this fact, perhaps, 
 we may find the solution in the declaration of 
 Scripture, that no one can say, that Jesus is the 
 Lord, except by the Holy Ghost. 
 
 When our blessed Redeemer, having tri- 
 umphed over death, sent forth his Apostles, 
 that the uttermost ends of the earth might 
 know the Salvation of God ; — " Go ye,'' said he, 
 " and teach all nations, baptising them in the 
 " name of the Father, and of the Son, and of 
 " the Holy Ghost."_And, from the beginning of 
 the first Epistle to the Corinthians, we learn, 
 that Christians were baptised in no name infe- 
 rior to that of God. — At the conclusion of the 
 last Epistle to the Corinthians, we find the Holy 
 Spirit again joined with the Father and the Son, 
 in the blessing of the Godhead, which the 
 Apostle invokes for the Church ; — " The peace 
 " of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, 
 " and the communion of the Holy Ghost." — 
 And again, in the first Epistle to the Corin- 
 
80 
 
 thians, the Apostle, speaking of the gifts of 
 God to the Church, says, " there are diversi- 
 " ties of gifts, but the same spirit, and there 
 " are differences of administrations, but the 
 " same Lord, and there are diversities of ope- 
 " rations, but it is the same God, — which work- 
 " eth all in all.*' — Now, if God worketh all in 
 all, assuredly " God" must be the " Lord of 
 " whom are the differences of administrations," 
 and the " Spirit of whom are the diversities of 
 " gifts." — I have called your attention to these 
 three texts, both because, each of them seems 
 to me to be fully conclusive on the point, and 
 also because, they afford us three different forms 
 of arrangement of the persons of the Trinity. 
 In the first it is the Father, the Son, and the 
 Holy Ghost. In the second it is the Son, the 
 Father, and the Holy Ghost. In the third it 
 is the Holy Ghost, the Son, and the Father. 
 As if to obviate any idea of inequality, which 
 might arise from the order of enumeration. 
 
 If we refer to those passages of Scripture, 
 which relate to the creation, redemption, 
 and sanctification of mankind, those blessings, 
 for which we have been just now returning our 
 most humble and hearty thanks to Almighty 
 God, the Father of all mercies, we shall find 
 the presence and action of the Holy Spirit re- 
 cognised, distinguished, but not divided from 
 
81 
 
 that of the Father and the Son.— We find the 
 Psalmist declaring, that by the Word of Jeho- 
 vah were the heavens made, and all the host of 
 them by the Spirit of his mouth. — The author 
 of Genesis describes the Word of God as 
 creating the light, and his Spirit as diffusing 
 itself throughout the waters.— Job professes, 
 that " God by his spirit hath garnished the 
 " Heavens," and again, The Spirit of God hath 
 " made me, and the Spirit of the Almighty 
 " hath given me life." 
 
 In the beginning of St. Matthew, the Angel 
 speaking to Joseph of Mary, says, that which 
 is conceived in her is of the Holv Ghost. — And 
 St. Luke describes the Angel as disclosing to 
 Mary, that, " that holy thing which should 
 " be born of her, should be called the Son of 
 " God." 
 
 When St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, 
 describes the victory of our Redeemer over sin, 
 " they that are in the flesh" says he " cannot 
 " please God, but ye are not in the flesh, but 
 " in the spirit j if so be the Spirit of God dwell 
 ** in you." — " If any man have not the Spirit 
 " of Christ, the same is none of his. — But if the 
 " Spirit of Him, that raised up Jesus from the 
 " dead, dwell in you, even he that raised up 
 " Christ from the dead shall also quicken your 
 
82 
 
 " mortal bodies." — A passage which manifestly 
 identifies with each other the Spirit of God, 
 the Spirit of Christ, and Him, that raised up 
 Christ from the dead. — In the Epistle to the 
 Corinthians, having our bodies the Temples of 
 God, and the Temples of the Holy Spirit, are 
 represented as one and the same thing. " Know 
 " ye not, that ye are the Temples of God, and 
 " that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you ?"-•• 
 And again, " Know ye not, that your body 
 " is the Temple of the Holy Ghost, which is 
 " in you, which you have of God ?" 
 
 In the story of Ananias, and Saphira, to lie 
 unto the Holy Spirit is represented as lying unto 
 God. — In many passages of the Scripture, the 
 inspiration, by which holy men of God spoke 
 as they were moved, is represented as the im- 
 mediate act of God ; — in others, it is repre- 
 sented as the immediate act of the Holy Ghost ; 
 assertions which would be entirely inconsistent, 
 except the Holy Ghost be God. 
 
 But, my fellow Christians, the time usually 
 alloted to a discourse from this place would ill 
 suffice to recite all the Scriptural authorities on 
 this subject. — That the Holy Ghost is at once 
 distinct, and inseparable from the Father and 
 the Son, is a doctrine, which runs through the 
 entire texture of revelation ; — a doctrine, which 
 
83 
 
 if we receive, all the passages on the subject 
 are clear and consistent with each other ; — but, 
 if we deny, they are obscure, and irreconcile- 
 able : and he, who begins by rejecting the di- 
 vinity of the Holy Ghost, is likely to end by 
 completely refusing the authority of Scripture. 
 
 Nor is this doctrine to be considered as a 
 mere question of speculation unconnected with 
 practice. — 'Can there be a stronger incentive to 
 the regulation of our affections, and the puri- 
 fication of our hearts, to the cherishing of 
 every holy desire, the cultivation of every im- 
 pulse to resist temptation, and to fly from sin, 
 than the conviction, that these holy desires, 
 these good counsels, which Scripture declares 
 to us are the work of the Holy Spirit, are, in 
 so being, the immediate act of God? — What 
 more abundant source of comfort and of hope, 
 what more powerful support of patient continu- 
 ance in well doing can there be, than being, by 
 every approbation of virtue, every abhorrence 
 of vice, every feeling of humanity, which rises 
 in our minds, constantly reminded, that God 
 is present with us, that we are the objects of 
 the care and love of our Creator?— Oh my 
 fellow Christians ! which will the man, who at- 
 tempts to persuade himself, that these are only 
 the voice of nature, the suggestions of his 
 moral sense, and that the Holy Spirit means 
 
 VOL. II- G 
 
I 
 
 84 
 
 merely good inclination, or perhaps some sub- 
 ordinate undefined existence,— which will he be 
 more likely to be led by them, or, the Christian, 
 who feels them, with gratitude, as the mercy 
 of his Redeemer, and with awe, as the voice 
 of his God ? — assuredly, he, who hath this hope 
 in him, purifieth himself even as He is pure.— 
 And, accordingly, we find, that purity is the 
 first characteristic of that wisdom, which is the 
 gift of the Holy Spirit,— the earliest effect of 
 that guidance, which, if submitted to, will lead 
 us into the glorious liberty of the Sons of 
 God, that we shall no more be the servants of 
 sin ; — -which will lead our hearts to appreciate, 
 and to enjoy, that pleasure, which results from 
 being kindly affectioned one towards another ; 
 and teach us to cherish the feelings of gra- 
 titude and love to God, as the source of our 
 greatest happiness. — But, my fellow Christians, 
 without purity of mind, it is impossible we can 
 have brotherly love. — The natural depravity of 
 man's heart, when cherished, when cultivated, 
 when suffered to take the ascendancy, vitiates 
 the imagination, so that she represents every 
 thing to us under false colours, calling bitter 
 sweet, and sweet bitter, putting darkness for 
 light, and light for darkness ; — degrades me 
 reason, so that it cannot distinguish good from 
 evil,— so that it mistakes the gratification of the 
 senses, for happiness, — so that it attempts to se- 
 
85 
 
 parate, what God has joined by a natural and un- 
 changeable bond, true self love, and public affec- 
 tion. Where the heart is impure, no good thing 
 can dwell, no good fruit can issue ; the feelings 
 of humanity, the ecstacy of benevolence, the in- 
 fluence of the Holy Spirit inciting us to brother- 
 ly love, are absorbed in a blind and sensual 
 selfishness, which, like the deaf adder, closes 
 her ears to the voice of the charmer, charm he 
 never so wisely. — Avarice may occasionally sa- 
 crifice that wealth, which she so highly values, 
 to the pleadings of humanity ; ambition may 
 stop her career, for a while, to listen to the 
 voice of mercy ; but sensuality is deaf to every 
 call, except that of self-gratification. — " Be ye 
 ** not drunk with wine," says the Apostle, 
 ** wherein is excess f or, as it might be bet- 
 ter rendered, wherein is insanity ; marking, by 
 the instance of a single species of sensuality, 
 its destructive effects on the powers of the 
 mind, and the affections of the heart ; " but 
 " be ye filled with the Holy Ghost."— -How 
 strange at first view appears this juxtaposition 
 of ideas, which seem scarcely to have suffici- 
 ent relation to entitle them to be mentioned 
 even in opposition with each other ! — Yet, if 
 we consider it, we shall find it grounded in the 
 total incompatibility of any species of impurity 
 with submission to the guidance of the Holy 
 Spirit. 
 
 c 2 
 
86 
 
 Need I tell you, my fellow Christians, that 
 sensuality, as it thus excludes us from active 
 good will to man, so it still more strongly pre- 
 vents us from feeling in our hearts the love of 
 God ? — That principle which at once facilitates 
 our obedience, and renders it a source of 
 enjoyment. Can the sensualist love that God, 
 whose chastisements he dreads, and whom he 
 knows to be of purer eyes than to behold ini- 
 quity ? — The first symptom of the corruption of 
 human nature was that Adam hid himself from 
 the presence of the Lord ; and the earliest ef- 
 fect of criminal indulgence in the individual is 
 enmity against God. — Who are ever most ready 
 to forward the attacks of sophistry against re- 
 ligion, — to ridicule the love of God in others, 
 and to pursuade themselves, that they doubt 
 even his very existence ? — Look abroad into the 
 world, and you will see, that they are those 
 who are given up to sensuality. Those, whose 
 habits and enjoyments are most at variance with 
 the purity commanded by God, — will have their 
 hearts most estranged from his love. 
 
 The next part of the description of that wis- 
 dom, which is the gift of the Holy Spirit, is, 
 that is peaceable, gentle, and easy to be en- 
 treated. — The purity of the heart being esta- 
 blished, reason is restored to her genuine pow- 
 er, the turbulence of passion is assuaged, and 
 
87 
 
 the tranquillity consequent thereon diffuses it- 
 self throughout the whole character, and in- 
 fluences the outward conduct — How different 
 is that wisdom, in which the children of this 
 world are said to excel in their generation !- — 
 Ever anxious for individual advantage, exclu- 
 sive agrandisement, esteeming all happiness as 
 only comparative, undervaluing every enjoy- 
 ment in which others can equal them,— jealous 
 of every thing that looks like competition or ' 
 encroachment, alive to every semblance of the 
 slightest injury against themselves, yet slow to 
 perceive, and still slower to acknowledge, their 
 own injustice, — their hand is against every man, 
 and every man's hand is against them. — The 
 fruits of that wisdom, which is foolishness be- 
 fore God, — the issues of the heart of man, 
 when alienated from the guidance of the Holy 
 Spirit, are described to be hatred, variance, 
 emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, envying, 
 and murders :— But, the wisdom, that is from 
 above, does not merely cleanse us from impu- 
 rity, and free us from crime : it also leads us to 
 practical virtue ; giving efficiency to our bene- 
 volence, and action to our obedience. — The z&is* 
 dom that is from above is full of mere// and good 
 fruits. And to this part of the description 
 would I particularly call your attention — This 
 world has been aptly compared to a school, a 
 preparation for the next, in which our moral 
 
88 
 
 powers are to be strengthened and exalted, our 
 taste for true enjoyment formed, and directed 
 to its proper objects, and habits of obedience, 
 proceeding from the love of God, acquired and 
 confirmed. No doubt the Almighty may, and 
 perhaps sometimes does, by a sudden and irre- 
 sistible act of power, deliver the sinner at once 
 from the body of death, and renew a right spi- 
 rit within him. — But the experience of the 
 Church and the declarations of the Apostles 
 authorise us in thinking, that such is not his 
 usual process j — but that, as, in the natural 
 world, he chooses to work by a concatenation of 
 causes and gradual progress of exertion, up- 
 holding, rather than controlling, the laws, 
 which by his mighty word he at first establish- 
 ed, so in the spiritual regeneration of an immor- 
 tal soul, having originally formed man capable 
 of being acted on by certain means and mo- 
 tives, having willed, that man should be a par- 
 taker in the work of his own salvation, — having 
 furnished him abundantly with motives by the 
 Revelation of the Gospel, — with means by the 
 aid of the Holy Spirit,— having freed him from 
 the captivity of sin, by the blood of Christ, who 
 beholding the sufficiency of the motives, the 
 means, the atonement, — declared, as he tri- 
 umphed on the cross, that the salvation of man- 
 kind was finished ; God, I say, having done 
 every thing, which could be done for the salva- 
 
89 
 
 tion of a creature, such as he has created man, 
 — leaves him to the regular and gradual opera- 
 tion of those means and motives, which he has 
 supplied, and those laws of moral action, which 
 he has established. 
 
 Now for the perfection of our moral powers, 
 the reformation of our taste, and the acquisi- 
 tion of habits, action is absolutely requisite. — 
 Mere innocence — mere abstinence from trans- 
 gression, though it may prevent the encrease 
 of sinful habits, can never totally eradicate their 
 influence, or transform that taste, by which 
 men are naturally prone to be lovers of plea- 
 sure more than lovers of God. — Inaction can 
 never perfect any of our moral powers, no more 
 than the napkin which concealed the slothful 
 servant's talent could add to its value. — By ac- 
 tive love to mankind, by patient continuance in 
 well doing, — by following that wisdom which is 
 full of mercy and good fruits, alone can we 
 hope to be assimilated to our leather, which is 
 in heaven, who diffuses happiness throughout 
 his wide creation, and while he is slow to an- 
 ger, — is plenteous in mercy, and loving kind- 
 ness. 
 
 The Apostle concludes the description of 
 heavenly wisdom, by its being without hypo- 
 crisy j marking thereby the integrity of the 
 
90 
 
 source, from whence the purity of heart, which 
 it confers, and the fruitful benevolence, which 
 it generates, must, and indeed can alone, pro- 
 ceed. Party zeal must have no share in our 
 good works. Our brotherly love must not be 
 exclusive, confined to a particular sect, and re- 
 gulated by our judgment of their opinions. — 
 The innocency of our lives, the regularity of 
 our conduct, the purity of our conversation, 
 must proceed from a nobler source than the 
 fear of disgracing our profession, or scanda- 
 lizing our party. Men have been known, in all 
 ages, to have made the greatest sacrifices to 
 their passion for upholding some particular sect. 
 — There is no form of false religion so absurd, 
 as not to have had its votaries, who for the sake 
 of supporting and casting a lustre upon it, 
 would submit to privations, check their appe- 
 tites, and conform their lives to its precepts. — 
 But Christian wisdom knows no such motive.— 
 He that is wise unto salvation, will be pure in 
 heart, that he may see God,— will be merciful, 
 —that he may obtain mercy ; — he will be kind- 
 ly affectioned, and abounding in good works, 
 that he may be conformed to the likeness of 
 Him, who so loved mankind that he gave up 
 his life for them, — of whom it is declared, that 
 God is love,-— and of whose law love is the ful- 
 filment. 
 
91 
 
 Still less can hypocrisy contaminate the wis- 
 dom that is from above.— They that wash their 
 hand in innocency, not, that they may present 
 themselves unpoluted at the altar of God, but, 
 that they may be seen of men,— they that exercise 
 their piety in public, and do their alms in the 
 sight of the world that they may have glory of 
 the same, and may be considered more pure, 
 more pious, more virtuous, than they really are, 
 — they have their reward,— they are to hope for 
 no farther recompence. — And for what have 
 they toiled? — An empty, fleeting bubble. — Too 
 late will they find, that the wisdom of this 
 world is foolishness, and its friendship enmity, 
 with God. 
 
 I have thus, my fellow Christians, examined 
 the several parts of the description, which the 
 Apostle has given us of the wisdom, which is 
 the gift of the Holy Ghost, and shewed, I 
 trust, how intimately connected they are with 
 each other, and how indispensibly requisite, 
 both for our present salvation from the misery 
 and guilt and captivity of sin, and also for our 
 future enjoyment of that exceeding weight of 
 bliss and glory, which our mercifnl God has 
 promised to them, who manifest their love to 
 him, by keeping his commandments. 
 
 I have now to remind you, that out of the 
 
92 
 
 natural heart of man unenlightened, unmelio- 
 rated, uninfluenced by the Holy Spirit,— no 
 holy thought can arise, no good purpose can 
 originate. — When, therefore, you feel in your 
 minds an abhorrence of impurity, — a disposi- 
 tion to gentleness and meekness, — a love of 
 mercy, leading you to good works, — free from 
 the contracting influence of party spirit, — un- 
 dented by hypocrisy, — you are to consider it as 
 the voice of God within you, — as the breathings 
 of that spirit, which was promised, — not to the 
 primitive church alone, — but also, to all the 
 elect people of God, who were then afar off. — 
 You are to give the glory, — not to yourselves,-— 
 but to the Captain of your salvation, — through 
 whose sufferings ye are made perfect.— Cau- 
 tious not to grieve, — not to quench the Holy 
 Spirit within you, — you are to cherish and en- 
 courage the sacred influence, as the seal of your 
 acceptance. You are to follow his guidance, 
 with gratitude and awe, working out your own 
 salvation with fear and trembling, for it is — 
 God — which worketh in you, both to will and 
 
 to do To whom, with the Father, and our 
 
 ever blessed Redeemer, be glory now, and for 
 ever. 
 
SERMON II 
 
 Exodus, xxxiv. — 6. 
 
 And the Lord passed before him, and proclaim- 
 ed The Lord, The Lord God, merciful, and 
 gracious, long suffering, and abundant in 
 goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thou- 
 sands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, 
 and that will by no means clear the guilty, vi- 
 siting the iniquity of the Fathers upon the 
 Children, unto the third and fourth genera- 
 tion. 
 
 AMONG the various enquiries, which have 
 from time to time attracted the attention, and 
 exercised the ingenuity of man, that concern- 
 ing the nature of God has been one of the 
 most general, as it assuredly is of the most in- 
 teresting and important. In every stage of ci- 
 vilization, in every state of society, even in 
 
94 
 
 the hurry of active life, as well as in the se- 
 clusion of philosophical retirement, mankind 
 have ever made this their object, and have 
 sought, some in the varying obscurities of tra- 
 dition, some in the intricacies of metaphysical 
 reasoning, others in the careful study of Reve- 
 lation, for the description of the Deity, before 
 whom they should fall down and worship. 
 
