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SERMONS.
PRfNTED BY W. BAYNES, JUN., BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE.
SERMONS, K^f!^!^
SAMUEL HORSLEY,
LL.D. F.R.S. F.A.S.
LORD BISHOP OF ST. ASAPH.
A NEW EDITION, COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR WILLIAM BAYNES AND SON,
PATERNOSTER ROW ;
AND H. S. BAYNES, EDINBURGH.
1826.
CONTENTS.
SERMON I. James v. 8 ;
PAGE
For the coming of tlie Lord draweth nigh ]
SERMON II.
Matthew xxiv. 3 :
Tell us when shall these things be ; and what shall be the signs of thy coming, and of the end of the world ? ] 2
SERMON III.
Matthew xxiv. 3 :
Tell us when shall these things be ; and what shall be the signs of thy coming, and of the end of the world ?...;.., 21
VI CONTENTS.
SERMON IV. Psalm xlv. 1 :
PAGE
I speak of the things which I have made touching the King, or unto the King 30
SERMON V.
Psalm xlv. 1 :
I speak of the things vi^hich I have made touching the King, or unto the King 38
SERMON VI.
Psalm xlv. 1 :
I speak of the things which I have made touching the King, or unto the King 50
SERMON VII.
Psalm xlv. 1 :
I speak of the things which I have made touching the King, or unto the King 62
SERMON VIII.
1 John v. 6 :
PAGE
This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ 3 — not by water only, but by water and blood 78
SERMON IX. Luke iv. 18, 19:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor 5 he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and reco- vering of sight to the blind — to set at liberty them that are bruised — to preach the acceptable year of the Lord 93
SERMON X.
Makk vii. 37 :
And they were beyond measure astonished, saying. He hath done all things well ; he maketh both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak 1 07
SERMON XL
John xiii. 34 :
A new commandment I give unto you. That ye love one another 5 as I have loved you, that ye also love one another J 21
via CONTENTS.
SERMON XII. Matthew xvi. 28:
PAGE
Verily, I say unto you, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom 132
SERMON XIII.
• Matthew xvi. 18, 19:
say also unto thee, that thou art Peter j and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven ; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven 145
SERMON XIV.
1 Corinthians ii. 2:
For I have determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified 159
Appendix » 1 70
CONTENTfc;.
SERMON XV.
2 Peter i. 20,21:
Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time — [or, as it is in the margin, came not at any time] — by the will of man j but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost 171
SERMON XVI.
2 Peter i. 20, 21 :
Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not at any time by the will of man ; but holy men of God spake as they w^ere moved by the Holy Ghost 188
SERMON XVII.
2 Peter i. 20 :
Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation 1 98
CONTEXTS.
SERMON XVIII.
2 Peter i. 20, 21
PAGE
Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not at any time by the will of man j but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost 21i
SERMON XIX.
Matthew xvi. 21:
From that time forth, began Jesus to show unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests, and Scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day 229
SERMON XX. 1 Peter iii. 18—20: -Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit 3
by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffer- ing of God waited in the days of Noah 246
CONTENTS. XI
SERMON XXI.
Mark ii. 27 :
PAGE
The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. ... 264
SERMON XXII.
Mark ii. 27: The Sabbath wa^ made for man, and not man for the Sabbath 274
SERMON XXIII.
Mark ii. 27:
The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. . . . 285
SERMON XXIV.
John iv. 42 :
We have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world 301
SERMON XXV.
John iv. 42:
We have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world 312
CONTENTi<.
SERMON XXVI.
John iv. 42:
PAGE
We have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world 325
SERMON XXVII.
PiiiLiPPiANS iii. 15:
Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded ; and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you 340
SERMON XXVIII.
Philippians iii. 15 :
Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded ; and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you 35 1
SERMON XXIX.
Daniel iv. 17:
This matter is by the decree of the Watchers, and the demand by the word of the Holy Ones ; to the intent that the living may know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men ^^^
CONTENTS. XIU
SERMON XXX. Malachi iii. 1, 2 :
PAGE
And the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the Messenger of the Covenant, whom ye delight in : Be- hold He shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming ? and who shall stand when he ap- peareth ? 384
SERMON XXXL
Malachi iii. 1, 2 :
And the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the Messenger of the Covenant, whom ye delight in : Be- hold He shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming ? and who shall stand when he ap- peareth ? 392
SERMON XXXn. Malachi iii. 1,2:
And the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the Messenger of the Covenant, whom ye delight in : Be- hold He shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming ? and who shall stand when he ap- peareth? '401
SERMON XXXIII. Malaciii iii. 1,2:
PAGE
And the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the Messenger of the Covenant, whom ye delight in : Be- hold He shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming r and who shall stand when he ap- peareth ? 410
SERMON XXXIV.
Luke i. 28 :
Hail, thou that art highly favoured : the Lord is with thee : blessed art thou among women 419
SERM'ON XXXV,
Deuteronomy xv. 11 :
For the poor shall never cease out of the land : therefore I com- mand thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy in thy land 432
SERMON XXXVL John xi. 25, 26 :
I am the resurrection and the life j he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live ; and whosoever liveth, and believeth in me, shall never die. Believest thou this ? 445
SERMON XXXVII. Mark vli. 26:
PAGE
Tlic woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by nation 455
SERMON XXXVIII. Mark vii. 26 : The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by nation 464
SERMON XXXIX.
EccLESiASTEs xii. 7 :
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was j and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it 477
SERMON XL.
Matthew xxiv. 12 :
Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.. . 491
SERMON XLI.
John xx. 29 :
Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed : blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed 504
SERMON XLII. John xx. 29 :
PAGE
Thomas, because thou hast seen nie, thou hast believed : blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed 513
SERMON XLIII.
1 John iii. 3 :
And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure 524
SERMON XLIV.
Romans xiii. 1 :
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers 536
Appendix to the preceding Sermon 552
SERMONS,
SERMON I.
For the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. — James v. 8.
Time was, when I know not what mystical meanings were drawn, by a certain cabalistic alchymy, from the simplest expressions of holy writ, — from expressions in which no allusion could reasonably be supposed to any thing beyond the particular occasion upon which they were introduced. While this phrenzy raged among the learned, visionary lessons of divinity were often derived, not only from detached texts of Scripture, but from single words, — not from words only, but from letters — from the place, the shape, the posture of a letter : and the blunders of transcribers, as they have since proved to be, have been the groundwork of many a fine-spun meditation.
It is the weakness of human nature, in every instance of folly, to run from one extreme to its opposite. In later ages, since we have seen the futility of those mystic expo- sitions in which the school of Origen so much delighted, we have been too apt to fall into the contrary error; and the same unwarrantable license of figurative interpretation which they employed to elevate, as they thought, the plainer parts of Scripture, has been used, in modern times, in effect to lower the divine.
Among the passages which have been thus misrepre- sented by the refinements of a false criticism, are all those which contain the explicit promise of the "coming of the Son of man in glory, or in his kingdom;" which it is be-
B
come so much the fashion to understand of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman arms, within half a century after our Lord's ascension, that, to those who take the sense of Scripture from some of the best modern expositors, it must seem doubtful whether any clear prediction is to be found in the New Testament, of an event in which, of all others, the Christian world is the most interested.
As I conceive the right understanding of this phrase to be of no small importance, seeing the hopes of the righ- teous, and the fears of the wicked, rest chiefly on the expli- cit promises of our Saviour's coming, it is my present pur- pose to give the matter, as far as my abilities may be equal to it, a complete discussion ; and although, from the nature of the subject, the disquisition must be chiefly critical, consisting in a particular and minute examination of the passages wherein the phrase in question occurs, yet I trust, that, by God's assistance, I shall be able so to state my argument, that every one here, who is but as well versed as every Christian ought to be in the English Bible, may be a very good judge of the evidence of my conclusion. If I should sometimes have occasion, which will be but sel- dom, to appeal to the Scriptures in the original language, it will not be to impose a new sense upon the texts which I may find it to my purpose to produce ; but to open and ascertain the meaning, where the original ex- pressions may be more clear and determinate than those of our translation. And in these cases, the expositions which grammatical considerations may have suggested to me, will be evidenced to you, by the force and perspicuity they may give to the passages in question, considered either in them- selves or in the connexion with their several contexts.
It is the glory of our church, that the most illiterate of her sons are in possession of the Scriptures in their mother tongue. It is their duty to make the most of so great a blessing, by employing as much time as they can spare from the necessary business of their several callings, in the diligent study of the written word. It is the duty of their
teachers to give them all possible assistance and encou- ragement in this necessary work. I apprehend that we mistake our proper duty, when we avoid the public dis- cussion of difficult or ambiguous texts ; and either keep them entirely out of sight, or, when that cannot easily be done, obtrude our interpretations upon the laity, as magis- terial or oracular, without proof or argument; — a plan that may serve the purposes of indolence, and may be made to serve worse purposes, but is not well adapted to answer the true ends of the institution of our holy order. The will of God is, that all men should be saved ; and to that end, it is his will that all men, that is, all descriptions of men, great and small, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, should come to the knowledge of the truth. Of the truth, — that is, of the truths brought to light by the gospel : not only of the fundamental truths of faith toward God, of re- pentance from dead works, and of a future judgment ; but of all the sublimer truths concerning the scheme of man's redemption. It is God's will that all men should be brought to a just understanding of the deliverance Christ hath wrought for us, — to a just apprehension of the magnitude of our hopes in him, and of the certainty of the evidence on which these hopes are founded. It is God's will that all men should come to a knowledge of the original dig- nity of our Saviour's person, — of the mystery of his incar- nation,— of the nature of his eternal priesthood, the value of his atonement, the efficacy of his intercession. These things are never to be understood without much more than a superficial knowledge of the Scriptures, especially the Scriptures of the New Testament ; and yet that know- ledge of the Scriptvn-es which is necessary to the under- standing of these things, is what few, I would hope, in this country, are too illiterate to attain. It is our duty to faci- litate the attainment by clearing difficulties. It may be proper to state those we cannot clear, — to present our hearers with the interpretations that have been attempted, and to show where they fail ; — in a word, to make them B 2
masters of tlie question, thou^li neither they nor we may be competent to the resolution of it. This instruction would more efi'ectualiy secure them against the poison of modern corruptions, than the practice, dictated b}^ a false discretion, of avoiding the mention of every doctrine that may be combated, and of burying- every text of doubtful meaning. The corrupters of the Christian doctrine have no such reserve. The doctrines of tlie divinit}^ of the Son ; the incarnation ; the satisfaction of the cross as a sacri- fice, in the literal meaning of the word ; the mediatorial intercession ; the influences of the Spirit ; the eternity of future punishment ; are topics of popular discussion with those who would deny or pervert these doctrines: and we may judge by their success what our own might be, if we would but meet our antagonists on their own ground. The common people, we find, enter into the force, though they do not perceive the sophistry, of their arguments. The same people would much more enter into the internal evi- dence of the genuine doctrine of the gospel, if holden out to them, not in parts, studiously divested of whatever may seem mysterious, — not with accommodations to the pre- vailing fashion of opinions, — but entire and undisguised. Nor are the laity to shut their ears against these disputa- tions, as niceties in which they are not concerned, or dif- ficulties above the reach of their abilities : and least of all are they to neglect those disquisitions which immediately respect the interpretation of texts. Every sentence of the Bible is from God, and every man is interested in the meaning of it. The teacher, therefore, is to expound, and the disciple to hear and read with diligence ; and much might be the fruit of the blessing of God on their united exertions. And this I infer, not only from a general con- sideration of the nature of the gospel doctrine, and the cast of the Scripture language, which is admirably accommo- dated to vulgar apprehensions, but from a fact which has happened to fall much within my own observation, — the proficiency, I mean, that we often find, in some si^igle sci-
eiice, of men who have never liad a liberal education, and who, except in that particular subject on which they have bestowed pains and attention, remain ignorant and illiterate to the end of their lives. The sciences are said, and they are truly said, to have that mutual connexion, that any one of them may be the better understood for an insight into the rest. And there is, perhaps, no branch of knowledge which receives more illustration from all the rest, than the science of religion : yet it hath, like every other, its own internal principles on which it rests, with tlie knowledge of which, without any other, a great progress may be made. And these lie much more open to the apprehension of an uncul- tivated understanding than the principles of certain abstruse sciences, such as geometry, for instance, or astronomy, in which I have known plain men, who could set up no preten- sions to general learning, make distinguished attainments.
Under these persuasions, I shall not scruple to attempt a disc^uisition, which, on the first view of it, might seem adapted only to a learned auditory. And I trust that I shall speak to your understandings.
I propose to consider what may be the most frequent import of the phrase of " our Lord's coming," And it will, if I mistake not, appear, that the figurative use of it, to de- note the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Ro- mans, is very rare, if not altogether unexampled in the Scriptures of the New Testament ; except, perhaps, in some passages of the book of Revelation : that, on the other hand, the use of it in the literal sense is frequent, warning the Christian world of an event to be wished by the faith- ful, and dreaded by the impenitent, — a visible descent of our Lord from heaven, as visible to all the world as his ascension was to the apostles, — a coming of our Lord in all the majesty of the Godhead, to judge the quick and dead, to receive his servants into glory, and send the wicked into outer darkness.
In the Epistles of St. Saul, St. Peter, and St. James, we find frequent mention of the coming of our Lord, in
terms which, like those of the text, may at first seem to imply an expectation in those writers of his speedy arrival. There can be no question that the coming of our Lord literally signifies his coming in person to the general judg- ment, and that it was sometimes used in this literal sense by our Lord himself; as in the 25th chapter of St. Mat- thew's gospel, where the Son of man is described as com- ing in his glory — as sitting on the throne of his glory — as separating the just and the wicked, and pronouncing the final sentence. But, as it would be very unreasonable to suppose that the inspired writers, though ignorant of the times and seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power, could be under so great a delusion as to look for the end of the world in their own days — for this reason it has been imagined, that wherever in the epistles of the apostles, such assertions occur as those I have mentioned, the coming of our Lord is not to be taken in the literal meaning of the phrase, but that we are to look for some- thing which was really at hand when these epistles were written, and which, in some figurative sense, might be called his coming. And such an event the learned think they find in the destruction of Jerusalem, which may seem, indeed, no insignificant type of the final destruction of the enemies of God and Christ. But if we recur to the pas- sages wherein the approach of Christ's kingdom is men- tioned, we shall find that in most of them, I believe it might be said in all, the mention of the final judgment might be of much importance to the writer's argument, while that of the destruction of Jerusalem could be of none. The coming of our Lord is a topic which the holy penmen employ, when they find occasion to exhort the brethren to a steady perseverance in the profession of the gospel, and a patient endurance of those trying aiflictions, with which the providence of God, in the first ages of the church, was pleased to exercise his servants. Upon these occasions, to confirm the persecuted Christian's wavering faith — to revive his weary hope — to invigorate his droop-
ing zeal — nothing could be more eftectual than to set before him the prospect of that happy consummation, when his Lord should come to take him to himself, and change his short-lived sorrows into endless joy. On the other hand, nothing, upon these occasions, could be more out of season, than to bring in view an approaching period of increased affliction — for such was the season of the Jewish war to be. The believing Jews, favoured as they were in many instances, were still sharers, in no small degree, in the common calamity of their country. They had been trained by our Lord himself to no other expectation. He had spoken explicitly of the siege of Jerusalem as a time of distress and danger to the very elect of God. Again, if the careless and indifferent were at any time to be awakened to a sense of danger, the last judgment was likely to afford a more prevailing argument than the pros- pect of the temporal ruin impending over the Jewish nation ; or indeed than any thing else which the phrase of "our Lord's coming," according to any figurative inter- pretation of it, can denote. It should seem, therefore, that in all those passages of the epistles, in which the coming of our Lord is holden out, either as a motive to patience and perseverance, or to keep alive that spirit of vigilance and caution which is necessary to make our calling sure— it should seem, that in all these passages, the coming is to be taken literally for our Lord's personal coming at the last day; and that the figure is rather to be sought in those expressions which, in their literal mean- ing, might seem to announce his immediate arrival. And this St. Peter seems to suggest, when he tells us, in his second epistle, that the terms of soo?i and late are to be very differently understood, when applied to the great ope- rations of Providence, and to the ordinary occurrences ol human life. " The Lord," says he, " is not slack concern- ing his promise, as some men count slackness. One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." Soon and late are words whereby a compa-
8
rison is rather intended of the mutual proportion oi dif- ferent intervals of time,4han the magnitude of any one by itself defined; and the same thing may be said to be coming either soon or late, according as the distance of it is compared with a longer or a shorter period of dura- tion. Thus, although the day of judgment was removed undoubtedly by an interval of many ages from the age of the apostles, yet it might in their days be said to be at hand, if its distance from them was but a small part of its original distance from the creation of the world — that is, if its distance then was but a small part of the whole period of the world's existence, which is the standard, in reference to which, so long as the world shall last, all other portions of time may be by us most properly deno- minated long or short. There is again another use of the words soon and late, whereby any one portion of time, taken singly, is understood to be compared, not with any other, but with the number of events that are to come to pass in it in natural consequence and succession. If the events are few in proportion to the time, the succession must be slow, and the time may be called long. If they are many, the succession must be quick, and the time may be called short, in respect of the number of events, whatever be the absolute extent of it. It seems to be in this sense that expressions denoting speediness of event are applied by the sacred writers to our Lord's coming. In the day of Messiah the Prince, in the interval between our Lord's ascension and his coming again to judgment, the world was to be gradually prepared and ripened for its end. The apostles were to carry the tidings of salva- tion to the extremities of the earth. They were to be brought before kings and rulers, and to water the new- planted churches with their blood. Vengeance was to be executed on the unbelieving Jews, by the destruction of their city, and the dispersion of their nation. The Pagan idolatry was to be extirpated^the Man of Sin to be re- vealed. Jerusalem is yet to be trodden down; the rem-
iiant of Israel is to be brought back ; the elect of God to be gathered from the four winds of heaven. And when the apostles speak of that event as at hand, which is to close this great scheme of Providence — a scheme in its parts so extensive and so various — they mean to intimate how busily the great work is going on, and with what confidence, from what they saw accomplished in their own days, the first Christians might expect in due time the promised consummation.
That they are to be thus understood may be collected from our Lord's own parable of the fig-tree, and the ap- plication which he teaches us to make of it. After a minute prediction of the distresses of the Jewish war, and the destruction of Jerusalem, and a very general mention of his second coming, as a thing to follow in its appointed season, he adds, "Now learn a parable of the fig-tree: When its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, ye know that summer is nigh. So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors." That it is near; so we read in our English Bibles ; and expositors render the word it, by the ruin foretold, or the desolation spoken of. But what was the ruin foretold, or desolation spoken of? The ruin of the Jewish nation — the desolation of Jerusalem. What were all these things, which, when they should see, they might know it to be near ? All the particulars of our Saviour's detail ; that is to say, the destruction of Jerusalem, with all the circumstances of confusion and distress with which it was to be accompanied. This exposition, therefore, makes, as I conceive, the desolation of Jerusalem the prog- nostic of itself, — the sign and the thing signified the same. The true rendering of the original I take to be, "So like- wise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that He is near at the doors." He, — that is, the Son of man, spoken of in the verses immediately preceding, as coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. The
10
approach of summer, says our Lord, is not more surely indicated by the first appearances of spring-, than the final destruction of the wicked by the beginnings of vengeance on this impenitent people. The opening of the vernal blossom is the first step in a natural process, which neces- sarily terminates in the ripening of the summer fruits; and the rejection of the Jews, and the adoption of the believ- ing Gentiles, is the first step in the execution of a settled plan of Providence, which inevitably terminates in the general judgment. The chain of physical causes, in the one case, is not more uninterrupted, or more certainly productive of the ultimate effect, than the chain of moral causes in the other. " Verily, I say unto you, this genera- tion shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled." All these things, in this sentence, must unquestionably denote the same things which are denoted by the same words just before. Just before, the same words denoted those particular circumstances of the Jewish war which were included in our Lord's prediction. All those signs which answer to the fig-tree's budding leaves, the apostles and their cotemporaries, at least some of that generation, were to see. But as the thing portended is not included among the signs, it was not at all implied in this declara- tion that any of them were to live to see the harvest, — the coming of our Lord in glory.
I persuade myself that I have shown that our Lord's coming, whenever it is mentioned by the apostles in their epistles as a motive to a holy life, is always to be taken literally for his personal coming at the last day.
It may put the matter still farther out of doubt, to ob- serve, that the passage where, of all others, in this part of Scripture, a figurative interpretation of the phrase of " our Lord's coming" would be the most necessary, if the figure did not lie in the expressions that seem to intimate its near approach, happens to be one in which our Lord's coming cannot but be literally taken. The passage to
n
which 1 allude is in the fourth chapter of St. Paul's First Epistle to the Thessalonians, from the thirteenth verse to the end. The apostle, to comfort the Thessalonian bre- thren concerning theirdeceased friends, reminds them of the resurrection; and tells them, that those who were already dead would as surely have their part in a happy immor- tality as the Christians that should be living at the time of our Lord's coming. Upon this occasion, his expres- sions, taken literally, would imply that he included him- self, with many of those to whom these consolations were addressed, in the number of those who should remain alive at the last day. This turn of the expression naturally arose from the strong hold that the expectation of the thing, in its due season, had taken of the writer's ima- gination, and from his full persuasion of the truth of the doctrine he was asserting, — namely, that those who should die before our Lord's coming, and those who should then be alive, would find themselves quite upon an even foot- ing. In the confident expectation of his own reward, his intermediate dissolution was a matter of so much in- difference to him, that he overlooks it. His expression, however, was so strong, that his meaning was mistaken, or, as I rather think, misrepresented. There seems to have been a sect in the apostolic age, — in which sect, however, the apostles themselves were not, as some have absurdly maintained, included, — but there seems to have been a sect which looked for the resurrection in their own time. Some of these persons seem to have taken advan- tage of St. Paul's expressions in this passage, to represent him as favouring their opinion. This occasioned the Se- cond Epistle to the Thessalonians, in which the apostle peremptorily decides against that doctrine: maintaining that the Man of Sin is to be revealed, and a long conse- quence of events to run out, before the day of judgment can come; and he desires that no expression of his may be undertsood of its speedy arrival; — which proves, if the thing needed farther proof than I have already given of it,
J2
that the coming mentioned in his former epistle is the coming to judgment, and that whatever he had said of the day of coming as at hand, was to be understood only of the certainty of that coming.
The most difficult part of my subject yet remains, — to consider the passages in the gospel wherein the coming of our Lord is mentioned.
SERMON II.
Tell US;, when shall these things be ; and what shall be the signs of thy coming, and of the end of the world ? — Matt. xxiv. 3.
I PROCEED in my inquiry into the general importance of the phrase of " the coming of the Son of man" in the Scriptures of the New Testament.
I have shown, that in the epistles, wherever our Lord's coming is mentioned, as an expectation that should ope- rate, through hope, to patience and perseverance, or through fear, to vigilance and caution, it is to be understood lite- rally of his coming in person to the general judgment. I have yet to consider the usual import of the same phrase in the gospels. I shall consider the passages wherein a figure hath been supposed, omitting those where the sense is universally confessed to be literal.
When our Lord, after his resurrection, was pleased to intimate to St. Peter the death by which it was ordained that he should glorify God, St. Peter had the weak cu- riosity to inquire, what might be St. John's destiny. " Lord, what shall this man do?" " Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me." The disciples understood this answer as a prediction that St. John was not to die; which seems to prove, what is much to our purpose, that in the en- lightened period which immediately followed our Lord's ascension, the expression of his coming was taken in its literal meaning. This interpretation of the reply to St.
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Peter was set aside by tlie event. In extreme old ao-e, the disciple whom Jesus loved was taken for ever to the bosom of his Lord. But the Christians of that time being- fixed in a habit of interpreting the reply to St. Peter as a prediction concerning the term of St. John's life, began to affix a figurative meaning to the expression of " our Lord's coming," and persuaded themselves that the prediction was verified by St. John's having survived the destruction of Jerusalem ; and this gave a beginning to the practice, which has since prevailed, of seeking figurative senses of this phrase wherever it occurs. But the plain fact is, that St. John himself saw nothing of prediction in our Sa- viour's words. He seems to have apprehended nothing in them but an answer of significant, though mild, rebuke to an inquisitive demand.
If there be any passage in the New Testament in which the epoch of the destruction of Jerusalem is intended by the phrase of " our Lord's coming," we might not unrea- sonably look for this figure in some parts of those prophe- tical discourses, in Avhich he replied to the question pro- posed to him in the words of the text, and particularly in the twenty-seventh verse of this twenty-fourth chapter of St. Matthew's gospel, where our Saviour, in the middle of that part of his discourse, in which he describes the events of the Jewish war, says, " For as the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth unto the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." And he adds, in the twenty-eighth verse, " For wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together." The disciples, when they put the question, " Tell us, when shall these things be ; and what shall be the signs of thy coming, and of the end of the world;" imagined, no doubt, that the coming of our Lord was to be the epoch of the demolition with which he had threatened the temple. They had not yet raised their expectations to any thing above a temporal kingdom. They imagined, perhaps, that our Lord would come by conquest, or by some display of his extraordinary
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powers which should be equivalent to conquest, to seat himself upon David's throne ; and that the destruction of the Jewish temple would be either the last step in the acquisition of his royal power, or perhaps the first exertijii of it. The veil was yet upon their understandings ; and the season not being come for taking it entirely away, it would have been nothing strange if our Lord had framed his reply in terms accommodated to their prejudices, and had spoken of the ruin of Jerusalem as they conceived of it, — as an event that was to be the consequence of his coming, ■^-to be his own immediate act, in the course of those con- quests by which they might think he was to gain his king- dom ; or the beginning of the vengeance which, when esta- blished in it, he might be expected to execute on his vanquished enemies. These undoubtedly were the notions of the disciples, when they put the question concerning the time of the destruction of the temple and the signs of our Lord's coming; and it would have been nothing strange if our Lord had delivered his answer in expres- sions studiously accommodated to these prejudices. For as the end of prophecy is not to give curious men a know- ledge of futurity, but to be in its completion an evidence of God's all-ruling providence, who, if he governed not the world, could not possibly foretell the events of distant ages; — for this reason, the spirit which was in the pro- phets hath generally used a language, artfully contrived to be obscure and ambiguous, in proportion as the events intended might be distant, — gradually to clear up as the events should approach, and acquire from the events, when brought to pass, the most entire perspicuity: that thus men might remain in that ignorance of futurity, which so suits with the whole of our present condition, that it seems essential to the welfare of the world ; and yet be overwhelmed at last with evident demonstrations of the power of God. It might have been expected that our Lord, in delivering a prediction, should assume the ac- customed style of prophecy, which derives much of its
usetVil ambiguity from this circumstance, — from an artful accommodation to popular mistakes, so far as they concern not the interest of religion; — and much of this language, indeed, we find in our Lord's discourse. But, with respect to his own coming, it seems to be one great object of his discourse, to advertise the Christian world that it is quite a distinct event from the demolition of the Jewish temple. This information is indeed conveyed in oblique insinua- tions, of which it might not be intended that the full mean- ing should appear at the time when they were uttered. But when Christians had once seen Jerusalem, with its temple and all its towers, destroyed, the nation of the Jews dispersed, and our Lord, in a literal meaning, not yet come; it is strange that they did not then discern, that if there be any thing explicit and clear in the whole of this prophetical discourse, it is this particular prediction, that, during the distresses of the Jewish war, the expectation of our Lord's immediate coming would be the reigning delusion of the times. The discourse is opened with this caution, "Take heed that no man deceive you; for many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many." And the same caution is repeated in various parts of the prophecy, till he comes at last to speak (as I shall hereafter show) of his real coming, as a thing to take place after the destined period should be run out of the desolation of the holy city. " If any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there, — be- lieve it not. If they shall say unto you. Behold, he is in the desert, — go not forth ; Behold, he is in the se- cret chambers, — believe it not. For, as the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth unto the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For," as it is added in St. Matthew, " wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together." Give no credit, says our Lord, to any reports that may be spread that the Messiah is come, — that he is in this place, or in that: my coming will be attended with circumstances which will
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make it public at once to all the world; and there will be no need that one man should carry the tidings to another. This sudden and universal notoriety that there will be of our Saviour's last glorious advent, is signified by the image of the lightning, which, in the same instant, flashes upon the eyes of spectators in remote and opposite stations. And this is all that this comparison seems intended, or indeed fitted, to express. It hath been imagined that it denotes the particular route of the Roman armies, which entered Judea on the eastern side, and extended their conquests westward. But had this been intended, the image should rather have been taken from something which hath its natural and necessary course in that direction. The light- ning may break out indifferently in any quarter of the sky; and east and west seem to be mentioned only as ex- tremes and opposites. And, accordingly, in the parallel passage of St. Luke's gospel, we read neither of east nor west, but indefinitely of opposite parts of the heavens : " For as the lightning, that lighteneth out of the one part under the heaven, shineth unto the other part under hea- ven, so shall also the Son of man be in his day." The expression his day is remarkable. The original might be more exactly rendered his oion day; intimating, as I con- ceive, that the day, that is, the time of the Son of man, is to be exclusively his own, — quite another from the day of those deceivers whom he had mentioned, and therefore quite another from the day of the Jev»^ish war, in which those deceivers were to arise.
Nevertheless, if it were certain that the eagles, in the next verse, denote the Roman armies, bearing the figure of an eagle on their standards, — if the carcass, round which the eagles were to be gathered, be the Jewish nation, which was morally and judicially dead, and whose destruction was pronounced in the decrees of Heaven, — if this were certain, it might then seem necessary to understand the coming of the Son of man, in the comparison of the light- ning, of his coming figuratively to destroy Jerusalem.
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But tliis interpretation of the eagles and the carcass I take to be a very uncertain, though a specious conjecture.
As the sacred historians have recorded the several oc- currences of our Saviour's life without a scrupulous atten- tion to the exact order of time in which they happened, so they seem to have registered his sayings with wonderful fidelity, but not always in the order in which they came from him. Hence it has come to pass, that the heads of a continued discourse have, perhaps, in some instances, come down to us, in the form of unconnected apophthegms. Hence, also, we sometimes find the same discourse differ- ently represented, in some minute circumstances, by dif- ferent evangelists ; and maxims the same in purport some- what differently expressed, or expressed in the same words, but sent down in a different order; — circumstances in which the captious infidel finds occasion of perpetual cavil, and from which the believer derives a strong argument of the integrity and veracity of the writers on whose testimony his faith is founded. Now, wherever these varieties ap- pear, the rule should be to expound each writer's narrative by a careful comparison with the rest.
To apply this to the matter in question. These pro- phecies of our Lord, which St. Matthew and St. Mark relate as a continued discourse, stand in St. Luke's narra- tive in two different parts, as if they had been delivered upon different, though somewhat similar, occasions. The first of these parts in order of time is made the latter part of the whole discourse in St. Matthew's narrative. The first occasion of its delivery was a question put by some of the Pharisees concerning the time of the coming of the kingdom of God. Our Lord, having given a very general answer to the Pharisees, addresses a more particular dis- course to his disciples, in which, after briefly mentioning, in highly-figured language, the affliction of the season of the Jewish war, and after cautioning his disciples against the false rumours of his advent which should then be spread, he proceeds to describe the suddenness with which
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his real advent, the day of judgment, will at last surprise the thoughtless world. The particulars of this discourse we have in the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke's gospel. The other part of these prophecies St. Luke relates as de- livered at another time, upon the occasion which St. Mat- thew and St. Mark mention. When the disciples, our Lord having mentioned the demolition of the temple, in- quired of him, " When shall these things be ; and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world ?" our Lord answers their question, as far as it was proper to answer it. He gives a minute detail of those circumstances of the war, which, to that generation, were to be the signs of the last advent; — not the thing itself, but the signs of it ; for the beginning of the com- pletion of a long train of prophecy is the natural sign and pledge of the completion of the whole. He foretells the total dispersion of the Jews. He mentions briefly his own coming ; of which, he says, the things previously men- tioned would be no less certain signs than the first ap- pearances of spring are signs of the season of the harvest. He aflirms that the day and hour of his coming is known to none but the Father; and he closes the whole of this discourse with general exhortations to constant watchful- ness, founded on the consideration of that suddenness of his coming, of which he had given such explicit warning in his former discourse. The detail of this last discourse, or rather of so much of this discourse as was not a repeti- tion of the former, we have in the twenty-first chapter of St. Luke's gospel.
St. Matthew and St. Mark, the one in the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth, the other in the thirteenth chapter of his gospel, give these prophecies in one entire discourse, as they were delivered to the apostles upon the occasion which they mention ; but they have neither distinguished the part that was new from what had been delivered before, nor have they preserved, as it should seem, so exactly as St. Luke, the original arrangement of the matter. In par-
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ticular, St. Matthew lias brought close together the com- parison of the Son of mans coming with a flash of light- ning, and the image of the eagles gathered about the car- cass. St. Mark mentions neither the one nor the other • whereas St. Luke mentions both, but sets them at the greatest distance one from the other. Both, as appears from St. Luke, belonged to the old part of the discourse • but the comparison of tlie lightning was introduced near the beginning of the discourse, the image of the eagles and the carcass at the very end of it. Indeed, this image did not belong to the prediction, but was an answer to a par- ticular question proposed by the disciples respecting some things our Lord had said in the latter part of this prophecy. Our Saviour had compared the suddenness of the comino- of the Son of man to the sudden eruption of the waters in Noah's flood, and to the sudden fall of the lightning that consumed Sodom and Gomorrah. It is evident, from St. Matthew's relation, that the coming intended in these si- militudes, is that coming, of the time and hour of which none knows, said our Lord, "not even the Son, but the Father." But since the epoch of the destruction of Jeru- salem was known to the Messiah by the prophetic spirit, —for he said that it should take place before the genera- tion with which he was living on earth should be passed away,— the coming, of which the time was not known to the Messiah by the prophetic spirit, could be no other than the last personal advent. This, therefore, is the coming of which our Lord speaks in the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke's gospel, and of which he describes the suddenness ; and in the end of his discourse, he foretells some extraor- dinary interpositions of a discriminating Providence, which shall preserve the righteous, in situations of the greatest danger, from certain public calamities which, in the last ages of the world, will fall upon wicked nations. " Of two men in one bed, one shall be taken and the other left. Two women grinding together, the one shall be taken and the other left. Two men shall be in the field, the one shall c 2
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be taken and tlie other left. And they said unto him, Where, Lord ? And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together." It is probable that the eagle and the carcass was a proverbial image among the people of the East, expressing things inseparably connected by natural affinities and sympathies. " Her young ones suck up blood," says Job, speaking of the eagle, "and where the slain is, there is she." The disciples ask, Where, in what countries are these calami- ties to happen, and these miraculous deliverances to be wrought ? Our divine Instructor held it unfit to give far- ther light upon the subject. He frames a reply, as was his custom when pressed with unseasonable questions, which, at the same time that it evades the particular in- quiry, might more edify the disciples than the most expli- cit resolution of the question proposed. " Wheresoever the carcass is, thither will the eagles be gathered together." Wheresoever sinners shall dwell, there shall my vengeance overtake them, and there will I interpose to protect my faithful servants. Nothing, therefore, in the similitude of the lightning, or the image of the eagles gathered round the carcass, limits the phrase of " our Lord's coming," in the twenty-seventh verse of this twenty-fourth chapter of St. Matthew, to the figurative sense of his coming to de- stroy Jerusalem.
His coming is announced again in the thirtieth verse, and in subsequent parts of these same prophecies; where it is of great importance to rescue the phrase from the refine- ments of modern expositors, and to clear some considera- ble difficulties, which, it must be confessed, attend the literal interpretation. And to this purpose I shall devote a separate discourse.
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SERMON III.
Tell us when shall these things be ; and what shall be the signs of thy coming, and of the end of the world ? — Matt. xxiv. 3.
It was upon the Wednesday in the Passion week, that our Lord, for the last time retiring from the temple, where he had closed his public teaching with a severe invective against the hypocrisy of the Scribes and Pharisees, uttered to the apostles, remarking with admiration as they passed the strength and beauty of that stately fabric, that predic- tion of its approaching demolition which gave occasion to the question which is related in my text. When they reached the Mount of Olives, and Jesus was seated on a part of the hill where the city and the temple lay in pros- pect before him, four of the apostles took advantage of that retirement to obtain, as they hoped, from our Lord's mouth, full satisfaction of the curiosity which his prediction of the temple's ruin had excited. Peter, James, John, and An- drew, came to him, and asked him privately, " Tell us when shall these things be ; and what shall be the signs of thy coming, and of the end of the world ?" To this inquiry our Lord was pleased to reply, in a prophetical discourse of some considerable length, which takes up two entire chapters, the twenty-fourth and the twenty-fifth of St. Mat- thew's gospel ; and yet is brief, if the discourse be mea- sured by the subject, — if the length of speech be compared with the period of time which the prophecy embraces, commencing within a few years after our Lord's ascension, and ending only with the general judgment. This dis- course consists of two principal branches. The first is the answer to the first part of the question, " When shall these things be ?" — that is. When shall this demolition of the temple be, which thou hast now foretold ? And the second branch of the discourse is the answer to the second part of the question, " What shall be the signs of thy coming,
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and of tlie end of the world ?'' You will find, indeed, in some modern expositions, such a turn given to the expres- sions in which the apostles put their questions, as makes the two branches of the sentence, not two distinct ques- tions, as they really are, but the same question, differently expressed. You are told by these expositors, that by the end of the world the apostles meant the end of that particular age during which the Jewish church and state were destined to endure. Such puerile refinements of verbal criticism might better become those blind leaders of the blind, against whose bad teaching our Saviour warned the Jewish people, than the preachers of the gospel. Ask these expositors by what means they were themselves led to the discovery of a meaning so little obvious in the words, you will find that they have nothing to allege but what they call the idioms of the Jewish lan- guage ; which, however, are no idioms of the language of the inspired penmen, but the idioms of the rabbinical di- vines,— a set of despicable writers, who strive to cover their poverty of meaning by the affected obscurity of a mystic style. The apostles were no rabbins ; they were plain, artless men, commissioned to instruct men like them- selves in the mysteries of God's kingdom. It is not to be believed that such men, writing for such a purpose, and charged with the publication of a general revelation, should employ phrases intelligible to none but Jews, and among the Jews themselves intelligible only to the learned. The word end, by itself, indeed, may be the end of any thing, and may perhaps be used in this very part of Scripture with some ambiguity, either for the end of all things, or the end of the Jewish state, or the end of any period which may be the immediate subject of discourse : but it is not to be believed that the end of the world, in the language of the apostles, may signify the end of any thing else, or carry any other meaning than what the words must natu- rally convey, to every one who believes that the world shall have an end, and has never bewildered his understanding:
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in the schools of the rabbin. The apostles, therefore, in the text clearly ask two questions : When will the temple be demolished, as thou hast threatened? And by what signs shall the world be apprized of thy coming, and of its approaching end ? Our Lord's prophetical discourse contains such an answer as was meet for both these ques- tions; and as the questions were distinctly propounded, the answers are distinctly given in the two distinct branches of the entire discourse.
I observed, in my last sermon upon this subject, that these prophecies of our Lord, which St. Matthew and St. Mark relate as a continued discourse, are related by St. Luke as if they had been delivered in two different parts, upon different, though similar, occasions. The truth is, that it was our Lord's custom, as appears from the evange- lical history, not only to inculcate frequently the same maxims, and to apply the same proverbs in various senses, but to repeat discourses of a considerable length upon different occasions : as what is called his sermon on the mount was at least twice delivered, and some of his para- bles were uttered more than once. It is a rule, however, with the evangelists, that each relates a discourse of any considerable length but once, without noticing the various occasions upon which it might be repeated ; though differ- ent evangelists often record different deliveries of the same discourse. St. Luke, having related in its proper place our Lord's answer to the inquiry of the Pharisees about the signs of the kingdom, omits, in his relation of our Lord's answer to the like inquiry of the apostles, what seemed little more than a repetition of what had been said upon the former occasion. St. Matthew and St. Mark have given the discourse in reply to the apostles more at length, without mentioning that our Lord had at any time before touched upon the same subject.
By comparing the parallel passages of these prophetical discourses, as they are related entire by St. Matthew, and in parts by St. Luke, I have already shown, that in the
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similitude of the lightning, by which our Lord represents the suddenness of his future coming, no allusion could be intended to the route of the Roman armies, when they in- vaded Palestine ; and that the image of the eagles gathered round the carcass hath been expounded with more refine- ment than truth of the Roman standards planted round Jerusalem, when the city was besieged by Vespasian. No argument, therefore, can be drawn from these poetical al- lusions, that the coming of the Son of man, which is com- pared to the flash of lightning, was what has been called his coming figuratively to destroy Jerusalem. I now pro- ceed to consider the remaining part of these prophecies, and to show that the coming of the Son of man, so often mentioned in them, can be understood of nothing but that future coming of our Lord which was promised to the apostles by the angels at the time of his ascension, — his coming visibly to judge the quick and dead.
Every one, I believe, admits that the coming of the Son of man, foretold in the thirtieth verse of this twenty-fourth chapter of St. Matthew's gospel, when the sign of the Son of man is to be displayed in the heavens, when the tribes of the earth shall be seized with consternation, seeing him coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory ; — every one admits, that the coming thus foretold in the thirtieth verse, is to succeed those disorders in the sun, moon, and stars, mentioned in the twenty-ninth. Darkness in the sun and moon, and a falling of the stars, were images in frequent and familiar use among the Jewish prophets, to denote the overthrow of great empires, or the fall of mighty potentates; and there is nothing in the images themselves to connect them with one event of this kind rather than another. But if we recur to the parallel passage of St. Luke's gospel, we shall find, that before these signs in the sun, moon, and stars, our Lord had mentioned that Jerusalem is to be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled ; that is, till the time shall come for that accession of new converts from the
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Gentiles, which, as St. Paul intimates, is to follow the restoration of the converted Jews. "If the fall of them" (the Jews), says St. Paul, " be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fulness!" After he had mentioned this fulfilling of the times of the Gentiles, then, according to St. Luke, our Lord introduced those signs in the sun and the heavenly bodies. These signs, therefore, are not to take place till the time come for the fulfilling of the Gentiles ; not, therefore, till the restoration of the Jews, which is to be the beginning and the means of that ful- filling. They cannot, therefore, be intended to denote the beginnings of that dispersion of the Jews from which they are to be restored when these signs take place. Nor can the coming of the Son of man, which is still to succeed these signs, be his coming figuratively to effect that dis- persion by the arms of Vespasian. The dispersion, I say, of the Jewish people, which, by a considerable interval, was to precede these signs, cannot be the same thing with the coming of the Son of man, which is to follow them.
Upon these grounds, I conclude that, under the image of these celestial disorders, the overthrow of some wicked nations in the last ages is predicted ; probably of some who shall pretend to oppose, by force of arms, the return of the chosen race to the holy land, and the re-establish- ment of their kingdom. And if this be the probable in- terpretation of the signs in the sun and moon, the advent which is to succeed those signs can hardly be any other than the real advent at the last day.
In my first discourse upon this subject, I had occasion to obviate an objection that might be raised, from the de- claration which our Lord subjoins to his parable of the fig-tree : " This generation shall not pass away till all these things be fulfilled." I showed that the words all these things do not denote all the particulars of the whole pre- ceding prophecy, but all the things denoted by the same
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words in the application of that parable,- — namely, all the first signs which answer to the budding of the fig-tree's leaves.
Great stress has been laid upon the expressions with which, as St. Matthew reports them, our Lord introduces the mention of those signs in sun and moon which are to precede his advent : " Immediately after the tribulation of those days, shall the sun be darkened."' The word imme- diately may seem to direct us to look for this darkness of sun and moon in something immediately succeeding the calamities which the preceding part of the prophecy de- scribes: and as nothing could more immediately succeed the distresses of the Jewish war than the demolition of the city and the dispersion of the nation, hence, all that goes before in St. Matthew's narrative of these discourses hath been understood of the distresses of the war, and these celestial disorders, of the final dissolution of the Jewish polity in church and state; which catastrophe, it hath been thought, our Lord might choose to clothe in " figu- rative language, on purpose to perplex the unbelieving, persecuting Jews, if his discourses should ever fall into their hands, that they might not learn to avoid the im- pending evil." But we learn from St. Luke, that before our Lord spoke of these signs, he mentioned the final dis- solution of the Jewish polity, in the plainest terms, with- out any figure. He had said, "They," that is (as appears by the preceding sentence), this people, "shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations; and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gen- tiles." And to what purpose should he afterwards pro- pound in a figure what he had already described in plain words ? Or how could the figurative description, thus ac- companied with the interpretation, serve the purpose of confounding and perplexing? I apprehend, that the whole difficulty which the word immediately is supposed to create in that interpretation, which refers the signs in the sun and moon to the last ages of the world, is founded on a
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mistake concerning the extent of that period of affliction which is intended by the tribulation of those days. These words, I beheve, have been always understood of those few years during which the Roman armies harassed Judea and besieged the holy city : whereas it is more agreeable to the general cast of the prophetic language, to understand them of the whole period of the tribulation of the Jewish nation, — that whole period during which Jerusalem is to be trodden down. This tribulation began, indeed, in those days of the Jewish war; but the period of it is at this day in its course, and will not end till the time shall come, predetermined in the counsels of God, for the restoration of that people to their ancient seats. This whole period will probably be a period of affliction, not to the Jews only, but also in some degree to the Christian church ; for not before tlie expiration of it will the true church be se- cure from persecutions from without — from corruption, schism, and heresy within. But when this period shall be run out, — when the destined time shall come for the conversion and restoration of the Jewish people, — imme- diately shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light; great commotions and revolutions will take place among the kingdoms of the earth. Indeed, the re-establishment of the Jewish kingdom is, in the na- ture of the thing, not likely to be effected without great disturbances. By this interpretation, and I think in no other way, the parallel passages of St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke, may be brought exactly to one and the same meaning.
I shall now venture to conclude, notwithstanding the great authorities which incline the other way, that the phrase of " our Lord's coming," wherever it occurs in his prediction of the Jewish war, as well as in most other pas- sages of the New Testament, is to be taken in its literal meaning, as denoting his coming in person, in visible pomp and glory, to the general judgment.
Nor is the belief of that coming, so explicitly foretold,
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an article of little moment in the Christian's creed, how- ever some who call themselves Christians may affect to slight it. It is true, that the expectation of a future re- tribution is what ought, in the nature of the thing, to be a sufficient restraint upon a wise man's conduct, though we were uninformed of the manner in which the thing will be brought about, and were at liberty to suppose that every individual's lot would be silently determined, without any public entry of the Almighty Judge, and without the formaUty of a public trial. But our merciful God, who knows how feebly the allurements of the present world are resisted by our reason, unless imagination can be engaged on reason's side, to paint the prospect of future good, and display the terror of future suffering, hath been pleased to ordain that the business shall be so conducted, and the method of the business so clearly foretold, as to strike the profane with awe, and animate the humble and the timid. He hath warned us, — and let them who dare to extenuate the warning ponder the dreadful curse with which the book of prophecy is sealed — "If any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life ;"— God hath warned us that the inquiry into every man's conduct will be public, — Christ himself the Judge, the whole race of man, and the whole angelic host, spectators of the awful scene. Before that assembly, every man's good deeds will be declared, and his most secret sins disclosed. As no elevation of rank will then give a title to respect, no ob- scurity of condition shall exclude the just from public honour, or screen the guilty from public shame. Opu- lence will find itself no longer powerful, poverty will be no longer weak; birth will no longer be distinguished, meanness will no longer pass unnoticed. The rich and poor will indeed strangely meet together; when all the inequalities of the present life shall disappear, and the conqueror and his captive, the monarch and his subject, the lord and his vassal, the statesman and the peasant.
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tlie philosopher and the unlettered liind — shall find their distinctions to have been mere illusions. The characters and actions of the greatest and the meanest have, in truth, been equally important, and equally public ; while the eye of the omniscient God hath been equally upon them all, — while all are at last equally brought to answer to their common Judge, and the angels stand around specta- tors, equally interested in the dooms of all. The sentence of every man will be pronounced by him who cannot be merciful to those who shall have willingly sold themselves to that abject bondage from which he died to purchase their redemption, — who, nevertheless, having felt the power of temptation, knows to pity them that have been tempted ; by him on whose mercy contrite frailty may rely- — whose anger hardened impenitence must dread. To heighten the solemnity and terror of the business, the Judge will visibly descend from heaven, — the shout of the archangels and the trumpet of the Lord will thunder through the deep, — the dead will awake, — the glorified saints will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air; while the wicked will, in vain, call upon the mountains and the rocks to cover them. Of the day and hour when these things shall be, knoweth no man ; but the day and hour for these things are fixed in the eternal Father's counsels. Our Lord will come, — he will come unlooked for, and may come sooner than we think.
God grant, that the diligence we have used in these meditations may so fix the thought and expectation of that glorious advent in our hearts, that by constant watch- fulness on our own part, and by the powerful succour of God's Holy Spirit, we may be found of our Lord, when he cometh, without spot and blameless !
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SERMON IV.
I speak of the things which I have made touching the King, — or unto the King. — IVsalm xlv. 1 .
This forty-fifth psalm has, for many ages, made a stated part of the public service of the church on this anniversary festival of our blessed Lord's nativity.* With God's as- sistance, I purpose to explain to you its application, both in the general subject, and in each particular part, to this great occasion; which will afford both seasonable and edi-- fying matter of discourse.
It is a poetical composition, in the form of an epithala- mium, or song of congratulation, upon the marriage of a great king, to be sung to music at the wedding-feast. The topics are such as were the usual groundwork of such gra- tulatory odes with the poets of antiquity : they all fall under two general heads — the praises of the bridegroom, and the praises of the bride. The bridegroom is praised for the comeliness of his person, and the urbanity of his address • — for his military exploits — for the extent of his conquests — for the upright administration of his government — for the magnificence of his court. The bride is celebrated for her high birth — for the beauty of her person, the richness of her dress, and her numerous train of blooming bride- maids. It is foretold that the marriage will be fruitful, and that the sons of the great king will be sovereigns of the whole earth. In this general structure of the poem, we find nothing but the common topics and the com- mon arrangement of every wedding-song: and were it not that it is come down to us in the authentic collection of the sacred hymns of the Hebrew church, and that some particular expressions are found in it, which, with all the allowance that can be made for the hyperbolisms of the oriental style (of which, of late years, w^e have been accus- * Preached on Christmas-day.
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tomed to liear more than is true, as applied to tlie sacred writers), are not easily applicable to the parties, even in a royal marriage ; — were it not for such expressions which occm-, and for the notorious circumstance that it had a distinguished place in the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures, — we should not be led to divine, from any thing in the general structure of the poem, that this psalm had reference to any religious subject. But when we connect these cir- cumstances with another, which cannot have escaped the observation of any reader of the Bible, that the relation between the Saviour and his church is represented in the writings both of the Old and New Testament under the image of the relation of a husband to his wife, — that it is a favourite image with all the ancient prophets, when they would set forth the loving-kindness of God for the church, or the church's dutiful return of love to him ; while, on the contrary, the idolatry of the church, in her apostacies, is represented as the adultery of a married woman, — that this image has been consecrated to this signification by our Lord's own use of it, who describes God in the act of set- tling the church in her final state of peace and perfection, as a king making a marriage for his son; — the conjec- ture that will naturally arise upon the recollection of these circumstances will be, that this epithalamium, pre- served among the sacred writings of the ancient Jewish church, celebrates no common marriage, but the great mystical wedding, — that Christ is the bridegroom, and the spouse his church. And this was the unanimous opinion of all antiquity, without exception even of the Jewish ex- positors. For although, with the veil of ignorance and prejudice upon their understandings and their hearts, they discern not the completion of this or of any of their pro- phecies in the Son of Mary, yet they all allow, that this is one of the prophecies which relate to the Messiah and Messiah's people ; and none of them ever dreamed of an application of it to the marriage of any earthly prince.
It is the more extraordinary, that there should have arisen in the Christian church, in later ages, expositors
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of great name and authority, and, indeed, of great learn- ing, who have maintained, that the immediate subject of the psalm is the marriage of Solomon with Pharaoh's daughter, and can discover only a distant reference to Christ and the church, as typified by the Jewish king and his Egyptian bride. This exposition, too absurd and gross for Jewish blindness, contrary to the unanimous sense of the fathers of the earliest ages, unfortunately gained cre- dit, in a late age, in the reformed churches, upon the au- thority of Calvin ; insomuch that, in an English transla- tion of the Bible, which goes under the name of Queen Elizabeth's Bible, because it was in common use in private families in her reign, we have this argument prefixed to the psalm: "The majestic of Solomon, his honour, strength, beauty, riches, and power, are praised ; and also his mar- riage with the Egyptian, being an heathen woman, is blessed." It is added, indeed, " Under this figure, the wonderfuU majestic and increase of the kingdom of Christ, and his church now taken of the Gentiles, is described." Now the account of this matter is this : This English translation of the Bible, which is, indeed, upon the whole, a very good one, and furnished with very edifying notes and illustrations (except that in many points they savour too much of Calvinism), was made and first published at Geneva, by the English Protestants who fled thither from Mary's persecution. During their residence there, they contracted a veneration for the character of Calvin, which was no more than was due to his great piety and his great learning ; but they unfortunately contracted also a venera- tion for his opinions, — a veneration more than was due to the opinions of any uninspired teacher. The bad eff'ects of this unreasonable partiality the Church of England feels, in some points, to the present day ; and this false notion, which they who were led away with it circulated among the people of this country, ofthe true subject of this psalm, in the argument which they presumed to prefix to it, is one instance 9f this calamitous consequence.
Calvin was undoubtedly a good man, and a great di-
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vine: but, with all his sireat talents and his oTeatlearnino- he was, by his want of taste, and by the poverty of his imagination, a most wretched expositor of the prophecies, just as he would have been a wretched expositor of any secular poet. He had no sense of the beauties, and no understanding of the imagery of poetry ; and the far greater part of the prophetical writings, and- all the psalms, without exception, are poetical : and there is no stronger instance of his inability in this branch of sacred criticism than his notion of this psalm. " It is certain," he has the arrogance to say, with all antiquity, Jewish and Christian, in opposition to him, " it is certain, that this psalm was composed concerning Solomon. Yet the subject is not dalliance; but, under the figure of Solomon, the holy con- junction of Christ with his church is propounded to us."
It is most certain, that, in the prophetical book of the Song of Solomon, the union of Christ and his church is described in images taken entirely from the mutual pas- sion and early loves of Solomon and his Egyptian bride. And this, perhaps, might be the ground of Calvin's error : he might imagine, that this psalm was another shorter poem upon the same subject, and of the same cast. But no two compositions can be more unlike than the Song of Solomon and this forty-fifth psalm. Read the Song of Solomon, you will find the Hebrew king, if you know any thing of his history, produced, indeed, as the emblem of a greater personage, but you will find him in every page. Read the forty-fifth psalm, and tell me if you can any where find king Solomon. We find, indeed, pas- sages which may be applicable to Solomon, but not more applicable to him than to many other earthly kings ; such as comeliness of person and urbanity of address, mentioned in the second verse. These might be qualities, for any thing that we know to the contrary, belonging to Solomon ; I say, for any thing that we know to the contrary ; for in these particulars the sacred history gives no information. We read of Solomon's learning, and of his wisdom, and of the
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admirable sagacity and integrity of his judicial decisions: but we read not at all, as far as I recollect, of the extraor dinary comeliness of his person, or the affability of his speech. And if he possessed these qualities, they are no more than other monarchs have possessed in a degree not to be surpassed by Solomon. Splendour and stateliness of dress, twice mentioned in this psalm, were not peculiar to Solomon, but belong to every great and opulent monarch. Other circumstances might be mentioned, applicable, in- deed, to Solomon, but no otherwise than as generally ap- plicable to every king. But the circumstances which are characteristic of the king who is the hero of this poem, are every one of them utterly inapplicable to Solomon, insomuch, that not one of them can be ascribed to him, without contradicting the history of his reign. The hero of this poem is a warrior, who girds his sword upon his thigh, rides in pursuit of flying foes, makes havoc among them with his sharp arrows, and reigns at last by conquest over his vanquished enemies. Now, Solomon was no war- rior : he enjoyed along reign of forty years of uninterrupted peace. He retained, indeed, the sovereignty of the coun- tries which his father had conquered, but he made no new conquests of his own. " He had dominion over all the region west of the Euphrates, over all the kings on this side of the river (they were his vassals), and he had peace on all sides round about him. And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine, and under his fig- tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon." If Solomon ever girded a sword upon his thigh, it must have been merely for state ; if he had a quiver of sharp arrows, he could have had no use for them but in hunt- ing. We read, indeed, that Jehovah, offended at the idolatries of Solomon in his old age, stirred up an adver- sary unto Solomon in Hadad the Edomite, and another in Rezon the Syrian, and a third in Jeroboam the son of Ne- bat. But though Hadad and Rezon bore Solomon and his people a grudge, there is no reason to suppose that the
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enmity of either broke out into acts of open hostility, during Solomon's life at least,— certainly into none of such importance as to engage the old monarch in a war with either. The contrary is evident from two circumstances ; the first, that the return of Hadad into his country from Egypt was early in the reign of Solomon; for he returned as soon as he heard that David and Joab were both dead. And if this Edomite had provoked a war in so early a period of Solomon's reign, the sacred history could not have spoken in the terms of which it speaks of the unin- terrupted peace which Israel enjoyed all the days of Solo- mon. The second circumstance is this :— In that portion of the history which mentions these adversaries, it is said of the third adversary, Jeroboam, "that he lifted up his hand against the king ;" and yet it is certain, that Jero- boam never lifted up his hand till Solomon himself was in his grave. Solomon was jealous of Jeroboam, as the person marked by the prophet Ahijah as the future king of one branch of the divided kingdom, " and sought to kill him." Jeroboam thereupon fled into Egypt, and re- mained there till the death of Solomon. And this makes it probable of the two foreign adversaries, that, whatever hatred might be rankling in their hearts, they awaited for Solomon's death, before they proceeded to open hostilities. But, however that might be, it is most certain, that the character of a warrior and a conquerer never less belonged to any monarch than to Solomon.
Another circumstance of distinction in the great per- sonage celebrated in this psalm, is his love of righteous- ness and hatred of vi^ickedness. The original expresses that he had set his heart upon righteousness, and bore an antipathy to wickedness. His love of righteousness and hatred of wickedness had been so much the ruling princi- ples of his whole conduct, that for this he was advanced to a condition of the highest bliss, and endless perpetuity was promised to his kingdom. The word we render righ- teousness, in its strict and proper meaning, signifies "jus- D 2
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tice," or the constant and perpetual observance of the na- tural distinctions of right and wrong in civil society ; and principally with respect to property in private persons, and, in a magistrate or sovereign, in the impartial exercise of judicial authority. But the word we render wickedness, denotes not only injustice, but whatever is contrary to moral purity in the indulgence of the appetites of the in- dividual, and whatever is contrary to a principle of true piety toward God. Now the word righteousness being here opposed to this wickedness, must certainly be taken as generally as the word to which it is opposed in a con- trary signification. It must signify, therefore, not merely "justice," in the sense we have explained, but purity of private manners, and piety toward God. Now Solomon was certainly upon the whole a good king ; nor was he without piety : but his love of righteousness, in the large sense in which we have shown the word is to be taken, and his antipathy to the contrary, fell very far short of what the Psalmist ascribes to his great king, and procured for him no such stability of his monarchy. Solomon, whatever might be the general worth and virtue of his character, had no such predominant attachment to righteousness nor antipathy to wickedness, in the large sense in which the words are taken by the Psalmist, but that his love for the one, and his hatred of the other, were overpowered by his doating fondness for many of his seven hundred wives, who had so much influence with him in his later years, that they turned away his heart to other gods, and pre- vailed upon the aged king to erect temples to their idols.
Another circumstance wholly inapplicable to Solomon is, the numerous progeny of sons, the issue of the mar- riage, all of whom were to be made princes over all the earth. Solomon had but one son, that we read of, that ever came to be a king, his son and successor Rehoboam ; and so far was he from being a prince over all the earth, that he was no sooner seated on the throne than he lost the greater part of his father's kingdom.
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Upon the whole, therefore, it appears, that in the cha- racter which the Psalmist draws of the king, whose mar- riage is the occasion and the subject of this song, some things are so general, as in a certain sense to be appli- cable to any great king, of fable or of history, of ancient or of modern times. And these things are, indeed, appli- cable to Solomon, because he was a great king, but for no other reason. They are no otherwise applicable to him, than to king Priam or Agamemnon, to king Tarquin or king Herod, to a king of Persia or a king of Egypt, a king of Jewry or a king of England. But those circum- stances of the description which are properly characte- ristic, are evidently appropriate to some particular king, — not common to any and to all. Every one of these cir- cumstances, in the Psalmist's description of his king, posi- tively exclude king Solomon; being manifestly contra- dictory to the history of his reign, inconsistent with the tenor of his private life, and not verified in the fortunes of his family. There are, again, other circumstances, which clearly exclude every earthly king, — such as the salutation of the king by the title of God, in a manner in which that title never is applied to any created being ; and the pro- mise of the endless perpetuity of his kingdom. At the same time, every particular of the description, interpreted according to the usual and established significance of the figured style of prophecy, is applicable to, and expressive of, some circumstance in the mystical union between Christ and his church. A greater, therefore, than Solomon is here; and this I shall show more particularly in the se- quel. It is certain, therefore, that this mystical wedding is the sole subject of this psalm, without any reference to the marriage of Solomon, or any other earthly monarch, as a type. And it was with great good judgment, that upon the revision of our English Bible, in the reign of James the First, the Calvinistic argument of this psalm, as it stood in queen Elizabeth's Bible, was expunged, and that other substituted which we now read in our Bible of the
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larger size, in these words: "The majesty and grace of Christ's kingdom ; the duty of the church, and the bene- hts thereof;" which, indeed, contain a most exact summary of the whole doctrine of the psalm. And the particulars of this, it is my intention in future discourses to expound.
SERMON V.
I speak of the things which I have made touching the King, or unto the King. — Psalm xlv. 1 .
In my last Discourse in this place, I undertook to show, that the subject of this psalm (which, in its composition, is evidently in the form of anepithalamium, or a marriage song) is the connexion between Christ and his church, represented here, as in other parts of Scripture, under the emblem of a marriage. I undertook to show, that this is the imme- diate and single subject of the psalm, in the first intention of the author, without any reference to the marriage of Solomon, or any earthly monarch, as a type. But as this, which was the unanimous opinion of all antiquity, has been brought into some degree of doubt, by the credit which a contrary opinion obtained among Protestants at the beginning of the Reformation, upon the authority of so great a man as Calvin, I thought proper to argue the matter in some detail ; and to show, by the particulars of the character of the Psalmist's king, that Solomon more especially, but in truth every earthly monarch, is excluded. 1 might otherwise have drawn my conclusion at once, from that portion of the first verse which I chose for my text: " I speak of the things which I have made touching the King, or unto the King;" or, as the original might be still more exactly rendered, " I address my performance to the King." It is a remark, and a very just remark, of the Jewish expositors, — and it carries the more weight
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because it conies from Jews, who, by their prejudices against the Christian name, might have thought them- selves interested to keep out of sight a principle so ser- viceable to the Christian scheme of interpretation, — but it is their remark, and their principle, that the appellation of " the King," in the Book of Psalms, is an appropriate title of the Messiah ; insomuch that, wherever it occurs, except the context directs it to some special meaning, you are to think of no earthly king, but of the King Messiah. By the admission, therefore, of these Jewish commenta- tors, the Messiah is the immediate subject of this psalm.
My anxiety to settle the question of the immediate sub- ject of this psalm, was for the sake of the greater evidence and perspicuity of the exposition of the whole, verse by verse, which I am now about to deliver: for without a right comprehension of the general subject, it will be im- possible that the parts should be understood. And yet the psalm is, perhaps, one of the most important to be well understood in all its parts, of any in the whole col- lection. Farther, to settle_this point of the general sub- ject of the psalm, I must observe, and desire you to bear it in remembrance, that in the prophecies of the Old Tes- tament, which set forth the union between the Redeemer and his church, under the figure of the state of wedlock, we read of two celebrations of that mystical wedding, at very different and distant seasons ; or, to be more distinct and particular, we read of a marriage — a separation, on accountof the woman's incontinence, that is, on account of her idolatry — and, in the end, of a remarriage with the woman reclaimed and pardoned. The original marriage was contracted with the Hebrew church, by the institu- tion of the Mosaic covenant, at the time of the exodus, as we are taught expressly by the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The separation was the dispersion of the Jewish nation by the Romans, when they were reduced to that miserable state in which to this day they remain, — their city laid in ruins, their temple demolished and burned,
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and the forms of the Mosaic worship abolished. Then it was that the sceptre of ecclesiastical sway (for that is the sceptre meant in Jacob's famous prophecy) departed from Judah. The Jews were no longer the depositaries of the laws and oracles of God ; they were no longer to take the lead in matters of religion and worship ; and the government even of the Christian church of Jerusalem, remained but for a very short time after this in the hands of a bishop of the circumcision; — so strictly was the prophecy fulfilled of the departure of the ecclesiastical sceptre from Judah, the only remnant then visibly extant in the world of the Jewish nation. It is the same event which is predicted in many other prophecies, as the expulsion of the incontinent wife from the husband's house. Her expulsion, howevei-, was to be but temporary, though of long duration : it was a separation, as we should say in modern language, from bed and board, — not an absolute divorce, such as, by the principles of the Mosaic law (which in this point, how- ever, was not perfectly consistent with the original divine law of marriage), set the woman at liberty to unite herself to another man, and, in that event, prohibited her return to her first husband. On the contrary, the same pro- phecies that threatened the expulsion maintain the conti- nuance of the husband's property in the separated woman, and promise a reconciliation and final reinstatement of her in her husband's favour. " Where is this bill of your mother's divorcement?" saith the prophet Isaiah. The question implies a denial that any such instrument existed. And in a subsequent part of his prophecies, he expressly announces the reconciliation: " Blush not," saith the Re- deemer to the pardoned wife, "for thou shalt not be brought to reproach; for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and the reproach of thy deserted state thou shalt no more remember. For thy Maker is thy husband ; Jehovah of Hosts is his name, and he who claims thee is the Holy One of Israel. As a woman forsaken and deeply afflicted, Jehovah hath recalled thee; and as a wife wedded in
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youth, but afterward rejected, saith thy God. For a small moment have I forsaken thee ; but with great mercies will I receive thee again." The reconciliation is to be made publicly, by a repetition of the nuptial ceremonies. So we learn from the latter part of the Apocalypse. After Christ's final victory over the apostate faction, proclama- tion is made by a voice issuing from the throne, " The marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready;" that is, hath prepared herself, by penitence and reformation, to be reunited to him. And one of the seven angels calls to St. John, " Come hither, and 1 will show thee the Lamb's wife." Then he shows him " the lioly Jerusalem," that is, the church of the converted Jews. These nuptials, therefore, of the Lamb are not, as some have imagined, a marriage with a second wife, a Gentile church, taken into the place of the Jewish, irre- vocably discarded : no such idea of an absolute divorce is to be found in prophecy. But it is a public reconcilia- tion with the original wife, the Hebrew church, become the mother church of Christendom, notified by the cere- mony of a remarriage ; for to no other than the reconciled Hebrew church belongs in prophecy the august character of the Queen Consort. The season of this renewed mar- riagre is the second advent, when the new covenant will be established with the natural Israel; and it is this re- marriage which is the proper subject of this psalm.
And this again I might have concluded, according to the principles of the Jewish expositors, from my text; which, by the single word "the King," directs the appli- cation of this psalm to Christ in his kingly character. Christ, indeed, already exercises his regal office in his care and government of his church: but the second ad- vent is the season when his glory and majesty will be openly manifested to the whole world, and the Jews visi- bly reinstated in his favour. The marriage, therefore, which is the peculiar subject of this psalm, must be that
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reunion of the Saviour with the Jewish cliurch, which is to take place at that season.
Never losing sight of this, as his proper subject, the divine poet takes, however, an ample range : for he opens with our Lord's first appearance in the flesh, when, by the promulgation of the gospel, the guests were summoned to the wedding-supper; and running rapidly, but in order, through all the different periods of Christianity, from its first beginning to its consummation in this spiritual wed- ding, he makes the general outline of its divine history the groundwork of this highly mystic and important song; to the exposition of which, without farther preface, I shall now proceed.
The psalm takes its beginning in a plain, unaffected manner, with a verse briefly declarative of the importance of the subject, the author's extraordinary knowledge of it, and the manner in which it will be treated : " My heart is inditing a good matter j"
or rather,
" My heart labours with a goodly theme :"
for the word " inditing" answers but poorly, as our trans- lators themselves appear from their margin to have been well aware, to the emphasis of the original, which ex- presses, that the mind of the prophet was excited and heated, boiling over, as it were, with his subject, and eager to give utterance to its great conceptions. " A good matter," or " a goodly theme," denotes a subject of the highest interest and importance :
" My heart labours Avith a goodly theme : I address my performance to the King 5"
that is, as hath been abundantly explained, to the great King Messiah.
" My tongue is the pen of a ready-writer 3" that is, of a well-instructed writer,— a writer prepared
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and ready, by a perfect knowledge of the subject he un- dertakes to treat.
But with what sense and meaning is it, that the Psahn- ist compares his " tongue" to the " pen" of such a writer? It is to intimate, as I apprehend, that what he is about to deliver is no written composition, but an extemporaneous eti'usion, without any premeditation of his own, upon the immediate impulse and suggestion of the Holy Spirit: that what will fall, however, in that manner from his "tongue," for the coherence and importance of the matter, for the correct propriety of the expression, and for the orderly arrangement of the parts, will in no degree fall short of the most laboured production of the " pen" of any writer, the best prepared by previous study of his subject; inasmuch as the Spirit of God inspires his thoughts, and prompts his utterance.
After this brief preface, declaring that his subject is Messiah, chiefly in his kingly character, — that he cannot contain the thoughts which are rising in his mind, — that he speaks not from himself, or from previous study, but from inspiration at the moment, — he plunges at once into the subject he had propounded, addressing the King Mes- siah, as if he were actually standing in the royal presence. And in this same strain, indeed, the whole song proceeds; as referring to a scene present to the prophet's eye, or to things which he saw doing.
This scene consists of three principal parts, relating to three grand divisions of the whole interval of time, from our Lord's first appearance in the flesh, to the final triumph of the church, upon his second advent. And the psalm may be divided into as many sections, in which the events of these periods are described in their proper order.
The first section, consisting only of the second verse, describes our Lord on earth, in the days of his humiliation. The five following verses make the second section, and describe the successful propagation of the gospel, and our Lord's victory over all his enemies. This comprehends
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the whole period from our Lord's ascension to the time not yet arrived of the fulfilling of the Gentiles. The sequel of the psalm, from the end of the seventh verse, exhibits the remarriage, — that is, the restoration of the converted Jews to the religious prerogative of their na- tion.
The second verse, describing our Lord in the days of his humiliation, may seem perhaps to relate merely to his person, and the manner of his address.
"Thou art fairer than the children of men j" rather,
" Thou art adorned with beauty beyond tiie sons of men ; Grace is poured upon thy lips ) Therefore God hath blessed thee for ever."
We have no account in the gospels of our Saviour's person. Some writers of an early age (but none so early as to have seen him) speak of it as wanting dignity, and of his physiognomy as unpleasing. It would be difficult, I believe, to find any better foundation for this strange notion, than an injudicious interpretation of certain pro- phecies, in a literal meaning, which represent the humilia- tion which the Son of God was to undergo, by clothing his divinity with flesh, in images taken from personal de- formity. But, from what is recorded in the gospels, of the ease with which our Saviour mixed in what in the modern style we should call good company, — of the re- spectful attention shown to him, beyond any thing his reputed birth or fortune might demand, — and the manner in which his discourses, either of severe reproof or gentle admonition, were received, — we may reasonably conclude, that he had a dignity of exterior appearance, remarkably corresponding with that authority of speech, which, upon some occasions, impressed even his enemies with awe, and with that dignified mildness which seems to have been his more natural and usual tone, and drew the applause and admiration of all who heard him. " Never man spake like this man,'" was the confession of his enemies ; and,
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upon his first appearance in the synagogue at Nazareth, when he had finished his exposition of a certain text of Isaiah, which he applied to himself, "All bare him wit- ness, and wondered at the gracious words which pro- ceeded out of his mouth." Thus, without knowing it, the congregation attested the completion of this prophecy of the Psalmist, in one branch of it, — in the " grace" which literally, it seems, was "poured upon his lips." But cer- tainly it must have been something externally striking, — something answering to the text of the Psalmist in the former branch, " Adorned with beauty beyond the sons of men," which upon the same occasion, before his discourse began ; — it must have been something, I say, prepos- sessing in his features, and something of dignity in person, which, while he was yet silent, "fastened the eyes of all that were in the synagogue upon him,"— that is, upon the village carpenter's reputed son ; for in no higher character he yet was known. We may conclude, therefore, that this prophetic text had a completion, in the literal and superficial sense of the words, in both its branches, — in the beauty of our Saviour's person, no less than in the graciousness of his speech.
External feature, however, is generally the impression of the mind upon the body, and words are but the echo of the thoughts ; and, in prophecy, more is usually meant than meets the ear, in the first sound and most obvious sense of the terms employed. Beauty and grace of speech are certainly used in this text as figures of much higher qualities, which were conspicuous in our Lord, and in him alone of all the sons of men. That image of God in which Adam was created, in our Lord appeared perfect and entire, — in the unspotted innocency of his life, the sanctity of his manners, and his perfect obedience to the law of God, — in the vast powers of his mind, intellectual and moral ; intellectual, in his comprehension of all know- ledge ; moral, in his power of resisting all the allurements of vice, and of encountering all the difficulties of virtue
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and religion, despising hardship and shame, enduring pain and death. This was the beauty with which he was adorned beyond the sons of men. In him, the beauty of the divine image was refulgent in its original perfection ; in all the sons of Adam, obscured and marred, in a degree to be scarce discernible, — the will depraved, the imagina- tion debauched, the reason weak, the passions rampant! This deformity is not externally visible, nor the spiritual beauty which is its opposite : but, could the eye be turned upon the internal man, we should see the hideous shape of a will at enmity with God ; a heart disregarding his law, insensible of his goodness, fearless of his wrath, swelling with the passions of ambition, avarice, vain- glory, lust. Yet this is the picture of the unregenerated man, by the depravity consequent upon the fall, born in iniquity and conceived in sin. Christ, on the contrary, by the mysterious manner of his conception, was born with- out spot of sin; he grew up and lived full of grace and truth, perfectly sanctified in flesh and spirit. With this beauty he was "adorned beyond the sons of men."