 The prevalence of the interest on this sub- 
 ject would almost lead us to recur to the belief 
 of innate ideas to account for its generality, 
 did not another and equally simple way of its 
 explication offer itself. Though our ideas be 
 not innate, our affections are. — As our faculties 
 wait only for their proper materials whereon to 
 exercise themselves, and even lead us to such, 
 so our affections wait only for the proper objects 
 for excitement, cause us to feel that there must be 
 such, and induce us to seek them out.— And 
 among the affections, with which God has created 
 the human heart, that of veneration for some- 
 thing superior to ourselves is one of the most 
 prominent and powerful. Allied to fear, to grati- 
 tude, to love, partaking of awe, it has influ- 
 enced man, in all ages, to frame for it some 
 object, according to his ability. The unen- 
 lightened savage in the irregularities of nature, 
 which he dreaded, in the harmony of the sea- 
 sons, which blessed him with plenty, in every 
 
95 
 
 thing, which, however trivial, was unaccount- 
 able, — imagined he beheld the exertion of a 
 superior power. And the philosopher, who 
 found that the humblest part of nature was too 
 wonderful for human wisdom, that to a perfect 
 knowledge of it he could not attain, recog- 
 nized in the incomprehensible sublimity of the 
 universe, that there was a Power still more in- 
 comprehensible and more sublime. — But, while 
 we thus perceive, that nature, speaking with 
 the voice of feeling, suggests to us the existence 
 of an object for our reverence ; we should be 
 aware that the description, which she supplies 
 us with, is obscure and imperfect, totally in- 
 commensurate with the unspeakable majesty of 
 God, and leaving us almost to mere probable 
 conjecture as to his Providence and attributes. 
 Perhaps many, I had almost said all, of the errors 
 of the heathen world may be traced up to the 
 source of their not being satisfied with this im- 
 perfect intimation of the Deity, but seeking 
 to form more precise, more complicated ideas, 
 of his nature, than their means of information 
 authorized them.— Hence, he was by them 
 clothed with created forms, with human weak- 
 nesses, and human relations.— The eastern mo- 
 narch represented him by a golden image. He, 
 who had no gold, fell down before the stock of 
 a tree. The polished Grecian worshipped the 
 beautifully imagined grandeur of the olympian 
 
96 
 
 Jove — And the superstitious savage bent before 
 the dreadful deformity of some frightful idol. — 
 Nor was the enlightened philosopher, who de- 
 rided in secret those popular delusions, free 
 from an exactly corresponding effect of the 
 luxuriance of fancy. — He would not be satis- 
 fied with the witness, which God had vouch- 
 safed him, of his existence and goodness. He 
 would not acknowledge, even to himself, his 
 own ignorance in other respects. He would 
 not exclaim, with the righteous Job, " Lo ! 
 " these are parts of his ways. But how little a 
 " portion is heard of him !" But giving the 
 reins to his imagination in the midst of dark- 
 ness, judging of the perfections of God from 
 the analogy of man, wishing to include in his 
 invention an answer to every enquiry, he form- 
 ed a cunningly devised fable, as like to the Al- 
 mighty as was the Indians idol, or the golden 
 statue of Nebuchadnezzar. Different sects had 
 their different inventions, all beginning with 
 the gleam of truth, with which God had sup- 
 plied them, and ending in the manifold absur- 
 dity of human imagination ; and all furnishing 
 a melancholy and convincing proof, that the 
 world by wisdom could not know their God. 
 
 But, how, you may ask, does all this con- 
 cern us ? We are no longer in darkness. We 
 have revelation. The glorious light of the Gos- 
 
97 
 
 ♦ 
 
 pel has risen upon us. The day spring from an 
 high has visited us. God be praised, my fel- 
 low Christians, it has. — And let us keep to it.— 
 Let us not rely on metaphysical speculation for 
 our faith. The Scriptures, undoubtedly, con- 
 tain every thing, which is necessary for salva- 
 tion. In them shall we find our exceeding 
 great reward, even the word, which visited the 
 Patriarchs, inspired the Prophets, and redeem- 
 ed the world.— I am aware, that men of inge- 
 nuity, who have been exercised in specula- 
 tions on the human mind, have advanced de- 
 monstrations of the existence of God, and by 
 superadding infinity to what they consider as 
 perfections in ourselves, have established, as 
 they think, his various attributes, independent 
 of the authority of Revelation. They have not 
 in general erred much. — But, if they have not, 
 it is because, they had the light of Revelation 
 to point out to them what conclusions they 
 should seek for ; and because, they did not 
 venture to maintain any, which were obviously 
 inconsistent with it — It has been said by some, 
 that those demonstrations are of use as subsidiary 
 supports for our faith.— Others have gone far- 
 ther, and held, that they are its main ground- 
 work, and that we must be convinced by hu- 
 man reason of the existence, providence, and 
 attributes, of God, before we can receive Scrip- 
 ture as his Revelation. — But I will submit it to 
 
98 
 
 any unprejudiced mind, whether a chain of rea- 
 soning involving ideas totally beyond human 
 conception, which compares the relations of 
 different kinds of infinity, which abstracts from 
 each other duration and succession, which de- 
 termines concerning God from the analogy of 
 man, whether such a chain of reasoning be 
 more likely 4o carry conviction to the heart and 
 understanding, than the plain historical and 
 sensible proof, which God has actually vouch- 
 safed us of the authenticity and authority of 
 Scripture. The chain of historical evidence, 
 from this time upwards to that of our Saviour, 
 for the authenticity of the Scripture, consider- 
 ed merely as a history, is stronger than the evi- 
 dence for any human work whatsoever, more 
 enquired into, more strongly attacked, more 
 amply defended, more carefully preserved, 
 more jealously watched. It is in short of such 
 a nature, as to put us, as far as the degree of 
 our assent is concerned, nearly into the situa- 
 tion of persons, who actually behold the mira- 
 cles, and heard the voice of Christ and his 
 Apostles.— Imagine now an individual, who 
 had never before considered the question re- 
 specting the being of a God, but had merely 
 that instinctive propensity, which is natural to 
 man, to seek for some object ©f reverence and 
 adoration. — Imagine such one, I say, behold- 
 ing the miracles, the life, the death, the re- 
 
99 
 
 surrection of our Saviour, witnessing the ful- 
 filment of prophecy, the pouring forth of the 
 Holy Spirit on his followers, the triumph of 
 his doctrine over the wisdom, the passions, and 
 the interests of the world. Imagine such a 
 one receiving from him the Scriptures as the 
 Revelation of God, hearing him declare, that 
 there was a God, and that he had now mani- 
 fested himself to mankind. Do you think, that 
 the human heart is so formed, as that, except 
 blinded by some powerful prejudice or passion, 
 he could disbelieve the authority ? — Do you 
 think, that he could suspend his assent, until 
 some philosopher proved to him the being and 
 Providence of God ? — No, my fellow Chris- 
 tians, such is not the nature of human judg- 
 ment. There is a mass of probable evidence, 
 which can force our assent as strongly as the 
 strictest demonstration, perhaps more strongly 
 than any demonstration the terms of which we 
 are not satisfied as to our perfectly understand- 
 ing. And our decided assent, when once pro- 
 duced, is equally influential in our lives and 
 conduct, whatsoever may have been the source, 
 from whence it may have originated. And in- 
 deed, my fellow Christians, our Saviour seems 
 by no means to have required any previous wis- 
 dom in those to whom his Gospel should suc- 
 cessfully be preached. " Except ye become as 
 " little children," says he, " ye shall in no wise 
 
 VOL, II. H 
 
100 
 
 " enter into the kingdom of heaven."— And 
 the Apostle declares, that other foundation 
 should no man lay save Jesus Christ. Let us 
 therefore, if we would be wise unto salvation, if 
 we would form a true idea of the mighty One who 
 inhabiteth eternity, not seek for it in the fancied 
 strength of our intellect, but in the pure light of 
 the Holy Scriptures, in which is revealed every 
 thing, that is requisite for us to know. Let us not 
 dare to explain away the descriptions therein 
 contained, or to force them to an accommoda- 
 tion to our own conceits. Let us, with an 
 humble disposition of mind, search the Scrip- 
 tures for the several features of character, 
 which God has there given of himself, carefully 
 recollecting, that to worship a God in any way 
 differing from that, which is described in the 
 Bible, is to set up an Idol in the place of Jeho- 
 vah. We shall there find, that concerning his 
 moral attributes, and his relations to man, there 
 is much revealed, but concerning his nature, 
 and his relations to the rest of the universe, 
 scarce any thing. — He is described as being 
 pleased with the obedience of his rational crea- 
 tures, being pleased with faith, being of purer 
 eyes than to behold iniquity, being influenced 
 by man's moral conduct, one while provoked at 
 his wickedness and repenting and grieving that 
 he had made him, at another establishing a co- 
 venant of mercy with those, who by faith and 
 
101 
 
 obedience had found favour in his sight. Pro- 
 claiming himself, sometimes in general terms 
 of bounty and loving kindness to all mankind, 
 mingled with unchanging justice, but much 
 oftner, in particular descriptions of his mercies 
 to the individuals, whom he addresses, as more 
 likely to influence their love and obedience. 
 He is represented as a God, who is about our 
 path and about our bed, who not only regulates 
 the general outline of human history, but also 
 occasionally interferes in our most trivial con- 
 cerns, having his ears ever open to the prayers, 
 the sorrows, the repentance of his creatures. 
 With respect to his relations to mankind, he is 
 described as their Governor, their Redeemer, 
 and their Sanctifier ; and in these several offices 
 we find him represented as a distinct person. 
 Here, it is objected to us by infidels, as a tri- 
 umphant argumentum ad hominem, that this is 
 inconsistent with the unity of God, so repeat- 
 edly declared in our Scriptures. We are asked, 
 how can three be one ? We answer, that we 
 do not say, that three persons are one person, 
 or that three Gods are one God, but that three 
 Persons are one God. If they call on us to 
 explain the manner, in which they are so, 
 the nature of the union j we answer, that we 
 know the fact, because it is revealed, but the 
 manner of it— not being revealed, we do not 
 know, having no means of knowing the nature 
 h 2 
 
102 
 
 of God, antecedent to, or beyond, revelation. 
 There is no natural absurdity or inconsistence 
 in three persons being one God ; nor until our 
 adversaries can shew that there is, can they 
 claim any farther answer. Others there are, 
 who call themselves Christians, and profess to 
 believe in revelation, but who would be wise 
 above what is written. — These having devised 
 for themselves a God, and discovered his attri- 
 butes, by the strength of their own reason, 
 imagine that the authority of Scripture is to be 
 strengthened by proving that its descriptions of 
 the Deity are agreeable to these their own in- 
 ventions. To such, God manifested in the flesh, 
 taking on him the form of a servant, making 
 himself of no reputation, is a stumbling block 
 and a rock of offence. The union of three 
 persons in the Godhead, their perfect equality 
 and coeternity, being beyond the power of their 
 invention, they reject from the limits of their 
 belief, and attempt to explain away, or perhaps 
 to accommodate to their own doctrine, the most 
 obvious authorities cf Scripture on these sub- 
 jects. They seem not to be aware, that if 
 reason could discover every thing, Scripture 
 would be superfluous, and that the Bible has 
 been given us for a very different purpose than 
 merely to be a comment on our previous deduc- 
 tions. Point out to these men the several texts 
 in Scripture, in which the power, the majesty, 
 the eternity of God, are ascribed to Christ, 
 
103 
 
 and to the Holy Ghost; they will tell you, that 
 it is mere figurative language, or that perhaps 
 the passage may have been corrupted. When 
 the Word of God is described by Moses as coin- 
 ing unto Abraham, and declaring to him, that 
 He was his exceeding great reward, and imme- 
 diately after assuming the name of Jehovah ;-— 
 when Saint John declares, that the Word, which 
 was vvith God, and which was God, took upon 
 him our nature, and dwelt among us ; — when 
 our Saviour asserts, that Abraham saw his day 
 and was glad, obviously referring to the above 
 mentioned narration of Moses, in which it is 
 afterwards added, that Abraham believed in the 
 Lord, and it was counted to him for righteous- 
 ness ; when Isaiah describes the Messiah as The 
 Almighty Father, The everlasting God ; — when 
 the Apostle tells us, that the Jews tempted 
 Christ in the wilderness, which the Psalmist 
 describes as tempting the most high God ; when 
 the Apostle speaks of Christ as being over all 
 God blessed for ever ; — when Saint John de- 
 clares, that Jesus Christ is the true God and the 
 eternal life ; — when Ezekiel describes the Lord 
 God and the Spirit as being the same j — when 
 Christ is said to have been begotten by the Holy 
 Ghost, and therefore to be the Son of God ; 
 — when lying unto the Holy Ghost and lying 
 unto God are mentioned as one and the same 
 thing when the inspiration of the Spirit is 
 
104 
 
 mentioned as the inspiration of God ; — when 
 the Father the Son and the Spirit are joined 
 together, in different places of Scripture, with 
 a varied order of enumeration ; — when the 
 author of the Revelations describes the Lamb 
 and the Spirit with all the characteristics and 
 majesty of Everlasting Divinity ; — all these, and 
 such like passages, are held to be figurative lan- 
 guage, idiomatic forms, corrupt readings, any 
 thing in short but the obvious and plain decla- 
 ration, which they convey, of the distinct 
 personality and undivided Godhead of the great 
 Jehovah. — To such misconstruction, to such 
 self produced blindness, to such absurdity, 
 does the philosophy of this world force her de- 
 luded victim, rejecting, in reality, while en. 
 deavouring to accommodate the God of the 
 Bible to the proportions of the Idol, which she 
 has raised in the human intellect. Her pride 
 cannot bear the humility of the carpenter's son. 
 Her blindness cannot perceive the unspeakable 
 glory of the redemption. She cannot bear God 
 dwelling among men ; forgetful that the God 
 of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob dwelt on the 
 mercy seat between the Cherubims, talked with 
 the Patriarchs, led their posterity out of Egypt, 
 and guided them through the wilderness. 
 
 Among the scriptural authorities for the Tri- 
 nity I have not mentioned the form of expres- 
 
105 
 
 sion in the first Chapter of Genesis, where a 
 singular verb is joined to the plural noun sig- 
 nifying God, because I would be slow in put- 
 ing forward my own opinion in competition with 
 that of some able divines, who seem to think 
 it ought not much to be insisted on, as being 
 possibly an idiomatic form of expression. — And 
 yet I cannot help observing, that where we are 
 told, " God said let us make man in our image 
 " after our likeness," it must be a very strange 
 idiom, which can account for the connection of 
 the plural substantive " God" with a singular 
 verb " said" in one part of the sentence, and 
 a plural verb and plural pronoun immediately 
 after. If Elohim be a singular noun having 
 accidentally a plural termination, or if it be a 
 plural noun used by custom in a singular sense, 
 why is it joined with a plural verb and a plural 
 pronoun here, and also in other places with 
 plural verbs and even with plural adjectives ? 
 — If this junction be, as has been said, only a 
 royal form of speaking, why are plural verbs 
 and plural pronouns never used when the Deity 
 is expressed by his name Jehovah ? And besides, 
 what authority have we for the existence of 
 such a form of expression in the time of Moses ? 
 It is never used by any of the kings of Israel. 
 And the first instance we find of it is in the 
 book of Esther. I must confess, that I cannot 
 conceive a more plain and obvious intimation 
 
106 
 
 of the plurality of persons and unity of God, 
 than that afforded by the phraseology, used in 
 this passage, and the several others, which de- 
 scribe the conversations, which the Deity held 
 with Abraham, Jacob, and Moses. Be assured* 
 my fellow Christians, that if we would under- 
 stand the Scriptures to our souls' advantage, if 
 we would enter into the kingdom of heaven 
 and know the things that be of God, we must 
 approach them with the unprejudiced humility, 
 the untaught simplicity of little children. — The 
 precepts of the Gospel are not more hostile to 
 the passions of the human heart, than its doc- 
 trines are to the presumptuous pride of human 
 wisdom, which is not satisfied, except it put 
 forth its hand to the ark of God, and remove 
 the vail from before the seat of mercy. — Be 
 assured that every thing which is requisite for 
 salvation is revealed, is clearly revealed, in the 
 Scriptures. — Seek not to be wise above what 
 is written. — We are told all that is necessary 
 for us, the moral attributes of our God, his 
 three-fold relation to us as Governor, Re- 
 deemer and Sanctifier. — With the manner of the 
 union, with his physical attributes, we are by 
 no means concerned. We cannot comprehend 
 them. — Such knowledge is too wonderful for us. 
 —Pry not into it. Use no vain disputations of 
 philosophy, falsely so called. And, above all 
 things, use them not at the expence of Chris- 
 
107 
 
 tian peace and Christian charity. — If your 
 brother err in a matter, which is above human 
 understanding, pity his folly for having at- 
 tempted the enquiry ; pardon his weakness for 
 having erred. — Pardon him, I say, for the sake 
 of him who pardoned you, — for the sake of him 
 who preserved you from similar presumption 
 and similar mistake, — And may the God of all 
 comfort strengthen you, stablish you. — May 
 the Redeemer's blood wash out all your mis- 
 deeds.. — May he that raised up Jesus from the 
 dead, raise you also to sanctification in this 
 life, and to glory in the next. 
 
 Now to God the Father, Son, and Holy 
 Ghost, be glory now, and for ever. 
 
SERMON III 
 
 Philippians, ii. — 6 and 7. 
 
 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not 
 robbery to be equal with God ; but made him- 
 self of no reputation, and took upon himself 
 the form of a servant, and was made in the 
 likeness of men. 
 
 AVE are assembled, my fellow Christians, to 
 commemorate that wonderful instance of Di- 
 vine love to mankind, by which the Word, 
 which in the beginning was God, by whom all 
 things were made, in whom was life and bght, 
 came unto his own to proclaim the Gospel of 
 life and immortality, and to give to as many as 
 
109 
 
 should believe on him power to become the 
 children of God. 
 