Again, the gracefulness of his speech is put figuratively for the perfection, sublimity, excellence, and sweetness of the doctrine he delivered ; — a doctrine, in truth, intrinsi- cally perfect ; sublime, as being far above the discovery of human wisdom ; excellent, by its salutary effects and operation upon men, raising their minds to the knowledge of the true God, — to a knowledge of his nature, as far as a nature so distinct from matter, so remote from sense, so transcending reason, can be made intelligible to man, united to matter, perceiving by sense what immediately surrounds him, but contemplating at a distance only the objects of pure intellect ; — a doctrine sweeter to the rege- nerate soul than honey and the honeycomb to the palate, by the disclosure of the great scheme of redemption in all its branches — the incarnation of the Son of man, the atonement for sin by his death, the efliicacy of his inter- cession, the constant supply of succour from the Holy
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Spirit. This doctrine, cherishing the contrite, consoling the afflicted, banishing despair, raising the fallen, justify- ing sinners, giving life to the dead, — in a word, the glad- tidings of salvation, — this is the " grace" which is poured over the "lips' of the Son of God.
It is to be observed, that the happiness and glory to which the human nature is advanced in the person of Jesus, the man united to the Godhead, and now seated with the Father on his throne, is always represented in holy writ as the reward of that man's obedience. In conformity with this notion, the Psalmist says, " Therefore," — for this reason, in reward of the holiness perfected in thy own life, and thy gracious instruction of sinners in the ways of righteousness, — " God hath blessed thee for ever ;" hath raised thee from the dead, and advanced thee to endless bliss and glory.
Thus the Psalmist closes his brief description of our Lord on earth, in the days of his humiliation, with the mention equally brief, but equally comprehensive, of the exaltation in which it terminated.
He proceeds to the second great period in the divine history of Christianity, the successful propagation of the gospel, and our Lord's final victory over all his adversa- ries,— a work gradually accomplished, and occupying the whole interval of time from his ascension, to the epoch, not yet arrived, of the fulness of the Gentiles coming in.
From the commendation of the comeliness of the king's person, and the graciousness of his speech, the Psalmist, in the same figurative style, passes to the topic of his prowess as a warrior, under which character our Lord is perpetually described in the prophecies. The enemies he had to engage are the wicked passions of men, the devil in his wiles and machinations, and the persecuting powers of the world. The warfare is continued through the whole of the period I have mentioned, commencing upon our Lord's ascension, at which time he is represented, in the Revelation, as going forth upon a " white horse, with a
48 crown upon his head, and a bow in his hand, conquering and to conquer." The Psalmist, in imagery ahnost the same, accosts him as a warlike prince preparing to take the field, — describes his weapons, and the magnificence of his armour, and promises him victory and universal do- minion.
3. " Gird thy sword upon thy thigh,
O most mighty ! with thy glory and thy majesty."
This verse, I fear, must be but ill understood by the English reader. The words " O most mighty !" very weakly render the original, which is a single word, one of the titles of Christ, in its literal sense expressive of might and valour. But the great difficulty which, in my apprehension, must perplex the English reader, lies in the exhortation to gird on glory and majesty together with the sword. The things have no obvious connexion ; and how are majesty and glory, in any sense which the words may bear in our language, to be girt on upon the person ? The truth is, that, in the Hebrew language, these words have a great variety and latitude of meaning ; and either these very words, or their synonymes, are used in other places for splendid dress, and for robes of state ; and being things to be girt on, they must here denote some part of the war- rior's dress. They signify such sort of armour, of costly materials and exquisite workmanship, as was worn by the greatest generals, and by kings when they led their armies in person ; and was contrived for ornament as well as safety. The whole verse might be intelligibly and yet faithfully rendered in these words :
" Warrior ! gird thy sword upon thy thigh ; Buckle on thy refulgent., dazzling armour."
The Psalmist goes on :
4. "Take aim, be pros]5erous, pursue.
In the cause of truth, humility, and righteousness ;"
that is, take aim w^ith thy bow and arrow at the enemy ; be prosperous, or successful in the aim taken ; ride on in
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pursuit of the flying foe, in the cause of reliQ;ious truth, evangelical humility, and righteousness.
" And thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things ;"
rather,
" And thy own right hand shall show thee wonderful things."
In these last words, the Saviour, effecting every thing by his own power, is represented under the image of a great champion in the field, who is prompted by his own courage, and a reliance on his own strength and skill, to attempt what might seem impracticable ; singly to attack whole squadrons of the enemy, — to cut his way through their embattled troops, — to scale their ramparts and their walls, — and at last achieves what seems a wonder to him- self, when tbe fray is over, when he is at leisure to survey the bulwarks he has demolished, and the many carcasses his single arm has stretched upon the plain. Such great things he will be able to effect ; for
5. " Thine arrows," saith the Psalmist, " are very sharp In the heart of the king's enemies ; Insomuch that peoples fall under thee."
To open the true spiritual meaning of all this high- wrought imagery, will be ample matter for another Dis- course. I shall close, therefore, for the present, with this preliminary observation, as the fundamental principle of the interpretation, which, by God's assistance I shall give, That the war in which the Saviour is engaged is very dif- ferent from the wars which the princes of this world wage upon one another : it is not for the destruction of the lives of men, but for the preservation of their souls.
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SERMON VI.
I speak of the things which I have made touching the King, or unto the King. — Psalm xlv. 1.
In my last discourse, I proceeded so far in my exposi- tion of this mystic marriage song, as to enter upon what I reckon the second section of the whole psalm, consisting of five verses, from the third to the seventh, both inclusive; in which, under images taken from military exploits, the successful propagation of the gospel is described, through the whole of that period which commenced at our Lord s ascension, and will terminate with the triumphs of the church at his second advent.
From the commendation of the comeliness of the King's person, and the graciousness of his speech, which, in the second verse, are put figuratively for the perfect innocence and sanctity of our Lord's life on earth, and the sweetness of his gracious doctrine of pardon, peace, and justification, the Psalmist, persevering in the same figurative strain, passes to the topic of his royal Bridegroom's military prowess. He accosts the King as a warlike prince, pre- paring to take the field,— describes his weapons and the magnificence of his armour, and promises him victory and universal dominion.
I shall now endeavour to open and explain to you, with God's assistance, the true spiritual meaning of all this high- wrought imagery. But first I must repeat, with some en- largement and explanation, as the fundamental principle of the interpretation I am about to give, the observation with which I closed my last discourse,— namely, that the war in which the Psalmist represents the Saviour as en- gaged, is very different from the wars which the princes of this world wage with one another : it is not for the de- struction of the lives of men, but for the preservation of
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their souls. ft may happen indeed, — ^it lias happened heretofore, — in our own times it has happened, and it will inevitably happen again, that the struggles of Christianity, with the adverse faction, may kindle actual war between the secular powers, taking part on one side or on the other. This our Lord himself foretold. " Suppose ye,'' he said, " that I am come to give peace on earth ? I came not to send peace, but a sword." Such wars are, on the one side, no less holy, just, and good, than, on the other, they are wicked and impious ; for when the antichristian powers attack religious establishments by the sword, by the sword they may and must be defended. It is the mere cant of puritanism to allege tlie precept of mutual forgiveness, the prohibitions of returning evil for evil, and of resisting per- secution, as reprobating such wars. All those injunctions relate to the conduct of individuals with respect to one an- other, or with respect to the government of which they are subjects. The individual is to be ready at all times to forgive his personal enemies : he is not to indulge a spirit of revenge in tlie retaliation of private injuries ; and least of all is he to resist by force even the injustice, as affecting himself, of his lawful sovereign. But when antichrist arms his powers for the persecution of the faithful and the extinction of the faith, if Christian princes arm their powers to oppose him, their war is godly, and their cause is blessed. These wars, however, are not within the pur- view of this prophecy, as the sequel of my discourse will show. This prophetic text of the Psalmist relates only to that spiritual w^ar which Christ wages with the enemies of man, for man's deliverance, — to the war arising from that enmity which was originally put between the seed of the serpent and the woman's seed.
The offensive weapons in this war of charity, accord- ing to the Psalmist, are of two sorts, — a sword, and arrows.
The common military sword is a heavy massive weapon, for close engagement : wielded by a strong and skilful arm, E 2
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It stabs and cuts, opens dreadful gaslies where it falls, se- vers limbs, lops the head, or cleaves the body.
The arrow is a light missile weapon, which, in ancient times, was used to annoy the enemy at a distance, and particularly when put to flight. It comes whizzing through the air unseen ; and, when it hits, so sm.all is the wound, and so swift the passage of the weapon, that it is scarcely felt, till it fixes its sharp point in the very heart.
Now both these weapons, the sword and the arrow, are emblems of one and the same thing ; which is no other than the word of God, in its different effects, and different manners of operation on the minds of men, represented under these two different images.
The word of God may be divided, indeed, into two parts, — the word of reproof, commination, and terror ; and the word of persuasion, promise, and hope. The former holds up to the sinner the picture of himself, — sets forth the turpitude of sin — the holiness of God — God's hatred of unrighteousness, — and alarms the conscience with the danger of a state of enmity with God, and with denuncia- tions of implacable wrath and endless punishment.
The second, the word of persuasion, promise, and hope, sets before the penitent the riches of God's mercy, dis- played in the scheme of man's redemption,— points to the cross, where man's guilt was expiated, — bids the contrite sinner rely on the Redeemer's intercession, — offers the daily supply of grace to confirm him in his resolutions, and assist him in his efforts to conform himself to the precepts and example of the Saviour, — and promises victory and glory to them that persevere : thus turning despondency into hope, and fear into love.
The first, the word of terror, is the sword girt upon Messiah's thigh ; the second, the word of persuasion, is the arrow shot from his bow.
For the sense of the first metaphor, we have the autho- rity of the sacred writers themselves. "The sword of the Spirit," says St. Paul to the Ephesians, "is the word of
God." And ill the Epistle to the Hebrews, the full signi- fication of the fig-ure is opened, and the propriety of the application shown : " For the word of God," says the in- spired author, " is quick and powerful (rather, lively and energetic), and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing to the parting of soul and spirit, and to the joints and marrow ;" — that is, as the soldier's sword of steel cuts through all the exterior integuments of skin and muscle, to the bone, and even through the hard substance of the bone itself, to the very marrow, and divides the ligaments which keep the joints of the body together ; so this spiritual sword of God's awful word penetrates the inmost recesses of the human mind — pierces to the very line of separation, as it were, of the sensitive and the intelligent principle — lops off the animal part — divides the joints where reason and passion are united — sets the intellect free to exert its powers — kills sin in our members — opens passages for grace to enter and enrich the marrow of the soul, and thus delivers the man from his body of death.
Such are the effects for which the powerful word of terror is compared to a two-edged sword.
The comparison of the word of promise to the arrow is more easily understood ; being more familiar, and analo- gous to those figures of speech which run through all lan- guages, by which, whatever makes a quick and smart im- pression on the moral feelings, is represented under the image of a pointed missile weapon, — as when we speak of " the thrilling darts of harmony," or " the shafts of elo- quence." The Psalmist speaks of these arrows of God's word, as sticking in " the hearts of the King's enemies," — that is, of the enemies of the King Messiah ; for he, you will remember, is the only king in question. His enemies, in the highest sense of the word, are those who are avow- edly leagued with the apostate faction, — atheists, deists, idolaters, heretics, perverse disputers, — those who, in any manner, of set design oppose the gospel — who resist the truth by argument, or encounter it with ridicule — who ex-
plain it away by sophisticated interpretations, or endeavoiu- to crush it by the force of persecution. Of such hardened enemies there is no hope, till they have been hacked and hewed, belaboured, and all but slain (in the strong lan- guage of one of the ancient prophets), by the heavy sword of the word of terror. But, in a lower sense, all are ene- mies till they hear of Christ, and the terms of his peace are offered to them. Many such are wrought upon by mild admonition, and receive in their hearts the arrows of the word of persuasion. Such, no doubt, were many of those Jews who were pricked to the heart, by St, Peter's first sermon, on the day of Pentecost : and even those worse enemies, if they can be brought to their feeling by the ghastly wounds and gashes of the terrific sword of the word of threatening, may afterward be pierced by the arrow, and carry about in their hearts its barbed point. And by the joint effect of these two weapons, the sword and the arrow, the word of terror and the word of persuasion, "peoples," says the Psalmist, — that is, whole kingdoms and nations in a mass, " shall fall under thee," — shall for- sake their ancient superstitions, renounce their idols, and submit themselves to Christ,
So much for the offensive weapons, the sword and the arrows. But the defensive armour demands our attention ; for it has its use, no doubt, in the Messiah's war. His person, you will remember, is clad, in the third verse, " with refulgent, dazzling armour." This may be under- stood of whatever is admirable and amiable in the external form and appearance of the Christian religion. First, the character of Jesus himself; his piety toward God — his philanthropy toward man — his meekness, humility, ready forgiveness of injuries, patience, endurance of pain and death. Secondly, the same light of good works shining, in a less degree, in the lives of his disciples, particularly the apostles and blessed martyrs. Thirdly, whatever is decent and seemly in the government, the discipline, and the rites of the church. All these things, as they tend to
draw the admiration and conciliate the good-will of men, and mitigate the malice of the persecutor, are aptly repre- sented under the image of the Messiah's defensive armour, and had a principal share in making "peoples fall under him."
It yet remains to be explained, what is meant, in the Psalmist's detail of the Messiah's war, by those " wonders" which " his own right hand was to show him :"
" Tliy own right hand shall show thee wonders."
Our public translation has it " terrible things." But the notion of terror is not of necessity included in the sense of the original word, as it is used by the sacred writers : it is sometimes, indeed, applied by them to fright- ful things ; but it is also applied, with great latitude, to things extraordinary in their kind, — grand, admirable, amazing, awful, — although they should not be frightful. We have no right, therefore, to take it in the strict sense of " frightful," unless something in the context points to that meaning, which is not the case in this passage. And, accordingly, instead of "terrible," we find, in some of the oldest English Bibles, the better chosen word " wonderful."
Now the " wonderful things" which Messiah's " own right hand" showed him, I take to be the overthrow of the Pagan superstition, in the Roman empire, and other great kingdoms of the world, by the mere preaching of the gos- pel, seconded by the exemplary lives and the miracles of the first preachers, and by their patient endurance of im- prisonment, torture, and death, for the sake of Christ. It was, indeed, a wonderful thing, wrought by Christ's single arm, when his religion prevailed over the whole system of idolatry, supported as it was by the authority of sove- reigns, by the learning of philosophers, and most of all, by the inveterate prejudices of the vulgar, attached to their false gods by the gratification which their very worship afforded to the sensual passions, and by the natural par- tiality of mankind in favour of any system, however absurd
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and corrupt, sanctioned by a long antiquity. It was a wonderful thing, when the devil's kingdom, with much of its invisible power, lost at once the whole of its external pomp and splendour ; when silence being imposed on his oracles, and spells and enchantments divested of their power, the idolatrous worship which by those engines of deceit had been universally established, and for ages sup- ported, notwithstanding the antiquity of its institutions, and the bewitching gaiety and magnificence of its festi- yals, fell into neglect ; when its cruel and lascivious rites, so long holden in superstitious veneration, on a sudden became the objects of a just and general abhorrence ; when the unfrequented temples, spoiled of their immense trea- sures, sunk in ruins, and the images, stript of their gor- geous robes and costly jewels, were thrown into the Tyber, or into the common receptacles of filth and ordure. It was a wonderful thing, when the minds of all men took a sudden turn ; kings became the nursing fathers of the church, statesmen courted her alliance, philosophy em- braced her faith, and even the sword was justly drawn in her defence.
These were the " wonderful things" effected by Christ's right hand ; and in these, this part of the Psalmist's pro- phecy has received its accomplishment. Less than this his words cannot mean ; and to more than this they cannot with any certainty be extended : since these things satisfy all that is of necessity involved in his expressions.
If his expressions went of necessity to "terrible things," or were determined to that meaning by the context, inso- much that the inspired author could be understood to speak not of things simply wonderful, but wonderful in the par- ticular way of being frightful, an allusion, in that case, might easily be supposed to what is, indeed, the explicit subject of many other prophecies, — the terrible things to be achieved by the Messiah's own right hand, in the de- struction of antichrist, and the slaughter of his armies, in the latter ages. The word of prophecy forewarns us, and
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we have lived to see the season of the accomplishment set in, that the apostate faction will proceed to that extreme of malice and impiety, as to levy actual war against the nations professing Christianity : and, after much suffering of the faithful, and bloody struggles of the contending par- ties, our Lord himself will come from heaven, visibly and in person, to effect the deliverance of his servants, and with his own arm cut off the antichristian armies with tremen- dous slaughter. This is represented in the prophecies under images that can be understood of nothing but the havoc of actual battle. " The indignation of Jehovah is upon all the heathen," saith Isaiah, " and his fury upon all their armies. He hath utterly destroyed them, — he hath delivered them to the slaughter ; and the mountains shall be melted down in their blood." The prophet Eze- kiel summons all ravenous birds, and all beasts of prey, " to assemble and come to the slaughter which Jehovah should make for them, — a great slaughter on the moun- tains of Israel" (the stage, as it should seem, of antichrist's last exploits, and of his excision) ; " and ye shall eat flesh and drink blood. The flesh of warriors ye shall eat, and the blood of the princes of the earth ye shall drink. Ye shall eat fat till ye be cloyed, and drink blood till ye be drunken (the fat and the blood), of the slaughter which I have made for you." In the Apocalypse, when the Son of God comes forth, to make an end of the beast and the false prophet, and of the armies of kings their confederates, an angel standing in the sun " cries with a loud voice to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven. Come and gather yourselves together to the supper of the great God; that ye may eat the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all, freemen and slaves, both small and great." Men of all conditions, it seems, will be united in the impious coalition, to make war against the irresistible conqueror on the white horse, and his army, and will be involved in the great destruction. In a for-
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mer vision, relating to the same subject, St. John had seen the " great wine-press of God's wrath trodden ; and the blood came out of the wine-press, even unto the horses' bridles."
Such terrible things will be ; and if the Psalmist had spoken explicitly of terrible things, I should think an allu- sion was indeed intended to those scenes of terror, yet fu- ture, which however, in the appointed season, must over- take the wicked world. But as terrible things are not of necessity included in the import of his words, which goes not necessarily farther than " wonderful," and as he men- tions those wonderful things before the thread of his pro- phecy is brought down to the second advent, the season of those exploits of terror, it becomes us to be cautious how we force a sense upon the Psalmist's words which might not be intended by him, or rather by the inspiring Spirit. It will be safer to rest in those wonderful things which actually came to pass within the period he is yet upon, and were undoubtedly brought about by Messiah's power, as the true^accomplishment of this part of the prophecy. The suppression of idolatry in the Roman empire, and the establishment of the Christian church upon its ruins, was an event the most wonderful in the history of the Gentile world, to which nothing but the power of God was ade- quate, and comes up to the whole necessary import of the Psalmist's expressions.
The war of this period of the prophecy is finished : the battles have been fought, and the victory is gained. The Psalmist, in the two next verses, the sixth and seventh, exhibits the king seated on the throne of his mediatorial kingdom, and governed with perfect justice. He addresses him as God, whose throne is everlasting, and sceptre straight; as a monarch, whose heart is set upon righ- teousness, whose antipathy is wickedness.
6. "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever;
A straight sceptre is tlie sceptre of thy royalty.
7. "Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated wickedness j
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Therefore God liath anointed thee, thy own God, With the oil of gladness above thy fellows."
It was shown, in my first Discourse upon this psahn, liow inapplicable this address is to Solomon; and it is obvious, that it is equally inapplicable to any earthly mo- narch : for of no throne but God's can it be affirmed with truth, that it is for ever and ever; of no king-, but of God and of his Christ, it can be said, that he loves righteous- ness with a perfect love, and hates wickedness with a per- fect hate; of no sceptre, but the sceptre of God and of his Christ, that it is a straight sceptre. The sceptre has been, from the earliest ages, a badge of royalty. It was origi- nally nothing more than a straight slender rod, studded sometimes for ornament with little nails of gold. It was an emblem of the perfect integrity of the monarch in the exercise of his power, both by himself and by his minis- ters, inflexibly adhering to the straight line of right and justice, as a mason or carpenter to his rule. The perfec- tion of the emblem consisted in the straightness of the stick; for every thing else was ornament. The straight- ness, therefore, ascribed by the Psalmist to Messiah's sceptre, is to be understood of the invariable justice of the administration of his government. Now, certainly, there have been many kings, both in ancient and in modern times, to whom the praise is due of a cordial regard in general to righteousness, and of a settled principle of dislike to wickedness ; many who, in the exercise of their authority, and the measures of their government, have been generally directed by that just sense of right and wrong : but yet kings are not exempt from the frailties of human nature ; the very best of them are, at least, in an equal degree with other good men, liable to the surprises of the passions, and the seductions of temptation ; inso- much that that predominant love of righteousness and hatred of iniquity, maintaining an absolute ascendency in the mind, in all times, and upon all occasions, which the Psalmist attributes to his heavenly King, has belonged to
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none that ever wore an earthly crown: much less is the perfect straightness of the sceptre, a perfect conformity to the rule of right, to be found in the practice and execution of the governments of the world. It will happen, in num- berless instances, and from an infinite complication of causes, all reducible to the general head of the infirmity of human nature, and the depraved state of fallen man ; from an endless multiplicity of causes it will happen, that the government of the very best king will, in execution, fall far short of the purity of the king's intentions, and this in governments that are ever so well administered : for, if we suppose eyery one of those who are put in au- thority- under him to be as upright in their intentions as we have supposed the king himself to be, which must appear a very large and liberal supposition, if we consider the variety of departments into which the administration of any great government must necessarily be divided, and the great number of persons that must be employed in the affairs of each separate department; but if we make the supposition, that all the officers, from the highest to the lowest, in all the departments, are as good as men can be, still they will be men, and, as men, liable every one of them to error and deception; and, for this reason, they will often fail in the execution, in what they mean to do the best. This gives no colour to the detestable principle, propagated from democratic France over the continent of Europe, of what is profanely called " the sacred right of insurrection;" nor to similar doctrines broached by secta- rian teachers in our own country. It is merely the want of perfection in human nature, of which government and governors, with all things and with all persons human, must partake. Still, with all these imperfections, govern- ment is the source of the highest blessings to mankind; insomuch, that the very worst government is preferable to a state of anarchy : and for this reason, the peaceable sub- mission of the subject to the very worst of kings is one of the most peremptory precepts of Christianity. But I
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contend, that the perfect, undeviating- rectitude of inten- tion, and the perfect justice of administration, of which the Psalmist speaks, cannot be ascribed, without impiet)% to any earthly monarch.
The throne oi God, whether we understand it of God's natural dominion over the whole creation, or more parti- cularly of his providential government of the moral world, or, in a still more restricted sense, of Christ's mediatorial kingdom, is everlasting ; and the government, both in the w ill of the governor, and in the execution, is invariably good and just. But the kingdom of the God-man is in this place intended. This is evident from what is said in the seventh verse: "God, even thine own God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows ;"' that is, God hath advanced thee to a state of bliss and glory above all those whom thou hast vouchsafed to call thy fellows. It is said too, that the love of righteousness and hatred of wickedness is the cause that God hath so anointed him, who yet, in the sixth verse, is himself ad- dressed as God. It is manifest, that these things can be said only of that person in whom the Godhead and the manhood are united, — in whom the human nature is the subject of the unction, and the elevation to the mediato- rial kingdom is the reward of the man Jesus : for, in his divine nature, Christ, being equal with the Father, is in- capable of any exaltation. Thus, the unction with the oil of gladness, and the elevation above his fellows, cha- racterize the manhood; and the perpetual stability of the throne, and the unsullied justice of the government, de- clare the Godhead. It is therefore with the greatest pro- priety that this text is applied to Christ, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and made an argument of his divinity ; not by any forced accommodation of words which, in the mind of the author, related to another subject, but ac- cording to the true intent and purpose of the Psalmist, and the literal sense and only consistent exposition of his words.
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The Psalmist is now come down, by a regular and complete, thougli a summary review of the principal oc- currences of what may be called the history of the Media- tor and his kingdom, the Redeemer's life on earth, his exaltation to his throne in heaven, the successful propaga- tion of the gospel after his ascension, the suppression of idolatry, and the establishment of the Christian religion in the principal empires and kingdoms of the world : the Psalmist, through this detail, is come down to the epoch of the second advent, which immediately introduces the great event which has given occasion to the whole song, — the consummation of the church's happiness and Mes- siah's glory here on earth, in the public marriage of the great King with the wife of his love. This occupies the whole sequel of the psalm, and will be the subject of my next Discourse.
SERMON VII.
I speak of the things which 1 have made touching the King, or unto the King. — Psalm xlv. 1.
We have followed the holy Psalmist, step by step, through his accurate, though summary prospective view of the principal occurrences in the history of the Mediator and his kingdom upon earth, from our Lord's first appear- ance in the flesh to the epoch of his second advent. I have explained to you the several images under which the Psalmist represents the events of this interval. I have shown how easily they apply to Christ and his gospel, — how inapplicable they are to any other subject. I showed you, that under the figures of comeliness of person and urbanity of speech, the Psalmist describes the unexampled sanctity of the life of Jesus, and the high consolations of his doctrine : that under the figure of a warrior, clad in dazzling armour, with his sword girt upon his thigh, and shooting his arrows after a flying enemy, Christ is de-
G3 scribed as waging liis spiritual war against sin and Satan by his powerful word, — represented as a sword, when it is employed to terrify the conscience of the sinner, and rouse him, by denunciations of wrath and punishment, to a sense of his danger ; as an arrow, in its milder effects, when it pricks the heart with that godly remorse which brmgs on the sorrow that works true repentance, and ter- minates jn hope and love. The splendid defensive armour is an emblem of whatever is externally venerable and lovely in Christianity, and conduces to conciliate the good- will of men, and mitigate the malice of the persecutor. The subjugation of nations, by the prosecution of this war, is the triumph of the church over idolatry, which first took place in the reign of Constantine the Great, when the Christian religion was established in the Roman em- pire, and idolatry put down by that emperor's authority. A few years after, the idolatrous temples were finally closed by his successors.
The battles being fought, and the victory gained, the conqueror is saluted by the holy Psalmist as the God-man, seated upon the everlasting throne of his mediatorial king- dom. The Psalmist then proceeds to that great event which is to take place upon the second advent of our Lord, the prospect of which has been the occasion of the whole song, — the consummation of the church's happiness and Messiah's glory here on earth, in the public marriage of the great King with the wife of his love. And upon this subject, the inspired poet dwells throughout the whole sequel of the psalm, which makes, indeed, the greater part of the entire composition.
Before I enter upon the explanation of particulars in this part of the song, it may be proper to offer a few words upon the general propriety and significance of the image of a marriage, as it is applied here, and in other parts of Scripture, to Messiah and his church.
Our Lord said of himself, that he came to "preach the gospel to the poor ;" and the same thing may be said of
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the word of revelation in general, — that it was given for the instruction of all mankind, the lowest as well as the highest, the most illiterate as well as the wise and learned ; and, if with any difference, with a special regard to the benefit of those who, from their condition, were the most deficient in the means of natural improvement. It may be reckoned, therefore, a necessary characteristic of divine revelation, that it shall be delivered in a manner the most adapted to what are vulgarly called the meanest capaci- ties. And by this perspicuity, both of precept and of doctrine, the whole Bible is remarkably distinguished: for although St. Peter speaks of things in it hard to be understood, he speaks of such things only as could never have been understood at all, had they not been revealed, and, being revealed, are yet not capable of proof or expla- nation upon scientific principles, but rest solely on the authority of the revelation ; not that the terms in which these discoveries are made are obscure and ambiguous in their meaning, or that the things themselves, however hard for the pride of philosophy, are not of easy digestion to an humble faith. Obscurities undoubtedly have arisen, from the great antiquity of the sacred writings, from the changes which time makes in language, and from some points of ancient history, become dark or doubtful : but these affect only particular passages, and bring no difficulty at all upon the general doctrine of revelation, which is the only thing of universal and perpetual importance. Now, the method of teaching which the Holy Spirit hath em- ployed to adapt the profoundest mysteries of religion to the most ordinary capacities, has been, in all ages, to pro- pound them by his inspired messengers, the prophets under the law, and the apostles in the first ages of Chris- tianity, in figurative expressions, in images and allusions, taken either from the most striking objects of the senses in the works of nature, or from human life. The relation between Christ and his church, it is evident, must be of a nature not to be adequately typified by any thing in the
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material world ; and nothing could be found in human life which might so aptly represent it as the relation of husband and wife in the holy state of wedlock : and in this, the analogy is so perfect, that the notion of the ancient Jews has received the express sanction of St Paul, that the relation of the Saviour and the church was typified in the union of our first parents, and m the particular manner of Eve's formation out of the substance of Adam. The most striking particulars of the resemblance are these : the union, in both cases, in the natural case of man and wife, and the spiritual case of Messiah and the church, is a union of the most en- tire affection, and the warmest mutual love, between unequals ; contrary to the admired maxim of the heathen moralist, that friendship was not to be found but between equals. The maxim may be true in all human friendsliip, except the conjugal, but fails completely in the love be- tween Christ and the church, in which the affection on both sides is the most cordial, though the rank of the par- ties be the most disparate. Secondly, The union is indis- soluble, except by a violation of the nuptial vow. But the great resemblance of all lies in this ; the never-failing pi-o- tection and support afforded by the husband to the wife, and the abstraction of the affections from all other objects on the part of the wife, and the surrender of her whole heart and mind to the husband. In these circumstances principally, but in many others also, which the time will not permit me to recount, the propriety and significance of the type consists. It is applied with some variety, and with more or less accuracy, in different parts of holy writ, according to the purpose of the writer. Where the church catholic is considered simply in its totality, without distinc- tion of the parts of which it is composed, the whole church is taken as the wife : but when it is considered as consist- ing of two great branches, the church of the natural Israel, and the church of the Gentiles, of which two branches the whole was composed in the primitive ages, and will be
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composed again, then tlie former is considered as the wife, or queen consort, and the Gentile congregations as her daughters, or ladies of honour of her court. And in this manner, the type is used in many parts of the prophet Isaiah, and very remarkably in this psalm.
In the part of it which we are now about to expound, the holy Psalmist having seated the King Messiah on his everlasting throne, proceeds to the magnificence of his court, as it appeared on the wedding-day ; in which, the thing that first strikes him, and fixes his attention, is the majesty and splendour of the king's own dress, which, indeed, is described by the single circumstance of the profusion of rich perfumes with which it was scented. But this, by inference, implies every thing else of elegance and costly ornament : for among the nations of the east, in ancient times, perfume w^as considered as the finishing of the dress of persons of condition when they appeared in public ; and modern manners give us no conception of the costliness of the materials employed in the composi- tion of their odours, their care and nicety in the prepara- tion of them, and the quantity in which they were used. The high-priest of the Jews was not sprinkled with a few scanty drops of the perfume of the sanctuary ; but his person was so bedewed with it, that it literally ran down from his beard to the skirts of his garment. The high- priest of the Jews, in his robes of office, was in this, as I shall presently explain, and in every circumstance, the living type of our great High-priest. The Psalmist describes the fragrance of Messiah's garments to be such, as if the aromatic woods had been the very substance out of which the robes were made :
" Thy garments are all myrrh, aloes, and cassia."
The sequel of this verse is somewhat obscure in the ori- ginal, by reason of the ambiguity of one little w^ord, which different interpreters have taken difierently. I shall give you what in my judgment is the literal rendering of the
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passag-e, and trust I shall not find it diffioidt to make tlio meaning of it very clear.
" Thy garments are all myrrh, aloes, and cassia, Excelling the palaces of ivory, Excelling those uliich delight thee."
Ivory was highly valued and admired among the Jews, and other eastern nations of antiquity, for the purity of its white, the delicate smoothness of the surface, and the durability of the substance ; being not liable to tarnish or rust like metals, or, like wood, to rot or to be worm-eaten. Hence, it was a favourite ornament in the furniture of the houses and palaces of great men ; and all such ornamen- tal furniture was plentifully perfumed. The Psalmist, therefore, says, that the fragrance of the King's garments far exceeded any thing that met the nostrils of the visitors in the stateliest and best furnished palaces. But this is not all : he says, besides, that these perfumes of the royal garments " excel those which delight thee.'' To under- stand this, you must recollect, that there were two very exquisite perfumes used in the symbolical service of the temple, both made of the richest spices, mixed in certain proportions, and by a process directed by the law. The one was used to anoint every article of the furniture of the sanctuary, and the robes and persons of the priests. The composition of it was not to be imitated, nor was it to be applied to the person of any but a consecrated priest, upon pain of death. Some, indeed, of the kings of Da- vid's line were anointed with it ; but when this was done, it was by the special direction of a prophet, and it was to intimate, as I apprehend, the relation of that royal house to the eternal priesthood, to be instituted in due season in that family. The other was a compound of other ingre- dients, which made the incense that was burnt upon the golden altar as a grateful odour to the Lord. This, too, was most holy, and to attempt to make the like for private use was a capital offence.
Now the perfumed garments of the Psalmist's King de- V 2
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note the very same thing which was typified under the law by the perfumed garments of the high-priest ; the Psalmist's King being, indeed, the real person of whom the high-priest, in every particular, of his office, his ser- vices, and his dress, was the type. The perfumed gar- ments were typical : first, of the graces and virtues of the Redeemer himself in his human character ; secondly, of whatever is refreshino- encourao-ino;, consoling;, and cheer- ing in the external ministration of the word; and, thirdly, of the internal comforts of the Holy Spirit. But the in- cense fumed upon the golden altar was typical of a far inferior, though of a precious and holy thing ; namely, of whatever is pleasing to God in the faith, the devotions, and the good works of the saints. Now the Psalmist says, that the fragrance breathing from the garments of the King far excels, not only the sweetest odours of any earthly monarch's palace, but that it surpasses those spiritual odours of sanctity in which the King himself delights. The consolations which the faithful, under all their suffer- ings, receive from him, in the example of his holy life, the ministration of the word and sacraments, and the suc- cours of the Spirit, are far beyond the proportion of any thing they liave to offer in return to him, in their praises, their prayers, and their good lives, notwithstanding in these their services he condescends to take delight. This is the doctrine of this highly mystic text, that the value of all our best works of faith and obedience, even in our own eyes, must sink into nothing, when they are contrasted with the exuberant mercy of God extended to us through Christ. Such is the fragrance breathing from the great King's wedding garments. We proceed to other particulars in the magnificent appearance of his court on the wedding- day, figurative of the glory of the church in its final con- dition of purity and peace, and of the rank and order of particular churches.
" Kings' daughters are among thy honourable women."
You will observe, that the word " women," in the Bibles
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of the larger size, is printed in that character which is used to distinguish the words which have been inserted by tlie translators, to make the sense perspicuous to the English reader, without any thing expressly corresponding in the original. Omitting the word " women," our trans- lators might have given the verse, according to their con- ceptions of the preceding word which describes the women, thus:
" Kings' daughters are among thy honourables ;"
that is, among the persons appointed to services of honour. But the original word thus expressed by "honourable women," or by "honourables," is indeed applied to what- ever is rare and valued in its kind, and, for that reason, to illustrious persons, ennobled and distinguished by marks of royal favour: and in this sense, it certainly is figura- tively applicable to the persons whom I shall show to be intended here. But the primary meaning of the word is, "bright, sparkling;" and it is particularly applied to bril- liant gems, or precious stones. Sparkling is in all lan- guages figuratively applied to female beauty ; and the imagery of the original would be better preserved, though the sense would be much the same, if the passage were thus rendered :
" Kings' daughters are among the bright beauties of thy court."
The beauty certainly is mystic,— the beauty of evangelical sanctity and innocence.
But who and what are these kings' daughters, the lustre of whose beauty adorns the great monarch's court? " Kings' daughters," in the general language of holy writ, are the kingdoms and peoples which they govern, of which, in common speech, they are called fathers. The expression may be so taken here ; and then the sense will be, that the greatest kingdoms and empires of the world, converted to the faith of Christ, and shining in the beauty of the good works of true holiness, will be united, at the season of the wedding, to Messiah's kingdom. But. inasmuch
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as Messiah's kingdom is not one of the kingdoms of the world, and that secular kingdoms will never be immedi- ately, and in their secular capacity, vassals of his kingdom, I rather think, that the kings' daughters mentioned here are the various national churches, fostered for many ages by the piety of Christian princes, and now brought to the perfection of beauty, by the judgments which shall have purged every one of them of all things that oflend : for they may well be called "kings' daughters," of whom kings and queens are called, in the prophetic language, the fathers and the mothers. From these, the Psalmist turns our attention to another lady, distinguished above them all, by her title, her place, and the superlative rich- ness of her robes.
" Kings' daughters are among the bright beauties of thy court 3 At thy right-hand the consort has her station. In standard gold of Ophir."
Some expositors have imagined, that the consort is an emblem of the church catholic in her totality ; the kings' daughters, typical of the several particular churches of which that one universal is composed. But the queen consort here, is unquestionably the Hebrew church ; the church of the natural Israel, reunited, by her conversion, to her husband, and advanced to the high prerogative of the mother church of Christendom : and the kings' daugh- ters are the churches which had been gathered out of the Gentiles, in the interval between the expulsion of this wife, and the taking of her home again, — that is, between the dispersion of the Jews by the Romans, and their restora- tion. The restoration of the Hebrew^ church to the rights of a wife, to the situation of the queen consort in Messiah's kingdom upon earth, is the constant strain of prophecy. To prove this, by citing all the passages to that purpose, would be to transcribe whole chapters of some of the pro- phets, and innumerable detached passages from almost all. In addition to those which I have already cited, in my former Discourses upon this subject, I shall produce
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only the latter part of the second chapter of Hosea. In that chapter, Jehovah, after discarding- the incontinent wife, and threatening terrible severity of punishment, adds, that nevertheless the time should come, when she should again address her offended lord by the endearing name of husband. " And I will betroth thee to myself for ever. Yes ; I will betroth thee to myself, with justice, and with righteousness, and v\^ith exuberant kindness, and with tender love. Yes ; with faithfulness, to myself I will be- troth thee." These promises are made to the woman that had been discarded, and cannot be understood of mercies to be extended to any other. The prophet Isaiah speaks to the same effect, and describes the Gentile converts as becoming, upon the reunion, children of the pardoned wife. And I must not omit to mention, that St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, to clear up the mystery of God's dealing with the Jews, tells us, that " blindness is, in part only, happened unto Israel, till the time shall arrive for the fulness of the Gentiles to come in ; and then all Israel shall be saved; for the gifts and calling of God are with- out repentance." To expound these predictions of the ancient prophets, and this declaration of the apostle, of any thing but the restoration of the natural Israel, is to intro- duce ambiguity and equivocation into the plainest oracles of God.
The standard gold upon the queen's robe, denotes the treasures of which the church is the depositary, — the written word, and the dispensation of grace and forgive- ness of sins, by the due administration of the sacraments.
The Psalmist, beholding the queen in her costly robes, on the king's right hand, interrupts the progress of his description with a word of momentous advice addressed to her : —
" Hearken, O daughter ! and consider; Incline thine ear, and forget Thine own people, and thy father's house ; So shall the King set his heart upon thy beauty. Truly he is thy Lord ! therefore vvorsliip thou him."
If a princess irum a JLstaal land, taken ia marriage by a great king, were admonished to forget her ov»ti people and her father s house, the purport of the advice would easily be understood to be. that she should divest herself of all attachment to the customs of her native country, and to the style of her father s court, and learn to speak the lan- guage, and assume the dress, the manners, and the taste of her husband s people. The '" father s house," and *' own people," which the Psalmist advises the queen consort to forget, is the ancient Jewish religion in its external form, the ceremonies of the temple service, the sacrifices and the typical purgations of the Levitical priesthood. Xot that she is tc forget Gods gracious promises to Abraham, nor the covenant with her forefathers (the benefit of which she will enjoy to the very end of Ume^. nor the many wonder- ful deliverances that were wrought for them : nor is she to forget the history of her nation, preserved in the Scriptures of the Old Testament : nor the predictions of Mose5 and her prophets, the full accomplishment of which she will at this time experience : and historically, she is never to for- get even the ceremonial law ; for the Levitical rites were nothing less than the gospel itself in hieroglyphics : and. rightly understood, they afibrd the most complete demon- stration of the coherence of revelation with itself, in all its different stages, and the best evidence of its trath : showing that it has been the same in substance in all ages, differinor onlv in external form, in the rites of worship, and in the manner of teaching. But. practically, the rites of their ancient worship are to be forgotten, that is, laid aside ; for thev never were of any other importance than in reference to the g:ospel, as the shadow is of no value but as it resem- bles the substance. Practically, therefore, the restored Hebrew church is to abandon her ancient Jewish rites, and become mere and pure Christian ; and thus she will secure the conjuoral afiections of her husband, and render the beauty of her person perfect in his eyes. And this she is bound to do : for her roval husband is indeed her Lord :
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Moses was uo more than his servant ; the prophets after Moses, servants in a lower rank than lie. But the autho- rit\' of Christ the husband is paramount over all : he is entitled to her unreserved obedience: he is indeed her God, entitled to her adoration.
This submission of the consort to her wedded lord will set her his^h in the esteem of the churches of the Gentiles.
" See the daughter of Tyre, with a gift ; TTie wealthiest of the people shall entreat thy faTonr."
The " daughter of Tyre," according to the principles of interpretation we have laid down, must be a church esta- blished, either literally at Tyre, or in some country held forth under the image of Tyre. Ancient Tyre was famous for her commerce, her wealth, her excellence in the fine arts, her luxury, the profligate debauched manners of her people, and the grrossness of her idolatry. The •"'daughter of Tyre" appearing before the queen consort " with a gift," is a figurative prediction, that churches will be established, under the protection of the government, in countries which had been distinguished for profligacy, dissipated manners, and irreligion. It is intimated in the next line, that some of these churches will be rich : that is, rich in spiritual riches, which are the only riches of a church, in the mys- tic language of prophecy, — rich in the holy lives of their members, in the truth of their creeds, and the purity ot their external forms of worship, and in God's favour. But notwithstanding this wealth of their own, these churches will pay willino- homage to the royal consort, their eldest sister, the metropolitical church of Jerusalem.
From this address to the queen, the Psalmist, in the thirteenth verse, returns to the description of the great scene lying in vision before him.
" The King's daughter is all glorious within."
In this line, the same person that has hitherto been repre- sented as the Kiuo-'s wife seems to be called his daughter. This, however, is a matter upon which commentators
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have been much divided. Some have imagined that a new personage is introduced ; that the King s wife is, as I have all along maintained, the figure of the Hebrew church ; but that this " daughter of the King" is the Christian church in general, composed of Jews and Gen- tiles indiscriminately, considered as the daughter of the King Messiah by his Hebrew queen. This was Martin Luther's notion. Others have thought that the wife is the Hebrew church by itself, and the daughter the church of the Gentiles by itself But neither of these explanations are perfectly consistent with the imagery of this psalm. Far to be preferred is the exposition of the late learned and pious Bishop Home, who rejects the notion of the introduction of a new personage, and observes, " that the connexion between Christ and his spouse unites in itself every relation and every affection." She is, therefore, daughter, wife, and sister, all in one. The same seems to have been the notion of a learned Dominican of the se- venteenth century, who remarks that the Empress Julia, in the leo-ends of some ancient coins, is called the dauohter of Augustus, whose wife she was.
But, with much general reverence for the opinions of these learned commentators, I am persuaded that the stops have been misplaced in the Hebrew manuscripts, by the Jewish critics, upon the last revision of the text, — that translators have been misled by their false division of the text, and expositors misled by translators. The stops being rightly placed, the Hebrew words give this sense :
" She is all glorious" — She, the consort of whom we have been speaking, is glo- rious in every respect —
" Daughter of a king !"
That is, she is a princess born (by which title she is sa- luted in the Canticles) : she is glorious, therefore, for her high birth. She is, indeed, of high and heavenly extrac- tion ! She may say of herself, collectively, what the apos- tle has taught her sons to say individually, " Of his own
will begat he us with the word of his truth/' Accordingly, in the Apocalypse, the bride, the Lamb's wife, is " the holy Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God." The Psalmist goes on : —
" Her inner garment is besptUigled with gold ; Her upper garment is embroidered with the needle."
These two lines require little comment. The spangles of gold upon the consort's inner garment, are the same thing with the standard gold of Ophir, of the ninth verse, — the invaluable treasure with which the church is endowed, with the custody and distribution of which she is en- trusted. The embroidery of her upper garment is, what- ever there is of beauty in her external form, her discipline, and her rites.
The Psalmist adds : — ,
"She is conducted in procession to the King."
Our public translation has simply, " She is brought ;" but the original word implies the pomp and conduct of a pub- lic procession. The greatest caution is requisite in at- tempting to interpret, in the detail of circumstances, the predictions of things yet remote. We may venture, how- ever, to apply this conducting of the queen to the palace of her lord, to some remarkable assistance which the Is- raelites will receive from the Christian nations of the Gen- tile race, in their resettlement in the Holy Land ; which seems to be mentioned under the very same image by the prophet Isaiah, at the end of the eighteenth chapter, and by the prophet Zephaniah, chap. iii. 10, and is clearly the subject of more explicit prophecies. " Thus saith Jeho- vah," speaking to Zion, in the prophet Isaiah, " Behold, I will lift up my hand to the Gentiles, and set up my stand- ard to the peoples ; and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders." And in another place, " They" (the Gentiles, mentioned in the preceding verse) " shall bring all your brethren, for an offering unto Jehovah, out of all nations,
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upon liorses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, and upon swift beasts, to my holy mountain Jeru- salem,"
But the P^ahnist is struck with theappearanceof a very remarkable band which makes a part in this procession.
" She is conducted in procession to the King ; Virgins follow her, her companions. Coming unto thee ;
They are conducted in procession, with festivity and rejoicing; They enter the palace of the King."
These virgins seem to be different persons from the kings' daughters of the ninth verse. Those " kings' daughters" were already distinguished ladies of the mo- narch's own court : these virgins are introduced to it by the queen ; they follow her as part of her retinue, and are introduced as her companions. The former represent, as we conceive, the churches of Gentile origin, formed and established in the period of the wife's disgrace: these virgins we take to be new churches, formed among nations, not sooner called to the knowledge of the gospel and the faith in Christ, at the very season of the restoration of Is- rael, in whose conversion the restored Hebrew church may have a principal share. This is that fulness of the Gen- tiles of which St. Paul speaks as coincident in time with the recovery of the Jews, and, in a great degree, the effect of their conversion. " Have they stumbled that they should fall ?" saith the apostle, speaking of the natural Israel ; " God forbid : but rather, through their fall, salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to emulation. Now, if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and their loss the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fulness ? For if the casting away of them be the recon- ciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead ?" In these texts, the apostle clearly lays out this order of the business, in the conversion of the Whole world to Christ : First, the rejection of the unbelieving Jev/s : then, the first call of the Gentiles : the
recovery of the Jews, after a long season of obstinacy and blindness, at last provoked to emulation, brought to a right understanding of God's dispensations, by that very call which hitherto has been one of their stumbling-blocks : and lastly, in consequence of the conversion of the Jews, a prodigious influx from the Gentile nations yet uncon- verted, and immersed in the darkness and corruptions of idolatry ; which make little less than two-thirds, not of the civilized, but of the inhabited world. The churches of this new conversion seem to be the virgins, the queen's bridemaids, in the nuptial procession.
In the next verse (the sixteenth) the Psalmist again addresses the queen.
" Thy children shall be in the place of thy fathers ; Thou shalt make them princes in all the earth."
Thy children shall be what thy fathers were, God's pecu- liar people ; and shall hold a distinguished rank and cha- racter in the earth.
The Psalmist closes his divine song with a distich set- ting forth the design, and predicting the effect, of his own performance : " I will perpetuate the remembrance of thy name to all generations ; Insomuch that the peoples shall praise thee for ever."
By inditing this marriage-song, he hoped to be the means of celebratino- the Redeemer's name from ao-e to ao^e, and of inciting the nations of the world to join in his praise. The event has not disappointed the holy prophet's expecta- tion. His composition has been the delight of the congre- gations of the faithful for little less than three thousand years. For one thousand and forty, it was a means of keeping alive in the synagogue the hope of the Redeemer to come : for eighteen hundred since, it has been the means of perpetuating in Christian congregations the grateful re- membrance of what has been done, anxious attention to what is doing, and of the cheering hope of the second coming of our Lord, who surely cometli to turn away ungodliness from Jacob, and to set up a standard to the
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nations wliich yet sit in darkness and tlie sliadow ot" death. " He that witnesseth these things saith, Behold, 1 come quickly. And the Spirit saith, Come ; and the bride saith, Come ; and let every one that heareth say, Amen. Even so. Come, Lord Jesus !"'
SERMON VIII.
Tliis is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ j — not by water only, but by water and blood. — 1 John v. G.
For the surer interpretation of these words, it will be necessary to take a general view of the sacred book in which we find them written, and to consider the subject matter of the whole, but more particularly of the two last chapters.
The book goes under the title of The General Epistle of St. John. But in the composition of it, narrowly in- spected, nothing is to be found of the epistolary form. It is not inscribed either to any individual, like St. Paul's to Timothy and Titus, or the second of the two which follow it, " to the well-beloved Gains,"'- — nor to any particular church, like St, Paul's to the churches of Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, and others. — nor to the faithful of any particular region, like St, Peter's first epistle " to the strangers scat- tered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia," — nor to any principal branch of the Christian church, like St, Paul's to the Hebrews, — nor to the Chris- tian church in general, like the second of St, Peter's, " to them that had obtained like precious faith with him," and like St, Jude's, " to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called," It bears no such inscription. It begins without salutation, and ends without benediction. It is true, the writer some- times speaks, but without naming himself in the first per- son,— and addresses his reader, without naming him in the
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second. But this colloquial style is very common in all writings of a plain familiar cast : instances of it occur in St. John's gospel ; and it is by no means a distinguishing character of epistolary composition. It should seem, that this book hath, for no other reason, acquired the title of an epistle, but that, in the first formation of the canon of the New Testament, it was put into the same volume with the didactic writings of the apostles, which, with this single exception, are all in the epistolary form. It is, indeed, a didactic discourse upon the principles of Christianity, both in doctrine and practice : and whether we consider the sublimity of its opening with the fundamental topics of God's perfections, man's depravity, and Christ's propitia- tion,— the perspicuity with which it propounds the deepest mysteries of our holy faith, and the evidence of the proof which it brings to confirm them ; whether we consider the sanctity of its precepts, and the energy of argument with which they are persuaded and enforced, — the dignified simplicity of language in which both doctrine and precept are delivered ; whether we regard the importance of the matter, the propriety of the style, or the general spirit of ardent piety and warm benevolence, united with a fervid zeal, which breathes throughout the whole composition, — we shall find it in every respect worthy of the holy author to whom the constant tradition of the church ascribes it, " the disciple whom Jesus loved."'
The particular subject of the two last chapters is the great doctrine of the incarnation, or, in St. John's own words, of Christ's coming in the flesh. It may seem that I ought to say, the two doctrines of the incarnation and the atonement: but if I so said, though I should not say any thing untrue, I should speak improperly ; for the in- carnation of our Lord, and the atonement made by him, are not two separate doctrines : they are one; the doctrine of atonement being included in that of the incarnation, rightly understood, and as it is stated by St. John.
The doctrine of the incarnation in its whole amount is
so
tliis: that one of tlie tliiee persons of the Godhead was united to a man, that is, to a human body and a human soul, in the person of Jesus, in order to expiate the guilt of the whole human race, original and actual, by the merit, death, and sufferings of the man so united to the Godhead. This atonement was the end of the incarnation, and the two articles reciprocate: for an incarnation is implied and presupposed in the Scripture doctrine of atonement, as the necessary means in the end. For if satisfaction was to be made to divine justice for the sins of men, by vicarious obedience and vicarious sulTerings, in such a way (and in no other way it could be consistent with divine wisdom) as might attach the pardoned offender to God's service, upon a principle of love and gratitude, it was essential to this plan, that God himself should take a principal part in all that his justice required to be done and sutiiered, to make room for his mercy; and the divine nature itself being in- capable of suffering, it was necessary to the scheme of pardon, that the Godhead should condescend to unite to itself the nature capable.
For make the supposition, if you please, that after the fall of Adam another perfect man had been created. Suppose '^that this perfect man had fulfilled all righteous- ness,— that, like our Lord, he had been exposed to temp- tations of Satan far more powerful than those to v.hich our first parents yielded, and that, like our Lord, he had baffled Satan in every attempt. Suppose this perfect man had consented to offer up his own life as a ransom for other lives forfeited, and to suffer in his own person the utmost misery a creature could be made to suffer, to avert punish- ment from Adam, and from Adam's whole posterity. The life he would have had to offer would have been but the life of one; the lives forfeited were many. Could one life be a ransom for more than one? Could the sufferings of one single man, upon any principle upon which public justice may exact and accept vicarious punishment, ex- piate the guilt of more than one other man? Could it
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expiate the apostacy of millions? It is true, tliat in human govern ments, the punishment of a few is sometimes ac- cepted as a satisfaction for the offence of many; as in military punishments, when a regiment is decimated. But the cases will bear no comparison. The reo-iment has perhaps deserved lenity by former good services, which in the case between God and man, cannot be alleo-ed. The satisfaction of the tenth man goes to no farther effect than a pardon, for the other nine, of the single individual crime that is passed. The law remains in force, and the nine, who for that time escape, continue subject to its ri- gour, and still liable to undergo the punishment, if the offence should be repeated. But such is the exuberance of mercy in man\s redemption, that the expiation extends not only to innumerable offences past, but to many that are yet to come. The severity of the law itself is miti- gated : the hand- writing of ordinances is blotted out, and duty henceforward is exacted upon a principle of allow- ance for human frailty. And w^ho will have the folly or the hardiness to say, that the suffering virtue of one mere man would have been a sufficient price for such a pardon ? It must be added, that when human authority accepts an inadequate satisfaction for offences involving multitudes the lenity, in many cases, arises from a policy founded on a prudent estimation of the imperfection of power in human government, which might sustain a diminution of its strength by the loss of numbers. But God hath no need of the wicked man; it would be no diminution of strength to his government if a world should perish: it is therefore from pure mercy that he ever spares. The dis- obedience of our first parents was nothing less than a con- federacy with the apostate spirit against the sovereio-n authority of God : and if such offenders are spared by such a sovereign, it must be in a way which shall unite the perfection of mercy with the perfection of justice ; for in God mercy and justice must equally be perfect.
Since, then, one mere man could make no expiation of
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the sins of myriads, make, it' you please, another supposi- tion. Suppose an angel had undertaken for us, — had de- sired to assume our mortal nature, and to do and suffer for us, what, done and suffered by a man, we have found would have been inadequate. We shall then have the life of one incarnate angel, still a single life, a ransom for myriads of men's lives forfeited; and the merit and suffer- ings of one angel to compensate the guilt of myriads of men, and to be an equivalent for their punishment. I fear the amended supposition has added little or nothing to the value of the pretended satisfaction. Whatever reverence may be due from man in his present condition upon earth to the holy angels as his superiors, what are they in the sight of God ? They are nothing better now than the glorified saints in heaven will hereafter be ; and " God charges even his angels with folly, and the heavens are not pure in his sight."
But admit, that either a perfect man, or an incarnate angel, had been able to pay the forfeit for us ; and suppose that the forfeit had been paid by a person thus distinct and separate from the Godhead. What effect would have been produced, by a pardon so obtained, in the mind of the pardoned offender ? Joy, no doubt, for an unexpected deliverance from impending vengeance, — love for the person, man or angel, who had wrought the deliverance, — remorse, that his crimes had involved another's inno- cence in misery ; but certainly no attachment to the ser- vice of the Sovereign. The deliverer might have been loved : but the Being whose justice exacted the satisfac- tion would have remained the object of mere fear, unmixed with love, or rather of fear mixed with aversion. Pardon thus obtained never could have inflamed the repentant sinner's bosom with that love of God which alone can qualify an intelligent creature for the enjoyment of the Creator's presence. This could only be effected by the wonderful scheme in which mercy and truth are made to kiss each other ; when the same God, who in one person
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exacts the punishment, in another, himself, sustains it; and thus makes his own mercy pay the satisfaction to his own justice.
So essential was the incaination of the Son of God to the effectual atonement of man's guilt by the shedding of his blood. On the other hand, the need there was of such atonement, is the only cause that can be assigned which could induce the Son of God to stoop to be made man : for had the instruction of man, as some have dreamed, been the only purpose of our Saviour's coming, a mere man might have been empowered to execute the whole business ; for whatever knowledge the mind of man can be made to comprehend, a man might be made the instrument to convey.
This inseparable and necessary connexion with the doc- trine of atonement, constitutes an essential difference be- tween the awful mystery of the incarnation in the Chris- tian system, and those avatars in the superstitious religion of the Indian Brahmin, which have been compared with it, but in which it is profanely mimicked rather than imi- tated. Yet the comparison is not unfounded, nor without its use, if it be conducted with due reverence and circum- spection. In those impious, incoherent fables, as in all the Pagan mythology, and in the very worst of the Pagan rites, vestiges are discernible of the history, the revelations, and the rites of the earliest of the patriarchal ages; and thus the worst corruptions of idolatry may be brought to bear an indirect testimony to the truth of revelation. But we must be cautious, that, in making the comparison, we mistake not a hideously distorted picture for a flattered likeness, — a disfigured for an embellished copy; lest we be inadvertently and insensibly reconciled to the impure and blasphemous fictions of idolatry, — to her obscene and savage rites, as nothing worse than elegant adumbrations of sacred truth in significant allegory. In the numerous successive incarnations of Veeshnu, the Deity is embodied for subordinate and partial purposes, altogether unworthy g2
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of tliat manner of interference. Tlie incarnation of Christ was for a purpose vvliich God only could accomplish, and God himself could accomplish in no other way : it was for the execution of a plan which divine wisdom could alone contrive, — divine love and almighty power could alone effect : it was to rescue those from endless misery, whom divine justice (which, because it is mere and very justice, must be inflexible) demanded for its victims.
It is therefore with great truth and reason that St. John sets forth this as the cardinal doctrine of Christianity ; insonmch, that he speaks of the belief of this article as the accomplishment of our Christian warfare, — the attain- ment at least of that faith, which, with certainty, over- cometh the world. " This," he says, " is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith." Then he adds, " Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that be- lieveth that Jesus is the Son of God V " Son of God," is a title that belongs to our Lord in his human character, describing him as that man who became the Son of God by union with the Godhead ; as "■ Son of man," on the contrar}^ is a title which belongs to the eternal Word, describing that person of the Godhead who was made man by uniting himself to the man Jesus. To believe, therefore, that Jesus is the Son of God, is to believe that he is God himself incarnate. This, the apostle says, is the faith which overcometh the world,— inspiring the Chris- tian with fortitude to surmount the temptations of the world, in whatever shape they may assail him. On the other hand, the denial of this great truth, so animating to the believer's hopes, he represents as the beginning of that apostacy which is to come to its height in the latter ages, as one of the characters of antichrist. " Ye have lieard," he says, "that antichrist shall come: even now theie are many antichrists. Who is a liar, but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ ? He is antichrist, denying the Father and the Son." And again, " Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God;
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and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is not of God : and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come, and now already is it in the world." "The Christ" is a name properly alluding- to the inauguration of the Redeemer, to his triple office of prophet, priest, and king,^ by the unction from above. But in the phraseology of the here- tics of the apostolic age, it was used as a name of that Divine Being with whom we maintain, but they denied, a union of the man Jesus. To deny, therefore, that Jesus is the Christ, was, in their sense of the word Christ, to deny that he is the Son of God, or God himself incarnate. He that denieth this, says the apostle, is a liar, and is antichrist. Two remarkable sects of these lying antichrists arose in the apostles' days, — the sect of the Corinthian heretics, who denied the divinity of our Saviour ; and the sect of the Docetae, who denied his manhood, maintaining that the body of Jesus, and every thing he appeared to do and suffer in it, was mere illusion. Thus, both equally denied the incarnation : both therefore equally were liars and antichrists ; and to give equal and direct contradic- tion to the lies of both, St. John delivers the truth in these terms, that " Jesus is the Christ come in the flesh."
In my text, the apostle, having stated the doctrine in the preceding verse, gives a brief summary of the irre- sistible evidence by which it is confirmed to us, which he opens most distinctly, but still in very few comprehensive words, in the two subsequent verses. The evidence is such as must command the assent of all who understand the component parts of it ; and these parts are intelligible to all who are well instructed in their Bibles : so that, of all evidence, at the same time that it is the most profound, it seems to be the most popular, and the best calculated to work a general conviction. It is much to be lamented that this evidence has been totally overlooked by those who, with much ostentation of philological learning which they possessed, and of meteiphysical which they possessed
not, have composed laboured demon.Unitious (as they pre- sume to call them) of natural and revealed religion, — demonstrations which have made, I fear, more infidels than converts. The apostle's demonstration proceeds thus : — In the verse preceding my text, he states his proposition (though not for the first time), that " Jesus is the Son of God :" then he adds ; " This is he that came by water and blood, Jesus the Christ ; — not by the water only, but by the water and the blood ;" that is, this is he who in the fulness of the time is come, according to the early promise of his coming, Jesus, by water and blood, proved to be the Christ ; not by the water only, but by the water and the blood. That this is the true exposition of the text, — that the coming by water and blood, as our public translation gives the passage, is coming with the evidence of the water and the blood, proving that he was the Christ, — appears from the distinct explication which immediately follows of the whole evidence, of which the water and the blood make principal parts. For thus the apostle pro- ceeds : " And the Spirit beareth witness (or more literally, the Spirit is a thing witnessing), because the Spirit is truth." The word spirit signifies here, as in many other places, the gift of tongues, and other extraordinary endowments, pre- ternatu rally conferred by the agency of the Spirit, not on the apostles only, but on believers in general in the apos- tolic age. When the word signifies the divine person, the epithet holy is usually joined with it. This Spirit is a " thing witnessing," besides the water and the blood, because this " Spirit is truth." It is the completion of a promise. These extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, consist- ing in an improvement of the faculties of the mind for the apprehension of divine truth, and in enlargements of its command over the bodily organs (as in the gift of tongues), for the propagation of it, were an evident completion of the promise given by our Lord to the apostles, expressly in the character of the Son of God, that after his return to the Father, he would send the Spirit to lead them into all
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truth. These gifts, therefore, the fulfihiient of that pro- mise, were the truth making good the words ; which truth proved the sincerity and veracity of the giver of the pro- mise, and established his pretensions. Thus this Spirit, because it was truth, was a thing bearing witness together with the water and the blood.
The apostle goes on : " For there are three which bear record in heaven (that is, there are three in heaven which bear record), the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost ; and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in the earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood ; and these three agree in one."
J shall not enter into argument in defence of the verse containing the testimony of the three in heaven. It has. indeed, of late years been brought under suspicion ; and the authenticity of it has been given up by men of great learning and unquestioned piety, even among the ortho- dox. But I conceive that the exposition which I shall give of the entire passage will best vindicate the sincerity of the text as it stands against the exceptions of an over- subtle criticism in these late ages, contradicting the ex- plicit testimony of St. Jerome, that critical reviser of the Latin version, in the fourth century, or, at the latest, in the very beginning of the fifth, corroborated as it is by the citations of still earlier fathers.
*' There are three," says the apostle (for these I assume as his genuine words), " There are three in heaven that bear record," — record to this fact, that Jesus is the Christ, — " the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost." The Father bare witness by his own voice from heaven, twice declaring Jesus his beloved Son ; first, after his baptism, when he came up out of the river, and again at the trans- figuration. A third time the Father bare witness, when he sent his angel to Jesus in agony in the garden. The eternal Word bare witness, by the fulness of the Godhead dwelling in Jesus bodily, — by that plenitude of strength and power with which he was supplied for the perform-
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ance of his miracles, and the endurance in his frail and mortal body of the fire of the Father's wrath. The Word bare witness, — perhaps more indirectly, — still the Word bare witness, by the preternatural darkness which for three hours obscured the sun, while Jesus hung in torment upon the cross ; in the quaking of the earth, the rending of the rocks, and the opening of the graves, to liberate the bodies of the saints which appeared in the holy city after our Lord's resurrection; for these extraordinary convulsions of the material world must be ascribed to that poAver by which God in the beginning created it, and still directs the course of it, — that is, to the immediate act of the Word ; for " by him all things were made, and he upholdeth all things by the word of his own power." The Holy Ghost bare witness, by the acknowledgment of the infant Jesus, made, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, by the mouths of his servants and instruments, Simeon and Anna; and more directly, by his visible descent upon the adult Jesus at his baptism, and upon the apostles of Jesus after the ascension of their Lord. Thus the three in heaven bare witness; and these three, the apostle adds, are one, — one, in the unity of a consentient testimony; for that unity is all that is requisite to the purpose of the apostle's present argument. It is remarkable, however, that he describes the unity of the testimony of the three celestial and the three terrestrial witnesses in different terms, — I conceive for this reason, — of the latter more could not be said with truth than that they ^^ agree in one;" for they are not one in nature and substance: but the three in heaven being in substance and in nature one, he asserts the agreement of their testimony in terms which predicate their substantial unity, in which the consent of testimony is necessarily included ; lest, if he applied no higher phrase to them than to the terrestrial witnesses, he might seem tacitly to qualify and lower his own doctrine. He goes on : " And there are three in earth that bear witness, — the spirit, and the water, and the blood ; and these three agree in one."
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Having thus detailed the particulars of the evidence, the apostle closes this part of his argument with these words: "This is the witness of God;"' that is, this testimony, made up of six several parts, the witness of three witnesses in heaven, and the witness of three witnesses in earth, — this, taken altogether, is "the witness of God which he hath testified of his Son."'
The Spirit here, in the eighth verse, as well as in my text, is evidently to be understood of the gifts preternaturally conferred upon believers. But what is the water, and what is the blood, produced as two other terrestrial wit- nesses ? What is their deposition, and what is its effect and amount?
No one who recollects the circumstances of the cruci- fixion, as they are detailed in St. John's gospel, can, for a moment, entertain a doubt, that the water and the blood mentioned here as witnesses, are the water and the blood which issued from the Redeemer's side, when his body, already dead, was pierced by a soldier with a spear. But how were these witnesses, and what did they attest? First, it is to be observed, that the stream, not of blood alone, but of water with the blood, was something preternatural and miraculous ; for St. John dwells upon it with earnest rei- terated asseveration, as a thing so wonderful that the ex- plicit testimony of an eye-witness was requisite to make it credible, and yet of great importance to be accredited, as a main foundation of faith. " One of the soldiers," the Evangelist saith, " with a spear pierced his side, and forth- with came there out blood and water. And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true, and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe." When a man ac- companies the assertion of a fact with this declaration, that he was an eye-witness, — that what he asserts he him- self believes to be true, — that he was under no deception at the time, — that he not only believes, but knows the fact to be true, from the certain information of his own senses, — that he is anxious, for the sake of others, tliat it
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should be believed, — he certainly speaks of something- extraordinary and hard to be believed, and yet, in his judg- ment, of great importance. The piercing of our Saviour's side with a spear, and the not breaking of his legs, though that piece of cruelty was usually practised among the Romans in the execution of that horrible punishment, which it was our Lord's lot to undergo, had been facts of great importance, though nothing had issued from the wound ; because, as the Evangelist observes, they were the completion of two very remarkable prophecies con- cerning the Messiah's sufferings. But there was nothing in either, in the doing of the one, or the not doing of the other, so much out of the common course as to be difficult of belief. The streaming of the blood from a wound in a body so lately dead, that the blood might well be sup- posed to be yet fluid, would have been nothing remarkable. The extraordinary circumstance must have been, the flow- ing of the water with the blood. Some men of learning have imagined, that the water which issued in this instance with the blood, was the fluid with which the heart in its natural situation in the human body is surrounded. This, chemists perhaps may class among the watery fluids ; being neither viscous like an oil, nor inflammable like spi- rits, nor elastic or volatile like an air or ether: it difters, however, remarkably from plain water, as anatomists as- sert, in the colour and other qualities : and that this fluid should issue with the blood of the heart, when a sharp weapon had divided the membranes which enclose it, as the spear must have done before it reached the heart, had been nothing more extraordinary than that blood by itself should have issued at a wound in any other part. Besides, in the detail of a fact, narrated with so much earnestness to gain belief, the Evangelist must be supposed to speak with the most scrupulous precision, and to call everything by its name. The water, therefore, which he says he saw streaming from the wound, was as truly water as the blood was bk)od ; the pure element of water, — transparent, co-
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lourless, insipid, inodorous water. And here is the mira- cle, that pure water, instead of the fluid of the pericar- dium in its natural state, should have issued with the blood from a wound in the region of the heart. This pure water and the blood coming forth together, are two of the three terrestrial witnesses, whose testimony is so efficacious, in St, John's judgment, for the confirmation of our faith.
But how do this water and this blood bear witness that the crucified Jesus was the Christ ? Water and blood were the indispensable instruments of cleansing and expiation in all the cleansings and expiations of the law. " Almost all things," saith St. Paul, " are by the law purged with blood ; and without shedding of blood there is no remission." But the purgation was not by blood only, but by blood and water; for the same apostle says, "When Moses had spoken every precept to all the people, according to the law, he took the blood of calves and of goats, with water, and sprinkled both the book and all the people." All the cleansings and expiations of the law, by water and animal blood, were typical of the real cleansing of the conscience by the water of baptism, and of the expiation of real guilt by the blood of Christ shed upon the cross, and virtually taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's supper. The flowing, therefore, of this water and this blood, im- mediately upon our Lord's death, from the wound opened in his side, was a notification to the surrounding multi- tudes, though at the time understood by few, that the real expiation was now complete, and the cleansing fount set open. O wonderful exhibition of the goodness and seve- rity of God ! It is the ninth hour, and Jesus, strong to tbe last in suff'ering, commending his spirit to the Father, exclaims with a loud voice, that " It is finished !" bows his anointed head, and renders up the ghost. Nature is con- vulsed ! Earth trembles ! The sanctuary, that type of the heaven of heavens, is suddenly and forcibly thrown open ! The tombs are burst ! Jesus hangs upon the cross a corpse ! And, lo, the fountain which, according to the prophet, was
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this day to be set open for sin and for pollution, is seen suddenly springing from his wound !— Who, contemplating only in imagination the mysterious, awful scene, exclaims not with the centurion, " Truly this was the Son of God ;'' — truly he was the Christ ?
Thus I have endeavoured to explain how the water and the blood, together with the spirit, are witnesses upon earth, to establish the faith which overcometh the world. Much remains untouched ; but the time forbids me to proceed. One thing only I must add, — that the faith which overcometh the world consists not in the involun- tary assent of the mind to historical evidence, nor in its assent, perhaps still more involuntary, to the conclusions of argument from facts proved and admitted. All this knowledge and all this understanding, the devils possess, yet have not faith ; and, believing without faith, they tremble. Faith is not merely a speculative, but a practi- cal acknowledgment of Jesus as the Christ, — an effort and motion of the mind toward God, when the sinner, convinced of sin, accepts with thankfulness the proffered terms of pardon; and, in humble confidence, applying individually to self the benefit of the general atonement, in the elevated language of a venerable father of the church, drinks of the stream which flows from the Redeemer's wounded side. The effect is, that, in a little, he is filled with that perfect love of God which casteth out fear, — he cleaves to God with the entire affection of the soul. And from this active, lively faith, overcoming the world, subduing carnal self, all these good works do necessarily spring, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.
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SERMON IX.
The Spirit of tlie Lord is upon me, because lie hath anointed me t<> preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken- hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, — to set at liberty them that are bruised, — to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.* — Luke iv. 18, 19.
It was, as it should seem, upon our Saviour's first ap- pearance in the synagogue at Nazareth, the residence of liis family, in the character of a public teacher, that, to the astonishment of that assembly, where he was known only as the carpenter's son, he applied to himself that remark- able passage of Isaiah which the evangelist recites in the words of my text. " This day," said our Lord, " is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." The phrase " this day," is not, I think, to be understood of that particvdar sabbath- day upon which he undertook to expound this prophetic text to the men of Nazareth ; nor " your ears," of the ears of the individual congregation assembled at the time within the walls of that particular synagogue. The expressions are to be taken according to the usual latitude of common speech, — " this day," for the whole time of our Lord's appearance in the flesh, or at least for the whole season of his public ministry ; and " your ears," for the ears of all you inhabitants of Judea and Galilee, who now hear my doctrine and see my miracles. Our Lord aflfirms, that in his works, and in his daily preaching, his countrymen might discern the full completion of this prophetic text, inasmuch as he was the person upon whom the Spirit of Jehovah was — whom Jehovah had anointed " to preach the gospel to the poor" — whom Jehovah had sent " to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the cap-
* Preached before the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, June 1, 1793.
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tives, and recovering of sight to the blind, — to set at liberty them that are bruised, and to preach the acceptable year of the Lord."