 The Almighty had, by a series of prophecies, 
 both verbally, and symbolically, declared unto 
 mankind what he was about to do. The world, 
 before the coming of the Redeemer was not 
 left without hope that an atonement should in 
 due time be made for them. They were not 
 left without matter to exercise their faith in the 
 promises of God, their trust in his mercy, and 
 their gratitude for his love. Though the Jews 
 were made the depositories of the oracles of 
 God, the immediate hearers of his law, the ex- 
 amples of his mercy to those that love him, yet 
 the knowledge of the promises was not confined 
 to them. Though separated from the world as 
 a peculiar people, yet they were held up to it s 
 curiosity and observation by the singularity of 
 their system, and the miraculous nature of 
 their history. A nation, numerous as the stars 
 of heaven, though but a few generations from 
 a single family, becoming thus numerous in a 
 land, where they were always held in abomina- 
 tion, and laterly treated as bond slaves, led out 
 from that land by signs and wonders and the 
 outstretched arm of the Almighty, passing dry 
 through seas and rivers, subsisted in a barren 
 wilderness for forty years, and afterwards driv- 
 ing out from one of the strongest countries in 
 
no 
 
 the world, a people more civilized, more war- 
 like, of greater personal strength, and more 
 numerous than themselves, such a nation must 
 have been the object of universal interest and 
 enquiry. The surrounding world would natu- 
 rally ask what were their institutions, what their 
 history, and what their religion ? Added to 
 this, the circumstances of the people, whom 
 they drove out before them, were peculiarly cal- 
 culated to spread the result of these enquiries 
 to the uttermost ends of the earth. Connected 
 with, and in fact a tribe of, the Phenicians, 
 who at that time exclusively possessed the na- 
 vigation of the world, were highly commercial, 
 enterprising, and roving, the Canaanites, who 
 escaped the sword of the children of Israel, 
 were likely to carry with them, to distant colo- 
 nies, the history of their expulsion, and every 
 thing therewith connected. 
 
 After the lapse of a few centuries, when it is 
 likely the memory of these transactions might 
 have faded away, there was a second diffusion 
 of the history of the chosen people by the cap- 
 tivity. Their history now contained examples 
 of the Almighty's vengeance on the third and 
 fourth generations of them that hate him, as 
 well as of his mercy on thousands of them that 
 love him and keep his commandments. They 
 brought with them the writings of their Pro- 
 
Ill 
 
 phets, as well as their history, and their law, 
 and some of these had their accomplishment in 
 the captivity itself, affording thereby evidence 
 of the Divine original of those which promised 
 a Redeemer. They were held in captivity by 
 a nation, who possessed the sway of the then 
 civilized world. The ten tribes had been sent 
 to its remotest extremities, and those of Judah 
 and Benjamin dwelt in the neighbourhood of 
 Babylon, which was at that time to be consi- 
 dered as the capital of the whole earth. It is 
 a remarkable circumstance, that the departure 
 of the children of Israel out of Egypt, and the 
 captivity of the ten tribes, divide into nearly 
 equal periods the interval between the disper- 
 sion of mankind at the confusion of languages, 
 and the advent of our blessed Redeemer. 
 
 That the knowledge of the Mosaic history, 
 the Jewish law, and the promises in which the 
 chosen people trusted, was by these means ge- 
 nerally diffused would be highly probable, even 
 had we no direct evidence on the subject. But 
 we have the testimony of history both sacred 
 profane, that it really was so. The sovereigns of 
 the Assyrian empire had on different occasions 
 enjoined the reverence of the God^of Israel to 
 every people and nation and language. The 
 mighty Cyrus had stopped amid the career of 
 victory to recognize the people of the Lord, 
 
112 
 
 to restore them to their country, to fulfill the pro- 
 phecy, to execute the purpose for which he had 
 been named by the Prophet Isaiah two hundred 
 years before his birth the shepherd of Lord, the 
 instrument to do his pleasure, that the world 
 might know, from the rising of the sun, and from 
 the West, that Jehovah was the Lord, and that 
 beside him there was no other God. The Jew- 
 ish nation had drawn the attention of the Gre- 
 cian conquerors. Their Scriptures had been 
 translated into the most generally diffused lan- 
 guage of the world, a translation which is still 
 in our hands. And a persuasion was prevalent 
 throughout the whole East, that an extraordi- 
 nary personage was to arise among the Jews, 
 who was to exalt them to universal command. 
 
 At length the fulness of time had arrived. 
 As it had been before the flood, all flesh had 
 corrupted their way. Though they knew God, 
 they glorified him not as God, but held the truth 
 in unrighteousness, changing it into a lie, and 
 worshipping the creature more than the Cre- 
 ator. Changing the glory of the incorruptible 
 God into an image made like to corruptible 
 man, sunk into the basest idolatry and all its 
 concomitant vice and impurity, setting up as 
 objects of adoration and consequently of res- 
 pect and imitation, these lyeing representations 
 
113 
 
 of the Deity, which they clothed, not in purity, 
 and justice, and mercy, and love, but in sensuality, 
 and violence, and rage, and revenge. Compare 
 the character of the gods of ancient mythology j 
 with that, which St. Paul has given of the repro- 
 bate world, and remark the powerful effects which 
 their speculative opinions concerning their gods 
 had on their practice, and how closely the wor- 
 shippers followed the imaginary example of those 
 whom they adored, " filled with all unrighteous. 
 " ness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, 
 " maliciousness, full of envy, murder, debate, 
 " deceit, malignity, despiteful, proud, boasters, 
 " without natural affection, implacable, unmer- 
 " ciful." Surely this, if ever, was the fullness of 
 time, when the powers of darkness reigned thus 
 uncontrolled in the world, when the enemy had 
 come in thus like a flood, for the Spirit of the 
 Lord to lift up an ensign against him, for the 
 Redeemer to come to Israel. 
 
 Human wisdom had been tried, had been 
 fully tried, and tried in vain. Legislators had 
 arisen. They had bound the weak, but could 
 not restrain the strong. They had partially re- 
 gulated external conduct, hut could not reach 
 the heart. They had made submissive subjects, 
 but could not make virtuous men. Philoso- 
 phers had arisen, had declaimed on the beauty 
 
114 
 
 of virtue. But unsanctioned speculations could 
 never retain the violence of passion, could never 
 regulate the impetuosity of the human heart, 
 which is deceitful above all things and despe- 
 rately wicked. Even the sage who harangued 
 with enthusiasm, and the disciple who listened 
 with admiration, so far from having an influ- 
 ence on the rest of the world, sunk them- 
 selves into its pollutions. At no previous time 
 was philosophy so highly cultivated, were the 
 laws so wisely framed, so powerfully sanctioned, 
 so carefully administered, was civilization so 
 widely diffused j in short, at no previous time 
 had the insufficiency of unassisted man, to free 
 the world from the thraldom of sin, been so 
 completely evinced. Surely this was the fulness 
 of time. 
 
 And as the abandoned and impotent state of 
 man required then, more than ever, the salva- 
 tion of a Redeemer, the aid of the Holy Spirit, 
 the promulgation of the law of God ; so did 
 the circumstances of the world at that time 
 render the diffusion of the knowledge of that 
 Saviour, of that Spirit, of that law, more easy, 
 and more rapidly general. Civilization had 
 reached one of these its limits, at which when 
 it arrives, it again recedes. The intercourse of 
 Rome or her dependencies extended over the 
 whole of the inhabited world ; as her empire 
 
115 
 
 did over the whole of the civilized. A spirit 
 of philosophical enquiry, and a readiness and 
 ability to canvass any high pretending claims, 
 were prevalent. It has been asked, why did 
 our Saviour appear at the particular time he 
 did ? — We answer, that as the purpose of his 
 coming was to make atonement for the sins 
 of the whole world, as well those which were 
 antecedent, as those which were subsequent to 
 his sacrifice, it mattered not, in this respect, 
 at what time he came. But as faith in the 
 promises and prophecies which foretold him 
 was requisite before his coming, the fulness of 
 time for him to come was before the grounds 
 of that faith, humanly speaking, would have 
 been too much weakened by an excessive inter- 
 val of time ; when the vices of the world were 
 at their height ; and the self-sufficiency of man 
 had been weighed in the balance and found 
 wanting. And as faith, and knowledge, and 
 Jove, and obedience to the Redeemer, were 
 necessary after his coming, the fulness of time 
 was that, when the Gospel could be most widely 
 and rapidly diffused, its evidence best examined 
 into, and most perfectly established. 
 
 And as it was the fulness of time, so was it 
 also the period pointed to by a succession of 
 prophecies. The scepter had not yet departed 
 from Judah, nor a law-giver from between his 
 
 VOL. II. I 
 
116 
 
 feet. The legislative authority existed in the 
 Sanhedrim, and the scepter was held by the 
 family of Antipas ; who, if we may credit the 
 earliest author who has spoken of him, was of 
 Jewish extraction, and confessedly was of the 
 Jewish religion, until, after the condemnation 
 of Archelaus, Judea was declared a Roman 
 province, shortly after the birth of Christ. 
 
 The seventy weeks were now completed, 
 which Daniel had declared were determined on 
 the people, on the holy city, to finish the trans- 
 gression, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to 
 bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up the 
 vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most 
 Holy One. This period was now completed ac- 
 cording to the explication of the Jews of that 
 day, who professed that they then expected 
 their Messiah ; according to the explication of 
 those who preceded them, from whose report 
 the same opinion prevailed throughout the 
 whole East ; and according even to the explica- 
 tion of many of the Jews since that time, who 
 assert, that in consequence of the sins of the 
 nation, God changed his purpose, and delayed 
 the redemption. 
 
 The limitation of time prevents me from now 
 pointing out to you fully the exact coincidence 
 between the character of our Saviour, and the 
 
117 
 
 predicted character of the Messiah. I shall 
 only remind you, that he was born in Bethle- 
 hem, born of a Virgin of the house of David, 
 as foretold by [saiah, that he was unwittingly 
 and contemptuously called by the Jews a Na- 
 zarene, a word, which signifies preserver, and 
 is, in Exodus, applied to the Deity, and in 
 Isaiah, to that plant, which was to arise from, 
 and preserve the stem of Jesse. 
 
 I must however direct your attention to the 
 humility, with which he, through whom the 
 universe was created, clothed himself, when he 
 came to his own ; an humility, which was a 
 rock of offence to the Jews, concealing from 
 their carnal and proud minds, that real gran- 
 deur, that dignity of righteousness, which they 
 ought to have looked for in the promised Shiloh, 
 in him to whom the scepter belonged, in him 
 who was the Son, who was the messenger of Je- 
 hovah, who was the bearer of reconciliation ; 
 for in all these meanings has the word Shiloh 
 been interpreted, and all of them are equally 
 applicable to Jesus of Nazareth. He who was 
 in the form of God, who is before the Patri- 
 archs were, took upon him the form of a ser- 
 vant, was born among the lowest of the people, 
 and under the most distressful circumstances of 
 poverty. Laid in a manger, under the open air, 
 immediately after his birth, and shortly after 
 
 i 2 
 
118 
 
 hurried from his humble home to avoid the per- 
 secution of a tyrant, and thrown on the com- 
 passion of strangers for concealment and sub- 
 sistence. He made himself of no reputation. 
 Though the beasts of the field have dens, yet 
 had not the Son of Man where to lay his head. 
 He preached the Gospel to the poor, whom the 
 Jewish doctors despised, impiously asserting, 
 that on such, the inspiration of God could never 
 rest. He associated with publicans and sin- 
 ners, he performed the most menial office 
 for his disciples, so as to alarm the pride, 
 which they felt for their master. He sub- 
 mitted himself to death, to a death, which in 
 its preparation, its manner, and its kind, was 
 attended with every circumstance of indig- 
 nity and infamy. And to make these instances 
 of humility the more striking, they are 
 uniformly accompanied by assertions or in- 
 dications of royalty and divinity. When we 
 are told, that he was born in an humble rank, 
 his descent is traced to the kings of Judah. 
 Was he born in the midst of poverty, the hea- 
 venly host hailed the advent of peace to man- 
 kind and glory to God. Were his family forced 
 to fly their country, it was in consequence of 
 the adoration of the wise men of the east. Did 
 he wander in the wilderness, he was there de- 
 clared to be the beloved Son, in whom the Al- 
 mighty was well pleased. When he preached 
 
119 
 
 the Gospel to the poor, he did it as one having 
 authority. When he associated with Publicans, 
 he professed himself the Saviour of sinners. 
 When he washed his disciples feet, he declared 
 himself their master. When he submitted him- 
 self to the death of the cross, he asserted his 
 royal title, his power over the heavenly host, 
 and promised to the penitent malefactor, par- 
 don and salvation. Nor is it only by his exam- 
 ple he recommends to his followers humility. 
 " Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the poor 
 " in spirit. Blessed are they who submit to 
 " reviling and persecution and injustice." Such 
 are the precepts of our meek and humble Re- 
 deemer. 
 
 Oh ! my fellow Christians, how invaluable is 
 this example, how invaluable are these pre- 
 cepts, how entirely indispensable to the Chris- 
 tian is the virtue of humility ! " Except ye 
 " become as little children, ye shall in no wise 
 " enter into the kingdom of God." Pride, 
 from whatsoever source it seems to take its rise, 
 under whatsoever form it offers itself, not only 
 debases the human heart, and unfits it for the 
 social virtues, but also hardens it against the 
 voice of the Almighty, and fills it with rebel- 
 lion and disobedience. Can the proud man, be 
 his pride of whatsoever sort it may, ever be 
 taught to feel, that he is of himself a lost and 
 
120 
 
 wretched creature, that of himself he can nei- 
 ther have faith, nor hope, nor patience, nor 
 charity, nor any thing that is good ; that, such 
 is his miserable state, that the very circum- 
 stance on which he grounds his pride is but as 
 a straw in the balance, as some trifling orna- 
 ment on a criminal who is dragging to execu- 
 tion ? And while pride thus shuts his eyes to 
 his own wretchedness and insufficiency, will he, 
 or can he, seek for aid, where alone aid is to 
 be found ? Will he, or can he, submit himself, 
 his will, his reason, his affections, to the guid- 
 ance of the Holy Spirit, to the government of 
 that God, by whom every one that exalteth 
 himself is abased, who chasteneth every son 
 whom he receiveth, to whom obedience is more 
 grateful than sacrifice ? To this government of 
 the heart and conduct, this reign of the Holy 
 Spirit within us, this kingdom of God, in which 
 there is peace beyond all understanding, and 
 pleasures for evermore, the proud man must 
 always be a stranger. Will he who is proud of 
 his riches, cease to care for the things of this 
 world, to be anxious for the morrow, to lay up 
 his treasure on earth, and his heart there also ? 
 Will he attend to that religion, which declares 
 that he cannot serve God and mammon, which 
 denounces the moral impossibility of a man, 
 who trusteth in his riches, entering into life ? 
 Will he, who is proud of his rank or family, 
 
121 
 
 forego his ambition ? Will he hearken to a 
 system, which teaches us to condescend to men 
 of low estate ? A system preached by the poor, 
 and to the poor, and to which not many rulers, 
 not many noble, not many great men, have 
 listened ? Will he, who is proud of superior 
 intellect, or mental acquirements, submit to be 
 apparently instructed by men of humbler ta- 
 lents than himself ? Will he give his assent to 
 what he can see but as through a glass darkly ? 
 A religion containing mysteries, which he can- 
 not comprehend, teaching with authority rather 
 than persuasion, given to the world by unlet- 
 tered fishermen, and totally unconnected with 
 human philosophy ? 
 
 But above all species of pride, the pride of a 
 fancied superior holiness, is most inconsistent 
 with the kingdom of God. Will he, who 
 thinks himself whole, seek for a physician ? 
 Confident that he stands secure, that he is not 
 as other men are, he will be ever more ready to 
 censure others, than to judge himself j more 
 ready to expose and condemn the speculative 
 errors of others, than to feel, to confess, to 
 rectify, his own errors in practice. It is easier 
 to concern ourselves with the spiritual state of 
 others, than to examine with fear and trembling 
 into our own. It is easier to persuade our- 
 selves, that others shall be excluded from the 
 
122 
 
 strait gate, than to labour, that we ourselves 
 may enter therein. It is easier to be leaders of 
 a sect, to fancy ourselves the lights of the 
 world, than to do justice, to love mercy, and 
 to walk humbly with our God. 
 
 Be not deceived, my fellow Christians, the 
 exclusion of others is not our own salvation. 
 Love of God, faith in our Redeemer, obedi- 
 ence to the Holy Spirit, are not comparative, 
 but absolute qualities. The question at the 
 great day will not be, whether we have loved 
 God more than others have, but whether our love 
 has regulated the conversation of our lives. 
 Not whether we have had faith more than 
 others, but whether we have had faith unto 
 obedience. Not whether we less than others 
 have grieved the Holy Spirit, but whether we 
 have surrendered ourselves wholly to his guid- 
 ance. Let therefore this mind be in you, which 
 was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form 
 of God, did not assume to himself honors equal 
 to that exalted nature, but divested himself of 
 his glory, taking the form of a servant, and be- 
 ing made in the likeness of men. 
 
 To whom, with the Father, and the Holy 
 Spirit, be glory now, and for ever. 
 
SERMON IV. 
 
 I. Corinthians, xv.— -14. 
 
 And if Christ be not risen, then is our preach- 
 ing vain, and your faith also vain. 
 