None but an inattentive reader of the Bible can suppose that these words were spoken by the prophet Isaiah of him- self. Isaiah had a portion, without doubt, but a portion only, of the Divine Spirit. In any sense in which the Spirit of Jehovah was upon the prophet, it was more emi- nently upon him who received it not by measure. The prophet Isaiah restored not, that we know, any blind man to his sight, — he delivered no captive from his chain. He predicted indeed the restoration of the Jews from the Baby- lonian captivity, — their final restoration from their present dispersion, and the restoration of man from the worse cap- tivity of sin : but he never took upon him to proclaim the actual commencement of the season of liberation, which is the thing properly implied in the phrase of " preaching deliverance to the captives." To the broken-hearted he administered no other balm than the distant hope of one who, in future times, should bear their sorrows ; nor were the poor of his own time particularly interested in his preaching. The characters, therefore, which the speaker seems to assume in this prophetic text, are of two kinds, — such as are in no sense answered by any known cir- cumstance in the life and character of Isaiah, or of any other personage of the ancient Jewish history, but in every sense, literal and figurative, of which the terms are capable, apply to Christ ; and such as might, in some degree, be answered in the prophet's character, but not otherwise than as his office bore a subordinate relation to Christ's office, and his predictions to Christ's preaching. It is a thing well known to all who have been conversant in Isaiah's writings, that many of his prophecies are conceived in the form of dramatic dialogues, in which the usual persons of the sacred piece are God the Father, the Messiah, the prophet himself, and a chorus of the faithful : but it is left to the reader to discover, by the matter spoken, how
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many of these speakers are introduced, and to which speaker eacli part of the discourse belongs. It had been reasonable therefore to suppose, that this, like many other passages, is delivered in the person of the Messiah, had our Lord's authority been wanting for the application of the prophecy to himself. Following the express authority of our Lord, in the application of this prophecy to him, we might have spared the use of any other argument, were it not that a new form of infidelity of late hath reared its hideous head, which, carrying on an impious opposition to the genuine faith, under the pretence of reformation, in its affected zeal to purge the Christian doctrine of I know not what corruptions, and to restore our creed to what it holds forth as the primitive standard, — under that infatua- tion which, by the just judgment of God, ever clings to self-sufficient folly, pretends to have discovered inaccura- cies in our Lord's own doctrine, and scruples not to pro- nounce him, not merely a man, but a man peccable and fallible in that degree as to have misquoted and misapplied the prophecies of the Old Testament. In this instance our great Lord and Master defies the profane censures of the doctors of that impious school. This text, referred to its original place in the book of Isaiah, is evidently the open- ing of a prophetic dialogue ; and in the particulars of the character described in it, it carries its own internal evidence of its necessary reference to our Lord, and justifies his ap- plication of it to himself, as will farther appear from a more particular exposition.
" The Spirit of the Lord is upon me," or " over me." The expression implies a superiority and control of the Divine Spirit, — the Spirit's government and guidance of the man, and the man's entire submission, in the pro- secution of the work he had in hand, to the Spirit's di- rection.
" The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me." Under the law, the three great offices of prophet, priest, and king, were conferred by the ceremony
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of anointing the person. The unction of our Lord was the descent of the Holy Ghost upon him at his baptism. This was analogous to the ceremony of anointing, as it was a mark publicly exhibited, "that God had anointed him," to use St. Peter's expression, " with the Holy Ghost and with power."
It will seem nothing strange that Jesus, who was him- self God, should derive authority from the unction of that Spirit which, upon other occasions, he is said to give, and that he should be under the Spirit's direction, if it be re- membered that our Lord was as truly man as he was truly God, — that neither of the two natures was absorbed in the other, but both remained in themselves perfect, notwith- standing the union of the two in one person. The Divine Word, to which the humanity was united, was not, as some ancient heretics imagined, instead of a soul to inform the body of the man ; for this could not have been without a diminution of the divinity, which, upon this supposition, must have become obnoxious to all the perturbations of the human soul, — to the passions of grief, fear, anger, pity, joy, hope, and disappointment, — to all which our Lord, without sin, was liable. The human nature in our Lord was complete in both its parts, consisting of a body and a rational soul. The rational soul of our Lord's human na- ture was a distinct thing from the principle of divinity to which it was united ; and being so distinct, like the souls of other men, it owed the right use of its faculties, in the exercise of them upon religious subjects, and its uncor- rupted rectitude 6f will, to the influence of the Holy Spirit of God. Jesus, indeed, " was anointed with this holy oil above his fellows," inasmuch as the intercourse was unin- terrupted,— the illumination by infinite degrees more full, and the consent and submission, on the part of the man, more perfect than in any of the sons of Adam ; insomuch that he alone, of all the human race, by the strength and light imparted from above, was exempt from sin, and ren- dered superior to temptation. To him the Spirit was given
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not by measure. Tlie unmeasured infusion of tlie Spirit into the Redeemer's soul, was not the means, but the efiect, of its union to the second person of tlie Godhead. A union of which this had been the means, had ditiered only in degree from that which is, in some degree, the privilege of every true believer, — which, in an eminent degree, was the privilege of the apostles, who, by the visible descent of the Holy Ghost upon them on the day of Pentecost, were, in some sort, like their Lord, anointed with the unction from on high. But in him the natures were united, and the uninlerrupted perfect commerce of his human soul with the Divine Spirit, was the effect and the privilege of that mysterious conjunction.
" The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel." To preach the gos- pel.— The original word, which is expressed in our Eng- lish Bibles by the word " gospel," signifies good news, a joyful message, or glad-tidings ; and our English word " gospel," traced to its original in the Teutonic language, is found to carry precisely the same import, being a com- pound of two words, an adjective signifying good, and a substantive which signifies a tale, message, or declaration. But as this signification of the English word, by the gene- ral neglect of the parent language, is pretty much forgotten, or remembered only among the learned, it may give per- spicuity to the text, if for the single word "gospel," we substitute the two words " glad-tidings." " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach glad-tidings to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, — to set at liberty them that are bruised, — to preach the acceptable year of the Lord."
Our blessed Lord, in the course of his ministry, restored the sight of the corporeal eye to many who were literally blind. By his miraculous assistance in various instances of worldly affliction, far beyond the reach of any human
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aid, he literally healed the broken-heart, as in the instance of Jairus, whose breathless daughter he revived — of the w^idow of Nain, whose son he restored to her from the coffin — of the family of Lazarus, whom he raised from the grave — of the Syrophoenician woman, whose young daugh- ter he rescued from possession — and of many other suf- ferers, whose several cases time would fail me to recount. We read not, however, that, during his life on earth, he literally opened the doors of any earthly prison, for the enlargement of the captive, or that, in any instance, he lite- rally released the slave or the convict from the burden of the galling chain. It is probable, therefore, that all these expressions of " the poor, the broken-hearted, the captive, the blind, and the bruised," carry something of a mystic meaning, denoting moral disorders and deficiencies under the image of natural calamities and imperfections ; and that the various benefits of redemption are described under the notion of remedies applied to those natural afflictions and distempers. In this figurative sense, the poor are not those who are destitute of this world's riches, but those who, before our Lord's appearance in the flesh, were poor in religious treasure, without any clear knowledge of the true God, of their own duty here, and of their hope here- after,— the whole heathen world, destitute of the light of revelation. To them our Lord preached the glad-tidings of life and immortality. The broken-hearted are sinners, not hardened in their sins, but desponding under a sense of guilt, without a hope of expiation. These broken- hearts the Redeemer healed, by making the atonement, and by declaring the means and the terms of reconcilia- tion. The captives are they who were in bondage to the law of sin, domineering in their members, and overpow- ering the will of the conscience and the rational faculty. The blind are the devout but erring Jews of our Lord's days, blind to the spiritual sense of the symbols of their ritual law. The bruised are the same Jews, bruised in their consciences by the galling fetters of a religion of ex-
99 ternal ordinances, wliom our Lord released by the promul- gation of his perfect law of liberty. But notwithstanding- that the expressions in my text may easily bear, and in the intention of the inspiring- Spirit, certainly, I think, involved this mystic meaning; yet since the prophecy, in some of these particulars, had a literal accomplishment in our Lord's miracles, the literal meaning is, by no means, to be excluded. Indeed, when of both meanings of a prophet's phrase, the literal and the figurative, either seems clearly and equally admissible, the true rule of interpretation seems to be, that the phrase is to be understood in both. This seems a clear conclusion from the very nature of our Lord's miracles, which, for the most part, were actions distinctly symbolical of one or other of the spiritual benefits of the redemption: as such, they were literal completions of the prophecies, taking the place, as it were, of the prophecies so completed, pointing to another latent meaning, and to a higher completion, and thus forming a strict and won- derful union between the letter and the spirit of the pro- phetic language.
This text is not the only passage in the prophetic writ- ings, in which the preaching of glad-tidings to the poor is mentioned as a principal branch of the Messiah's ofiice. That, in the exposition of these prophecies, the figurative sense of the expression is not to exclude the literal, is evi- dent from this consideration, that the discoveries of the Christian revelation are, in fact, emphatically glad-tidings to the poor, in the literal acceptation of the word, — to those who are destitute of worldly riches. To those who, from their present condition, might be likely to think themselves forsaken of their Maker, — to doubt whether they existed for any other purpose than to minister to the superfluous enjoyments of the higher ranks of society, by the severity of their own toil, — to persons in this low con- dition, and under these gloomy apprehensions, was it not glad-tidings to be told that they had a hope, beyond the infidel's expectation, of a perpetual cessation of sorrow in h2
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the grave? — hope of a day, when all shall rise, to meet before the common Lord, high and low, rich and poor, one with another ! — when, without regard to the distinctions of this transitory life, each man shall receive his proper portion of honour or shame, enjoyment or misery, accord- ino- to the deo;ree of his moral and religious worth ! — that he whose humble station excluded him, in this life, from the society and the pleasures of the great (now fallen from their greatness), shall become the companion and the fellow of angels and of glorified saints ! shall stand for ever in the presence of his Redeemer and his God, and partake of the pleasures which are at God's right hand !
Again, the discoveries of Christianity were made in a manner the most suited to popular apprehension; and, for that reason, they were emphatically glad-tidings to the poor. Its duties are not delivered in a system built on abstract notions of the eternal fitness of things, ^ — of the useful and the fair, — notions not void of truth, but intelligible only to minds highly improved by long habits of study and reflec- tion. In the gospel, the duties of man are laid down in short, perspicuous, comprehensive precepts, delivered as the commands of God, under the awful sanctions of eternal rewards and punishments. The doctrines of the Christian revelation are not encumbered with a long train of argu- mentative proof, which is apt to bewilder the vulgar, no less than it gratifies the learned ; they are propounded to the faith of all, upon the authority of a teacher who came down from heaven, " to speak what he knew, and testify what he had seen.''
Again, the poor are they on whom the Christian doctrine would most readily take effect. Christ's aton-ement, it is true, hath been made for all. The benefits of redemption are no less common to all ranks of society than to all nations of the world; and upon this ground, the first news of the Saviour's birth was justly called, by the angels who pro- claimed it, "glad-tidings of great joy which should be to all people." Every situation of life hath its proper temp-
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tations and its proper duties; and, with the aids which the gospel offers, the temptations of all situations are equally surmountable, and the duties equally within the power of the believer's improved strength. It were a derogation from the greatness of our Lord's work, to suppose, that with an equal strength of religious principle once formed, the attain- ment of salvation should be more precarious in any one rank of life than in another. But if we consider the different ranks of men, not as equally religious, but as equally with- out religion, which was the deplorable situation of the world when Christianity made its first appearance, the poor were the class of men among whom the new doctrine was likely to be, and actually was, in the first instance, the most effi- cacious. The riches of the world, and the gratifications they afford, are too apt, when their evil tendency is not op- posed by a principle of religion, to beget that friendship for the world which is enmity with God. The poor, on the other hand, excluded from the hope of worldly pleasure, were likely to listen with the more attention to the promise of a distant happiness; and, exposed to much actual suf- fering here, they would naturally be the most alarmed with the apprehension of continued and increased suffering in another world. For this third reason, the gospel, upon its first publication, was emphatically "glad-tidings to the poor."
From these three considerations, that the gospel, in the matter, in the manner of the discovery, and in its relation to the state of mankind at the time of its publication, was in fact, in a peculiar sense, " glad-tidings to the poor," the conclusion seems just and inevitable, that, in my text, and in other passages of a like purport, the prophets describe the poor, in the literal acceptation of the word, as especial objects of the divine mercy in the Christian dispensation. And this sense of such prophecies, v»diich so much claims the attention both of rich and poor, receives a farther con- firmation from our Lord's appeal to his open practice of preaching to the poor, as an evidence to his cotemporaries
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of his divine mission. " Go ye/' he said to the Baptist's messengers, " and show Johnf again those things which ye do hear and see : The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk ; the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up, and the pooi^ have the gospel preached to themr Here " the preaching of the gospel to the poor," is mentioned by our Lord among the circumstances of his ministry, which so evidently corresponded with the pro- phecies of the Messiah, as to render any more explicit answer to the Baptist's inquiries unnecessary. This, there- fore, must be a preaching of the gospel to the poor lite- rally ; for the preaching of it to the figurative poor, the poor in religious knowledge, to the heathen world, commenced not during our Lord's life on earth, and could not be alleged by him, at that time, among his own personal exhibitions of the prophetical characters of the Messiah of the Jews.
Assuredly, therefore, our Lord came " to preach glad- tidings to the poor." " To preach glad-tidings to the poor," was mentioned by the prophets as one of the especial objects of his coming. To preach to them, he clothed himself with flesh, and in his human nature received the unction of the Spirit. And since the example of our Lord is, in every par- ticular in which it is at all imitable, a rule to our conduct, it is clearly our duty, as the humble followers of our merciful Lord, to entertain a special regard for the religious inte- rests of the poor, and to take care, what we can, that the gospel be still preached to them. And the most effectual means of preaching the gospel to the poor, is by charitable provisions for the religious education of their children.
Blessed be God, institutions for this pious purpose abound in most parts of the kingdom. The authority of our Lord's example, of preaching to the poor, will, with every serious believer, outweigh the objection which hath been raised against these charitable institutions, by a mean and dastardly policy imbibed in foreign climes, not less unchris- tian than it is inconsistent with the genuine feelings of the home-bred Briton, — a policy which pretends to foresee,
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that by the advantages of a religious education, the poor may be raised above the laborious duties of his station, and his use in civil life be lost. Our Lord and his apostles better understood the interests of society, and were more tender of its security and peace, than many, perhaps, of our modern theorists. Our Lord and his apostles certainly never saw this danger, that the improvement of the poor in religious knowledge might be a means of confounding civil subordination. They were never apprehensive that the poor would be made the worse servants by an education which should teach them to serve their masters upon earth, from a principle of duty to the great Master of the whole family in heaven. These mean suggestions of a wicked po- licy are indeed contradicted by the experience of mankind. The extreme condition of oppression and debasement, the unnatural condition of slavery, produced, in ancient times, its poets, philosophers, and moralists. Imagine not that I would teach you to infer, that the condition of slavery is not adverse to the improvement of the human character. Its natural tendency is certainly to fetter the genius and debase the heart: but some brave spirits, of uncommon strength, have at diiferent times surmounted the disadvan- tages of that dismal situation. And the fact which I would offer to your attention is this, that these men, eminent in taste and literature, were not rendered by those accom- plishments the less profitable slaves. Where, then, is the danger, that the free-born poor of this country should be the worse hired servants, for a proficiency in a knowledge by which both master and servant are taught their respec- tive duties, by which alone either rich or poor may be made wise unto salvation?
Much serious consideration would indeed be due to the objection, were it the object, or the ordinary and probable eifect of these charitable seminaries for the maintenance and education of the infant poor, to qualify them for the occu- pations and pursuits of the higher ranks of society, or to give them a relish for their pleasures and amusements.
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But this is not the case. Nothing more is attempted, nor can more, indeed, be done, than to give them that instruc- tion in the doctrines and duties of religion, to which a claim of common right is in some sort constituted in a Christian comitry, by the mere capacity to profit by it; and to furnish them with those first rudiments of what may be called the trivial literatvire of their mother- tongue, with- out which they would scarce be qualified to be subjects even of the lowest class of the free government under which they are born, — a government in which the meanest citizen, the very mendicant at your doors, unless his life or his franchises have been forfeited by crime to public justice, hath his birth-rights, and is intrusted with a considerable share of the management of himself. It is the peculiarity, — and this peculiarity is the principal excellence of such governments, — that as the great have no property in the labour of the poor, other than what is acquired for a time by a mutual agreement, the poor man, on the other hand, hath no claim upon his superior for support and mainte- nance, except under some particular covenant, as an ap- prentice, a journeyman, a menial servant, or a labourer, which entitles him to the recompense of his stipulated service, and to nothing else. It follows, that, in such states, every man is to derive a support for himself and his fa- mily, from the voluntary exertions of his own industry, under the direction of his own genius, his own prudence, and his own conscience. Hence, in these free govern- ments, some considerable improvement of the understand- ing is necessary even for the lowest orders of the people ; and much strength of religious principle is requisite to govern the individual in those common concerns of his private life in which the laws leave the meanest subject, equally with his betters, master of himself Despotism, — sincere, unalloyed, rigid despotism, — is the only form of government which may with safety to itself neglect the education of its infant poor. Where it is the principle of government that the common people are to be ruled as
105 more animals, it might indeed be impolitic to suffer them to acquire the moral discernment and tlie spontaneity of man; but in free states, whether monarchical, or of what- ever form, the case is exactly the reverse. The schemes of Providence and Nature are too deeply laid to be over- thrown by man's impolicy. It is contrary to the order of Nature, it is repui^nant to the decrees of Providence, and therefore the thing shall never be, that civil liberty should long- maintain its ground among any people disqualified by ignorance and profligacy for the use and enjoyment of it. Hence the greatest danger threatens every free constitution, when, by a neglect of a due culture of the infant mind, barbarism and irreligion are suffered to overrun the lower orders. The barriers which civilized manners naturally oppose against the encroachments of power, on the one hand, and the exorbitance of licentiousness, on the other, will soon be borne down; and the government will dege- nerate either into an absolute, despotic monarchy, or, what a subsisting example proves to be by infinite degrees a heavier curse, the capricious domination of an unprincipled rabble. Thus would ignorance and irreligion, were they once to prevail generally in the lower ranks of society, ne- cessarily terminate in one or the other of these two dread- ful evils, — the dissolution of all government, or the en- slaving of the majority of mankind : while true religion, on the contrary, is the best support of every government ; which, being founded on just principles, proposes for its end the joint advancement of the virtue and the happiness of the people ; and by necessary consequence, co-operates with religion in the two great purposes of exalting the general character, and of bettering the general con- dition of man. Of every such government, Christianity, by consent and concurrence in a common end, is the natural friend and ally ; at the same time that, by its silent influence on the liearts of men, it affords the best security for the permanence of that degree of orderly, definite liberty, which is an essential principle in every such constitution. The
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Christian religion fosters and protects such liberty, not by supporting the absurd and pernicious doctrine of the natural equality of men, — not by asserting that sovereignty is originally in the multitude, and that kings are the servants of their people, — not by releasing the conscience of the subject from the obligations of loyalty, in every sup- posed case of the sovereign's misconduct, and maintaining what, in the new vocabulary of modern democracy, is named the sacred rig/it of insurrection, — not by all, or by any of these detestable maxims, Christianity supports that rational liberty which she approves and cherishes ; but by planting in the breast of the individual powerful principles of self- government, which render greater degrees of civil freedom consistent with the public safety.
The patrons, therefore, of these beneficent institutions in which the children of the poor are trained in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, have no reason to apprehend that true policy will disapprove the pious work which cha- rity hath suggested. Thousands of children of both sexes, annually rescued by means of these charitable seminaries, in various parts of the kingdom, from beggary, ignorance, and vice, are gained as useful citizens to the state, at the same time that they are preserved as sheep of Christ's fold. Fear not, therefore, to indulge the feelings of benevolence and charity which this day's spectacle awakens in your bosoms.
It is no weakness to sympathize in the real hardships of the inferior orders : it is no weakness to be touched with an anxiety for their welfare, — to feel a complacency and holy joy in the reflection, that, by the well-directed exer- tions of a godly charity, their interests, secular and eternal, are secured : it is no weakness to rejoice, that, withoutbreak- ing the order of society, religion can relieve the condition of poverty from the greatest of its evils, from ignorance and vice : it is no weakness to be liberal of your worldly trea- sures, in contribution to so good a purpose. The angels in heaven participate these holy feelings. Our Father, which
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is in heav^en, accepts and will reward the work, provided it be well, done, in the true spirit of faith and charity ; for of such as these — as these who stand before you, arrayed in the simplicity and innocence of childhood, in the humility of poverty, — of such as these, it was our Lord's express and solemn declaration, " of such is the kingdom of God 1"
SERMON X.
And they were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well ; he maketh both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak. — Mark vii. 37.
It is matter of much curiosity, and affording no small edification, if the speculation be properly pursued, to ob- serve the very different manner in which the various spec- tators of our Lord's miracles M^ere affected by what they saw, according to their different dispositions.
We read in St. Luke, that our Lord " was casting out a devil, and it was dumb ; and it came to pass, that when the devil was gone out, the dumb spake ;" and the popu- lace that were witnesses of the miracle " wondered." They wondered, and there was an end of their speculations upon the business. They made no farther inquiry, and their thousfhts led them to no farther conclusion than that the thing was very strange. These seem to have been people of that stupid sort, which abounds too much in all ranks of society, whose notice is attracted by things that come to pass, not according to the difficulty of accounting for them, • — a concern which never breaks their slumbers, — but ac- cording as they are more or less frequent. They are neither excited, by any scientific curiosity, to inquire after the esta- blished causes of the most common things, nor, by any pious regard to God's providential government of the world, to in- quire after him in the most uncommon. Day and night suc- ceed each other in constant vicissitude : the seasons hold
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tlieir unvaried course ; tlie sun makes liis annual journey through the same regions of the sky ; the moon runs the circle of her monthly changes, with a motion ever varying, yet sub- ject to one constant law and limit of its variations ; the tides of the ocean ebb and flow ; heavy waters are suspended at a great height in the thinner fluid of the air, — they are collected in clouds, which overspread the summer's sky, and descend in showers to refresh the verdure of the earth, — or they are driven by strong gales to the bleak regions of the north, whence the wintry winds return them to these milder climates, to fall lightly upon the tender blade in flakes of snow, and form a mantle to shelter the hope of the husbandman from the nipping frost. These things are hardly noticed by the sort of people who are now before us : they excite not even their wonder, though in themselves most wonderful ; much less do they awaken them to inquire by what mechanism of the universe, a system so complex in its motions and vicissitudes, and yet so regular and or- derly in its complications, is carried on. They say to them- selves, " These are the common occurrences of nature," and they are satisfied. These same sort of people, if they see a blind man restored to sight, or the deaf and dumb suddenly endued, without the use of physical means, with the faculties of hearing and of speech, wonder; that is, they say to themselves, " It is uncommon," — and they concern themselves no farther. These people discover God neither in the still voice of nature, nor in the sudden blaze of mi- racle. They seem hardly to come within that definition of man which was given by some of the ancient philosophers, — that he is an animal which contemplates the objects of its senses. They contemplate nothing. Two sentences, " It is very common," or " It is very strange," make at once the sum and the detail of their philosophy and of their belief, and are to them a solution of all difliculties. They wonder for a while; but they presently dismiss the subject of their wonder from their thoughts. Wonder, connected with a principle of rational curiosity, is the source of all
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knowledge and discovery, and it is a principle even of piety ; but w^onder, which ends in wonder, and is satisfied with wondering, is the quality of an idiot.
This stupidity, so common in all ranks of men, — for what I now describe is no peculiarity of those who are ordinarily called the vulgar and illiterate, — this stupidity is not na- tural to man : it is the eftect of an over-solicitude about the low concerns of the present world, which alienates the mind from objects most worthy its attention, and keeps its noble faculties employed on things of an inferior sort, drawing them aside from all inquiries, except what may be the speediest means to increase a man's v/ealth and advance his worldly interests.
When the stupidity arising from this attachment to the world is connected, as sometimes it is, with a principle of positive infidelity, or, which is much the same thing, with an entire negligence and practical forgetfulness of God, it makes the man a perfect savage. When this is not the case, when this stupid indifference to the causes of the or- dinary and extraordinary occurrences of the world, and some- thing of a general belief in God's providence, meet, as they often do, in the same character, it is a circumstance of great danger to the man s spiritual state, because it exposes him to be the easy prey of every impostor. The religion of such persons has always a great tendency toward super- stition ; for, as their uninquisitive temper keeps them in a total ignorance about secondary causes, they are apt to refer every thing which is out of what they call the common course of nature,— that is, which is out of the course of their own daily observation and experience, — to an immediate exertion of the power of God : and thus the common sleight- of-hand tricks of any vagabond conjurer maybe passed off upon such people for real miracles. Such persons as these were they who, when they saw a dumb demoniac endued with speech by our Lord, were content to wonder at it.
The Pharisees, however, a set of men improved in their understandino's, but wretchedly hardened in their hearts,
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were not without some jealousy even ot" tliis stupid won- derment. They knew that the natural effect of wonder, if it rested on the mind, would be inquiry after a cause ; and they dreaded the conclusions to v/hich inquiry in this case might lead. They would not, therefore, trust these peo- ple, as perhaps they might have done with perfect secu- rity, to their own stupidity ; but they sug-gested a prin- ciple to stop inquiry. They told the people, that our Lord cast out devils by the aid and assistance of Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. This extraordinary suggestion of the Pharisees will come under consideration in its proper place.
We read again, in St. Matthew, that our Lord, upon ano- ther occasion, restored a dumb demoniac to his speech ; and the multitude assembled upon this occasion marvelled, saying, "It was never so seen in Israel." These people came some small matter nearer to the ancient definition of man, than the wondering blockheads in St. Luke, who had been spectators of the former miracle. They not only won- dered, but they bestowed some thought upon the subject of their wonder; and in their reasonings upon it they went some little way. They recollected the miracles, recorded in their sacred books, of Moses, and some of the ancient prophets : they compared this performance of our Lord with those, and perhaps with things that they had seen done in their own times by professed exercisers ; and the comparison brought them to this conclusion, that " it was never so seen in Israel," — that our Lord's miracle sur- passed any thing that ever had been seen even in that people which was under the immediate and peculiar go- vernment of God, and among whom extraordinaiy inter- positions of power had, for that reason, been not unfrequent. They seem, however, to have stopped short at this conclu- sion. They proceeded not to the obvious consequence, that this worker of greater miracles was a greater perso- nage, and of higher authority than Moses and the prophets. The Pharisees, however, as might be expected, again took
Ill
alarm, and, to stifle inquiry, had recourse to their former solution of the wonder, that our Lord cast out devils by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils.
Upon a third occasion, as we read again in this same evangelist, St. Matthew, a person was brought to our Lord, " possessed with a devil, and blind and dumb." Our Lord healed him, " insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw." The populace, upon this occasion, were amazed. But they were not only amazed, — they said not only that it never was so seen in Israel, but they went much farther; they said, " Is not this the Son of David?" Of these people, we may assert that they were not far from the kingdom of God. They looked for the redemption of Israel by a son of David : they believed, therefore, in God s promises by his prophets; and they entertained a suspicion, though it appears not that they went farther, that this might probably be the expected son of David. The alarm of the Pharisees was increased, and they had recourse to their former suggestion.
The manner in which these people treated the miracles which were done under their eyes, comes now under con- sideration.
They were impressed with wonder, it seems, no less than the common people ; but their wonder was connected with the pretence at least of philosophical disquisition upon the phenomena which excited it. They admitted that the things done, in every one of these instances, were beyond the na- tural powers of man, and must be referred to the extraordi- nary agency of some superior being ; but they contended, that there was no necessity to recur to an immediate exer- t'on of God's own power, — that the power of the chief of the rebellious spirits was adequate to the effect.
This suggestion of the Pharisees proceeded upon an as- sumption, which, considered generally, and in the abstract, without an application to any specific case, cannot be de- nied : they supposed that beings superior to man, but still created beings, whose powers fell short of the Divine, might possess that degree of power over many parts of the universe which might be adequate to effects quite out of the com-
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mon course of nature ; und tliat, by a familiarity with some of these superior beings, a man might perform miracles. Some of the philosophizing divines of later times, who, under the mask of zeal for religion, have done it more dis- service than its open enemies, — some of these, anxious, as they would pretend, for the creditof our Lord's miracles, and for the general evidence of miracles, have gone the length of an absolute denial of these principles, and have ventured to assert, that nothing preternatural can happen in the world but by an immediate actof God\s own power. The assertion in itself is absurd, and in its consequences dan- gerous ; and nothing is to be found in reason or in Scripture for its support, — much for its confutation. Analogy is the only ground upon which reason, in this question, can proceed ; and analogy decides for the truth of the general principle of the Pharisees. Not, certainly, in their appli- cation of it to the specific case of our Lord's miracles, — but for the truth of their general principle, that subordinate beings may be the immediate agents in many preternatural eifects, analogy is clearly on their side. It is a matter of fact and daily experience, that mere man, in addition to the na- tural dominion of the mind of every individual over the body which he animates, has acquired an empire of no small extent over the matter of the external world. By optical machines, we can look into the celestial bodies with more accuracy and precision, than with the naked eye we can look from an eminence into a city at the distance of a few miles ; we can form a judgment of the materials of which they are composed; we can measure their distances; we can assign the quantity of matter they severally contain, — the density of the matter of which they are made ; we can estimate their mechanical powers : we know the weight of a given quantity of matter on the surface of the sun, as well as we know its weight upon the surface of the earth : we can break the compound light of day into the constituent parts of which it is composed. But this is not all : our ac- c[uired power goes to practical eftects. We press the elements into our service, and can direct the general principles of the
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mechanism of the universe to the pin-poses of man ; we can employ the buoyancy of the waters and the power of the winds to navigate vast unwieldy vessels to the remotest re- gions of the globe, for the purposes of commerce or of war; and we animate an iron pin, turning on a pivot, to direct the course of the mariner to his destined port; we can kindle a fire by the rays of the sun, collected in the focus of a burning-glass, and produce a heat which subdues that stubborn metal which defies the chemist's furnace ; we can avert the stroke of lightning from our buildings. These are obvious instances of man's acquired power over the natural elements, — a power which produces effects which might seem preternatural to those who have no knowledge of the means. And shall we say that beings superior to man may not have powers of a more considerable ex- tent, which they may exercise in a more summary way, — which produce effects far more wonderful, such as shall be truly miraculous with respect to our conceptions, who have no knowledge of their means ?
Then, for Scripture, it is very explicit in asserting the existence of an order of beings far superior to man; and it gives something more than obscure intimations, that the holy angels are employed upon extraordinary occasions in the affairs of men, and the management of this sublunary world.
But the Pharisees went farther: their argument sup- posed that even the apostate spirits have powers adequate to the production of preternatural effects. And, with re- spect to this general principle, there is nothing either in reason or Scripture to confute it.
Reason must recur again to analogy. And we find not that the powers which men exercise over the natural ele- ments, are at all proportioned to the different degrees of their moral goodness or their religious attainments. The stoic and the libertine, the sinner and the saint, are equally adroit in the application of the telescope and the quadrant, — in the use of the compass, — in the management of the sail,
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the rudder, and tlie oar, — and in the exercise of the electrical machine. Since, then, in our own order of being, the power of the individual over external bodies is not at all propor- tioned to his piety or his morals, but is exercised indiscrimi- nately, and in equal degrees, by the good and by the bad, we have no reason from analogy to suppose but that the like in ■ discrimination may obtain in higher orders, and that both the good and evil angels may exercise powers far transcending any we possess, the effects of which to us will seem preterna- tural : for there is nothing in this to disturb the established order of things, since these powers are, no less than our own, subject to the sovereign control of God, who makes tlie actions of evil angels, as of bad men, subservient to the ac- complishment of his own will, and will not suffer the effects of them finally to thwart his general schemes of mercy.
The Scriptures, again, confirm the principle. We read, in the book of Exodus, of an express trial of skill, if we may be allowed the expression, between Moses and the magicians of Egypt, in the exercise of miraculous powers, in which the magicians were completely foiled, — not because their feats were not miraculous, but because their power, as they were at last driven to confess, extended not to those things which Moses did. They performed some miracles; but Moses performed many more, and much greater. When the wands of the magicians were cast upon the ground, and became serpents, the fact, considered in itself, was as much a miracle as when Aaron's rod was cast upon the ground and became a serpent ; for it was as much a miracle that one dry stick should become a live serpent as another. When the magicians turned the water into blood, we must confess it was miraculous, or we must deny that it was a miracle when Aaron turned the water into blood. When the frogs left their marshy bed to croak in the chambers of the king, it was a miracle, whether the frogs came up at the call of Moses and Aaron, or of Jannes and Jambres. And the sacred history gives not the least inti- mation of any imposture in these performances of the magi-
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cians; it only exhibits the circumstances in which Moses's miracles exceeded those of the magicians; and marks the point where the power of the magicians, by their own con- fession, stopped, wlien Moses's went on, as it should seem, without limits. Now, whoever will allow that these things done by the magicians were miraculous, — that is, beyond the natural powers of man, — must allow that they were done by some familiarity of these magicians with the devil : for they were done in express defiance of God's power ; they were done to discredit his messenger, and to encourage the king of Egypt to disregard the message.
It was not, therefore, in the general principle, that mi- racles may be wrought by the aid of evil spirits, that the weakness lay of the objection made by the Pharisees to our Lord's miracles, as evidence of his mission. Our Lord himself called not this general principle in question, any more than the writers of the Old Testament call in question the reality of the miracles of the Egyptian magicians. But the folly of their objection lay in their application of it to the specific instance of our Lord's miracles, which, as he replied to them at the time, were works no less diametrically opposite to the devil's purposes, and the interests of his king- dom, than the feats of Pharaoh's magicians, or any other wonders that have at any time been exhibited by wicked men in compact with the devil, have been in opposition to God. Our Lord's miracles, in the immediate effects of the individual acts, were works of charity: they were works which, in the immediate effect of the individual acts, rescued the bodies of miserable men from that tyranny which, before the coming of our Lord, the devil had been per- mitted to exercise over them ; and the general end and inten- tion of them all, was the utter demolition of the devil's king- dom, and the establishment of the kingdom of God upon its ruins. And to suppose that the devil lent his own power for the furtherance of this work, was, as our Lord justly argued, to suppose that the devil was waging war upon himself.
There is, however, another principle upon which the truth 1 2
IIG
of our Lord's miracles, as evidence of his mission from tlie Father, may be argued, — a principle which applies to our Lord's miracles exclusively, and gives them a degree of credit beyond any miracles, except his ow^n, and those which after his ascension were performed by his disciples, in his name, in the primitive ages. To this principle we are led, by considering the manner in which the particular miracle to which my text relates atiected the spectators of it, who seem to have been persons of a very different complexion from any that have yet come before us.
"They were beyond measure astonished;"' — so we read in our English Bibles ; but the better rendering of the Greek words of the evangelist would be, " They were superabun- dantly astonished, saying. He hath done all things well; he maketh both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak."
They were superabundantly astonished; — not that their astonishment w^as out of proportion to the extraordinary nature of the thing they had seen, as if the thing was less extraordinary than they thought it; but their astonishment was justly carried to a height which no astonishment could exceed. This is that superabundant astonishment which the evangelist describes, not taxing it with extravagance. It was not the astonishment of ignorance: it was an astonish- ment upon principle and upon knowledge. It was not the astonishment of those who saw a thing done which they thought utterly unaccountable. They knew how to account for it: they knew that the finger of God himself was the efficient cause of what they saw ; and to that cause, they, without hesitation, yet not hastily and in surprise, but upon the most solid principles of belief, referred it. It vv'as not the astonishment of those who see a thing done which they thought would never come to pass: it was the astonishment of those who find a hope which they had entertained of something very extraordinary to be done, satisfied in a degree equal to, or beyond their utmost expectations : it was the astonishment of those who saw an extraordinary thing, which they expected to take place some time or other, but
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knew not exactly when, accomplished in their own times, and under their own inspection : it was that sort of astonish- ment which any of us, who firmly expect the second coming of our Lord, but knowing not the times and the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power, look not for it at any definite time, — it was that sort of astonishment which we should feel, if we saw the sign of the Son of man this moment displayed in the heavens: for, observe the remark of these people upon the miracle, " He hath done all things well ; he maketh both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak." To have done a thing well, is a sort of commendation which we bestow, not upon a man that performs some extraordinary feat, which we had no reason to expect from him, but upon a man who executes that which by his calling and profession it is his proper task to do, in the manner that we have a right to expect and demand of him who pretends and professes to be a master in that particular business. This is the praise which these people bestowed upon our Lord's performances. " He hath done all things well ;'' — he hath done every thing in the most perfect manner which we had a right to expect that he should do, who should come to us assuming the character of our Messiah.
The ancient prophecies had described all the circum- stances of our Saviour's birth, life, and death; and, with other circumstances, had distinctly specified the sort of miracles which he should perform. This is the circum- stance which, I say, is peculiar to our Lord's miracles, and puts the evidence of diem beyond all doubt, and supersedes the necessity of all disputation concerning the general evi- dence of miracles. Our Lord, and of all persons who have ever appeared in the world, pretending to work mira- cles, or really working miracles in proof of a divine mis- sion, our Lord alone, could appeal to a body of recorded prophecy, delivered many hundred years before he came into the world, and say, " Li these ancient oracles it is predicted that the Messiah, appearing among you at a
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time defined by certain signs and characters, shall be known by his performing — not miracles generally — but such and such specific miracles. At a time distinguished by those signs and characters, /come ; those specific works, I do; and /exhibit the character of the Messiah, deli- neated in those prophecies, in all its circumstances."
It is remarkable, that our Lord, in reply to the Pharisees, condescended not to resort to this summary and overbear- ing proof. But he answered their objection by an argu- ment, just indeed, and irresistibly conclusive, but of more refinement. This, I conceive, was in resentment of the insincerity of these uncandid adversaries. It is indispu- table, from many circumstances in the gospel history, that the Pharisees knew our Lord to be the Messiah ; and yet they were carried by motives of worldly interest to disown him, — just as Judas knew him to be the Messiah, and yet he was carried by motives of worldly interest to betray him. Thus, disowning the Messiah, whom they knew, they were deliberate apostates from their God ; and they were treated as they deserved, when our Lord rather exposed the futility of their own arguments against him, than vouchsafed to offer that sort of evidence, which, to any that were not obstinate in wilful error, must have been irresistible, and which had indeed to the godly multitude offered itself. But when John the Baptist sent his disci- ples to inquire of Jesus if he was the person who was to come, or whether they were to look for another (they were sent, you will observe, for their own conviction, not for John's satisfaction; for he at this time could have no doubt), our Lord was pleased to deal with them in a very different manner. He made them eye-witnesses of many of those miracles which were a literal completion of the prophecies, and bade them go back and tell John what they had heard and seen. " Go and tell your master that you have seen me restore the paralytic ; you have seen we cleanse the leper, cure the lame, the blind, the deaf, and the dumb ; you have seen wf liberate the possessed ; you
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have snen mc raise the dead; and you have heard )iic preach the gospel to the poor. He will connect these things with the prophecies that have gone before concern- ing me; he will tell you what conclusion you must draw, and set before you the danger which threatens those who are scandalized in me.*'
I must now turn from this general subject, nor farther pursue the interesting meditations which it might suggest, in order to apply the whole to the particular occasion which has brought me hither.
You will recollect, that the miracles which are specified in the prophecies as works that should characterize the Messiah when he should appear, were, in great part, the cure of diseases, by natural means the most difficult of cure, and the relief of natural imperfections and inabilities. In such works our Lord himself delighted; and the mira- culous powers, so long as they subsisted in the church, were exercised by the first disciples chiefly in acts of mercy of the same kind. Now that the miraculous powers are withdrawn, we act in conformity to the spirit of our holy religion, and to our Lord's own example, when we endeavour what we can to extend relief, by such natural means as are within our power, to the like instances of dis- tress. It was prophesied of our Lord, that when he should come to save those that were of a fearful heart, " the eyes of the blind should be opened, and the ears of the deaf should be unstopped; that the lame man should leap as the hart, and the tongue of the dumb should sing." All this, and much more, he verified. Of all natural imperfections, the want of speech and hearing seem the most deplorable, as they are those which most exclude the unhappy sufferer from society, — from all the enjoyments of the present world, and, it is to be feared, from a right apprehension of his interests in the next. The cure of the deaf and the dumb is particularly mentioned in the prophecies, among the works of mercy the most characteristic of man's great de- liverer: and accordingly, when he came, there was, I think,
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no one species of miracle which he so frequently performed, which may justify an attention even of preference in us to this calamity.
It is now some years since a method has been found out, and practised with considerable success, of teaching per- sons, deaf and dumb from the birth, to speak; but it was not till the institution of this Asylum,* in the year 1792, that the benefit of this discovery was extended in any de- gree to the poor,— the great attention, skill, and trouble, requisite in the practice, putting the expense of cure far beyond the reach of the indigent, and even of persons of a middling condition. The Directors of this charity, who are likely, from their opportunities, to have accurate information upon the subject, apprehend that the number of persons in this lamentable state is much greater than might be imagined.
In this Asylum, as many as the funds of the charity can support, are taught, with ^le assistance of the two senses of the sight and the touch, to speak, read, write, and cast accounts. The deafness seems the unconquerable part of the malady; for none deaf and dumb from the birth have ever been brought to hear. But the calamity of the want of the sense of hearing is much alleviated, — comparatively speaking, it is removed, by giving the use of letters and of speech, by which they are admitted to the pleasure of social conversation, — are made capable of receiving both amusement and instruction from books, — are qualified to be useful both to themselves and the community, — and, what is most of all, the treasures of that knowledge which maketh wise unto salvation are brought within their reach. The children admitted are kept under the tuition of the house five years, which is found to be the time requisite for their education. They are provided with lodging, board, and washing; and the only expense that falls upon the parent, or the parish, is in the article of clothing. The proficiency of those admitted at the first institution, in * Preached for the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, 1/96.
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November, 1792, exceeds the most sanguine expectations of their benefactors; and tlie progress of those who have been admitted at subsequent periods, is in full proportion to the time. The number at present exceeds not twenty. There are at this time at least fifty candidates for admission, the far greater part of whom, the slender finances of the society will not permit to be received.
I am persuaded that this simple statement of the object of the charity, the success with which the good providence of God has blessed its endeavours, within the narrow sphere of its abilities, and the deficient state of its funds, is all that it is necessary or even proper for me to say, to excite you to a liberal contribution for the support of this excellent insti- tution, and the furtherance and extension of its views. You profess yourselves the disciples of that Master, who, during his abode on earth in the form of a servant, went about doing good, — who did good in that particular species of distress in which this charity attempts to do it, — and who, seated now at the right hand of God, sends down his bless- ing upon those who follow his steps, and accepts the good that is done to the least of those whom he calls his brethren, as done unto himself.
SERMON XI.
A new commandment I give unto you. That ye love one another 3 as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. — John xiii. 34.
In that memorable night, when divine love and infernal malice had each their perfect work, — the night when Jesus was betrayed into the hands of those who thirsted for his blood, and the mysterious scheme of man's redemption was brought to its accomplishment, Jesus, having finished the paschal supper, and instituted those holy mysteries by which the thankful remembrance of his oblation of himself is continued in the church until his second coming, and the believer is nourished with the food of everlasting life, the body and blood of the crucified Redeemer ;— when all this
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was finished, and nothing now remained of his great and painful undertaking, but the last trying part of it, to be led like a sheep to the slaughter, and to make his life a sacrifice for sin, — in that trying hour, just before he retired to the garden, where the power of darkness was to be permitted to display on him its last and utmost effort, Jesus gave it so- lemnly in charge to the eleven apostles (the twelfth, the son of perdition, was already lost ; he was gone to hasten the execution of his intended treason),— -to the eleven, whose loyalty remained as yet unshaken, Jesus in that awful hour gave it solemnly in charge, " to love one another, as he had loved them." And because the perverse wit of man is ever fertile in plausible evasions of the plainest duties, — lest this command should be interpreted, in after ages, as an injunction in which the apostles only were concerned, im- posed upon them in their peculiar character of the governors of the church, our great Master, to obviate any such wilful misconstruction of his dying charge, declared it to be his pleasure and his meaning, that the exercise of mutual love, in all ages, and in all nations, among men of all ranks, callings, and conditions, should be the general badge and distinction of his disciples. " By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another." And this injunction of loving one another as he had loved them, he calls a new commandment : " A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another."
It was, indeed, in various senses, a new commandment. First, as the thing enjoined was too much a novelty in the practice of mankind. The age in which our Saviour lived on earth was an age of pleasure and dissipation. Sensual appetite, indulged to the most unwarrantable excess, had extinguished all the nobler feelings. This is ever its effect when it is suffered to get the ascendant; and it is for this reason that it is said by the apostle to war against the soul. The refinements of luxury, spread among all ranks of men, had multiplied their artificial wants beyond the proportion of the largest fortunes ; and thus bringing all men into the
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class of the necessitous, had universally induced that churlish habit of the mind in which every feeling is consi- dered as a weakness which terminates not in self ; and those generous sympathies by which every one is impelled to seek his neighbour's good, are industriously suppressed, as dis- turbers of the repose of the individual, and enemies to his personal enjoyment. This is the tendency, and hath ever been the effect of luxury, in every nation where it is unhap- pily taken root. It renders every man selfish upon princi- ple. The first symptom of this fatal corruption is the ex- tinction of genuine public spirit, — that is, of all real regard to the interests and good order of society ; in the place of which arises that base and odious counterfeit, which, assum- ing the name of patriotism, thinks to cover the infamy of every vice which can disgrace the private life of man, by clamours for the public good, of which the real object all the while is nothing more than the gratification of the am- bition and rapacity of the demagogue. The next stage of the corruption, is a perfect indifference and insensibility, in all ranks of men, to everything but the gratification of the moment. An idle peasantry subsist themselves by theft and violence ; and a voluptuous nobility squander, on base and criminal indulgences, that superfluity of store which should go to the defence of the country in times of public danger, or to the relief of private distress. In an age, therefore, of luxury, such as that was in which our Saviour lived on earth, genuine philanthropy being necessarily extinguished, what is far beyond ordinary philanthropy, the religious love of our neighbour, rarely, if ever, will be found.
Nor was it missing only in the manners of the world, — but in the lessons of the divines and moralists of that age, mutual love was a topic out of use. The Jews of those times were divided in their religious opinions between the two sects of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Sad- ducees were indeed the infidels of their age ; they denied the existence of any immaterial substance, — of consequence they held that the human soul is mortal ; and they denied
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the possibility of a resurrection. Their disciples were numerous among the great and voluptuous, but they never had any credit with the body of the people. The popular religion was that of the Pharisees ; and this, as all must know who read the New Testament, was a religion of form and show, — if that indeed may be called a religion, of which the love of God and man made no essential part. Judge whether they taught men to love one another, who taught uup-rateful children to evade the fifth command- ment, with an untroubled conscience, and to defraud an aged parent of that support, which, by the law of God and nature, was his due. In respect, therefore, of both these circumstances, that it prescribed what was neglected in the practice of mankind, and what was omitted in the sermons of their teachers, our Lord's injunction to his dis- ciples, to love one another, was a new commandment. But the novelty of it consisted more particularly in this, — that the disciples were required to love one another, after the manner, and, if the frailty of human nature might so far aspire, in the degree in which Christ loved them : " As I have loved you, that ye also love one another." Chris- tians are to adjust their love to one another to the measure and example of Christ's love to them. Christ's love was perfect as the principle from whence it flowed, the origi- nal benignity of the divine character. The example of this perfect love in the life of man was a new example ; and the injunction of conformity to this new example might well be called a new commandment. Otherwise, the commandment that men should love one another, consi- dered simply in itself, without reference to the deficiencies in the manners of the age, or to the perfection of Christ's example, had been no new precept of revealed religion. This is a point which seems to be generally mistaken. Men are apt, upon all occasions, to run into extremes ; and it has been too much the practice of preachers, in these later ages, in their zeal to commend what every one will indeed the more admire the more he understands it.
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to heighten tlie encomium ot'the Clivistian system, by de- preciating, not only the lessons of the heatlien moralists, but the moral part of the Mosaic institution. They con- sider not that the peculiar excellence of the Christian sys- tem lies much more in doctrine than in precept. Our Saviour, indeed, and his apostles after him, took all occa- sions of reproving the vices of mankind, and of inculcating a punctual discharge of the social duties ; and the mora- lity which they taught, was of the purest and the highest kind. The practice of the duties enjoined in their pre- cepts, is the end for which their doctrines were delivered. It is always, therefore, to be remembered, that the practice of these duties is a far more excellent thing in the life of man — far more ornamental of the Christian profession, than any knowledge of the doctrine without the practice, as the end is always more excellent than tlie means. Nay, the knowledge of the doctrines, without an attention to the practical part, is a thing of no other worth than as it may be expected some time or other to produce repentance. But this end of bringing men to right conduct — to habits of temperance and sobriety; to the mutual exercise of jus- tice and benevolence ; to honesty in their dealings, and truth in their words ; to a love of God, as the protector of the just ; to a rational fear of him, as the judge of human actions, — the establishment of this practical religion, is an end common to Christianity with all the earlier revelations — with the earliest revelations to the patriarchs — with the Mosaic institution, and with the preachings of the pro- phets ; and the peculiar excellency of Christianity cannot be placed in that which it hath in common with all true religions, but rather in the efficacy of the means which it employs to compass the common end of all, the conversion of the lost world to God. The efficacy of these means lies neither in the fulness nor the perspicuity of the precepts of the gospel, though they are sufficiently full and entirely perspicuous; but the great advantage of the Christian re- velation is, that, by the large discovery which it makes of
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the principles and plan of God's moral government of the world, it furnishes sufficient motives to the practice of those duties which its precepts, in harmony with the na- tural suggestions of conscience, and with former revela- tions, recommend. This is the true panegyric of the glo- rious revelation we enjoy, — that its doctrines are more immediately and clearly connected with its end, and more effectual for the attainment of it, than the precarious con- clusions of human philosophy, or the imperfect discoveries of earlier revelations, — that the motives by which its pre- cepts are enforced, are the most powerful that might with propriety be addressed to free and rational agents. It is commonly said, and sometimes strenuously insisted, as a circumstance in which the ethic of all religions falls short of the Christian, that the precept of universal benevolence, embracing all mankind, without distinction of party, sect, or nation, had never been heard of till it was inculcated by our Saviour. But this is a mistake. Were it not that experience and observation afford daily proof how easily a sound judgment is misled by the exuberance even of an honest zeal, we should be apt to say that this could be maintained by none who had ever read the Old Testa- ment. The obligation, indeed, upon Christians, to make the avowed enemies of Christianity the objects of their prayers and of their love, arises out of the peculiar nature of Christianity, considered as the work of reconciliation. Our Saviour, too, Avas the fiist who showed to what ex- tent the specific duty of mutual forgiveness is included in the general command of mutual love ; but the command itself, in its full extent, " That every man should love his neighbour as himself," we shall find, if we consult the Old Testament, to be just as old as any part of the re- ligion of the Jews. The two maxims to which our Sa- viour refers the whole of the law and the prophets, were maxims of the Mosaic law itself. Had it, indeed, been otherwise, our Saviour, when he alleged these maxims in answer to the lawyer's question, " Which is the chief
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commandment of the law?" would not have answered with that wonderful precision and discernment which, on so many occasions, put his adversaries to shame and silence.
Indeed, had these maxims not been found in the law of Moses, it would still have been true of them, that they contain every thing which can be required of man, as matter of general, indispensable duty ; insomuch, that no- thing can become an act of duty to God, or to our neighbour, otherwise than as it is capable of being re- ferred to the one or the other of these two general topics. They might be said, therefore, to be, in the nature of the thing, the supreme and chief of all commandments ; being those to which all others are naturally and necessarily subordinate, and in which all others are contained as parts in the whole. All this would have been true, though neitlier of these maxims had had a place in the law of Moses. But it would not have been a pertinent answer to the lawyer's question, nor would it have taken the effect which our Lord's answer actually took, with the subtle disputants with whom he was engaged, " that no man durst ask him any more questions." The lawyer's question was not, what thing might, in its own nature, be the best to be commanded. To this, indeed, it might have been wisely answered, that the love of God is the best of all things, and that the next best is the love of man; although Moses had not expressly mentioned either. But the question was, " Which is the great commandment in the law?" — that is, in Moses's law; for the expression, " the law," in the mouth of a Jew, could carry no other meaning. To this it had been vain to allege " the love of God or man," had there been no express requisition of them in the law, notwithstanding the confessed natural excellence of the things ; because the question was not about natural excellence, but what was to be reckoned the first in authority and importance among the written com- mandments. Those masters of sophistry, with whom our
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Saviour had been for some hours engaged, felt themselves overcome, w^hen he produced from the books of the law two maxims, which, forming a complete and simple sum- mary of the whole, — and not only of the whole of the Mosaic law, but of every law which God ever did or ever will prescribe to man, — evidently claimed to be the first and chief commandments. The first, enjoining the love of God, is to be found, in the very words in which our Saviour recited it, in the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, at the fifth verse. The second, enjoining the love of our neighbour, is to be found, in the very words in which our Saviour recited it, in the nineteenth chapter of Levi- ticus, at the eighteenth verse.
The injunction, therefore, of conformity to his own example, is that which is chiefly new in the command- ment of our Lord. As it is in this circumstance that the commandment is properly his, it is by nothing less than the conformity enjoined, or an assiduous endeavour after that conformity, that his commandment is fulfilled.
The perfection of Christ's example it is easier to under- stand than to imitate ; and yet it is not to be understood without serious and deep meditation on the particulars of his history. Pure and disinterested in its motives, the love of Christ had solely for its end the happiness of those who were the objects of it. An equal sharer with the Almighty Father in the happiness and glory of the Godhead, the Redeemer had no proper interest in the fate of fallen man. Lifinite in its comprehension, his love embraced his enemies ; intense in its energy, it incited him to assume a frail and mortal nature, — to undergo contempt and death ; constant in its operations, in the paroxysm of an agony, the sharpest the human mind was ever known to sustain, it maintained its vigour unimpaired. In the whole busi- ness of man's redemption, wonderful in all its parts, in its beginning, its progress, and completion, the most wonder- ful part of all is the character of Christ, — a character not exempt from those feelings of the soul and infirmities of
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the body vvhicli rciider man obnoxious to temptation, but in which the two principles of piety to God, and (good- will to man, maintained such an ascendancy over all the rest, that they might seem by themselves to make the whole. This character, in which piety and benevolence, upon all occasions, and in all circumstances, overpowered all the inferior passions, is more incomprehensible to the natural reason of the carnal man than the deepest mys- teries,— more improbable than the greatest miracles, — of all the particulars of the gospel history, the most trying to the evil heart of unbelief, — the very last thing, I am persuaded, that a ripened faith receives; but of all thino-s the most important and the most necessary to be well un- derstood and firmly believed, — the most efficacious for the softening of the sinner's heart, for quelling the pride of human wisdom, and for bringing every thought and ima- gination of the soul into subjection to the righteousness of God. "Let this mind," says the apostle, "be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus ;" — that mind which incited him, when he considered the holiness of God, and the guilt and corruption of fallen man, to say, "I come to do thy will, O God r' — that is, according to the same apostle's interpretation, to do that will by which we are sanctified, to make the satisfaction for the sinful race which divine justice demanded. Being in the form of God, he made himself of no reputation; he divested himself of that ex- ternal form of glory in which he had been accustomed to appear to the patriarchs in the first ages, in which he ap- peared to Moses in the bush, and to his chosen servants in later periods of the Jewish history, — that form of glory in which his presence was manifested between the cheru- bim in the Jewish sanctuary. He made himself of no reputation, and, uniting himself to the holy fruit of Mary's womb, he took upon him the form of a slave — of that fallen creature who had sold himself into the bondage of Satan, sin, and death ; and, being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, — he submitted to the condition
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of a man in its most humiliating circumstances, and car- ried his obedience unto death — the death even of the cross — the painful, ignominious death of a malefactor, by a public execution. He who shall one day judge the world, suffered himself to be produced as a criminal at Pilate's tribunal; he submitted to the sentence which the dastardly judge who pronounced it confessed to be unjust: the Lord of glory suffered himself to be made the jest of Herod and his captains : he who could have summoned twelve legions of angels to form a flaming guard around his person, or have called down fire from heaven on the guilty city of Jerusalem, on his false accusers, his unrighteous judge, the executioners, and the insulting rabble, — made no re- sistance when his body was fastened to the cross by the Roman soldiers, — endured the reproaches of the chief priests and rulers — the taunts and revilings of the Jewish populace ; and this not from any consternation arising from his bodily sufferings, which might be supposed for the moment to deprive him of the knowledge of himself. He possessed himself to the last. In the height of his agonies, with a magnanimity not less extraordinary than his patient endurance of pain and contumely, he accepted the homage, which, in that situation, was oiiiered to him as the king of Israel, and in the highest tone of confident authority, promised to conduct the penitent companion of his sufferings that very day to Paradise. What, then, was the motive which restrained the Lord of might and glory, that he put not forth his power for the deliverance of him- self and the destruction of his enemies? — Evidently that which he avows upon his coming first into the world; " I come to do thy will, O God f and, by doing of that will, to rescue man from wrath and punishment. Such is the example of resignation to God's will — of indifference to things temporal — of humility, and of love, we are called upon to imitate.
The sense of our inability to attain to the perfection of Christ's example, is a reason for much humility, and for
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much mutual forbearance, but. no excuse for the wilful neglect of his command. It may seem tliat it is of little consequence to inculcate virtues which can be but seldom practised ; and a general and active benevolence, embracing all mankind, and embracing persecution and death, may appear to come under this description : it may seem a virtue proportioned to the abilities of few, and inculcated on mankind in general to little purpose. But, though it may be given to few to make themselves conspicuous as benefactors of mankind, by such actions as are usually called great, because the effect of them on the welfare of various descriptions of the human race is immediate and notorious, the principle of religious philanthropy, influ- encing the whole conduct of a private man, in the lowest situations of life, is of much more universal benefit than is at first perceived. The terror of the laws may restrain men from flagrant crimes, but it is this principle alone that can make any man a useful member of society. This re- strains him, not only from those violent invasions of an- other's right which are punished by human laws, but it overrules the passions from which those enormities pro- ceed ; and the secret effects of it, were it but once uni- versal, would be more beneficial to human life than the most brilliant actions of those have ever been to whom blind superstition has erected statues and devoted altars. As this principle is that which makes a man the most use- ful to others, so it is that alone which makes the character of the individual amiable in itself, — amiable, not only in the judgment of man, but in the sight of God, and in the truth of things; for God himself is love, and the perfections of God are the standard of all perfection.
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SERMON XII.
Verily, I say unto you, there be some standing iierc, uliicli shall not taste of death till tliey see the Son of man coming in his kingdom. — Matt. xvi. 28.
These remarkable words stand in the conclusion of a certain discourse, with the subject of which, as they have been generally understood, they seem to be but little con- nected. It must therefore be ray business to establish what I take to be their true meaning, before I attempt to enlarge upon the momentous doctrine which I conceive to be contained in them.
The marks of horror and aversion with which our Lord's disciples received the first intimations of his sufferings, gave occasion to a seasonable lecture upon the necessity of self-denial, as the means appointed by Providence for the attainment of future happiness and glory. " If any one," says our Lord, " would come after me," — if any one pre- tends to be my disciple, " let him take up his cross and follow me." To enforce this precept, as prescribing a conduct, which, afflictive as it may seem for the present, is yet no other than it is every man's truest interest to pursue, he reminds his hearers of the infinite disproportion between time and eternity; — he assures them of the cer- tainty of a day of retribution ; and to that assurance he subjoins the declaration of the text, as a weiglity truth, in which they were deeply interested, — for so much the earnestness with which it seems to have been delivered speaks. " Verily, I say unto you," — these are words be- speaking a most serious attention, — " Verily, I say unto you, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom."
Here, then, is an assertion concerning some persons who were present at this discourse of our Lord's, that they
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" should not taste of death" before a certain lime; which time is described as that when " the Son of man should be seen coming- in bis kingdom."' Observe, it is not simply the time when the Son of man should come, but the time when he should come in his kingdom, and when he should be seen so comino-. In order to ascertain the meanino; of this assertion, the first point must be, to determine, if pos- sible, what may be the particular time which is thus de- scribed. From the resolution of this question, it will pro- bably appear in what sense, figurative or literal, it might be affirmed of any who were present at this discourse, that they should not taste of death before that time ; also, who they might be at whom the words " some standing here" may be supposed to have been pointed. And when we shall have discovered who they were of whom our Lord spake, and what it was he spake concerning them, it is likely w^e shall then discern for what purpose of general edification the particular destiny of those persons was thus publicly declared.
Many expositors, both ancient and modern, by " the coming of the Son of man," in this text, have understood the transfiguration. This notion probably takes its rise from the manner in which St. Peter mentions that memo- rable transaction, in the first chapter of his second catholic epistle ; v/here, speaking of himself as present upon that occasion in the holy mountain, he says that he was then an eye-witness of the majesty of our Lord Jesus Christ. Hence, perhaps, the hint was taken, that the transfiguration might be considered as the first manifestation of our Lord in glory to the sons of men, and that the apostles, who were per- mitted to be present, might be said to have seen the Son of man at that time coming in his kingdom ; and it must be confessed, that no violence is done to the phrase of " the coming of the Son of man," considered by itself, in this interpretation. But, if it be admitted, — if the time described as that when the Son of man should be seen coming in his kingdom, be understood to have been the
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time of the transfiguration, what will be the amount of the solemn asseveration in the text ? Nothing more than this, — that in the numerous assembly to which our Lord was speaking, composed perhaps of persons of all ages, there were some, — the expressions certainly intimate no great number, — but some few of this great multitude there were, who vvere not to die within a week ; for so much was the utmost interval of time between this discourse and the transfiguration. Our great Lord and Master was not ac- customed to amuse his followers with any such nugatory predictions.
The like argument sets aside another interpretation, in which our Lord's ascension and the mission of the Holy Ghost are considered as the " coming in his kingdom" intended in the text. Of what importance was it to tell a numerous assembly (for it was not to the disciples in par- ticular, but to the whole multitude, as we learn from St. Mark, that this discourse was addressed), — to what pur- pose, I say, covdd it be, to tell them that there were some among them who were destined to live half a year?
Both these interpretations have given way to a third, in which "the coming of our Lord in his kingdom" is supposed to denote the epoch of the destruction of Jeru- salem. This exposition is perhaps not so well warranted as hatli been generally imagined, by the usual import of the phrase of the " coming of the Son of man," in other passages of holy writ. There is no question but that the coming of our Lord, taken literally, signifies his coming in person to the general judgment; and, if the time per- mitted me to enter upon a minute examination of the se- veral texts wherein the phrase occurs, it might perhaps appear, that, except in the book of Revelations, the figu- rative sense is exceedingly rare in the Scriptures of the New Testament, if not altogether unexampled. Be that as it may, there is no question but that the coming of our Lord, taken literally, signifies his coming in person to the
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general judgment ; and the close connexion of the words of the text with what immediately precedes, in our Lord's discourse, makes it unreasonable, in my judgment, to look for any thing here but the literal meaning. In the verse next before the text, our Lord speaks of the coming of the Son of man in terms that necessarily limit the notion of his coming to that of his last coming to the general judg- ment. " For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father, with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works." And then he adds, " Verily, I say unto you, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom." First, it is said the Son of man shall come ; — it is immediately added, that some then pre- sent should see him coming. To what purpose is this second declaration, but as a repetition of the first, with the addition of a circumstance which might interest the audience in the event, and awaken their serious attention to it ? "I will come, and some of you shall see me coming." Can it be supposed, that in such an assevera- tion, the word to come may bear two different senses ; and that the coming, of which it was said that it should be seen, should not be visible? But what then? Did our Lord actually aver that any of those who upon this occa- sion were his hearers, should live to the day of the general judgment? It cannot be supposed: that were to ascribe to him a prediction which the event of things hath fal- sified. Mark his words : " There be some standing here, who shall not taste of death." He says not, "who shall not die,'' but " who shall not taste of death." Not to taste of death, is not to feel the pains of it — not to taste its bit- terness. In this sense was the same expression used by our Lord upon other occasions, as was, indeed, the more simple expression of not dying. " If a man keep my say- ing, he shall never taste of death.'' The expression is to be understood with reference to the intermediate state be- tween death and the final judgment, in which the souls,
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both of the righteous and the wicked, exist in a conscious state,' — the one comforted with the hope and prospect of their future glory, — the other mortified with the expecta- tion of torment. The promise to the saints, that they shall never taste of death, is without limitation of time; — in the text, a time being set, until which the persons intended shall not taste of eath, it is implied that then they shall taste it. The departure of the wicked into everlasting torment, is, in Scripture, called the second death. This is the death from which Christ came to save penitent sin- ners; and to this the impenitent remain obnoxious. The pangs and horrors of it will be such, that the evil of na- tural death, in comparison, may well be overlooked ; and it may be said of the wicked, that they shall have no real taste of death till they taste it m the burning lake, from whence the smoke of their torment shall ascend for ever and ever. This is what our Lord insinuates in the alarm- ing menace of the text ;— this, at least, is the most literal exposition that the words will bear; and it connects them more than any other with the scope and occasion of the whole discourse. "Whosoever," says our Lord, ''will lose his life, shall find it,"'^shall find, instead of the life he loses here, a better in the world to come; "and who- soever will save his life shall lose it,"— shall lose that life which alone is worth his care: "for what is a man pro- fited, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ; or what shall a man give in exchanoe for his soul?" For there will come a day of judgment and retribution; — the Son of man, — he who now converses with you in a human form, — shall " come in the glory of the Father, with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works." On them who, by patient continuance in well-doing, have sought for life and immortality — on them he shall bestow glory and happiness, honour and praise ; but shame and rebuke, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil. The purport of the discourse was to enforce a just contempt both of the enjoyments and
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of the sufferings of the present life, from the consideration of the better enjoyments and of the heavier snfferings of the life to come; and because the discourse was occa- sioned by a fear which the disciples had betrayed of the sufferings of this world, for which another fear might seem the best antagonist, — for this reason, the point chiefly insisted on, is the magnitude of the loss to them who should lose their souls. To give this consideration its full effect, the hearers are told that there were those among themselves who stood in this dangerous predica- ment. " There be some standing here, who shall not taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom;" and then will they be doomed to endless suf- ferings, in comparison with which the previous pangs of natural death are nothing. " Flatter not yourselves that these threatenings will never be executed, — that none will be so incorrigibly bad as to incur the extremity of these punishments : verily, I say unto you, there are present, in this very assembly, — there are persons standing here, who will be criminal in that degree, that they will inevitably feel the severity of vindictive justice, — persons who now perhaps hear these warnings with incredulity and con- tempt: but the time will come, when they will see the Son of man, whom they despised — whom they rejected — whom they persecuted, coming to execute vengeance on them who have not known God, nor obeyed the gospel; and then will they be doomed to endless sufferings, in comparison with which the previous pangs of natural death are nothing."
It will be proper, however, to consider, whether, among the hearers of this Discourse, there might be any at whom it may be probable that our Lord should point so express a denunciation of final destruction.
" There are some standing here." — The original words, according to the reading which our English translators seem to have followed, might be more exactly rendered — " There are certain persons standing here;" where the ex-
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pression certain persons hath just the same definite sense as a certain person, the force of the phiral number being only that it is a more reserved, and, for that reason, a more alarming, way of pointing at an individual. Now, in the assembly to which our Lord was speaking, a cer- tai?i person, it may well be supposed, was present, whom charity herself may hardly scruple to include among the miserable objects of God's final vengeance. The son of perdition, Judas the traitor, was standing there. Our Saviour's first prediction of his passion was that which gave occasion to this whole discourse. It may reason- ably be supposed, that the tragical conclusion of his life on earth was present to his mind, with all its horrid cir- cumstances ; and, among these, none was likely to make a more painful impression than the treason of his base dis- ciple. His mind possessed with these objects, when the scene of the general judgment comes in view, — the traitor standing in his sight, — his crime foreseen, — the sordid motives of it understood, — the forethought of the fallen apostle's punishment could not but present itself; and this drew from our divine instructor that alarming menace, which must have struck a chill of horror to the heart of every one that heard it, and the more because the par- ticular application of it was not at the time understood. This was the effect intended. Our Lord meant to impress his audience with a just and affecting sense of the magni- tude of those evils — the sharpness of those pains, which none but the ungodly shall ever feel, and from which none of the ungodly shall ever escape.
Nor in this passage only, but in every page of holy writ, are these terrors displayed, in expressions studiously adapted to lay hold of the imagination of mankind, and awaken the most thoughtless to such an habitual sense of danger as might be sufficient to overcome the most power- ful allurements of vice. '' The wicked are to go into outer darkness ; there is to be weeping and gnashing of teeth ; they are to depart into everlasting fire, prepared for the
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devil and his angels, where the worm dieth not, and the lire is not quenched; there they sliall drink of the wrath of God, poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation." Whatever there may be of figure in some of these expressions, as much as this they certainly import, ■ — that the future state of the wicked will be a state of ex- quisite torment, both of body and mind, — of torments, not only intense in degree, but incapable of intermission, cure, or end, — a condition of unmixed and perfect evil, not less deprived of future hope than of present enjoyment.
It is amazing, that a danger so strongly set forth should be disregarded ; and this is the more amazing, when we take a view of the particular casts and complexions of character among which this disregard is chiefly found. They may be reduced to three different classes, according to the three different passions by which they are severally ovei-come, — ambition, avarice, and sensuality. Personal consequence is the object of the first class ; wealth, of the second ; pleasure, of the third. Personal consequence is not to be acquired but by great undertakings, bold in the first conception, difficult in execution, extensive in conse- quence. Such undertakings demand great abilities. Ac- cordingly, we commonly find in the ambitious man a su- periority of parts, in some measure proportioned to the magnitude of his designs : it is his particular talent to weigh distant consequences, to provide against them, and to turn every thing, by a deep policy and forecast, to his own advantage. It might be expected, that this sagacity of understanding would restrain him from the desperate folly of sacrificing an unfading crown for that glory that must shortly pass away. Again, your avaricious money- getting m.an is generally a character of wonderful discre- tion. It might be expected that he would be exact to count his gains, and would be the last to barter posses- sions which he might hold for ever, for a wealth that shall be taken from him, and shall not profit him in the day of wrath. Then, for those servants of sin, the effeminate
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sons of sensual pleasure, these are a feeble, timid race. It might be expected that these, of all men, v»^ould want firmness to brave the danger. Yet so it is, — the ambitious pursues a conduct which must end in shame ; the miser, to be rich now, makes himself poor for ever ; and the ten- der, delicate voluptuary slirinks not at the thought of endless burnings !
These things could not be, but for one of these two reasons, — either that there is some lurking incredulity in men — an evil heart of unbelief , that admits not the gospel doctrine of punishment in its full extent ; or, that their imaginations set the danger at a prodigious distance.
The Scriptures are not more explicit in the threatenings of wrath upon the impenitent, than in general assertions of God's forbearance and mercy. These assertions are con- firmed by the voice of nature, which loudly proclaims the goodness as well as the powder of the universal Lord. Man is frail and imperfect in his original constitution. This, too, is the doctrine of the Scriptures ; and every man's experience unhappily confirms it. Human life, by the ap- pointment of Providence, is short. " He hath made our days as it were a span long." " Is it, then, to be sup- posed, that this good, this merciful, this long-sutTering God, should doom his frail, imperfect creature man to endless punishment, for the follies, — call them, if you please, the crimes, of a short life ? Is he injured by our crimes, that he should seek this vast revenge ; or does his nature delight in groans and lamentations ? It cannot be supposed. What revelation declares of the future con- dition of the wicked, is prophecy ; and prophecy, we know, deals in poetical and exaggerated expressions." Such, perhaps, is the language which the sinner holds within himself, when he is warned of the wrath to come ; and such language he is taught to hold, in the writings and the sermons of our modern sectaries. He is taught, that the punishment threatened is far more heavy than will be executed : he is told, theit the words which, in their literal
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meaning, denote endless duration, are, upon many occa- sions, in Scripture, as in common speech, used figuratively or abusively, to denote very long, but yet definite, periods of time. These notions are inculcated in the writings, not of infidels, but of men who, with all their errors, must be numbered among the friends and advocates of virtue and religion ; — but, while we willingly bear witness to their worth, we must not the less strenuously resist their dan- gerous innovations.
The question concerning tlie eternity of punishment (like some others, which, considered merely as questions of philosophy, may be of long and difficult discussion) might be brought to a speedy determination, if men, before they heat themselves with argument, would impartially consider how far reason, in her natural strength, may be competent to the inquiry. I do not mean to affirm gene- rally that reason is not a judge in matters of religion : but I do maintaiil, that there are certain points concerning the nature of the Deity, and the schemes of Providence, upon which reason is dumb and revelation is explicit; and that, in these points, there is no certain guide but the plain, obvious meaning of the written word. The question con- cerning the eternal duration of the tarments of the wicked is one of these. From any natural knowledge that we have of the Divine character, it never can be proved that the scheme of eternal punishment is unworthy of him.
It cannot be proved that this scheme is inconsistent with his natural perfections, — his essential goodness. What is essential goodness ? It is usually defined by a single pro- perty,— the love of virtue for its own sake. The definition is good, as far as it goes ; but is it complete ? Does it comprehend the whole of the thing intended ? Perhaps not. Virtue and vice are opposites : love and hate are opposites. A consistent character must bear opposite affections toward opposite things. To love virtue, there- fore, for its own sake, and to hate vice for its own sake, may equally belong to the character of essential goodness ;
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and thus, as virtue in itself, and for its own sake, must be the object of God's love and favour; so, incurable vice, in itself, and for its own sake, nun/ be the object of his hatred and persecution.
Again, it cannot be proved that the scheme of eternal punishment is inconsistent with the relative perfections of the Deity — with those attributes which are displayed in his dealings with the rational part of his creation : for who is he that shall determine in what proportions the attri- butes of justice and mercy, forbearance and severity, ought to be mixed up in the character of the Supreme Governor of the universe ?