 Among the many speculative enquiries, 
 which have arisen on religious subjects, that 
 concerning the intention, with which the Chris- 
 tian dispensation was given to mankind, is 
 perhaps one of the most important.— Not, that 
 having a perfect knowledge thereof is neces- 
 sary to salvation, nor yet, that entertaining a 
 right opinion thereon is immediately connected 
 with moral practice, but, that error on this 
 might lead to error on points, which are es- 
 sential, — might blind our understandings to the 
 Gospel of our salvation, and paralise our obe- 
 dience to the teaching which is of God. — Some 
 
124 
 
 have maintained, that the design of the Chris- 
 tian revelation was to supply to mankind a more 
 perfect system of morals. Others, that it was 
 to superadd a perfect sanction to that morality, 
 which was already discoverable by human rea- 
 son. — Others again have held, that to make 
 atonement for sin, and to reconcile the justice 
 and mercy of God, Avas the exclusive object 
 of the divine counsel. — I shall not at present 
 enter on the consideration of these several opi- 
 nions, their relative merits, their grounds, and 
 consequences. — They are each of them singly 
 incomplete. That is, they are far less perfect, 
 than the Scripture itself authorises. — That God 
 sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins ; 
 and not for ours only, but for those of the whole 
 world ; — that Christ gave his life for the life of 
 the world, — a ransom for many ; — that he 
 came to purify to himself a people zealous of 
 good works j — that he has given to us the new 
 commandment of loving one another \ — that 
 he has brought to light life and immortality ; 
 that he has called us to a faith, which is unto 
 obedience,— a faith gounded on better hopes, 
 and surer promises j are the express declarations 
 of the Holy Scripture. — With these declara- 
 tions we should content ourselves, and cau- 
 tiously avoid all speculations, which may be in- 
 consistent with them.— It is not for us to con- 
 jecture what were the counsels of God j it is 
 
125 
 
 dangerous, nay impious, to appeal to the tri- 
 bunal of human reason for what they ought to 
 have been. — And yet, some, and these men of 
 no humble name in religious controversy, 
 have grounded their respective systems on the 
 supposed determination of what were the coun- 
 sels, the designs, the purposes of God, in his 
 government of mankind, — and seem to think, 
 that they render an invaluable service to the 
 cause of religion, by shewing the conformity 
 of revelation with the consequences of these 
 principles ; and, that they thereby add to the 
 evidence of our faith, and bring it more near 
 the confines of abstract certainty. — This method 
 may be useful j— but it may also be dangerous. 
 — And, it is most worthy of remark, that neither 
 our Redeemer himself, nor even his Apostles, 
 ever resorted to such means, for establishing 
 the religion, which they proclaimed to mankind. 
 — They appealed, not to ratiocination, but to 
 the witness of God. — They did not attempt to 
 prove the reasonableness of the Gospel ; but 
 they confirmed it by miracle, and the fulfil- 
 ment of prophecy. — " Go," said Christ to the 
 messengers of John, " and tell him what ye have 
 " seen. — The blind receive their sight, and the 
 " lame walk. The lepers are cleansed, and the 
 " deaf hear. The dead are raised up, and the 
 " poor have the Gospel preached to them.'* — 
 This my fellow Christians, is the appropriate, 
 
126 
 
 the genuine, the original, the only scriptural 
 evidence of our religion. — Our Saviour's entire 
 ministry was one continued argument of this 
 description.— The preaching of his Apostles 
 never referred to any other. It is briefly com- 
 prehended and represented in the passage 
 I have chosen for my text.—-" If Christ be not 
 " risen, then is our preaching vain, and your 
 " hope also is vain." 
 
 The author had been endeavouring to impress 
 on his Corinthian converts the tenet of the re- 
 surection of the dead, and to guard them against 
 error on that momentous subject. — Though 
 well acquainted with the philosophy of the day, 
 and though addressing a people, to whom such 
 wisdom was familiar, he enters into no abstract 
 reasoning from the natural immortality of the 
 soul ; nor does he yet resort to the considera- 
 tion of the attributes of God ; to infer from 
 thence the necessity of a future state, to vin- 
 dicate the wisdom and justice of Providence 
 in the present. No, he rests his conclusion 
 on the authority of the Gospel founded on the 
 simple evidence of miracle. — If Christ be risen, 
 then is our preaching true, and your hope well 
 founded. — If he be not, then is our preaching 
 vain, and your faith also is vain. 
 
 But, perhaps, it may be thought, that how' 
 
127 
 
 ever well adapted this evidence might have been 
 to the age of the Apostles, it has now ceased 
 to be sufficient ; miraculous powers have long 
 since been suspended in the church, and the in- 
 tervention of many centuries may have obscured 
 and weakened the testimony for the facts re- 
 corded by the Evangelists. — It may be thought, 
 that the miracles themselves have need of be- 
 ing substantiated by shewing the consonance of 
 the religion, which they were meant to support, 
 to that, which reason would point out to us 
 ought to be of God. — Suffer me, therefore, to 
 call your attention to the consideration of the 
 evidence for the miraculous facts of Gospel his- 
 tory, and to estimate what its real value at pre- 
 sent is. — And, I trust, you will find, that it is 
 now as it was at first ; — that the resurrection of 
 Christ is the best, the surest, and the safest, 
 reason we can give of the hope, which is in us. 
 
 Let us go back from the present, and trace, 
 gradually, the chain of testimony ; that we 
 may compare the probability, which is offered 
 to us, with that which was presented to the 
 first hearers of Christianity.— There are at pre- 
 sent, and have been nearly since the introduc- 
 tion of printing, an almost countless number of 
 copies of the Holy Scriptures dispersed over 
 the world in various languages. — All of them 
 conspire in bearing testimony, that the Sacred 
 
128 
 
 Text has been preserved uncorrupted during 
 
 that period. Our assurance, that there has 
 
 been no forgery during the last 400 years, is as 
 great as our assurance of any matter of fact 
 whatsoever not coming immediately under the 
 observation of our own senses. — Nay, I might 
 have spared the exception, for, where proba- 
 bility approaches so near to certainty, then, 
 though the abstract difference still exists, yet 
 the assurance, the persuasion generated in the 
 mind, is as great by the one as by the other. — 
 Whatever was the weight of Scripture testi- 
 mony 400 years ago, it is precisely the same at 
 present. The intervening time has not sub- 
 tracted a particle from its value. — Let us now 
 go back to the period preceding this era, and 
 beginning from those who heard the Apostles ; 
 and consider what is the value of the evidence, 
 that there was no alteration during that time. — 
 It is recorded by Eusebius, who wrote about 
 200 years after the transaction, and who col- 
 lected his information, not only from preceding 
 writers, but also from general tradition, — that 
 Quadratus, and other preachers of Christianity, 
 who lived immediately after the first publica- 
 tion of our Scriptures, were in the practice of 
 distributing copies of them among their con- 
 verts. It appears, that this practice was con- 
 tinued, and was also universal ; for, in the per- 
 secution by Galerius, every apostate Christian 
 
129 
 
 was required to surrender his Bible, as the 
 symbol of his recantation : — so that it must 
 have been a generally known fact, that every 
 Christian family was possessed of one. — These, 
 who surrendered them, were but few ; and 
 shortly after, Christianity having became the 
 profession of the Empire, copies of the Scrip- 
 tures were of course immensely multiplied. 
 
 The nature of the material, on which these 
 copies were written, and the religious care, which 
 was bestowed on them, were such as to render 
 them peculiarly lasting.— An individual manu- 
 script might, and probably often did, last for 
 nearly 1000 years. We have at present one 
 complete copy of the Bible, I mean the Alex- 
 andrian, which was made at least in the fifth 
 century, and perhaps much earlier. We have 
 also part of another little less ancient. — This 
 durability, while it aided the multiplication of 
 copies by obviating a corresponding diminution, 
 —supplied also an insurmountable check to the 
 corruption of the Scriptures. — From the time 
 of Quadratus to that of the irruption of the bar- 
 barians, every Christian family possessed a Bi- 
 ble. — Many of these were the copies, which had 
 been distributed by the immediate successors of 
 the Apostles.— From thence to the invention of 
 printing, Bibles, though no longer as numer- 
 ous as Christian families, were at least as nu- 
 
130 
 
 merous as the churches, convents, and othei 
 religious houses ; that is, many tens of thou- 
 sands. — The Scriptures could not be corrupted, 
 because, they were universally in the hands of 
 the people.— They could not be corrupted, be- 
 cause, the manuscripts of the first age reached 
 nearly through the entire period, of which I 
 speak. I choose rather to insist on these con- 
 siderations, than on the circumstance of the ri- 
 val sects mutually watching each other, be- 
 cause, I think them incomparably stronger. — 
 Are they not the testimony of all men in all 
 ages, during the period, to which I allude, that 
 the Scriptures were not corrupted ? — And, if so, 
 can we have a doubt, that our present Scrip- 
 tures are the same as those of the first age of 
 Christianity ? — That they contain the history, 
 and preaching of the Apostles ? And are we 
 not, as to assurance that they do so, precisely 
 in the same situation with those who were their 
 actual hearers ? 
 
 Now, my fellow Christians, let us consider, 
 what kind of evidence was offered to the hearers 
 of the Apostles and their immediate succes- 
 sors ; for precisely the same kind and degree of 
 evidence is, by this unquestionable preservation 
 of the integrity of the New Testament, also of- 
 fered to us. — A number of persons, who stated 
 themselves to have been actual witnesses of what 
 
131 
 
 they related, declared to the world, that Jesus 
 Christ, after having been crucified, and evi- 
 dently dead, again returned to life, remained 
 on earth for many days, and then ascended into 
 heaven. They delivered, at the same time, to 
 the world, a written account of this transaction, 
 which was forthwith dispersed among all the 
 Christian converts. — Now, what is the value of 
 this written account ? Is it to be considered as 
 the testimony only of its four authors ? By no 
 means. — It is the testimony of every Jewish 
 convert, who received it. — It is the testimony 
 of the five hundred brethren, who beheld our 
 Lord immediately after his resurrection. — It 
 is the testimony of them, with whom he con- 
 versed during the interval between his resurrec- 
 tion and assension. It is the testimony of all 
 those who witnessed his assension. — It is the 
 dying declaration of every Jewish martyr, who 
 perished in the first age of Christianity. — Every 
 one of them, by receiving this written account, 
 sanctioned it as his own. — The Evangelists 
 were, if I may use the expression, merely the 
 secretaries of this immense body ; — every one 
 of whom would have written the same, had 
 occasion called for it ;-— every one of whom at- 
 tested the sincerity, with which he joined in its 
 publication, by the sacrifice of all which human 
 weakness holds dear ; and many of whom 
 finally sealed it with their blood. — But here, 
 
 VOL. II. K 
 
132 
 
 perhaps, some objector may ask, why did not all 
 the Jews submit to such a weight of evidence ? 
 — Precisely for the same reason, my fellow 
 Christians, that the Egyptians did not acknow- 
 ledge and obey the divine authority of Moses. 
 —We know, from history, that a belief of ma- 
 gical powers was universally prevalent among 
 the Jews at the time. — Though they admitted, 
 that the event was supernatural, it did not 
 therefore necessarily follow, in their minds, that 
 it was divine. — And, my fellow Christians, it 
 may not be useless to remark, that if we, from 
 whose minds a more advanced state of science, 
 a more enlightened philosophy, has removed 
 these absurd delusions, if we are weak in our 
 faith, if we hesitate in our belief, we have less 
 to plead in palliation of our hardness of heart 
 than they had. 
 
 But another objector, in the garb of fancied 
 wisdom, may profess,— that it is harder to be- 
 lieve the miracle than to disbelieve the testi- 
 mony j — it being more consonant to experience, 
 that testimony should be false, than that mira- 
 cle should happen.— This objection, you all 
 know, has been ably and fully answered— by a 
 learned Prelate of our Church. I shall there- 
 fore not delay on it, farther than to remark, 
 that to the resurrection this general assertion, 
 even if admitted, would not apply ; — for the 
 
13.3 
 
 testimony for the resurrection is such, as has 
 never before, nor never since, been offered 
 for any other fact ; — and there is, therefore, no 
 opportunity for experience to compare the fre- 
 quency, or infrequency, of its truth, with that 
 of the event, which it is brought to establish. — 
 No other testimony has been so carefully, so 
 multifariously, so unquestionably, transmitted 
 to us. — Of no other testimony have the wit- 
 nesses been so numerous, so incapable of being 
 deceived themselves, or of wishing to deceive 
 others. — No other testimony has been supported 
 by the same sacrifices.— Take any circumstance 
 however familiar to our belief, to which we 
 most strongly and implicitly assent; — suppose 
 any historical fact of even the preceding age ; — 
 have we any such overpowering testimony for 
 it? — By what such sacrifices have its evidences 
 been supported ? — Over what such affections of 
 human nature, over what such opposition, such 
 investigation of adversaries, has it triumphed ? 
 — By what such integrity, such sincerity, such 
 numbers, has it been confirmed ? 
 
 Here, my fellow Christians, let me entreat 
 you to consider, how it becomes us to act, who 
 are " encompassed by such a cloud of wit- 
 " nesses." Jesus Christ, who was crucified, 
 dead, and buried, who rose again from the 
 dead, and ascended into heaven, as surely, as 
 
 k 2 
 
134 
 
 any fact, for which we have not the actual evin 
 dence of our senses ; — he has declared, by his 
 Apostle, that he died for our sins, and rose again 
 for our justification. — Shall we not gratefully 
 avail ourselves of the offered mercy ? — Shall 
 we not lay hold on the salvation, which is set 
 before us ? Shall we hesitate, because we 
 cannot explain, why a vicarious sacrifice should 
 be accepted ? — He has declared to us a God, 
 and that " God is love shall we suspend our 
 understandings, and restrain our hearts, until 
 we can confirm his testimony, until we can in- 
 vestigate, and ascertain, the attributes of that 
 Almighty Being, by the slowness, and obscu- 
 rity, of ratiocination? — He has declared, that 
 he is one with the Father ; shall we hesitate, 
 because, we cannot reconcile it to the imagi- 
 nary grandeur of the Idol of philosophical ab- 
 straction ?— Shall we presumptuously ask, is not 
 this the Carpenter's son ? — He has promised us, 
 that he will give the Holy Spirit to those who 
 ask him, — that he will send us another Com- 
 forter, who shall abide with us for ever j shall 
 we discredit, or explain away these promises ? 
 Shall we neglect, shall we quench the Spirit, 
 because, we cannot comprehend its influence, 
 because, we know not how it cometh, or whither 
 it goeth ? — He has called us to a faith, which is 
 unto obedience, a faith, which worketh by love ; 
 — he has declared, that, without holiness, no 
 
135 
 
 man shall see the Lord ; he has called on us, 
 to work out our own salvation, with fear and 
 trembling, while it is God, which worketh in 
 us, both to will, and to do ; — shall we be slow 
 in our obedience, through the vain conceit, that 
 the necessity of our cooperation would lessen 
 the sufficiency of an all perfect sacrifice ? No, 
 my fellow Christians, let us rather walk humbly 
 with our God, do righteously, and love mercy. 
 — The ark of the Christian covenant refuses 
 the presumptuous hand of human weakness to 
 unveil its mysteries, or to support its progress. — 
 Inconceivableness, being above the ken of 
 human reason, or the reach of human discovery, 
 can be no objection to any revelation or doc- 
 trine, delivered by him, who rose from the dead, 
 and ascended into heaven. — Let me now ask you, 
 my fellow Christians if you yourselves knew of 
 any person, that he had performed such mira- 
 cles as our Saviour did, that he had declared 
 himself God, and confirmed that declaration 
 by rising from the dead and ascending into 
 heaven, would you not believe him ? Would 
 you not obey him ?-— And yet, you could not, 
 by any means, know it more surely than you 
 may know, if you consider the evidences, that 
 Jesus of Nazareth has done so. — Do you then 
 indeed believe in him ?— If you do, you must 
 love him ; for love is the natural offspring of 
 that gratitude and admiration, which must re- 
 
136 
 
 suit from such a faith- — If you love him, you 
 
 must obe) him ; for obedience is, at once, the 
 consequence, and the criteiion, of affection. — 
 Do you indeed believe ? — Can you lay your 
 anxieties, your pride, your resentments, at the 
 feet of your Redeemer ? — Can you do good for 
 evil ? — Can your forgive those who have injured 
 you, with that full, that affectionate pardon, 
 which you wish yourselves to receive from your 
 God ? — Or, will you delay, until you can satisfy 
 yourselves of the civil expediency of these com- 
 mands ?— Expedient, or inexpedient, they are 
 the commands of Christ. — Probable, or impro- 
 bable, the promises of the Gospel are the pro- 
 mises of Christ. — If he be not risen, then is our 
 preaching vain, and your faith also is vain. — 
 But if he be, those promises are of the greatest 
 certainty, — those commands of the utmost im- 
 portance. — If he be, life and immortality are 
 the gift of God -death, eternal death, is the 
 wages of transgression. 
 
SERMON V. 
 
 Luke, i. — 78 and 79. 
 
 Through the tender mercy of our God, whereby 
 the day spring from on high hath visited us, 
 to give light to them that sit in darkness and in 
 the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the 
 way of peace. 
 
 WE have here, my fellow Christians, a de- 
 claration uttered by an individual, whom the 
 sacred historian states to have been under the 
 immediate influence of inspiration, to have been 
 filled with the Holy Ghost. — Jt proclaims the 
 source, the manner, and the object of the Gos- 
 pel, and therefore, both from the importance 
 of its subject, and the authority of its convey- 
 ance, demands our most serious consideration. 
 — It is not the proposal of some curious ques- 
 
138 
 
 tion, which may minister strife, it is not the 
 decision of some minor point of metaphysical 
 theology, collected by ratiocination from some 
 obscure allusion, it is the voice of God speak- 
 ing by the instrumentality of the Prophet, and 
 declaring to us the source, and object, of our 
 highest hopes, — and the manner of our salva. 
 tion. It declares, that the source from whence 
 the dayspring from on high has visited us is 
 the tender mercy of our God. — It pronounces, 
 that the mode of its efficacy is by the illumina- 
 tion of our minds. It describes the previous 
 state of those, who were thus mercifully en- 
 lightened, to have been a state of most pe- 
 rilous darkness. It describes them, sitting, as 
 it were, under the very shadow of impending 
 destruction. It proclaims, the great object of 
 this merciful visitation to have been to extri- 
 cate them out of this awful ruin, and to guide 
 their feet in the paths of safety and of peace.— 
 Suffer me, my fellow Christians, to call your 
 attention, your most earnest attention, to the 
 several parts of these glad tidings of exceeding 
 joy, this glorious Gospel of our salvation. 
 
 There are, perhaps, few more distinguishing 
 features of the religion of the Bible, than the 
 character, under which it presents the God of 
 nature to the adoration of mankind, namely, 
 as a God of mercy. — The superstition of the 
 
139 
 
 savage seeks its Deity in the destructive blnze 
 of the lightening, or the devastation of the 
 whirlwind, and bows, with abject fear, amid 
 the ruins of convulsed nature, before an ima- 
 ginary, malevolent, and vengeful being. — The 
 mythology of the Poets, while it clothed the 
 Gods of civilized antiquity with the passions, 
 and even the weaknesses, of human nature, 
 passed by the neglected attribute of mercy, in 
 its fiction of divinity.— »By the Philosopher it 
 was proudly rejected from the grandeur of his 
 invented God. — To a being eternal, and in- 
 finitely present, supremely happy, and su- 
 premely wise, mercy seemed too humble a qua- 
 lity to add aught, either of enjoyment, or 
 of dignity. — The Gods of the Epicureans 
 were careless of mankind. The Deity of the 
 Stoics exerted only his prudence in the govern- 
 ment of human affairs. — The world by wisdom 
 knew not God.— The natural man receiveth not 
 the things which be of God. — It was reserved for 
 the incarnate Word, by the mouths of his Pro- 
 phets and Apostles, to proclaim to mankind, 
 that God is Love, and that his mercy is over 
 all his works. — This neglected attribute, which, 
 by some unaccountable blindness, the savage 
 had not collected from the bounty displayed in 
 the universe, which the Poet had omitted to 
 transfer from our own to a superior nature, — to 
 the glory and the enjoyment of which the 
 
140 
 
 Philosopher had been insensible, this neglected 
 attribute stands formost in the title of the Chris- 
 tian's God ; — that God, who proclaimed him- 
 self, as he passed before Moses, The Lord, The 
 Lord God, merciful and gracious. — It is no sub- 
 ordinate or adventitious quality, it is the cha- 
 racter, by which the Almighty chooses to be 
 known by mankind, — eclipsing by a superior 
 glory the other perfections of his nature. — It is 
 not to the infinite wisdom, the Almighty power, 
 the incomprehensible existence, of Jehovah, 
 that mankind owe their pardon and salvation, 
 but to the tender mercy of our God, whereby 
 the dayspring from on high hath visited us. 
 
 Yes, my fellow Christians, vain would be 
 the attempt to demonstrate any necessary con- 
 nection between the wisdom, the omnipotence, 
 the infinity of God, and the pardon of man- 
 kind. — Justly has the Psalmist exclaimed, 
 ** Lord, what is man, that thou so regardest 
 " him, or the children of men, that thou visit- 
 " est them !" — Reason can see no cause, why, 
 among the countless systems, which circulate 
 in the vast expanse of space, and have been, 
 and shall be for ages innumerable, the wisdom 
 and power of the Creator could not find ample 
 and enduring opportunities for their exertion ; 
 why the Almighty should deem the glorious 
 display of his infinite perfections to the innu- 
 
141 
 
 merable company of angels, which, day without 
 night, circle his throne rejoicing, — why he 
 should deem such display insufficient,— except 
 he visited this world of ours, — this speck in the 
 boundless ocean of being, and dwelt among 
 the sons of men. — But, what reason could not 
 discern, what the intellectual pride of man, 
 seeking to comprehend the incomprehensible 
 God, would reject, nay even in many, who 
 trusted in their own strength, has rejected, — 
 that has revelation clearly and fully declared to 
 us. — Great, without doubt, is this mystery of 
 divinity.— Worthy of the admiration of men 
 and angels is that attribute of mercy, which led 
 the son of God to leave that glory, which he 
 had before the world began, and to manifest 
 himself to mankind in the flesh. 
 
 The next particular in these glorious tidings 
 of the mercy of God, which demands our at- 
 tention, is the description of the mode of its 
 efficacy, that it is meant to operate by the illu- 
 mination of our minds, — that the dayspring 
 from on high has visited us to give light to the 
 objects of redeeming Love. — It is not by any 
 violent and resistless abstraction of the causes 
 of temptation, it is not by any overpowering 
 coercion of our faculties and actions, that the 
 gracious work of our renovation is effected, 
 that we are vindicated from the bondage of sin 
 
142 
 
 into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 
 — As the Apostle declares, that darkness of un- 
 derstanding, and blindness of heart, had alien- 
 ated mankind from the life, which was pleasing 
 in the sight of God,— so the Gospel, which we 
 are here concerned with, proclaims, that the 
 removal of that darkness was to be the remedy 
 for that alienation. — Had the change been pro- 
 duced by coercion, the moral character, where- 
 by, alone, obedience can be pleasing, namely, 
 its being voluntary, would have been impossi- 
 ble.— As sin had originated in a voluntary dis- 
 obedience ; so by a voluntary obedience must 
 salvation from sin be effected. — Had the change 
 been produced by an alteration of our physical 
 and moral state of being, by transfering us to 
 an higher order in the scale of creation, — it 
 would no longer be man, but a different class of 
 existences, which would have been redeemed ; 
 — the usual order, which we observe in the 
 works of Providence, would have been departed 
 from, which works by gradual, not sudden 
 transitions, — and which would indicate, that 
 the merciful design of our Creator was, first, to 
 save us from sin, such as tve are, and, afterwards, 
 to exalt us to a more glorious state of being.— 
 For this purpose, to enlighten the minds of 
 mankind, to present to them a knowledge of 
 the merciful designs of Providence in their 
 favour, and thereby to awaken their gratitude, 
 
143 
 
 to supply them with that wisdom, which is from 
 above, and which, influencing our strongest 
 and best affections, can dedicate them to the 
 service of God, and regulate the whole conver- 
 sation of our lives, is obviously a most appro- 
 priate and certain means of operation. — If we 
 are told, and believe, that we are, and have 
 been from eternity, objects of the love of our 
 heavenly Father, — if we are told, and believe, 
 that he has given his son, that that son has 
 given himself, to make atonement for our sins, 
 if we are told, and believe that he has pro- 
 mised his Holy Spirit to them that ask in faith, 
 that that Spirit is ever ready to sustain our 
 infirmities, to aid our insufficiency, — to be 
 the author and perfector of our faith, the 
 source of holy desires, good counsels, and just 
 works, — if, I say, we are told, and believe, all 
 this, will we not naturally, I had almost said 
 necessarily, love in return that Father, Son, 
 and Spirit, devote ourselves, our souls, and 
 bodies, to the service of our God, bow at the 
 throne of his mercy, and become willing in 
 the day of his power ? — Where then is the domi- 
 nion of sin ?— Is not our captivity led captive ? 
 Where are the alurements of the world ! — Shall 
 we not by faith overcome the world ? — Shall 
 not the love of God shed abroad into our hearts 
 triumph over every earthly affection ? — Shall we 
 not go on from strength to strength, until we 
 
144 
 
 arrive at the fulness of the stature of the sons 
 of God ? 
 
 And, my fellow Christians, what a contrast 
 is this to our former state ! — When that day- 
 spring from on high first visited ns, we sat in 
 darkness. — When that Spirit first descended, he 
 moved, as at the material creation, on the face 
 of a void and formless abyss — We sat in dark- 
 ness,- -under the very shadow of impending 
 destruction. — The very ruin, which every 
 instant threatened by its fall to crush the human 
 race in everlasting death, shut out from their 
 view the light of heaven, by which alone they 
 could not know their danger, or hope for pre- 
 servation. 
 
 But, my fellow Christians, let us carefully 
 consider, whether this description belongs ex- 
 sively and solely to the state of mankind in 
 general at the advent of our blessed Lord. — 
 Let us well consider, whether it be not equally 
 applicable to every individual, who has not yet 
 received into his heart the knowledge of the 
 Gospel of Christ, — who has not yet submitted 
 his affections to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. 
 — Without these sure testimonies of the Lord 
 which give light unto the simple, and rejoice 
 the heart, without those right statutes, those 
 true judgments, which convert the soul, care- 
 
145 
 
 less, because ignorant, — hardened, because in- 
 sensible, he sits in blind security, and in the 
 midst of ruin dwells in Egyptian darkness. 
 Such was the state of every one of us, before 
 our hearts were turned towards the Gospel of 
 Christ. — Such may be the case with many of 
 us yet. — Many of us may have hitherto closed 
 our ears against the voice of the Saviour, and 
 shut our hearts against the intrusion of the 
 Holy Spirit.— God grant there may be none 
 such among my present audience. — But if 
 there be, let me entreat them, as they value 
 the prospects of a boundless futurity, which 
 lies before them, — to suffer themselves to be 
 roused from their lethargic delusion, their 
 
 procrastinating apathy, to fly from the 
 
 haunts of sinners, to rise from the seat of the 
 scornful, to meditate on the law of their God, 
 by night, and by day, — to read their Bibles, 
 diligently, carefully, humbly, to read them, to 
 lay hold on the hope, which is therein set before 
 them, the salvation, which is therein offered to 
 them. — The sun of righteousnes has risen with 
 healing on his wings, let them open their eyes 
 to that glorious light, it will guide their feet 
 into to paths of safety and of peace. 
 
 But, will the mere perusal of the Scriptures, 
 the mere attending to the Gospel, effect all 
 this ?— Assuredly the reception of it will j for 
 
146 
 
 it is the power of God unto salvation j — it is 
 the history of God's inconceivable mercies 
 towards fallen man ; it is the history of the 
 solicitude of a tender parent for his mindstruck 
 child ; and the first exertion of returning sa- 
 nity shall be grateful affection, the next hum- 
 ble obedience. — The bonds of Christian duty 
 are the bonds of love, its cords are these of 
 a man. — From the reception of the Gospel, 
 does this heavenly principle of Love to God 
 originate; from the belief of the Gospel, does 
 it gather strength ; by the persuasion, the con- 
 viction, of the Gospel's truth, is it rendered 
 perfect ; so as to cast out all suspicion, and to 
 triumph over every other motive of the human 
 system It is this, from which, neither tribu- 
 lation, nor anguish, nor famine, nor the sword, 
 nor hope of worldly good, nor fear of worldly 
 evil, can separate the believer's heart. It is 
 this, which, in all ages of the history of God's 
 people has produced the most glorious instances 
 of benevolent exertion, and disinterested self 
 denial. — It has changed the human heart from 
 stone to flesh. — It has eradicated every sinful 
 passion, and cherished every charity of our 
 nature. And, what it has done for others, it 
 is equally powerful to effect in us. — To us, it 
 may be as a pole star amid the waves of a tem- 
 pestuous ocean, — a brazen serpent in the wil- 
 derness of our mortal pilgrimage, on which, 
 
147 
 
 the wounded soul may look and live. — It may, 
 in this world, lead us through ways of peace, 
 and paths of pleasantness, — and, in that which 
 is to come, present us at the throne of our 
 Redeemer's glory, clothed in his righteousness, 
 — in righteousnes, which is his gift, because, 
 it has proceeded from that love, which his 
 spirit has shed abroad into our hearts. 
 
 Yes, my fellow Christians, he, that came to 
 be the glory of his people, and to be a light 
 to lighten the nations, — came, as the inspired 
 Zacharias has declared, to guide our feet into 
 the way of peace — Peaceful are the Christian's 
 ways ; for the grand obstacle to peace is re- 
 moved. — Sin, with all its cancerous roots, which 
 disease and render man a living mass of ago- 
 nized corruption, is eradicated. The turbu- 
 lent affections, which distract the heart, the 
 hurtful lusts, which drown men in perdition, 
 are removed, and in their room the dormant, 
 though original, determinations of our nature, 
 as it came blameless and very good from the 
 hands of its Creator, are revived. The glow 
 of Christian sympathy and Christian love is 
 awakened. — The cheering, the delightful hope 
 of immortality is excited. — That hope, which 
 maketh not ashamed, — which gives dignity to 
 our self-anxiety, nay even renders it holy, — 
 prolongs, from time to eternity, our love for 
 
 VOL. II. L 
 
148 
 
 the present objects of our affection, — and re- 
 stores to our hearts, with assured expectation, 
 even those, whom death has snatched away. — 
 Instead of the suggestions of the evil one, are ex- 
 perienced the impulses, the fruits, of the Spirit 
 of God. — Every delightful feeling of our nature 
 is cherished, matured, and perfected. — No 
 longer is felt that fearful looking after judg- 
 ment, that terror which is torment. — There, in 
 the Christian's paths, — is not heard the shout 
 of vicious revelry, which leaves behind disgust 
 and remorse. There, are not felt the stings of 
 envy, revenge, and malice. His heart is the 
 temple of the Lord, into which no evil thing 
 can enter ; — it is the paradise of God, formed 
 by the Word, blessed by the Spirit, and en- 
 lightened by the presence of its Creator. 
 
 Such, my fellow Christians, — would to God 
 I could say such are, — such every one of us may 
 be, if we receive not the grace of God in vain. 
 — Such are the treasures, which the God of 
 nature pours forth in glorious abundance for 
 our acceptance. — Plenteous is the harvest.— 
 May its gracious Giver grant, that the reapers be 
 not few.— Do not your hearts, my fellow Chris- 
 tians, join me in this prayer ?— If they do, let 
 your actions, your conduct, bear testimony to 
 
 your sincerity You can impart, or assist in 
 
 imparting, toothers the knowledge of that Gos- 
 
149 
 
 pel, which has been given for our common salva- 
 tion. — Even in the tender mercy of our God can 
 you participate. — That dayspring, which from 
 on high hath visited us, you can assist in dis- 
 playing to the eyes of those, who otherwise 
 must continue to sit in darkness and the shadow 
 of death. — You can assist in guiding into the 
 way of peace the feet of those, who otherwise 
 must be far from it. — God hath prepared the 
 seed, and hath blessed the field. — Christian ! 
 Put forth your hand to the plough. If you 
 deem your Master's gifts of value ; — if you 
 think his promises sure ; — aid in the diffusion 
 of those gifts to others. — Christian ! If you 
 believe in your God,— assist in leading others 
 to his Gospel. 
 
SERMON VI. 
 
 Micah. vi,— 8. 
 
 He hath shewed thee, Oh Man ! what is good; 
 and what doth the Lord require of thee, but 
 to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly 
 with thy God ? 
 
 IT is a most humiliating comparison, and, 
 therefore, a most useful one, to examine, in 
 opposition with each other, the moral powers 
 of man, as he is in himself, as he stands iso- 
 lated from, and independant of, divine assist- 
 ance, with his powers, and means of obedience, 
 when under the teaching of the word of God, 
 and the influence of the Holy Spirit. Placed, 
 at the commencement of his existence, in the 
 garden of Eden, Man disobeyed the command- 
 ment, disbelieved the denunciation of punish- 
 
151 
 
 ment, departed from his reliance on the mercy 
 of his Creator, listened to the tempter, and pre- 
 maturely aspired to that knowledge of good and 
 evil, which his God had not as yet thought fit 
 to communicate.— The faculty of distinguish- 
 ing he indeed acquired by his fatal act, but the 
 power of availing himself of it, of regulating 
 his conduct thereby, he did not acquire ; but, 
 on the contrary, by the corruption of his na- 
 ture, rendered his obedience to the suggestions 
 of this discrimination impossible. — He had, as 
 it were, by some powerful drug, been gifted 
 with a new species of vision, but the organ 
 thereof was diseased and distorted ; his whole 
 moral system was thereby paralized j — he saw, 
 but saw imperfectly and falsely ; — he saw, but 
 could not follow. The insufficiency, — the worse 
 than insufficiency, of such a guidance was 
 manifested in the history of mankind, from the 
 time of the fall to that of the deluge, when 
 violence had spread over the earth, when every 
 thought of man's heart was evil continually, 
 and all flesh had corrupted their way. It was 
 manifested in the history of mankind, from the 
 deluge, to the coming of the Redeemer, when 
 all, but the favoured few, whom God thought 
 fit to make the depositories of his promises and 
 his will, when all, but these few, whom God 
 vouchsafed to guide, were, because of their 
 unbelief, given over to their own hearts' lusts, 
 
152 
 
 and in consequence thereof, wrought all abomi- 
 nations with greediness. — It is manifest, in 
 the history of mankind, from the Redemption 
 to this present day. — In which period, even 
 temporal happiness and comfort, even the moral 
 decencies of life, even the exterior of human 
 virtue, have been, and are commensurate with 
 and proportional to the duffusion of true reli- 
 gion.-— Would you duly appreciate the efficacy 
 of man's unaided moral power, go to those na- 
 tions to whom the light of Christianity has not 
 yet penetrated ; — you will find them compara- 
 tively uncultivated, unhappy, and immoral. — 
 Would you wish to extend the experiment, go 
 to those among whom all traditionary reliques 
 of Divine revelation have wholly perished, and 
 you will find them sunk in the most degraded, 
 the most disgusting, state of brutal vice, and 
 savage misery. Go even to those of civilized 
 mankind, who have despised, or even neglected 
 the teaching of the word of God.— Though the 
 intellectual advantages, among which they live, 
 have improved and strengthened their mental 
 powers ; though in science, in invention, in 
 worldly prudence, in ingenuity, in that know- 
 ledge, which is power, they are as Gods to the 
 rest of mankind ; yet, there is one faculty, 
 which these advantages have not affected. — 
 Their moral discrimination of good and evil re- 
 mains as impotent, as when it was purchased 
 
153 
 
 by the shipwreck of Adam's faith and obedi- 
 ence, at the fatal tree of Eden.— It cannot re- 
 strain them from impurity. It cannot restrain 
 them from sensuality. It cannot restrain them 
 from chicanery and dishonesty. . It cannot re- 
 strain them from slander, from revenge, from 
 murder. — Nay the duellist will tell you, that it 
 is his sense of honor, his moral sense, which 
 leads him to the field. 
 
 Wretched as is the Hindu, or the Musel- 
 man ;— disgusting as is the savage ; the Chris 
 tian who departs from the teaching of his God, 
 and consults only his own heart for his conduct, 
 is .more miserable, more vicious, more de- 
 graded. 
 
 God, however, has never yet left himself 
 without a witness to mankind. — Through the 
 family of Seth, he communicated to the ante- 
 diluvian world the knowledge of his will. — 
 In that family there was one, who, emphati- 
 cally, walked with God; and another, whom 
 the Almighty vouchsafed to make a preacher of 
 righteousness, during the space of 120 years, 
 a declarer of justification by a future Redeemer, 
 while the long suffering of God suspended his 
 vengeance over an offending world, in hopes, 
 that they might have a faith in those promises, 
 which should produce obedience ; — in hopes, 
 
154 
 
 that they might believe in that Redeemer, and 
 live. 
 
 In after times, the family of Abraham were 
 the vehicles of divine instruction to mankind, — 
 the chosen people, the nation of Priests and 
 Prophets, in whom all the families of the earth 
 were to be blessed. — He left them, not to the 
 vanity of their own imaginations, but gave 
 them an undefiled law converting the soul, sure 
 testimonies giving wisdom to the simple, right 
 statutes making glad the heart, and pure com- 
 mandments giving light unto the eyes. — In the 
 emphatical language of my text, — " God hath 
 " shewed thee ! oh man, what is good." — He 
 hath not left thee to thine own devices. He 
 hath not left thee to thine own powers of dis- 
 crimination. He has marked out thy path.— 
 He has ordained the good works, in which thou 
 shouldst walk.— He has revealed to thee his will. 
 He hath shewed thee, oh man ! what is good. 
 — And what is the sum and substance of this 
 revealed will, this religious morality, — this 
 righteousness, which is of God ? Hear it in 
 comprehensive and beautitul simplicity from 
 the mouth of the Prophet. — " And what doth 
 " the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, to 
 " love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" 
 — Hear from the Apostle, in what consists pure 
 and undefiled religion. — Hear from the Re- 
 
155 
 
 deemer himself, on what hang all the law and 
 the Prophets. 
 