Nor can it be proved that eternal punishment is incon- sistent with the schemes of God's moral government : for who can define the extent of that government? Who among the sons of men hath an exact understanding of its ends — a knowledge of its various parts, and of their mutual relations and dependencies ? Who is he that shall explain by what motives the righteous are to be preserved from falling from their future state of glory ? That they shall not fall, we have the comfortable assurance of God's word. But by what means is the security of their state to be effected ? Unquestionably by the influence of moral motives upon the minds of free and rational agents. But who is so enlightened as to foresee what particular motives may be the fittest for the purpose ? Who can say, These might be sufficient, — these are superfluous ? Is it impossible, that, among other motives, the sufferings of the wicked may have a salutary effect ? And shall God spare the wicked, if the preservation of the righteous should call for the perpetual example of their punishment ? — Since, then, no proof can be deduced, from any natural know- ledge that we have of God, that the scheme of eternal pu- nishment is unworthy of the Divine character, — since there is no proof that it is inconsistent either with the natural perfections of God, or with his relative attributes, — since it may be necessary to the ends of his government, — upon
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what grounds do we proceed, when we pretend to inter- pret, to qualify, and to extenuate the threatenings of holy writ ?
The original frailty of human nature, and the provi- dential shortness of human life, are alleged to no purpose in this argument. Eternal punishment is not denounced against the frail, but against the hardened and perverse ; and life is to be esteemed long or short, not from any pro- portion it may bear to eternity (which would be equally none at all, though it were protracted to ten thousand times its ordinary length), but according as the space of it may be more or less than may be just sufficient for the purposes of such a state as our present life is, of discipline and probation. There must be a certain length of time, the precise measure of which can be known to none but God, within which, the promises and the thrcatenings of the gospel, joined with the experience which every man's life affords of God s power and providence — of the insta- bility and vanity of all worldly enjoyments, — there must, in the nature of things, be a certain measure of time, within which, if at all, this state of experience, joined with future hopes and fears, must produce certain degrees of improvement in moral wisdom and in virtuous habit. If, in all that time, no effect is wrought, the impediment can only have arisen from incurable self-will and obstinacy. If the ordinary period of life be more than is precisely sufficient for this trial and cultivation of the character, those characters which shall show themselves incorrigibly bad, will have no claim upon the justice or the goodness of God, to abridge the time of their existence in misery, so that it may bear some certain proportion to the short period of their wicked lives. Qualities are not to be measured by duration : they bear no more relation to it than they do to space. The hatefulness of sin is seated in itself — in its own internal quality of evil : by that its ill-deservings are to be measured, — not by the narrowness of the limits,
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either of time or place, vvitliin which the good providence of God hath confined its power of doing mischief.
If, on any ground, it were safe to indulge a hope that the suffering of the wicived may have an end, it would be upon the principle adopted by the great Origen, and by other eminent examples of learning and piety which our own times have seen, — that the actual endurance of pu- nishment in the next life will produce effects to which the apprehension of it in this had been insufficient, and end, after a long course of ages, in the reformation of the worst characters. But, the principle that this effect is possible — that the heart may be reclaimed by force, is at best pre- carious ; and the only safe principle of human conduct is the belief, that unrepented sin will suffer endless punish- ment hereafter.
Perhaps, the distance at which imagination sets the prospect of future punishment, may have a more general influence in diminishing the effect of God's merciful warn- ings, than any sceptical doubts about the intensity or the duration of the sufferings of the wicked. The Spirit of God means to awaken us from this delusion, when he tells us, by the apostles and holy men of old, that the " coming of the Lord draweth nigh." He means, by these declara- tions, to remind every man that his particular doom is near : for, whatever may be the season appointed in the secret counsels of God, for " that great and terrible day, when the heavens and the earth shall flee from the face of him who shall be seated on the throne, and their place shall be no more found," — whatever may be the destined time of this public catastrophe, the end of the world, with respect to every individual, takes place at the conclusion oriiis own life. In the grave there will be no repentance ; no virtues can be acquired — no evil habits thrown off. With that character, whether of virtue or of vice, with which a man leaves the world, with that he must appear before the judgment-seat of Christ. In that moment, there-
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tore, in which his present life ends, every man's future con- dition becomes irreversibly determined. In this sense, to every one that standeth here, " the coming of the Lord draweth nigh, — the Judge is at the door ; let us watch, therefore, and pray," — watch over ourselves, and pray for the succours of God's grace, that we may be able to stand before the Son of man. Nor shall vigilance and prayer be ineffectual. On the incorrigible and perverse, — on those who mock at God's threatenings, and reject his promises, — on these only the severity of wrath will fall. But, for those who lay these warnings seriously to heart — who dread the pollution of the world, and flee from sin as from a serpent — who fear God's displeasure more than death, and seek his favour more than life, — though much of frailty will to the last adhere to them, yet these are the objects of the Father's mercy — of the Redeemer's love. For these he died, — for these he pleads, — these he sup- ports and strengthens with his Spirit, — these he shall lead with him triumphant to the mansions of glory, when Sin and Death shall be cast into the lake of fire.
SERMON XIII.
I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter ; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven : and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven ; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.* — Matt. xvi. 18, 19.
It is much to be lamented, that the sense of this im- portant text, in which our Lord for the first time makes explicit mention of his church, declaring, in brief but comprehensive terms, the ground-work of the institution, the high privileges of the community, and its glorious hope, — it is much to be lamented, that the sense of so
* Preached before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, February 20, 1795. L
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important a text should have been brought under doubt and obscurity, by a variety of forced and discordant expo- sitions, which prejudice and party-spirit have produced ; while writers in the Roman communion have endeavoured to find in this passage a foundation for the vain preten- sions of the Roman pontiff, ^md Protestants, on the other hand, have been more solicitous to give it a sense which might elude those consequences, than attentive to its true and interesting meaning. It will not be foreign to the purpose of our present meeting, if, without entering into a particular discussion of the various interpretations that have been offered, we take the text itself in hand, and try whether its true meaning may not still be fixed with cer- tainty, by the natural import of the words themselves, without any other comment than what the occasion upon which they were spoken, and certain occurrences in the first formation of the church, to which they prophetically allude, afford.
Among the divines of the reformed churches, especially the Calvinists, it hath been a favourite notion, that St. Peter himself had no particular interest in the promises which seem in this passage to be made to him. The words were addressed by our Lord to St. Peter, upon the occasion of his prompt confession of his faith in Jesus as the Christ, the son of the living God ; and this confession of St. Peter's was his answer to a question which our Lord had put to the apostles in general, " Whom say ye that I am?''— which question had arisen out of the answers they returned to an antecedent question, " Whom say men that I am?"
Now, with respect to this confession of St. Peter's, two of the most learned and acute among the commentators of antiquity, St. Chrysostom and St. Jerome, solicitous, as it should seem, for the general reputation of the apostles, as if they thought, that, at this early period, no one of them could without blame be behind another in the fulness and the fervour of his faith ; — from these, or from what motives
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it is not easy to divine, these two ancient commentators have taken upon them to assert that St. Peter, upon this occasion, was but the spokesman of the company, and replied to our Lord's question, " Whom say ye that I am ?" in the name of all.
Improving upon this hint, modern expositors of the Calvinistic school proceed to a conclusion which must stand or fall with the assumption upon which it is founded. They say, since St. Peter's confession of his faith was not his own particular confession, but the general confession of the apostles, made by his mouth, the blessing annexed must be equally common to them all, and was pronounced upon St. Peter, not individually, but as the representative of the twelve ; insomuch, that whatever the privileges may be which are described in my text as the custody of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and the authority to bind and loose on earth, with an effect that should be ratified in heaven, — whatever these privileges may be, St. Peter, according to these expositors, is no otherwise interested in them than as an equal sharer with the rest of the apostolic band.
But we may be allowed to demand of these apt disci- ples of St. Chrysostom and St. Jerome, what right they can make out for St. Peter to be the spokesman of the company, and, without any previous consultation with his brethren, to come forward with an answer, in the name of all, to a question of such moment. What right will they pretend for St. Peter to take so much upon him, — unless they will concede to him that personal precedence among the twelve, which, however it may be evinced by many circumstances in the sacred history, it is the express pur- pose of their exposition to refute ? St. Peter, it must be confessed, upon two other occasions, spoke in the name of all. But, that he so spake upon those occasions, is not left to be understood as a thing of course ; but it is evident, in the one instance, by the very words he used, — in the other, it is remarked by the sacred historian. In the pre- L 2
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sent case, have we any such evidence of the thing sup- posed ; any indication of it in the apostle's words ; any assertion of the historian ? — Quite the contrary. To our Lord's first question, "Whom say men that I am?" the answer, we are told indeed, was general. '' They said — '" says the sacred historian. The question was about a plain matter of fact, concerning which there could not be two opinions. To the second question, " Whom say ye that I am?" Simon Peter is mentioned as the person who alone replied,' — as if, upon this point, no one else was ready with an answer. " Simon Peter answered and said — " Why is the mode of narration changed ? Why is it not said again, "They said?" Why is the speaker, and the speaker only, named in the one case rather than in the other, if the answer given was equally in both a common answer? Whence is it that the two other evangelists who have re- corded this discourse, though far less minute in the detail of the particulars than St. Matthew, are both, however, careful to name St. Peter as the person who replied to the second question? And whence is it that not the most distant hint of any general concurrence of the apostles in St. Peter's sentiments is given by any one of these three writers ?
Again, let the manner of our Lord's reply to St. Peter be remarked. I would ask, in what way any one person of a numerous company can be more pointedly addressed, — in what way can a discourse be more expressly con- fined and limited to one, in exclusion of the rest, than by calling that one person by his proper name, adding to his proper name his patronymic, and subjoining to that dis- tinct compellation these express words, " I say unto thee?" But this was the manner of our Lord's reply to St. Peter's confession of his faith. " Blessed art thou, Simon Bar- Jonah ; and I say also unto thee — " Can it be supposed, that what was thus particularly said to Simon, son of Jonah, was equally said to another Simon, who was not the son of Jonah — to James, the son of Alpheus — to the
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sons of Zebedee, or any other persons present who were not named ? I ask, by what other mode of compellation our Lord could have more distinctly marked St. Peter as the individual object of discourse, had he intended so to mark him? I ask, by what mode of compellation was St. Peter marked as the individual object of oiu' Lord's dis- course upon another occasion, upon which no man in his senses ever doubted that St. Peter individually was ad- dressed? By the same mode of compellation which is used here;— he was spoken to by his name and by his patronymic — " Simon, son of Jonah, lovest thou me?' Clearly, therefore, Peter individually was upon this occa- sion blessed by our Lord; — clearly, therefore, the confes- sion which obtained the blessing was St. Peter's own.
It may perhaps be objected, that it is upon record in St. John's gospel, that, upon another occasion, the self- same confession, in the self-same terms, was made by St. Peter in the name of all. I answer, it was upon a sub- sequent occasion; when, it may well be supposed, the satisfaction which our Lord upon this occasion had ex- pressed in St. Peter's confession, had made a deep impres- sion upon the minds of the apostles, and had brought them to a general concurrence in St. Peter's sentiments. But it is particularly to be remarked, that St. Peter, upon this occasion, making a confession for himself, as I contend, obtains a blessing ; afterward, when the same confession was made by him in the name of all, no blessing follows it. The reason is obvious. The blessing due to the first confession was already St. Peter's: he had carried off the prize; and the rest of the apostles, more tardy, though not less sincere in the same faith, could have no share of what St. Peter had made his own.
But there is yet another argument that St. Peter, upon this occasion, spake singly for himself; the force of which, however it hath passed unnoticed, is nothing short of de- monstration. It is to be drawn from those words of our Lord, " I say unto thee, thou art Peter." Proper names,
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in the Hebrew language, were titles rather than names — words expressive of some peculiar adjunct of the persons by whom they were first borne. This was more particu- larly the case when a person's name was changed. The new name was always significant, and, for the most part, when given by divine authority, predictive of some pecu- liarity in the character, the life, the achievements, or the destiny, of the person on whom it was imposed. When Simon, son of Jonah, first became a follower of our Lord, our Lord gave him the name of Cephas, or the rock, which passed into the equivalent word of the Greek language, Petros. Our Lord, upon this occasion of his confession of his faith, says to him, " Thou art Peter." The like form of words, — though the similarity appears not in our English Bibles, — but the like form of words was used by the patriarch Jacob, as the exordium of the blessing which he pronounced upon the most distinguished of his sons : " Thou art Judah ; thy brethren shall praise thee ;" — that is. Thou hast been rightly named Judah ; the name pro- perly belongs to thee, because thou wilt be what the name imports, the object of thy brethren's praise. So, here, " Thou art Peter," — that is. Thou hast been properly so named ; for it now appears that thou hast about thee what the name imports. But how was it that this now ap- peared? Nothing had passed which could discover any peculiarity of St. Peter, unless it was the confession which he had made of his faith in Jesus. This confession, there- fore, was, by our Lord's own judgment, that which evinced the singular propriety of the name. But how should this confession evince the propriety of the name, if the merit of the confession was not at this time peculiar to St. Peter? If this confession contains the reason of the name, and yet was the common confession of all the apostles, made only by St. Peter's mouth, the inevitable consequence will be, that the name might have been imposed with equal propriety upon any one of the twelve, Judas Iscariot perhaps alone excepted;— which is in effect to say, that it was imposed
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upon Simon, ttie son of Jonah, by the Omniscient Discerner of the hearts of men, with no propriety at all.
Standing- upon this firm ground of argument, we may now venture to assume a confident tone, nor scruple to assert, that St. Peter upon this occasion answered only for himself, — that the blessing he obtained was for him- self singly, the reward of his being foremost in the faith which he confessed,* — that, to be the carrier of the keys of the kingdom of heaven — to loose and bind on earth, in any sense which the expressions may bear in this passage — were personal distinctions of the venerable primate of the apostolic college, appropriated to him in positive and absolute exclusion of all other persons, — in exclusion of the apostles, his cotemporaries, and of the bishops of Rome, his successors. We need not scruple to assert, that any interpretation of this passage, or of any part of it, founded upon a notion that St. Peter, upon this occasion, spake or was spoken to as the representative of the apostles, is groundless and erroneous.
Having laid this foundation, let us now endeavour to fix the sense, first of the promise to St. Peter, and, in the next place, of the promise to the church.
The promise to St. Peter consists of these two articles, — that the keys of the kingdom of heaven should be given to him, and that whatsoever he should bind or loose on earth should be bound or loosed in heaven.
The keys of the kingdom of heaven here promised to St. Peter, by the principles we have laid down for the ex- position of this text, must be something quite distinct from that with which it hath generally been confounded — the
* Some sort of general confession of our Lord as Son of God, had been made, by different persons, upon different occasions, before this of St. Peter's, — by Nathaniel, upon his very first acquaintance with our Lord, — by the apostles, and others perhaps with them^ in the boat, upon the lake of Gennesaret, after the storm. It is shown in the se- quel, that this last fell far short of St. Peter's ; and the same remark would apply to Nathaniel's. St. Peter was unquestionably foremost in the full, distinct confession now made.
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power of the remission and retention of sins, conferred by our Lord, after his resurrection, upon the apostles in ge- neral, and transmitted through them to the perpetual suc- session of the priesthood. This is the discretionary power lodged in the priesthood of dispensing the sacraments, and of granting to the penitent and refusing to the obdurate the benefit and comfort of absolution. The object of this power is the individual upon whom it is exercised, ac- cording to the particular circumstances of each man's case. It was exercised by the apostles in many striking instances : it is exercised now by every priest, when he administers or withholds the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper, or, upon just grounds, pronounces or refuses to pronounce upon an individual the sentence of absolution. St. Peter's custody of the keys was quite another thing. It was a temporary, not a perpetual authority: its object was not individuals, but the whole human race. The kingdom of heaven upon earth is the true church of God. It is now, therefore, the Christian church ; — formerly the Jewish church was that kingdom. The true church is represented in this text, as in many passages of holy writ, under the image of a walled city, to be entered only at the gates. Under the Mosaic economy these gates were shut, and particular persons only could obtain admittance, — Israelites by birth, or by legal incorporation. The locks of these gates were the rites of the Mosaic law, which obstructed the entrance of aliens. But, after our Lord's ascension, and the descent of the Holy Ghost, the keys of the city were given to St. Peter, by that vision which taught him, and authorised him to teach others, that all distinctions of one nation from another w^ere at an end. By virtue of this special commission, the great apostle ap- plied the key, pushed back the bolt of the lock, and threw the gates of the city open for the admission of the whole Gentile world, in the instance of Cornelius and his family. To this, and to this only, our Lord prophetically alludes when he promises to St. Peter the custody of the keys.
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With this, the second article of the promise, the autho- rity to loose and bind, is closely connected. This again being, by virtue of our rule of interpretation, peculiar to St. Peter, must be a distinct thing from the perpetual standing power of discipline, conveyed upon a later occa- sion to the church in general, in the same figurative terms. St. Peter was the first instrument of Providence in dis- solving the obligation of the Mosaic law in the ceremo- nial, and of binding it in the moral part. The rescript, indeed, for that purpose, was drawn by St. James, and confirmed by the authority of the apostles in general, un- der .the direction of the Holy Ghost; but the Holy Ghost moved the apostles to this great business by the sugges- tion and the persuasion of St. Peter, as we read in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. And this was his particular and personal commission to bind and loose.
I must not quit this part of my subject without observ- ing, that no authority over the rest of the apostles was given to St. Peter, by the promise made to him, in either or in both its branches ; nor was any right conveyed to him which could descend from him to his successors in any see. The promise was, indeed, simply a prediction that he v/ould be selected to be the first instrument in a great work of Providence, which was of such a nature as to be done once for all ; and, being done, it cannot be repeated. The great apostle fulfilled his commission in his life-time. He applied his key,^ — he turned back the lock, — he loosed and he bound. The gates of the king- dom of heaven are thrown open, — the ceremonial law is abrogated — the moral is confirmed ; and the successors of St. Peter, in the see of Rome, can give neither furtherance nor obstruction to the business.
So much for the promise to St. Peter. The promise to the church, which is next to be considered, consists like- wise of two articles, — that it should be built upon a rock ; and that, being so built, the gates of hell should not pre- vail against it.
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The first part of the promise, that the church should be built upon a rock, is contained in those words of our Lord to St. Peter, " I say unto thee, thou art Peter ; and upon this rock" (or, as the words might be better rendered, " up- on this self-same rock") " I will build my church ;" which may be thus paraphrased: "Thou hast now shown the propriety of the name which I gave thee, taken from a rock ; for thou hast about thee that which hath in it the likeness of a rock ; and upon this self-same rocky thing I will build my church/' We have already seen, that the reason of the name of Peter, given to Simon, lay in the confession which he now made. In that confession, there- fore, we must seek the rocky thing to which the name al- luded. Of all natural substances, a rock, though not perhaps the most dense, is certainly the most durable, the least liable to internal decay, and the least obnoxious to destruction or damage by any external force ; for which reason, the sacred writers often apply to rocky mountains the epithet of everlasting. Hence, a rock is the most apt image that the material world affords of pure, unadulte- rated truth, — in its nature, than adamant more firm — more permanent — more insurmountable. These things being put together, what shall we find in St. Peter's confession, which might be represented by a rock, but the truth of it? This, then, is the rock upon which our Lord promises to build his church, — the faith confessed by St, Peter, in a truth, firm, solid, and immutable.
This being the case, it will be necessary, for the fuller explication of the promise, to consider the extent and the particulars of this faith of St. Peter's.
It is remarkable, that the apostles in general, upon a certain occasion, confessing a faith in Jesus as the Son of God, obtained no blessing. I speak not now of that confession which, upon a subsequent occasion, was made by St. Peter, in the name of all ; but of a confession made before, by the apostles in a body, for any thing that ap- pears, without St. Peter's intervention. We read, in the
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fourteenth chapter of St. Matthew's gospel, that after the storm upon the lake of Gennesaret, which ceased upon our Lord's entering into the vessel, " They that were in the ship came and worshipped him, saying, Of a truth thou art the Son of God." No blessing follows. Simon Peter, some short time after, confesses, in terms which, to an inattentive reader, might seem but equivalent, and he is blessed. The conclusion is inevitable, that more was contained in this confession of St. Peter's than in the prior confession of the apostles in the ship,^ — more, therefore, than in a bare confession of Jesus as a Son of God.
What that more was, will easily be understood, if we take St. Peter's answer in connexion with our Lord's question, paying a critical attention to the terms of both. Our Lord puts his first question in these terms : "Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am ?" Then he says, " Whom say ye that I am ?" Simon Peter answers, " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Our Lord, in the terms of his question, asserts of himself that he is the Son of man : St. Peter's answer, therefore, connected with our Lord's question, amounts to this : " Thou, who sayest rightly of thyself that thou art the Son of man, art Christ, the Son of the living God." St. Peter, therefore, asserts these three things of Jesus : that he was Christ, — that he was the Son of man,^ — and that he was the Son of God. The Son of man, and the Son of God, are distinct titles of the Messiah. The title of the Son of man belongs to him as God the Son ; — the title of the Son of God belongs to him as man. The former characterises him as that one of the three persons of the ever-blessed Trinity which was made man ; — the other characterises him as that man which was united to the Godhead. St. Peter's confession, there- fore, amounts to a full acknowledgment of the great mys- tery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh, to destroy the works of the devil ; and the truth of this faith is the rock upon which Christ promises to build his church.
Upon the second article of the promise to the church,
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"that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it," the time compels me to be brief. Nor is there need I should be long. In the present state of sacred literature, it were an affront to this assembly to go about to prove that the expression of " the gates of hell" describes the invisible mansion of departed souls, with allusion to the sepulchres of the Jews and other eastern nations, under the image of a place secured by barricadoed gates, through which there is no escape, by natural means, to those who have once been compelled to enter. Promising that these gates shall not prevail against his church, our Lord promises not only perpetuity to the church, to the last moment of the world's existence, notwithstanding the successive mortality of all its members in all ages, but, what is much more, a final triumph over the power of the grave. Firmly as the gates of Hades may be barred, they shall have no power to confine his departed saints, when the last trump shall sound, and the voice of the archangel shall thunder through the deep.
I have now gone through the exposition of my text, as much at large as the time would allow, though more briefly than the greatness of the subject might deserve. To apply the whole to the more immediate concerns of this assembly, I shall conclude with two remarks :
The first is. That the church, to which our Lord pro- mises stability, and a final conquest over the power of the grave, is the building raised by himself, as the master- builder, — that is, by persons commissioned by him, acting under his directions, and assisted by his Spirit, upon the solid rock of the truth of St. Peter's faith. That faith was a faith in the mediatorial oflSces of Christ, in his divinity, and in the mystery of the incarnation. Whatever may be raised by man upon any other foundation, however it may assume the name of a church, is no part of Christ's build- ing, and hath no interest in these glorious promises. This deserves the serious attention of all who, in any manner, engage in the plantation of churches, and the propagation
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of the gospel. By those who have the appointment of itinerant missionaries for the conversion of the heathen, it should be particularly attended to, in the choice of per- sons for so great an undertaking; and it deserves the conscientious attention of every such missionary, in the prosecution of his work. Whatever may be the difficulty of giving a right apprehension of the mysteries of our reli- gion to savages, whose minds have never yet been raised to the contemplation of any higher object than the wants of the animal life, — the difficulty, great indeed, but not insuperable to him that worketh with us, must be encoun- tered, or the whole of the missionary's labour will be vain. His catechumens are not made Christians, till they are brought to the full confession of St. Peter's faith; nor hath he planted any church, where he hath not laid this foun- dation. For those who presume to build upon other foundations, their work will perish ; and it will be as by fire, if they themselves are saved.
The second remark I have to make is no less interesting to us. The promise of perpetual stability, in the text, is to the church catholic : it aftbrds no security to any particular church, if her faith or her works should not be found per- fect before God. The time shall never be, when a true church of God shall not be somewhere subsisting on the earth ; but any individual church, if she fall from her first love, may sink in ruins. Of this, history furnishes but too abundant proof, in the examples of churches, once illus- trious, planted by the apostles, watered with the blood of the first saints and martyrs, which are now no more. Where are now the seven churches of Asia, whose praise is in the Apocalypse ? Where shall we now find the succes- sors of those earliest archbishops, once stars in the Son of man's right hand ? Where are those boasted seals of Paul's apostleship, the churches of Corinth and Philippi ? Where are the churches of Jerusalem and Alexandria? — But is there need that we resort, for salutary warning, to the ex- amples of remote antiquity ? Alas ! where, at this moment,
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is the church of France ? — her altars demolished — her treasures spoiled — her holy things profaned — her perse- cuted clergy, and her plundered prelates, wanderers on the earth ! Let us take warning by a visitation that is come so near our doors. Let us not defraud ourselves of the benefit of the dreadful example, by the miserable subterfuge of a rash judgment upon our neighbours, and an invidious comparison of their deservings with our own. Let us not place a vain confidence in the purer worship, the better discipline, and the sounder faith, which, for two centuries and a half, we have enjoyed. These things are not our merit : they are God's gifts ; and the security we may de- rive from them will depend upon the use we make of them. Let us not abate — let us rather add to our zeal, for the propagation of the gospel in distant parts ; but let us not forget that we have duties nearer home. Let us of the ministry give heed to ourselves and to our flocks ; — let us give an anxious and diligent attention to their spiritual concerns. Let us all — but let the younger clergy, more especially, beware how they become secularized in the general cast and fashion of their lives. Let them not think it enough, to maintain a certain frigid decency of charac- ter, abstaining from the gross scandal of open riot and criminal dissipation, but giving no farther attention to their spiritual duties than may be consistent with the pursuits and pleasures of the world, and may not draw them from a fixed residence in populous cities, at a distance from their cures, or a wandering life in places of public resort and amusement, where they have no call, and where the grave, dignified character of a parish-priest is ill exchanged for that of a fashionable tritler. We know the charms of improved and elegant society. Its pleasures in themselves are innocent ; but they are dearly bought, at the expense of social and religious duty. If we have not firmness to resist the temptations they present, when the enjoyment is not to be obtained without deserting the work of the mi- nistry, in the places to which we are severally appointed,
159 because our lot may have chanced to fall in the retirement of a country town, or perhaps in the obscurity of a villacre, the time may come, sooner than we think, when it shall be said, Where is now the church of England ? Let us be- times take warning. " As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten," said our Lord to the church of Laodicea, whose worst crime it was, that she was "neither hot nor cold." " Be zealous, therefore, and repent. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches."
SERMON XIV.
For I have determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.* — 1 Cor. ii. 2.
Among various abuses in the Corinthian church, which this epistle, as appears from the matter of it, was intended to reform, a spirit of schism and dissension, to which an attempt to give a new turn to the doctrines of Christianity had given rise, was in itself the most criminal, and in its consequences the most pernicious. Who the authors of this evil were, is not mentioned, and it were idle to inquire. They were run after in their day, but their names have been long since forgotten ; nor is any thing remembered of them, but the mischief which they did. The general character of the men, and the complexion of their doc- trine, may easily be collected from this and the subsequent epistle. They were persons who, without authority from Heaven, had taken upon themselves to be preachers of the gospel. The motive from which they had engaged in a business for which they were neither qualified nor com- missioned, was not any genuine zeal for the propagation of the truth, or any charitable desire to reclaim the profli- gate, and to instruct the ignorant ; but the love of gain — of power and applause, — the desire, in short, of those
* Preached in the Cathedral Church of Gloucester, at a Public Ordi- nation of Priests and Deacons.
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advantages which ever attend popularity in the character of a teacher, A scrupulous adherence to the plain doc- trine of the gospel had been inconsistent with these views, since it could only have exposed them to persecution. Whatever, therefore, the Christian doctrine might contain offensive to the prejudice of Jew or Gentile, they endea- voured to clear away by figurative interpretations, by which they pretended to bring to light the hidden sense of mys- terious expressions, which the first preachers had not ex- plained. While they called themselves by the name of Christ, they required not that the Jew should recognise the Maker of the world, the Jehovah of his fathers, in the carpenter's reputed son; nor would they incm* the ridicule of the Grecian schools, by maintaining the necessity of an atonement for forsaken and repented sins, and by holding- high the efficacy of the Redeemer's sacrifice.
Such preaching was accompanied with no blessing. These pretended teachers could perform no miracles in confirmation of their doctrine : it was supported only by an affected subtlety of argument, and the studied orna- ments of eloquence. To these arts they trusted, to gain credit for their innovations with the multitude. Not that the Corinthian multitude, more than the multitude of any other place, were qualified to enter into abstruse questions — to apprehend the force, or to discern the fallacy of a long chain of argument — or to judge of the speaker's elo- quence ; but they had the art to persuade the people that they excelled in argument and rhetoric. They told the people, that their reasoning was such as must convince, and their oratory such as ought to charm : and the silly people believed them, when they bore witness to them- selves. St. Paul they vilified, as a man of mean abilities, who either had not himself the penetration to discern I know not what hidden meaning of the revelation of which he was the minister, or had not the talents of a teacher in a sufficient degree to carry his disciples any considera- ble length, and, through his inability, had left untouched
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those treasures of knowleda^e which they pretended to dis- close.
This sketch of the characters of the false teachers in the Corinthian church, and of the sort of doctrine which they taught, is the key to the apostle's meaning, in many pas- sages of this epistle, in which, as in the text, he may seem to speak with disparagement of wisdom, learning, and elo- quence, as qualifications of little significance in a preacher of the gospel, and as instruments unfit to be employed in the service of divine truth. In all these passages, a par- ticular reference is intended to the arrogant pretensions of the false teachers, — to their affected learning, and counter- feit wisdom. It was not that, in the apostle's judgment, there is any real opposition between the truths of revelation and the principles of reason ; — or that a man's proficiency in knowledge can be in itself an obstacle in the way of his conversion to the Christian faith; — or that an ignorant man can be qualified to be a teacher of the Christian re- ligion; which are the strange conclusions which ignorance and enthusiasm, in these later ages, have drawn from the apostle's words : but he justly reprobates the folly of that pretended wisdom, which, instead of taking the light of revelation for its guide, would interpret the doctrines of revelation by the previous discoveries of human reason ; and he censures the ignorance of that learning, which ima- gines that the nature of the self-existent Being, and the principles of his moral government of the world, are in such sort the objects of human knowledge, as, like the motions of the planets, or the properties of light, to be open to scientific investigation : and he means to express how little is the amount, and how light the authority of the utmost wisdom that may be acquired in the schools of human learning, in comparison of that illumination which was imparted to him by the immediate influence of the Divine Spirit, the fountain of truth and knowledge, on his mind.
That this is the true interpretation of what the apostle
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says, or liath been supposed to say, in disparagement of human learning, may appear from this consideration, — We have, in the twelfth chapter of this epistle, a distinct enumeration of the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, which were nine, it seems, in number. In a subsequent part of the same chapter, we have an enumeration of ecclesiasti- cal offices, — nine also in number. The nine gifts, and the nine offices, taken in the order in which they are men- tioned, seem to correspond ; the first gift belonging to the first office, the second to the second, and so on :* only, it is to be supposed, that as the authority of all inferior offices is included in the superior, so the higher and rarer gifts contained the lower and more common. At the head of the list of offices, as the first in authority, stand apostles and prophets ; by which last word are meant expounders of the Scriptures ; — for, that the exposition of Scripture was the proper office of those who were called prophets in the primitive church, is a thing so well understood, and so generally acknowledged, that any particular proof of it upon the present occasion may be spared. Corresponding to these two offices, at the head of the catalogue of gifts, stand "the word of wisdom,'' and "the word of know- ledge." The word of wisdom seems to have been a talent of arguing from the natural principles of reason, for the conviction and conversion of philosophical infidels. This was the proper gift of the apostles, who were to carry the glad-tidings of salvation to distant nations, among which the light of revelation had either never shone, or had at least for ages been extinguished. The word of knowledge was the talent of holding learned arguments from the an- cient prophecies, and other writings of the Old Testament, to silence the objections of Jewish adversaries, and to demonstrate the consistency of the gospel with former revelations. This was the proper gift of those who were appointed to expound the Scriptures in congregations of the faithful, once formed by the preaching of the apostles. * Vide Appendix.
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These persons, by the way, bore the name of prophets, because their office in the church stood in the same rela- tion to the office of the apostles, as that of the prophets under the law to the office of Moses. The Jewish pro- phets were only guardians and expounders of the law prescribed by Moses, and of the revelation which he pub- lished. The prophets in the primitive church were not the publishers of the gospel, but expounders of what the apostles had previously taught. The apostolic gift, the word of wisdom, consisted, it should seem, in an intuitive knowledge of philosophic truth, and an insight into the harmony of the faith which the apostles taught, with what are called the principles of natural religion. The prophetic gift, the word of knowledge, consisted in a prompt recollection of all parts of the sacred writings, and an insight into the harmony of the different revelations. It pleased God to commit the first preaching of the gospel to men whose former occupations and conditions may be supposed to have excluded them from the pursuits and the attainments of learning, and from the advantages of edu- cation, "that the excellency of the power might be of God — not of them." But it is evident, that these gifts, with which he was pleased to adorn the two first offices in the Christian church, were to those first preachers instead of education : for the qualities of a penetrating judgment in abstruse questions, and a ready recollection of written knowledge, which the first preachers enjoyed by the im- mediate influence of the Holy Spirit, are in kind the very same which men, to whom this supernatural assistance is denied, may, with God's blessing, acquire in a less degree, by long and diligent study. These talents existed un- questionably in the minds of the first inspired preachers, in a degree in which, by the mere industry of study, they cannot be attained. The apostles were, by infinite degrees, the best informed of all philosophers ; and the prophets of the primitive church were the soundest of all divines : but yet the light of inspiration and the light of learning, M 2
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however ditlerent in degree, as the difterence indeed is inexpressible, are nevertheless the same in kind ; for rea- son is reason, and knowledge is knowledge, in w^iatever manner they may be produced, — the degree of more and less being the only difference of which the things are ca- pable. As the word of wisdom, therefore, and the word of knowledge, were to the first preachers instead of learn- ing, so in these later ages, when the Spirit no longer im- parts his extraordinary gifts, leartiing is instead of them.
The importance and the necessity of it, to a Christian preacher, evidently appears from God's miraculous inter- position, in the first ages, to infuse learning into the minds of those who by education were unlearned ; for, if the at- tainments of learning were of no importance to the true and effectual preaching of the gospel, to what purpose did that God who commanded the light to spring out of dark- ness, by an exertion of the same almighty power, light up the lamp of knowledge in the minds of uneducated men? The reason of this extraordinary interposition, in the early ages, was, that, for the first promulgation of the gospel, no abilities to be acquired by education were sufficient for the teacher's office : and the reason that this extraordinary interposition hath long since ceased, is, that Christianity having once taken root in the world, those inferior abilities, which may be attained by a diligent improvement of our natural talents, are now sufficient for its support. But in all ages, if the objections of infidels are to be confuted ; if the scruples of believers themselves are to be satisfied ; if Moses and the prophets are to be brought to bear witness to Jesus of Nazareth ; if the calumnies of the blaspheming Jews are to be repelled, and their misinterpretations of their own books confuted ; if we are to be " ready," that is, if we are to be qualified and prepared " to give an an- swer to every man that asketh us a reason of the hope that is in us ;" — a penetration in abstruse questions ; a quick- ness in philosophical discussion ; a critical knowledge of the ancient languages ; a familiar acquaintance with the
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Jewish history, and with all parts of the sacred writings ; a sound judgment, a faithful memory, and a prompt elo- cution,— are talents without which the work of an evano-e- list will be but ill performed. When they are not infused by inspiration, they must be acquired by diligence in study, and fervency in prayer. And if any in the present age imagine, that, wanting the advantages of education, they may be qualified for preachers of the gospel, they are to be considered as enthusiasts, unless, like the apostles, they can appeal to a confirmation of their word by " signs and wonders following." Inspiration is the only means by which they may be qualified for the business in which they presume to meddle ; and of a real inspiration, the power of miracles is the proper sign and inseparable concomitant.
It is the usual plea of these deluded men, when they would assert their sufficiency, while they confess their ignorance, that, however deficient they may be in other knowledge, they know Christ. i\.nd God forbid, that, in a country professing Christ's religion, Christ should not be known by every one, in the degree necessary to his own salvation, — that any one should not so know Christ, as to have a right apprehension of the necessary articles of the Christian faith; right notions of his duty to God, and to his neighbour ; a steadfast faith in God's promises through Christ; such views, in short, of the Christian doctrine, as may give it its full effect upon his heart and practice. This knowledge of Christ, the most illiterate hath, or ought to have, in a Christian country ; and he who hath it not is culpable in his ignorance. But this knowledge, without which no one's condition is secure, is not that which may authorize the private Christian to assume the office of a public teacher.
It may indeed be made a question, whether any degree of knowledge may justify the officious interference of an individual, of his own pure motion, in a business of such
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serious concern to the community ; tor, if it be allowed ill any society, that mere ability constitutes a right to act in any particular capacity, the consequence will be, that every man will be justified in the usurpation of any office in the state, by his own opinion of his own sufficiency. The extravagance and the danger of this principle, applied in the civil departments, would be readily perceived. A man who, from a conceit of his own abilities, should take upon him to play the magistrate, the general, or the privy counsellor, without a commission regularly obtained from the source of civil power, would soon be shut up in some proper place, where he might act his fooleries in secret, without harm to his neighbour, or public discredit to him- self. The reason that the extravagance and danger of the same principle is not equally perceived, when it is applied in the ecclesiastical polity, and that disturbers of the eccle- siastical constitution are suffered to go loose, while other madmen are confined, is only this, — that the interests of the church are not so seriously considered as those of the state, because its oood o-overnment and its disorders come not so immediately home to the particular interests of each mem- ber of the community.
I mean not, however, at present to enter into the ques- tion, what more than mere sufficiency may be requisite to give a man authority to set up as a public teacher of what he really knows ; or how far the rights of a commission actually existing may be infringed by the laic's invasion of the preacher's chair. When it is considered, that not fewer than nine different ecclesiastical offices, distinguished by their different gifts, appear to have been subsisting at Corinth when this epistle was written ; and that, by the consent of the most learned in ecclesiastical chronology, this epistle was written so early as the 57th year of our Lord ; it should seem that the formation of a church — the constitution of an hierarchy, composed of difterent orders, which orders were appointed to distinct duties, and in-
167 vested with distinct rights, — was a thing of so great anti- quity, as may leave no doubt remaining with any reason- able man of the divine authority of the institution.
But what I at present insist upon is this, — that that knowledge of Christ, by which a man may be qualified to bear the office of a teacher, cannot be separated from other branches of knowledge, to which uneducated men can in these days make no pretensions. I contend that it never was separated : for the word of wisdom, and the word of knowledge, in the apostles and primitive prophets, con- sisted not in a knowledge of revelation only, but, as their writings testify, in a general comprehension of all that other men acquire in a less degree by education, — in those branches at least of human knowledge which are con- nected with theology and morals.
They were, perhaps, not knowing in the details of na- tural philosophy: for the argument for the being and the providence of God, from the visible order and harmony of the universe, is the same, by whatever laws its motions may be carried on. They were not physicians or ana- tomists; because they had the power of curing diseases and healing wounds without medicine or art. But they were profound metaphysicians — the best of moralists — well-informed historians — accurate logicians — and excel- lent in that strain of eloquence which is calculated for the conveyance of instruction, the enforcement of duty, the dissuasion of vice, the conviction of error, and the defence of truth. And whoever pretends to teach without any of these qualifications, hath no countenance from the example of the apostles, who possessed them all in an eminent degree, not from education, but from a higher source.
►St. Paul, indeed, says of himself, that when he first preached the gospel to the Corinthians, "he came not unto them with excellency of speech, or of wisdom ;" — that is, he came not, like the false teachers, making an ostentatious display of studied eloquence, nor boasting liis proficiency in philosophy : he required not that the Co-
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rinthians should receive the testimony of God, which he delivered to them as the testimony of God, because he who delivered it was a knowing man, or an accomplished orator : he rested not the evidence of his doctrine upon mere argument, nor did he think to persuade by mere eloquence ; for argument alone, although it might indeed evince the consistency and reasonableness of the doctrine, could never amount to a proof of its heavenly origin ; and the apostle had means of persuasion more powerful than eloquence, which, by the way, no modern teacher hath : his knowledge and eloquence, however necessary, were still in him but secondary qualifications ; and so little was he ambitious of the fame of learning, that he determined not " to know any thing among them, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified."
But consider what this knowledge of the apostle really contained. " To know Jesus Christ, and him crucified," was to know, — not simply to believe, but to know in such a manner as to be able to teach others, that Jesus of Na- zareth was the Messiah announced by the prophets from the beginning of the world, and to understand that the sufferings of the Messiah were the means appointed by God for man's deliverance from sin and damnation. This knowledge, therefore, of Jesus Christ, and him crucified, to which St. Paul laid claim, contained an accurate know- ledge of the ancient prophecies — a clear apprehension of their necessary reference to the Messiah — a discernment of their exact completion in the person of Jesus — and an insight into that great mystery of godliness, the expiation of the actual sins of men, and the cleansing of man's sinful nature, by the shedding of the blood of Christ.
And who is sufficient for these things ? That no study can attain this knowledge of Christ, in the degree in which the apostles possessed it, he who confesses not, hath studied Christ to little purpose. But he who ima- gines that Christ may thus be known by men uninformed both by inspiration and education, or imagines that, when
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inspiration is wanting, education- may contribute nothing at all in aid of the deficiency, — that is, to make my meaning very plain, he who imagines that, of uninspired men, the learned and the unlearned are equally qualified to be teachers of the word of God, — he who builds this extrava- gant opinion upon the terms in which the apostle speaks of the knowledge of Christ, as the only knowledge to which he himself made pretensions, only proves, that more learn- ing is necessary than he is aware of to the right appre- hension of this sinole text.
o
Inferences naturally flow from the doctrine which hath been asserted, of high concern to every one in this as- sembly. We, who, with however weak ability, fill the high station of the prophets in the primitive church, — you, who are this day to be admitted to a share in that sacred office, — are admonished of the diligence with which we must devote ourselves to study, and of the assiduity which we must use in prayer, to acquit ourselves of the duties of our calling. The laity are admonished of the folly and the danger of deserting the ministry of those who have been rightly separated to that holy ser- vice, in the vain hope of edifying under their instruction, who cannot be absolved of the crime of schism upon any better plea than that of ignorance. To allege the apostles as instances of illiterate preachers, is of all fallacies the grossest. Originally, perhaps, they were men of little learning — fishermen — tent-makers — excisemen : but when they began to preach, they no longer were illiterate ; they were rendered learned in an instant, without previous study of their own, by miracle. The gifts, which we find placed by an apostle himself at the head of their quali- fications, were evidently analogous to the advantages of education. Whatever their previous character had been, the apostles, when they became preachers, became learned. They were of all preachers the most learned. It is, there- fore, by proficiency in learning, accompanied with an un- reserved submission of the understanding to the revealed
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word, — but it is by learning, not by the want or the neglect of it, that any modern teacher may attain to some distant resemblance of those inspired messengers of God.
APPENDIX TO SERMON XIV.
I Cor. xii. 8—10.
The word of ivisdom, — the talent of arguing, from the natural principles of reason, for the conversion of philo- sophical infidels. The ivord of knowledge, — the talent of holding learned arguments from the ancient prophecies, and the writings of the Old Testament, for the conversion of Jewish infidels, Faith, — a depth and accuracy of un- derstanding, in the general scheme of the Christian reve- lation, for the improvement and edification of believers. The gifts of healing, and the ivor^king of 7niracles,—iov the purpose of making new converts, and displaying the extent of the power of Christ. Prophecy, or the talent of fore- seeing future events, — for the purpose af providing against the calamities, whether worldly or spiritual, that miglit threaten particular churches, — such as famines, pestilence, wars, persecutions, heresies. Discerning of spirits, — for the better government of the church ; and the gift of tongues, and the interpretation of tongues, which seem to have been very generally dispersed, ^ — that every Christian might be qualified to argue with the learned Jews in the synagogues, from the original Scriptures, especially M'hen the Jew thought proper to appeal from the Greek of the Septuagint to the Hebrew text.
In these very remarkable passages, the apostle reckons up nine distinct gifts of the Holy Spirit, all of the extra- ordinary kind. In the twenty-eighth verse, he enumerates just as many ecclesiastical offices. The gifts and the of- fices, taken in the order in which they are mentioned, seem to correspond.
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GIFTS. OFFICKS.
J . The word of wisdom Apostles.
, , , , , -) Prophets, that is, exi)ouiKler3 of the
2. The word of knowledge. . > c • ^ r 4.1 /-ki i rp . ^
° J Scriptures of the Old Icstament.
3. Faith Teachers of Christianity.
4. Miracles Workers of miracles.
5. Healing Healers.
, „ , . ... -) Helps — AvTiXri-^in;, such as Mark, Ty-
0. Prophecies, or predictions > , ■ r^ ■ d
^ * J chicus, (Jnesimus, &c.
7. Discerning of spirits Governments — Ku*£^mo-EK.
8. Tongues 1 ^.^ , . ,
n r . . .- r . > Gifted with tongues in various ways.
9. Interpretation of tongues J ° ^
The fourth and fifth gifts, miracles and healing, seem to have changed places in the ninth and tenth verses. Mi- racles, I think, must take place as the gc/nis, and healing must rank below it, as the species. Accordingly, in the twenty-eighth verse, miracles, or powers, are mentioned before healings. With this slight alteration, the list of gifts in the eighth, ninth, and tenth verses, seems to an- swer exactly to the list of offices in the twenty-eighth : only, it is to be supposed, that as all inferior offices are included in the superior, so all the higher and rarer gifts contain the lower and more common.
Dr. Lightfoot, if I mistake not, hath remarked this pa- rallelism of gifts and offices, in his HorcE Hebraicce.
SERMON XV.
Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time — (or, as it is in the margin, came not at any time) — by the will of man 5 but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. — 2 Peter i. 20, 21.
In the verse which immediately precedes my text, the apostle mentions a "sure word of prophecy," which he earnestly commends to the attention of the faithful. This word of prophecy, I conceive, is to be understood, not of
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that particular word of tlie Psalmist,* nor of that other of Isaiah, t to which the voice uttered from heaven at the baptism, and repeated from the shechinah at the transfigu- ration, hath by many been supposed to allude; — not of either of these, nor of any other particular prediction, is St. Peter's prophetic word, in my judgment, to be under- stood ; but of the entire volume of the prophetic writings — of the whole body of the prophecies which were extant in the Christian church at the time when the apostle wrote this second epistle. You are all, I doubt not, too well ac- quainted with your Bibles, to be told by me, that this epistle was written at no long interval of time before the blessed apostles martyrdom. He tells you so himself, in the fourteenth verse of this first chapter. The near pros- pect of putting ofi^his mortal tabernacle, was the occasion of his composing this epistle, which is to be considered as his dying charge to the church of God. Now, the mar- tyrdom of St. Peter took place in Nero's persecution, when his fellow-labourer St. Paul had been already taken off. St. Paul, therefore, we may reasonably suppose, was dead before St. Peter wrote this epistle, which, by necessary consequence, must have been of later date than any of St. Paul's. Again, three of the four gospels, St. Matthew's, St. Mark's, and St. Luke's, were all published some years before St. Peter's death ; for St. Luke's, which is beyond all controversy the latest of the three, was written about the time when St. Paul was released from his first imprisonment at Rome. It appears from these circum- stances, that our Saviour's prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem and his last advent, which is recited in the gos- pels of the three first Evangelists, and St. Paul's predic- tions of antichrist, the dreadful corruptions of the latter times, and the final restoration of the Jewish people, de- livered in various parts of his epistles, must have been current among Christians at the time when this Second Epistle of St. Peter was composed. These prophecies,
* Psalm ii. 7. t Isa. xiii. 1.
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therefore, of the Christian church, together with the pro- phetic writings of the Old Testament, the books of the Jewish prophets, the book of Psalms, and the more ancient oracles preserved in the books of Moses, make up that system of prophecy which is called by the apostle " the prophetic word,'' to which, as it were, with his last breath, he gives it in charge to the true believer to give heed. If I seem to exclude the book of the Apocalypse from that body of prophecy which I suppose the apostle's injunction to regard, it is not that I entertain the least doubt about the authenticity or authority of that book, or that I esteem it less deserving of attention than the rest of the prophetic writings; but for this reason, that, not being written till many years after St. Peter's death, it cannot be understood to make a part of the writings to which he alludes. How- ever, since the sentiments delivered by St. Peter are to be understood to be the mind of the Holy Spirit which inspired him, — since the injunction is general, prescribing what is the duty of Christians in all ages, no less than of those who were the cotemporaries of the apostle, — since the Apocalypse, though not then written, was nevertheless an object of the Spirit's prescience, as a book which, in no distant time, was to become a part of the oracular code, we will, if you please, amend our exposition of the apos- tle's phrase : we will include the Apocalypse in the word of prophecy ; and we will say that the whole body of the prophecies, contained in the inspired books of the Old and New Testament, is that to which the Holy Spirit, in the admonition which he dictated to St. Peter, requires all who look for salvation to give heed, " as to a lamp shining in a dark place ;" — a discovery from heaven of the schemes of Providence, which, however imperfect, is yet sufficient for the comfort and support of good men, under all the discouragements of the present life ; as it furnishes a de- monstration— not of equal evidence, indeed, with that which the final catastrophe will afford, but a certain de- monstration— a demonstration drawn from fact and expe-
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rience, rising in evidence as the ages of the world roll on, and, in every stage of it, sufficient for the passing genera- tion of mankind, " that the Most High ruleth in the king- doms of the earth," — that his providence directeth all events for the final happiness of the virtuous, — that " there is a reward for the righteous, — that there is a God who will judge the earth." In all the great events of the world, especially in those which more immediately concern the true religion and the church, the first Christians saw, and we of these ages see, the extended arm of Providence by the lamp of the prophetic word, which justly, therefore, claims the heedful attention of every Christian, in every age, "till the morning dawn, and the day-star arise in our hearts," — till the destined period shall arrive, for that clearer knowledge of the Almighty, and of his ways, which seems to be promised to the last ages of the church, and will terminate in that full understanding of the justice, equity, and mercy of God's dealings with mankind, which will make a chief part of the happiness of the righteous in the future life, and seems to be described in Scripture under the strong metaphor of seeing the incorporeal God.
This is the sum of the verse which precedes my text. It is an earnest exhortation to all Christians to give atten- tion to the prophecies of holy writ, as what will best obviate all doubts that might shake their faith, and prevent their minds from being unsettled by those difficulties which the evil heart of unbelief will ever find in the present moral constitution, according to those imperfect views of it which the light of nature by itself affords.
But to what purpose shall we give attention to prophecy, unless we may hope to understand it ? And where is the Christian who is not ready to say, with the treasurer of the Ethiopian queen, " How can I understand, except some man shall guide me ?" The Ethiopian found a man appointed and empowered to guide him : but in these days, when the miraculous gifts of the Spirit are withholden, where is the man who hath the authority or the ability to
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be another's guide ? — Truly, vain is the help ol' man, whose breath is in his nostrils ; but, blessed be God, he hath not left us without aid. Our help is in the name of the Lord. To his exhortation to the study of prophecy, the inspired apostle, apprized of our necessities, hath, in the first of the two verses which I have chosen for my text, annexed an infallible rule to guide plain men in the interpretation of prophecy ; and in the latter verse, he explains upon what principle this rule is founded.
Observe me : I say the apostle gives you an infallible rule of interpretation. I do not tell you that he refers you to any infallible interpreter ; which perverse meaning, the divines of the church of Rome, for purposes which I forbear to mention, have endeavoured to fasten upon this text The claim of infallibility, or even of authority to prescribe magisterially to the opinions and the consciences of men, whether in an individual or in assemblies and col- lections of men, is never to be admitted. Admitted, said I ? It is not to be heard with patience, unless it be sup- ported by a miracle : and this very text of Scripture is mani- festly, of all others, the most adverse to the arrogant pre- tensions of the Roman pontiff. Had it been the intention of God, that Christians, after the death of the apostles, should take the sense of Scripture, in all obscure and doubtful passages, from the mouth of an infallible inter- preter, whose decisions, in all points of doctrine, faith, and practice, should be oracular and final, this was the occasion for the apostle to have mentioned it — to have told us plainly whither we should resort for the unerring explication of those prophecies, which, it seems, so well deserve to be studied and understood. And from St. Peter, in particular, of all the apostles, this information was in all reason to be expected, if, as the vain tradition goes, the oracular gift was to be lodged with his succes- sors. This, too, was the time when the mention of the thing was most likely to occur to the apostle's thoughts ; when he was about to be removed from the superintend-
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ence of the church, and was composing an epistle for the direction of the flock which he so faithfully had fed, after his departure. Yet St. Peter, at this critical season, when his mind was filled with an interested care for the welfare of the church after his decease, upon an occasion which might naturally lead him to mention all means of instruc- tion that were likely to be provided, — in these circum- stances, St. Peter gives not the most distant intimation of a living oracle to be perpetually maintained in the suc- cession of the Roman bishops. On the contrary, he over- throws their aspiring claims, by doing that which super- sedes the supposed necessity of any such institution ; he lays down a plain rule, which, judiciously applied, may enable every private Christian to interpret the written ora- cies of prophecy, in all points of general importance for himself.
The rule is contained in this maxim, which the apostle propounds as a leading principle, of which, in reading the prophecies, we never should lose sight, " That no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation." " Knowing this first," says he, " that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation." And the reason is this, — that the predictions of the prophets did not, like their own private thoughts and sentiments, originate in their own minds. The prophets, in the exercise of their office, were necessary agents, acting under the irresistible impulse of the omniscient Spirit, who made the faculties and the organs of those holy men his own instruments for convey- ing to mankind some portion of the treasures of his own knowledge. Futurity seems to have been delineated in some sort of emblematical picture, presented by the Spirit of God to the prophet's mind, which, preternaturally filled and heated with this scenery, in describing the images obtruded on the fantasy, gave pathetic utterance to wis- dom not its own. " For the prophecy came not at any time by the will of man ; but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."
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Some Olio, perlinps, will be apt to say, " It had been well if the apostle had delivered his rule for the explication of prophecy, as clearly as he hath expressed what he al- legeth as the principle from which his rule is derived. This principle is indeed propounded with the utmost per- spicuity : but how this principle leads to the maxim which is drawn from it, or what the true sense of that maxim may be, or how it may be applied as a rule of interpreta- tion, may not appear so obvious. It may seem that the apostle hath rather told us negatively how the prophecies mai/ 7iot, than affirmatively how they maij be interpreted : and since, in most cases, error is infinite, and truth single, it may be presumed that innumerable modes of interpreta- tion will mislead, while one only will carry us to the true sense of the prophecies ; and surely it had been more to the purpose, to point out that single true path, than to guard us against one out of a great number of deviations. Nor, it may be said, is this erroneous path, which we are admo- nished to avoid, very intelligibly defined. Private inter- pretation, it seems, is that which is never to be applied. But what is private interpretation ? Is it the interpreta- tion of the private Christian ? Is it forbidden that any private member of the church should endeavour to ascer- tain the sense of any text of prophecy for himself? — The prohibition would imply, that there must be somewhere, either in some great ofiicer of the church, or in assemblies of her presbyters and bishops, an authority of public inter- pretation,— of which the contrary seems to have been proved from this very passage."
It must be confessed, that all this obscurity and incohe- rence appears in the first face of the passage, as it is ex- pressed in our English Bibles. The truth is, that the English wovd private does but very darkly, if at all, con- vey to the understanding of the English reader the ori- ginal word to which it is meant that it should answer. The orio-inal word denotes that peculiar appropriation of
178 the thing with which it is joined, to something else pre- viously mentioned, which is expressed in English by the word own subjoined to the pronouns of possession : Our own power — his own blood — a prophet of their own. In all these places, the Greek word which is rendered by the words, our own — his own — their own., is that same word which in this text is rendered by the word private. The precise meaning, therefore, of the original, may be thus expressed : " Not any prophecy of Scripture is of self- interpretation.'' This compound word, "self-interpreta- tion," contains the exact and full meaning of the two Greek words, which our translators have rendered by " private interpretation," and with which no two separate words can be found in our language exactly to correspond. The meaning is just the same as might be thus expressed : " Not any prophecy of Scripture is its own interpreter." It is in this sense that the passage is rendered in the French Bible of the church of Geneva ; and, what is of much impor- tance to observe, it is so rendered in the Latin translation, called the Vulgate, which the church of Rome upholds as the unerring standard of the sacred text.
This, then, is the rule of interpretation prescribed by the apostle, in my text : and though it is propounded in a negative form, and may, therefore, seem only to exclude an improper method of interpretation, it contains, as I shall presently explain to you, a very clear and positive defini- tion of the only method to be used with any certainty of success.
The maxim is to be applied, both to every single text of prophecy, and to the whole.
Of any single text of prophecy, it is true that it cannot be its own interpreter ; for this reason, — because the Scrip- ture prophecies are not detached predictions of separate, independent events, but are united in a regular and en- tire system, all terminating in one great object— the pro- mulgation of the gospel, and the complete establishment
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of the Messiah's king-dom. Of lliis system, every par- ticular prophecy makes a part, and bears a more imme- diate or a more remote relation to that which is the ob- ject of the vvhole. It is, therefore, very unlikely, that the true signification of any particular text of prophecy shoidd be discovered from the bare attention to the terms of the single prediction, taken by itself, without considering it as a part of that system to which it unquestionably belongs, and without observing how it may stand connected with earlier and later prophecies, especially with those which might more immediately precede or more immediately follow it.
Again, of the whole of the Scripture prophecies, it is true that it cannot be its own interpreter. Its meaning never can be discovered, without a general knowledge of the principal events to which it alludes ; for prophecy was not given to enable curious men to pry into futurity, but to enable the serious and considerate to discern in past events the hand of Providence.
Thus you see, the apostle, while he seems only to guard against a manner of interpretation which would perpetu- ally mislead, in etfect directs us to that which will seldom fail. Every particular prophecy is to be referred to the system, and to be understood in that sense which may most aptly connect it with the whole ; and the sense of prophecy in general is to be sought in the events which have actually taken place, — the history of mankind, espe- cially in the article of their religious improvement, being the public, infallible interpreter of the oracles of God.
I shall now proceed, in this, and some other Discourses, to explain these rules somewhat more distinctly, — to il- lustrate the use of them by examples of their application,
and to show you how naturally they arise out of that
principle which is alleged by the apostle as their founda- tion, and how utterly they overthrow the most formidable objection that the adversaries of our holy faith have ever been able to produce against that particular evidence of N 2
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our Lord's pretensions, which the completion of tlie Scrip- ture prophecies affords.
In the first place, for the more distinct explication of the apostle's maxim, nothing, I conceive, is requisite, but to mark the limits within which the meaning of it is to be restrained.
And, first, the subject of the apostle's negative proposi- tion, prophecy. — Under this name is not to be included every thing that might be uttered by a prophet, even under the Divine impulse; but the word is to be taken strictly for that which was the highest part of the prophetic ofliice — the prediction of the events of distant ages. The pro- phets spake under the influence of the Spirit, upon various occasions, when they had no such predictions to deliver. They were, in the Jewish church, the ordinary preachers of righteousness ; and their lessons of morality and reli- gion, though often conveyed in the figured strains of poe- try, were abundantly perspicuous. They were occasionally sent to advise public measures, in certain critical situations of the Jewish state. Sometimes they gave warning of impending judgments, or notice of approaching mercies ; and sometimes they were employed to rebuke the vices, and to declare the destiny of individuals. What they had to utter upon these occasions had sometimes, perhaps, no immediate connexion with prophecy, properly so called ; and the mind of the prophet seems to have been very dif- ferently affected with these subjects, and with the visions of futurity. The counsel he was to give, or the event he was to announce, were presented naked, without the dis- guise of imagery, to his thoughts, and he gave it utterance in perspicuous phrases, that carried a definite and obvious meaning. There are even predictions, and those of very remote events, and those events of the highest moment, which are not pioperly to be called prophecies. Such are those declarations of the future conditions of the righteous and the wicked, which make a principal branch of general revelation, and are propounded in such clear terms, that
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none can be at a loss to appreliend tlie treneral purport of tbem. These are, indeed, predictions, because the events whicli they declare are future ; yet they do not seem to answer to the notion of prophecy, in the general accepta- tion of the word. What then, you will ask me, is the distinction between these discoveries of general revelation and prophecy, properly so called? — The distinction, I think, is this: an explicit declaration of the final general event of things, and of whatever else may be the imme- diate effect of the will and power of the First Cause, or the purport of any original decree of God, is revelation. Pro- phecy is a disguised detail of those intermediate and sub- ordinate events which are brought about by the regular operation of second causes, and are in part dependent upon man's free agency. Predictions of these events are pro- phecies, in the proper meaning of the word ; and of these prophecies alone, St. Peter's maxim, " that no prophecy is its own interpreter," is to be understood.
Again, the word '' interpretation" is not to be understood without much restriction. Interpretation, in the largest sense, consists of various branches, the greater part of which it were absurd to include in the negation of the text. Such are all grammatical interpretations of an au- thor's language, and logical elucidations of the scope, composition, and coherence of his argument. Such inter- pretations may be necessary for prophecies, in common with every other kind of writings ; and the general rules by which they must proceed are the same in all : but the interpretation of which the apostle speaks is that whicli is peculiar to prophecy ; and it consists in ascertaining the events to which predictions allude, and in showing the agreement between the images of the prediction, and the particulars of the history ; and this particular sort of inter- pretation, distinct from any other, is expressed by that word which we find in this place in the original text of the apostle. The original word hath not the extensive signification of the English word "interpretation," but it
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is the specific name of" that sort of" exposition which ren- ders the mystic sense of parables, dreams, and prophecies.
Having thus defined in what sense the apostle uses the word " prophecies," and what that particular sort of inter- pretation is, which, he says, no prophecy can furnish for itself, his maxim is reduced to a perspicuous proposition, too evident to need farther proof or explication. Of pro- phecies, in the strict acceptation of the word, that is, of disguised predictions of those events which are brought about by the intervention of second causes, and do in great part depend upon the free agency of man, — of such pre- dictions, the apostle affirms, that the mystic interpretation — that interpretation which consists in ascertaining the events with w^hich the predictions correspond — is never to be drawn from the prophecy itself. It is not to be struck out by any process of criticism applied to the words in which a prediction is conceived ; — it is not to be so struck out, because, without a knowledge of the event foretold, as well as a right understanding of the terms of the pre- diction, the agreement between them cannot be perceived. And, among different events which may sometimes seem prefigured by the same prophetic images, those are always to be esteemed the true completions, which, being most connected with the main object of prophecy, may most aptly connect any particular prediction with the system.
It is of importance, however, that I show you, that the apostle's maxim, in the sense in Vv^hich I would teach you to understand it, arises naturally from the principle which he alleges as the foundation of it, — that the origin of pro- phecy, its coming from God, is a reason why it should not be capable of self-interpretation: for, if I should not be able to make out this connexion, you would do wisely to reject the whole of my interpretation ; since it is by infinite degrees more credible that error should be in my exposi- tion, than incoherence in the apostle's discourse.
But the connexion, if I mistake not, is not difficult to be made out: for, since the prophecies, though delivered by
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various persons, were dictated to all by one and the same Omniscient Spirit, the different books, and the scattered passages of prophecy, are not to be considered as the works or the saying-s of different men, treating a variety of sub- jects, or delivering various and contradictory opinions upon the same subject; but as parts of an entire work of a single author — of an author, who, having a perfect com- prehension of the subject which he treats, and at all times equally enjoying the perfection of his intellect, cannot but be always in harmony with himself We find, in the writings of a man of any depth of understanding, such re- lation and connexion of the parts of any entire work — such order and continuity of the thoughts — such conse- quence and concatenation of arguments, — in a word, such unity of the whole, which, at the same time that it gives perspicuity to every part, when its relation to the whole is known, will render it difficult, and in many cases im- possible, to discover the sense of any single period, taken at a venture from the first place where the book may chance to open, without any general apprehension of the subject, or of the scope of the particular argument to which the sentence may belong. How much more perfect, is it rea- sonable to believe, must be the harmony and concert of parts, how much closer the union of the thoughts, how much more orderly the arrangement, how much less un- broken the consequence of argument, in a work which hath for its real author that Omniscient Mind to which the universe is ever present, in one unvaried, undivided thought ! — the universe, I say, — that is, the entire compre- hension of the visible and intelligible world, with its in- effable variety of mortal and immortal natures — of sub- stances, accidents, qualities, relations, present, past, and future ! — that Mind, in which all science, truth, and know- ledge, is summed and compacted in one vast idea ! How absurd were the imagination, that harmony and system, while they reign in the works of men, are not to be looked for in the instruction which this great Mind hath delivered,
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in separate parcels indeed, by the diti'erent instruments which it hath at different times employed ; or that any de- tached part of his sacred volume may be safely expound- ed, without reference to the whole ! The Divine know- ledge is indeed too excellent for man, and could not other- wise be imparted to him than in scraps and fragments : but these are then only understood, when the human mind, by just and dexterous combinations, is able to restore them, in some imperfect degree, to the shadow and the semblance at least of that simplicity and unity in which all truth ori- ginally exists in the self-furnished intellect of God.
But, farther. As there cannot but be harmony and connexion in the knowledge and the thoughts of God, so there cannot but be unity and consistency of design in all his communications with mankind. The end, indeed, of all that extraordinary intercourse which the great God who made heaven and earth hath vouchsafed to hold with the inhabitants of this lower world, is the moral improvement of the human character, the improvement of man's heart and understanding, by the establishment and propagation of the Christian religion. All instruction from Heaven, of which the prophecies make a part, is directed to this end. All the promises given to the patriarchs, the whole typical service of the law, the succession of the Jewish pro- phets,— all these things were means employed by God to prepare the world for the revelation of his Son ; and the later prophecies of our Lord himself, and his inspired apostles, are still means of the same kind for the farther advancement of the same great design, — to spread that divine Teacher's doctrine, and to give it full effect upon the hearts of the faithful. The great object, therefore, of the whole word of prophecy, is the Messiah and his king- dom ; and it divides itself into two general branches, as it regards either the first coming of the Messiah, or the va- rious fortunes of his doctrine and his church, until his second coming. With this object, every prophecy hath immediate or remote connexion. Not but that in many
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predictions, in many large portions of the proplietic word, the Messiah and the events of his kingdom are not imme- diately brought in view as the principal objects ; yet in none of the Scripture prophecies are those objects set wholly out of sight, inasmuch as the secular events to which many parts of prophecy relate, will be found, upon a close inspection, to be such as either in earlier times affected the fortunes of the Jewish people, or in later ages the state of Christendom, and were of considerable effect upon the propagation of the true religion, either as they promoted or as they obstructed it. Thus, we have pre- dictions of the fall of the old Assyrian empire, and the desolation of Nineveh, its capital ; of the destruction of Tyre, and the ravages of Nebuchadnezzar in the neigh- bourhood of Palestine ; of the overthrow of the Babylo- nian empire, by Cyrus — of the Persian, by Alexander; of the division of the eastern world, after the death of Alex- ander, among his captains ; of the long wars between the rival kingdoms of Syria and Egypt ; of the intestine quar- rels and court intrigues of those two kingdoms ; of the propagation of Mahomet's imposture ; of the decline of the Roman empire ; of the rise and grov/th of the papal tyranny and superstition. Such events as these became the subject of prophecy, because their consequences touched the state of the true religion; and yet they were of a kind in which, if in any, the thoughtless and inconsiderate would be apt to question the control of Providence. Read the histories of these great revolutions : you will find they were effected by what you might the least guess to be the instruments of Providence, — by the restless ambition of princes, by the intrigues of wicked statesmen, by the treachery of false sycophants, by the mad passions of aban- doned or of capricious women, by the frenzy of enthu- siasts, by the craft of hypocrites. But, although God hath indeed no need of the v/icked man, yet his wisdom and his mercy find frequent use for him, and render even his vices subservient to the benevolent purposes of providence.
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The evidence of a vigilant providence, thus mercifully ex- erted, arises from the prediction of those events, which, while they result from the worst crimes of men, do yet in their consequences affect the state of religion and the condition of the virtuous. If such events lay out of the control of God's providence, they could not fall within the comprehension of his prescience : but, what God hath predicted, he foreknew, — what he foreknew, he predeter- mined,— ^what God liath predetermined, whatever bad action he permits to be done, must no less certainly, though less immediately than the good actions which he approves, operate, by the direction of his universal providence, to the final benefit of the virtuous. This comfortable assur- ance, therefore, "that all things work together for good to them that love God," is derived from prophecy, especially from those parts of prophecy which predict those crimes of men by which the interests of religion are affected ; and, to afford this comfort to the godly, such crimes are made the subject of the sacred oracles.
Thus you see, that, in all prophecy, the state of reli- gion is the object, and the interests of religion are the end. Hence it is, that as a man, whose mind is bent upon the accomplishment of some great design, will be apt, upon every occasion of discourse, to introduce allusions to that which is ever uppermost in his thoughts, and nearest to his heart, so the Holy Spirit of God, when he moved his prophets to speak of the affairs of this low world, was perpetually suggesting allusions to the great design of Providence, the uniting of all things under Christ. And whoever would edify by the prophetic word, must keep this great object constantly in view, that he may be ready to catch at transient hints and oblique insinua- tions, which often occur where they might be the least expected.
Nor is an active attention to the events of the world less necessary. That prophecy should fetch its interpretation from the events of history, is a necessary consequence of
187 its divine origiiiul: it is a part of the contrivance, and a part without which prophecy would have been so little beneficial — rather, indeed, pernicious to mankind — that, seeing God is infinitely wise and good, this could not but be a part of his contrivance. This is very peremptorily declared in the original of my text ; where the expression is not, as in the English, " no prophecy is,'' but " no pro- phecy is )?ia(k of self-interpretation," No prophecy is to be found in Scripture, which is not purposely so framed as not to be of self-interpretation. It was undoubtedly within the power of the Almighty, to have delivered the whole of prophecy in terms no less clear and explicit than those in v/hich the general promises of revelation are con- veyed, or particular deliverances of the Jewish people occasionally announced : but his wisdom reprobated this unreserved prediction of futurity, because it would have enlarged the foresight of man beyond the proportion of his other endowments, and beyond the degree adapted to his present condition. To avoid this mischief, and to at- tain the useful end of prophecy, which is to afford the highest proof of Providence, it was necessary that pro- phecy should be delivered in such disguise as to be dark while the event is remote, to clear up as it approaches, and to be rendered perspicuous by the accomplishment. And in this disguise prophecy hath actually been deli- vered, because it comes from God, who is good and wise, and dispenses all his blessings in the manner and degree in which they may be truly blessings to his creatures. Knowledge were no blessing, were it not adjusted to the circumstances and proportioned to the faculties of those to whom it is imparted.
I trust that it appears to you, that the apostle's maxim, " that no prophecy can be its own interpreter," does ne- cessarily follow from the matter of fact alleged as its foun- dation, that " all prophecy is from God."
You will reap a rich harvest of improvement from these disquisitions, if, now that you understand the apostle's
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rule of interpretation, you will learn (o use it when you read or hear the prophecies of holy writ. In my next Discourses, I shall endeavour, with God's assistance, to teach you the use of it, by examples of its application.
SERMON XVI.
Kuovviiig this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. For tlic prophecy came not at any time by the will of man ; but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.— 2 Pktek i. 20, 21.
This period hath already been the subject of one Dis- course, in which it hath been my endeavour to explain its meaning-, and to show the coherence of its parts. Its meaning, — that it propounds a maxim for the interpreta- tion of the prophecies of holy writ, which is this negative proposition, that no prophecy is its own interpreter; and alleges the principle upon wdiich that maxim is founded, that all prophecy came from God. The coherence of its parts, — inasmuch as the maxim, by necessary and obvious consequence, rises out of the principle alleged as the foun- dation of it.
I now proceed, as I proposed, to instruct you in the use of the apostle's maxim, by examples of its application. I would not fatigue your attention with unnecessary repe- tition ; but it is of importance that you should recollect that the aposde's negative maxim, " that no prophecy is of self-interpretation," has been shown in effect to contain two affirmative rules of exposition, — that every single text of prophecy is to be considered as a part of an entire system, and to be interpreted in that sense wdiicli may best connect it with the whole; and that the sense of prophecy in general is to be sought in the events which have ac- tually taken place.
To qualify the Christian to make a judicious applica- tion of these rules, no skill is requisite in verbal criticism
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—no proficiency in the subtleties of the loo-ician's art — no acquisitions of recondite learning. That deoree of understanding with which serious minds are ordinarily blessed — those general views of the schemes of Provi- dence, and that general acquaintance with the prophetic language, which no Christian can be wanting in, who is constant, as every true Christian is, in his attendance on the public worship, and gives that serious attention which every true Christian gives to the word of God, as it is read to him in our churches, and expounded from our pulpits,- — these qualifications, accompanied with a certain strength of memory and quickness of recollection, which exercise and habit bring — and with a certain patience of attention in comparing parallel texts,- — these qualifications will enable the pious, though unlearned Christian, to suc- ceed in the application of the apostle's rules, so far at least as to derive much rational amusement — much real edifica- tion— much consolation — much confirmation of his faith — much animation of his hopes — much joy and peace in be- lieving, from that heedful meditation of the prophetic word, which all men would do well to remember an in- spired apostle hath enjoined.
The first instance to which I shall apply the apostle's' rules, is the very first prediction which occurs in the Bible — the prophetic curse upon the serpent, which we read in the third chapter of the Book of Genesis. " Thou art cursed above all cattle of the field. Upon thy belly shait thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed : it" (or rather ) "he shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." To judge of the illustration that this prophecy may receive from the apostle's rules, it will be proper previously to settle what may be the full meaning of the words, taken by themselves. For this purpose, let us suppose that the passage were recited to some uninstructed heathen, who should be totally unacquainted with the Bible, and with
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every part of its contents : sup}3o.-;e liim quite ignorant of the story of the fall — ignorant upon what occasion the words were spoken, or by whom: suppose that he were only told, that once upon a time these'words were spoken to a serpent; — think ye he would discern in them any thing prophetic ? — He must have more than the serpent's cunning, if he did. He would tell you they contain a few obvious remarks upon the condition of the serpent kind, upon the antipathy which nature has established between men and serpents, and upon the natural advantages of man over the venomed reptile. " The serpent," says he, " is told, that, for the extent of his natural powers and enjoyments, he holds his rank with the lowest of the brute creation, — that serpents, by the make of their bodies are necessitated to crawl upon the ground, — that, although they have a poison in their mouths, the greatest mischief they can do to men is to bite them by the heels ; whereas men, by the foresight of their danger, and by their erect posture, have greatly the advantage, and knock serpents on the head wherever they chance to lind them."' This would be our heathen's exposition ; nor could the most subtle criticism draw any farther meaning from the terms of this denunciation.