 Suffer me, my fellow Christians, to call your 
 attention, your most serious attention, to the 
 several branches of this comprehensive sum- 
 mary, to consider them separately, though they 
 do not exist separately, — righteousness, — mercy, 
 — and humhle dependance on God ; — Graces, 
 which though three in character, are like him, 
 from whom they proceed, but one in sub- 
 stance. 
 
 It would, perhaps, be superfluous to prove 
 to you, that the words, by which the Prophet 
 has conveyed the first of these injunctions, " to 
 " do justly," are of far more comprehensive 
 signification than the present, and vulgar use, 
 of the word " justly" would seem to indicate. 
 The meaning is by no means confined to 
 making equitable decisions between man and 
 man, nor even to the abstaining from injuring 
 our neighbour's property by violence or fraud ; 
 — but is the same as the word righteously would 
 have expressed ; justice and righteousness, with 
 their respective derivatives, being indiscrimi- 
 nately used, in our version, as renderings of 
 the same original words, and consequently meant 
 to convey the same ideas. — Now righteousness, 
 and consequently justice, in its Scriptural sense, 
 
156 
 
 implies the fulfilment of every thing, which is 
 enjoined in the divine law ; whether it respects 
 others, or ourselves, the discharge of every 
 practical duty, the obligation to which is ren- 
 dered, what moralists call, perfect, by being 
 commanded by the word of God. — When, there- 
 fore, we are required to do justly, we are requir- 
 ed not merely to abstain from dishonesty, but also 
 from hatred, from variance, from wrath, from 
 strife, from seditions, from factions, from envy- 
 ings, and from murders ; — we are required, 
 not merely to abstain from sining against our 
 neighbour, but also against ourselves, — to ab- 
 stain from fornications, uncleaness, lascivious- 
 ness, drunkeness, and revellings : — we are 
 called on, in every relation of life, to cease to 
 do evil, and to learn to do well ; — we are en- 
 joined to moral innocence, and to moral acti- 
 vity,— to be obedient to our parents and supe- 
 riors, grateful to our friends, equitable to all 
 men, useful to our country. — All these, some 
 moralist may say, are but the dictates of rea- 
 son, the selections of our moral sense. — True, 
 if thereby be meant, what reason must ap- 
 prove on consideration, though she had not 
 herself discovered, — what, on being presented 
 to our moral sense, must be most grateful, 
 though we had not been led thereto by that 
 sense. Though human wisdom led not man- 
 kind to the mine to seek the useful ore, yet 
 
157 
 
 when it was found, she approved its advantages, 
 and appreciated its value. — Though the children 
 of Israel found not, nor even sought for a 
 spring in the wilderness, yet when the living 
 streams followed the rod of Moses from the 
 stoney rock, they were refreshed by, and re- 
 joiced in their waters. — Truly the yoke of 
 Christ is easy, and his burden is light. — The 
 first command of that kingdom, which the Holy 
 Spirit would establish within us, is to no un- 
 reasonable privation, no useless sacrifice, no 
 toilsome or difficult or dangerous exertion ; — it 
 is not, (in the language of the Prophet,) that 
 we should come before the most high God with 
 burnt sacrifices, with thousands of rams, or ten 
 thousand rivers of oil ; — it is not that we should 
 give our first born for our transgression, or the 
 fruit of our body for the sin of our soul, — but, 
 that we should follow the most approved dic- 
 tates of our reason, the most pleasing reflec- 
 tions of our moral discrimination. 
 
 But, this is not enough. — That the man of 
 God may be perfectly furnished unto all good 
 works, he must add to his patient continuance 
 in well doing brotherly kindness and charity. — 
 To whatsoever things are just, to whatsoever 
 things are pure, he must add that, which is 
 lovely, which is of good report.— We are called 
 on, not merely to those things, the obligation 
 
158 
 
 to which is perfect, but also to those, whose 
 obligation is inferior ;— not merely to those, 
 which we are commanded, but also those, to 
 which we are exhorted. It is required of us, 
 not only that we should do justly, but also that 
 we should love mercy. — Is it difficult, my fellow 
 Christians, to love,— -to practise, mercy ?— Is 
 it not rather the gratification of the most de- 
 lightful feelings of our hearts ? — Is it not rather 
 the enjoyment of the finest emotions, and the 
 greatest exstacy ? — Tell me, any among you, 
 who have ever bent over the bed of desolate 
 sickness, — who have restored the afflicted, and 
 bound up the broken hearted, — who have wit- 
 nessed the combination of gratitude to your- 
 selves with pious thanksgivings to your God,— 
 tell me, what is the sensual pleasure, for years 
 of which you would exchange that moment ? 
 Yes, my fellow Christians, the yoke of Christ 
 is easy, and his burden is light. The first com- 
 mand of the kingdom of God is, that we should 
 obey the dictates of the most perfect reason ; 
 the next, that we should gratify the purest na- 
 tural affection ; — an affection the source of the 
 most unmixed pleasure, without remorse or 
 satiety,— encreasing, by every indulgence, both 
 in influence and enjoyment, — consecrating us 
 to be the ministers of the Almighty's love to 
 mankind, and drawing us every day more near 
 the great pattern for our imitation, the God 
 
159 
 
 of our hope. — We ourselves are the children 
 of mercy. Our creation, our preservation, 
 our redemption, all the blessings of this life,— 
 every happiness or comfort we possess, are from 
 the mercy of God. — Shall we not therefore be 
 merciful, even as our Father, which is in heaven, 
 is merciful ?— Jesus, who gave himself for us, 
 who, while he was perfect God, was also perfect 
 man, displayed, as one of the most prominent 
 and pleasing characteristics of that perfect 
 human nature, compassion. — He had compas- 
 sion on the multitude, as you have heard in 
 the lesson of this day, and he miraculously fed 
 them. — He had compassion on the sick, and he 
 healed them. — He had compassion on the sisters 
 of Lazarus, — he wept, — and raised their brother 
 from the dead. — He had compassion on the in- 
 habitants of Jerusalem, he preached the Gospel 
 to their poor, and anxiously sought to gather 
 them to him, with every expression of the 
 fondest parental solicitude. — Can it then be 
 difficult, or grievous, or absurd, to follow the 
 suggestion of that natural affection, which 
 was the most distinguishing property of human 
 nature, when in its most perfect state j that 
 feature, which it has retained of the re- 
 semblance of God in which it was created ; — 
 that quality, which was withdrawn from the 
 gentile world because of their unbelief, when 
 they were left implacable, unmerciful, without 
 
160 
 
 natural affection,— but which has been restored 
 to us by the blood of Christ, as one of the 
 first earnests of our redemption ? To follow 
 such an affection cannot be grievous. — Truly* 
 the ways of heavenly wisdom are ways of plea- 
 santness, and all her paths are peace. 
 
 The third injunction of the Prophet is, that 
 we should walk humbly with our God. — This is 
 the last, the highest step of the climax, and 
 virtually implies the presence of the two 
 others. — They cannot exist without it. They 
 must exist with it. — It is in the fear of the 
 Lord, that, by the union of righteousness and 
 mercy, we must perfect holiness. 
 
 Even if they could exist separately from it, 
 they would be insufficient j they would be but 
 the righteousness of the Pharisee, inferior in 
 value to the single aspiration of humility from 
 the miserable, sinful, Publican ; — they would 
 be but the deeds of the law, by which shall no 
 flesh be justified. Need I remind you of the 
 importance, which, throughout the history and 
 precepts of the Sacred Scriptures, appears to 
 be attached to this heavenly temper of mind ? 
 —It was a disposition of mind the direct op- 
 posite of humility, which led our first parents 
 to be dissatisfied with their Creator, for having 
 withheld from them the knowledge of good and 
 
161 
 
 evil, and to seek to be as gods by its acquisi- 
 tion. — The tempter himself had fallen by pride, 
 and to the pride of man did he apply himself, 
 as the surest instrument of his ruin. And in 
 our redemption from that ruin, did our blessed 
 Saviour, both by example and by precept, la- 
 bour to counteract its original cause. His life 
 was a life of humility and submission. His 
 death was of the greatest humility. — Every par- 
 ticular of his history seems designed to coun- 
 teract the spirit of human pride, in all its va- 
 ried shapes, to crush the head of that serpent, 
 to which man had owed his destruction. As he 
 most eminently had fulfilled all righteousness, 
 as he most sincerely had compassion on man- 
 kind, so did he most especially walk humbly 
 with his God. 
 
 And why should we not most readily follow 
 the steps of our meek Redeemer ? What have 
 we whereof to boast ourselves before God, be- 
 fore whom no flesh should glory ? — What good 
 thing have we, which we have not received ? 
 Has man, of himself, the power of doing 
 justly ? — Look to the history of philosophy, and 
 of mankind, from their first commencement, to 
 the coming of the Redeemer, and you will 
 find that when theory was most attended to, 
 then was practice most deficient ; — when mora- 
 lity was best understood, then was mankind 
 
162 
 
 most vicious nay, even the very teachers 
 themselves given up to the most disgusting the 
 most degrading unrighteousness.— When the 
 tree of the knowledge of good and evil was 
 most carefully cultivated, then was it most bar- 
 ren. — Has man, of himself, the power of lov- 
 ing mercy ? — A thousand voices will, from their 
 own feelings, proudly answer me, he has. — Is 
 it your own, my fellow Christians, or is it the 
 gift of God ? — The Scripture, to which I have 
 before alluded, declares, that before Christ had 
 triumphed over the powers of darkness, before 
 "he had led our captivity captive, and given gifts 
 unto men, — mankind were left without natural 
 affection, implacable, unmerciful ; and the his- 
 tory of mankind confirms the gloomy represen- 
 tation. — Go even to those nations of the pre- 
 sent day, who have not yet received the light 
 of Christianity, and enquire into their treat- 
 ment of each other, — their religious rites, — 
 their conduct towards defenceless strangers.— 
 Go to the Indian's funeral pile, or his festival ; 
 — to the African's honouring of his departed 
 relatives ; — to the savage's celebration of his 
 victory ; — and tell me, whether mercy be a 
 constituent faculty of unredeemed human na- 
 ture. — No, my fellow Christians, if you have a 
 heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone, it is 
 the gift of God. — If you occasionally experi- 
 
163 
 
 ence the pleadings of compassion, it is the 
 voice of God, — the influence of the spirit. — 
 Cherish it, — follow it ; — while you humbly feel, 
 that it is not of yourselves, but of the grace 
 of God j — while you give the glory to him, of 
 whom cometh every good gift, — from whom all 
 good counsels, all holy desires, all just works 
 do proceed. — Follow his guidance ; — and, while 
 you do justly,— while you love mercy, walk 
 humbly with your God. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
SERMON VII. 
 
 I. Peter, iv.— 10 and 1 1. 
 
 As every man hath received the gift, even so 
 minister the same one to another, as good Stew- 
 ards of tlie manifold grace of God. If any 
 man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God. 
 If any man minister, let him do it, as of the 
 ability, which God giveth ; that God in all 
 things may be glorified, through Jesus Christ. 
 
 HAD we no other argument for the truth of 
 the Christian religion, that which results from 
 its analogy to the beneficence of God in the 
 material universe, might, perhaps, be sufficient 
 to induce us to consider it as of divine origi- 
 nal. — If the obvious order, and beauty, and 
 bounty, which surround us, supply, even to 
 
1 
 
 165 
 
 the most savage, a suggestion of the being of 
 a Creator, and an indication of his wisdom and 
 benevolence, — shall not a system, which is 
 every way calculated to produce moral order 
 and moral beauty, be referred, by educated 
 man, to the same Almighty, allwise, allmerci- 
 ful, power ? If the heavens declare the glory 
 of God, because, the various bodies, which 
 occupy the vast expansion, are each adapted to 
 mutual influence, and mutual good, because, 
 nothing exists therein useless or independent, 
 shall not a religion, whose first principle binds 
 its votary to every other human being, which 
 rejects every thing exclusively selfish, and 
 cherishes every charity of our nature, proclaim 
 its mighty source, and indicate, that it proceeds 
 from that God, whose mercy is over all his 
 works ? 
 
 Among the various forms, which the wisdom, 
 or the weakness of man, has, from time to time, 
 devised for rendering themselves acceptable to 
 a superior being, not one possessed this sacred 
 characteristic. — While the science of the mo- 
 ralist led him to refer the social duties to a prin- 
 ciple of selfishness for their obligation ; while 
 he defined morality to be the art of procuring 
 happiness ; the connection between morality 
 and religion never struck his imperfect, his 
 clouded mental vision. Nay so little did they 
 
 m 2 
 
166 
 
 seem related, that even to their very gods the 
 heathens did not attribute the moral virtues. 
 They approached these debased representations 
 of the Deity with costly sacrifices and sumptu- 
 ous oblations, not having washed their hands 
 in innocency, and shewed mercy to the afflicted. 
 • — They vainly thought, that they could give 
 glory to God without having good will to 
 mankind. 
 
 Even where the presumptuous self sufficiency 
 of man dared to intermingle itself with the 
 light which was of God, and to pronounce that 
 something beyond the Gospel, something more 
 than what was contained in the Scriptures, 
 was requisite for salvation, the resulting gloom 
 of superstition set mankind on a thousand vain 
 devices. — One isolated himself from the duties 
 of society, and fancied that seclusion from the 
 world could consecrate to God a heart, which 
 to mankind had been hard and unfeeling. 
 Another placed his religion in orthodoxy of 
 tenet and zeal against disputing adversaries ; he 
 gave to the service of his God speculation in 
 lieu of practice, and devoted his understand- 
 ing while he witheld his affections. — A third 
 was taught to make compensation for his neglect 
 of his brother, or his violence against him, to 
 pay the price of his obedience to that God, 
 who will have mercy rather than sacrifice, by 
 
167 
 
 embracing some revolting mortification, nay 
 even by presenting some costly gift to the mi- 
 nisters of his worship ; as if the suicide of Judas, 
 or his casting down in the Temple the wages of 
 his iniquity, could atone for his having deserted 
 and betrayed his master. — These vain deceits 
 he, that possesses the sure hope of the Gospel of 
 Christ, despises. These forms of Godliness he, 
 that hath the power of Godliness, rejects. 
 These cisterns, which will hold no water, he, 
 that hath within him the well of living waters, 
 refuses. His religion alone of all others, the 
 Christian's religion singly and exclusive of all 
 others, declares, that the love of mankind is 
 the best adoration, which we can pay to our 
 God. — " Blessed are the merciful, blessed are 
 " the peace-makers, blessed are the meek, 
 " blessed are they that hunger and thirst after 
 " righteousness." — Such are the fruits of the 
 Spirit of the Christian's God. — Such are the 
 works, in which our God has ordained that we 
 should walk, — to which his law directs, his 
 grace invigorates, and his Spirit constrains us ; 
 — dispositions, affections, works, which fit us 
 for being the instruments of his mercy, and 
 proclaim, that the religion, which conveys 
 them, is the voice of Nature's God. 
 
 Mark, my fellow Christians, how the Apostle 
 enjoins these duties. " As every man hath re- 
 
168 
 
 " ceived the gift, even so minister the same one 
 " to another, as good Stewards of the mani- 
 " fold grace of God." — Manifold indeed has 
 been the grace of God to us. — Let us not close 
 our eyes to the mercies of our God, because 
 we live in the midst of them, because they 
 beam in glory round us. Let us not forget our 
 God, because his blessings are familiar, because 
 he is about our path, and about our bed, and 
 lifts up the light of his countenance on all our 
 ways. I do not mean to expatiate on the ad- 
 vantages, which we possess as a people ; on the 
 proud, the exalted rank, which we hold among 
 the nations of the earth ; but suffer me to call 
 your attention to those gifts, which we have re- 
 ceived as individuals. — Compare your situation 
 as individuals with that enjoyed by your fellow 
 men in any other country, or any other age. — Go 
 back to the remotest periods of antiquity. — A 
 vast extensive gloom of ignorance and misery 
 presents itself, diversified by some occasional in- 
 tervals of partial civilization, some nebulee in the 
 mighty void, whose light was obscurity com- 
 pared to the splendor, which now beams on 
 you. — Compare yourselves with your pagan 
 forefathers, untaught, wretched, and con- 
 temptible, scarce surpassing the brutes that 
 perish, save in the skill and power of inflicting 
 mutual evil. — Compare yourselves with those, 
 who lived beneath that cloud of superstition, 
 
169 
 
 that shadow of death, which hid the sun of 
 righteousness from the eyes of mankind ; — 
 that antichristian misrule, which closed the 
 book of God from the people, and sent forth 
 an unholy ministry to prophecy deceits to the 
 world. — Compare yourselves with the present 
 inhabitants of other climes ; — with the barba- 
 rian, who bows before some frightful Idol, and 
 devotes his own, or his brother's blood, in their 
 abominable rites* — darkened in his foolish heart, 
 and sacrificing, with criminal insanity, his 
 child, or his parent, the widow, or the unpro- 
 tected stranger. — Compare yourselves even with 
 these, who boast of superior refinement, and 
 class themselves under the name of Christians, 
 — who can contend with you in arts and arms, 
 nay almost surpass you in science, but have 
 not been blest, equally with you, in the more 
 glorious light of the Gospel. Behold them 
 living under a form of godliness, which sub- 
 stitutes the devices of men for the simplicity 
 of Christ,— led away, prevented from the con- 
 templation of the real beauties of his religion, 
 by the magnificent pageantry of an unapropri- 
 ate and unbecoming dress, — some following in 
 the crowd with blind and cold acquiescence, 
 others of more fastidious minds rejecting be- 
 cause they are disgusted,— seeking in infidelity 
 a retreat from what offends them, — shuting 
 their eyes on the precipice of time, on the 
 
iro 
 
 verge of eternity, because the exhalations of a 
 fen have obscured and distorted the light of 
 heaven. 
 
 You, my fellow Christians, are not like any 
 of these. You possess advantages, beyond 
 what any period in the mighty course of ages 
 presents to the historian's view, beyond what 
 any country on the vast surfice of the globe can 
 boast. You possess a religion, in comparison 
 of which, the wicked fictions of human weak- 
 ness are not even to be mentioned, — a form of 
 Christianity, which the simplest must admire, 
 the wisest must approve, the most fastidious 
 cannot fault ; which contains every thing, which 
 revelation has conveyed, and nothing more ; — 
 a faith, in which the devices of man have not 
 intermingled, a church, which has cautiously 
 abstained from adding aught to, or subtracting 
 aught from, the written word of God, and has 
 raised an altar to his glory, over which the 
 implements of human art have not been exer- 
 cised. 
 
 How shall we escape, my fellow Christians, 
 if we neglect so great salvation ? How does 
 it become us to act, on whom the light of the 
 world has thus beamed with such unclouded 
 splendor ? — We have received of the gift of 
 God.-— We have received of it largely and sin- 
 
171 
 
 gularly. — A talent of surpassing value has been 
 committed to our charge. While we keep it 
 to our soul's advantage, we must employ it to 
 our Master's service. " Even so, let us minister 
 " one to another, as good Stewards of the 
 " manifold grace of God." 
 
 Think not, my fellow Christians, that my 
 meaning is, that we should all become actual 
 preachers of the Word of God, or missiona- 
 ries of the Gospel, to those who need its illu- 
 mination. — These offices belong to those, who 
 are called, fitted, ordained to the public minis- 
 try. — But there are other services, other modes 
 of promoting the knowledge of God and the 
 kingdom of God, which lie within the compass 
 of every Christian's power, and are the objects 
 of every Christian's duty. Every one of us, 
 under the grace of God, can give, if it be not 
 our own neglect, that most impressive, that 
 most convincing lesson, which a life adorned by 
 the graces of a Christian spirit affords to man- 
 kind. — Every one of us can bear testimony to 
 the efficacy of the Gospel of Christ, can give 
 a reason, an evidence, of the hope which is in 
 us, by the purity of our lives, and the since- 
 rity of our practice. — Gifted indeed must that 
 preacher be, blessed that missionary, through 
 whom the Word of God can come with greater 
 power to turn the hearts of the disobedient to 
 
172 
 
 the wisdom of the just, than through the ex- 
 ample of a pure and holy life of the humblest 
 believer. — Vain will be his efforts, and transi- 
 tory his success, except the practice of his 
 first hearers bear testimony to the value of his 
 doctrine. — Man attends not to precept, un- 
 til example has shewed him its practicability 
 and effect. His heart is rooted on society. To 
 that it assimilates itself ; from that it takes its 
 inclinations, its habits, its form, and its fruit. 
 — On you, my fellow Christians, (and the con- 
 sideration is a most awful one,) depend, in a 
 great measure, the future, the eternal pros- 
 pects of those, with whom Providence has im- 
 plicated you, whether in the opportunities of 
 occasional intercourse, or the endearing bonds 
 of relationship and affection. — To your brother, 
 to your friend, to your parents, to your fami- 
 lies, may you be the ministers of the manifold 
 grace of God. — Your example may be instruc- 
 tion to the ignorant, animation to the cold and 
 careless, confusion to the scoffer, and convic- 
 tion to the unbeliever. — Ye have been placed 
 by the singular bounty of Providence in an high 
 and holy station, — to be the lights of the 
 world. — Let that light so shine before men, 
 that they may glorify your Father, which is in 
 heaven. 
 
 " "Wherefore if any man speak," says the 
 
173 
 
 Apostle, " let him speak as the oracles of 
 " God."— And is this, indeed, what ought to 
 be the character of the Christian's conversation ? 
 If any man speak, let him speak as the ora- 
 cles of God.— Let him speak purely, sincerely, 
 affectionately, instructively, to the good of man 
 and the glory of God. — Let him speak consola- 
 tion to the afflicted, wisdom to the ignorant, 
 counsel to the weak, reproof to the sinner.— 
 Let his conversation be profitable for teaching, 
 for reproof, for correction, for instruction in 
 righteousness, that himself and his hearers may 
 be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good 
 works. Will the trifler meet with amusement, 
 will the scoffer, the careless, those who are 
 lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, 
 meet with countenance in the oracles of God ? 
 Surely not. Neither should they find it in the 
 conversation of a Christian. — The value of 
 words, their vast importance, is not known, or 
 at least not remembered j or mankind would 
 never trifle with them as they do. — A word 
 spoken in due season has oftentimes produced, 
 and is always capable of producing, the hap- 
 piest effects.— At the crisis of temptation, when 
 revenge, or selfihness, some importunate de- 
 sire, or overwhelming passion, has nearly tri- 
 umphed, oft has the meek advice of a Chris- 
 tian friend reversed the victory j — oft has the 
 affectionate caution, the humble reproof, de- 
 
174 
 
 spised and neglected in the midst of turbulent 
 pleasure and careless security, returned in the 
 hour of sickness or sorrow or even disgust, re- 
 turned to the scorner's heart, and led him to 
 his God. — On the other hand, my fellow Chris- 
 tians, every verbal dereliction of Christian du- 
 ty, which levity or heedlessness may lead us 
 into, exclusive of its proper criminality, — con- 
 veys to our hearers a persuasion, that we care 
 not for the things of God, and casts a suspi- 
 cion of insincerity and hypocrisy on our future 
 professions. — By our words are we esteemed 
 righteous ; by our words are we condemned by 
 our,, hearers ; and our influence on them, our 
 power of doing them good, depends on the 
 decision. — Of every idle word must we give an 
 account. " Wherefore if any man speak, let 
 " him speak as the oracles of God." 
 
 " Moreover," saith the Apostle, " if any 
 " man minister, let him do it as of the ability 
 " which God giveth, — that God may be glori- 
 " fled in all things, through Jesus Christ." — 
 That is, when we minister to the wants of 
 others, let us do it with the recollection, that it 
 is God who has given us both the means, and 
 the inclination. Can there be a stronger incen- 
 tive to the performance of our duty in this re- 
 spect, than the persuasion, that the ability is of 
 God. — If we be indeed instruments of mercy 
 
175 
 
 in his hand, if we be indeed stewards of his 
 manifold grace, if the suggestions of public af- 
 fection, the calls of sympathy, the pleadings 
 of compassion in our hearts, be indeed the voice 
 of God within us, and the means of complying 
 with them his gift, shall we not be willing in 
 the day of his power ? Shall we not follow, 
 with grateful reverence, the guidance of his 
 spirit ? It is the way, in which he declares he 
 will be glorified ; — and what more glorious spe- 
 tacle can there be, than to behold the human 
 heart turned from the gloom of selfishness, to 
 the light of Christian love ? — But, that our 
 ministration to the wants of others be to the 
 glory of God, it must be so through Jesus 
 Christ ; — and it will be so, if we always, and 
 carefully, keep in mind that the ability is of 
 God. — This reflection will banish every feeling 
 of pride, and ostentation, and self-sufficiency. 
 The doers will be humble and retired, the works 
 will be manifest j they will be done in Christ 
 Jesus ; men shall behold them as the fruits of 
 his kingdom, and God, not man shall be glori- 
 fied. 
 
SERMON Vlir 
 
 Proverbs, iv. — 23. 
 
 Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it 
 are the issues of life. 
 
 AMONG the many peculiar beauties, which 
 distinguish the style of the sacred Scriptures, 
 there is one, which most eminently presents it- 
 self to our observation. — And that is, that figu- 
 rative language never seems to have been re- 
 curred to, merely for the sake of ornament, 
 but always where the strength of the idea ab- 
 solutely demanded some unusual, some uncom- 
 mon, representation. — Regardless of sublimi- 
 
177 
 
 ty, careless of those graces, for which Eastern 
 composition is proverbial, the sacred writers 
 present to us a style, which for strength, sub- 
 limity, and beauty, never has been equalled. 
 
 The passage I have chosen for my text af- 
 fords an impressive instance of the justice of 
 this remark. " Keep thy heart with all dili- 
 " gence." Could the meaning have been ex- 
 pressed more briefly, or more simply ? " For 
 " out of it are the issues of life." Could the 
 utmost art of the rhetorician have supplied a 
 bolder, a happier, a more impressive figure,— 
 forcing itself, and fixing itself, on the under- 
 standing, bearing with it elucidation and argu- 
 ment, beauty and conviction ? 
 
 Superficial, indeed, must his acquaintance 
 with human nature be, who imagines, that our 
 conduct results solely from the determinations 
 of our reason. Though we be naturally de- 
 termined to pursue what appears to be good, it 
 is passion, it is appetite, it is the heart, which 
 delineates the representation. — Even in cases 
 where there is time for full enquiry, even then 
 does this influence operate with considerable 
 sway.— But in the far greater part of human 
 conduct, where the necessity of immediate ex- 
 ertion will not await the delays of deliberation, 
 there are our desires and our habits the sole 
 
178 
 
 sovereigns ; — there, is our heart the great source 
 of action ; — out of it are the issues of life. — 
 And how much more so, when indulgence shall 
 have strenghened our passions, — and indolence 
 debilitated our reason, when the deaf adder shall 
 have closed his ears to the voice of the charmer, 
 charm he never so wisely. 
 
 Hence the necessity of keeping the heart 
 with all diligence, of regulating its passions, 
 of controlling its habits. — But how shall we ef- 
 fect this ? For the word of God, and indeed 
 our own experience, declares to us, that the 
 heart is deceitful above all things, and despe- 
 rately wicked ; that its every thought is evil 
 continually ; — that it has fallen, by the corrup- 
 tion of sin, from the likeness of God, in which 
 it was created, from the goodness, in which 
 every thing that God had made was declared to 
 participate. 
 
 But, while the word of God thus declares the 
 corruption of the human heart, it also proclaims 
 its remedy ; while it tells us, that the spring is 
 poisoned, it also indicates what shall miracu- 
 lously heal its waters. — " Believe on the Lord 
 " Jesus, and thou shalt be saved,"— not merely 
 from future condemnation, but from present 
 sin, from the weakness, the violence, the pas- 
 sion, the impotence, the corruption, of thine 
 
179 
 
 own heart.— -When her king was set on Sion, 
 the hill became holy. When the Redeemer is 
 enthroned on the human heart, it becomes pure, 
 even as he is pure. — They that believe on the 
 Lord will love the Lord. They shall be taught 
 in the way, and shall know that the teaching 
 is of God. — They shall keep his command- 
 ments, and the Lord shall come unto them, 
 and take up his abode with them. — A kingdom, 
 which is not of this world, shall be established 
 within them. A temple, not made with hands, 
 shall be raised, whose purity and whose glory 
 shall far surpass the utmost exertions of human 
 wisdom, or of human power. — Their Redeemer 
 shall send to them another Comforter, an ex- 
 horter, a suggester of holy desires, good coun- 
 sels, and just works, — taking from them the 
 heart of stone, and giving them an heart of 
 flesh ; — obviating the fluctuations of their faith, 
 encouraging the breathings of hope, cherishing 
 the spark of love, and displaying, even in their 
 weakness, the strength and the sufficiency of 
 their God. — Think not, my fellow Christians, 
 that the Spirit of God is withheld from the 
 humble believer, because you behold not its 
 supernatural, its miraculous effects. — When the 
 Prophet sought it, he found it not in the whirl- 
 wind, lie found it not in the thunder, he found 
 it not in the magnificence of convulsed nature, 
 but in the " still small voice," — which might 
 
 VOL. II. N 
 
180 
 
 have escaped the careless, or been neglected 
 by the indolent. — Such is the influence of the 
 Spirit in the believer's heart. The " still small 
 " voice" is ever with him. It is about his 
 path. It is about his bed. It accompanies him 
 in all his ways. — Its test is the written Word of 
 God, to which it is ever conformable.— The 
 Christian's part is to approve it by that test, to 
 satisfy himself by that test, that the inclina- 
 tion is of God, — to obey, to follow with grate- 
 ful reverence, to abstain from grieving that 
 spirit, whereby he is sealed, and to v;ork out 
 his own salvation with fear and trembli* g, 
 while he feels, that it is God, which worketh 
 in him, both to will and to do.— It is the Chris- 
 tian's part to watch and to pray, that he enter 
 not into temptation, for though the spirit is 
 willing, the flesh is weak j — though the spirit is 
 ever willing, and ever ready, to aid our weak- 
 ness, to sustain our infirmities, yet these infir- 
 mities are tremendously great, — the conflict 
 with sin is always to be looked to with fear and 
 trembling. Oh ! my fellow Christians, care- 
 fully distinguish between confidence in God, 
 and that mistaken self-confidence, that spiri- 
 tual pride, which would lead you to be careless 
 about exposing yourselves to temptation. — 
 Many have fallen from the grace of God. — 
 You possibly may fall.— It is God which work- 
 eth in you, anu should you neglect so great sal- 
 
181 
 
 vation, how shall you escape ?— Carefully avoid 
 every opportunity, every excitement, which 
 may lead to the developement of the fruits of 
 your own hearts, of the works of the flesh.— 
 Avoid the impure thought ; it may end in las- 
 civiousness. — Avoid the proness to take of- 
 fence ; it may end in strife, in debate, in mur- 
 der. — Avoid the unkind construction of your 
 neighbour's conduct, it may end in hatred. 
 But above all things, avoid all levity with re- 
 spect to religion, all indolence, as to those 
 means, which God has appointed for keeping 
 alive the remembrance of him it may end 
 in open and bold impiety, leaving you unaided, 
 and exposed to an host of foes, the passions of 
 your own hearts, the self-created offspring of a 
 fallen and corrupted nature. — It is not, when ' 
 sin has gained strength by our reception of its 
 first advances, that we may best hope to resist 
 with success, but at its earliest approach. Jt 
 is not, when the grace of God has been ne- 
 glected, that we can expect its encreased ener- 
 gy. Watch, therefore, every appearance, every 
 indication of evil, and avoid it.— -Keep your 
 heart with all diligence, for out of it are the 
 issues of your life. 
 
 But, it is not enough, to avoid the contami- 
 nation of positive guilt ; it is not enough, to 
 seek to secure our Master's talent from loss, or 
 
 n 2 
 
182 
 
 from tarnish. — To temperance, and goodness, 
 we must add brotherly kindness and charity. — 
 We must, not only, avail ourselves of his aid 
 in resisting temptation ; but we must also fol- 
 low his guidance, must cherish his seed, and 
 cultivate his fruits. — Nor is it indeed possible, 
 in practice, to separate innocence and active 
 good will to mankind from each other, where 
 we would have one, there must the other be 
 also. — Would we avoid the works of the flesh, 
 we must encourage the fruits of the spirit. 
 
 Adapted by its natural capacities and facul- 
 ties to action, prone by its natural desires to the 
 exercise of its powers, the mind of man cannot 
 lie torpid, it must have employment ; if it be not 
 * occupied with good, it will with evil, its enjoy- 
 ment consists in the agitation of affection ; and 
 if the objects of that affection be not God and 
 the will of God, they will be the world, they 
 will be sin. 
 
 So sensible of this were the old philosophers, 
 that they held the various branches of know- 
 ledge to be not only useful, but necessary, to 
 man, and presented to him the sciences as the 
 purifiers of the soul. — But, my fellow Chris- 
 tians, here was the boasted wisdom of man de- 
 ficient. — The remedy it proposed was applica- 
 ble but to few, to those, whose leizure, whose 
 
183 
 
 opportunity, whose talents, fitted for the pur- 
 suit ; and even to these few presented an in- 
 ducement too weak to contend with passion, 
 too contracted to occupy exclusively the sphere 
 of human action, too little to fill the human 
 heart, and shut out the intrusion of sin. — The 
 best informed philosophers, the men of most 
 extensive natural research, were too often 
 given up to selfishness and impurity and hard- 
 ness of heart, — and displayed a melancholy 
 proof that the wisdom of this world is foolish- 
 ness before God. 
 
 Constrast now with the insufficiency of this 
 remedy, the sufficiency which is of God. — 
 Compare with these, the objects, the occupa- 
 tions, the inducements, which the Gospel points 
 out to the Christian, — the gifts, which the Spi- 
 rit of God confers on the believer, the 
 fruits, which it produces. — His heart is filled 
 with the love of God. — Faith has kindled 
 that love, by assuring him, that his God 
 hath first loved him, and given himself for 
 him ; hope has cherished it, by intimating, 
 that he who sent his son to be the propitiation 
 for our sins will with him freely give us all 
 things.— The word of his God declares to him, 
 that the best indication of that love is the ex- 
 ercise of the kindly affections towards his fel- 
 low men ; and these are affections, which can 
 
184 
 
 fill, can expand, the human heart, can facinate 
 it from every meaner object, can wholly possess, 
 and keep it secure, from the attack of every 
 sinful passion, the intrusion of every sensual 
 desire.— In the love of God, and of his brother, 
 he posseses that principle, which envieth not, 
 vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doeth not 
 behave itself unseemly, seeketh not the grati- 
 fication of selfishness, is not easily provoked, 
 designeth no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but 
 rejoiceth in the truth, that principle, which 
 never faileth. 
 
 Here, my fellow Christians, is the antidote 
 for the poison of our nature, the remedy for 
 the works of the flesh, for the uncleaness, the 
 hatred, the wrath, the envyings, the murders, 
 the drunkeness, and such like. — The believer 
 hears the word of God commanding him, he 
 feels the Spirit of God inducing him, inclining 
 him, impelling him, to love his brother. — He 
 visits the fatherless, and the widow, in their 
 affliction ; and thereby keeps himself unspotted 
 from the world, and experiences, that it is 
 better to go to the house of mourning, than to 
 the house of joy. — He has compassion on the 
 ignorant, and on them that are out of the way ; 
 he feeds the hungry, he clothes the naked ; he 
 meets the Spirit of his Redeemer at the bed 
 of sickness, and in the gloom of the prison; — 
 
185 
 
 he descends into the pool of human misery, 
 and the angel of God, while he disturbs its 
 waters, heals him of every infirmity. 
 