But now, let our heathen be made acquainted with the particulars of the story of the fall ; and let him understand that these \vords vv^ere addressed to the individual serpent which had tempted Eve, by the omnipotent Creator, when he came in person to pronounce the dreadful doom upon deluded, ruined man; — our heathen will immediately per- ceive that this was no season for pursuing a useless spe- culation on the natural history of the serpent ; nor was so obvious a remark upon the comparative powers of the serpent kind and man better fitted to the majesty of the great Being to whom it is ascribed, than to the solemnity of the occasion upon which it was introduced: and he could not but suspect that more must be meant than meets the ear. He would observe, that the words were addressed
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to the serpent, in the character of the seducer of our first parents, — that the dciuuiciation made a part of a judicial procedure, in which a striking- regularity appears in the distribution of the several branches of the business. — Three delinquents stand before the Maker of the world, to answer for a crime in which each had borne a part. Adam, as first in rank, is first questioned. He acknow- ledges his crime, but imputes the blame to Eve's persua- sions. Eve is next examined. She confesses the truth of her husband's accusation, but she taxes the serpent as her seducer. The Creator proceeds to judgment. And in this part it is remarkable, that the person who had been first interrogated is the last condemned : for the first words spoken by the Judge, after he has received the confession of the human pair, are those in which he accosts the ser- pent; then he addresses himself to Eve, — to Adam last. The words addressed to Eve are the sentence of the Judge, denouncing the penalties to be sustained by her, for having listened to the serpent, and made herself the instrument of the man's seduction. The words addressed to Adam are the sentence of the Judge on him, for having yielded to Eve's solicitation. — From the plain order of the business our heathen would conclude that these words, addressed to the serpent, are a sentence upon him as the first seducer. He would observe, that as, in the narrative of the tempta- tion, contrivance, design, and speech, are ascribed to the serpent, so, in these words, he is accosted as the object of animadversion and punishment. He would say, "This was no common serpent of the field, but some intelligent and responsible agent, in the serpent form; and, in the evils decreed to the life and condition of the serpent, this individual serpent solely is concerned. The enmity which is mentioned, between the serpent and mankind, must ex- press some farther insidious designs on the part of this deceiver, with resistance on the part of man ; and in the declaration, that, while serpents should have no power but to wound the heels of men, men should bruise the
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heads of serpents, it is certainly intimated, by meta- phors taken from the condition and powers of the na- tural serpent, that the calamities which the stratagems of this enemy in disguise should bring on man, would prove light, in comparison of the greater mischiefs which man shall inflict on him. It is intimated, that man's wound, although, like the serpent's bite, it might be fatal in its consequences if it were neglected, was however curable. The reptile's tooth had lodged its malignant poison in the heel. Considerable time must pass, before the blood and juices could be mortally infected ; — in the interval, remedies might be applied to prevent the threa- tened mischief. Again, the declaration that God him- self puts this enmity between the serpent and mankind, implies, that the merciful, though offended God, will yet take an interest in the fortunes of man, and will support him in his conflict with the adversary."
\ ou see, that, by considering this denunciation of the serpent's doom in connexion only with that particular story of which it is a part, without any knowledge of later prophecies and revelations, our heathen has been able to dive into the prophetic meaning of words, which, taken by themselves, he did not know to be at all prophetic. The particular events, indeed, which may correspond to the images of the prediction, he hath not yet been able to assign; but of the general purport of the prophecy he has formed a very just notion. He is besides aware, that mysteries are contained in it, more than he can yet unra- vel. He is sensible that it cannot be without some impor- tant meaning, that either the whole or some remarkable part of Adam's posterity, contrary to the general notions of mankind, and the common forms of all languages, is expressed under the image of the woman's seed rather than the man's. I must here observe, that Adam, with respect to the insight he may be supposed to have had into the sense of this curse upon the serpent, was probably for some time much in the situation of our supposed hea-
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then, — aware that it contained a general intimation of an intended deliverance, but much in the dark about the par- ticular explication of it. This prophecy was, therefore, to Adam, when it was first delivered, so far intelligible as to be a ground of hope, — at the same time that the darkness of the terms in which it was conceived must have kept him anxiously attentive to every event that might seem connected with the completion of it, and to any new light that might be given him by succeeding predictions or pro- mises. And, by the way, this points out one important secondary use of the original obscurity and gradual elu- cidation of prophecy, by succeeding prophecies and by events, — this method of prediction awakens the curiosity of mankind.
But let us give our heathen, whose curiosity is keen upon the subject, farther lights. Let us carry him, by proper steps, through the whole volume of the sacred ora- cles ; and let us instruct him in that great mystery of god- liness, which from the beginning of the world was hidden with God, but in these later ages hath been made manifest by the preaching of the blessed apostles and evangelists ; and, when his heart is touched with a sense of the mercies conferred on him through Christ — when he has taken a view of the whole of the prophetic word, and has seen its correspondence with the history of Jesus, and the begin- nings of his gospel, let him then return to the curse upon the serpent. Will he now find in it any thing ambiguous or obscure? Will, he hesitate a moment to pronounce, that the serpent who received this dreadful doom could be no other than an animated emblem of that malignant spi- rit, who, in the latest prophecies, is called the Old Dragon? Or rather, will he not pronounce, that this serpent was that very spirit, in his proper person, dragged, by some unseen power, into the presence of Jehovah, to receive his doom in the same reptile form which he had assumed to wreck his spite on unsuspecting man; for which exploit of wicked and dishonourable cunning, the opprobriou.s names
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of tlie serpent and the dragon have ever since been fixed upon him in derision and reproach 1 Will not our en- lightened and converted heathen understand the circum- stances which are mentioned of the serpent's natural con- dition, as intimations of something analogous in the de- graded state of the rebellious angel ? B)^ the days of the serpent's life, will he not understand a certain limited period, during which, for the exercise of man's virtue, and the fuller manifestation of God's power and goodness, the infernal dragon is to be permitted to live his life of malice, to exercise his art of delusion on the sons of men ? — while, in the adjuncts of that life, the grovelling posture and the gritty meal, will he not read the condition of a vile and despicable being, to whom all indulgence but that of malice is denied — to whom little freedom of action is intrusted ? Will he have a doubt that the seed of this serpent are the same that in other places are called the devil's angels ? Will he not correct his former surmises about the seed of the woman, and the wound to be inflicted by the serpent in the heel ? Will he not perceive, that the seed of the woman is an image, not generally descriptive of the descendants of Adam, but characteristic of an indi- vidual— emphatically expressive of that person, who, by the miraculous manner of his conception, was peculiarly and properly the son of Eve, — that the wound to be suf- fered by this person in the heel, denotes the sufferings with which the devil and his emissaries were permitted to exercise the Captain of our salvation ? And will he not discern, in the accomplishment of man's redemption, and the successful propagation of the gospel, the mortal blow inflicted on the serpent's head ; — when the ignorance which he had spread over the world was dispelled by the light of revelation, — when his secret influence on the hearts of men, to inflame their passions, to debauch their imagi- nations and mislead their thoughts, was counteracted by the graces of God's Holy Spirit, aiding the external admi- nistration of the word, — when, with much of its invisible
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power, his kingdom lost the whole of its external pomp and splendour? Silence being imposed on his oracles, and spells and enchantments being divested of their power, the idolatrous worship which by those engines of deceit he had universally established, and for ages supported, not- withstanding the antiquity of its institutions, and the be- witching gaiety and magnificence of its festivals, fell into neglect. Its cruel and lascivious rites, so long holden in superstitious veneration, on a sudden became the object of a just and- general abhorrence ; and the unfrequented tem- ples, stripped, no doubt, of their rich ornaments and costly oflerings, sunk in ruins. These were the early effects of the promulgation of the gospel, — effects of the power of Christ exalted to his throne, openly spoiling principalities and powers, and trampling the dragon under foot. When these effects of Christianity began to be perceived, which was very soon after our Lord's ascension,' — when magi- cians openly forswore their ruined art, and burned their useless books, — when the fiend of divination, confessing the power by which he was subdued, ceased to actuate his rescued prophetess, — when the worshippers of the Ephe- sian Diana avowed their apprehensions for the tottering reputation of their goddess, — then it was that the seed of the woman was seen to strike and bruise the serpent's head.
Thus you see, that as the general purport of this pro- phecy was readily opened by an attention to the circum- stances of the memorable transaction which gave occasion to it, so a comparison of it with later prophecies, and with events (which, to whatever cause they may be referred, have confessedly and notoriously taken place), naturally leads to a particular and circumstantial explication.
It is remarkable that this, which is of all the most ancient prophecy of the general redemption, is perhaps, of any single prediction that can be produced, upon many accounts the most satisfactory and convincing. For, in the first place, although it be conveyed in the most highly figured language, the general meaning of it, though less obvious, is no less o 2
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single and precise than the most plain and simple expres- sions might have made it. It was uttered by the voice of God himself; therefore two different and unequal intellects were not, as in every instance of prophecy uttered by a man, concerned in the delivery of it. The occasion upon which it was delivered was of such importance as neces- sarily to exclude all other business : its general meaning, therefore, must be connected, which is not the case of every prophecy, with the occasion upon which it was spoken ; and with that occasion one meaning only can possibly con- nect it. The serpent accosted could be no other serpent than Eve's seducer, — the curse, no other curse than such as might be adapted to that deceiver's nature, — the enmity, no other enmity but what might be exercised between beings of such natures as man and his seducer,— and the bruises in the heel and in the head, no other mischiefs to either party than that enmity might produce. So that the gene- ral meaning to which the occasion points, is no less certain than if our enemy had been accosted in some such plain terms as these : ^' Satan ! thou art accursed beyond all the spirits of thy impious confederacy. Short date is granted to the farther workings of thy malice ; and all the while thou slialt heavily drag the burden of an unblessed exist- ence,— fettered in thy energies, cramped in thy enjoyments ; and thy malevolent attempts on man, though for a time they may affect, and perchance, through his own folly, endanger his condition, shall terminate in the total extinction of thine ov/n power, and in the aggravation of thy misery and abase- ment ; and, to gall thee more, he who shall undo thy deeds, restore the ruined world, and be thy conqueror and avenger, shall be a son, though in no natural way, of this deluded woman."
Again, no less certain than the general meaning derived from the occasion of this prophecy, is the particular expo- sition of it by the analogy of prophecy, and by the event. The images of this prediction, however dark they might be when it was first delivered, carry, v»'e find, in the pro-
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phetic language, a fixed, unvaried meaning. The image of the serpent answers to no being in universal nature but the devil. Prophecy knows no seed of the woman — it ascribes the miraculous conception to which this name alludes to none but the Emanuel ; nor shall we find, in the whole progeny of Eve, a person to whom the character may belong, but the child in the manger at Bethlehem, the holy fruit of Mary's unpolluted womb.
Lastly, the event which answers to the image in the conclusion of this prophecy, the bruise upon the serpent's head, is in its nature single ; for the universal extirpation of idolatry, and the general establishment of the pure wor- ship of the true God, is a thing which must be done once for all, and being done, can never be repeated. A pro- phecy thus definite in its general purport, conveyed in images of a fixed and constant meaning, and correspond- ing to an event in its nature single — a sudden and univer- sal revolution of the religious opinions and practices of all the civilized nations of the known world, — such a prophecy, so accomplished, must be allowed to be a proof that the whole work and counsel was of God, if in any case it be allowed that the nature of the cause may be known by the ejffect.
I mean hereafter to apply the apostle's rules to instances of prophecy of another kind, in which we find neither the same settled signification in the imagery, nor the same singularity of completion.
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SERMON XVII.
Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scriptures is of any private interpretation. — 2 Peter i. 20.
I PROCEED in the task I have undertaken, to exemplify the use of those rules of interpretation which the maxim of my text contains ; which are these two, — to refer par- ticular predictions to the system, and to compare prophe- cies with events. In my last Discourse, I showed you with what certainty and facility they lead to the explica- tion of the first prophecy that was ever given — that which was uttered by the voice of God himself, in the foi-m of a curse upon the serpent, the adviser of Adam's disobedi- ence. I shall now try them in an instance of a very dif- ferent kind, where the occasion of the prediction does not so clearly ascertain its general purport, — ^where the images employed are less fixed to one constant meaning, — and where, among the events that have happened since the prophecy was given, a variety may be found to correspond with it, all in such exactness, that every one of the num- ber may seem to have a right to pass for the intended com- pletion.
The first prophecy uttered by the voice of God, fur- nished an example of a prediction in which the general meaning was from the first certain, and the imagery of the diction simple, and of which the accomplishment hath been single. The earliest prophecy recorded in the sacred vo- lume, of those which were Uttered by men, furnishes the example that we now seek, of a prediction originally doubtful in its general meaning, comprehensive in its imagery, various in its completion. Such was the prophecy in which Noah, awakened from his wine, and inflamed with resentment at the irreverent levity of his younger son, denounced the heavy curse on his posterity, and de- scribed the future fortunes of the three general branches of mankind. " Cursed be Canaan ; — a servant of servants
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shall he be unto his brethren. Blessed be Jehovah, God of Shem! — and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japhet, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant."
The only explicit part of this prophecy is the curse upon Canaan, Ham's youngest son ; of whose descendants it is openly foretold that they should live in a state of the lowest subjection to nations which should issue from the two other sons of Noah. And yet here we find some ob- scurity ; for how was Canaan to be in slavery both to Shem and Japhet? The evangelic maxim, "that no man can serve two masters," seems applicable here in a literal sense. This difficulty, the apostle's maxim, of applying for the explication of the sacred oracles to the occurrences of the world, readily removes. It appears from sacred history, that so early as in the time of Abraham, the Canaanites were governed by petty princes of their own, who were the tributary vassals of the Assyrian monarchy, then newly arisen under princes of the family of Ashur, Shem's se- cond son. And from profane history we learn, that when the Canaanites fled from the victorious arms of Joshua, and when the remainder of them were expelled by David, they settled in those parts of Africa which first fell under the dominion of the Romans, the undoubted descendants of Japhet. Thus Canaan in early ages was the slave of Shem, and in later times of Japhet.
But this is neither the most difficult nor the most in- teresting part of the prophecy. Let us turn our attention to the blessings pronounced upon the two other branches. And we will first consider Japhet's part, because it seems of the two the most explicit. " God shall enlarge Japhet, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem." The most ob- vious meaning of the words, I think, is this, — that the gracious purpose of Providence was to bless Japhet with a numerous progeny, which should spread over an ample tract of country; and that, not satisfied, or not sufficiently accommodated with their own territory, they would be apt
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to encroacli upon Sliem's descendants, and make settle- ments within their borders. And as this is the most ob- vious sense of the words, so it is justified by the apostle's rules ; for history supports it. The whole of Europe, and a considerable part of Asia, was originally peopled, and hath been ever occupied by Japliet's oifspring, who, not contented with these vast demesnes, have been from time to time repeatedly making encroachments on the sons of Shem ; as was notoriously the case, when Alexander the Great, with a European army, attacked and overthrew the Persian monarchy — when the Romans subjugated a great part of the East, — and still more notoriously, when the Tartar conquerors of the race of Genghis Khan demolished the great empire of the Caliphs, took possession of their country, and made settlements and erected kingdoms in all parts of Asia and the East — and again, when Tamerlane settled his Moguls, another branch of Japhet's progeny, in Indostan, whose descendants gradually got possession of that immense country, a part of Shem's original inheri- tance, which forms the present empire of the Great Mo- gul. These events, not to mention other less remarkable incursions of Scythians into Shem's parts of Asia, may well be deemed an accomplishment of the patriarch's prophetic benediction; not only because they answer to the natu- ral import of the terms of it, but because every one of them had great consequences upon the state of the true religion, and the condition of its professors n various parts of the world, and some of them have been the subjects of later prophecies. So that, in this interpretation, we find the two circumstances which, according to the apostle, are the best characteristics of a true interpretation, — an agreement with the truth of history, and a connexion of this particular prediction with the system of the prophetic word.
It may seem, however, that some amicable intercourse between certain branches of the two families, some peace- able settlements of descendants of Japhet in nations arisen from the other stock, may be no less conveniently
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denoted, by the expression of " Japhet's dwelling in the tents of Shem," than the violent encroachments of con- querors of the line of Japhet. And this interpretation does not ill agree with history, or, to speak more properly, with the present state of the two families. The settlements of Portuguese, English, Dutch, and French — all of ns de- scended from the loins of Japhet, made within the three last centuries in different parts of India — all of it a part of Shem's inheritance, have given the prophecy in this sense a striking accomplishment. Nor, in this interpretation, is the necessary connexion wanting of this particular pre- diction with the prophetic system ; for consequences can- not but arise, although they have not yet appeared, of great moment to the interests of the true religion, from such numerous and extensive settlements of professed Christians, in countries where the light of the gospel hath for many ages been extinguished.
Thus, you see, history leads us to two senses of this pro- phecy, of which each may contain an unlimited variety of particular accomplishments ; since every settlement of Europeans or of Asiatic Tartars in the Lower Asia and the East, whether gained by war or procured by commercial treaties, connects with the prophecy in one or other of these two senses.
A third sense is yet behind : but, to bring it the more readily to light, it will be proper previously to consider the sense of Shem's blessing, a blessing obliquely conveyed in this emphatic ejaculation, " Blessed be Jehovah, God of Shem !" — an ejaculation in which this assertion is evi- dently implied, that " Jehovah should be Shem's God ;" and this is the whole of Shem's blessing, a blessing, in- deed, which could receive no addition or improvement. It can admit of no dispute, that Jehovah is here styled the God of Shem, in the same sense in which in later times he vouchsafed to call himself the God of a particular branch of Shem's progeny — of Abraham, Isaac, and of Jacob, and of their descendants the Jewish people. — Jehovah is
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indeed the God of all the nations of the earth — the Uni- versal Father, whose tender mercies are over all his works ; but, to a particular branch of Shem's family, he was for a time more peculiarly a God, inasmuch as he chose them to be the depositaries of the true religion, while the rest of mankind were sunk in the ignorance and abomination of idolatry. Their temporal concerns he condescended to take under the visible direction of his special providence, — to them he revealed his sacred, incommunicable name, — ■ among them he preserved the knowledge and worship of himself, by a series of miraculous dispensations, till the destined season came for the general redemption ; and then he raised up, among the offspring of that chosen stock, that Saviour, whose divine doctrine hath spread the know- ledge and worship of the true God among all nations, and whose meritorious sacrifice of himself hath made atone- ment for the sins of the whole world. These were the privileges in store for a select branch of Shem's family, when this prophecy was delivered ; privileges by which they were put in a condition to attain the highest blessings both in this world and in the next — the height of national prosperity, and the sum of future bliss; and Shem being yet alive, and his family not split into its branches, it was natural, and agreeable to the usage of the prophetic style, that the future blessings of the offspring should be referred to the ancestor. This, therefore, is the oracular sense of the patriarch's emphatic compellation of Jehovah as the God of Shem. " Thou, O Jehovah ! shalt be the God of Shem, — the object of his worship and the guardian of his fortunes ; while the progeny of his brethren shall place their foolish trust in those v/hich are no gods." • This exposition of Shem's blessing will naturally lead to a new sense of Japhet's, if we only recollect what ex- ternal means were used by Providence to preserve the knowledge of the true God in the chosen branch ofShem's family. These means were — the call of Abraham; the personal intercourse holden with him and his two next
203 descendants; and, in due time, tlie institution of the Mosaic religion ; of which religion, you will particularly observe, the tabernacle and the service performed in it were the chief external instruments. The magnificence of the tabernacle ; its stately support of upright pillars rest- ing on their silver sockets, and transverse beams overlaid with gold ; its gorgeous hangings within, of purple, linen, blue, and scarlet, with the buttons of gold ; its noble co- vering without, of the shaggy skins of goats ; its rich fur- niture, the seven-branched candlestick, the altars, and the implements of sacrifice, all of brass or gold, pure or over- laid ; the ark, containing the tables of the law, with the mercy-seat overshadowed by the wings of the cherubim ; but above all, the glorious light which filled the sacred pavilion, the symbol of Jehovah's presence, this glory of the tabernacle in ancient times, and of the temple after- ward, was probably what most caught the admiration of the Jewish people, and attached them to a religion which had so much splendour in 'its externals, and in which something of what is visible of the majesty of the Divine Being met the senses of the worshippers.
Bearing this remark in mind, let us now turn again to that part of the prophecy which concerns Japhet's family, especially the latter clause of it — " he shall dwell in the tabernacles of Shem." The blessing promised to Shem, we have found to be the miraculous preservation of the true religion in a chosen branch of Shem's family. Might not the prediction of this merciful design of Providence naturally introduce an allusion to the external means by which it was to be effected ? Among the external means, we have seen reason to think that the Jewish tabernacle was the most generally efficacious : but under what de- scription is it likely that the tabernacle, not erected till the days of Moses, should be mentioned in prophecy so early as the days of Noah, — and in this prophecy in particular, in which Jehovah, for the intention of maintaining the true religion in a branch of Shem's family, is characterized as
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tlie God of Shem ? A beautiful consistency of imagery will be maintained, if the tent which Jehovah was to pitch for this purpose among men, should be called Shem's ta- bernacle, or Shem's tent ; for a tent and a tabernacle are one and the same thing, and the word in the Hebrew is the same. This holy tent or tabernacle was Shem's taber- nacle, because it was erected among the sons of Shem, and because none might bear a part in the whole service of it, who did not incorporate with the chosen family.
But, farther. This tabernacle, and the service per- formed in it, were emblems of the Christian church and of the Christian service. When all these circumstances are put together, can any doubt remain, that, in the men- tion of the tents of Shem, the Holy Spirit made allusion to the Jewish tabernacle as an emblem of the Christian church ; and that the dwelling of Japhet in these tents of Shem, took place when the idolatrous nations of Japhet's line, converted to the faith of Christ, became worshippers of the God of Shem in Shem's tabernacles — worshippers of the true God, in the modes of worship prescribed by revealed religion.
And this interpretation well agrees with the apostle's maxim, being supported both by the harmony of the pro- phetic system and the truth of history.
For the harmony of the prophetic system. This inter- pretation brings this particular prediction to bear directly upon the general object of prophecy, the uniting of all na- . lions in the faith of Christ ; and it is worthy of particular remark, that, from the delivery of this prediction, the con- version of the Gentiles made a standing part of all the prophecies of the Saviour. Now, that nothing of variation might appear in the schemes of Providence, it should seem tbat it was requisite that the first intimation of the design of selecting a peculiar people, which is contained in Shem's blessing, should be accompanied with an intimation of the general mercies of which that measure was to be produc- tive to all mankind : but of the general benefit intended
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we have in this place no intimation, if it be not conveyed in Japhet's benediction, — in which benediction it is not conveyed, unless this sense of that benediction be admitted. This interpretation," therefore, of the prophetic blessing pronounced on Japhet, most of all connects it with the great object of prophecy, and best maintains the harmony of the prophetic system.
Then for history. The fact is notorious, that the gos- pel, from the beginning to the present times, hath made the greatest progress in Europe, and in those parts of Asia which were first peopled by the posterity of Japhet. Among the uncivilized descendants of Ham, and the degenerate sons of Shem, it hath not been so generally spread, or hath not so deeply taken root.
Beside this evident agreement with history and the pro- phetic system, another circumstance is much in favour of this interpretation, which is this, — that the images of this prediction bear a near affinity to those under which later prophets have described the same event. Hear in what language the prophet Isaiah announces the conversion of the Gentiles, in words addressed to the Jewish church, as the emblem of the Christian : " Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habi- tations." Or, as the words are more significantly ren- dered in a late translation : " Let the canopy of thy habi- tation be extended. Spare not : lengthen thy cords, and firmly fix thy stakes. For on the right hand and on the left thou shalt burst forth with increase, and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles." Here, you see, Isaiah's allusion is to the tabernacle ; and the image presented to him is an enlargement of the sacred tent, to contain new crowds of worshippers; and the stakes are to be driven deep and firm, the cords are to be lengthened and drawn tight, that the sides of the tent may be able to sustain the pressure of the multitudes within it. Noah's allusion is also to the tabernacle; and the image presented to him is the ad- mission of foreign worshippers. It is, therefore, one and
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the same scene which the patriarch and the younger pro- phet have before them ; and, except in the distinct mention of that particular circumstance, that the new worshippers should be chietly of Japhet's stock, Noah's prophecy dif- fers not from Isaiah's, otherwise than as an outline differs from a more finished drawing of the same objects.
Thus, by the apostle's rules, prophecy, in that part of it which regards the family of Japhet, is brought to three senses, in each of which it hath been remarkably verified, • — in the settlements of European and Tartarian conquerers in the Lower Asia aixl in the East, — in the settlements of European traders on the coast of Indostan, — but especially in the numerous and early conversions of the idolaters of Japhet's line (among whom it is fit that we of this island should remember our own ancestors were included) to the worship of the one true God, and to the faith of Christ.
I am sensible that this variety of intent and meaning discovered in a single prophecy, brings on a question. of no small difficulty, and of the first importance. It is this, — What evidence of a providence may arise from predic- tions like the one we have now been considering, in which a variety of unconnected events, independent, to all ap- pearance, of each other, and very distant in times, seem to be prefigured by the same images? And, although it be a digression from my main subject, yet as the inquiry is of the highest importance, and spontaneously presents itself, it is to this that I shall devote the remainder of the present Discourse.
I shall not wonder, if, to those who have not sifted this question to the bottom (which few, I am persuaded, have done), the evidence of a providence, arising from prophe- cies of this sort, should appear to be very slender, or none at all. Nor shall I scruple to confess, that time was when I was myself in this opinion, and was, therefore, much in- clined to join with those who think that every prophecy, were it rightly understood, would be found to carry a pre- cise and single meaning, and that, wdierever the double
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sense appears, it is because the one true sense hatli not yet been detected. I said, " Either the images of the pro- phetic style have constant and proper relations to the events of the world, as the words of common speech have proper and constant meanings, — or they have not. If they have, then it seems no less difficult to conceive that many events should be shadowed under the images of one and the same prophecy, than that several likenesses should be expressed in a single portrait. But, if the prophetic images have no such appropriate relations to things, but that the same image may stand for many things, and va- rious events be included in a single prediction, then it should seem that prophecy, thus indefinite in its meaning, can afford no proof of providence : for it should seem pos- sible, that a prophecy of this sort, by whatever principle the world were governed, whether by providence, nature, or necessity, might owe a seeming completion to mere ac- cident." And since it were absurd to suppose that the Holy Spirit of God should frame prophecies by which the end of prophecy might so ill be answered, it seemed a just and fair conclusion, that no prophecy of holy writ might carry a double meaning.
Thus I reasoned, till a patient investigation of the sub- ject brought me, by God's blessing, to a better mind. I stand clearly and unanswerably confuted, by the instance of Noah's prophecy concerning the family of Japhet; which hath actually received various accomplishments, in events of various kinds, in various ages of the world, — in the settlements of European and Tartarian conquerors in the Lower Asia, in the settlements of European traders on the coasts of India, and in the early and plentiful con- version of the families of Japhet's stock to the faith of Christ. The application of the prophecy to any one of these events bears all the characteristics of a true interpre- tation,— consistence with the terms of the prophecy, con- sistence with the truth of history, consistence with the pro-
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plietic system. Every one of these events must therefore pass, with every believer, for a true completion.
A plain instance, therefore, being found in holy writ, of a prophecy which bears more than a double meaning, the question, what evidence such prophecies may aflbrd of a divine providence, becomes of the highest moment. I enter upon the discussion of it with this preliminary ob- servation,— that if our suspicion that such prophecies may receive a seeming accomplishment by chance, or by the natural and necessary course of the world, should appear, upon a strict examination, unreasonable and ill founded, the consequence will be, that the evidence arising from this sort of prophecy is of the highest kind ; since the greater the variety of events may be to which a single combination of images shall be found to correspond, the more of art and contrivance is displayed in the framing of the prophecy, and the more of power (if accident be clearly excluded) in bringing about the completion. Our whole inquiry, therefore, is reduced within a narrow compass, since the whole is brought to rest upon this single ques- tion, May the accomplishment of such predictions be, or may it not be accidental ? If it may, then such prophecies are frivolous, and the Deity is blasphemed when they are ascribed to him. If it may not, then such prophecies are most complete and wonderful demonstrations of the abso- lute foreknowledge and universal providence of God. The negative of this great question, which leads to these comfortable and glorious consequences, I purpose to sus- tain. I mean to show you, that, amidst all the compre- hension and variety of meaning which is to be found in any prophecies of holy writ, and which, in the instance before us, of Noah's prophecy, is indeed wonderful, cer- tain restrictions and limitations will always be found, by which the power of accident, or any other but an intelli- gent cause, is no less excluded from any share in the com- pletion, than it is in other instances, where the prediction,
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like the curse upon tlie serpent, points direct and lull at a single event. The method which I shall pursue to make this appear, shall be to argue upon Noah's prophecy, which I have so particularly expounded, as an instance ; and my method of arguing upon this instance shall be, to contrast it, in every circumstance, with a pretended pre- diction, which, for the propriety of its images, and the exactness of its completion, hath been compared and set in competition with the prophecies of holy writ.
A heathen poet, whose subject leads him to speak of a certain voyage, which, if it was ever really performed, was the first attempt of any European nation to cross the main seas in a large ship with masts and sails, describes, in ele- gant and animated strains, the consequences which the success of so extraordinary an undertaking might be ex- pected to produce upon the state of mankind, the free intercourse that was likely to be opened between distant nations, and the great discoveries to be expected from voyages in future times, when the arts of ship-building and navigation, to which this expedition, if a real one, gave rise, should be carried to perfection. This is his general argument, and verses to this effect make the con- clusion of his song : —
" Distant years
Shall bring the fated season, when Ocean, Nature's prime barrier, shall no more obstruct The daring search of enterprising man. The earth, so wide, shall all be open, — The mariner explore new worlds ; Nor Shetland be the utmost shore."*
" Now give me," says the infidel,! " a prophecy from your Bible, which may be as clearly predictive of any
* " Venient annis
Ssecula seris, quibus Oceanus Vincula rei'um laxat, et ingens Pateat tellus, Tiphysque novos Detegat orbes ; nee sit terris Ultima Thule." — Seneca, Medea, 374, &c. t Anthony Collins.
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event wliich you may choose to allege tor the accomplish- ment, as these verses have by mere accident proved to be, of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. Give me such a prophecy from your Bible, as I have pro- duced to you from a heathen poet, who yet was no pro- phet, nor claimed the character, and I will turn believer." We cheerfully accept this arrogant defiance ; — we are thankful to the adversary that he hath invited us to meet him on such advantageous ground, by comparing what may justly be deemed the most indefinite of the Scripture prophecies, with the best specimen of the power of acci- dent for the completion of prophecy which his extensive reading could produce.
These verses of his Latin poet are, indeed, a striking example of a prediction that might safely take its chance in the world, and, happen what might, could not fail at some time or other to meet with its accomplishment. In- deed, it predicts nothing but what was evidently within the ken of human foresight, — that men, being once fur- nished with the means of discovery, would make disco- veries,— that, having ships, they would make voyages, — that, when improvements in the art of ship-building should have furnished larger and better ships, men would make longer and more frequent voyages, — and that, by longer and more frequent voyages, they would gain more know- ledge of the surface of the globe which they inhabit. What peasant of Thessaly but might have uttered such prophecies as these, who saw the Argo bring her heroes home, and observed to what degree the avarice and cu- riosity of his countrymen were inflamed, by the wealth which the adventurers had amassed, and the stories which they spread ? What restriction do we find of the genera- lity of these prognostications, which may seem to put the exact completion out of the reach of accidental causes ? None. Neither the parts of the world are specified from which expeditions of discovery should be fitted out, nor the quarters in which they should most succeed : or, if
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any particular intimation upon the latter article be couched in the mention of Shetland as an island that should cease to be extreme, it is erroneous, as it points precisely to that quarter of the globe where discovery hath been ever at a stand,—where the ocean, to this hour, opposes his eter- nal barrier of impervious, unnavigable ice.
So much for our infidel's prophecy. Let us now com- pare the patriarch's. Of this, indeed, the topics are most general,— -the increase of mankind— empire and servitude — varieties of religion — conquests — migration — foreign settlements. The increase of mankind was to be foreseen from physical causes ;— that mankind, being increased, some part would govern, might be probably conjectured \ —that one part governing, another part must serve, was of necessity to be concluded :— that a part of mankind would fall from the worship of the one true God, was to be feared, from the example of the antediluvian world ;— that con- querors would plant colonies, and merchants make settle- ments in foreign countries, the same example might per- suade. So far the comparison may wear a promising aspect on our adversary's side : but let him not exult be- fore his victory is complete. Let him tell me by what natural sagacity the patriarch might foresee— by what analogy of antediluvian history he might conjecture, that Japhet's line would have so greatly the advantage over Shem's, in the rate of increase by propagation, and in the extent of territory, that when he speaks of God's enlarging Japhet, he should esteem the enlargement of Shem in either instance unworthy to be mentioned. Did blind causes bring about the agreement, which all history proves, be- tween the patriarch's conjecture and the event of thino-s ? '' Unquestionably," the adversary will reply, " blind causes brought this about. Physical causes determine the rate of propagation, and with the rate of propagation the grov/th of empire is naturally connected." It is granted. But was it within the natural powers of the patriarch's mind to ascertain in which line these physical causes should be the p2
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most efficacious, while the nations to arise from either of his sons lay yet unissued in the loins of their progenitors ? If not, to what may the agreement be ascribed between the thoughts of the patriarch's mind, which did not com- mand those physical causes, and the effects of causes which could not influence his thoughts, but the energy of that Supreme Mind which hath the thoughts of men and the motions of matter equally in its power ?
Again. I ask, by what natural sagacity did the patriarch foresee that Shem's family, rather than any branch of the other two, should retain the knowledge and worship of Jehovah ? — that the condition of slavery should be fixed upon a particular branch of Ham's descendants ? — that the masters of those slaves should be of the stock of Shem or Japhet, rather than of the collateral branches of their own family ? By what natural sagacity did the patriarch fore- see the distinct genius and character of whole nations yet v.iiVcrn '{■ — tat the spirit of migration should prevail in the line of Japhet, while the indolent progeny of Shem would ever be averse to foreign settlements, and indifferent to a distant commerce ? Hath it been accident, I would ask, that the history of past ages, and the experience of the present time, confirm the patriarch's conjecture, and falsify the poet's ? — for the poet, although the adversary would gladly have suppressed that circumstance, speaks of the intermixture which he thought likely to take place of dif- ferent nations. But, unfortunately for the infidel's argu- ment, the poet is wrong precisely in those particulars in which the patriarch is right ; and this although the poet lived when the different genius of the sons of Shem and Japhet had shown itself, and lay open to a wise man's observation. " The cool Armenian streams (so the poet guessed) shall quench the parched Indian's thirst, and Persians drink the Rhine and Elbe."* But is it so ? Did
Indus gelidum
Potat Araxem : Albim Persa?
Rheiiumqne bibunt." — Sexkca, Mp:dea, 372, kc.
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ever colony of Indians settle in the Upper Asia ? Are Per- sians to be found upon the banks of the Elbe or Rhine? What said the patriarch ? Just the reverse ; and that reverse proves true. Tartars from the north of Asia hold possession of Shem's Indian territory, and Japhet's Europe drinks the Ganges !
Was it accident — was it an effect of mechanical causes, that Japhet's sons, when tliey had been sunk for ages in the abominations of idolatry, were reclaimed at last by the emissaries of that divine Teacher who arose among Shem's descendants, and thus settled, according to the patriarch's prediction, in Shem's tabernacles ? Was it chance — was it nature — was it fate, that a prophecy like that before us, applicable to events of various sorts, — to propagation — conquest — trade — religion, hath received an accomplish- ment in every sense in which the words can be taken ; — and this notwithstanding that each sense hath such limita- tions as no less require a certain determination of the course of the world, for the verification of the prediction, than if each sense had respected one individual fact? I would not indeed deny, that without any superintendence of the world by Providence, events might sometimes so fall out as to correspond with a random conjecture of the human mind, or with the forged predictions of an impostor. But if the impostor's words should carry two meanings, the probability that they should be verified in one meaning or the other would indeed be much greater ; but that they should prove true in both, the probability would be much less, than that of the accomplishment of a prediction of a single meaning. If the words, instead of two, should carry a variety of meanings, the improbability that they should prove true in all, would be heightened in a much greater proportion than any who are not versed in compu- tation may easily be brought to apprehend. But the pheno- menon which Noah's prophecy presents, if it be not a real prophecy brought by Providence to its completion, is that of a prediction of an immense extent and variety of mean-
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ing, wliiclj hath had the wonderful good fortune to be veri- fied in every branch. If this cannot be supposed to have happened without Providence, in the single instance of this prophecy, how much less in all the instances of pro- phecies of this sort which occur in holy writ? And if this could be conceived of all those prophecies, so far as they concern secular events, yet, let me ask, do we not find in every one of them, or at least in the far greater part, that some event of the Messiah's reign, or something charac- teristic of his time or person, makes one, and for the most part the most obvious of the various meanings ? And is this too casual, — that such a variety of predictions as we find of this sort in the Bible, delivered in different ages, upon very different occasions, should be so framed, as all to bear upon one great object, the last of a succession, or the chief of an assortment of events, to which the images of each prediction are adapted with such wonderful art, that every one of them hath passed in its turn for the ac- complishment? Should you see the rays of the sun re- flected from a system of polished planes, and transmitted through a variety of refractive surfaces, collect at last in a burning point, and there, by their united action, melt down the stubborn metal which resists the chemist's furnace, would you refer the wonderful effect to chance, rather than to an exquisite polish — to an accurate conformation and a just arrangement of the mirrors and the glasses ? Would you not suppose that the skill of many artists had con- curred to execute the different parts of the machine, under the direction of some man of far superior knowledge, by whom the properties of light and the laws of its reflections and refractions were understood, and by whom the effect which you had seen produced was originally intended? And can you suppose that it hath happened without design and contrivance, that the rays of the prophetic light are concentrated in a single point to illuminate a single object? You will now recollect and apply the observation with which we entered upon this discussion, — that accident
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being once excluded from any share in the accomplish- ment, the evidence of a providence which these multiform prophecies afford, is of the highest kind.
SERMON XVIII.
Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not at any time by the will of man ; but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.— 2 Peter i. 20, 21.
From the digression which closed my last Discourse, I noM^ return to my principal subject; and shall immedi- ately proceed to the last general topic I proposed to treat, — namely, to show that this same text of the apostle, which is so sure a guide to the sense of the prophecies, will also furnish a satisfactory answer to the most specious objection which the adversaries of our most holy faith have ever been able to produce against that particular evidence of the truth of our Lord's pretensions, which arises from the sup- posed completion of the prophecies of the Old Testament in him and in his doctrines.
The objection, indeed, is nothing less than this, — that although the divine inspiration of the Jewish prophets be admitted, their prophecies will afford no support to our Lord's pretensions ; for this reason, that in the application of these prophecies to him, and to the propagation of his doctrine, they are drawn by the writers of the New Testa- ment to a sense in which they were never understood by the prophets themselves who delivered them : and since the true sense of any writing can be no other than that which the author intended to convey, and which was un- derstood by him to be contained in the expressions which he thought proper to employ, an application of a prophecy in a sense not intended by the prophet must be a misin- terpretation.
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The assertion upon which this objection is founded, " that the first preachers of Christianity understood pro- phecies in one sense which were uttered in another," can- not altogether be denied ; and, unless it could be denied in every instance, it is to little purpose to refute it, which might easily be done, in some : for if a single instance should remain, in which the apostles and evangelists should seem to have been guilty of a wilful misinterpreta- tion of prophecy, or of an erroneous application of it, the credit of their doctrine would be greatly shaken ; since a single instance of a fraud would fasten on them the impu- tation of dishonesty, and a single instance of mistake con- cerning the sense of the ancient Scriptures would invali- date their claim to inspiration. The truth, however, is, that though the fact upon which this objection is founded were as universally true as it is universally alleged, — which is not the case, — yet, were it so, we have in this text of the apostle a double answer to the adversary's ar- gument, which is inconclusive, for two reasons ; first, be- cause the assumption is false, that the prophets were the authors of their prophecies, " for the prophecy came not at any time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost ;" and, secondly, were the assumption true, still the conclusion might not stand, " because no prophecy of holy writ is its own inter- preter." I will endeavour to make you understand the propriety of both these answers, which at first perhaps may not strike you.
First, then, I say we deny the adversary's rash conclu- sion, though in part we grant his premises, because his assumption is false, that the prophets were the authors of their prophecies. The assumption is false, upon the prin- ciples upon which the adversary who urges this objection professes to dispute. He professes to dispute upon a con- cession of the divine inspiration of the Jewish prophets. But, if the prophets were inspired, they were not the au- thors of their prophecies; — the Holy Spirit of God was
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the author of every prophecy or of every saying' of a pro- phet, so far at least as it is prophetic ; and the views of that Omniscient Spirit who gave the prophecy — not the surmises of the men whose faculties or whose organs that Spirit employed — are to be the standard of interpretation ; and this upon that very principle which the adversary al- leges,— that the meaning of every book, and of every sen- tence in the book, is its author's meaning.
To explain this more distinctly, I must observe, that all prophecy is speech, in which the prophet is made to ex- press ideas of the Divine Mind, in uttering his own; and the prophecies of holy writ are divisible into two different kinds, distinguished by two different manners, in wdiich this utterance of the mind of God by the mouth of the pro- phet was usually effected. The first kind consisted in a scene allegorically descriptive of futurity, which was dis- played to the imagination of the prophet, who was left to paint the images excited in his fantasy in such language as his natural talents of poetical description might supply. Of this kind are the prophecies delivered by Jacob and by Moses, not long before their death — the prophecies of Balaam, and many that occur in the writings of those who were prophets by profession. The other kind consists merely in verbal allusions, when the prophet, speaking per- haps of himself or of his own times, or of distant events set clearly in his view, was directed by the inspiring Spirit to the choice of expressions to which later events have been found to correspond with more exactness than those to which the prophet himself applied them. This kind of prophecy particularly abounds in the Psalms of David, who often speaks of the fortunes of his own life, the difficulties with which he had to struggle, and his providential deliver- ances, in terms which carry only a figurative meaning as applied to David himself, but are literally descriptive of the most remarkable occurrences in the holy life of Jesus. Nor is this kind of prophecy unfrequent in the writings of the other prophets ; who were often made to allude to the
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general redemption, when they would speak in the most explicit terms of deliverances of the Jewish people ; and were seldom permitted to deplore present calamities, or to denounce impending judgments, but in expressions lite- rally descriptive of the suiferings of Christ and the afflic- tions of his church.
In both kinds of prophecy, the Spirit of God and the mind of man had each its proper part. In prophecies of the first kind, the matter was furnished by the Spirit of God, and the language only is the man's. In these pro- phecies we often find a double obscurity, of which one part is to be imputed to the man, and arises from the con- cise and broken manner in which he utters his conceptions. Carried away by the strength of the images presented to him, the prophet seems often to forget that his hearers were not apprized of what was passing in his own fancy : he addresses them upon the subject of what lie sees, as joint spectators of the interesting scene, in brief allusions, and in animated remarks upon the most striking parts, rather than in a just and cool description of the whole. Now, this obscurity may indeed be best removed by in- quiring the prophet's meaning — by collecting, from his abrupt hints and oblique intimations, what might be the entire picture exhibited to his mind. But, when this is sufficiently understood, another obscurity, arising from the matter of the prophecy, may yet remain. The mystic sense couched under the allegorical images may yet be hidden ; and for clearing this difficulty, on which the real interpretation of the prophecy, as prophecy, depends, it may be to little purpose to inquire or to know what mean- ing the prophet might affix to the images he saw, unless it were certain that the prophet was so far in the secret of Heaven as to know of what particular events these images were designed to be the emblems. But this, it is certain, he could not know but by a second inspiration, of which there is no evidence, — by an operation of the Divine Spi- rit on the man's understanding, which might enable him
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to decyplier the allegorical scenery which his imagination had been made to conceive : for, that the sight of the pic- ture should be accompanied with any natural discernment of its mystic meaning, is no more necessary than that a waking man's recollection of his dream should be accom- panied with a clear understanding of its signification ; the reverse of which we know to have been the case in ancient times, when prophetic dreams were not unfrequent. The dreamer could describe every particular of his dream, but, for the meaning of it, it was necessary he should have re- course to other persons with whom the gift of interpreta- tion was deposited ; and had God been pleased to with- hold this gift, a prophetic dream would have had no interpretation antecedent to its completion, and yet, by the completion, would have been understood to be pro- phetic. Now, what is a dream which is distinctly remem- bered, and not at all understood, but one instance of a prophetic vision, of which the sense is unknown to the prophet ? In prophecies, therefore, of this first kind, there is no reason to suppose that the prophet's meaning was the whole meaning of the inspiring Spirit ; but there is the greatest reason from analogy for the contrary conclusion. ] In prophecies of the second kind, the whole matter is from the mind of the man, but the language is from the Divine Spirit ; and, in this case, the immediate action of the Spirit seems to have been upon the memory of the prophet, which was directed to suggest words, phrases, and similitudes, which, at the same time that they were strongly expressive of the prophet's thoughts, were still more nicely adapted to the private meaning of the inspir- ing Spirit. Now, in this, as in the former instance, the first step toward the understanding of the prophecy is to settle what was the meaning of the prophet. But still this may be understood, and the meaning of the Divine Spirit remain a secret; for in this, as in the former case, it was impossible the prophet should be apprized of the Spirit's meaning, without a second operation on another faculty of
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his mind, by which it might be empowered to discern those future events within the view of the Omniscient Spirit, to which the expressions in which he clothed his own thoughts miglit be applicable. But of this second act of the Spirit, for the private information of the prophet, no evidence appears.
Upon the whole, prophecy of either kind was the joint production of two intellects, of very different and unequal powers. In this, therefore, as in every instance where more than single intellect is concerned, a design and meaning may reasonably be ascribed to the superior understanding, which contrives and directs, not imparted to the inferior, which obeys and executes ; — just as, in any book, the meaning of the author may be little miderstood by the corrector of the press, and not at all by the founder of the types. And yet the disparities of understanding between the wisest and most learned author, and the most ignorant of the mechanics whose manual art and industry must concur in the publication of his labours, — the dispa- rity between the wisest man and the humblest of his in- struments, is nothing in comparison of that which must be confessed to subsist between the two intellects which have concurred in the publication of the prophetic word.
Here, then, is one answer which the apostle furnishes to this specious objection, "that the prophecies of the Old Testament are misinterpreted by the writers of the New ; being taken in senses in which the authors of those prophe- cies, the prophets, never understood them." The prophets, says the apostle, were not the authors of their prophecies, any more than a scribe is the author of the discourse which he takes down from the mouth of a speaker. " For the prophecy came not at any time by the will of man; but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."
This first answer is, however, an answer to the objec- tor rather than to the objection ; since it goes no farther than to prove that the adversary's argument is incon-
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elusive : and as it hath happened to many to fail in the proof of true propositions, through want of skill or cir- cumspection in the framing- of tlieir arguments, it may perhaps be supposed that this may have happened to our adversary in the present question. It may be said, in de- fence of the opinion he sustains, that though every author must be allowed to understand his own writings, it is not to be allowed that no writing is to be understood by any but the author of it. Though the principle, therefore, may be false, upon which our adversary would conclude that the prophets had of all men the clearest understanding of their prophecies, the reverse is not immediately to be con- cluded— that any other men have had a clearer under- standing of them. It is possible, it may be said, that the prophets might enjoy a clear foresight of the events to which their predictions were intended to allude, as some men have had the gift of interpreting their own dreams ; and that, if this was the fact, which may seem no unna- tural supposition, the consequence still must be, that no meaning that may be affixed to any prophecy may be the true one, that was not within the comprehension of the prophet's mind. Now, we will allow the adversary to amend his assumption, and to reform his argument ; we will allow him to assume, that the full meaning of every pro- phecy was clearly understood by the prophet who uttered it. We shall, in the course of our argument, find a proper place to show that this assumption is false, and all conse- quences built upon it at the best precarious. But, for the present, we grant this assumption, with every consequence that may fairly be deduced from it. We must therefore grant (what we hold, indeed, to be false ; but for the pre- sent we must grant it) that nothing may be a true com- pletion of a prophecy which was not foreseen by the pro- phet. Still we feel ourselves at liberty to maintain 'that the adversary's argument, with all this emendation on his part, and with all this concession on our own, hath no connexion with the particular conclusion against the first
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preachers of Christianity ; because he has not proved — because he could not prove, without retracting- that very assumption on which his whole argument depends — be- cause the thing is incapable of proof upon any principles which an infidel, granting the divine inspiration of the Jewish prophets, can admit, — their inspiration being granted, it is incapable of proof, otherwise than by the authority of the later Scriptures, that those very meanings which the writers of the Nev/ Testament affix to the an- cient prophecies might not be in the minds of the pro- phets, though they are not obvious in their words. The proof of this assertion rests upon the apostle's maxim, that " no prophecy of Scripture is of self-interpretation ;" or, to state the same thing affirmatively, that the sense of pro- phecy is to be sought in the events of the v/orld, and in the harmony of the prophetic writings, rather than in the bare terms of any single prediction.
The apostle asserts that all the Scripture prophecies are purposely so conceived as not to be of self-interpretation. He intimates that it was a part of the scheme of Provi- dence, that prophecy should be so delivered as to have to fetch its interpretation from the consistence of the prophe- tic system, and from the events of the world. I do not insist upon the authority of the apostle ; — I know that this is nothing with the adversary : but I persuade myself you will recollect, that in a former Discourse, in which I opened the connexion between the apostle's maxim and the facts on which he builds it, I proved, from the end to which prophecy, if it comes from God, must unquestionably be directed, and from the wisdom with which the means of Providence must ever be adapted to their ends, — I proved to you, not from any man's authority, but from these plain and general principles of natural religion, namely, that God is good and wise, that his ends ever are the best, and his means the most fitting and convenient, — I proved to you, from such plain principles as these, acknowledged by Deists no less than by Christians, that if prophecy be really of
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divine original, that mysterious disguise by which the events of remote futurity (such, at least, as depend on the free actions of men) may be kept almost as much con- cealed as if prophecy had never been given, must be a part of the original contrivance. Hence it follows, that what- ever private information the prophet might enjoy, the Spi- rit of God would never permit him to disclose the ultimate intent and particular meaning of the prophecy in the bare terms of the prediction. I ask, then, by what means we may discover that any particular meaning which may seem to suit with the prediction was not in the prophet's mind, when it is proved, that although it had been in the pro- phet's mind, he would not have been permitted to declare it? By what means doth the adversary pretend to show, that the applications of the ancient prophecies which are made by the Evangelists were never intended or foreseen by the prophets, but by showing that no such intention ap- pears in the terms of any prediction, considered in con- nexion with the occasion upon which it was delivered, the circumstances in which the prophet might be who uttered it, and the persons to whom it was addressed ? But where is the force of this conclusion, — " The apostle's sense of the prophecy is not to be found in the terms of the prediction ; therefore it was not in the prophet's mind ?" Where is the force of this conclusion, if the mind of the prophet, possessed of that sense, would nevertheless be irresistibly determined, by the impulse of the Almighty Spirit, to en- velop the perceived sense in an enigma, which should re- main inexplicable till the time for the accomplishment should draw near ? And this must have been the case, if the prophet was privy to the intent of his prophecy, and the Holy Spirit of God was really his inspirer. Our ad- versary would prove that the ancient prophecies, though allowed to be divine, give no countenance to the preten- sions of our Lord ; and his boasted proof is this : " Your first teachers," he says to Christians, " have taught you to misinterpret these prophecies, in applying them to your pretended Messiah ; for they adopt a mode of interpreta-
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tion which you must confess to be inapplicable, unless the divine inspiration of the prophets be admitted." The argument is no less incoherent and infirm than it is base and insidious, which is built, like this, on an occult retrac- tation of what the disputant, in drawing his own state of the controversy, professes to concede.
Thus you see, that though the general principle should be admitted, that the true meaning of a prophecy cannot be unknown to the prophet, yet the particular conclusion, that the prophecies of the Old Testament have been mis- applied by the writers of the New, hath no connexion with these general premises. Although the general maxim could be proved to be true, the particular conclusion might nevertheless be false. And now we may safely advance a step farther, and say, that this conclusion is proved to be actually false, by the evident agreement of the particulars of the gospel history with the prophecies which have been applied to them, and by the mutual harmony and consis- tence of the prophecies so interpreted; since, whatever might be in the mind of the prophet or his cotempora- ries, a manifest correspondence and agreement between the particulars of an event and the images of a prophecy is in all cases a complete evidence that this prophecy was predictive of this event, provided the prophecy so ap- plied be consistent with the general purport of the system. The authority of this evidence is so decisive, that the pri- vate opinion of the prophet, could it in any case be clearly ascertained, must give way to it. If the prophet, in any case, pretended to form a conjecture concerning the ulti- mate intention of his prophecies, his judgment must still bow down to time, as a more informed expositor ; — and this is an immediate consequence of that disguise of pro- phecy which > renders it inexplicable but by time, and which hath been shown to arise from the attributes of the Deity. Our adversary, therefore, has employed his learn- ing and his logic to his own confusion : he has brought himself into a disgraceful and unpleasant situation, for a man who asserts with confidence, and would afl^ect solidity
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of argument. The senses of tlie ancient prophecies, which he rejects because he supposes them to have been unknown to the propliets, he cannot prove to have been unknown to them ; and, if he could prove this, still the conclusion, upon principles which in his assumed character of a Deist he cannot but admit, — the conclusion still must be for ignorance in the prophet, rather than error or fraud in the apostles. And this was indeed the case. The inspired prophets had not always a distinct foresight of the parti- cular events in which their prophecies were to receive their ultimate accomplishment; — not but that the prophets and the earliest patriarchs had indeed an expectation full of joy — a glorious hope of a deliverance of mankind from the ruin of the fall, and the later prophets understood that the deliverance was to be effected by a descendant of the royal stock of David ; but, of the particulars of our Saviour's life — of the particular doctrines he was to teach — of the particular sufferings he was to undergo — of the means by which the true religion was to be propagated, ^ — of these things they had no distinct and particular foreknowledge. That they had it not, is implied in the text ; but it is more explicitly affirmed by St. Peter, in his first epistle : " Of which salvation" — that is, of the salvation of the souls of men, purchased by our Lord Christ Jesus, — "of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched dili- gently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you ; searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufterings of Christ and the glory that should follow." Here, you see, is an explicit asser- tion that the particulars of the gospel dispensation, testified by the Spirit of Christ, the Omniscient Spirit of the Fa- ther and the Son, which was in the prophets, were matters of anxious search and diligent inquiry to the spirit of the prophet. But what is once known and clearly understood is no longer an object of inquiry and search to him who knows and understands it. By the prophets, therefore,
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who inquired and searched diligently after that salvation of which they prophesied, the true sense of their own pro- phecies was but imperfectly understood.
And this circumstance, the confessed ignorance of the prophets concerning the issue of their prophecies, is that which gives the testimony that prophecy affords of the wise and powerful providence of God its peculiar weight ; for the evidence of prophecy lies in these two particulars, — that events have been predicted which were not within human foresight; and the accomplishments of predictions have been brought about, which much surpass human power and contrivance. The prediction, therefore, was not from man's sagacity, nor the event from man's will and design ; and then the goodness of the end, and the intricacy of the contrivance, complete the proof that the whole is of God. But, if it appeared that the events had been foreseen by the prophets, a very important branch of the argument, the exclusion of human foresight, would be rendered very precarious. The infidel, in that case, would have said, "The plain fact is, that these events were fore- seen by men. You tell us, indeed," he would say to the advocates of revelation, " that this foresight came from a preternatural illumination of their minds; but this is a mere hypothesis of your own, which you set up because it best serves your purpose. All that appears is, that these men did foresee these events. On what principle their power of foresight might depend, is matter of doubtful inquiry. Why should it rather be referred to some inex- plicable intercourse of a superior mind with the human, than to a certain faculty originally inherent in the minds of those particular men, the use of which might be no less easy and natural to them, than the use of a more li- mited faculty of foresight, and the ordinary talent of con- jecture, is to you? Are not men very unequal in all their endowments? And this being once allowed, is it not rea- sonable to suppose of any faculty or power which a man is seen to exercise, that he possesses it as his own, in that
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degree in which he is seen to exercise it. The prophet's foresight, therefore, of the things he did foresee, was na- tural to him. And why," the infidel would add, "why should it be doubted but that man liath powers to effect what the human mind hath power to prognosticate." To such objections, the evidence from prophecy would indeed have been obnoxious, had the prophets shown a clear foreknowledge of the full intent and meaning of their pro- phecies ; but the case being the reverse, — since the events which best correspond with the prophecies, and put the system of prophecy most in harmony with itself, were nei- ther foreseen by the prophets nor by any other men till they had actually taken place, or till such things had taken place as at the same time brought these accomplish- ments within the reach of human foresight, and put it be- yond the reach of human power to prevent them, there can be no ground for these extravagant claims in favour of man's sagacity to predict, or of his power to accomplish. Had the case been otherwise, the divine inspiration of the prophets might still, indeed, have been an object of pro- bable opinion and rational faith ; but it becomes as much more certain, when the ignorance of the prophet noto- riously appears, as the consequence of a known fact or self-evident truth is more certain than any conclusion from the most plausible hypothesis.
I have now discussed the various points of doctrine that my text suggested. You have seen that it confutes those vain pretensions to an infallible authority of inter- pretation, which its meaning hath been perverted to sup- port. You have seen that it furnishes rules by which the private Christian may be enabled to interpret the pro- phecies of Scripture for himself You have seen, that these rules are of extensive use, and ready application. You have seen, that, by virtue of that peculiar structure which brings them under these rules of interpretation, the most multiform of the Scripture prophecies do equally with the most simple afford a positive evidence of God's q2
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providential government of the world. And, lastly, you have seen, that, from this same text of the apostle, the most specious objection which infidels have ever been able to produce against the argument from prophecy in sup- port of the Christian revelation, receives a double answer, —one from the fact upon which the apostle builds his maxim of interpretation, the other from the maxim itself, — the first defeating the objector's argument, the other establishing the opposite of his conclusion. Nothing now remains, but briefly to obviate a question which many who have attended to these Discourses may, perhaps with the best intentions, wish to put, — whedier these rules of inter- pretation, which we have taken so much pains to explain and to establish, are suflScient to clear the prophetic writ- ings, to popular apprehension, of all obscurity. Length of time, by the changes which it makes in the customs and manners of mankind, on which the figures of speech depend, and by various other means, brings an obscurity on the most perspicuous writings. Among all the books now extant, none hath suflered more from this cause in its original perspicuity, than the Bible ; nor hath any part of the Bible suffered equally with the prophetic books, in particular passages : but, notwithstanding the great and confessed obscurity of particular parts of the prophecies, those which immediately concern the Christian church are for the most part, so far at least as they are already ac- complished, abundantly perspicuous, or incumbered with no other difiiculty than the apostle's rules of exposition will remove ; nor does the obscurity of other parts at all lessen the certainty of the evidence which these afford. The obscurity, therefore, of the prophecies, great as it is in certain parts, is not such, upon the whole, as should discourage the Christian laic from the study of them, nor such as will excuse him under the neglect of it. Let him remember, that it is not mine, but the apostle's admoni- tion, who would not enjoin a useless or impracticable task, " to give heed to the prophetic word."
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SERMON XIX.
From that time forth, began Jesus to show unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, aud suffer many things of the elders, and chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. — Matt. xvi. 2 1 .
The saying of the prophet, that " the ways and thoughts of God are not like those of men," was never more remark- ably verified than in that great event which we this day commemorate, the death and passion of our Lord and Sa- viour Jesus Christ. " Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness !" Wonderful in every part, but chiefly in the last acts of it, was the scheme of man's re- demption ! That the Author of life should himself be made subject unto death — that the Lord of glory should be clothed with shame — that the Son of God's love should become a curse for sinful man — that his sufferings and humiliation should be made the manifestation of his glory • — that by stooping to death he should conquer death — that the cross should lift him to his throne — that the height of human malice should but accomplish the pur- poses of God's mercy — that the devil, in the persecutions he raised ao-ainst our Lord, should be the instrument of his own final ruin, — these were mysteries in the doctrine of the cross, so contrary to the confirmed prejudices of the Jewish people, and so far above the reach of philosophi- cal investigation, that they rendered the preaching of a crucified Saviour " a stumbling-block to the Jews, and to the Greeks foolishness." God, foreseeing how improbable this doctrine would appear to men, was pleased in various ways to typify and predict our Saviour's passion, ages be- fore it happened, that the thing, when it should come to pass, might be known to be his work and counsel ; and our Lord himself omitted not, at the proper season, to give his disciples the most explicit warning of it, that an event so contrary to every thing they had expected (for
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they were involved in the common error of the Jewish nation concerning the Messiah) might not come upon them by surprise. " From that time forth," saith the evan- gelist, " Jesus began to show to his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders, and chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third da}^"
"From that time forth." — The fact last mentioned was that conversation of our Lord with his disciples, in which Peter declared, in the name of all, that while the people in general were in doubt who Jesus might be — whether Elias, or Jeremias, or some other of the ancient prophets revived — they, his constant followers, believed him to be the Christ, the Son of the living God. "From that time forth," it seems, and not before, Jesus began to advertise his disciples of his approaching death. It was a thing not to be disclosed till their faith had attained to some degree of constancy and firmness ; but when once it ap- peared that they not only esteemed and loved their Master as a wise and virtuous man — that they not only revered him as an inspired teacher of righteousness, but that they believed in him as the Christ, the Son of God, the Re- deemer of Israel, it then became seasonable to remove the prejudices in which they had been educated, and to show them plainly what that deliverance was which the pro- mised Messiah was to work, — for whom, and by what means, it was to be effected. It was time to extinguish their hopes of sharing in the splendours of an earthly kingdom, and to prepare and fortify their minds against all that " contradiction of sinners" v/hich they, with their Master, were in this world destined to endure. AW, therefore, he begins to show them how that he must go to Jerusalem, and, after much malicious persecution from the leaders of the Jewish people, he must be killed. The form of expression here is very remarkable in the original ; and it is well preserved in our English translation. He must go — he must suffer — he mjist be killed — he must be raised again on the third day,^all these things were fi.xed and determined
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— must inevitably be — nothing could prevent them ; and yet the greater part of them were of a kind that might seem to depend entirely upon mans free agency. To go or not to go to Jerusalem was in his own power ; and the persecution he met with there, arising from the folly and the malice of ignorant and wicked men, surely depended upon human will : yet, by the form of the sentence, these things are included under the same necessity of event as that which was evidently an immediate effect of divine power, without the concurrence of any other cause, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The words which in the original express the going — the suffering — the being killed — the being raised again — are all equally subject to the verb which answers to the word must of our lan- guage, and in its first and proper meaning predicates ne- cessity. As he must be raised on the third day, so he must go, he must suffer, he must be killed. Every one of these events, his going to Jerusalem, his suffering, and his death there — and that these sufferings and that death should be brought about by the malice of the elders, and chief priests, and scribes, — every one of these things is plainly announced, as no less unalterably fixed than the resurrection of our Saviour, or the time of his resurrection — that it was to happen on the third day.
The previous certainty of things to come is one of those truths which are not easily comprehended. The difficulty seems to arise from a habit that we have of measuring all intellectual powers by the standard of human intellect. There is nothing in the nature of certainty, abstractedly considered, to connect it with past time or with the pre- sent, more than with the future ; but human knowledge extends in so small a degree to future things, that scarce any thing becomes certain to us till it is come to pass, and therefore we are apt to imagine that things acquire their certainty /ro?w their accomplishment. But this is a gross fallacy. The proof of an event to us always depends either upon the testimony of others, or the evidence of our
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own senses; but the certainty oi" events in themselves arises from their natural connexion with their proper causes. Hence, to that great Being who knows things, not by testimony — not by sense, but by their causes, as being himself the First Cause, the source of power and activity to all other causes, — to Him, every thing that shall ever be, is at all times infinitely more certain than any thing either past or present can be to any man, except perhaps the simple fact of his own existence, and some of those necessary truths wdiich are evidenced to every man, not by his bodily senses, but by that internal per- ception which seems to be the first act of created intellect.
This certainty, however, is to be carefully distinguished from a true necessity inherent in the nature of the thing. A thing is necessary when the idea of existence is included in the idea of the thing as an inseparable part of it. Thus, God is necessary ; — the mind cannot think of him at all without thinking of him as existent. The very notion and name of an event excludes this necessity, w^hich belongs only to things uncaused. The events of the created uni- verse are certain, because sufficient causes do, not because they must, act to their production. God knows this cer- tainty, because he knows the action of all these causes, inasmuch as he himself begins it, and perfectly compre- hends those mutual connexions between the things he hath created, which render this a cause, and that its effect.
But the mere certainty of things to come, includino- in it even human actions, is not all that is implied in the terms of our Lord's prediction ; which plainly intimate that the actions of men, even their worst actions, are in some measure comprised in the design of Providence, who, al- though he wills not the evil of any single act, undoubtedly wills the good in which the whole system of created agency shall ultimately terminate.
On these views of things, and in particular on our Saviour's prediction of his sufferings, in which the&e views are most strongly set forth, the Calvinistic di-
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vines endeavoured to establish their hard doctrine of ar- bitrary predestination, — a doctrine to which, whether we consider it in itself, or in its consequences, we may, with good reason, apply the words of the prophet, " It hath truly little form or comeliness — little beauty, that we should desire it." But let us not judge uncharitably of those who maintained it, nor ascribe to a morose severity of temper, much less to spiritual pride, what is easily traced to nobler principles. The Calvinistic predestinarians had found in the Scriptures, both of the Old and of the New Testa- ment, the most explicit assertions of God's omniscience, and of his constant attention to the minutest occurrences both of the natural and of the moral world. These notions they found agreeable, we must not say to philosophy (for of that these pious men had but a scanty portion), but to what in many cases is a better guide — to the natural sense and feeling of a virtuous mind. The belief that the world, and they themselves as a part of it, were under the imme- diate care and protection of the wisest and the best of beings, had taken possession of their honest hearts more firmly than it seems to do of some men's understandings ; and they set themselves to combat with the fiercest zeal, and without any scrupulous examination, every doctrine that midit seem to contradict it, and threaten to rob them of the holy joy and comfort which flowed from that per- suasion. They did not understand that the foreknowledge and providence of the Deity, and that liberty which doth truly belong to man as a moral agent, are things perfectly consistent and naturally connected ; — they did not hesitate a moment to deny the freedom of human actions. But this was a dangerous error ; for, in truth, the proof of our liberty is to every individual of the human race the very same, I am persuaded, with the proof of his existence. I feel that I e.vist, and I feel that I am/ree; and I may with reason turn a deaf ear upon every argument that can be alleged in either case to disprove my feelings. I feel that I have power to flee the danger that I dread — to pursue
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the pleasure that 1 covet — to forego the most inviting pleasure, although it be actually within my grasp, if I apprehend that the present enjoyment may be the means of future mischief — to expose myself to present danger, to submit to present evils, in order to secure the possession of a future good ; — I feel that I have power to do the action I approve — to abstain from another that my conscience would condemn; — in a word, I feel that I act from my own hopes, my own fears, my own internal perceptions of moral fitnesses and discongruities. Happy, thrice happy, they who act invariably by these perceptions ! They have attained to the "glorious liberty of the sons of God!" But whenever I act from other motives, I feel that I am misled by my own passions, my own appetites, my own mistaken views of things. A feeling always succeeds these unreasonable actions, that, had my mind exerted its na- tural powers, in considering the action I was about to do — the propriety of it in itself and its consequences, I might and I should have acted otherwise. Having these feel- ings, I feel all that liberty which renders the morality of a man's actions properly his own, and makes him justly accountable for his conduct.
The liberty, therefore, of man, and the foreknowledge and providence of God, are equally certain, although the proof of each rests on different principles. Our feelings prove to every one of us that we are free ; reason and re- velation teach us that the Deity knows and governs all things, — that even " the thoughts of man he understandeth long before,"' — long before the thoughts arise — long be- fore the man himself is born who is to think them. Now, when two distinct propositions are separately proved, each by its proper evidence, it is not a reason for denying either, that the human mind, upon the first hasty view, imagines a repugnance, and may, perhaps, find a difficulty in con- necting them, even after the distinct proof of each is clearly perceived and understood. There is a wide difference between a paradox and a contradiction. Both, indeed,
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consist of two distinct propositions ; and so far only are they alike ; for, of the two parts of a contradiction, the one or the other must necessarily be false, — of a paradox, both are often true, and yet, when proved to be true, may con- tinue paradoxical. This is the necessary consequence of our partial views of things. An intellect to which nothing should be paradoxical would be infinite. It may naturally be supposed that paradoxes must abound the most in me- taphysics and divinity, " for who can find out God unto perfection?" — yet they occur in other subjects; and any one who should universally refuse his assent to proposi- tions separately proved, because when connected they may seem paradoxical, would, in many instances, be justly laughed to scorn by the masters of those sciences which make the highest pretensions to certainty and demonstra- tion. In all these cases, there is generally in the nature of things a limit to each of the two contrasted propositions, beyond which neither can be extended without implying the falsehood of the other, and changing the paradox into a contradiction ; and the whole difficulty of perceiving the connexion and agreement between such propositions arises from this circumstance, that, by some inattention of the mind, these limits are overlooked. Thus, in the case be- fore us, we must not imagine such an arbitrary exercise of God"s power over the minds and will of subordinate agents, as should convert rational beings into mere machines, and leave the Deity charged with the follies and the crimes of men, — which was the error of the Calvinists ; nor must we, on the other hand, set up such a liberty of created beings, as, necessarily precluding the Divine foreknowledge of human actions, should take the government of the mo- ral world out of the hands of God, and leave him nothing to do with the noblest part of his creation, — which hath been, perhaps, the worse error of some who have opposed the Calvinists.
There is yet another error upon this subject, which, I think, took its rise among professed infidels ; and to them,
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till of late, it hutli been entirely confined. But some have appeared among its modern advocates, actuated, I am per- suaded (for tlieir writings on this subject witness it), by the same humble spirit of resigned devotion which gave birth to the plan of arbitrary predestination. Deeply versed in physics, which the Calvinists neglected, these men wish to reconcile the notions of God's arbitrary do- minion, which they, in common with the Calvinists, main- tain, with what the others entirely overlooked, the regular operation of second causes : and in this circumstance lies the chief, if not the whole difference, between the phi- losophical necessity of our subtle moderns and the predes- tination of their more simple ancestors. And so far as these Necessarians maintain the certain influence of moral motives, as the natural and sufficient means whereby human actions, and even human thoughts, are brouglit into that continued chain of causes and effects, which, taking its beginning in the operations of the Infinite Mind, cannot but be fully understood by him, — so far they do service to the cause of truth ; placing the " great and glorious" doctrines of foreknowledge and providence, — absolute fore- knowledge, universal providence,— upon a firm and philo- sophical foundation ; — a thing to be wished with respect to every doctrine of any practical importance, whenever, as in this case, the great obscurity of the subject renders the interpretation of texts of Scripture dubious, which otherwise, taken as they ought to be, in the plainest and the most natural meaning of the words, might be decisive. But when they go beyond this, — when they would repre- sent this influence of moral motives as arising from a phy- sical necessity, the very same with that which excites and governs the motions of the inanimate creation, here they confound nature's distinctions, and contradict the very principles they would seem to have established. The source of their mistake is this, that they imagine a simi- litude between things which admit of no comparison — between the influence of a moral motive upon mind, and
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that of mechanical force upon matter. A moral motive and a mechanical force are botli indeed causes, and equally- certain causes each of its proper effect ; but they are causes in very different senses of the word, and derive their energy from the most opposite principles. Force is only ano- ther name for an ejjlcient cause ; it is that which impresses motion upon body, the passive recipient of a foreign im- pulse. A moral motive is what is more significantly called i\ie final cause, and can have no influence but with a being that proposes to itself an end, chooses means, and ihu&puts itself in action. It is true, that while this is my end, and while I conceive these to be the means, a definite act will as certainly follow that definite choice and judgment of my mind, provided I be free from all external restraint and impediment, as a determinate motion will be excited in a body by a force applied in a given direction. There is in both cases an equal certainty of t4ie effect ; but the prin- ciple of the certainty in the one case and in the other is entirely different, which difference necessarily arises from the different nature of final and efficient causes. Every cause, except it be the will of the Deity acting to the first production of substances, — every cause, I say, except this acting in this singular instance, produces its effect by act- ing upon something; and, whatever be the cause that acts, the principle of certainty lies in a capacity, in the thing on which it acts, of being affected by that action. Now, the capacity which force, or an efficient cause, requires in the object of its action, is absolute inertness. But intelligence and liberty constitute the capacity of being influenced by a final cause — by a moral motive : and to this very liberty- does this sort of cause owe its whole efficacy — the whole certainty of its operation ; which certainty never can dis- prove the existence of that liberty upon which it is itself founded, and of which it affords the highest evidence.
These distinctions between the eflftcient and the final cause being once understood, we may from the Necessarian's own principles deduce the firmest proof of the liberty of
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man : for, since God foreknows nnd governs future events, so far as subordinate agents are concerned in them, by the means of moral motives, that is, by final causes, — since these are the engines by which he turns and wields the intellectual world, bending the perverse wills of wicked men and of apostate spirits to his purpose, — and since these motives owe their energy, their whole success, to the liberty of the beings that are governed by them, it is in consequence most certain, however it may seem most strange, that God could not govern the world as he does, by final causes, if man were not free, no more than he could govern the material part of it mechanically, by effi- cient causes, if matter were not wholly passive. The Neces- sarian does not listen to this argument. He has furnished himself with an expedient to make room for the physical necessity he would introduce into what has been called the moral world. His expedient is neither more nor less than this, that he would annihilate the moral world altogether : he denies the existence of the immaterial principle in man, and would stamp the very form of human intellect, that living image of the Divinity, upon the passive substance of the brain ! It seems, the notion of an active principle distinct from the body, the true cause of voluntary motion, possessing in itself the faculties of thought, desire, voli- tion, and necessarily surviving the body, which principle should much more truly than the body constitute the man, — all this was a phantom of heathen philosophy, which a Christian, for that reason in particular, should discard. It is a new kind of argument against the truth of a proposi- tion which a man might otherwise be disposed to receive, that it hath been asserted and maintained by wise and good and learned men, who had spent a great part of their lives in thinking most intensely upon the subject. This is a new waif of managing the topic of authorities. When in the ardour of controversy a man alleges such an argu- ment as this, he is seldom perhaps aware how little he is himself in earnest in it — how nugatory it would appear to
239 him in any other but tliat particular instance wherein it happens to serve his purpose — how absurd, were it once turned against him. That acute writer who would ex- punge the doctrine of an immaterial soul and its immor- tality from the creed of a Christian, because many who were destitute of the assistances of revelation were brouo-ht by the mere light of nature to believe it, does not, I am well persuaded, the less firmly believe the being and the providence of God, because in that belief he happens to concur with Socrates and Plato,
Let us, however, turn to a meditation more adapted to this holy season. Let the pious Christian in every thing look up to God, with full assurance of faith, as to the first mover and cause of all things, the director of all events, the vigilant guardian and omnipotent protector of the vir- tuous : but let him no less firmly believe, that the morality of his actions is his own, — that he is free to stand and free to fall, — that if he fall, the blame is with himself, in his own foolish choice ; God is blameless.
According to this state of things, in which every thing is subject to the wise control of God, and human actions, and even the liberty of human actions, are constituent parts of the wonderfully complex scheme of Providence, — according to this state of things, so evidently implied in our Saviour's prediction of his sufferings, every thing fell out in exact agreement, not only with this prediction, but also with the ancient predictions of the Jewish prophets, and with the still more ancient types of the Mosaic law ; and yet every thing was brought about by the ordinary operation of second causes, and in great part by the free agency of man. At the season of the passover, our blessed Lord, whose present condition of humanity imposed upon him an implicit obedience to the positive precepts of the Mosaic law (which law was not yet abolished), was car- ried by motives of devotion to Jerusalem. The chief priests and scribes assembled with the elders in the hall of Cai- aphas the high-priest, to concert the safest measures of
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destroying- him. These men, in consideration of their worldly interests, had reason to dread the success of our Saviour's doctrine. There was nothing against which he had waged more constant war, than that system of hypo- crisy and superstition by which they had disfigured the true religion, and had enslaved the minds of the simple multitude. He had studiously improved every occasion of insisting upon the futility of their traditions, the vanity of their ceremonies, the insincerity of their devotion — of ex- posing their ignorance, their pride^ their ambition, their avarice. Motives of interest and revenge suggested the resolution, in this infernal assembly, of seizing the holy Jesus, and of putting him to death. A party of their officers and servants was sent immediately to execute the first part of the horrid purpose. Motives of avarice had prevailed upon the sordid mind of Judas to conspire with his master's enemies against his life. For a paltry bribe of something less than four pounds — for the sum that the law appointed for damages to the owner of a slave who had been killed accidentally by another man's ox, he conducts the officers of the great council to the accustomed place of our Lord's retirement, where Jesus was at this time withdrawn to prepare himself, by prayer and meditation, against that trying hour which he knew to be approach- ing.
Let us once more recur to the words of our Lord's pre- diction,— instructive words, upon which we never can too deeply meditate. He must go — he must suffer — he must be killed. Whence, and what was this necessity ? — As- suredly no absolute necessity originally seated in the na- ture of the thing, that the Son of God should suffer ; — he might have left the miserable race of man to perish in their sins. The Son is in all things, but in nothing more than in love and mercy, the express image of the Father. Notwithstanding all that man could plead in extenuation of his transgression (and somewhat he had to plead, — the frailty of his nature — the subtlety of the tempter,) yet the
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purposes of God's moral government rendered it unfit to pardon sin without intercession and atonement. Com- passion instigates the Son of God to pay the forfeit of our crimes, and to satisfy, in his own person, the Eternal Fa- ther's justice. Impelled by tJiis necessity, incited by com- miseration of our fallen state, he lays aside the glory "which he had with the Father before the world began." In the virgin's womb he clothes himself with flesh ; and, together with that mortal clothing, he assumes man's per- fect nature, — a nature subject to our wants and to our pains, not insensible to our enjoyments, susceptible, as appeared in many actions of his life, of our social attachments, and though pure from the stain of sin, not exempt from the feeling of temptation. When his hour draws near, this human nature shrinks under the apprehension of pain ; — he foresees the accumulated horror of his approaching sufferings, — he foresees it with distress and agony. Where is the wise disputer of the world, who says that pain and affliction are not evils; — who, sufficient to himself, indif- ferent to things external, boasts that he would be unmoved in calamity, at ease in torment? Bring him to Gethse- mane : there shall he see a just man and perfect — a man whose conscience reproaches him with no vice or folly — a man whose life hath been piety and love, unaffected piety, disinterested love — a man in whose ample mind are hidden all the treasures of knowledge — a man assuredly entitled to every comfort which the consciousness of per- fection, of perfect virtue and of perfect wisdom, can bestow, —he shall see this wise, this good, this perfect man, this man in union with Divinity, overwhelmed with grief and tribulation. "Surely he bears our griefs, he carries our sorrows, he undergoes the chastisement of our peace." See his mortified looks, his troubled gestures ! See the bloody sweat! strange symptom of the unuttered pangs that rend his righteous heart. See him prostrate on the earth in anxious supplication. Humble thyself, O vain philosophy ! dismiss thy arrogant maxims: learn from this alfecting
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spectacle a better wisdom than thine own ; — learn it of him who brought it from above. Say not that affliction is not an evil : say that it is to be bonie with humility, as the punishment of sin — to be endured with fortitude, as the instrument of good — to be accepted with thankfulness, as the discipline of God, whereby he trains his sons to virtue, and fits the virtuous for glory ; but confess that it is that which the most perfect natures do the most abhor, — that which it is the wisdom of man, with due submis- sion to the dispensations of Providence, to shun.
Our Saviour, in the anguish of his soul, but with per- fect resignation to the Father's will, prays that, if possible, the cup of bitterness may pass by him. The counsels of God are founded on unerring wisdom ; they cannot be reversed or changed. The awful sentence is gone forth, "Without blood there is no remission!" "Awake, O sword! against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts." Love to man, joined with a zeal for the honour and support of the Father's government,— these motives, which first engaged him in the painful work of our redemption, prevail over his human feelings; and farther fortified by a vision from heaven, he determines to meet the malice of his enemies ; and when the officers of the Sanhedrim appear with Judas at their head, he summons not those legions of angels which were ever in readiness to attend his call, — he puts not forth the powers that resided in him,^ — he commands his attendants to sheath the swords already drawn in his defence, — he repairs the violence that one of them already had com- mitted,— and after such rebuke to the traitor, and such expostulations with the officers, as might show them that he knew every particular of the conspiracy, and was aware of all that was intended, he surrenders himself without resistance, thus verifying the ancient prediction, " He was led like a lamb to the slaughter ; and as a sheep before the shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth."
The chief priests and elders were unwilling to put him
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to death by their own authority, lest they should incur the charge of tumult and sedition ; for Judea being at this time a Roman province, death could not regularly be in- flicted without the permission, at least, of the Roman go- vernor, and they were desirous of putting the face of public justice upon the whole of the transaction. Cool and crafty in their malice, they present him before Pilate, and, urging the complicated charge of blasphemy and sedition, insist upon his death. Pilate well understood that both these accusations were groundless : but he was very unpopular in his province, which he is said to have ruled with a rod of iron. He was given to understand, that if he stood forth as the friend of Jesus, he would himself incur the accusa- tion of traitorous designs. He took the alarm at this. He saw that complaints might be carried to Rome : he well knew the jealous temper of the Emperor Tiberius, ever ready to listen to complaints against his provincial governors — cruel and implacable in his resentments : he thought the present opportunity was not to be missed of doing the Jews a pleasure, by throwing away the life, as he conceived, of an inconsiderable, friendless man, who, when once he was gone, would never be inquired after. And from these motives of selfish cunning and guilty fear, Pilate, against the remonstrances of his conscience and the warnings of Heaven, consented to our Saviour's death. The execution of the Roman governor's sentence fell in course upon the Roman soldiers, and this insured that particular kind of death which our Lord had himself pre- dicted ; for crucifixion was not the punishment vi^hich the Jewish law appointed for the crimes wherewith Jesus was charged, but it was one which the Romans inflicted upon oflenders of the meanest condition, or those who had been guilty of the most atrocious and flagitious crimes. The living body of the suflerer was fastened to two cross pieces of wood, by nails driven through the hands and feet ; the feet being nailed to the upright post, and the hands to the two extremities of the transverse beam. In this situation, R 2
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the miserable objects of this barbarous punishment were lett to consume in lingering and dreadlYil torments : for as none of the parts essential to life was immediately in- jured, none of the vital actions immediately impeded, and none of the larger blood vessels set open, the death was necessarily slow ; and the muUitude of nerves that termi- nate in the hands and feet, giving those parts the nicest sensibility, rendered the sutterings exquisite.
Such was the death to which the unrelenting malice of his enemies consigned the meek and holy Jesus. I must not farther pursue the detail of those minute occurrences, in which, though brought about by natural and common causes, the ancient prophecies concerning the circum- stances of our Saviour's passion were remarkably fulfilled. It was not till every tittle was fulfilled, that the patient Son of God, as if then and not before at liberty to depart, said " It is finished !" bowed his anointed head, and ren- dered up the ghost. Wonderful catastrophe ! replete with mysteries ; among which the harmony of Divine Provi- dence and human liberty is not the least. Mechanical causes, governed by a single intellect, could not with more certainty have wrought the predetermined effect : inde- pendent beings could not have pursued with greater li- berty, than the persons concerned in this horrid trans- action, each his separate design, "/if isjinishedr Holy victim! thy sufterings are finished I All is finished, that wicked men were wonderfully destined to contribute to- ward the general deliverance ! What remains, infinite power and infinite mercy shall accomplish. The disciples, those few of them who had the courage to be present at this dismal scene, hang their heads in sorrowful despon- dency, and seem to have abandoned the hope that this was he who should redeem Israel. But Israel is redeemed. The high sacrifice, appointed before the foundation of the world, typified in all the sacrifices of the law, is now slain, and is accepted. That Jesus who, according to his own prediction, hath expired on the cross, shall, according to
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his own prediction, be raised again on the third day. He is raised, — he is entered into glory, — he is sitten down lor ever at the right hand of the Majesty on high : there he pleads the merit of his blood in behalf of those crying sins that caused it to be shed. Nor does he plead in vain. The final judgment is committed to him ; and the greatest of sinners that will but forsake their evil ways, have no reason to fear the severity of a judge who hath himself been touched with the feeling of our infirmities. On the other hand, let not any deceive themselves with a vain reliance oh his merits, who, after all that the Son of God hath done and suffered for them, remain impenitent. The sacrifice of the cross was no less a display of the just seve- rity than of the tender mercy of God. The authority of his government must be maintained. This rendered in- tercession and atonement necessary for the pardon of sin in the first instance, — the most meritorious intercession, the highest atonement. For those "who despise so great salvation," who cannot be reclaimed by the promises and threatenings of the gospel — by the warnings of God's wrath — by the assurances of mercy — by the contempla- tion of their Saviour's love, — for those who cannot be re- claimed by these powerful motives from obstinate courses of wilful vice, there assuredly " remains no more sacrifice for sin, but a certain fearful looking-for of fiery indigna- tion," which at the last day shall burn with inextinguisha- ble rage against these incorrigible adversaries of God and goodness. Grant, O Lord, that all we who are this day assembled before thee, lamenting our sins and imploring thy mercy, may be permitted, through the intercession of thy Son, to escape the everlasting horrors of that second death !
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SERMON XX.
Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit ;
by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which sometime were disobedient^ when once the loug-suftering of God waited in the days of Noah. — 1 Peter iii. 18 — 20.
Ix the first rudiments of our Christian faith, comprised in the Apostles' Creed, which we are made to get by heart - in our earliest infancy, we are taught to believe 'that " our Lord Jesus Christ descended into hell ;" and this belief is solemnly professed by every member of the congregation, when that creed is repeated in the daily service of the church. And it seemed of so much importance that it should be distinctly acknowledged by the Church of Eng- land, when we separated from the Roman communion, that cur reformers thought proper to make it by itself the subject of one of the articles of religion. They were aware, that upon the fact of our Lord's descent into hell the Church of Rome pretended to build her doctrine of purgatory, which they justly esteem.ed one of her worst corruptions ; but, apprehensive that the zeal of reformation might in this, as in some other instances, carry men too far, and induce them to reject a most important truth, on which a dan- gerous error had been once ingrafted, — to prevent this intemperance of reform, they assert, in the third article of the Thirty-nine, " That as Christ died for us and was bu- ried, so it is to be believed that he went down into hell." The terms in which they state the proposition, imply that Christ's going down into hell is a matter of no less impor- tance to be believed than that he died upon the cross for men — is no less a plain matter of fact in the history of our Lord's life and death, than the burial of his dead body. It should seem, that what is thus taught among the first things which children learn, should be among the plainest, — that what is thus laid down as a matter of the same ne-
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cessity to be believed as our Lords passion and atone- ment, should be among- the least disputed, — that what every Christian is required to acknowledge as his own belief, in the daily assemblies of the faifliful, should little need either explanation or proof to any that have been in- structed in the very first principles only of the doctrine of Christ. But so it is, that what the sagacity of our re- formers foresaw, the precaution which they used has not prevented. The truth itself lias been brought into discre- dit by the errors with which it has been adulterated ; and such has been the industry of modern refinement, and un- fortunately so great has been its success, that doubts have been raised about the sense of this plain article of our creed by some, and by others about the truth and authenticity of 'it. It will, therefore, be no unprofitable undertaking to show that the assertion in the Apostles' Creed, that " our Lord descended into hell," is to be taken as a plain matter of fact in the literal meaning oi the words, — to show what proof of this fact we have in holy writ, — and, lastly, to show the great use and importance of the fact as a point of Christian doctrine.
First, then, for the sense of the proposition, " He de- scended into hell."' If we consider the words as they stand in the Creed itself, and in connexion with what im- mediately precedes and follows them, they appear evi- dently to contain a declaration of something which our Lord performed — some going of our Lord to a place called "hell," in the interval of time between the burial of his dead body and his rising to life again on the third day after that interment ; for thus speaks the Creed of Jesus Christ: " — was crucified, dead, and buried; he de- scended into hell ; the third day he rose again from the dead." It is evident that the descending into hell is spoken of as an action of our Lord, but as an action per- formed by him after he was dead and buried, and before he rose again. In the body, our dead Lord, more than any other dead man, could perform no action; for the
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very notion of death is, that all sensation, and activity, and power of motion of the body, is in that state of the man extinguished. This, therefore, was an act of that part of the man which continues active after death, — that is, of the soul separated by death from the body, — as the interment must be understood of the body apart from the soul. The dead body could no more go into hell than the living soul could be laid in the grave. Considering the words, therefore, as they stand in the Creed as the church now receives it, they seem as little capable of any variety of meaning, and almost as little to require explanation, as the word " buried." That word describes not more plainly, to the apprehensions of all men, what was done with the inanimate body of our crucified Lord, than these words declare what was done by his rational soul in its'* intermediate state. The only question that can possibly arise to a plain man's understanding is, where or what the place may be which is here called hell, to which it is said our Lord in the state of death descended.
It is evident that this must be some place below the surface of the earth ; for it is said that he " descended," that is, he went down to it. Our Lord's death took place upon the surface of the earth, where the human race in- habit ; that, therefore, and none higher, is the place from which he descended : of consequence, the place to which he went by descent was below it ; and it is w^ith relation to these parts below the surface that his rising to life on the third day must be understood. This was only a re- turn from the nether regions to the realms of life and day, from which he had descended, — not his ascension into heaven, which was a subsequent event, and makes a dis- tinct article in the Creed.
But although the hell to which our Lord descended was indeed below, as the word " descent" implies, it is by no means to be understood of the place of torment. This is a point which requires elucidation, to prevent a mistake into which the unlearned easily might fall. The
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word " heir' is so often applied, in common speech, and in the English translation of the New Testament, to the place of torment, that the genuine meaning of the word (in which, how^ever, it is used in many passages of the English Bible) is almost forgotten; and the common peo- ple never hear of hell but their thoughts are carried to that dismal place " where the fallen angels are kept in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day." But the word, in its natural import, sig- nifies only that invisible place which is the appointed habitation of departed souls in the interval between death and the general resurrection. That such a place must be, is indisputable; for when man dieth, his soul dieth not, but returneth unto him that gave it, to be disposed of at his will and pleasure, — which is clearly im- plied in that admonition of our Saviour, " Fear not them which kill the body, but cannot kill the soul." But the soul existing after death, and separated from the body, though of a nature immaterial, must be in some place: for, however metaphysicians may talk of place as one of the adjuncts of body, as if nothing but gross, sensible body could be limited to a place, to exist without relation to place seems to be one of the imcommunicable perfections of the Divine Being ; and it is hardly to be conceived that any created spirit, of however high an order, can be with- out locality, or without such determination of its existence at any given time to some certain place, that it shall be true to say of it, " Here it is, and not elsewhere." That such at least is the condition of the human soul, were it seasonable to go into so abstruse a disquisition, might be proved, I think, indisputably from holy writ. Assuming, therefore, that every departed soul has its place of resi- dence, it would be reasonable to suppose, if revelation were silent on the subject, that a common mansion is pro- vided for them all, their nature being similar; since we see throuofhout all nature creatures of the same sort
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placed together in the same element. But i-evelation is not silent. The sacred writers of the Old Testament speak of such a common mansion in the inner parts of the earth; and we find the same opinion so general among the heathen writers of antiquity, that it is more probable that it had its rise in the earliest patriarchal revelations than in the imaginations of man, or in poetical fiction. The notion is confirmed by the language of the writers of the New Testament, with this additional circumstance, that they divide this central mansion of the dead into two dis- tinct regions, for the separate lodging of the souls of the righteous and the reprobate. In this, too, they have the concurrence of the earliest heathen poets, who placed the good and the bad in separate divisions of the central re- gion. The name v;hich the Hebrew writers gave to this mansion of departed souls (without regard to any such division) expresses only that it is a place unknown, about which all are curious and inquisitive. The writers of the New Testament adopted the name which the earliest Greek writers had given it, which describes it by the sin- gle property of invisibility. But for the place of torment by itself, they had quite another appellation. The English word " hell," in its primary and natural meaning, signifies nothing more than " the unseen and covered place;" and is properly used, both in the Old and the New Testament, to render the Hebrew word in the one, and the Greek word in the other, which denote the invisible mansion of disembodied souls, without any reference to suffering. But being used also in the translation of the New Testa- ment for that other word which properly denotes the place of torment, the good sense of the word, if we may so call it, is unfortunately forgotten, and the common peo- ple know of no other hell but that of the burning lake.
This certainly was oiot the hell to which the soul of Christ descended. He descended to hell properly so called, — to the invisible mansion of departed spirits, and
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to that part of it where the souls of the fuitbful, when they are delivered from the burden of the flesh, are in joy and felicity.
That he should go to this place was a necessary branch of the general scheme and project of redemption, which required, that the Divine Word should take our nature upon him, and fulfil the entire condition of humanity in every period and stage of man's existence, from the com- mencement of life, in the mother's womb, to the extinction and the renovation of it. The same wonderful scheme of humiliation which required that the Son should be con- ceived, and born, and put to death, made it equally neces- sary that his soul, in its intermediate state, should be ga- thered to the souls of the departed saints.
That the invisible place of their residence is the hell to which our Lord descended, is evident from the terms of his own promise to the repentant thief upon the cross : " Verily, I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." Paradise was certainly some place where our Lord was to be on the very day on which he suffered, and where the companion of his sufferings was to be with him. It was not heaven ; for to heaven our Lord after his death ascended not till after his resurrection, as appears from his own words to Mary Magdalen. He was not therefore in heaven on the day of the crucifixion ; and where he was not the thief could not be with him. It was no place of torment; for to any such place the name of Paradise never was applied. It could be no other than that region of repose and rest where the souls of the righteous abide in joyful hope of the consummation of their bliss. And upon this single text we might safely rest the proof of this article of our Creed in the sense in which we explain it, — a sense so plain and prominent, in the bare words, to every one who is not misled by the popular misapplication of the word " hell," that it never would have been set aside to make room for expositions of more refinement, much less would the authenticity of the article ever even have
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been questioned, but for the countenance which it was supposed to give to the doctrine of purgatory as taught in the Church of Rome, with which, however, it has not even a remote connexion. Time will not permit me to enter into a particular examination of the different interpreta- tions of this article which have been attempted by those who have not gone the length of proposing to expunge it from the Creed, because they were well aware, that al- though it is not to be found in any copy of the Creed now extant, of an earlier date than the latter end of the fourth century, yet that Christ, in some sense or other, descended into hell, was the unanimous belief of the Christian church from the earliest ages. I will offer only this general ob- servation,— that the interpretation which I have given is the only literal interpretation which the words will bear, unless we would admit the extravagant assertion, as to me it seems, of the venerable Calvin, that our blessed Lord actually went down to the place of torment, and there sustained (horrible to think or mention!) the pains of a reprobate soul in punishment, — a notion evidently confuted by our Lord's own description of the place where the companion of his sufferings on the cross was to be with him on the very day of the crucifixion. This sense being thus confuted, I say the personal descent of our Lord to that region where the souls of the righteous rest in hope, is the only literal interpretation which the words of the article will bear ; and that any figurative interpretation of the words of a creed or formulary of faith are inadmissible ; for, in such a composition, intended to convey the know- ledge of the most important truths to the most ordinary understandings, the ornamental figures of rhetoric or poetry would be no less out of place than in the opinion of a judge upon a question of law, or in a mathematical demonstration. They could have no other effect than to introduce doubt, where every thing ought to be precise and unequivocal. Without entering, therefore, into a par- ticular confutation of the figurative interpretations that
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have been oilered of this article of the Creed, 1 shall pro- ceed at once to show what proof we find in Scripture of the fact averred, according; to the literal meanino; of the words, that " Christ descended into hell."
This proof rests, I think, principally upon three texts of Scripture, in addition to that which I have already mentioned, as atfording by itself ample confirmation of the truth of the proposition, namely, our Lord's promise to the penitent thief upon the cross. But there are three other texts which conspire with this to put the matter out of doubt. The first is that text of the Psalmist which was alleged by St. Peter, in his first sermon on the day of Pentecost, as a prophecy concerning Christ, verified in his resurrection from the dead. " Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thy Holy One to see corruption.'' The apostle having recited these words of the Psalmist, says they were not spoken by David of him- self, but that David, being a prophet, spake of the resur- rection of Christ,' — that his soul was not left in hell, nei- ther did his flesh see corruption. From this text, if there were no other, the article, in the sense in which we have explained it, is clearly and infallibly deduced ; for if the soul of Christ were not left in hell at his resurrection, then it was in hell before his resurrection. But it was not there either before his death or after his resurrection, for that never was imagined : therefore it descended into hell after his death, and before his resurrection : for as his flesh, by virtue of the divine promise, saw no corruption, although it was in the grave, the place of corruption, where it re- mained until his resurrection; so his soul, which by virtue of the like promise was not left in hell, was in that hell where it was not left, until the time came for its reunion to the body for the accomplishment of the resurrection. Hence it is so clearly evinced that the soul of Christ was in the place called hell, "that none but an infidel," saith St. Augustine, " can deny it."
Another text which carries us to the same conclusion,
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is in the fourth chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Eplie- sians, in the apostle's reasoning upon a passage of the sixty-eighth Psalm, which he applies as prophetic of the various gifts which Christ, after his ascension, conferred upon the members of his church. The Psalmist speaks to this effect, as he is cited by the apostle : " When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men." " Now that he ascended," says the apostle, arguing upon the Psalmist's words, " what is it but that he descended first into the lower parts of the earth?" — intimating, that the ascending up on high, of which the Psalmist speaks, is to be understood in refe- rence to a previous descent into the lowest regions, as its opposite.
Some, however, have imagined, that the descent into hell is not to be deduced from this text with the same certainty as from the former. They imagine something of ambiguity in the phrase of "the lower parts of the earth." Rightly referring the ascending up on high to our Lord's ascension into heaven, they think that "the lower parts of the earth" may signify the earth gene- rally, as lower than the heavens, and even nothing lower than the very surface of it. And it must be confessed that our Lord speaks of himself before his death, while he was living upon the surface of the earth, as having come down to it from heaven. Nevertheless, "the lower parts of the earth," in the Greek language, in which the apostle writes, is a periphrasis for "hell" in the proper sense of that word, as the invisible mansion of departed spirits. The phrase is so perfectly equivalent to the word " hell," that we find it used instead of that word in some of the Greek copies of the Creed, in this very article, where the mention of our Lord's coming down from hea- ven to dwell upon the earth would be quite out of place, after the mention of the several events of his birth, cru- cifixion, death, and burial, in their natural order and suc- cession. But, indeed, this phrase of the "lower parts of
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the eartir" is in the Greek language so much a name tor the central parts of the globe, as distinguished from the surface or the outside on which we live, that had the apostle intended by this phrase to denote the inhabited surface of the earth, as lowei- than the heavens, we may confidently say his Greek converts at Ephesus would not easily have guessed his meaning. This text, there- fore, when the Greek words are taken in the only sense in which any writer in that language would have used, or any one who spoke the language would have under- stood them, expressly affirms a descent of Christ's spirit into hell.
A third scripture which goes to the proof of the same fact, is that very remarkable passage in the third chapter of St. Peter's First Epistle, which I have chosen for my text. I might mention, as a fourth, another passage in the following chapter of the same Epistle, which alludes to the same event, but not, I think, with equal certainty ; for the sense of that following passage is indeed depen- dent upon this, insomuch that any figurative interpreta- tion which would invalidate the argument we shall deduce from this first passage, would in equal degree affect the second ; and no proof can be drawn from that of Christ's descent into hell, if none can be previously found in the words of my text.
But in them, taken in their most literal and obvious meaning, we find not only a distinct assertion of the fact that " Christ descended into hell" in his disembodied spirit, but moreover, a declaration of the business upon which he went thither, or in which at least his soul was employed while it was there. " Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit ; by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which sometime were disobedient." The interpretation of this whole pas- sage turns upon the expression " spirits in prison;" the sense of which I shall first, therefore, endeavour to ascer- tain, as the key to thejneaning of the whole. It is hardly
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necessary to mention, that " spirits" here can signify no other spirits than the souls of men; for we read not of any preaching of Christ to any other race of beings than mankind. The apostle's assertion, therefore, is this, that Christ went and preached to souls of men in prison. The invisible mansion of departed spirits, though certainly not a place of penal confinement to the good, is never- theless in some respects a prison. It is a place of seclusion from the external world— a place of unfinished happiness, consisting in rest, security, and hope, more than enjoy- ment. It is a place which the souls of men never would have entered, had not sin introduced death, and from which there is no exit by any natural means for those who once have entered. The deliverance of the saints from it is to be effected by our Lord's power. It is described in the old Latin language as a place enclosed within an im- passable fence; and in the poetical parts of Scripture it is represented as secured by gates of brass, which our Lord is to batter down, and barricadoed with huge, massive iron bars, which he is to cut in sunder. As a place of con- finement, therefore, though not of punishment, it may well be called a prison. The original word, however, in this text of the apostle, imports not of necessity so much as this, but merely a place of safe keeping ; for so this passage might he rendered with great exactness. " He went and preached to the spirits in safe keeping." And the invisible mansion of departed souls is to the righteous a place of safe keeping, where they a.re preserved under the shadow of God's right hand, as their condition sometimes is de- scribed in Scripture, till the season shall arrive for their advancement to their future glory; as the souls of the wicked, on the other hand, are reserved, in the other divi- sion of the same place, unto the judgment of the great day. Now, if Christ went and preached to souls of men thus in prison or in safe keeping, surely he went to the prison of those souls, or to the place of their custody ; and what place that should be but the hell of the Apostles'
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Creed, to which our Lord descended, I have not yet met with the critic that could explain. So clearly does this text affirm the fact of Christ's descent into hell.
But this is not all. It agrees with the Apostles' Creed in the time of this event, that it was in the interval be- tween our Lord's death and resurrection ; for the apostle affirms, that it was in his spirit, that is, in his disembodied soul, that Christ went and preached to those souls in safe custody. " Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit." " Quickened by the Spirit." — The Spirit, in these English words, seems to be put, not for the soul of Christ, but for the Divine Spirit ; and the sense seems to be, that Christ, after he was put to death, was raised to life again by the Holy Spirit. But this, though it be the sense of the English translation, and a true proposition, is certainly not the sense of the apostle's words. It is of great importance to remark, though it may seem a gram- matical nicety, that the prepositions, in either branch of this clause, have been supplied by the translators, and are not in the original. The words " flesh" and " spirit," in the original, stand without any preposition, in that case which, in the Greek language, without any preposition, is the case either of the cause or instrument by which — of the time when — of the place where — of the part in which — of the manner how — or of the respect in which, accord- ing to the exigence of the context ; and, to any one who will consider the original with critical accuracy, it will be obvious, from the perfect antithesis of these two clauses concerning flesh and spirit, that if the word " spirit" de- note the active cause by which Christ was restored to life, which must be supposed by them who understand the word of the Holy Ghost, the word " flesh " must equally denote the active cause by which he was put to death, which tliere- fore must have been the flesh of his own body, — an inter- pretation too manifestly absurd to be admitted. But if the word " flesh " denote, as it most evidently does, the part in which death took effect upon him, " spirit" must
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denote the part'in which life was preserved in him, that is, his own soul ; and the word " quickened" is often applied to signify, not the resuscitation of life extinguished, but the preservation and continuance of life subsisting. The exact rendering, therefore, of the apostle's words would be — " Being put to death in the flesh, but quick in the spirit ;" that is, surviving in his soul the stroke of death which his body had sustained ; " by which," or rather " in which,"' that is, in which surviving soul, " he went and preached to the souls of men in prison or in safe keeping."
It is not to be wondered that this text should have been long considered in the church as one of the principal foun- dations of the catholic belief of Christ's descent into hell : it is rather to be wondered that so clear a proof should ever have been abandoned. In the Articles of religion agreed upon in convocation in tie year 1552, the 6th of Edward the Sixth, and published by the king's authority the year following, the, third article is in these words : "As Christ died and was buried for us, so also it is to be believed that he went down into hell ; for the body lay in the se- pulchre until the resurrection, but his ghost departing from him, was with the ghosts that were in prison, or in hell, as the place of St. Peter doth testify." But in the short interval of ten years, between this convocation in the reign of Edward and the setting forth of the Thirty-nine Articles in their present form, in the 5th of Queen Eliza- beth, a change seems to have taken place in the opinions of the divines of our church with respect to this text of St. Peter ; for in the Articles, as they were then drawn, and we now have them, Christ's descent into hell is still asserted, but the proof of it from the text of St. Peter is withdrawn, — as if the literal sense of the text which affords the proof had fallen under suspicion, and some other exposition of it had been adopted. This change of opinion, I fear, is to be ascribed to an undue reliance of the divines of that time on the authority of St. Austin ; for St. Austin was, I think, the first who doubted of the literal sense of this pas-
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sage of St. Peter. He perplexes himself with some ques- tions, which seemed to him to arise out of it, of too great subtlety perhaps to be solved by man ; and then he had recourse to the usual but dangerous expedient of abandon- ing the plain meaning of the passage, for some loose, figu- rative interpretation, which presents a proposition of no sort of difficulty to the understanding of the critic, because in truth it is a proposition of his own making. I mean iK)t to depreciate the character of St. Austin. He was indeed, in his day, a burning and a shining light ; and he has been ever since, by his writings, one of the brightest luminaries of the Latin church, — a man of warm, unaffected piety, of the greatest natural talents and the highest attain- ments, exercised in the assiduous study of the Holy Scrip- tures, replete with sacred learning, and withal deeply versed in that Pagan lore, in Avhich, however it may have been of late shamefully calumniated, the soundest divines have always been great proficients. In polite literature he was the rival — in science and philosophy the superior, by many degrees, of his great cotemporary St. Jerome. But it was a culpable deference to the authority even of so great and good a man, if his doubts were in any case turned into objections, and the interpretation of Scripture adjusted to opinions which he himself propounds with doubt and hesitation. Those in later times, who have im- proved upon St. Austin's hint of figurating this passage, have succeeded no better than they who have made the like attempt upon the article of our Lord's descent in the Creed. They tell us, that by the souls in prison are to be understood the Gentile world in bondage and captivity to sin and Satan, and held in the chains of their own lusts ; and, for confirmation of this, they refer to those passages of the prophet Isaiah in which it is predicted of Christ, that he is to bring the prisoners out of prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house, — that he is to say to the prisoners, " Go forth," — that he is to proclaim s2
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liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those that are bound.
Now, we deny not that the state of the unregenerate, carnal man is indeed represented in Scripture under the images of captivity and bondage, and his sinful lusts under the images of chains and fetters ; but, with respect to the alleged passages from the prophet Isaiah, — in the last of them most indubitably, and I believe in all, but in the last without doubt, the prison is no other than that self-same place which is the prison or place of safe keeping in this text of St. Peter, according to our notion of it. The en- largement of the saints from the confinement of that place is the liberation predicted. Their souls in that place are the captives to whom the Redeemer, at the season of his final triumph over death and hell, shall say, " Go forth." These texts of the prophet, therefore, rather afford a con- firmation of the literal acceptation of the apostle's words, than of those jejune figurative interpretations, which mo- dern criticism, scared at the bugbear of purgatory, would substitute for the plain and obvious sense.
It cannot, however, be dissembled, that difficulties arise out of the particular character of the souls in custody ; to which I shall give such consideration as the time will permit.
The souls in custody, to whom our Saviour went in his disembodied soul and preached, were those " which some- time were disobedient," The expression " sometime were," or "one while had been disobedient," implies that they were recovered, however, from that disobedience, and, before their death, had been brought to repentance and faith in the Redeemer to come. To such souls he went and preached. But what did he preach to departed souls, and what could be the end of his preaching? Certainly he preached neither repentance nor faith ; for the preaching of either comes too late to the departed soul. These souls had believed and repented, or they had not been in that
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part of the nether regions which the soul of the Redeemer visited. Nor was the end of his preaching any liberation of them from we know not what purgatorial pains, of which the Scriptures give not the slightest intimation. But if he went to proclaim to them (and to proclaim or publish is the true sense of the word "to preach") the glad-tidings, that he had actually offered the sacrifice of their redemp- tion, and was about to appear before the Father as their intercessor, in the merit of his own blood, this was a preaching fit to be addressed to departed souls, and would give new animation and assurance to their hope of the consummation in due season of their bliss ; and this, it may be presumed, was the end of his preaching. But the great difficulty, in the description of the souls to whom this preaching for this purpose was addressed, is this, that they were souls of some of the antediluvian race. Not that it at all startles me to find antediluvian souls in safe keeping for final salvation: on the contrary, I should find it very difficult to believe (unless I were to read it some- where in the Bible), that of the millions that perished in the general deluge, all died hardened in impenitence and unbelief, insomuch that not one of that race could be an object of future mercy, beside the eight persons who were miraculously saved in the ark, for the purpose of re- peopling the depopulated earth. Nothing in the general plan of God's dealings with mankind, as revealed in Scrip- ture, makes it necessary to suppose, that, of the antedilu- vian race who might repent upon Noah's preaching, more would be saved from the temporal judgment than the pur- pose of a gradual repopulation of the world demanded ; or to suppose, on the other hand, that all who perished in the flood are to perish everlastingly in the lake of fire. But the great difficulty, of which perhaps I may be unable to give any adequate solution, is this, — For what reason should the proclamation of the finishing of the great work of redemption be addressed exclusively to the souls of these antediluvian penitents? Were not the souls of the
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penitents of later ages equally interested in the joyful tidings? To this I can only answer, that I think I have observed, in some parts of Scripture, an anxiety, if the ex- pression may be allovs^ed, of the sacred writers to convey distinct intimations that the antediluvian race is not unin- terested in the redemption and the final retribution. It is for this purpose, as I conceive, that in the description of the general resurrection, in the visions of the Apocalypse, it is mentioned with a particular emphasis, that the ''^ sea gave up the dead that were in it ;" which I cannot be con- tent to understand of the few persons — few in comparison of the total of mankind — lost at different times by ship- wreck (a poor circumstance to find a place in the midst of the magnificent images which surround it), but of the my- riads who perished in the general deluge, and found their tomb in the waters of that raging ocean. It may be con- ceived, that the souls of those who died in that dreadful visitation might from that circumstance have peculiar ap- prehensions of themselves as the marked victims of divine vengeance, and might peculiarly need the consolation which the preaching of our Lord in the subterranean re- gions afforded to these prisoners of hope. However that may be, thither, the apostle says, he went and preached. Is any difficulty that may present itself to the human mind, upon the circumstances of that preaching, of sufficient weight to make the thing unfit to be believed upon the word of the apostle ? — Or are we justified, if, for such dif- ficulties, we abandon the plain sense of the apostle's words, and impose upon them another meaning, not easily adapted to the words, though more proportioned to the capacity of our understanding, — especially when it is confirmed by other Scriptures that he went to that place ? In that place he could not but find the souls which are in it in safe keeping ; and, in some way or other, it cannot but be sup- posed that he would hold conference with them ; and a particular conference with one class might be the means, and certjiinly could be no obstruction, to a general com-
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munication with all. It' the clear assertions of holy writ are to be discredited, on account of difficulties which may seem to the human mind to arise out of them, little will remain to be believed in revealed or even in what is called natural religion : we must immediately part with the doc- trines of atonement — of gratuitous redemption — of justi- fication by faith, without the works of the law — of sanc- tification by the influence of the Holy Spirit; and we must part at once with the hope of the resurrection. " How are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come?" are questions more easily asked than answered, unless it may be an answer, to refer the proposer of them to the promises of holy writ, and the power of God to make good those promises.
Having now, I trust, shown that the article of Christ's descent into hell is to be taken as a plain matter of fact, in the literal meaning of the words, — having exhibited the positive proof that we find of this fact in holy writ, — hav- ing asserted the literal meaning of my text, and displayed, in its full force, the convincing proof to be deduced from this passage in particular, — I shall now, with great brevity, demonstrate the great use and importance of the fact itself as a point of Christian doctrine.
Its great use is this, — that it is a clear confutation of the dismal notion of death as a temporary extinction of the life of the whole man; or, what is no less gloomy and dis- couraging, the notion of the sleep of the soul in the in- terval between death and the resurrection. Christ was made so truly man, that whatever took place in the human nature of Christ may be considered as a model and example of what must take place, in a certain due proportion and degree, in every man united to him. Christ's soul sur- vived the death of his body: therefore shall the soul of every believer survive the body's death. Christ's disem- bodied soul descended into hell : thither, therefore, shall the soul of every believer in Christ descend. In that place, the soul of Christ, in its separate state, possessed and
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exercised active powers : in the same place, therefore, shall the believer's spul possess and exercise activity. Christ's soul was not left in hell : neither shall the souls of his ser- vants there be left but for a season. The appointed time will come, when the Redeemer shall set open the doors of their prison-house, and say to his redeemed, " Go forth."
SERMON XXL
The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbatli. — Makk ii. 27.
The two opposite characters of the hypocrite and the profane are in no part of their conduct more conspicu- ously distinguished, than by the opposite errors which they seem to adopt concerning the degree of attention due to the positive institutions of religion, whether of human or Divine appointment. Under the name of positive in- stitutions, we comprehend all those impositions and re- straints, which, not being suggested to any man by his conscience, and having no necessary and natural con- nexion with the dictates of that internal monitor, seem to have no importance but what they may derive from the will of a superior who prescribes them. Of this sort, as far as we at present understand it, was the restriction laid upon our first parents in Paradise— the prohibition of the use of blood for food, after the deluge — the rite of circum- cision in Abraham's family — the whole of the Mosaic ri- tual— the sacraments of the Christian church — the insti- tution of the Sabbath — and, besides these, all ceremonies of worship whatsoever, of human appointment. All these things come under the notion of positive institutions ; for although the expediency of things of the kind, in the se- veral successive ages of the world, is sufficiently apparent, yet the particular merit of the special acts enjoined, for which they might be preferable to other acts which might
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have been devised for the same purpose, is perhaps in none of the instances alleged very easy to be discovered. That men should assemble, at stated seasons, for the public worship of God, all must perceive to be a duty, who ac- knowledge that a creature, endowed with the high faculties of reason and intelligence, owes to his Maker public ex- pressions of homage and adoration : but that the assembly should recur every seventh, rather than every sixth or every eighth day, no natural sanctity of the seventh, more than of the sixth or eighth, persuades. That Christians, in their public assemblies, should commemorate that death by which death was overcome, and the gate of everlasting life set open to the true believer, no one who pretends to a just sense of the benefit received, and the sharpness of the pain endured, will dare to question : but the particular sanctity of the rite in use proceeds solely from our Lord's appointment. The same may be said of baptism. A rite by which new converts should be admitted into the church, and the children of Christian parents, from their earliest infancy, devoted to Christ's service in their riper age, is of evident propriety : but our Lord's solemn injunction of its constant use constitutes the particular sanctity of that which is employed. The like observations applied with equal force, in ancient times, to the particulars of the Mosaic service, to the rite of circumcision, to the prohibi- tion of the use of blood, and to the abstinence from the fruit of a particular tree, exacted of Adam in Paradise, for no other purpose, perhaps, but as a test of his obedience ; and they are still applicable with much greater force to all ceremonies of worship appointed in any national church by the authority of its rulers. The fact is, that all ceremonies are actions, which, by a solemn appropriation of them to particular occasions, are understood to denote, or are made use of to produce, certain dispositions of the mind toward God : they acquire their meaning merely from the institu- tion ; and the necessity of making a choice of some one out of a variety of acts which naturally might be equally
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significant and equally fit to be made subservient to tlie intended purpose, will always produce, even in the ordi- nances of Divine appointment, an appearance at least of something arbitrary in the institution. Hence, it will of necessity come to pass, that these ordinances will be very differently regarded by different men, according as the particular cast of each man's temper and disposition — his natural turn to seriousness or gaiety — his acquired habits of sincerity or dissimulation — render either the importance of the general end, or what there may seem to be of arbi- trary authority in the particular institution, the object most apt to seize upon his attention ; according as he is dis- posed to be scrupulous in his duty, or impatient of restraint — fair and open in his actions, or accustomed to seek his private ends in the fair show and semblance of a ready and exact submission to authority. With the hypocrite, there- fore, the whole of the practical part of religion will consist in an ostentatious rigour in the observance of its positive precepts. With that thoughtless tribe which constitutes, it is to be feared, the far greater proportion of mankind, those who, without any settled principles of positive infi- delity, and without any strong propensities to the excesses of debauchery, find, however, their whole occupation in the cares and what may seem the innocent amusements of the world, and defer the consideration of the future life till they find the present drawing to a close, — with persons of this disposition, the duties of which I speak are for the most part totally neglected ; insomuch, that an affected assiduity in the discharge of the positive precepts of re- ligion on the one hand, and the neglect of them on the other, may be considered as the discriminating symptoms of the two opposite vices of hypocrisy and profaneness : for the name of profaneness, you will observe, in strict propriety of speech, belongs not only to the flagrant and avowed impiety of the atheist and libertine, but to the conduct of him who, without any thing notoriously repre- hensible in his morals — any thing to make him shunn*^
2()7
and disliked by his neighbours and acquaintances, lives, however, without any habitual fear of God and sense of religion upon his mind.
The Mosaic law, as it was planned by unerring wisdom, was uncjuestionably admirably well contrived for the great purposes for which it was intended, — to maintain the knowledge of the true God among a particular people, and to cherish an opinion of the necessity of an expiatory sacrifice for involuntary offences, till the season should arrive for the general revelation. Nor is it to be supposed that it failed of the purpose for which it was so well con- trived. The highest examples of consummate virtue and heroic piety which the ancient world knew were formed in that people, under the discipline of their holy law ; never- theless, the great stress laid upon ceremonial observances had, notwithstanding the continual remonstrances of the prophets — not from any defect in the law itself, but from the corruption of human nature— it had at least an ill effect upon the manners of the people. Notwithstanding the eminent instances of virtue and piety which from time to time arose among them — of virtue and piety, of which faith alone in the revelation which they enjoyed might be a sufficient foundation, — yet, if we look to the national character, especially in the later ages of the Jewish state, we shall find that it was rank hypocrisy, such as justifies what is said of them by a learned writer, that they were at the same time the most religious and the most profligate people upon the earth, — the most religious in the hypo- crite's religion — the most regardless of what their own law taught them to be more than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.
Strange as the assertion may seem, this depravity of the Jewish people, the effect, as has been observed, of an abuse of their divine law, was favourable (so active is the merciful providence of God to bring good out of evil), — this ill effect of the abuse of the divine law was favourable to that great end to which the law tended, the introduction
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of a universal revelation for the general reforrpation of the manners of mankind. It was favourable to this end, be- cause it was favourable to our Saviour's method of instruc- tion. Our Saviour's method of instruction was not by delivering a system of morality, in which the formal na- ture of the moral good should be traced to the original idea of the seemly and the fair — the foundations of our duty discovered in the natural relations of things, and the importance of every particular duty demonstrated by its connexion with the general happiness. This was not his method of instruction, because he well knew how long it had been followed with little effect ; for abstruse specula- tions, whatever they may have at the bottom of solidity and truth, suit not the capacities of the many, and in- fluence the hearts of none. The method of instruction which he chose, was to throw out general maxims respect- ing the different branches of human duty, as often as, in the course of an unreserved intercourse with persons of all ranks, characters, and conditions, he found occasion either to reprove the errors and enormities which fell under his observation, or to vindicate his own conduct and that of his disciples, when either was unjustly arraigned by the hypocrites of the times. Had the manners of his cotem- poraries been less reprehensible, or their hypocrisy less rigid and censorious, the occasions of instruction by re- proof and apology would have less frequently occurred. It was an accusation of his disciples as profaners of the Sabbath, when they took the liberty to satisfy their hunger with the ripe ears of standing corn, which they plucked as they chanced to cross a corn-field on the Sabbath-day, which drew from him that admirable maxim which I have chosen for my text, — a maxim which, rightly understood, may be applied to all the positive precepts of religion no less than to the Sabbath, and clearly settles the degree of attention that is due to them ; insomuch, that whoever will keep this maxim in its right sense constantly in view, will with certainty avoid the two extremes of an unnecessary
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rigour in the observance of these secondary duties, on the one hand, and a profane neglect of them on the other.
After all that can be said, and said with truth, about the immutable distinctions of right and wrong, and the eternal fitness of things, it should seem that the will of God is the true foundation of moral obligation ; for I can- not understand that any man's bare perception of the natu- ral seemliness of one action and unseemliness of another, should bring him under an obligation upon all occasions to do the one and to avoid the other, at the hazard of his life, to the detriment of his fortune, or even to the diminu- tion of his own ease, which suffers diminution more or less in every instance in which he lays a constraint upon his own inclination. I say, I cannot understand how the bare perception of good in actions of one sort, or of evil in ac- tions of another, should create such an obligation, that a man, if he were not accountable to a superior for the con- duct of his life, should yet be criminal, if, in view of his own happiness or ease, he should sometimes think proper to omit the action which he admires, or to do that which he disapproves. No such obligation therefore arising from the mere intuitive perception of the diiferences of right and wrong, it follows, that, notwithstanding the reality of those differences, and the incommutable nature of the two things, still the obligation upon man to act in conformity to these perceptions arises from the will of God, who en- joins a conformity of our conduct to these natural appre- hensions of our minds, and binds the obligation by assur- ances that what we lose of present gratification shall be amply compensated in a future retribution, and by threaten- inof the disobedient with heavier ills than the restraints of self-denial or the loss of life. But if this be the case, that the will of God is the sole foundation of man's duty, it should seem that the distinction which is usually made between the great natural duties of justice and sobriety — all, in short, that are included in the general topics of the love of God and man, — it should seem that the distinction
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between these and the positive precepts of religion is ima- ginary, so far at least as the distinction regards positive precepts of Divine appointment ; it should seem that all duties, natural and positive, are, upon this principle, of the same value and importance — that, by consequence, all crimes are equal, and that a wilful, unnecessary absence from the assemblies of the seventh day, or from the Lord's table, is a crime of no less guilt than theft or murder.
The highest authority hath decided otherwise, and hath established the distinction. Our Lord told his disciples, that " unless their righteousness should exceed the riphte- ousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, they should in no- wise enter into the kingdom of heaven," — that is, unless it should be a righteousness of a higher kind ; for, in the sort of righteousness which they practised, the Scribes and Pharisees were not easily to be outdone. He recom- mended to them two things very contrary to the hypocrite s religion, secrecy and brevity in their devotions. He seemed industriously to seek occasions of doing those good actions on the Sabbath-day, which, to those who understood not how the principle and the end sanctified these works of mercy, seemed a violation of the institution : and it was in justification of an action in which no such merit could be pretended — an action done by some of his followers, per- haps without much consideration, to appease the cravings of a keen appetite — that he alleged the maxim in the text, " that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath," — a maxim which, at the same time that it esta- blishes in the most peremptory terms the distinction be- tween natural duties and positive institutions, defines with the greatest precision and perspicuity in what the differ- ence consists, and as little justifies the wilful neglect of the ordinances of religion as it countenances an hypocritical formality in the performance, or a superstitious reliance on the merit of them.
Although the obligation upon man to a discharge of any duty arises, as I have observed, from the sole will of
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God, yet, in the great duties of justice and charity in our dealings with men — of mildness to our inferiors, courtesy to our equals, and submission to our governors — of sobriety and temperance in the refections of the body, and of mode- ration in the pleasures which belong to the animal life, — in all these we can discern a natural fitness and propriety immutably inherent in the things themselves ; insomuch, that any rational being, once placed in a situation to be superior to the influence of external motives, and to be determined in his conduct by the sole approbation of his own mind, must always delight in them : and though oc- casions may arise which may render a contrary conduct useful to the individual, yet no occasions can arise which may render it so lovely and laudable. Now, although this natural fitness and propriety be not the origin of moral obligation among men, yet it is indeed a higher principle ; for it is that from which that will of God himself origi- nates by which the natural discernment of our conscience acquires the force of a law for the regulation of our lives. Of these duties of inherent and immutable propriety, it were not true to say that they are made for man : but what is denied of positive institutions is true of these, that man was made for them. They are analogous to the moral attributes of the Deity himself. The more that any man is fixed in the habitual love and practice of them, the more the image of God in that man is perfected. The perfec- tion of these moral attributes is the foundation of the ne- cessity of God's own existence; and if the enjoyment and display of them is (if the expression may be allowed) the end and purpose to which God himself exists, the humble imitation of these divine perfections is the end and pur- pose for which men and angels were created.
We discern, therefore, in these natural duties, that in- trinsic worth and seemliness, which is the motive that determines the Divine will to exact the performance of them from the rational part of his creation; for God's will is not arbitrary, but directed by his goodness and his
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wisdom. Or, to go a step higher, the natural excellence of these duties, we may reasonably presume, was the ori- ginal motive which determined the Deity to create beings who should be capable of being brought to that dignity of character which a proficiency in virtue confers, and of en- joying, in their improved state of moral worth, a corre- sponding happiness.
But in the positive institutions of religion we discern nothing of inherent excellence. They evidently make a part of the discipline only of our present state, by which creatures in their first state of imperfection, weak in in- tellect and strong in passion, might be trained to the habit of those virtues which are in themselves valuable, and, by the fear of God thus artificially as it were impressed upon their minds, be rendered in the end superior to temptation. They are therefore, as it were, but a secondary part of the will of God ; and the rank which they hold as objects of God's will, the same they must hold as branches of man's obedience. They are no otherwise pleasing to God than as they are beneficial to man, by enlivening the flame of genuine religion in his bosom. Man, therefore, was not made for these, but these were made for man. To commemorate the creation of the universe by certain cere- monies in public assemblies on the seventh day, though a noble and a salutary employment of our time, is not, how- ever, the principal business for which man was created ; nor is the commemoration of our Redeemer's death, by any external rite, the principal end and business of the Christian's calling : but the observation of the Sabbath with certain ceremonies in public assemblies, and the commemoration of our Lord's death in the Eucharist, v/ere appointed as means of cherishing in the heart of man a more serious and interested attention to those duties which are the real end and purpose of his existence, and the pe- culiar service which the Christian owes his Lord, who bought him with his blood. And thus we see the dis- tinction between the primary duties and the positive pre-
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cepts of religion. Tiie practice of the first is the very end for which man was originally created, and, after the ruin of his fall, redeemed: the other are means appointed to facilitate and secure the attainment of the end. In them- selves they are of no value ; insomuch, that a scrupulous attention to these secondary duties, when the great end of thern is wilfully neglected, will but aggravate the guilt of an immoral life. Man was not made for these,
But, on the other hand, it demands our serious atten- tion, that it is declared by the very same authority that they ivere made for him. They are not mere arbitrary appointments, of no meaning or significance. They are not useless exactions of wanton power, contrived only to display the authority of the master, and to imbitter the subjection of the slave. They were made for man. They were appointed for the salutary influence which the Maker of man foresees they are likely to have upon his life and conduct. To live in the wilful neglect of them, is to neg- lect the means which Infinite Wisdom hath condescended to provide for the security of our future condition. The consequence naturally to be expected is that which is always seen to ensue, — a total profligacy of manners, hardness of heart, and contempt for God's word and commandment.
Having thus shown the true distinction between the primary duties and the positive precepts of religion, I shall in some future Discourses proceed to the particular subject which the text more especially suggests, and in- quire what the reverence may be, due to the Sabbath under the Christian dispensation ; which I shall prove to be much more than it is generally understood to be, if the principles of men are to be inferred from their practice.
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SERMON XXII.
The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabl)ath. Mark ii. 27.
What is aflirmed of the Sabbath in these remarkable words is equally true of all the ordinances of external worship. The maxim tliereforc is general ; and, at the same time that it establishes a distinction between the primary duties and the positive institutions of religion, it clearly defines the circumstance in which the difference consists. Of the positive institutions of religion, even of those of Divine appointment, whatever sanctity may be de- rived to them from the will of God, which is indeed the su- preme rule and proper foundation of human duty, — what- ever importance may belong to them as necessary means for the attainment of the noblest end, the improvement of man's moral character, and the consequent advance- ment of his happiness, — yet we have our Lord's authority to say, that the observance of them is not itself the end for which man was created. Man was not made for these. Of natural duties we affirm the contrary. The acquisition of that virtue which consists in the habitual love and prac- tice of them, is the very final cause of man's existence. The intrinsic worth and seemliness of that virtue is so great, that it may be presumed to be the motive which determined the will of God to create beings with capa- cities for the attainment. These, therefore, are the things for which man was made. They were not made for him. They derive not their importance from a temporary sub- serviency to the interests of man in his present condition — to the happiness and preservation of the individual or of the kind. They are no part of an arbitrary discipline, contrived, after man was formed, for the trial and exercise of his obedience. Their worth is in the things themselves. In authority they are higher than law — in time, older than creation — in worth, more valuable than the universe. The
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positive precepts of religion, on tlie contri\ry, are ot* the nature of political institutions, which are g'ood or bad in relation only to the interests of particular conniuuuties. These, therefore, were made for man. And although man hath no authority to give himself a general dispensation from any law which hath the sanction of his Maker's will, yet, since God hath given him faculties to distinguish between things for which he is made and things which are made for him, it is every man's duty, in the applica- tion of God's general laws to his own conduct on particu- lar occasions, to attend to this distinction. If by an af- fected precision in the exercises of external devotion, while he disregards the great duties of morality, lie thinks that he satisfies the end of his creation, — if he sets sacri- fice in competition with mercy, as the Jews did, when, under the pretence of rich otlerings to the temple, they defrauded their parents in their old age oi^ the support which was their due — and when they took advantage of the rigour with which their law enjoined the observance of the Sabbath, to excuse themselves on that day from of- fices of charity, while they could dispense with the insti- tution for the preservation of their own property, — who- ever, after these examples, thinks to commute for natural duties by an exact observance of positive institutions, de- ceives himself, and offers the highest indignity to God, in believing, or affecting to believe, that he will judge o( the conduct of moral agents otherwise than according to the truth of things — that he will prefer the means to the eiul, the subordinate to the primary duties. On the other luuul, the wilful neglect of the ordinances of religion, under a pretence of a general attention to the weightier matters o[' the law, argues either a criminal security or a profane in- ditference. No one, whatever pretensions he may make, can have a just sense of the importance and the dilhculty of virtuous attainments, who in mere indolence desires to release himself from a discipline which may diminish the difficulty and insure the effect; nor is it consistent with
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just apprehensions of the divine wisdom to suppose that the means which God hath appointed in subservience to any end may be neglected with impunity. A neglect, therefore, of the ordinances of religion of divine appoint- ment, is the sure symptom of a criminal indifierence about those higher duties by which men pretend to atone for the omission. It is too often found to be the beginning of a licentious life, and for the most part ends in the high- est excesses of profligacy and irreligion.
Having thus taken occasion from the text to explain the comparative merit of natural duties and positive precepts, and having shown the necessity of a reverent attention to the latter, as to means appointed by God for the security of virtue in its more essential parts, I proceed to the in- quiry which the text more immediately suggests, — the sanctity of the Sabbath under the Christian dispensation. The libertinism of the times renders this inquiry impor- tant; and the spirit of refinement and disputation has ren- dered it in some degree obscure. I shall therefore divide it into its parts, and proceed by a slow and gradual dis- c^uisition. An opinion has been for some time gaining ground, that the observation of a Sabbath in the Chris- tian church is a matter of mere consent and custom, to which we are no more obliged by virtue of any divine precept than to any other ceremony of the Mosaic law. I shall first, therefore, show you, that Christians actually stand obliged to the observation of a Sabbath, — that is, to the separation of some certain day for the public wor- ship of God ; and I shall reply to what may be alleged with some colour of reason on the other side of the ques- tion. I shall, in the next place, inquire how far the Chris- tian, in the observation of his Sabbath, is held to the ori- ginal injunction of keeping every seventh day; and which day of the seven is his proper Sabbath. When I have shown you that the obligation to the observance of every seventh day actually remains upon him, and that the first day of the week is his proper Sabbath, I shall, in the last
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place, inquire in what manner this Christian Sabbath should be kept.
To the general question, What regard is due to the in- stitution of a Sabbath under the Christian dispensation ? the answer is plainly this, — Neither more nor less than was due to it in the patriarchal ages, before the Mosaic covenant took place. It is a gross mistake to consider the Sabbath as a mere festival of the Jewish church, de- riving its whole sanctity from the Levitical law. The contrary appears, as well from the evidence of the fact which sacred history affords, as from the reason of the thing which the same history declares. The religious ob- servation of the seventh day hath a place in the decalogue among the very first duties of natural religion. The rea- son assigned for the injunction is general, and hath no relation or regard to the particular circumstances of the Israelites, or to the particular relation in which they stood to God as his chosen people. The creation of the world was an event equally interesting to the whole human race ; and the acknowledgment of God as our Creator is a duty, in all ages and in all countries, equally incumbent upon every individual of mankind. The terms in which the reason of the ordinance is assigned plainly describe it as an institution of an earlier age. " Therefore the Lord blessed tlie seventh, and set it apart.'" (That is the true import of the word "hallowed it.") These words, you will observe, express a past time. It is not said, "Therefore the Lord «o?i^ blesses the seventh day, and sets it apart;" but, " There- fore he did bless it, and set it apart in time past ; and he now requires that you his chosen people should be ob- servant of that ancient institution." And in farther con- firmation of the fact, we find, by the sixteenth chapter of Exodus, that the Israelites were acquainted with the Sab- bath, and had been accustomed to some observance of it be- fore Moses received the tables of the law at Sinai. When the manna was first given for the nourishment of the army in the wilderness, the people were told, that on the sixth day
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tliey should collect the double of the daily portion. When the event was found to answer to the promise, Moses gave command, that the redundant portion should be prepared and laid by for the meal of the succeeding day; " For to- morrow," said he, " is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord : on that day ye shall not find it in the field ; for the Lord hath given you the Sabbath, therefore he givcth you on the sixth day the bread of two days." He men- tions the Sabbath as a divine ordinance, with which he evidently supposes the people were well acquainted; for he alleges the well-known sanctity of that day to account for the extraordinary quantity of manna which was found upon the ground on the day preceding it. But the ap- pointment of the Sabbath, to which his words allude, must have been earlier than the appointment of it in the law, of which no part was yet given: for this first gathering of the manna, which is recorded in the sixteenth chapter of Exodus, was in tlie second month of the departure of the Israelites from Egypt; and at Sinai, where the law was given, they arrived not till the tliird. Indeed, the anti- quity of the Sabbath was a thing so well understood among the Jews themselves, that some of their rabbin had the vanity to pretend that an exact adherence to the observation of this day, under the severities of the Egyptian servitude, was the merit by which their ances- tors procured a miraculous deliverance. The deliverance of the Israelites from the Egyptian bondage was surely an act of God's free mercy, in which their own merit htid no share : nor is it likely that their Egyptian lords left them much at liberty to sanctify the Sabbath, if they were inclined to do it. The tradition, therefore, is vain and groundless: but it clearly speaks the opinion of those among whom it passed, of the antiquity of the institution in question; which appears, indeed, upon better evidence, to have been coeval with the world itself. In the book of Genesis, the mention of this institution closes the history of the creation.
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An institution of this antiquity, and of this general im- portance, could derive no part of its sanctity from the au- thority of the Mosaic law; and the abrogation of that law no more releases the worshippers of God from a rational observation of a Sabbath, than it cancels the injunction of filial piety, or the prohibitions of theft and murder, adul- tery, calumny, and avarice. The worship of the Christian church is properly to be considered as a restoration of the patriarchal, in its primitive simplicity and purity ; — and of the patriarchal worship, the Sabbath was the noblest and perhaps the simplest rite.
Thus it should seem that Christians are clearly obliged to the observance of a Sabbath. But let us consider what may be alleged with any colour of reason on the other side. Now, it may be said, that the argument which we have used for the perpetual sanctity of the Sabbath is of that sort which must go for nothing, because it proves too much. If the antiquity and the universality of the origi- nal institution be made the ground of a permanent obliga- tion to the observance of it, it may seem a consequence, that the practice of the world, since the establishment of Christianity, must have been far more deficient than hath ever been suspected ; since upon this principle, mankind, it may be said, should still be held to various ceremonies which for many ages have sunk into disuse. Circum- cision, it is true, will not come within the question ; for though four or perhaps six centuries older than the law, it was only a mark set upon a particular family. But the prohibition of the use of blood in food bore the same anti- quity, it may be said, with respect to the second race of men, as the Sabbath with respect to the first. The prohi- bition of blood followed the deluge as closely as the Sab- bath followed the creation : the one was no less general to all the sons of Noa.h than the other to all the sons of Adam. The use of animals at all for food is only to be justified by the Creator's express permission; and since the exception of the blood of the animal accompanied the grant of the
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flesh, the prohibition, it may be said, unless it was at any time solemnly repealed, must be as general and as perma- nent as the license. In the assembly of the apostles at Jerusalem, of which we read in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts, when the question was solemnly discussed con- cerning the obligation of the Jewish law upon the converts from the Gentiles, the prohibition of blood was one of three things specially reserved in the solemn act of repeal in which the deliberations of that council terminated. " It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us," — these are the words of the apostolical rescript — " it seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things, — that ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication." It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to the apostles, to lay no other restraint upon the Gentile converts : but this restraint, of which an abstinence from blood made a part, it seemed good to the apostles, nor to the apostles only, but to the Holy Ghost also, to lay ; and they declare that they laid it on as a necessary thing: whereas, in this same decree, which so remarkably reserves the abstinence from blood, the Sabbath is not at all re- served as a thing either of necessity or expedience. It should seem, therefore, it may be said, that the prohibition of blood was an ordinance of more lasting obligation than the Sabbath : the argument from antiquity and original generality applies with equal force to both ; and the pro- hibition is enforced by the authority of tbe apostles, who mention no necessity of any observance of a Sabbath in the Christian church. Upon what principle, then, is the sanctity of the Sabbath maintained by those who openly disregard the prohibition ?
I must confess, that had the Sabbath been a rite of the Mosaic institution, or were any reason to be assigned for the prohibition of blood, which might be of equal force in all ages, I should hold this argument unanswerable, and feel myself compelled to admit that the disregard of the
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Sabbath were a less crime than the use of blood : but, as the apostles assembled to consider whether the Gentile converts were to be holden to any part of the Jewish ritual, and if to any, to what part, it was beside their purpose to mention any thing that was not considered by those who consulted them as a branch of Judaism. Fornication, in- deed, they mention ; for it hath been owing to that refine- ment of sentiment which the Christian religion hath pro- duced, that this is at last understood to be a breach of natural morality. In the heathen world, it was never thought to be a crime, except it was accompanied with injury to a virgin's honour, or with violation of the mar- riage-bed. Abstinence, in this instance, was considered as a peculiarity of Judaism ; and had it not been mentioned in the apostolical decree, the Gentile converts would not have been very ready to discern that the prohibition of this crime is included in the seventh commandment. But with regard to the Sabbath, although it was gone into disuse among the heathen long before the appearance of our Saviour, yet the most ignorant idolater observed some stated festivals in honour of the imaginary divinities to which his worship was addressed. When an idolater, therefore, was converted, the natural consequence of his conversion — that is, of his going over from the worship of idols to the worship of the true God, — the natural and immediate consequence would be, that he would observe the festival of the true God instead of the festival of his idol. Thus the Gentile convert would spontaneously adopt the observation of the Sabbath, as a natural duty — a branch, indeed, of that most general commandment, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God." It was therefore as little necessary that the Sabbath should be expressly ob- served in the apostolical decree, as that express reservation should be made of any other of the ten commandments : nor is the neglect of the Sabbath more to be justified by the silence of the apostolical council concerning the ne- cessity of the observation, than idolatry or blasphemy is to
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be justified by their silence about the second or the third commandment.
The argument, therefore, from the parallel antiquity of the injunction of a Sabbath and the prohibition of blood, rather goes to prove that the prohibition is in force, than to invalidate the conclusion of the perpetual sanctity of the Sabbath from the early date of the institution. Accord- ingly, it hath been the practice of very considerable men, within our own memory, to abstain, from conscientious scruples, from all meats prepared with the blood of ani- mals, and from the flesh of animals otherwise killed than by the effusion of their blood. The truth, however, seems to be, that the two ordinances, the observation of a Sab- bath and abstinence from blood, although they were equally binding upon all mankind at the time when they were severally enjoined, differ nevertheless in this, — that the reason of the Sabbath continues invariably the same, or, if it changes at all, it hath been gaining rather than losing its importance from the first institution. The rea- son of the prohibition of blood was founded on the state of mankind before the coming of Christ, and was peculiar to those early ages. The use of the Sabbath, as it began, will end only with the world itself. The abstinence from blood was a part of that hand-writing of ordinances to which sin gave a temporary importance, and which were blotted out when the Messiah made an end of sin by the expiatory sacrifice of the cross. I have already had occasion to re- mark, that it was the great end of the numerous sacrifices of the Mosaic ritual, to impress the Jewish people (for a season the chosen depositaries of revealed truth) with an opinion of the necessity of a sanguinary expiation even for involuntary offences, — to train them to the habitual belief of that awful maxim, that " without blood there shall be no remission." The end of those earlier sacrifices, vs^hich were of use in the patriarchal ages, was unquestionably the same. To inculcate the same important lesson, in the earliest instance of a sacrifice upon record, respect was had
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to the shepherd's sacrifice of the firstlings of his flock, rather than to the husbandman's offering' of the fruit of his ground ; and for the same reason, by the prohibition laid upon the sons of Noah, and afterward enforced in the severest terms in the Mosaic law, blood was sanctified, as it were, as the immediate instrument of atonement. The end of the pro- hibition was to impress mankind with a high reverence for blood, as a most holy thing, consecrated to the purpose of the general expiation : but this expiatory virtue belonged not to the blood of bulls and of goats, but to the blood of Christ, of which the other was by God's appointment made a temporary emblem. As the importance, therefore, of all inferior sacrifices, and of all the cleansings and purifica- tions of the law, ceased when once the only meritorious sacrifice had been oifered on the cross, and the true atone- ment made, animal blood, at the same time, and for the same reason, lost its sanctity. The necessity, therefore, mentioned in the apostolic rescript, so far as it regards the restriction from the use of blood, can be understood only of a temporary necessity, founded on the charitable conde- scension, which, in the infancy of the church, was due from the Gentile converts to the inveterate prejudices of their Hebrew brethren. Accordingly, although we read of no subsequent decree of the apostolical college, rescind- ing the restriction which by the act of their first assembly they thought proper to impose, yet we find what is equiva- lent to a decree, in the express license given by St. Paul to the Christians of Corinth, to eat of whatever meat was set before them, provided they incurred not the imputa- tion of idolatry, by partaking of a feast upon the victim in an idol's temple. With this exception, they had permis- sion to eat whatever was sold in the shambles, and what- ever was served up at table, without any attention to the legal distinctions of clean and unclean, and without any anxious inquiry upon what occasion or in what manner the animals had been slaughtered.
Thus it appears, that the prohibition of blood in food
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was for a time indeed, by the generality of the restraint, binding upon all mankind : but, in the reason of the thing, its importance was but temporary; and when its impor- tance ceased, the restraint was taken off, — not indeed by a decree of the whole college of apostles, but still by apos- tolical authority. The observation of a Sabbath, on the contrary, was not only a general duty at the time of the institution, but, in the nature of the thing, of perpetual importance; since, in every stage of the world's existence, it is man's interest to remember, and his duty to acknow- ledge, his dependence upon God as the Creator of all things, and of man among the rest. The observation of a Sabbath was accordingly enforced, not by any apostoli- cal decree, but by the example of the apostles after the solemn abrogation of the Mosaic law.
Thus, I trust, I have shown that the observation of a Sabbath, as it was of earlier institution than the religion of the Jews, and no otherwise belonged to Judaism, than as, with other ordinances of the patriarchal church, it was adopted by the Jewish legislature, necessarily survives the extinction of the Jewish law, and makes a part of Chris- tianity. I have shown how essentially it differs from other ordhiances, which, however they may boast a similar an- tiquity, and for a season an equal sanctity, were only of a temporary importance. I have shown that it is a part of the rational religion of man, in every stage and state of his existence, till he shall attain that happy rest from the toil of perpetual conflict with temptation — from the hard- ship of duty as a task, of which the rest of the Sabbath is itself a type. I have therefore established my first propo- sition, that Christians stand obliged to the observation of a Sabbath. I am, in the next place, to inquire how far the Christian, in the observance of a Sabbath, is held to the original injunction of keeping every seventh day ; and which day of the seven is his proper Sabbath. And this shall be the business of my next Discourse.
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SERMON XXIII.
The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Mark ii. 27.
The general application of this maxim of our Lord, as a rule establishing the true distinction between natural duties and positive institutions, I have already shown. I have already shown you, that, rightly understood, what- ever pre-eminence in merit it may ascribe (as it ascribes indeed the greatest) to those things which are not good because they are commanded, but are commanded because they are in themselves good, it nevertheless as little justi- fies the neglect of the external ordinances of religion, as it warrants the hypocritical substitution of instituted forms for those higher duties which it teaches us to consider as the very end of our existence. In the particular inquiry which the text more immediately suggests, what regard may be due to the institution of the Sabbath under the Christian dispensation, I have so far proceeded, as to show, in opposition to an opinion which too visibly influences the practice of the present age, that Christians are indeed obliged to the observance of a Sabbath. It remains for me to inquire how far the Christian, in the observance of a Sabbath, is held to the original injunction of keeping every seventh day ; and when I have shown you that this obligation actually remains upon him, I am, in the last place, to show in what manner his Sabbath should be kept.
The spirit of the Jewish law was rigour and severity. Rigour and severity were adapted to the rude manners of the first ages of mankind, and were particularly suited to the refractory temper of the Jewish people. The rigour of the law itself was far outdone by the rigour of the popular superstition and the pharisaical hypocrisy, — if, indeed, superstition and hypocrisy, rather than a particular
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ill will against our Lord, were the motives with the people and their rulers to tax him with a breach of the Sabbath, when they saw his power exerted on the Sabbath-day for the relief of the afflicted. The Christian law is the law of liberty. We are not therefore to take the measure of our obedience from the letter of the Jewish law, — much less from Jewish prejudices and the suggestions of Jewish malignity. In the sanctification of the Sabbath, in particular, we have our Lord's express authority to take a pious discretion for our guide, keeping constantly in view the end of the institution, and its necessary subordi- nation to higher duties. But, in the use of this discretion, I fear it is the fashion to indulge in a greater latitude than our Lord's maxims allow or his example warrants ; and although the letter of the Jewish law is not to be the Christians guide, yet, perhaps, in the present instance, the particular injunctions of the law, rationally interpreted by reference to the general end of the institution, will best enable us to determine what is the obligation to the obser- vance of a particular day, — what the proper observation of the day may be, — and how far the practice of the pre- sent age corresponds with the purpose and spirit of the ordinance.