 Bear with me, my fellow Christians, and at- 
 tribute not my appropriation of Scripture ima- 
 gery to any other cause, than the strength of 
 my own conviction, and my earnestness to im- 
 press it on you, that innocence and active virtue 
 are inseparable ; that the exercise of the kindly 
 affections are the means, whereby the Holy Spirit 
 regenerates the human heart, and frees it from 
 from the bondage of sin ; that patient continu- 
 ance in well doing is the road to holiness, as 
 well as to immortality. — Oh ! my fellow Chris- 
 tians, cherish these affections, yield yourselves 
 to them, gratify them. Cherish them,— they 
 are the gift of God, and they are the voice of 
 God. Cherish them, they will quench the 
 strength of passion j they will break the deter- 
 mination of revenge ; they will root up the 
 stings of envy and of pride ; they will dash 
 from your lips the cup of sensuality. — Now, in 
 the spring of life, now, in the morning of your 
 days, ere the thorns shall have sprung up, ere 
 the midday shall have parched the soil, cherish 
 these affections j they will bring an abundant 
 harvest, peace, and patience, gentleness, and 
 goodness, meekness, and temperance. — Cherish 
 these affections ; they will lead you from 
 
186 
 
 strength to strength. Every victory, which 
 you experience over sin, will strengthen the 
 source of that victory, by causing you to know 
 that your Redeemer liveth, and that you are 
 the object of his love. — Every submission to 
 the guidance of the Holy Spirit will convince 
 you, that the teaching is of God. — You will go 
 on from strength to strength, till you arrive at 
 the fulness of the Christian stature. You will 
 find, that your Redeemer's yoke is easy, his 
 burden is light, his ways are ways of pleasant- 
 ness, and all his paths are peace. 
 
 I have now, my fellow Christians, called to 
 your observation two methods, which are highly 
 conducive to the keeping your hearts with all 
 diligence. One is the cautious avoidance of 
 exposure to temptation, the praying to God to 
 lead you not into temptation, but rather to 
 deliver you from the conflict with the evil one. 
 The other is the constant exercise of the kindly 
 affections of good will to mankind, with which 
 the Holy Spirit has blessed and adorned his 
 temple. — To these I would add a third. I 
 mean the cultivation of Christian friendships. 
 This however, too important to be slightly 
 hurried over, I shall defer to a future opportu- 
 nity. 
 
 May he, that is able to keep you from falling, 
 
187 
 
 and to present yon faultless before the throne 
 of his glory with exceeding joy, — may the God 
 of all peace, without whom nothing is good, 
 nothing is holy, breathe into your hearts that 
 most excellent gift of Charity, which is the 
 very bond of peace and of all virtue. 
 
SERMON IX. 
 
 Proverbs, iv.— 23. 
 
 Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it 
 are the issues of life. 
 
 To a mind that delights in meditating on 
 the ways of God, and in cherishing the love 
 of its Creator, by the contemplation of his 
 glorious works, a comparison of the arrange- 
 ments and process of the material universe with 
 those, by which Providence administers the 
 affairs of men, and again, with those, by which 
 the Holy Spirit promotes and establishes the 
 spiritual kingdom of Christ within the be- 
 liever's heart, cannot fail of being highly in- 
 teresting. 
 
189 
 
 We behold the mighty fabric of the natural 
 world sustained and perpetuated by a few sim- 
 ple tendencies, impressed on matter, while its 
 several parts perform their offices unconscious 
 of the power, which retains them in their un- 
 changeable courses, or of the glory, which re- 
 sults from their combination. But, while the 
 stupendous system, which surrounds us, declares 
 the unspeakable skill and power of its Creator, 
 it is but his lowliest work ; we can ascend from 
 the consideration of it to that of a far greater 
 display of wisdom and omnipotence. The cre- 
 ation of the material world was but a single act. 
 The Almighty said, Let there be light, and 
 there was light. — By a single command be con- 
 ferred on matter a few simple properties, which 
 originated its varied organisation, and shall 
 perpetuate its order and beauty, until the same 
 Almighty word shall again interfere; but the 
 regulation of human events is a continued ex- 
 ertion ; there the wisdom and benevolence of 
 the Deity is about the path, and nbout the 
 bed, and spieth out all the ways, of innumera- 
 ble beings, beings gifted, not with unconsci- 
 ous tendencies, but with rational inclinations, 
 with the multitude of passions and desires, 
 changing with their several objects, and fluc- 
 tuating with the varied combinations of cir- 
 cumstances and of appetite. And yet all these 
 are made, by an overuling Providence, to con- 
 
190 
 
 duce to one grand outline, one foreseen, one 
 foretold, scheme of human history. " Known 
 " unto God are all his works from the begin- 
 " ning;" and to the predetermined arrange- 
 ment of these works are the virtues, and the 
 vices of mankind, their wisdom, and their 
 follies, their very impiety, and their very crime, 
 their every thought, and word, and action, 
 though perfectly voluntary, and perfectly free, 
 made perfectly subservient, by an overuling 
 Providence operating at all times and in all 
 places. What glory would we give, what wis- 
 dom would we attribute, to any human Poten- 
 tate, who could so rule even a few intellectual 
 beings, as to turn their voluntary actions to 
 predetermined wise and beneficient purposes ? 
 How far should we prefer him to the sage, 
 who could penetrate the inmost recesses of 
 nature, or to the artist, who could devise the 
 most ingenious combinations of her powers! 
 How wonderful then, how unspeakable, must 
 be the glory of God's moral providence ! Can 
 there be a mightier display of divine wisdom, 
 and divine power ? There can, there is j — and 
 that is the establishment of the kingdom of 
 God within the believer's heart. 
 
 It is not on the face of a chaos of materials 
 newly created, and equally succeptible of all 
 impressions, but over the wreck of a fallen and 
 
191 
 
 ruined nature, where every principle is adverse 
 to his influence, that the Spirit of God is dif- 
 fused, preparatory to this mighty operation. 
 It is not over the wills of beings, who think 
 they are pursuing their private objects, who, 
 while they contribute to the designs of Provi- 
 dence, know not what they do, and therefore 
 cannot have resisted his will, that this influence 
 is here exerted, but over the passions, the de- 
 sires, the desperate wickedness, of a heart, 
 which is conscious of being led directly con- 
 trary to its natural, its habitual, enjoyments. 
 It is not creation ; it is regeneration. It is 
 not government ; it is victory. And in the 
 great work of this regeneration, this perpetual 
 process, this leading captive the captivity of 
 nature, the subject is at first conscious and re- 
 sisting, afterwards conscious and voluntary. 
 Feeling the influence, knowing that the teach- 
 ing is of God, and yet voluntary in his actions, 
 he is led to offer himself a freewill sacrifice to 
 his Redeemer, — the very affections, with which 
 God has adorned our natures, at first rising in 
 rebellion against the Saviour, afterwards grace- 
 ing his triumph. The fear and the shame of 
 man, which before had kept the sinner in his 
 bonds, no longer restrain him. His only fear 
 is now the fear of God, — the beginning of 
 wisdom. What before was his shame is now 
 his glory j and his former glory is his shame. 
 
192 
 
 His hatred, his anger, which before had rested 
 on his fellow man, has now become the hatred 
 of sin, and that, not so much in others, as in 
 himself. His pride, his ambition, is for the 
 testimony of a good conscience. — His anxiety 
 for the dearest objects of his affection is, that 
 they may be loved of God ; — for the young, 
 that they may be brought up in the nurture 
 and admonition of the Lord ; and for the old, 
 that they may continue therein. His every 
 passion has found its legitimate object, reason 
 and imagination have been restored to their 
 proper state. The insanity of sin has been 
 removed, and the grace of God has made him 
 free indeed. 
 
 But, while God is thus all in all, while he is 
 our sufficiency and our salvation, while he works 
 in us both to will and to do, he also commands 
 our own exertions. He calls on us to watch 
 and pray, to fear, to tremble, and to work ; 
 and, though he who never sleeps or slumbers 
 is our guardian, he enjoins us to keep our heart 
 with all diligence, for out of it are the issues 
 of life. He, first, by breaking the bonds of 
 sin, by renewing a right spirit within us, by 
 being the author and finisher of our faith, by 
 suggesting to us good counsels, holy desires, 
 just works, confers on us the power of action, 
 and then, commands its exertion. — He first, 
 
193 
 
 restores Lazarus to life, and then, says, come 
 forth from the tomb. Except the Lord keep 
 the city, the watchman waketh but in vain ; 
 yet, though the Lord do keep the city, yet 
 must the Christian soldier wake and watch. 
 
 And first, against that self confidence, which 
 would lead us to be careless about exposing our- 
 selves to temptation ; next, against that indo- 
 lence, which would lead us to neglect the prac- 
 tice of active good will to mankind, the patient 
 continuance in well doing, as the best security 
 against the inroads of sin j against these must 
 the Christian soldier cautiously watch. On 
 these topics I took occasion, on a former oppor- 
 tunity, more fully to insist. 
 
 Suffer me now to call your attention to ano- 
 ther and most important means of keeping your 
 heart with diligence. I mean the regulation, 
 the selection, of your private friendships. 
 
 At your age, my fellow Christians, the 
 human heart needs society ; it longs for it, it 
 seeks it, it cannot isolate itself. Faint though 
 they be, yet the traces of its Creator's image 
 remain. It seeks whereon to repose its love, 
 whereon to exercise its kindness. — It is for age 
 alone, long conversant with a depraved world, 
 to feel, or to fancy, what can secure the heart 
 
194 
 
 against these natural inclinations. — Youth must 
 have friends ; and on the nature of these friends 
 does it depend (humanly speaking) for its fu- 
 ture character. — With the pure, thou shalt be 
 pure ; but with the froward, thou shalt learn 
 frowardness. — The intercourse of friendship 
 directs the passions, influences the judgment, 
 forms and perpetuates the habits, and the 
 stronger, or sometimes the more cunning, mind 
 succeeds in fashioning the other according to 
 its own likeness. — Hence the danger, and hence 
 the value, of friendship.— Oh ! my fellow Chris- 
 tians, keep your hearts with all diligence, for 
 out of them are the issues of your life. 
 
 Let me entreat you, most cautiously to ab- 
 stain even from intimacy with the wicked, with 
 those who think lightly of the commands of 
 God, who boldly, or even carelessly, outrage 
 morality. Intimacy may lead to friendship, 
 The more attractive the manners, the more 
 facinating the conversation, the greater is the 
 danger. — If they wish for your friendship let 
 them forsake their evil ways, let them approach 
 you without the contagion of pestilence. — 
 Give not that which is holy to the dogs. Lean 
 not on the shattered reed ; it may wound you 
 to death. 
 
 But perhaps you will say, those, who are free 
 
195 
 
 from faults, those who fear the Lord, are not 
 gifted with attractions ; they are not gay ; they 
 are not of the rank, to which we aspire j they 
 are not likely to be useful, or even amusing, in 
 life ; we can be good enough, and do well 
 enough, without them ; they are therefore by 
 no means desirable as friends. — Are they not ? 
 
 my fellow Christians Have they, like their 
 
 Master, no form, or comeliness, for which we 
 should desire them ? When your object is the 
 acquisition of academic honors, you prefer the 
 intimacy of those, who have already been fore- 
 most in the same pursuit. — In every line of fu- 
 ture life you will covet the acquaintance of 
 those, whom you think can best promote the 
 objects you have in view. — And if among your 
 present objects, — if the foremost of them, be, 
 sincerely, the love of God, will you not join 
 yourselves to those, who, you have reason to 
 believe, are objects of his favour,-— who are 
 most likely to encourage and invigorate you, to 
 assist and confirm you, in the pursuit ? — Are 
 not such desireable as friends ?— Perhaps, there 
 cannot be well imagined a character, more fit- 
 ted to sustain the several duties resulting from 
 social intercourse, than that which is formed by 
 the principles and spirit of the Gospel. The 
 spirit of the Gospel is love ; and love is the 
 fulfilling of the law, saith the Apostle, " be- 
 " cause it worketh no ill to his neighbour." 
 
 VOL. II. O 
 
196 
 
 May we not, with equal force and justice, rea- 
 son thus, Love thinketh all good of his neigh- 
 bour, and worketh all good to his neighbour, 
 therefore is Christian love the appropriate bond 
 of private friendship ?— Consider, my fellow 
 Christians, what must be the character, which 
 the principles of the Gospel must necessarily 
 form ; what must be the moral description of 
 the sincere Christian. Humble, yet independ- 
 ant ; meek, yet fearless of man ; frugal, yet 
 generous ; parsimonious, yet incorruptible ; 
 anxious for the esteem, and even the praise of 
 virtue, and yet unostentatious ; influenced by a 
 principle, which is patient, and kind, and de- 
 void of envy, free from rashness, and pride, and 
 indelicacy, and selfishness, a principle, which is 
 not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth 
 not in iniquity, seeketh not in the comparative 
 iniquity of others for self-gratulation, but re- 
 joiceth in the truth and power of God to renew 
 a right spirit within them, a principle, which 
 endues us with fortitude, and fidelity, confi- 
 dence, and perseverance ; a principle which ne- 
 ver faileth. I have been almost quoting the 
 Apostle's description of Christian love ; is not 
 every feature of it such as friendship would re- 
 quire in its votary ? 
 
 I am aware it has been said, that the cultiva- 
 tion of private friendship is alien from the ge- 
 
197 
 
 neral principle of benevolence, which should 
 result from the Gospel system. But, surely, 
 benevolence may be general, without being un- 
 discriminating. While we are kindly affecti- 
 onate to all men, we may feel greater plea- 
 sure in the society of some, than of others. 
 Nature points out to us our parents and chil- 
 dren, as the more peculiar objects of our affec- 
 tion. Why may not those also, whom similarity 
 of disposition, and habitual interchange of 
 kindness, have united to us as friends, enjoy 
 our more especial love, without weakening its ge- 
 neral influence towards the rest of mankind ? — 
 No, my fellow Christians, so far from weaken- 
 ing, it strengthens it j and he, who is most af- 
 fectionate in the domestic relations of life, and 
 most faithful and warm in his friendship, is most 
 likely to be tender hearted, and forbearing, and 
 benevolent to all men.—-Our blessed Saviour 
 did not love mankind the less, because he asso- 
 ciated with his disciples ; he did not love his 
 disciples the less, because he selected the 
 Apostles ; he did not love the Apostles the less, 
 because there was one the object of his peculiar 
 affection. — Shall we then say, when our Re- 
 deemer has left us an example of private friend- 
 ship, when his entire discipline most eminently 
 fits us for its cultivation, when it is as it were 
 the cradle, the cherish ei', of Christian love, 
 
198 
 
 shall we say, that it is not most consonant to the 
 spirit of the Gospel ? 
 
 What must the influence, the salutary influ- 
 ence, of Christian friends be on each other ! It 
 is in some respects greater than that of parents 
 over their children, for, while, like that, it 
 rests on precept and example, the precepts of 
 friendship are more attended to, the example 
 more influential ; — because there is greater si- 
 milarity of circumstances, greater equality, 
 whether of capability of exertion, or of power 
 of resistance. — Strong as is our conviction, that 
 the advice of our parents proceeds from love, 
 still more firmly are we persuaded, that the 
 counsels of our friends can proceed from no 
 other principle. They better know on what 
 springs of action to ground it, at what time to 
 offer it. — Their opportunities are more fre- 
 quent. — Reserve and fear are absent ; while the 
 anxiety, the reciprocal anxiety, for the eter- 
 nal welfare of each other almost equalises the 
 bond of friendship to that of nature, and, while 
 it consecrates it to the service of God, gives 
 vigilance to its care, and energy to its exer- 
 tions. Every proof of affection encreases the 
 power of its influence. When the Christian 
 cautions his friend against temptation, he not 
 only saves his brother, but also adds to his own 
 power of resistance, ensures for himself some 
 
 I 
 
199 
 
 future victory. — When he incites his friend to 
 acts of good will to mankind, he, at the same 
 time, fans the sacred fire in his own bosom. 
 The counsels of friendship are like mercy, bles- 
 sing both the giver, and the receiver ; and 
 where two or three are gathered together in 
 Christian friendship, the blessing of God is on 
 them, and their Redeemer is in the midst of 
 them they are beautiful in their lives, and in 
 their deaths they are not divided. 
 
 Contrast with this the friendship of the 
 world ; that friendship, on which you must repose 
 your affections, if you have not preoccupied your 
 hearts with that which is better. — Contrast with 
 this the unstable, the deceitful, the destruc- 
 tive, connection between those, whose affec- 
 tions religion has not corrected, has not regu- 
 lated, has not purified ; — their mutual follies 
 reciprocally encouraging and encreasing each 
 other, or perhaps the weakness of one becom- 
 ing the dupe of the interested cunning of his 
 companion. 
 
 Reversing every feature of Christian love, 
 the spirit, which is of this world, is impatient, 
 unkind, and envious, vaunteth itself, is easily 
 puffed up, behaveth itself unseemly, taketh 
 pleasure in the iniquity of some, and rejoiceth 
 over the iniquity of others, seeketh her own, 
 her own exclusively, and more than her own> 
 
200 
 
 thinketh evil continually, and is most easily 
 provoked. The hollow, the visionary friend- 
 ship, which such a spirit entertains is subser- 
 vient to every vice, bows to every passion, and 
 yields to every breath of selfishness. — To day 
 the friends are countenancing each other in 
 folly and in sin, to-morrow, like the cup of 
 sensuality, which they had shared, their friend- 
 ship is turned to loathing. — They part for ever, 
 to seek new friends, on whom they may confer 
 the ruin of their intimacy. — Or, perhaps, an 
 eternal union is their lot. — That spirit, which 
 is puffed up, and thinketh evil, is also easily 
 provoked, — Pride leads them from drunkenness, 
 or debate, or deceit, to malignity and murder. 
 — Behold the friends of yesterday on the field 
 as rival duellists. — They die by each others 
 hands. — Die have I said ?— Death protracted, 
 
 eternal, misery unspeakable, infinite, and 
 
 everlasting, — agony beyond the power of sense 
 to picture, beyond the stretch of imagination 
 to limit, have they drawn on each other.— Sure- 
 ly, in the eyes of God, this friendship of the 
 world is the bitterest enmity. 
 
 But you will say, this seldom happens. — 
 True, for it is but one of the fruits of worldly 
 friendship. Shall I describe to you more of 
 them ? How many a ruined family, an aban- 
 donment of character and of principle, a wreck- 
 
201 
 
 ed constitution, and a broken heart, may be 
 traced, may be clearly traced, to friendships 
 with the irreligious ! — Contrast with these, the 
 love, the peace, the joy, of Christian friend- 
 ships ; — and be assured, that you must choose 
 between them. You cannot remain unattached. 
 You cannot close your bosoms against the en- 
 trance of all friendship. — If you would escape 
 the evil, you must cleave to that which is good. 
 — May He, who is able to keep you from fal- 
 ling, direct you in your choice. May He 
 strengthen you to keep your heart with all dili- 
 gence, for out of it are the issues of your 
 life. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
Princeton Theological Seminary-Sneer Library 
 
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