The injunction of the Sabbath, in the fourth command- ment, is accompanied with the history and the reason of the original institution. Both the history and the reason given here are the same which occur in the second chapter of Genesis. The history is briefly this, — that " God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it." " He hallowed it," — that is, God himself distinguished this particular day, and set it apart from the rest; and "he blessed it," — that is, he appropriated this day to religious exercises on the part of man ; and he engaged, on his own part, to accept the homage which should on this day be oifered to him. He promised to be propitious to the prayers, public and pri- vate, which should be offered to him on this day in the true spirit of piety, humility, and faith. This is, I think,
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the import of tlte phrase that God " blessed the day." He annexed the promise of his especial blessing to the regular discharge of a duty enjoined. The reason of this sancti- fication of the seventh day was founded on the order in which the work of the creation had been carried on. In this business, we are told, the Divine power was active for six successive days ; on the sixth day all was finished, and on the seventh God rested : his power was no longer exerted in the business of making, the whole world being now made, arranged, and finished.
From the reason thus assigned for the institution, it is easy to understand that the worship originally required of men on this day was to praise God as the Creator of the universe, and to acknowledge their dependence upon him and subjection to him as his creatures : and it is evident that this worship is due to the Creator from all men, in all ages, since none in any age are not his creatures. The propriety of the particular appointment of every seventh day is also evident from the reason assigned, if the fact be as the letter of the sacred history represents it, that the creation was the gradual work of six days. It hath ever been the folly or the pride of man, to make a difficulty of every thing of which he hath not the penetration to dis- cern the reason. It is very certain that God needs no time for the execution of his purposes. Had it so pleased him, the universe, in its finished form, with all its furni- ture and all its inhabitants, might have started into exis- tence in a moment. To say " Let the world be," had been as easy to God as " Let there be light;" and the effect must have followed. Hence, as if a necessity lay upon the Deity upon all occasions to do all to which his omni- potence extends, — or as if, on the contrary, it were not impossible that Infinite power should in any instance do its utmost (for whatever hath been done, more must be within its ability to perform, or it were not infinite), — un- mindful of these principles, some have dreamed of I know not what figures and allegories in that part of the Mosaic
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history which describes tlie creation as a work performed in time and distributed into parts ; imagining, in opposi- tion to the letter of the story, that the whole must have been instantaneously accomplished. Others, with more discernment, have suspected, that when once the chaos was produced and the elements invested with their quali- ties, physical causes, which work their effect in time, were in some measure concerned in the progi'ess of the business ; the Divine power acting only at intervals, for certain pur- poses to which physical causes were insufficient, such as the division of the general chaos into distinct globes and systems, and the formation of the first plants and animals. These notions are indeed perfectly consistent with sound philosophy ; nor am I aware that they are in any way re- pugnant to the sacred history : but from these principles a conclusion has too hastily been drawn, that o, week would be too short time for physical causes to accomplish their part of the business ; and it has been imagined, that a day must be used figuratively in the history of the creation, to denote at least a thousand years, or perhaps a longer period.
In what manner the creation was conducted, is a ques- tion about a fact, and, like all questions about facts, must be determined, not by theory, but by testimony ; and if no testimony were extant, the fact must remain uncertain. But the testimony of the sacred historian is peremptory and explicit. No expressions could be found in any lan- guage to describe a gradual progress of the work for six successive days, and the completion of it on the sixth, in the literal and common sense of the word "day," more definite and unequivocal than those employed by Moses ; and they who seek or admit figurative expositions of such expressions as these, seem to be not sufficiently aware, that it is one thing to write a history, and quite another to compose riddles. The expressions in which Moses describes the days of the creation, literally rendered, are these ; When he has described the first day's work, he
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.say3 — "And there was morning and there was evening- one day ;" when he has described the second day's work "There was morning and there was evening, a second day;" when he has described the third day's work, "There was evening and there was morning, a third day," Thus, in the progress of his narrative, at the end of each day's work, he counts up the days which had passed off from the beginning of the business ; and, to obviate all doubt what portion of time he meant to denote by the appella- tion of " a day," he describes each day of which the men- tion occurs as consisting of one evening and one morning, or, as the Hebrew words literally import, of the decay of light and the return of it. By what description could the word " day" be more expressly limited to its literal and common meaning, as denoting that portion of time which is measured and consumed by the earth's revolution on her axis ? That this revolution was performed in the same space of time in the beginning of the world as now, I would not over confidently affirm; but we are not at pre- sent concerned in the resolution of that question : a day, whatever was its space, was still the same thing in nature — a portion of time measured by the same motion, divisi- ble into the same seasons of morning and noon, evening and midnight, and making the like part of longer portions of time measured by other motions. The day was itself marked by the vicissitudes of darkness and light ; and so many times repeated, it made a month, and so many times more, a year. For six such days God was making the heaven and the earth, the sea, and all that therein is ; and rested on the seventh day. This fact, clearly established by the sacred writer's testimony, in the literal meaning of these plain words, abundantly evinces the perpetual im- portance and propriety of consecrating one day in seven to the public worship of the Creator.
I say one day in seven. In the first ages of the world, the creation of the world was the benefaction by which God was principally known, and for which he was chiefly
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to be worshipped. The Jews, in their religious assem- blies, had to commemorate other blessings — the political creation of their nation out of Abraham's family, and their deliverance from the Egyptian bondage. We Chris- tians have to commemorate, beside the common benefit of the creation, the transcendent blessing of our redemption — our new creation to the hope of everlasting life, of which our Lord's resurrection to life on the first day of the week is a sure pledge and evidence. You see, there- fore, that the Sabbath, in the progress of ages, hath ac- quired new ends, by new manifestations of the Divine mercy ; and these new ends justify correspondent altera- tions of the original institution. It has been imagined that a change was made of the original day by Moses — that the Sabbath was transferred by him from the day on which it had been originally kept in the patriarchal ages, to that on which the Israelites left Egypt. The conjec- ture is not unnatural ; but it is, in my judgment, a mere conjecture, of which the sacred history affords neither proof nor confutation. This, however, is certain, that upon our Lord's resurrection, the Sabbath was transferred, in memory of that event, the great foundation of the Chris- tian's hopes, from the last to the first day of the week. The alteration seems to have been made by the authority of the apostles, and to have taken place on the very day on which our Lord arose; for on that day the apostles were assembled, and on that day sennight we find them assembled again. The celebration of these two first Sun- days was honoured with our Lord's own presence. It was perhaps to set a mark of distinction upon this day in par- ticular, that the intervening week passed off, as it should seem, without any repetition of his first visit to the eleven apostles. From that time, the Sunday was the constant Sabbath of the primitive church. The Christian, there- fore, who devoutly sanctifies one day in seven, although it be the first day of the week, not the last, as was origi- nally ordained, may rest assured that he fully satisfies the
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spirit of the ordinance. Had the propriety of the altera- tion been less apparent than it is from the reason of the thing, the authority of the apostles to loose and bind was absolute.
I must remark, however, that their authority upon this point was exercised not purely in consideration of the ex- pediency, but upon the higher consideration of the neces- sity of a change — a necessity arising, as I conceive, out of the original spirit of the institution. The original ob- servation of a Sabbath on every seventh day was a public and distinguishing characteristic of the worship of the Creator, who finished his work in six days, and rested on the seventh. This was the public character by which the worship of the true God was distinguished, that his festi- val returned every seventh day ; and, by the strict obser- vance of this ordinance, the holy patriarchs, and the Jews their descendants, made as it were a public protestation once in every week against the errors of idolatry, which, instead of the true God, the Creator of the universe, paid its adoration either to the works of God, the sun and moon, and other celestial bodies, or to mere figments of the hu- man imagination, misled by a diabolical illusion — to imaginary beings presiding over the natural elements, or the departed ghosts of deceased kings and heroes — and, in the last stage of the corruption, to inanimate images, by which the supposed influences of the celestial bodies and physical qualities of the elements were emblematically represented, and the likenesses of the deified kings sup- posed to be pourtrayed. To this protestation against heathenism, the propriety of which binds the worshippers of the true God in all ages to a weekly Sabbath, it is rea- sonable that Christians should add a similar protestation against Judaism. It was necessary that Christians should openly separate as it were from the communion of the Jews, who, after their perverse rejection of our Lord, ceased to be the true church of God : and the sanctifica- tion of the Saturday being the most visible and notorious u 2
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character of the Jewish worship, it, was necessary that the Christian Sabbath should be transferred to some other day of the week. A change of the day being for these reasons necessary, the choice of the apostles was directed to the first day of the week, as that on which our Lord's resur- rection finished and sealed the vv'ork of our redemption ; so that, in the same act by which we acknowledge the Creator, and protest against the claims of the Jews to be still the depositaries of the true religion, we might confess the Saviour whom the Jews crucified.
You have now seen that the Christian clearly stands obliged to the observance of a Sabbath, — that, in the ob- servance of his Sabbath, he is held to the original institu- tion of keeping every seventh day, — and that his proper Sabbath is the first day of the seven. By keeping a Sab- bath, we acknowledge a God, and declare that we are not atheists; by keeping one day in seven, we protest against idolatry, and acknowledge that God who in the beginning made the heavens and the earth ; and by keeping our Sab- bath on the first of the week, we protest against Judaism, and acknowledge that God who, having made the world, sent his only-begotten Son to redeem mankind. The ob- servation, therefore, of the Sunday in the Christian church, is a public weekly assertion of the two first articles in our Creed — the belief in God the Father Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth ; and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
I must not quit this part of my subject without briefly taking notice of a text in St. Paul's Epistle to the Colos- sians, which has been supposed to contradict the whole doctrine which I have asserted, and to prove that the ob- servation of a Sabbath in the Christian church is no point of duty, but a matter of mere compliance with an ancient custom. In the second chapter of that epistle, St. Paul, speaking of " the hand-writing of ordinances which is blotted out, having been nailed to the Redeemer's cross," adds, in the sixteenth verse, "Let no man therefore judge
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you in meat or in drink, or in respect oT a lioliday, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath-days." From this text, no less a man than the venerable Calvin drew the conclu- sion, in which he has been rashly followed by other con- siderable men, that the sanctification of the seventh day is no indispensable duty in the Christian church, — that it is one of those carnal ordinances of the Jewish religion which our Lord hath blotted out. The truth however is, that, in the apostolical age, the first day of the week, though it was observed with great reverence, was not called the Sabbath-day, but the Lord's-day, — that the separation of the Christian church from the Jewish communion might be marked by the name as well as by the day of their weekly festival ; and the name of the Sabbath-days was appropriated to the Saturdays, and certain days in the Jewish church which were likewise called Sabbaths in the law, because they were observed with no less sanctity. The Sabbath-days, therefore, of which St. Paul in this passage speaks, were not the Sundays of the Christians, but the Sa urdays and the other Sabbaths of the Jewish calendar. The Judaizing heretics, with whom St. Paul was all his life engaged, were strenuous advocates for the observation of these Jewish festivals in the Christian church; and his (St. Paul's) admonition to the Colossians is, that they should not be disturbed by the censures of those who reproached them for neglecting to observe these Jewish Sabbaths with Jewish ceremonies. It appears from the First Epistle to the Corinthians, that the Sunday was observed in the church of Corinth with St. Paul's own approbation. It appears from the Apocalypse, that it was generally observed in the time when that book was written by St. John ; and it is mentioned by the earliest apologists of the Christian faith, as a necessary branch of Christian worship. But the Sabbaths of the Jewqsh church are abolished ; nor is the Christian, in the observation of his own Sabbath, to conduct himself by the childish rules of the old Pharisaical superstition. This brino-s me to
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consider, in the last place, the manner in which the Chris- tian Sabbath is to be kept.
As the reason of the institution rests on such common benefits as the creation of the world and man's redemp- tion, it is evident that ail descriptions of men stand ob- liged to the duties of the day. No elevation of rank may exempt; no meanness of condition may exclude; no inex- perience of youth disqualifies for the task ; no decrepitude of age is unequal to the toil ; no tenderness of sex can suffer from the fatigue. Since the proper business of the day thus engages every rank, every sex, and every age, it is evident that it requires a suspension of the ordinary business of the world ; for none can be at leisure for se- cular employments when all are occupied as they ought to be in devotion. All servile labour and all worldly bu- siness was accordingly prohibited by the Mosaic law, under the highest penalties; and capital punishment was, in an early instance, actually inflicted on a man who only went out on the Sabbath to gather sticks for fuel. Chris- tian magistrates have not only the permission, they have the injunction of our Lord — they have the authority at least of inference from the example of what he did him- self, and what he justified when done by his disciples, to remit much of the rigour of this interdiction. Such a ces- sation, however, of business and of pleasure, should be enforced, as may leave neither necessity nor temptation upon any denomination of men in the community to neg- lect the proper observance of the festival. It is to be re- membered, that although the worship of God is the chief end of the institution, yet the refreshment of the lower ranks of mankind, by an intermission of their labours, is indisputably a secondary object. " Thou shalt rest on the seventh day," said the law, " that the son of thy handmaid and the stranger may be refreshed." A handmaid, in the language of the Old Testament, denotes a female slave. The son of a handmaid therefore is the offspring of a fe- male slave, which, by the laws of the Jews, as of all people
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among- whom slavery hath been allowed, was the property of the master of the mother. The stranger seems here to be set in opposition to the home-born slave, denoting a foreign slave bought with money or taken in war. These two descriptions of the home-born and the foreign slave comprehend the whole of that oppressed and helpless order of mankind. It is expressly provided by the law, that on the Sabbath-day this harassed race of mortals should have their refreshment. Now, as these injunctions were evidently founded on the general principles of phi- lanthropy, it should seem, that, allowance being made for the difference between the rigour of the Jewish and the liberality of the Christian dispensation, — and allowance being also made for the different circumstances of the ancient and the modern world, — these injunctions of the suspension of the labours of the lower ranks are univer- sally and perpetually in force, in all parts of the world, and in all ages; the rather, as they are no less calculated for the benefit of the higher than for the comfort of the lower orders. It is useful to both to be admonished at frequent intervals, — the one for their consolation, the other for the suppression of Jiat pride which a con- dition of ease and superiority is too apt to inspire. It is useful to both to be reminded of their equal relation to their common Lord, as the creatures of his power — the subjects of his government — the children of his love, by an institution which at frequent intervals unites them in his service. Under this recollection, the servant will obey with fidelity and cheerfulness, and the superior will govern with kindness and lenity. It is of the highest importance to the present good humour of society, and to the future interests of men of every rank, that these injunctions should be observed with all the exactness which the present state of society may admit.
The labour of man is not the only toil which the Mo- saic law prohibited on the Sabbath-day. "On the se venth day thou shalt rest, that thine ox and thine ass may
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rest." It was a principle with some of the heathen mora- lists, that no rights subsist between man and the lower animals, — that, in the exercise of our dominion over them, we are at liberty to pursue our own profit and conve- nience, without any consideration of the fatigue and the miseries which they may undergo. The holy Scriptures seem to speak another language, when they say, " The righteous man is merciful even to his beast ;" and as no reason can be alleged why the ox or the ass of Palestine should be treated with more tenderness than the kindred brutes of other countries, it must be upon this general principle, that mercy is in some degree due to the animals beneath us, that the divine Legislator of the Jews pro- vided on the Sabbath for their refreshment. This, there- fore, like the former provision (allowance still being made for the different spirit of Judaism and Christianity), is to be considered as a general and standard part of the institution, which is violated whenever, for the mere plea- sure and convenience of the master and the owner, either servants, or even animals, are subjected to the same seve- rity of toil on the Sabbath, which belongs to the natural condition of the one, and to the civil rank of the other, on the six days of the week. On the Sabbath, man is to hold a sort of edifying communion with the animals be- neath him, acknowledging, by a short suspension of his dominion over them, the right of the Creator in himself as well as in them, and confessing that his own right over them is derived from the grant of the superior Lord.
It appears from what has been said, that the practice, which is become so common in this country among all ranks of men, of making long journeys on the Sabbath- day without any urgent necessity, is one of the highest breaches of this holy institution. It breaks in upon the principal business of the day, laying some under a necessity, and furnishing others with a pretence for withdrawing themselves from the public assemblies; and it defeats the ordinance in its subordinate ends.
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depriving servants and cattle of that temporary exemption from fatigue which it was intended both should enjoy. This, like other evils, hath arisen from small beginnings; and by an unperceived, because a natural and a gradual growth, hath attained at last an alarming height. Persons of the higher ranks, whether from a certain vanity of ap- pearing great, by assuming a privilege of doing what was generally forbidden, or for the convenience of travelling when the roads were the most empty, began within our own memory, to make their journeys on a Sunday. In a commercial country, the great fortunes acquired in trade have a natural tendency to level all distinctions but what arise from affluence. Wealth supplies the place of nobi- lity : birth retains only the privilege of setting the first example. The city presently catches the manners of the court, and the vices of the high-born peer are faithfully copied in the life of the opulent merchant and the thriv- ing tradesman. Accordingly, in the space of a few years, the Sunday became the travelling day of all who travel in their own carriages. But why should the humbler citizen, whose scantier means oblige him to commit his person to the crammed stage-coach, more than his wealthier neigh- bour, be exposed to the hardship of travelling on the working days, when the multitude of heavy carts and waggons moving to and fro in all directions renders the roads unpleasant and unsafe to all carriages of a slighter fabric ; especially when the only real inconvenience, the danger of such obstructions, is infinitely increased to him, by the greater diflficulty with which the vehicle in which he makes his uncomfortable journey crosses out of the way, in deep and miry roads, to avoid the fatal jostle? The force of these principles was soon perceived; and, in open defiance of the laws, stage-coaches have for seve- ral years travelled on the Sundays. The waggoner soon understands that the road is as free for him as for the coachman, — that if the magistrate connives at the one, he cannot enforce the law against the other ; and the Sunday
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traveller now breaks the Sabbath without any advantage gained in the safety or pleasure of his journey. It may seem, that the evil, grown to this height, would become its own remedy : but this is not the case. The temptation, in- deed, to the crime, among the higher ranks of the people, subsists no longer ; but the reverence for the day among all orders is extinguished, and the abuse goes on from the mere habit of profaneness. In the country, the roads are crowded on the Sunday, as on any other day, with tra- vellers of every sort: the devotion of the villages is inter- rupted by the noise of the carriages passing through, or stopping at the inns for refreshment. In the metropolis, instead of that solemn stillness of the vacant streets in the hours of the public service, which might suit, as in our fathers' days, with the sanctity of the day, and be a reproof to every one who should stir abroad but upon the business of devotion, the mingled racket of worldly busi- ness and pleasure is going on with little abatement; and in the churches and chapels which adjoin the public streets, the sharp rattle of the whirling phaeton, and the graver rumble of the loaded waggon, mix^d with the oaths and imprecations of the brawling drivers, disturb the con- gregation and stun the voice of the preacher.
These scandals call loudly for redress : but redress will be in vain expected from any increased severity of the laws, without a concurrence of the willing example of the great. This is one of the many instances in which a corrupt fashion in the higher orders of society will render all law weak and ineffectual. I am not without hope that the example of the great will not be wanting. I trust that we are awakened to a sense of the importance of religious ordinances, by the dreadful exhibition of the mischiefs of irreligion in the present state of the neighbouring apos- tate nation; and though our recovery from the disease of carelessness and indifference is yet in its beginning, ap- pearances justify a sanguine hope of its continuance, and of its ultimate termination, through the grace of God, in
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a perfiect convalescence : and when once the duties of r eU- gion shall be recommended by the general example of the superior ranks, then, and not till then, the bridle of legal restraint will act with effect upon vulgar profligacy.
But, in the application of whatever means for the re- medy of the evil, — whether of legal penalties, which ought to be enforced, and in some cases ought to be heightened, — or of the milder persuasion of example — or of the two united, which alone can be successful, — in the application of these various means, the zeal of reform, if it would not defeat its own end, must be governed and moderated by a prudent attention to the general spirit of Christianity, and to the general end of the institution. The spirit of Chris- tianity is rational, manly, and ingenuous ; in all cases de- lighting in the substantial works of judgment, justice, and mercy, more than in any external forms. The primary and general end of the institution is the public worship of God, the Creator of the world and Redeemer of mankind.
Among the Jews, the absolute cessation of all animal activity on their Sabbath had a particular meaning in re- ference to their history : it was a standing, symbolical memorial of their miraculous deliverance from a state of servitude. But to mankind in general — to us Christians in some degree, the proper business of the day is the wor- ship of God in public assemblies, from which none may without some degree of crime be unnecessarily absent. Private devotion is the Christian's daily duty; but the peculiar duty of the Sabbath is public worship. As for those parts of the day which are not occupied in the public duty, every man's own conscience, without any interfer- ence of public authority, and certainly without any offi- cious interposition of the private judgment of his neigh- bour,— every man's own conscience must direct him what portion of this leisure should be allotted to his private devotions, and what may be spent in sober recreation. Perhaps a better general rule cannot be laid down than this, — that the same proportion of the Sabbath, on the
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whole, should he devoted to religious exercises, public and private, as every man would spend of any other day in liis ordinary business. The holy work of the Sabbath, like all other work, to be done well, requires intermissions. An entire day is a longer space of time than the human mind can employ with alacrity upon any one subject. The austerity therefore of those is little to be commended, who require that all the intervals of public worship, and whatever remains of the day after the public duty is satis- fied, should be spent in the closet, in private prayer and retired meditation. Nor are persons in the lower ranks of society to be very severely censured — those especially who are confined to populous cities, where they breathe a nox- ious atmosphere, and are engaged in unwholesome occu- pations, from which, with their daily subsistence, they derive their daily poison-— if they take advantage of the leisure of the day to recruit their wasted strength and harassed spirits, by short excursions into the purer air of the adjacent villages, and the innocent recreations of sober society ; provided they engage not in schemes of dissi- pated and tumultuous pleasure, which may disturb the sobriety of their thoughts, and interfere with the duties of the day. The present humour of the common people leads perhaps more to a profanation of the festival than to a superstitious rigour in the observance of it: but, in the attempt to reform, we shall do wisely to remember, that the thanks for this are chiefly due to the base spirit of puritanical hypocrisy, which in the last century opposed and defeated the wise attempts of government to regulate the recreations of the day by authority, and prevent the excesses which have actually taken place, by a rational indulgence.
The Sabbath was ordained for a day of public worship, and of refreshment to the common people. It cannot be a day of their refreshment, if it be made a day of mortified restraint. To be a day of worship, it must be a day of leisure from worldly business, and of abstraction from dis-
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sipated pleasure : but it need not be a dismal one. It was ordained for a day of general and willing resort to the holy mountain ; when men of every race, and every rank, and every age, promiscuously — Hebrew, Greek, and Scy- thian— ^bond and free — young and old — high and low — rich and poor — one v/ith another — laying hold of Christ's atonement, and the proffered mercy of the gospel, might meet together before their common Lord, exempt for a season from the cares and labours of the world, and be "joyful in his house of prayer."
SERMON XXIV.
^Ve have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world. — John iv. 42.
It was in an early period of our Saviour's ministry — in the beginning of the first year of it, shortly after his first public appearance at Jerusalem, that the good people of the town of Sychar in Samaria, where he made a short visit of two days in his journey home to Galilee, bore that remarkable testimony to the truth of his pretensions, which is recorded in my text. " We have heard him ourselves," they say to the woman of their town to whom he had first revealed himself at the well by the entrance of the city, and who had first announced him to her countrymen. " We no longer rely upon your report : we ourselves have heard him. We have heard him propounding his pure maxims of morality — inculcating his lessons of sublime and rational religion — proclaiming the glad-tidings of his Father's peace. We ourselves have heard him ; and we are con- vinced that this person is indeed what he declares himself to be : we know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world, the Christ."
This profession consists, you see, of two parts. The
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terms in which it is stated imply a previous expectation of these Samaritans of a Christ who should come ; and de- clare a conviction that Jesus was that person. It is very remarkable in three circumstances.
First, for the persons from whom it came. They were not Jews : they were Samaritans, — a race of spurious Israelites sprung from the forbidden marriages of Jews with heathen families,^ — a nation who, although they pro- fessed indeed to worship the God of Abraham after the rites of the Mosaic law, yet, as it should seem from the censure that was passed upon them by a discerning and a candid judge, " that they worshipped they knew not what," — as it should seem, I say, from this censure, they had but very imperfect notions of the nature of the Deity they served ; and they were but ill instructed in the true spirit of the service which they paid him. These were the per- sons who were so captivated with the sublimity of our Saviour's doctrines, as to declare that he who had so admi- rably discoursed them could be no other than the Christ, the Saviour of the world.
The second thing to be remarked, is the very just notion these Samaritans express of the office of the Christ whom they expected, — that he should be the Saviour of the world. In the original language of the New Testament, there are more words than one which are rendered by the word " world'' in the English Bible, One of these is a word which, though it properly signifies the whole of the habi- table globe, is often used in a more confined sense by those later Greek writers who were subjects of the Roman empire and treat of the affairs of the Romans. By these writers, it is often used for so much only of the world as was com- prised within the limits of the Roman empire. It has been imagined that the evangelists, following in this particular the example of the politer writers of their times, have used this same word to denote what was peculiarly theii' world, the territory of Judea. Men of learning in these later ages have been much too fond of the practice of framing expo-
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sitions of Scripture upon these grammatical refinements. The observation may be partly just : in many instances, however, it hath been misapplied ; and I would advise the unlearned reader of the English Bible, wherever the world is mentioned, to take the word in its most natural — that is, in its most extended meaning. This rule will seldom mis- lead him ; and the few instances in which it may be incor- rect, are certain passages of history in which exactness of interpretation is not of great — at least not of general im- portance. In the text, however, at present before us, the original word is not that which is supposed to be capable of a limited interpretation. On the contrary, it is that word which is used by the sacred writers to denote the mass of the unconverted Gentile world, as distinguished from God's peculiar people. Of this world, therefore, and by conse- quence of the whole world, the Samaritans, as it appears by the text, expected in the Christ the Saviour. It appears, too, from the particulars of our Saviour's conference with the woman at the well, which are related in the preceding- part of this chapter, — it appears, that of the means by which the Messiah was to effect the salvation of the world, these same people had a very just, though perhaps an in- adequate apprehension. They expected him to save the world by teaching the true religion. " I know," said the woman, " when the Messiah is come, he will tell us all things," — all things concerning the worship of God ; for that was the topic in discussion. The circumstances which the evangelist's narrative discovers of this woman's former life, give us no reason to suppose that she had been a person of a very thoughtful, religious turn of mind, which had led her to be particularly inquisitive after the true meaning of the prophecies. It is to be supposed, therefore, that the notions which she expressed were the common notions of her country. It was the notion, therefore, of the Sama- ritans of this age, that teaching men the true religion would be in great part the means which the Messiah would employ for the general salvation of mankind : and
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since this was their notion of the means by which the Messiah's salvation should be effected, they must have placed the salvation itself in such a deliverance as these means were naturally fitted to accomplish, — in a deliver- ance of mankind from the corruptions which ignorance, hypocrisy, and superstition had introduced in morals and religion, and particularly in the rites of external worship. Another thing appears by the woman's profession, — that the Samaritans were aware that the time was actually come for this Deliverer's appearance. Jesus had said to her — " The hour cometh, and now is, when the true wor- shippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth ; for the Father seeketh such to worship him." The woman took this declaration in its true meaning. She answered, " I know" — (these words in the beginning of the woman's answer are opposed to those in which our Saviour had be- spoken her attention, "• Believe me") — " You have my belief," she said, — " I know you tell me what is true : I know that the Messiah is just now coming (that is the precise meaning of the original words) : I know that the appointed time is come — that the Messiah must presently arrive; and I know that when that person is come, he will tell us all things." Great and innumerable are the myste- ries of godliness. These Samaritans, who knew not what they worshipped, had truer notions of the Messiah's ofiice, and of the nature and extent of the deliverance he was to work, than the Jews had, who for many ages had been the chosen depositaries of the oracles of God. The Samari- tans looked for a spiritual, not a temporal — for a universal, not a national deliverance ; and, by a just interpretation of the signs of the times, they were apprized, that the time in which Jesus of Nazareth arose was the season marked by the prophetic spirit for the Messiah's appearance. Attend, I beseech you, to this extraordinary fact, deduced, if I mistake not, with the highest evidence, from the public profession of the Sycharites which is contained in my text, connected with the particular professions of the woman.
305 Tliis iuct will lead us to interesting speculations, and to conclusions of the bigliest importance. The use I would at present make of it, is only to admonish you, by this striking instance, of how little benefit what are called the external means of grace may prove — the advantages even of a Divine revelation, — of how little benefit they may prove to those whose minds are occupied with adverse prejudices, or who trust so far to that partial favour of the Deity, of which they erroneously conceive the advantages of their present situation to be certain signs, as to be neo-li- gent of their own improvement. On the other hand, you see what a proficiency may be made, by God's blessing, on the diligent use of scanty talents. The Samaritans, you see, who were not included in the commonwealth of Israel, who had no light but what came to them obliquely, as it were, by an irregular reflection from the Jewish temple — no instruction but that of fugitive priests, and under the protection of a heathen prince, — these Samaritans had so far improved under this imperfect discipline, as to attain views of the promised redemption, of which the Jews themselves missed, whom the merciful providence of God had placed under the immediate tuition of Moses and the prophets.
I return to the analysis of my text. The third circum- stance to be remarked in this profession of the Sycharites, is the great Vv'armth and energy of expression with which ' they declare their conviction that Jesus was that universal Saviour whose arrival at this season they expected. " We know,'' they say to the woman (this word expresses an assurance of the mind far stronger than belief) — " We give entire credit to your report. But your assertion is no longer the ground of our belief; our persuasion goes far beyond any belief founded upon the testimony of a third person. We believe your report ; but we believe it because we ourselves have heard him : and we know and can main- tain, each of us upon his own proper knowledge and con- viction, that this person is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of
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the world." Would God, that all who now name the name of Christ, I had almost said, were Sycharites ! But would God, they all were animated with that full-grown confi- dence of faith, which, in a visit of two days, our great Master's preaching had raised to such strength and matu- rity in the honest hearts of these half-taught Samaritans !
These facts, then, are clearly deducible from the text, — • that the Samaritans of our Saviour's day, no less than the more instructed Jews, expected a Messiah, — that they knew, no less than the Jews, that the time was come for his ap- pearance,^ — that, in the Messiah, they expected not, like the mistaking Jews, a Saviour of the Jewish nation only, or of Abraham's descendants, but of the world — a Saviour of the world from moral rather than from physical evil.
Of these facts, J may hereafter, with God's gracious assistance, endeavour to investigate the causes. The spe- culation will be no less improving than curious. It will give us occasion to inquire by what means God had pro- vided that something of a miraculous, beside the natural witness of himself, should remain among the Gentiles in the darkest ages of idolatry. We shall find, if I mistake not, that a miraculous testimony of God, as the tender parent of mankind, founded upon early revelations and wide- spread prophecies, beside that testimony which the works of nature bear to him as the universal Lord, was ever existing in the heathen world, although for many ages the one was little regarded, and the other lay buried and concealed. We shall, besides, have occasion to con- sider and to explain many prophecies that lie scattered in the books of Moses. When I have shown you what were the foundations of the previous faith of the Samaritans in the Messiah to come, I may then proceed to inquire upon what evidence the people of Sychar were induced to be- lieve that Jesus was the expected person. But, as these topics will require some accuracy and length of disquisi- tion, I shall for the present decline them ; and I shall bring my present discourse to a conclusion, when I have
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mentioned and considered a diOiciilty which some find in the story of our Lord's visit to the town of Sychar, and of his conference with the woman at the well, — and which they think a great one, though, in my judgment, it is either altogether groundless, or, if it have any foundation, it is nevertheless entirely removed by the discovery which my text makes of the state of the Samaritans' faith at the time of our Lord's appearance. Whence was it, it hath been said, that Jesus, who declared himself not sent, save to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, should, to these Samaritans (a race which, in a more advanced period of his ministry, he ranked with Gentiles, when he first sent his apostles out to announce the approach of the kingdom of heaven, forbidding them to go into any Gentile province, or to enter any Samaritan town), — whence was it, that in this early period, to these Samaritans, and in particular, to a woman of that country whose character at that time was not irreproachable, whatever her succeeding life might be when she became a disciple of our Lord, — whence was it, that at this early period, in this country, and to this woman, our Lord declared himself more explicitly than it is sup- posed he had yet done in any part of Judea, or even in private among his own disciples ?
Perhaps the supposition which creates this diflficulty — the supposition that Jesus had not declared himself ex- plicitly, either among the Jews in general, or to any of his disciples in private — may be unfounded ;— at least, it is no proof that it is true, that we read not in any of the four Evangelists, that Jesus had, at any time before this interview with the Sycharite woman, said to any one, either in public or in private, " I am the Messiah." To those who consider the abridged manner in which the Evangelists have written — in which they professed to write the story of their Master's life, omitting many more incidents than they have related, — to those who consider this circumstance, it will be no argument that no declara- tion equally explicit had been previously made, that none X 2
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such is recorded. The important transactions of tlie whole interval between our Lord's baptism and his return into Galilee after the first passover, which are contained in the four first chapters of St. John's gospel, the three other Evangelists have altogether passed by: and those who are read in history, either sacred or profane, well know, that the negative of any probable fact is never to be concluded from the silence and omission even of the most accurate and exact historians. From the narrative contained in the three first chapters of St. John's gospel, my conclusion, I confess, would be, that our blessed Saviour, from the very first, was sufliciently explicit with his select associates, upon the general point of his pretensions, and neither at Jerusalem nor in Galilee at all reserved in public. But, granting the truth of the supposition upon which the diffi- culty is raised, I say the solution of the difficulty is easy to be found, in the view which the text displays of the religious opinions of the Samaritans at the time of our Lord's visit to the town of Syclmr. The Samaritans, at that time, had truer notions of the Messiah's character and office — I will not say than an}^ that were commonly to be found among the Jews — but I will say, than any one even of the apostles had, before their minds were en- lightened by the Holy Spirit, after our Lord's ascension. Now, we are told that it is one of the maxims of God's government, "that to him that hath" — to him that hath acquisitions of his own, made by an assiduous improve- ment of his talents, by a studious cultivation of his natural endowments, and a diligent use of the external means of knowledge which have been afforded him — " to him shall be given" the means of greater attainments; "but from him that hath not'' — from him who can show no fruits of his own industry- — " from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have." This unprofitable servant, in the natural course of things, and by the just judgment of God, shall lose the advantages which, through sloth and indolence, he hath neglected to improve. By this maxim,
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every particular person's rank and station will be deter- mined in the world to come. If it is not constantly ob- served in the present world, the necessity of departing from it is either the result of that disorder and irregularity which man's degeneracy hath introduced, or it may be an essential part of the constitution of a probationary state. Still, in general, it is reasonable to suppose that the ex- ternal light of revelation, like the internal influences of the Spirit, when no particular good purposes of Providence are to be answered by a more arbitrary and unequal dis- tribution of it, — ^in general, it is reasonable to suppose, that it is dispensed to difl'erent persons in proportion to the inclination and ability to profit by it which the Searcher of hearts discerns in each. Where, then, is the wonder, that our Saviour should declare himself so openly to these honest Sycharites, who vrere then earnestly looking for the great redemption, whose hearts were ready, and whose un- derstandings were prepared, to receive such a deliverer as Jesus pretended to be — to acknowledge the Christ, the Son of God, although he came in the form of a servant? Where is the wonder that he should make this m-eat dis- covery in the first instance to a weak woman, laden with the follies of her youth, if, notwithstanding the irregularity ,of her past life, he discovered in her heart a soil in which his holy doctrine rnight take root and flourish ? The re- striction laid upon the apostles, in their first mission, not to visit the Samaritans, was probably founded on reasons of policy, not on any dislike of the Samaritans. It might have obstructed the accomplishment of our Saviour's great design, had the Samaritan multitude at that time risen on his side ; as the Jewish multitude, if I conjecture aright, was ripe to rise, had he declared himself the temporal Messiah which they expected. But how, then, would man's redemption have been effected, which required that his blood should flow for our crime — that he, as the re- presentative of guilty man, should suffer capital punish- ment as a criminal ? It was probably for this reason that
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the public call was not to be given to Samaria in his life- time, lest Samaria should obey it. This, at least, seems consistent with the general politics of our Saviour's life ; for it is very remarkable, that as he grew in public fame, he became more reserved with his friends and more open with his enemies. This appears in a ver}^ striking manner in the circumstances of his lastjourney to Jerusalem, when he went up thither to return home no more till he had finished the great atonement. From Galilee, where his friends were numerous and his party strong, he stole away in secret : through Samaria, where he was then less known, he made a more public progress : Jerusalem, wliere the faction of his enemies prevailed, he entered in open triumph : in the temple, he bid defiance to the chief priests and rulers ; telling them, that if, at their request, he should silence the acclamations of his followers (which he refused to do), the stones of the building would pro- claim his titles, and salute the present Deity. From simi- lar motives, it may reasonably be presumed, our Saviour, in the beginning of his ministry, honoured the forward faith of the Samaritans with an open avowal of his person and his office. In a more advanced period, bent on the speedy execution of his great design, he would not call them to his party, lest, by securing his person, they should thwart his purpose.
And now, from these contrasted examples of Samaritan faith and Jewish blindness, let every one take encourage- ment, and let every one learn the necessity of assiduity in self-improvement. Does any one whose thoughtless heart has hitherto been set upon the lust of the eye, the pomp of the world, or the pride of life, begin now to perceive the importance of futurity? Does any one whom the violence of passion hath carried into atrocious crimes, which repe- tition hath rendered habitual and familiar, begin to per- ceive his danger? — Would he wish to escape it, if an escape were possible? — Let him then not be discouraged by any enormities of his preceding life. To become
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Christ s disciple, every one who wishes is permitted : every one's past sins are forgiven from the moment that he re- solves to conform to the precepts and example of his Sa- viour. He who made an open discovery of himself — an early proffer of salvation to a people who, though not ido- laters, had but imperfectly known the Father, — he who, in a conference, the occasion of which was evidently of his own seeking, revealed himself to a woman living in impure concubinage with the sixth man she had called her husband, — he who forgave the sinner that perfumed his feet, and bathed them with the tears of her repentance, — lie who absolved the adulteress taken in the fact, — he who called Saul the persecutor to be a pillar and an apostle of the faith he had so cruelly oppressed, — he who from the cross bore the penitent companion of his last agonies to Paradise, — HE hath said — and you have seen how his actions accorded with his words — he hath said — " Him that Cometh to me, I will in nowise cast out." " Him that Cometh to me in humility and penitence, I will in nowise cast out. In nowise, — in no resentment of any crimes, not even of blasphemy and infidelity previous to his coming, will I exclude him from the light of my doc- trine— from the benefits of my atonement — from the glo- ries of my kingdom." Come, therefore, unto him, all ye that are heavy laden with your sins. By his own gracious voice he called you while on earth : by the voice of his ambassadors he continueth to call ; he calleth you now by mine. Come unto him, and he shall give you rest, — rest from the hard servitude of sin and appetite and guilty fear. That yoke is heavy, — that burden is intolerable : his yoke is easy, and his burden light. But come in sincerity ; — dare not to come in hypocrisy and dissimulation. Think not that it will avail you in the last day, to have called yourselves Christians — to have been born and educated under the gospel light — to have lived in the external com- munion of the church on earth, — if all the while your hearts have holden no communion with its Head in hea-
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veil. If, instructed in Christianity, and professing to be- lieve its doctrines, ye lead the lives of unbelievers, it will avail you nothing in the next, to have enjoyed in this world, like the Jews of old, advantages which ye despised, — to have had the custody of a holy doctrine, which never touched your hearts— of a pure coraraandincnt, by the light of which 3'e never walked. To those who disgrace the doctrine of their Saviour by the scandal of their lives, it will be of no avail to have vainly called him "Lord ! Lord !"
SERMON XXV.
\Vc liave heard liim ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world. — .Tohn iv. 42.
Such was the testimony which, in an early period of our Saviour's ministry, the good people of the town of Sy- char, in Samaria, bore to the truth of his pretensions. They make, you see, a double profession, — first, of a previous faith in a Christ that was to come; then, of a faith now wrought in them by the preaching of Jesus, that Jesus himself was the person they expected.
From this public confession of the Sycharites, connected with the sentiments which had been expressed by a wo- man of the same town, in her private conference with our Lord at Jacob's well, these facts, as I showed you in my last Discourse, may readily be deduced : that the Samari- tans of our Saviour's day, with advantage of less light from revelation, no less than the more instructed Jews, expected a Messiah, — that they knew, no less than the Jews, that the time was come for his appearance, — that, in the Mes- siah who was now to come, they expected not, like the mistaking Jews, a Saviour of the Jewish nation only, or of Abraham's descendants, but of the world, — that they ex- pected a Saviour of the world from moral evil — from the
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misery of sin and guilt — from the corruptions of ignorance, hypocrisy, and superstition.
Of these facts, I now purpose to investigate tlie causes. I am to inquire, therefore, first, on what grounds the pre- vious faith which we find in the Samaritans — their faith in a Christ to come, was founded ; and, in the next place, what particular evidence might produce their conviction that Jesus was the person they expected actually arrived.
The first question, what were the grounds of their pre-, vious faith, may seem naturally to divide itself into two parts, — as it respects this previous faith in that part which was peculiar to the Samaritans ; or in that more general part of it in which they only concurred in the universal expectation of all the civilised nations of the world. The expectation of an extraordinary person who should arise about this time in Judea, and be the instrument of great improvements in the manners and condition of mankind, was almost, if not altogether, universal at the time of our Saviour's birth ; and had been gradually spreading and getting strength for some time before it. The fact is so notorious to all who have any knowledge of antiquity, that it is needless to attempt any proof of it. It may be assumed as a principle which even an infidel of candour would be ashamed to deny ; or, if any one would deny it, I would decline all dispute with such an adversary, as too ignorant to receive conviction, or too disingenuous to acknowledge what he must secretly admit. This general expectation was common, therefore, to the Samaritans with other na- tions : and, so far as it was common, it must be traced to some common source ; for causes can never be less gene- ral than their effects. What was peculiar to the Samari- tans, was the just notion which is expressed in my text, and in the private professions of the Sycharite woman, of the nature and extent of the benefits men were to receive from the expected deliverer, and of the means by which the deliverance was to be accomplished.
The subject, therefore, before us, in its first general
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branch, the inquiry into the grounds of the previous faith of the Samaritans, appears, in this view of it, to be of vast extent and comprehension : for, to give the question a com- plete discussion, and to conduct the inquiry in what might seem the most natural order, it would be necessary to consider, first, the general grounds of the expectation which so generally prevailed ; and afterward, to inquire from what particular sources the Samaritans drew these just views of the Messiah's business which they have been found to entertain. The investigation of the first question would carry us into deep disquisitions of theological anti- quities.
It is not much my practice to shrink from difliiculties ; nor can I bring myself to believe that common people are so incompetent as they are generally supposed to be to comprehend whatever the preacher will be at the trouble to explain. Under the contrary persuasion, I scruple not to serve you with stronger meats than are generally thought fit for popular digestion, I should consult my own ease more, and your advantage less, if I could acquiesce in the general opinion. — For our present subject. The condition of the Samaritans in the article of religious information, was, in consequence of their connexion with the Jews, so different from that of any other people, that we may rea- sonably separate the two questions concerning their parti- cular faith and the general expectation of the rest of man- kind, and consider them as distinct subjects ; for the views of the Samaritans might have been just what they were, although the Gentiles had been left (which never was tlieir case) in total darkness. For the present, therefore, I shall postpone the general question concerning the grounds of the general expectation of the Gentiles (which I purpose, however, with God's gracious assistance, at some future season to resume ; but for the present, I shall postpone it), and, confining myself to the particular case of the Samari- tans, I shall endeavour to ascertain the particular sources from which they drew their information that the Messiah
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was to come for the general advantage of mankind, and that he was to come in the cliaracter of a public teacher of the true religion. In the first circumstance, their expectations differed from those of the Jews, and, in the second, from those of the whole Gentile world. Now, since these no- tions, which were peculiar to themselves, could not be formed on any vague traditions which were current among any other people, and since they have been remarkably justified by the event of things, it is most reasonable to suppose that they were drawn immediately from the word of God— from prophecies of the Old Testament, which the Samaritans interpreted with more discernment than the Jews, because they were free from the prejudices which the Jews entertained in favour of their own nation, — perhaps for this reason, tliat, being secretly conscious of their spurious original, however they might boast their descent from Abraham, they were unwilling to admit those exclusive claims of his family for which the Jews so zea- lously contended, and on which their fatal prejudices were founded. But if the notions of the Samaritans were drawn immediately from the Old Testament, it is evident they are to be sought in those parts of it which the Samaritans admitted. The Samaritans admitted no part of the sacred writings of the Jews but the five books of Moses. In the books of Moses, therefore, we are to look for such prophecies of the Messiah as might be a sufficient foundation of the faith of the Samaritans — of that pure faith which was free from the errors of the Jews, and far more particular than the general expectation of the Gen- tiles. In the books of Moses we must look for prophecies of the Messiah, declaring the general extent of the deliver- ance he was to accomplish, and describing him in the character of a religious teacher : and these prophecies must be clear and explicit, — not conveyed in dark images and ambiguous allusions, but in terms that might be open to popular apprehension before their accomplishment ; for if no such prophecies should be found in the books of Moses,
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the faith of the Samaritans will be a fact for which it will be impossible to account.
For prophecies describing the Messiah as the general benefactor of mankind, it is no difficult task to find them in the books of Moses. The greater difficulty, perhaps, would be to find any prophecy of him, of that high anti- quity, in which the extent of the blessings that should be the consequence of his appearance is not expressly sig- nified. This circumstance is clearly implied in the earliest revelations; and it is remarkable that it is always men- tioned in the most explicit terms, in the promises made to the ancestors of the Jewish nation. A general restoration of mankind from the ruin of the fall was plainly implied in the original curse upon the serpent; for what would have been the great victory of the woman's seed, if the greater part of Eve's posterity were doomed to continue in the power of the common enemy? — if, for one family to be brought by Christ within the possibility of salvation, two hundred and ninety-seven millions were to remain the neglected victims of the devil's malice?— which, upon a very moderate computation, was the case, if Jacob's w^as the single family that was to have an interest in Christ's redemption. After the flood, when Jehovah was de- scribed as the God of Shem, it was declared that Japhet was to find a shelter in Shem's tabernacle. Nor can I perceive that the curse denounced on Canaan's degenerate posterity amounted to an absolute exclusion of his descen- dants from the knowledge and worsliip of Shem's God : the contrary, I think, is mercifully implied in the terms of the curse, though I confess very darkly. When it was first intimated to Abraham that the Messiah was to arise among his descendants, it was at the same time declared that the blessing was to reach to all the families of the earth ; and this declaration was constantly repeated upon every renewal of the glorious promise to Isaac and to Jacob : so that the whole tenor of patriarchal prophecy attests the universal extent of the Messiah's blessings ; and
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tlic tiling is so very clear, that it is unnecessary to be more particular in tlie proof of it.
i\gain, for the time of his ajjpearance. This was marked in Jacob's dying prophecy by a sign which the Samaritans of our Saviour's days could not but discern. The dissolution of a considerable state hath, like all events, its regular and certain causes, which work the ultimate effect by a slow and gradual progress. The catastrophe is ever preceded by public disorders, of which human sagacity easily fore- casts the event. To the Samaritans of our Saviour's day, living in the heart of the Jewish territory, it must have been very perceptible that the sceptre was falling from the hand of Judah, when the Jewish polity was actually within half a century of its dissolution ; — and when the sceptre should depart from Judah, then, according to the holy patriarch's prediction, the Shiloh was to come.
Of the extent, therefore, of the Messiah's blessings, and of the time of his appearance, the Samaritans might find clear information in the books of Moses. Upon these points the earliest prophecies were so explicit, that no higher qualification could be requisite to comprehend their general meaning, than a freedom of the mind from preju- dices in favour of the pretensions of the Jewish nation, — prejudices which the Samaritans, who hated the Jews, were not likely to entertain.
It may be somewhat more difficult to produce the par- ticular predictions in which they found the Messiah de- scribed as a religious teacli^r. That predictions to this purpose do exist in the books of Moses, in terms which were clearly understood by the ancient Samaritans, cannot reasonably be doubted; because we find this notion of the Messiah in the previous faith of the Samaritans, of which the books of Moses were the sole foundation. If these prophecies are now not easy to be found, the whole diffi- culty must arise from the obscurity which time hath brought, through various causes, upon particular passages
;3i8
of these very ancient writings, which originally were per- spicnous.
It were, perhaps, not difficult to prove, that the promise which accompanied the delivery of the law at Sinai — the promise of a prophet to be raised np among the Israelites, who should resemble Moses — had the Messiah for its ulti- mate object : and from the appeal which is repeatedly made to it by the first preachers of Christianity, — from the terms in which the inquiries of the Pharisees were propounded to the Baptist, — from the sentiments which the Jewish multitude were accustomed to express upon occasion of several of our Saviour's miracles, it is very evident, that, in the age of our Lord and his apostles, the Messiah was universally looked for by the Jewish nation, as the person in whom that promise was to receive its final and particular completion. In the office of a prophet, and more particu- larly in the resemblance of Moses, the character of a teacher is indeed included ; but of a national teacher of the Jews only, not of a universal instructor of mankind. This pro- mise, therefore, could hardly be the foundation of the ex- pectation which the Samaritans entertained of a public teacher who was to rescue the whole world from moral evil, by instructing all men in the true religion : for, in the letter of the prophecy, no such character appears ; nor is it probable, that before the merciful scheme of Providence was developed and interpreted by the appearance of our Saviour and the promulgation of the gospel, men would be so quick-sighted in the interpretation of dark figures and distant allusions, as to descry the character of a universal teacher under the image of a prophet of the Israelites. The passages, therefore, on which the Samaritans built their hope, we have yet to seek.
One passage which, if I take its meaning right, contains an illustrious prophecy to our purpose, occurs in the book of Deuteronomy. It is the beginning of that prophetic song in which Moses, just before his death, describes the
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future fortunes of tlie twelve tribes of Israel. This song is contained in the thirty-third chapter of Deuteronomy, under the title of " The blessing wherewith Moses, the man of God, at the point of death, blessed the children of Israel." The particular passage of which I speak, lies in the second, third, fourth, and fifth verses. From the quick transitions that are used in it from narrative to ejaculation, and from ejaculation again to narrative — and from the mixture of allusion to past facts and future events — it has much of that natural difficulty which is, in some degree, inseparable from this style of composition : and the natural difficulty of the passage seems considerably heightened by the errors of transcribers ; insomuch, that the ablest critics seem to have despaired of reducing the original text to any grammatical propriety, or of drawing from it any consistent meaning, without much liberty of conjectural emendation. If the interpretation which I shall venture to propose should seem new, it Avill nevertheless be thought a circumstance somewhat in its favour, that, at the same time that it brings the passage to a more interesting and more connected sense than any other exposition — a sense too the most pertinent to the occasion — it requires fewer alterations of the present text than are necessary in any exposition that hath been hitherto attempted. Of forty- two words, of which the whole passage is composed, six only undergo slight alterations, and a seventh is omitted. The six alterations have the sanction of antiquity, — two from the Samaritan copy of the original text, three from the Greek translation of the Seventy, and the sixth from the Syro-Arabic and Chaldee versions. In the omission of the seventh word, which is the name of Moses in the fourth verse, I have the consent of all judicious critics, who have found the omission necessary in all possible in- terpretations of the passage. In this sacred poem, the particular benedictions of the several tribes are naturally prefaced with a thankful commemoration of that which was the great and general blessing of the whole nation —
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tlie revelation wlucli they enjoyed, and tlie singular privi- lege of a polity and a law of Divine institution. The mention of these national prerogatives is mixed with inti- mations of God's general tenderness for the whole human race, with which the particular promises to the Jews, as hath been before observed, were seldom unaccompanied in the earlier prophecies ; and, as I understand the pas- sage, a prediction of the final conversion of the Jews to Christ, after a previous adoption of the Gentiles, finishes the lofty proem of the inspired song. Such, as I conceive it, is the general scope and purport of the passage ; of every part of which, with the few alterations I have men- tioned, I shall now give you the literal translation, — or, where that cannot be done with perspicuity in the English language, the exact meaning, accompanied witli so much of paraphrase and remark as may be necessary to illustrate the connexion, and to justify my version in its principal peculiarities.
The prophet enters upon his subject with poetical allu- sions to the most striking circumstances of the glorious scene which accompanied the promulgation of the law.
*' Jehovah came from Sinai ; His uprising was from Seir : He displayed his glory from Mount Paran,
And from the midst of the myriads came forth the Holy One,* — On his right-hand streams of fire."
Seir and Paran were places in the wilderness where the Divine glory had been sensibly displayed. The myriads, from which the Holy One is described as coming forth, were the myriads of attendant angels whose descent per- haps was visible before the blaze of light burst forth, which Avas the well-known signal of the personal presence of the Holy One, — that High and Holy One whose transcendent perfections and original existence separate him by an infi- nite interval even from the highest orders of the angelic
* " T/ie Hobj One.'' The same word is used for God, in the parallel text of Habakkuk. — Editor.
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nature. The streams of fire on his right, are tlie incessant flashes of lightning which struck the whole assembly with dismay.
The description being brought to this point, the thing next in order to be mentioned should be the utterance of the decalogue; but here the" prophet interrupts his narra- tive, to commemorate God's parental care of all mankind, in these pathetic eja'culations :
" O loving Father of the peoples !"
" Of the peoples," — that is, of all the different nations of the world ; for that is the force of '' peoples " in the plural.
" O loving Father of the peoples ! Ail the saints are in thy hand j They are seated at thy feet^ And have received of thy doctrine."
" All the saints — good men of all families and of all coun- tries are under thy protection." In our English Bibles we read " all his saints." It is upon the authority of the Se- venty that I throw away the pronoun, which not being- expressed in their translation, had probably no place in their copies of the original ; and indeed its whole effect is but to destroy the generality of the expression, on which the spirit of the sentiment entirely depends. " All the saints are seated at thy feet, and have partaken of thy doc- trine." In these words, you will observe, the great Being who was styled the loving Father of the peoples is addressed in the specific character of a teacher; for the expression of sitting at his feet describes the attitude of scholars listening to the lessons of a master. " And they have received of thy doctrine, or of thy instructions." " They have re- ceived— " In the public translation, the expression is in future time, — " They shall receive ;" and, thus rendered, the passage stands as a promise of the instruction of man- kind by future revelations : but we have the authority of the Seventy to understand the original expression of time past. The promise of future instruction comes in another
Y
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place : the allusion here is to past mercies, as an evidence of the universality of God's parental care of all mankind, in which the prophet professes his belief; and of this the past instances of general mercy, manifested in the revela- tions which had been granted to good men in the patriarchal ages, long before the institution of the Mosaic covenant, furnished a more pregnant proof than distant promises. After these ejaculations, the prophet resumes his narrative, and proceeds to mention the promulgation of the law ; which, prefaced as it is with these allusions to the world's old experience of its Maker's comprehensive love, seems rather alleged as a recent instance of the general provi- dence, than as an argument of any arbitrary partial fond- ness for that particular race in which the theocracy was erected.
" To us he prescribed a law." " He," the Holy One who came forth from the midst of the- myriads ; for the intervening ejaculations stand in parentheses, and this line is to be taken in connexion with the two last of the initial stanza.
" To us he prescribed a law.
Jacob is the inheritance of the preacher :
He shall be king in .leshurun.
When the chiefs of the people shall gather themselves together
In union with the tribes of Israel."
'' Jacob is the inheritance of the preacher." This sentence renders the reason of the institution of the law,— that the family of Jacob, for the general good of mankind, was chosen to be the inheritance or peculiar portion of the preacher. They were appointed to be for many ages the immediate objects of Divine instruction, and the deposita- ries of the sacred oracles. In this sense Jacob was the inheritance of " the preacher," — of that person who hath been in all ages, though in difterent ways at difl'erent seasons, the dispenser of the light of revelation. Of this preacher Jacob is here called the inheritance, in the same sense in which the Jewish nation is called " his own" in
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tlic first cliaptcr of St. John's gospel. The word wliich I have rendered by " tlic preacher" hath been generally taken in this place in the sense ot" " congregation," which gives the whole passage a very different meaning : but the sense in which I take it, of " the preacher," is the usual signification of the word. The use of it in the sense of " congregation" is unexampled in the sacred writings, un- less perhaps in this passage, in another in the book of Genesis, and a third in the book of Nehemiah. The pas- sage of the book of Genesis will be particularly considered in the prosecution of our subject. The signification of the word in question is not less ambiguous in that place than it is here; and the sense of" the preacher" will equally suit the context. In Nehemiah, the sense is somewhat doubtful ; and, were it certain, the style of Nehemiah is not the best standard for the interpretation of Moses. The interval between the two writers was long; and the changes and corruptions which the Hebrew language underwent in the captivity of the Jewish nation were great and various. The book of Ecclesiastes was of an earlier and a purer age ; and throughout that book, the word, by the consent of all interpreters, signifies " the preacher." But the particular advantage of taking the word here in its usual and proper signification, is the remarkable perspicuity which it gives to the ensuing distich, — clearly demonstrating the person of whom it is predicated that he shall be a king ; which person it will be no easy matter to ascertain, if, by adopt- ing any other meaning of this word, we lose the descrip- tion of him which this line affords. " He shall be king." The preacher, whose inheritance is Jacob, shall be king. Our public translation has it — " He was king ;" making the sentence an assertion of something past, instead of a prediction. And this, assertion some understand of Moses, M^ho was no king, nor ever bore the title, — and some, of God, of whom it were improper to say that he ivas what he ever is, king in Jeshurun. With the authority of the Seventy, therefore, on my side, T throw away the letter Y 2
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which gives the verb the preterite form, and understand it of time future. " He," the preacher, " shall be king in Jeshurun." The word " Jeshurun" is no patronymic of the Jewish nation ; but, by the natural force of it, seems rather to denote the whole body of the justified, in all ages of the world, and under all dispensations : and it is to be taken with more or less restriction of its general meaning, according to the particular times which may be the subject of discourse. It is sometimes descriptive of the Jews, not as the natural descendants of Jacob or of Abraham, but in their spiritual character of the justified, while they formed the whole of the acknowledged church : but, in prophecies which respect the adoption of the Gentiles, it denotes the whole body of the faithful gathered from the four winds of heaven. In this Jeshurun the monarchy of God was from the beginning, is without interruption, and shall be without end : but tlie MessiaJi's kingdom commenced upon our Lord's ascension; and its establishment will be then complete, when the rebellious Jews shall acknow- ledge him. This kingdom I conceive to be here predicted, in the assertion that the preacher shall be king in that Jeshurun which shall hereafter be composed of Jews and Gentiles, living in friendship and alliance, professing the same faith, and exercising the same worship.
Thus it appears, that in this prophecy of Moses, if we have rightly divined its meaning, the Messiah is explicitly described under the character of a preacher, in whose spi- ritual kingdom Jews and Gentiles shall be imited as the subjects of a common Lord. This interpretation of this remarkable passage will receive, I think, considerable con- firmation, from the elucidation of another prophecy of an earlier age, in which Christ's character of a general teacher, or his business at least of teaching all the world, is de- scribed in terms less liable to ambiguity of interpretation. And this I shall consider in my next Discourse.
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SERMON XXVJ.
We have heard him ourselves, and know that tliis is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world. — John iv. 42.
This fourth chapter of St. John's gospel contains a narrative of our Saviour's visit to the town of Sychar in Samaria ; and in the text we have the testimony which was publicly borne by the people of the place to the truth of his pretensions.
Extraordinary as the fact may seem, this portion of the evangelical history aflx)rds the most unquestionable docu- ments of the truth of it, — that the Samaritans of our Sa- viour's day not only believed in a Christ who was to come, but had truer notions than the Jews, their cotem- poraries, of the nature and extent of the salvation to b'e expected from him, and of the means by which it should be accomplished : the nature of the salvation, spiritual — the extent, universal — the means, teaching. They ex- pected a deliverance of the whole world from moral evil, by a person who should appear in the character of a uni- versal teacher of the true religion.
Of these just, views of the Samaritans, the books of Moses, which were the only part of the Jewish Scriptures which the Samaritans received, were the only possible foundation. The conclusion therefore seems infallible, that prophecies do actually exist in some part of the books of Moses, which describe the Messiah as a general teacher of the true religion, and express this character in terms which were clearly understood by the ancient Samaritans. If these prophecies are now not easy to be found, the diffi- culty must arise from the obscurity which time hath brought upon particular passages of those very ancient writings, which originally were perspicuous. If, by the assistance of Him who hath promised to be ever with us, we should
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be enabled to succeed in our attempt to do the injuries of time in some degree away, and to restore defaced prophe- cies of this great importance to their original evidence, we trust we shall have rendered some part of the service which we owe to that great cause, to the support of which our talents and our studies stand solemnly devoted.
In my last Discourse, I produced a passage from the book of Deuteronomy, which, in whatever obscurity it may have lain for several ages, with fewer and slighter emendations than are requisite to bring it to any other consistent meaning, admits an interpretation which makes it an illustrious prophecy to our purpose. You will re- collect, that the passage is the proem of that prophetic song in which Moses, just before his death, described the fortunes of the twelve tribes of Israel. My translation, which it may be useful to repeat, that the agreement and resemblance between this prophecy and some others, which I now purpose to consider, may be the more readily per- ceived,— my translation of the second and three following verses of the thirty-third chapter of Deuteronomy, is in these words :
" Jehovah came from Sinai > His uprising was from Seir : He displayed his glory from Mount Faran,
And from the midst of tlic myriads came fortli the Holy One, — On his right hand streams of fire. O loving Father of the peoples ! All the saints are in thy hand; They are seated at thy feet, And have received of thy doctrine. To ns he (the Holy One) prescribed a law. Jacob is the inheritance of the preacher : He (the preacher) shall be king in Jcshurun, When the chiefs of the peoples gatlier themseh'es together In union with the tribes of Israel."
The interpretation of this remarkable passage will re- ceive great confirmation from the elucidation of another prophecy, of an earlier age, which I now take in hand. The examination of this prophecy will consist of two
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parts. The first point will be, to ascertain its meaning, as it stands in our modern copies of the Hebrew text, without any alteration ; and the second, to consider an emendation suggested by the old versions, which, without altering the sense, considerably improves the perspicuity and heightens the spirit of the expression.
When the patriarch Jacob was setting out for Padan- aram, to form an alliance by marriage, according to the customs of those early times, with the collateral branch of his mother's family, his father Isaac's parting blessing was to this effect : "God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee; and thou shalt be a mul- titude of i^eoplesT This blessing was repeated, it seems, to the patriarch, in his dream at Luz ; for though this cir- cumstance is not mentioned by Moses in its proper place, in his narrative of that extraordinary dream, in the twenty- eighth chapter of Genesis, it is, however, apparent by the words which in the forty-eighth chapter he puts into the mouth of Jacob upon his death-bed : " God Almighty ap- peared unto me at Luz, in the land of Canaan, and blessed me, and said unto me — Behold, I will make thee fruitful, and multiply thee ; and I will make of thee a multitude of peoples." You will observe, that it is not without a [spe- cial reason that I choose in these passages to sacrifice the propriety of my English expression to an exact adherence to the letter of the Hebrew text, in the use of the word " peoples" in the plural. In the original language of the Old Testament, the word " people" in the singular always signifies some single nation, and, for the most part, the individual nation of the Jews ; the plural word '• peoples" signifies many nations, either Jews and Gentiles promis- cuously, or the various nations of the Gentiles, as dis- tinguished from the Jews. Our translators, in this in- stance, over studious of the purity of their English style, have dropped this important distinction throughout the whole of the Old Testament ; and thus the force and spi- rit of the original, wherever it depends upon this distinc-
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tion, vvliich is the case in many prophetic texts, is unhap- pily lost in our public translation. But, to return.
This same blessing was again repeated upon the pa- triarch's return from Padan-aram, when God appeared to him, and said — " I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall be of thee." It is the same word in the original which is rendered in our English Bibles, in this third benediction, by a "company," and in the two former passages by a " multitude :" but it is of great importance to observe, that in the promise made to Abraham that he should be a fa- ther " of many nations," or, according to the margin, " of a multitude of nations," a very different word is used. Were the marginal interpretation adopted, the terms of this promise to Abraham, and of the blessings pronounced upon Jacob upon three diti'crcnt occasions, in our English Bibles, would be very much the same : whereas in the ori- ginal they are essentially different ; and the difference lies in the principal word, in the word which expresses the matter of the promise. Novv^, as a sameness of the terms, if it really existed, v^ould be an argument for assigning one and the same meaning to the promises, so a regular variation of the terms in which the promises to Abraham and to his grandson were conveyed, when the promise was repeated twice to Abraham — to Jacob three times, creates a strong presumption that the promises to these different persons, in which so striking a difference of the terms was so constantly observed, had different objects : and the event of things confirms the suspicion. Of Abra- ham, who was the common ancestor of the Israelites, the Arabians, the Idumseans, and many other nations of the East, it might be said with truth, in the literal sense of the words, " that he should be the father of many nations." But, of Jacob, whose whole posterity was contained in the single nation of the Jews, I cannot see with what propriety it could be said that " a company of nations should come out of him,'' or that he should be " made a multitude of
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peoples." To say tliut nations or peoples sUind only for tribes, is an ill-devised subterfuge of Jewish expositors : it is founded upon a principle vvliich will ever mislead, because it is in itself false (though, by the way, it is the fa- vourite assumption of our modern Socinians, and is the foundation of their whole system), that the prophetic style describes little things by gigantic images. Even in the spiritual sense, the expression that Jacob should be a mul- titude of peoples, or that a company of nations should come out of him, would be improper and unprophetic ; for the various races of men, who, by embracing the faith of Christ, are become in a spiritual sense the children of Abraham and of Jacob, are in the same spiritual sense, by virtue of their adoption into the blessed family, become parts of the one nation of the spiritual Israel, and are no longer to be called in any spiritual sense a multitude or a company of peoples or of nations. It is a just observation of the learned Calvin, that a prophecy which should have described the Christian community under the image of a variety of nations, would have been no blessing, but a curse; since, according to the regular signification of the prophetic images, which have their regular and deter- mined significations no less than the words of common speech, such a prophecy would have been predictive of factions and schisms, and would have threatened a disso- lution of that unity on which the welfare of the church depends. The word which, in these promises to Jacob, is rendered by " multitude"" or " company" in our English Bibles, takes its origin and its meaning from a root which properly signifies "to assemble," or to "call an assembly:" and the force of it in these passages seems more properly expressed in the Greek translation of the Seventy than by any later interpreter. Their translation is to this effect ; In the two first places, " I will make thee for the gathering together of nations :" in the third place, " the gathering together of nations shall be from thee ;" — and the gather- ing: together which is intended, can be no other than the
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gathering- of all nations into one in Christ. But, it I mis- take not, this great event is much more expressly men- tioned in these passages than it appears to be even in the version of the Seventy; the Messiah being personally mentioned under the character of the " Gatherer of the nations :" for the word w^hich the Seventy render by "the gathering together," and the English translators by " a multitude or company," may by its derivation either signify the persons of which an assembly is composed, in which sense our English translators understood it, — or the act of bringing them together, which is the sense the Seventy express ; or it may bear a third sense, which perhaps is of all the most pertinent in the passages in question : it may stand for the person by whose authority the assembly is convened. Any one of these three senses, the word, for its natural force, may bear indifferently; and in Avhich of the three it is in any particular passage to be taken, can only be determined by the occasion upon which it is intro- duced, by what is said of it, and by the words with which it is immediately connected. In the passages in question, the first sense seems absolutely excluded by the truth of history, with which true prophecy must ever be consistent : Jacob never became the father of a multitude of nations. Of the remaining two, we are at liberty to choose that which may be most consistent with history and with the general tenor of the ancient prophecies, and may give the most importance to the sense and the most spirit to the expression. The spirit of the expression will be the most striking, if the last of the three senses be adopted, that of a person ; for, with this sense of the word, the literal ren- dering of the three passages will be thus : Of the two first, "I have appointed thee for a gatherer of the peoples :" of the third, "A nation and the gatherer of nations shall arise from thee." Were I satisfied that our modern copies of the Hebrew text give these promises to Jacob precisely in the terms in which they were originally delivered to him, without the alteration or omission of a single letter,
33 J
I mig'Iit perhaps allege, in confirmation of the iuterpreta- tioii I would propose, that our Lord may be imagined to allude to this prediction of himself under the character of a gatherer of the nations, in those pathetic words with which he closed his public preaching : "■ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem ! thou murderess of the prophets ! thou that stonest them that are sent unto thee ! how often would I liave gathered thy children together in what manner the hen gathereth her own chickens under her wings, and ye would not !" But, whichever be the true rendering, — whe- ther " the gatherer," for which my opinion stands, or "the gathering together," which the Seventy approve, — the prophecy contains an evident allusion either to the person of Christ as a teacher, or to his business as a teaching ; for although the ambiguous word, in the sense of an as- sembly, seems to carry no natural limitation of its mean- ing, but might stand for any assembly convened by pro- clamation, without regard to any particular end or purpose for which it might be holden, yet the most frequent use of it among the sacred writers is for assemblies of which the purpose is either civil consultation or religious worship and instruction : and the civil assemblies to which it is applied, are for the most part those in which something of religious business mixes itself more or less with the pur- pose of the meeting : so that, in the sense of " an assem- bly," it pretty much corresponds with the English word " congregation," which, by its natural force, might stand for any assembly, and yet, by the usage of our best writers, and indeed of common speech, is appropriated to religious assemblies. By analogy, therefore, we may conclude that this same word, in the sense of "an assembler," must pe- culiarly denote the person who presides in a religious con- gregation, who leads the public worship, and instructs the people : and the gatherer of nations, in this sense, is the proper character of the founder of a religion which was to be adopted by the whole Gentile world ; except, perhaps, that it may seem somewhat more comprehensive, as de-
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scribing a person who shonld gather the nations, as our Saviour would have gathered the children of Jerusalem, for the double purpose of teaching and of saving them.
In these passages, therefore, of the book of Genesis, as they stand in our modern copies of the Hebrew text, whe- ther we follow the version of the Seventy or adopt another which the original words will equally bear, we have an explicit prediction of the instruction and salvation of the Gentiles, to be accomplished by a descendant of Jacob. The two first, indeed, in which it is said to Jacob that he should be, or that God had appointed him to be, for a gatherer or for the gathering of the peoples, declare perhaps the general benefit immediately intended by the selection of Jacob's family, who, for the general good of all mankind, were appointed to be for a certain period the depositaries of the true religion, and the objects of a mi- raculous discipline. Their intercourse, in various ways at different periods — by conquest or by commerce, by alliance or by servitude — with the principal empires and most en- lightened nations of the world, — in the earliest times with the Moabites, the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, and the Syrians of Damascus ; afterward with the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Persians ; then with the Greeks ; and last of all with the Romans ; the intercourse of the Is- raelites, in every period of their state, with the people that was the most considerable for the time, was the means of keeping alive some knowledge of the true God even among the heathens, in such a degree at least as might prepare the world for a general revelation at the appointed season. They were, as some of their own rabbin have very well expressed it, the witnesses of the one true God to all mankind. In this sense Jacob was appointed for the congregations, or for the teacher of the people : his posterity was a race of priests, a nation of prophets. The third passage specifically respects either the general sal- vation of the Gentiles, or the person who was to save them by teaching them a true religion and a pure worship.
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According' to the version of the Seventy, " The gathering together of the nations shall be from thee," this passage is exactly parallel with our Saviour's own words, m his conference with the Samaritan woman, — " Salvation is of the Jews." The salvation of the Gentiles is predicted ; and the accomplishment of it is ascribed to a descendant of Jacob. According to the version which to me seems preferable, it is a prophecy describing a descendant of Jacob by the character of the Saviour and the teacher of all mankind.
We find, therefore, in this promise to Jacob, as it is represented in the copies of the Hebrew text which are now in use, such a declaration of God's merciful care of all mankind — so explicit a prediction of a teacher, or at least of a teaching of the Gentiles, as may sufficiently ac- count for the just views which the Samaritans entertained of the nature as well as of the extent of the Messiah's re- demption.
I cannot take leave of this same prophecy, without con- sidering an emendation which the translation of the Seventy suggests. The true object of the prophecy is that which appears in the interpretation of the Greek translators — the mysterious scheme of Providence of gathering all na- tions into one in Christ. But, though the Seventy have so far succeeded as not to misinterpret (for they have ex- pressed the true purport of the prophecy, and have intro- duced no false images which the original words do not convey), whether they have had the good fortune to seize the true turn of the original expression, and have given the prophecy in its genuine form as well as its true mean- ing, will bear a question. In their translation, the pro- phecy is a simple prediction of the event. The original words will bear an exposition which render it an animated prediction of the person by whom the event was to be ac- complished, in that particular character in which we have the highest reason to think he is actually described in some passages of the Mosaic writings which have been
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long misunderstood. The different interpretations of this passage have all arisen, as I have in a preceding part of this Discourse explained, from the ambiguity of a single word, which by its natural force may indifferently signify either a multitude assembled, the act of assembling, or the person by whose authority the assembly is convened. If the ambiguous word be taken in the last of these three meanings, the literal rendering of the three passages in question will be to this effect: Of the two first, "Thou shalt be," or " I have appointed thee to be for a gatherer of the peoples :" of the third, " A nation and the gatherer of nations shall arise from thee." I shall not dwell upon the arguments that might be alleged for giving a pre- ference to this interpretation of the passages in question, as the original text stands in our modern copies; but I shall proceed to show, that in older copies, which were likely to be more sincere, this was the most obvious, if not the only sense which the Hebrew words presented.
The copies of the Hebrew text which are now in use, from which the English and most modern translations of the Old Testament have been made, give the text which the Jews have thought proper to consider as authentic, since a revision of the sacred books by certain learned rabbin who lived several centuries after Christ. These critics, by their very imperfect knowledge of the Hebrew language, which in their time had been a dead language among the Jews themselves for many ages, and by their prejudices against our Saviour, were but ill qualified for their arduous undertaking. I would not over confidently charge them with an impiety of which they have been sus- pected— of wilful corruptions of the prophetic text in pre- judice of our Lord's pretensions. To say the truth, I am little inclined to give credit to this heavy accusation : the Jews, to do them justice, with all their prejudices, have ever shown a laudable degree of religious veneration for the sacred text, and have employed the greatest pains, though not always by the most judicious means, to preserve
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its integrity. 1 am there fore unwilling to believe that any Jew would make the least wilful alteration in any expression which he believed to have proceeded from the inspired pen. But, although I am inclined to acquit them of the imputation of wilful corruptions (without any im- peachment, how^ever, of the candour of those who judge more severely ; for they have room enough for their suspi- cions), it is but reasonable to suppose, — it were unreason- able to suppose the contrary, — that where various readings occurred of any prophetic text, these Jewish critics w^ould give the preference, not in malice, but in the error of a prejudiced mind, — they would give the preference to that readinp' which mioht seem the least favourable to the scheme of Christianity, and to give the least support to the claims of that Saviour whom their ancestors had crucified and slain : and that this was actually their practice, might be proved by many striking instances. It is therefore become of great importance, to consider how certain texts might stand in more ancient copies of the sacred writings ; which is often to be discovered from the translations and paraphrases made before the appearance of our Saviour, and of consequence before any prejudices against him could operate. Among these, the Greek translation of the Pentateuch, for its great antiquity, deserves the highest attention, being about two hundred and sixty years older than the Christian era. And though an extreme caution should be used in admitting any conjectural emendations of the sacred text, lest we should corrupt what we attempt to amend, yet the historical inquiry after the varieties of the ancient copies cannot be prosecuted with too much freedom : for, though it might be dangerous to make any alteration of the modern text, except upon the most certain evidence, yet it can never be dangerous to know of any particular text that it was once read otherwise ; and the inquiry might often prove the means of restoring many illustrious prophecies. Nor can I see for what reason we should be scrupulous to adopt readings which give perspi-
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cuity to particular passages, and heighten the prophetic evidence, wlien we have the highest reason to believe that those readings were received by the Jews themselves, in their unprejudiced times ; and were only called in ques- tion afterward, for the positive testimony they seemed to bear to our Saviour's claims, and to the gospel doctrine of a general redemption. The passages which would be most apt to suffer, through the prejudices of the later Jew- ish critics, would be those in which the call of the Gen- tiles was most openly predicted, and in which the Messiah was described as a universal teacher.
We have seen that this description of the Messiah is contained in the promises to Jacob, as they stand in the mo- dern Hebrew text. From an attentive consideration of the Greek translation of the Seventy, I cannot but persuade myself that this character of the Messiah was far more explicitly expressed in the copies of the Hebrew from which that version v/as made, though it was not clearly understood by those translators; and yet the whole diffe- rence between their copies of the original, and those of the modern Jews, consists in the omission of a single letter in the later copies. The word " gathering," or " gatherer," on the true sense of which so much depends, is rendered by the Seventy, in every one of the three passages in ques- tion, in tlifi plural number, — not ^'gathering,'''' but ^'ga- therings;'" and yet the original Hebrew word, in the pre- sent state of the text, is singular. These translators have in general followed their original with such scrupulous exact- ness, expressing in their Greek all the grammatical pecu- liarities of their Hebrew original, often at the expense not only of the purity but of the perspicuity of their style, that no one who has had the opportunity of giving a critical attention to that translation will believe, that the Seventy would in three places, where they found a word in the Hebrew which could not but be singular, choose, without any necessity, to express it by a plural word in Greek: and every one who cannot believe this, will find himself
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compelled to conclude that thut word, wliich in our mo- dern copies of the Hebrew text is necessarily singular, in the copies which the Seventy used was something that might be taken for a plural. The addition of a single letter (and that a letter which transcribers have been very apt to omit) to the word which now occurs in the Hebrew will give it that plural form which the Seventy have ex- pressed : but, with the addition of this letter, the Hebrew word may be either that plural word which the Seventy understood it to be, or a singular word which literally signifies "the preacher." "The words of the preacher, the son of David, king of Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher." This, you know, is the title and the beginning of the book of Ecclesiastes. The word which liere, and in other parts of this same book, is very pro- perly rendered in our English Bibles by " the preacher," diflers not in a single letter from that plural word which in the promises to Jacob the Seventy have rendered by " the gatherings." But since this word, by the consent of all interpreters, signifies " the preacher" throughout the book of Ecclesiastes, why should it be otherwise un- derstood in other passages of Scripture, where the same sense may suit the context ? In the promises to Jacob, no other sense of the word will equally suit the context, since no other interpretation of the word produces an equal per- spicuity of the whole sentence. This, therefore, is the sense in which it is most reasonable to understand it ; and the literal translation of these three passages, as the text appears to have stood in the copies which the Greek translators followed, will be thus: Of the two first, "Thou shalt be," or " I have appointed thee to be for a preacher of the peoples:" of the third, " A nation, and the preacher of nations shall come out of thee." It is no great objec- tion to this interpretation, that the Seventy missed it: these translators were Jews, and would be little inclined to admit a sense of any text which should make it a pre- diction of the Messiah in the express character of a teacher z
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of the Gentiles. They took up, therefore, with another meaning, which the word, considered by itself, might equally bear, though it rendered the sentence less perspi- cuous. The want of perspicuity was a circumstance in which they found a shelter for their prejudices. They perhaps imagined, that " the gathering of the nations," though by the proper import of the Hebrew words it expressed " a gathering of the nation for the purpose of instruction and salvation," was only an obscure pre- diction of a universal monarchy of the Jews, to be esta- blished by the Messiah, and a gathering of the Gentiles under that monarchy by conquest: and an obscure predic- tion of this exaltation of their own nation was more to their taste than an explicit prophecy of the Messiah as a general benefactor. The Samaritans, who had no interest in the national prosperity of the Jews, their enemies, were better interpreters.
To sum up the whole of this long but interesting dis- quisition, it appears that the promises to Jacob, conveyed first in his father Isaac's parting blessing — repeated in the patriarch's dream at Luz, and, for the last time, when God appeared at Peniel — in any sense in which they can be taken, contain, especially the last of them, a clear pro- phecy of the Messiah as a universal teacher. The precise terms in. which these promises were conveyed, are in some small degree uncertain ; for we find, in the transla- tion of the Seventy, the plainest indications of a small dif- ference, in all the three texts, between their copies and those which are now received. The difierence is only of a single letter in the ancient copies, which is not found in those of the present day ; and this variety afiects not the sense of the promise, but makes some diflference in the degree of precision with which the sense is expressed. The terms of the promise, according to the one or the other of these two different readings — according to the ancient or the later copies, are unquestionably correct ; and according to either, the general purport is the same :
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hut it' the gTeator correctness lie in the later copies, then the Messiah's character of a teacher of the nations is only to be di-awn from the general character of a gatherer, in which it is contained, or his particular business of teach- ing the nations, from the general business of gathering them. If the ancient copies gave the truer reading, then the Messiah is expressl}^ announced under the specific cha- racter of a " preacher of the nations."
In either way, we have found, in these promises in the book of Genesis, of which the Samaritans acknowledo^ed tlie authority, an explicit prophecy of the Messiah as an universal preacher. Two prophecies, therefore, of this import, seem to be yet legible in the books of Moses ; and, by bringing these prophecies to light, we discover a new circumstance of agreement between the character which our Lord sustained and the prophecies that went before concerning him.
I would now turn your attention for a moment to a sub- ject which might well deserve a particular discussion, — the evidence upon which the Samaritans, looking for a Christ to come, were induced to believe that Jesus was the person. What was the evidence which produced this belief? — What is the evidence on which we believe? We are curious to examine the philosophy of the doctrine : we seek for the completion of prophecies, and for the evi- dence of miracles : unless we see signs and wonders, we will not believe ; — but upon what evidence did the Sama- ritans believe? We read of no miracles performed among the Sycharites. That we read of none is not a proof that none were performed: but if any were, it was not evidence of that kind which took possession of the hearts of the Samaritans; — they allege our Saviour's doctrine as the ground of their conviction; and our Saviour's doctrine carries with it such internal evidence, — it is in itself so rational and consistent — in its consequences so conducive to that which must be the great end of a Divine revelation, if any such be extant, — it discovers a scheme of salvation z 2
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so wonderfully adapted both to tlie perfections of God and the infirmities of man, that a mind which hath not lost, by the force of vicious habits, its natural sense of right and wrong' — its natural approbation of what is good and great and amiable, will always perceive the Christian doctrine to be that which cannot easily be disbelieved when it is fairly propounded. The Samaritans heard this doctrine from the Divine Teacher's mouth for the short space of two days: we, in the writings of the evangelists, have a com- plete summary of his triennial preaching; we have, joined with the detail of many of his miracles, the delineation of his character, and the history of his wonderful life of piety and love : we have seen the fortitude with which he re- pelled temptation — the patience with which he endured reproach — the resignation with which he underwent the punishment of others' crimes: in the figured language of the apostle, we ourselves have heard him preach, — we have seen him crucified, — we have seen him rise ao-ain: we experience his present power, in the providential pre- servation of his church and support of his doctrine. The Samaritans were convinced by a preaching of two days: how, then, shall we escape, if we neglect so great sal- vation !
SERMON XXVII.
Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, he thus minded ; and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. — Philippians lii. 15.
The obscurity of this text arises from two causes, — from a double sense of the word " minded," and from an improper use of the word "otherwise."
The word "minded" predicates indift'erently any state of mind, — this or that particular state, according as the
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occasion upon wliicli it is used, and tlie words with wliicli it is connected, may limit and qualify its general meaning. A state of the mind may be either a state of its dispositions and affections toward external objects, — a state of its hopes and fears — its desires and aversions — its schemes, purposes, and machinations; or a state of the in- tellect with respect to its internal faculties — the quickness of the apprehension — the strength of the memory — the extent of knowledge, and the truth or error of opinion. The condition of a man's mind with respect to these or any other circumstances of its appetites — its native powers or acquired endowments, may be expressed in our language by his being thus or thus minded. By this great latitude of its signification, the English word " minded" serves to convey the meaning of a great variety of words in the original languages of the holy Scriptures. In this particu- lar text, however, it is one and the same word in the origi- nal which answers in both parts of the sentence to the word " minded :" and this original word might seem, by its nature and derivation, to be capable of the same variety of meaning as the English ; but, by the usage of the sacred writers, its signification, so far as it corresponds at all with the English word" minded," is far more restrained; for it is never applied to the intellectual part of the mind, but with respect to the opinions, — nor to the disposition, but in a religious sense, to express the state of moral taste and sentiment. It carries, however, a double meaning, seeing it may express a state of mind w ith respect either to opi- nion or religious disposition. It is used in these two different senses in the different branches of the text; and this double application of the same word, in different clauses of the same sentence, makes the whole difficulty of the passage as it lies in the original.
But, in our English translation, this difficulty is greatly heightened by the improper use of the word " otherwise," which in our language is a word of comparison between individual things, insomuch that it can never be used with
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propriety unless it is answered by the comparative " tlian," either expressed or understood ; and the expression " to be otherwise minded," in the English language, properly sig- nifies to be in a state of mind other than some certain state afterward mentioned or already described. In the text, I doubt not but the generality of the readers of the English Bibles imagine an opposition is intended between " thus minded" and " otherwise minded," and would perhaps supply the sentence thus : " Let us, as many as be perfect, be thus minded ; and if in any thing you be otherwise minded than thus, God shall reveal even tliis unto you." This, at least, seems to be the exposition to which the English expressions naturally lead : but this exposition will lead us far away from any thing that may be sup- posed to be a wise man's meaning.
Now, the original word which is here rendered " other- wise," is frequently indeed used, like the English word, to indicate comparison ; yet, in its primary and most pro- per meaning, in which I think it is to be taken here, it predicates generally, without reference to individual terms of comparison, the opposite of sameness or uniformity, — that is, difference or variety; and it might perhaps be better rendered by the English word " variously." We will take the liberty, therefore, to substitute " variously' in the place of " otherwise" in the text; and, bearing in remembrance the double meaning of the word " minded," let us see what sense the passage, thus corrected, will pre- sent : " Let us, as many as be perfect, be thus minded ; and if in any thing you be variously minded, God shall reveal even this unto you." Light seems to open on the passage : the opposition which before perplexed us be- tween " thus minded" and " otherwise minded" now dis- appears. The deficiency of the sentence is in another part than we at first suspected, and is to be very diffe- rently supplied. " Let us, as many as are perfect, be thus minded : and if in any thing ye be variously minded, God shall reveal to you even this thing concerning which you
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have various minds." I doubt not but you now perceive that the exhortation to be " thus minded " respects certain virtuous habits of the mind — certain sentiments with re- spect to religious practice, which the apostle would recom- mend it to the Philippians to assume : and the supposition of their being variously minded, regards certain differences of opinion which he apprehended might subsist among them when this epistle was v/ritten, and which, he assures them, the good habits lie prescribes, were they once be- come universal, would in a great measure abolish, by that especial blessing of God's overruling providence and en- lightening Spirit which ever accompanies the upright and sincere.
The disposition or habit of the mind which the apostle recommends, is that which in the verses immediately pre- ceding the text he has described as his own, — namely, such a constant and earnest desire of continual improvement in the habits of a Christian life, as made him think lightly of any proficiency he had actually made in it, otherwise than ' as a necessary step toward farther attainments. Having expressed his high sense of the importance of the Christian doctrine, and the merit of that righteousness which consists in the exercise of Christian duties, and arises from a true and lively faith in Christ, he declares, in the tenth and eleventh verses, that he is content to be conformed to his Master's death, — that is, to suffer and to die, as he did, for the good of mankind, and for the interests of the true religion, if by any means he might " attain unto the resur- rection of the dead. Not," says he, " that I have yet got- ten hold, — not that I am secure of attaining the great prize to which I aspire, or am already perfect, — but I persevere in the pursuit, if, by my utmost diligence, I may at last lay hold of it : for which purpose, — that I might persevere in this great pursuit, and at last lay hold upon the prize, hold has been taken of me by Jesus Christ." There is in the original, a certain animated play (not unusual in the most serious discourse, nor abating any thing of its seriousness,
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but adding to its force) upon the double meaning of the word " lay hold/" A person lays hold upon a thing, when he takes possession of it, and claims it as his right and property. In this sense, the apostle speaks with much diffidence and humility of his hope of laying hold of his reward. A guide lays hold of a person that is going out of his way, to lead him into it, or of a feeble person, to support him. In this sense the apostle speaks of Christ's laying hold on him, to conduct him into the path of life, and to support him in it; at the same time, not without some oblique allusion to the miraculous manner of his first conversion, under the image of a sudden and violent seizure. The apostle goes on. " Brethren, I do not so account of myself as if I had already gotten hold; — zealous as I have been in the propagation of the faith, — patient as I am under all the sufferings in which it has involved me, — pre- pared as I am to sacrifice my life in its support, yet 1 do not entertain the arrogant opinion, that, by these services or these dispositions, 1 have already earned my reward. I pretend to no merit beyond this one thing, that, forgetting what is behind, — thinking little of attainments already made, — I stretcli forward to what is yet before, endea- vouring at continual improvement. I make toward the goal, for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. This is my mind: these are my notions of our duty : these are my views of our perfection ; and let us all, as many as be perfect, — as many as pretend to per- fection, or would aspire after it, — be thus minded ; and if in any thing ye be variously minded, — if in certain points of doctrine, or concerning some particulars of external worship, you eu-e not all agreed, provided you arc sincere in the desire, and constant in the endeavour to improve, God will enlighten your understandings, and bring you, by a general apprehension of the truth, to agree no less in your opinions than in the o^eneral principles of life." The apostle goes on, in the following verse : " Be that as it may, so far as we have already attained, walk by the same
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rule ; have your minds upon the same thing."' This is the exact rendering of the sixteenth verse. The words " let US;" which occur twice in tire English translation. — " let us walk by the same rule,"' and " let us mind the same thing,"" — the words " let us"' are in both places an addition of the translators, and darken the meaning. " But, what- ever differences of opinion may remain among you," says the apostle, " in that which I for my part consider as the only perfection to which I have yet attained, agree in fol- lowing my example : walk by the same rule by which I walk, of neglectino- the thino-s that are behind, and makino- for the goal ; have your minds upon the same thing which my mind is set upon — a continual progress and improve- ment."
Thus I have opened to you w-hat I conceive to be the true meaning of the text. Indeed, it is the only one that can be drawn without violence from the words, and is the best suited to the purport of the apostle's discourse : and, among a great variety of expositions that have been pro- posed, there is but one other that seems to deserve the least attention, — which is that of those who, in the expression " thus minded," refer the word " thus" to the opinion which the apostle expresses in the beginning of this chap- ter, concerning the ceremonies of the Mosaic law,— that they make no part of a Christian s duty ; and the dif- ference of opinion expressed in the words " otherwise minded," they understand of a difference of opinion be- tween the apostle himself and some members of the church to which he writes, upon that particular question concern- ing the importance of the Jewish ceremonies : and thus they bring the sense of the text to nothing more than a declaration concerning those who might stand for the obli- gation of the ceremonial law under the Christian dispensa- tion,— that God would, at some time or other, open their minds to perceive the error of this particular opinion. As this exposition has been pretty much received, and has found its way into some of the best English paraphrases
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of this epistle, it may be proper briefly to mention our rea- sons for rejecting it. One great objection to this interpre- tation is, that it turns the text into a very singular promise of illumination, upon a particular question, to all who should dissent from the apostle's doctrines, without the stipulation of any condition which might render them in any degree worthy of such extraordinary favour. It is far more reasonable to understand the promise of a general illumination of the mind upon religious subjects, limited to those wlio, under much darkness and imbecility of understanding, should distinguish themselves by a sin- cerity of good intention. But an objection of still greater weight than this is, that by the evident connexion of the text with the following verse this exposition is clearly set aside. Read the two verses, the fifteenth and sixteenth, in connexion, and you will easily decide whether the sum of the admonition, according to this view of the passage, is such as the apostle can be supposed to give. " Let us, as many as be perfect, be thus minded with respect to the rites of the Jewish religion, that under the Christian esta- blishment they are of no importance toward salvation ; and if any of you think otherwise about them, God will, at some time or other, bring you to a better mind. But, be that as it may, — whether you are brought to that better mind or no, as far as we have attained, walk by the same rule." By what same rule ? Why, according to this expo- sition, by the rule of neglecting the Jewish ordinances. " Have this same mind." What same mind? That which it has been just supposed they might not have, — the opi- nion that the ritual part of the Jewish religion is superseded by the gospel. He that would stand for this interpretation of the text, let him find another instance, in the apostle's writings, where the apostle enjoins an hypocritical assent to opinions which the understanding has not received, or requires of any man to walk by a rule which has not the entire approbation of his conscience.
I have thought proper to examine this exposition more
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particalariy tban I should odterwis^ have d^ae, becao^e 1 find it is mcdi received, and has fomid its way into s(»De of the best English paraphrase of dds ^listle. But, har- mg shoyra. yoa that it biii^ die text to a meanii^ tittle consisTeDt with the gmetal sesise and spirit oCtlie go^pd, I shall think it needless to dwell upcm the feidaer coirfiita- tioo of it. Some other expositiaGs are to be lound zxaang the Latin ^oheis, which aU lest npoa a cormptiOD of sone aocioit copies of the Latin T»aoo. Of the two which the gtenuine text of the apostle may bear, that which I adcipt is what the words in their natural meaning^ most obvioaslT present, and the foAy one that i!be context will admit. We may therefore safely rest in this as die tme expositicHi of the apostle's meanii^ : and I shall acccMrdingbr proceed to set before you the is^portant lessons whidi &e text- in this view oi it. suggests ; which are these two. First, it tc2^ciies us in what the tme perfecdicn of the Christian cha- racter consists : and. secondly, what the immediate ad^an- tages to the Christian comniunity would be, if that good habit of the mind which constitotes perfecticHi wesTC c«ace become universal : which would be iK)thing: le^ than this. — that ail diaerences of cpinicn at least aU c<Hitieiiti<Nis disagreement, the great baue of Christian love and har- mony) would be abolished, by God's bl^sing^ cm the na- tural operation of this happy temper : and Christians would be established in that univo^ peace and cjiarity whicb is so generally professed and preached, and is so little practised.
First, the text teaches us in what the perfection of the Christian cbaracter consists. — namely, in an earnest de- sire and steady pursuit of perpetual improviMneat. This, at least, the apostie declares, was the hio[liest attaiimient he himself could boast : and what was the hei^t of the apes- tie's virtue may well be allowed to be the perteciion ct every private Christian, especially as it is in this circum- stance that he proposes himself as an example to all who would be perfect. " Let us. as many as be perfect, be
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thus minded/" Perhaps you will imagine, that if this be perfection, it is an attainment easily made, or rather, that it is a quality of which none are destitute, since all men have more or less of a desire of being better than they feel themselves to be. But that desire of improvement in which the apostle places his own and every Christian's perfection, is not a desire terminated in the mind itself, unproductive of any real effort to improve. This is so little the perfection of a Christian, that it seems to be only a necessary part of the human character in its utmost state of depravation : it is the necessary result of that natural perception of right and wrong of which the worst of men are never totally divested. He that should be divested of it would from that moment cease to be a man : he would cease to be a moral agent, inasmuch as, having lost all natural sense of the moral quality of his actions, he would, to all intents and purposes, with respect to moral good and evil, be irrational : he would have lost the faculty of rea- soning upon that subject, and could no longer be account- able for the violation of rules which he would no longer understand. These perceptions, therefore, from which our whole capacity of being good or bad arises, must be of the nature of man, if man by his nature be a moral agent : and the difference between good men and bad is not that the latter do really lose the perceptions wdiich the other retain, but that, retaining the same original perceptions, they lose the benefit of them in the conduct of their lives, turning the attention, by a voluntary effort of the mind, to other objects. These perceptions being of the nature of man, it is of the nature of man, even of wicked men, to approve virtue and to disapprove its opposite : and from a natural desire of being in friendship with himself, the wicked man, when he reflects upon his own character, and perceives that it is destitute of those qualities which might naturally claim his own respect and love, cannot but wish that he were the opposite of what he is, — respect- able rather than contemptible — amiable rather than odious.
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Hence it is, that nothing is more common than for persons of the most debauched and abandoned lives, to acknow- ledge that they are not what they ought to be, and to ex- press a wish that they were better, — at the same time that they, speak upon a subject of such great concern with a tranquillity and coolness that shows that nothing is farther from their thoughts than the purpose of making any vigor- ous eft'orts toward their own reformation. These wishes are not insincere ; but they are involuntary, resulting, by a natural necessity, from that constitution of the human mind which is indeed its perfection, considered as the work of God, but is no more a part of the moral virtue of the man, considered as a free agent, than any other of his natural endowments,' — the strength of his memory, for in- stance, or the quickness of his apprehension, or even than the exterior comeliness of his person, his muscular strength, or the agility of his limbs. In all these natural gifts and faculties, among which conscience is the first in worth and dignity, there is reason to admire the good and per- fect work of God : but it is in the application of them, by the effort of the will, to God's service, to the good of man- kind, and to self-improvement, that we are to seek the true perfection of the human character. The bare, unprevailing wish that we were what we necessarily understand we ought to be, hath nothing more in it of moral merit than the involuntary assent of the mind to any other self-evi- dent truth. In the Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul, de- scribing the condition of the mind in its most corrupt and ruined state, when reason is become the slave of appetite, and the prohibitions of God's pure and holy law serve only to irritate the passions which they ought to control, — in this ruined condition of the mind, St. Paul supposes that the natural sense of what is right remains, accompa- nied with an ineffectual desire of performing it : and it is not to be supposed that he speaks of that quality here as the perfection of a Christian, which there he attributes to the reprobate. That desire of improvement which
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makes tite perfect Christian, the apostie describes in him- self as an active principle, maintaining the ascendant in his heart over every other appetite, and displaying its energy in the whole tenor of his life. He describes it as derived from a conviction of the understanding that the proper business of this life is to prepare for the next. The formal nature of it he places in this, — that its imme- diate object is rather virtue itself than any exterior prospe- rity of condition with which virtue may be rewarded: for he compares his thirst of virtuous attainments to the pas- sion that stimulated the competitors in the Grecian games ; and he describes the reward which the Christian seeks under the image of the prize to be bestowed on him that should be foremost in the race. The passion which fires the competitors in any honourable contest is a laudable ambition to excel ; and the prize is no otherwise valued than as the mark and seal of victory. Of that reward which is the object of the Christian's hope, it were mad- ness to affirm that it has not an intrinsic value ; for we are taught that it will consist in a state of perfect happiness : but that happiness is therefore perfect, because it is the condition of a nature brought to perfect holiness ; and that desire of improvement, in which the apostle places our per- fection, hath for its immediate object those virtuous attain- ments which insure the reward, rather than the reward itself, otherwise considered than as the honourable distinc- tion of the approved servants of God. It is easy to per- ceive that this thirst for moral excellency must be in its nature what the apostle in himself experienced — a princi- ple of growing energy ; for, wherever this principle is sin- cere, as long as any degree of imperfection remains, or, to speak more accurately, as long as any farther excellence is attainable, farther improvement must be the object. The true Christian, therefore, never can rest in any habits of virtue already attained : his present proficiency he va- lues only as a capacity of better attainments ; and, like the great Roman whose appetite of conquest was inflamed
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by every new advantage gahied, lie thinks nothing done wliile aught remains which prowess may achieve.
Such is the principle, as may be collected from the apostle's description of his own feelings and his own prac- tice,— such is the principle in which he places the per- fection of a Christian; in its origin rational, in its object disinterested, in its energies boundless : and in these three properties its perfective quality consists. And this I would endeavour more distinctly to prove : but, for this purpose, it will be necessary to explain what man's proper goodness naturally is, and to consider man both in his first state of natural innocence, and in his present state of re- demption from the ruin of his fall. But this is a large subject, which we shall treat in a separate Discourse.
SERMON XXVIII.
Let us tlieiefore, as many as he perfect, be thus miiidedj and if in any thing \e be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. — Philippians iii. 15.
The perfection of the Christian character, as may be collected from the apostle's description of his own feelings and his own practice, consists, it seems, in an earnest desire of perpetual progress and improvement in the practical habits of a good and holy life. When the apostle speaks of this as the highest of his own attainments, he speaks of it as the governing principle of his whole life; and the perfective quality that he ascribes to it seems to consist in these three properties, — that it is boundless in its energy, disinterested in its object, and yet rational in its origin. That these are the properties which make this desire of proficiency truly perfective of the Christian character, I shall now attempt to prove; and, for this purpose, it will be necessary to inquire what man's proper goodness is, and
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to take a view of jnan, botli in iiis first state of natural inno- cence, and in his actual state of redemption from the ruin of his fall.
Absolute perfection in moral goodness, no less than in knowledge and power, belongs incommunicably to God ; for this reason, that goodness in the Deity only is original : in the creature, to whatever degree it may be carried, it is derived. If man hath a just discernment of what is good, to whatever degree of quickness it may be improved, it is originally founded on certain first principles of intuitive knowledge which the created mind receives from God. If he hath the will to perform it, it is the consequence of a connexion which the Creator hath established between the decisions of the judgment and the effort of the will; and for this truth of judgment and this rectitude of the original bias of the will, in whatever perfection he may possess them as natural endowments, he deserves no praise, any otherwise than as a statue or a picture may deserve praise, in which what is really praised is not the marble nor the canvass — not the elegance of the figure nor the richness of the colouring, but the invention and execution of the artist. This, however, properly considered, is no imperfection in man, seeing it belongs by necessity to the condition of a creature. The thing made can be originally nothing but what the maker makes it: therefore the created mind can have no original knowledge but what the Maker hath infused — no original propensities but such as are the neces- sary result of the established harmony and order of its fa- culties. A creature, therefore, in whatever degree of ex- cellence it be supposed to be created, cannot originally have any merit of its own ; for merit must arise from volun- tary actions, and cannot be a natural endowment : and it is owing to a wonderful contrivance of the beneficent Crea- tor, in the fabric of the rational mind, that created beings are capable of attaining to any thing of moral excellence — that they are capable of becoming what the Maker of them may love^ and their own understandings approve.
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The contrivance that 1 speak of consistja ia a principle of which we have large experience in ourselves, and may with good reason suppose it to subsist in every intelligent being, except the First and Sovereign intellect. It is a principle which it is in every man's power to turn, if he be so pleased, to his own advantage : but if he fail to do this, it is not in his power to hinder that the deceiving spirit turn it not to his detriment. In its own nature it is indifferent to the interests of virtue or of vice, being no propensity of the mind to one thing or to another, but simply this property, — that whatever action, either good or bad, hath been done once, is done a second time with more ease and with a better liking ; and a frequent repetition heightens the ease and pleasure of the performance without limit. By virtue of this property of the mind, the having done any thing once becomes a motive to the doing of it again: the having done it twice is a double motive; and, so many times as the act is repeated, so many times the motive to the doing of it once more is multiplied. To this principle, habit owes its wonderful force ; of which it is usual to hear men complain, as of something external that enslaves the will. But the complaint, in this, as in every instance in which man presumes to arraign the ways of Providence, is rash and unreasonable. The fault is in man himself, if a prin- ciple implanted in him for his good becomes by negligence and mismanagement the instrument of his ruin. It is owing to this prhiciple that every faculty of the understand- ing and every sentiment of the heart is capable of being im- proved by exercise. It is the leading principle in the whole system of the human constitution, modifying both the phy- sical qualities of the body and the moral and intellectual endowments of the mind. We experience the use of it in every calling and condition of life. By this the sinews of the labourer are hardened for toil ; by this the hand of the mechanic acquires its dexterity : to this we owe the amazing progress of the human mind in the politer arts and the ab- struser sciences. And it is an engine which it is in our 2 A
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power to employ to nobler and more beneficial purposes. By the same principle, when the attention is turned to moral and religious subjects, the understanding may gra- dually advance beyond any limit that may be assigned, in quickness of perception and truth of judgment; and the will's alacrity to conform to the dictates of conscience and the decrees of reason will be gradually heightened, to corre- spond in some due proportion with the growth of intellect. '' Lord, what is man, that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man, that so regardest him! Thou hast made him lower than the angels, to crown him with glory and honour!"' Destitute as he is of any original perfection, which is thy sole prerogative, who art alone in all thy qualities original, yet in the faculties of which thou hast given him the free command and use, and in the power of habit which thou hast planted in the principles of his system, thou hast given him the capacity of infinite attain- ments. Weak and poor in his beginnings, what is the height of any creature's virtue, to which he has not the power, by a slow and gradual ascent, to reach? The im- provements which he shall make by the vigorous exertion of the powers he hath received from thee, thou permittest him to call his own, imputing to him the merit of the ac- quisitions which thou hast given him the ability to make. What, then, is the consummation of man's goodness, but to co-operate with the benevolent purpose of his Maker, by forming the habit of his mind to a constant ambition of improvement, which, enlarging its appetite in proportion to the acquisitions already made, may correspond with the increase of his capacities, in every stage of a progressive virtue, in every period of an endless existence? And to what purpose but to excite this noble thirst of virtuous proficiency, — to what purpose but to provide that the ob- ject of the appetite may never be exhausted by gradual attainment, hast thou imparted to thy creature's mind the idea of thine own attribute of perfect, uncreated good-
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But man, alas! hath ahiised thy gifts; and the tilings that should have been for his peace are become to him an occasion of falling-. Unmindful of the heioht of glory to which he might attain, he has set his affections upon earthly things. The first command, which was imposed that he might form himself to the useful habit of implicit obedience to his Maker's will, a slight temptation — the fair show and fragrance of the forbidden fruit, moved him to transgress. From that fatal hour, error hath seized his understanding, appetite perverts his will, and the power of habit, intended for the infinite exaltation of his nature, operates to his ruin.
Man hath been false to himself; but his Maker's love hath not forsaken him. By early promises of mercy, by Moses and the prophets, and at last by his Son, God calls his fallen creature to repentance. He hath provided an atonement for past guilt. He promises the effectual aids of his Holy Spirit, to counteract the power of perverted habit, to restore light to the darkened understanding, to tame the fury of inflamed appetite, to purify the soiled ima- gination, and to foil the grand deceiver in every new at- tempt. He calls us to use our best diligence to improve under these advantages ; and it is promised to the faithful and sincere, that by the perpetual operation of the Holy Spirit on their minds, and by an alteration which at the ge- neral resurrection shall take place in the constitution of the body, they shall be promoted to a degree of perfection, which, by the strength that naturally remains in man in his corrupted state, they never could attain. They shall be raised above the power of temptation, and placed in a con- dition of happiness not inferior to that which, by God's ori- ginal appointment, might have corresponded with the im- provement of their moral state, had that improvement been their own attainment, by a gradual progress from the first state of innocence. That the devout and well-dis- posed are thus by God's power made perfect, is the free gift of God in Christ — the effect of undeserved mercy, exer- 2 A 2
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cised in consideration of Christ's intercession and atone- ment. Thus it is that fallen man is in Christ Jesus " created anew unto those good works which God had be- fore ordained that we should walk in them."' His lost ca- pacity of improvement is restored, and the great career of virtue is again before him. What, then, is the perfection of man, in this state of redemption, but that which might have been Adam's perfection in Paradise, — a desire of moral improvement, duly proportioned to his natural ca- pacity of improving ; and, for that purpose, expanding without limit, as he rises in the knowledge of what is good, and gathers strength in the practical habits of it?
Thus, you see, the proper goodness of man consists in gradual improvement : and the desire of improvement, to be truly perfective of his character, and to keep pace with the growth of his moral capacities, must be boundless ia its energies, or capable of an infinite enlargement.
Another property requisite in this desire of improvement, to give it its perfective equality, is, that it should be disin- terested. Virtue must be desired for its own sake, — not as subservient to any farther end, or as the means of any greater good. It has been thought an objection to the morality of the Christian system, that as it teaches men to shun vice on account of impending punishments, and to cultivate virtuous habits in the hope of annexed rewards, that therefore the virtue which itafiects to teach it teaches not, teaching it upon mean and selfish motives. The ob- jection perhaps may claim a hearing, because it is founded on principles which the true Christian will of all men be the last to controvert, — namely, that good actions, if they arise from any other motive than the pure love of doing good, or, which is the same thing, from the pure desire of pleasing God, lose all pretension to intrinsic worth and merit. God himself is good, by the complacenc}'^ which his perfect nature finds in exertions of power to the pur- poses of goodness ; and men are no otherwise good than as they deiight in virtuous actions from the bare appre-
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hensioii that they are good, without any selfish views to ad- vantageous consequences. He that denies these principles confounds the distinct ideas of the useful and the fair, and leaves nothing remaining of genuine virtue but an empty name. But our answer to the adversary is, that these are the principles of Christianity itself; for St. Paul himself places the perfection of the Christian character in that quality of disinterested virtue which some have injuriously supposed cannot belong to it. It may seem, perhaps, that the strictness and purity of the precepts of Christianity ra- ther heighten the objection than remove it ; that the ob- jection, rightly understood, is this, — that the Christian system is at variance with itself, its precepts exacting a perfection of which the belief of its doctrines must neces- sarily preclude the attainment ; for how is it possible that a love of virtue and religion should be disinterested, which in its most improved state, is confessedly accompanied with the expectation of an infinite reward? A little atten- tion to the nature of the Christian's hope — to the extent of his knowledge of the reward he seeks, will solve this diffi- culty. It will appear, that the Christian's desire of that happiness which the gospel promises to the virtuous in a future life, — that the desire of this happiness, and the pure love of virtue for its own sake, paradoxical as the assertion may at first seem, are inseparably connected : for the truth is, that the Christian's love of virtue does not arise from a previous desire of the reward ; but his desire of the reward arises from a previous love of virtue. Observe that I do not speak of any love of virtue previous to his conversion to Christianity : but I affirm, that the first and immediate efi'ect of his conversion is to inspire him with the genuine love of virtue and religion; and that his desire of the reward is a secondary and subordinate eflfect — a conse- quence of the love of virtue previously formed in him: for, of the nature of the reward it promises, what does the gospel discover to us more than this — that it shall be great and endless, and adapted to the intellectual endowments and moral qualities of the human soul in a state of high im-
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proveiiieiit ? — and, from this general view of it, as the proper condition of the virtuous, it becomes the object of the Christian's desire and his hope. " It doth not yet ap- pear," saith St. John, " what we shall be : but we know that when he shall appear (that is, v/hen Christ shall appear) we shall be like him; for we shall see hira as he is." This, you see, is our hope, — to be made like to Christ our Saviour, in the blessed day of his appearance : and "he that hath this hope in him" — this general hope of being transformed into the likeness of his glorified Lord, of whose glory, which, as he hath not seen, he hath no dis- tinct and adequate conception — " purifies himself, as he is pure." Of the particular enjoyments in which his future happiness will consist, the Christian is ignorant. The gospel describes them by images only and allusions, which lead only to this general notion, that they will be such as to give entire satisfaction to all desires of a virtu- ous soul. Our opinion of their value is founded on a sense of the excellence of virtue, and on faith in God as the protector of the virtuous. The Christian gives a preference to that particular kind of happiness to which a life of virtue and religion leads, in the general persuasion, that of all possible happiness that must be the greatest which so good a being as God hath annexed to so excellent a thing in the creature as the shadow of his own perfec- tions. But the mind, to be susceptible of this persuasion, must be previously possessed with an esteem and love of virtue, and with just apprehensions of God's perfections : and the desire of the reward can never divest the mind of that disinterested love of God and goodness on which it is itself founded ; nor can it assume the relation of a cause to that of which it is itself the effect. It appears, therefore, that the Christian's love of goodness — his desire of virtu- ous attainments, is, in the strict and literal meanina: of the word, disinterested, notwithstanding the magnitude of the reward which is the object of his hope. The magnitude of that reward is an object of faith, not of sense or know- ledge ; and it is commended to his faith, by his just sense
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ot" the importance of the attainments to whicli it is pro- raised.
If any one imagines he can be actuated by principles more disinterested than these, he forgets that he is a man and not a god. Happiness must be a constant object of desire and pursuit to every intelligent being, — that is, to every being, who, besides the actual perception of present pleasure and present pain, hath the power of forming gene- ral ideas of happiness and misery as distinct states arising from different causes. Every being that hath this degree of intelligence is under the government of final causes ; and the advancement of his own happiness, if it be not already entire and secure, must be an end. It is impossible, there- fore, that any rational agent, unless he be either sufficient to his own happiness, which is the prerogative of God, or hath some certain assurance that his condition will not be altered for the worse, which will hereafter be the glorious privilege of the saints who overcome, — but without this prerogative or this privilege, it is impossible that any rati- onal being should be altogether unconcerned about the consequences of his moral conduct, as they may affect his own condition. In the present life, the advantages are not on the side of virtue : all comes alike to all — " to him that sacrificeth and him that sacrificeth not — to him that sweareth and to him that feareth an oath :" and if a con- stitution of things were to continue for ever in which virtue should labour under disadvantages, man might still have tlie virtue to regret that virtue was not made for him ; but discretion must be his ruling principle ; and discretion, in this state of things, could propose no end but immediate pleasure and present interest. The gospel, extending our views to a future period of existence, delivers the believer from the uneasy apprehension that interest and duty may possibly be at variance. It delivers him from that distrust of Providence, which the present face of things, without some certain prospect of futurity, would be too apt to create ; and sets him at liberty to pursue virtue, with all
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that ardour of affection which its native worth may claim, and gratitude to God, his Maker and Redeemer, may excite. It is true, the alternative which the gospel holds out is endless happiness in heaven or endless suffering in hell ; and the view of this alternative may well be supposed to operate to a certain degree on base and sordid minds, — ■ on those who, without any sense of virtue, or any prefer- ence of its proper enjoyments as naturally the greatest good, make no other choice of heaven than as the least of two great evils. To be deprived of sensual gratifications, they hold to be an evil of no moderate size, to which they must submit in heaven ; but yet they conceive of this ab- sence of pleasure as more tolerable than positive torment, which they justly apprehend those who are excluded from heaven must undergo in the place of punishment. On minds thus depraved, the view of the alternative of endless happiness or endless misery was intended to operate ; and it is an argument of God's wonderful mercy, that he has been pleased to display such prospects of futurity as may affect the human mind in its most corrupt and hardened state, — that men in this unworthy state, in this state of enmity with God, are yet the objects of his care and pity, — that " he willeth not the death of a sinner, but that the sinner should turn from his way and live." But, to ima- gine that any one v/hom the warnings of the gospel may no otherwise affect than v.'ith the dread of the punishment of sin, — that any one in whom they may work only a re- luctant choice of heaven as eligible only in comparison with a state of torment, does, merely in those feelings, or by a certain pusillanimity in vice, v/hich is the most those feelings can affect, satisfy the duties of the Christian call- ing,— to imagine this, is a strange misconception of the whole scheme of Christianity. The utmost good to be expected from the principle of fear is that it may induce a state of mind in which better principles may take effect. It may bring the sinner to hesitate between self-denial here with heaven- in reversion, and gratification here with
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future sufferings. In this state of ambiguity, the mind deliberates : while the mind deliberates, appetite and pas- sion intermit : while they intermit, conscience and reason energize. Conscience conceives the idea of the moral good : reason contemplates the new and lovely image with delight ; she becomes the willing pupil of religion ; she learns to discern in each created thing the print of sove- reign goodness, and in the attributes of God descries its first and perfect form. New views and new desires occupy the soul. Virtue is understood to be the resemblance of God : his resemblance is coveted, as the highest attain- ment : heaven is desired, as the condition of those who resemble him ; and the intoxicating cup of pleasure is re- fused,— not that the mortal palate might not find it sweet, but because vice presents it. When the habit of the mind is formed to these views and these sentiments, then, and not before, the Christian character, in the judgment of St. Paul, is perfect ; and the perfective quality of this dis- position of the mind lies principally in this circumstance, that it is a disinterested love of virtue and religion as the chief object. The disposition is not the less valuable nor the less good, when it is once formed, because it is the last stage of a gradual progress of the mind which may too often perhaps begin in nothing better than a sense of guilt and a just fear of punishment. The sweetness of the ripened fruit is not the less delicious for the austerity of its cruder state : nor is this Christian righteousness to be despised, if, amid the various temptations of the world, a sense of the danger, as well as the turpitude of a life of sin, should be necessary not only to its beginning but to its permanency. The whole of our present life is but the childhood of our existence : and children are not to be trained to the wisdom and virtues of men without more or less of a compulsive discipline ; at the same time that perfection must be confessed to consist in that pure love of God and of his law which casteth out fear.
We have now seen, that the perfective quality which
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the apostle ascribes to the Christian's desire of improve- ment consists much in these two properties, — that it is boundless in its energies, and disinterested in its object. A third renders it complete ; which is this, — that this ap- petite of the mind (for such it may be called, although in- satiable, and, in the strictest sense of the word, disinterested) is nevertheless rational ; inasmuch as its origin is entirely in the understanding, and personal good, though not its object, is rendered by the appointment of Providence, and by the promises of the gospel, its certain consequence. Upon the whole, it appears that the perfection of the Chris- tian character, as it is described by the apostle, consists in that which is the natural perfection of the man, — in a principle which brings every thought and desire of the mind into an entire subjection to the will of God, render- ing a religious course of life a matter of choice no less than of duty and interest.
SERMON XXIX.
This matter is by the decree of the Watchers, and the demand by the word of the Holy Ones ; to the intent that the living raay know that the Most High ruletli in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whom- soever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men.* — Daniel iv. 17.
The matter which the text refers to the " decree of the Watchers," and " the demand of the Holy Ones," is the judgment which, after no long time, was about to fall upon Nebuchadnezzar, the great king of whom we read so much in history, sacred and profane. His conquest of the Jewish nation, though a great event in the history of
* Preached in the Cathedral Church of St. Asaph, on Thursday, De- cember 5, 1805; being the day of public thanksgiving for the victory obtained by Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson, over the combined fleets of France and Spain, off Cape Trafalgar.
SCy'S
the church, was but a small part of this prince's story. The kingdom of Babylon came to him by inheritance from his father. Upon his accession, he made himself master of all the rest of the Assyrian empire ; and to these vast dominions he added, by a long series of wars of unparal- leled success, the wdiole of that immense tract of country which extends from the banks of the Euphrates westward to the sea-coasts of Palestine and Phoenicia and the border of Egypt. Nor was he more renowned in war than justly admired in peace, for public works of the highest utility and magnificence. To him the famous city of Babylon owed whatever it possessed of strength, of beauty, or con- venience,— its solid walls with their hundred gates, immense in circuit, height, and thickness — its stately temple and its proud palace, with the hanging gardens — its regular streets and spacious squares — the embankments, which confined the river — the canals, which carried off the floods — and the vast reservoir, which in seasons of drought (for to the vicissitudes of immoderate rains and drouo^ht the climate was liable) supplied the city and tl>e adjacent country with water. In a word, for the extent of his dominion, and the great revenues it supplied — for his unrivalled success in war — for the magnificence and splendour of his court — and for his stupendous works and improvements at Baby- lon, he was the greatest monarch, not only of his own times, but incomparably the greatest the world had ever seen, without exception even of those whose names are remembered as the first civilizers of mankind — the Egyp- tian Sesostris and the Indian Bacchus. But great as this prince's talents and endowments must have been, his un- interrupted and unexampled prosperity was too much for the digestion of his mind. His heart grew vain in the contemplation of his grandeur : he forgot that he was a man ; and he affected divine honours. His impious pride received indeed a check, by the miraculous deliverance of the three faithful Jews from the furnace to which they had been condemned. His mind at first was much affected by
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the miracle ; but the impression in time wore off, and the intoxication of power and prosperity returned upon him. God was therefore pleased to humble him, and to make him an example to the world and to himself, of the frailty of all human power — the instability of all human greatness. I say, an example to the world and to himself; for it is very remarkable, that the king's own conversion was in part an object of the judgment inflicted upon him : and, notwithstanding what has been said to the contrary, upon no ground at all, by a foreign commentator of great name, it is evident, from the sacred history, that object was accom- plished ; and it was in order to the accomplishment of it that the king had warning of the impending visitation in a dream. That a dispensation of judgment should be tem- pered with such signal mercy to a heathen prince, not, like Cyrus, eminent for his virtues, however distinguished by his talents, is perhaps in some degree to be put to the ac- count of the favour he showed to many of the Jews his captives, and in particular to his constant patronage of the prophet Daniel. At a time when there was nothing in his situation to fill his mind with gloomy thoughts, " for he was at rest in his house, and flourishing in his palace," he saw in a dream a tree strong and flourishing: its summit pierced the clouds, and its branches overshadowed the whole extent of his vast dominions : it was laden with fruit, and luxuriant in its foliage : the cattle reposed in its shade, and the fowls of the air lodged in its branches ; and multitudes partook of its delicious fruit. But the king saw a celestial being, a Watcher and a Holy One, come down from heaven ; and heard him give order with a loud voice, that the tree should be hewn down, its branches lopped off, and its fruit scattered, and nothing left of it but " the stump of its roots in the earth," which was to be se- cured, however, with a " band of iron and brass, in the tender grass of the field." Words of menace follow, which are applicable only to a man, and plainly show that the whole vision was typical of some dreadful calamity, to fall
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for a time, but tor a time ouly^ on some one of the sons of men.
The interpretation of this dream was beyond the skill of all the wise men of the kingdom. Daniel was called, who, by the interpretation of a former dream, which had been too hard for the Chaldeans and the Magi, and for the pro- fessed diviners of all denominations, had acquired great credit and favour with the king; and before this time had been promoted to the highest offices in the state, and, amongst others, to that of president of the college of the Mao;i. Daniel told the king that the tree which he had seen so strong and flourishing was himself, — that the hew- ing down of the tree was a dreadful calamity that should befall him, and continue till he should be brought to know " that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will."
Strange as it must seem, notwithstanding Daniel's weight and^ credit with the King — notwithstanding the conster- nation of mind into which the dream had thrown him, this warning had no permanent effect. He was not cured of his overweening pride and vanity, till he was overtaken by the threatened judgment. " At the end of twelve months, he was walking in the palace of the kingdom of Babylon," — probably on the flat roof of the building, or perhaps on one of the highest terraces of the hanging gardens, where the whole city would lie in prospect before him; and he said, in the exultation of his heart, " Is not this great Babylon, which I have built for the seat of empire, by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?" The words had scarcely passed his lips, when '• the might of his power and the honour of his majesty " departed from him. The same voice which in the dream had predicted the judgment, now denounced the impending execution; and the voice had no sooner ceased to speak than the thing was done.
This is " the matter," — this judgment, thus predicted and thus executed, is the matter which the text refers to
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*' the decree of the Watchers" and " the word of the Holy Ones." " The matter is by the decree of the Watchers, and the requisition is by the word of the Holy Ones ;" and the intent of the matter is to oive mankind a proof, in the fall and restoration of this mighty monarch, that the fortunes of kings and empires are in the hand of God, — that his providence perpetually interposes in the aftairs of men, distributing crowns and sceptres, always for the good of the faithful primarily, ultimately of his whole creation, but according to his will.
To apprehend rightly how the judgment upon Nebuchad- nezzar, originating, as it is represented in the text, in the "decree of the Watchers, and in the word of the Holy Ones,'' affords an instance of the immediate interference of God's providence in the affairs of men, it is very necessary that the text should be better than it generally has been hitherto understood : and the text never can be rightly understood, until we ascertain loho they are, and to what class of be'mgs they belong, who are called " the Watchers" and " the Holy Ones ;'" for, according as these terms are differently expounded, the text will lead to very different, indeed to opposite conclusions, — to true conclusions, if these terms are rightly understood — to most false and dangerous conclusions, if they are ill interpreted.
I am ashamed to say, that if you consult very pious and very learned commentators, justly esteemed for their illus- trations of the Bible generally, you will be told these " Watchers" and '* Holy Ones" are angels, — principal angels, of a very high order, they are pleased to say, such as are in constant attendance upon the throne of God. And so much skill have some of these good and learned men affected in the heraldry of angels, that they pretend to distinguish the different rank of the different denomi- nations. The " Watchers," they say, are of the highest rank; the "Holy Ones," very high in rank, but inferior to the "Watchers:" and the angels are introduced upon this occasion, they say, in allusion to the proceeding* of
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earthly princes, who publish their decrees with the advice of their chief ministers.
This interpretation of these words is founded upon a notion which got ground in the Christian church many ages since, and unfortunately is not yet exploded ; name- ly, that God's government of this lower world is carried on by the administration of the holy angels, — that the dif- ferent orders (and those who broached this doctrine could tell us exactly how many orders there are, and how many angels in each order) — that the different orders have their different departments in government assigned to them : some, constantly attending in the presence of God, form his cabinet council ; others are his provincial governors ; every kingdom in the w^orld having its appointed guardian angel, to whose management it is intrusted : others again are supposed to have the charge and custody of indivi- duals. This system is in truth nothing better than the Pagan polytheism, somewhat disguised and qualified ; for, in the Pagan system, every nation had its tutelar deity, all subordinate to Jupiter, the sire of gods and men. Some of those prodigies of ignorance and folly, the rabbin of the Jews who lived since the dispersion of the nation, thought all would be well if for tutelar deities they substituted tu- telar angels. From this substitution the system which I have described arose ; and from the Jews, the Christians, with other fooleries, adopted it. But, by whatever name these deputy gods be called, — whether you call them gods, or demigods, or demons, or genii, or heroes, or angels, — the difference is only in the name ; the thing in substance is the same; they still are deputies, invested with a sub- ordinate, indeed, but with an high authority, in the exer- cise of which they are much at liberty, and at their own discretion. If this opinion were true, it would be difficult to show that the heathen were much to blame in the wor- ship which they rendered to them. The officers of any great king are entitled to homage and respect in propor- tion to the authority committed to them; and the grant of
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the power is a legal title to such respect. These officers, therefore, of the greatest of kings, will be entitled to the greatest reverence; and as the governor of a distant pro- vince will, in many cases, be more an object of awe and veneration to the inhabitants than the monarch himself, with whom they have no immediate connexion, so the tutelar deity or angel will, with those who are put under him, supersede the Lord of all: and the heathen, who worshipped those who were supposed to have the power over them, were certainly more consistent with themselves than they who, acknowledging the power, v/ithhold the worship.
So neai'ly allied to idolatry — or rather so much the same thing with polytheism, is this notion of the admi- nistration of God's government by the authority of angels. And surely it is strange, that, in this age of light and learning, Protestant divines should be heard to say that *^ this doctrine seems to be countenanced by several pas- sages of Scripture."
That the holy angels ai-e often employed by God, in his government of this sublunary world, is indeed clearly to be proved by holy writ: that they have powers over the matter of the universe, analogous to the powers over it which men possess, greater in extent, but still limited, is a thing which might reasonabl}^ be supposed, if it were not declared ; but it seems to be confirmed by many pas- sages of holy writ, from which it seems also evident that they are occasionally, for certain specific purposes, com- missioned to exercise those powers to a prescribed extent. That the evil angels possessed before their fall the like powers, which they are still occasionally permitted to exercise for the punishment of wicked nations, seems also evident. That they have a power over the human sensory (which is part of the material universe), which they are occasionally permitted to exercise, by means of which they may inflict diseases, suggest evil thoughts, and be the instruments of temptations, must also be admitted. But
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all this amounts not to aii}^ thing of a discretional autho- rity placed in the hands of tutelar angels, or to an au- thority to advise the Lord God with respect to the mea- sures of his government. Confidently I deny that a single text is to be found in holy writ, which, rightly understood, gives the least countenance to the abominable doctrine of such a participation of the holy angels in God's govern- ment of the world.
In what manner, then, it may be asked, are the holy angels made at all subservient to the purposes of God's government? — This question is answered by St Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews, in the last verse of the first chapter: and this is the only passage in the whole Bible in which we have any thing explicit upon the oflice and employment of angels. " Are they not all,'' saith he, " mi- nistering spirits, sent forth to minister for them that shall be heirs of salvation?"' They are all, however high in rank and order, — they are all nothing more than "minis- tering spirits," or, literally, "serving spirits; "not invested with authority of their own, but " sent forth" — occasionally sent forth to do such service as may be required of them, "for them that shall be heirs of salvation." This text is the conclusion of the comparison which the apostle insti- tutes between the Son of God and the holy angels, in order to prove the great superiority in rank and nature of the Son ; and the most that can be made of angels is, that they are servants, occasionally employed by the Most High God to do his errands for the elect.
An accurate discussion of all the passages of Scripture which have been supposed to favour the contrary opinion, would much exceed the just limits of this Discourse; I shall only say of them generally, that they are all abused texts, wrested to a sense which never would have been dreamed of in any one of them, had not the opinion of the government of angels previously taken hold of the minds of too many of the learned. In the consideration of par- ticular texts so misinterpreted, I shall confine myself to 2 b
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such as occur in the prophet Daniel, from vvliose writings til is monstrous doctrine has been supposed to have received great support; and of these I shall consider my text last of all.
In the prophet Daniel, we read of the angel Gabriel by- name, who, together with others unnamed, is employed to exhibit visions typical of future events to the prophet, and to expound them to him : but there is nothing in this employment of Gabriel and his associates which has the most remote connexion with the supposed office of guar- dian angels, either of nations and states, or of individuals. We read of another personage superior to Gabriel, who is named Michael. This personage is superior to Gabriel, for he comes to help him in the greatest difficulties; and Gabriel, the servant of the Most High God, declares that this Michael is the only supporter he has. This is well to be noted. Gabriel, one of God's ministering spirits, sent forth, as such spirits are used to be, to minister for the elect people of God, has no supporter in this business but Michael. This great personage has been long distin- guished in our calendars by the title of " Michael the archangel.'' It has been for a long time a fashion in the church to speak very frequently and familiarly of arch- angels, as if they were an order of beings with which we are perfectly well acquainted. Some say there are seven of them. Upon what solid ground that assertion stands, I know not: but this I know, that the word "archangel" is not to be found in any one passage of the Old Testa- ment. In the New Testament, the word occurs twice, and only twice. One of the two passages is in the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, where the apostle, among the circumstances of the pomp of our Lord's descent from heaven to the final judgment, mentions " the voice of the archangel." The other passage is in the Epistle of St. Jude, where the title of archangel is coupled with the name of Michael. " Michael the archangel." This pas- sage is so remarkably obscure, that I shall not attempt
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to draw any conclu>;ion from it, but this, which manifestly follows, be the particular sense of the passage what it may : since this is one of two texts in, which alone the word "archangel" is found in the whole Bible, — since in this one text only the title of archangel is coupled with any name, — and since the name with Avhich it is here coupled is Michael, it follows undeniably that the arch- angel Michael is the only archangel of whom we know any thing from holy writ. It cannot be proved from holy writ, — and if not from holy writ, it cannot be proved at all, that any archangel exists but the one archangel Mi- chael; and this one archangel Michael is unquestionably the Michael of the book of Daniel.
I must observe, by the way, with respect to the import of the title of archangel, that the word, by its etymology, clearly implies a superiority of rank and authority in the person to whom it is applied. It implies a command over angels ; and this is all that the word of necessity implies. But it follows not, by any sound rule of argu- ment, that because no other superiority than that of rank and authority is implied in the title, no other belongs to the person distinguished by the title, and that he is in all other respects a mere angel. Since we admit various orders of intelligent beings, it is evident that a being highly above the angelic order may command angels.
To ascertain, if we can, to what order of beings the archangel Michael may belong, let us see how he is de- scribed by the prophet Daniel, who never describes him by that title; and what action is attributed to him in the book of Daniel, and in another book, in which he bears a very principal part.
Now Daniel calls him "one of the chief princes," or " one of the capital princes," or " one of the princes that are at the head of all :" for this I maintain to be the full, and not more than the full import of the Hebrew words. Now, since w^e are clearly got above the earth, into the order of celestials, who are the princes that m'ejirst, or at 2 b2
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the head of all? — are they any other than the Three Per- sons in the Godhead? Michael therefore is one of them ; but which of them ? This is not left in doubt. Gabriel, speaking of him to Daniel, calls him, "Michael, your prince," and "the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people ;" that is, not for the nation of the Jews in particular, but for the children, the spiritual chil- dren of that holy seed the elect people of God, — a descrip- tion which applies particularly to the Son of God, and to no one else. And in perfect consistence with this descrip- tion of Michael in the book of Daniel, is the action as- signed to him in the Apocalypse, in which we find him fighting with the Old Serpent, the deceiver of the world, and victorious in the combat. That combat who was to maintain, — in that combat who was to be victorious, but the seed of the woman ? From all this it is evident, that Michael is a name for our Lord himself, in his particular character of the champion of his faithful people, against the violence of the apostate faction and the wiles of the Devil. In this point I have the good fortune to have a host of the learned on my side ; and the thing will be farther evident from what is yet to come.
We have as yet had but poor success in our search for guardian angels, or for angels of the cabinet, in the book of Daniel ; but there are a sort of persons mentioned in it whom we have not yet considered, — namely, those who are called "the princes of Persia and of Grsecia." As these princes personally oppose the angel Gabriel, and Michael his supporter, I can hardly agree with those who have taken them for princes in the literal acceptation of the word, — that is, for men reigning in those countries. But if that interpretation could be established, these princes would not be angels of any sort ; and my present argu- ment would have no concern with them. If they are be- ings of the angelic order, they must be evil angels ; for good angels would not oppose and resist the great prince Michael, and his angel Gabriel. If they were evil angels,
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they could not be tutelar angels of Persia and of Grsecia respectively, or of any other country. But, to come di- rectly to the point : since they fight with Michael, to those who are conversant with the prophetic style, and have ob- served the imiformity of its images, it will seem highly probable that the angels which fight with Michael in the book of Daniel are of the same sort with those who fight with Michael, under the banners of the Devil, in the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse. " There was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought with the Dragon ; and the Dragon fought and his angels." The vision of the war in heaven, in the Apocalypse, represents the vehe- ment struggles between Christianity and the old idolatry in the first ages of the gospel. The angels of the two op- posite armies represent two opposite parties in the Roman state, at the time which the vision more particularly re- gards. Michael's angels are the party v/hich espoused the side of the Christian religion, the friends of which had for many years been numerous, and became very powerful under Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor: the Dragon's angels are the party which endea- voured to support the old idolatry. And, in conformity with this imagery of the Apocalypse, the princes of Persia, in the book of Daniel, are to be understood, I think, of a party in the Persian state which opposed the return of the captive Jews, first after the death of Cyrus, and again after the death of Darius Hystaspes. And the prince of Grsecia is to be understood of a party in the Greek empire which persecuted the Jewish religion after the death of Alexander the Great, particularly in the Greek kingdom of Syria.
We have now considered all the angels and supposed ano-els of the book of Daniel, except the personages in my text ; and we have found as yet no tutelar angel of any province or kingdom — no member of any celestial senate or privy council. Indeed, with respect to the latter no- tion of angels of the presence, although it has often been
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assumed in exposition of some passages in Daniel, the confirmation of it has never been attempted, to the best of my recollection, by reference to that book. Its advocates have chiefly relied on Micaiah's vision, related in the twenty-second chapter of the First Book of Kings ; in which, they say, Jehovah is represented as sitting in coun- cil with his angels, and advising with them upon mea- sures. But, if you read the account of this vision in the Bible, you will find that this is not an accurate recital of it. " Micaiah saw Jehovah sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him, on his right-hand and on his left." Observe, the heavenly host are not in the attitude of counsellors, sitting ; they are standing, in the attitude of servants, ready to receive commands, and to be sent forth each upon his proper errand. " And Jehovah said — Whoshallpersuade Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead?" Here is no consultation : no advice is asked or given. The only question asked is — Who, of the whole multitude assembled, will undertake a particular service ? The answers were various. " Some spake on this manner, and some on that ;" none, as it should seem, showing any readiness for the business, till one, more for- ward than the rest, presented himself before the throne, and said — " I will persuade him." He is asked, by way of trial of his qualifications, "How?" He gives a satis- factory answer ; and, being both ready for the business and found equal to it, is sent forth. If this can be called a consultation, it is certainly no such consultation as a great monarch holds with his prime ministers, but such as a military commander might hold with privates in the ranks.
Having thus disposed, I think, of all the passages in the book of Daniel which mention beings of the angelic or of a superior order, except my text, I can now proceed to the exposition of that, upon very safe and certain grounds.
Among those who understand the titles of " Watchers" and " Holy Ones" of angelic beings, it is not quite agreed
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wliether they are angels of the cabinet, or the provincial g-overnors — the tutelar angels, to whom these appellations belong. The majority, I think, are for the former. But it is agreed by all, that they must be principal angels — angels of the highest orders; which, if they are angels at all, must certainly be supposed : for it is to be observed, that it is not the mere execution of the judgment upon Nebuchadnezzar, but the decree itself, which is ascribed to them. The whole matter originated in their decree ; and at their command the decree was executed. " The Holy Ones" are not said to hew down the tree, but to give command for the hewing of it down. Of how high order, indeed, must these " Watchers and Holy Ones" have been, on whose decrees thejudgments of God himself are founded, and by whom the warrant for the execution is finally is- sued ! It is surprising, that such men as Calvin among the Protestants of the Continent* — such as Wells and the elder Lowth in our own church — and such as Calmet in the Church of Rome, should not have their eyes open to the error and impiety indeed of such an exposition as this, which makes them angels ; especially when the learned Grotius, in the extraordinary manner in which he recom- mends it, had set forth its merits, as it should seem, in the true light, when he says that it represents God as acting- like a great monarch "upon a decree of his senate," — and when another of the most learned of its advocates imagines something might pass in the celestial senate bearing some analogy to the forms of legislation used in the assemblies of the people at Rome, in the times of the republic. It might have been expected that the exposition would have needed no other confutation, in the judgment
* Calvin, indeed, seems to have had some apprehension that this ex- position (which, however, he adopted) makes too much of angels, and to have been embarrassed with the difficulty. He has recourse to an admirable expedient to get over it. He says the whole vision was ac- commodated to the capacity of a heathen king, who had but a confined knowledge of God, and could not distinguish between him and the angels.
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of men of piety and sober minds, than this lair statement of its principles by its ablest advocates.
The plain truth is, and some learned men, though but few, have seen it, that these appellations, " Watchers' and " Holy Ones," denote the Persons in the Godhead ; the first describing them by the vigilance of their univer- sal providence, — the second, by the transcendent sanctity of their nature. The word rendered " Holy Ones" is so applied in other texts of Scripture, which make the sense of the other word coupled with it here indisputable. In perfect consistency with this exposition, and with no other, we find, in the twenty-fourth verse, that this decree of the " Watchers" and the " Holy Ones" is the decree of the Most High God : and in a verse preceding my text, God, who, in regard to the plurality of the persons, is afterward described by these two "plural nouns, " Watchers" and " Holy Ones," is, in regard to the unity of the essence, described by the same nouns in the singular number, "Watcher" and "Holy One." And this is a fuller con- firmation of the truth of this exposition : for God is the only being to whom the same name in the singular and in the plural may be indiscriminately applied ; and this change from the one number to the other, without any thing in the principles of language to account for it, is frequent, in speaking of God, in the Hebrew tongue, but unexampled in the case of any other being.
The assertion, therefore, in my text is, that God had decreed to execute a signal judgment upon Nebuchadnez- zar for his pride and impiety, in order to prove, by the example of that mighty monarch, that " the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomso- ever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men." To make the declaration the more solemn and striking, the terms in which it is conceived distinctly express that con- sent and concurrence of all the persons in the Trinity in the design and execution of this judgment, which must be understood indeed in every act of the Godhead. And in
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truth, we shall not find in history a more awful example and monument of Providence than the vicissitudes of Ne- buchadnezzar's life afford.
Raised gradually to the pimiacle of power and human glory, by a long train of those brilliant actions and suc- cesses which man is too apt to ascribe entirely to himself (the proximate causes being indeed in himself and in the instruments he uses, although Providence is always the prime efficient), he was suddenly cast down from it, and, after a time, as suddenly restored, without any natural or human means. His humiliation was not the effect of any reverse of fortune, of any public disaster, or any mis- management of the affairs of his empire. At the expira- tion of a twelvemonth from his dream, the king, still at rest in his house and flourishing in his palace, surveying his city, and exulting in the monuments of his own great- ness which it presented to his eye, was smitten by an in- visible hand. As tlie event stood unconnected with any known natural cause, it must have been beyond the ken of any foresight short of the Divine ; and it follows incon- testibly, that the prediction and. the accomplishment of it were both from God. The king's restoration to power and grandeur had also been predicted ; and this took place at the predicted time, independently of any natural cause, and without the use of any human means. And the evi- dence of these extraordinary occurrences — of the predic- tion, the fall, and the restoration — is, perhaps, the most undeniable of any thing that rests upon mere human testi- mony. The king himself, upon his recovery, published a manifesto in every part of his vast empire, giving an account of all which had befallen him, and in conclusion giving praise and honour to the King of heaven ; acknow^- ledging that "all his works are truth, and his ways judg- ment, and that those who walk in pride he is able to abase." The evidence of the whole fact, therefore, stands upon this public record of the Babylonian empire, which is preserved verba tun in the fourth chapter of the book of
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Dciiiiel, of vvhicli it makes indeed the vvliole. That cliap- ter therefore is not Daniel's writing, but Nebucliadnez- zar's.
Nothing can so much fortify the minds of the faithful against all alarm and consternation, — nothing so much maintain them in an unruffled composure of mind, amid all the tumults and concussions of the world around them, as a deep conviction of the truth of the principle incul- cated in my text, and confirmed by the acknowledgment of the royal penitent Nebuchadnezzar, "that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men." But as this doctrine, so full of consolation to the godly, is liable to be perverted and abused by that sort of men who wrest the Scriptures to the destruction of themselves and others, — notwith- standing that my Discourse has already run to a greater length than I intended, the present occasion demands of me to open the doctrine in some points more fully, and to apply it to the actual circumstances of the world and of ourselves.
It is the express assertion of the text, and the language indeed of all the Scriptures, that God governs the world according to his will ; — by which we must understand a will perfectly independent, and unbiassed by any thing external ; yet not an arbitrary will, but a will directed by the governing perfections of the Divine intellect — by Gods own goodness and wisdom : and as justice is included in the idea of goodness, it must be a will governed by God's justice. But God's justice, in its present dispensations, is a justice accommodated to our probationary state, — a jus- tice which, making the ultimate happiness of those who shall finally be brought by the probationary discipline to love and fear God, its end, regards the sum-total and ulti- mate issue of things — not the comparative deserts of men at the present moment. To us, therefore, who see the pre- sent moment only, the government of the world will appear upon many occasions not conformable, in our judgments, formed upon limited and narrow views of things, to the
379 maxims of distributive justice. We see power unci pros- perity not at all proportioned to merit; for " the Most High, who ruleth in the kingdom of men, giveth it to whomsoever he ivili, and setteth up over it the basest of men," — men base by the turpitude of their wicked lives, more than by the obscurity of their original condition ; while good kings are divested of their hereditary domi- nions, dethroned, and murdered : insomuch, that if power and prosperity were sure marks of the favour of God for those by whom they are possessed, the observation of the poet, impious as it seems, would too often be verified :
" The conqueror is Heaven's favourite ; but on earth. Just men a])prove and honour more the vanquisli'd."'*
As at this moment the w^orld beholds with wonder and dis- may the low-born usurper of a great monarch's throne, raised, by the hand of Providence unquestionably, to an eminence of power and grandeur enjoyed by none since the subversion of the Roman empire ; — a man whose un- daunted spirit and success in enterprise might throw a lustre over the meanest birth, while the profligacy of his private and the crimes of his public life would disgrace the noblest. When we see the imperial diadem circling this monster's brows, — while we confess the hand of God in his elevation, let us not be tempted to conclude from this, or other similar examples, that He who ruleth in the kingdom of men delights in such characters, or that he is even indifferent to the virtues and to the vices of men. It is not for his own sake that such a man is raised from the dunghill on which he sprang, but for the good of God's faithful servants, who are the objects of his constant care and love even at the time when they are suffering under the tyrant's cruelty : for who can doubt that the seven brethren and their mother were the objects of God's love, and their persecutor Antiochus Epiphanes of his hate ? But such persons are raised up and permitted to indulge
f * " \'ictri.\ causa Diis placuit ; sed victa Catoni. "
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their lerocious passions, their ambition, their cruelty, and their revenge, as the instruments of God's judgments for the reformation of his people ; and when that purpose is answered, vengeance is executed upon them for their own crimes. Thus it was with the Syrian we have just men- tioned, and with that more ancient persecutor Sennacherib, and many more ; and so, we trust, it shall be with him who now " smiteth the people in his wrath, and ruleth the nations in his anger." When the nations of Europe shall break off their sins by righteousness, the Corsican " shall be persecuted with the fury of our avenging God, and none shall hinder."
Again, if the thought that God ruleth the affairs of the world according to his will were always present to the minds of men, they would never be cast down beyond mea- sure by any successes of an enemy, nor be unduly elated with their own. The w^ill of God is a cause ever blended with ajid overruling other causes, of which it is impossibl*^ from any thing past to calculate the future operation : what is called the fortune of war, by this unseen and mysterious cause, may be reversed in a moment.
Hence again it follows, that men, persuaded upon good grounds of the justice of their cause, should not be discou- raged even by great failures in the beginning of the con- test, nor by sudden turns of ill fortune in the progress of it. Upon such occasions, they should humble themselves before God, confess their sins, and deprecate his judgments : but they should not interpret every advantage gained by the enemy as a sign that the sentence of God is gone forth against themselves, and that they are already fallen not to rise again. When the tribe of Benjamin refused to give up " the children of Belial which were in Gibeah" to the just resentment of their countrymen, the other tribes con- federated, and with a great force made war upon them. The cause of the confederates was just. The war, on their part, was sanctioned by the voice of God himself; and it was in the counsel and decree of God that they should be
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ultimately victorious : yet, upon the attack of the town, they were twice repulsed, with great slaughter. But they were not driven to despair : they assembled themselves before the house of God, and wept, and fasted. They re- ceived command to go out again the third day. They obeyed. They were victorious. Gibeah was burned to the ground, and the guilty tribe of Benjamin was all but extirpated ; — an edifying example to all nations to put their trust in God in the most unpromising circumstances.
Again, a firm belief in God's providence, overruling the fortunes of men and nations, will moderate our excessive admiration of the virtues and talents of men, and particu- larly of the great achievements of bad men, which are always erroneously ascribed to their own high endow- ments. Great virtues and great talents being indeed the gifts of God, those on whom they are conferred are justly entitled to respect and honour : but the Giver is not to be forgotten, — the centre and source of all perfection, to whom thanks and praise are primarily due even for those benefits which are conve3^ed to us through his highly-favoured ser- vants. But when the brilliant successes of bad men are ascribed to themselves, and they are admired for those very actions in which they are the most criminal, it is a most dangerous error, and often fatal to the interests of man- kind ; as, in these very times, nothing has so much con- duced to establish the power of the Corsican and multiply his successes, as the slavish fear of him which has seized the minds of men, growing out of an admiration of his boldness in enterprise on some occasions, and his hair- breadth escapes on others, which have raised in the many an opinion that he possesses such abilities, both in council and in the field, as render him an overmatch for all the statesmen and all the warriors of Europe, insomuch that nothing can stand before him : whereas, in truth, it were easy to find causes of his extraordinary success in the poli- tical principles of the times in which he first arose, inde- pendent of any uncommon talents of his own. — principally
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in the revolutionary fi-enz}/, the spirit of treason and revolt, which prevailed in the countries that were the first prey of his unprincipled ambition. But, were this not the case, yet were it impious to ascribe such a man's success to him- self. It has been the will of God to set up over the king- dom " the basest of men," in order to chastise the profane- ness, the irreligion, the lukewarmness, the profligacy, the turbulent, seditious spirit of the times ; and when this pur- pose is eftected, and the wrath of God appeased, " wherein is this man to be accounted of, whose breath is in his nostrils?"
It is a gross perversion of the doctrine of Providence, when any argument is drawn from it for the indifference of all human actions in the sight of God, and the insigni- ficance of all human efforts. Since every thing is settled by Providence according to God's own will, to what avail, it is said, is the interference of man ? At the commence- ment of the disordered state which still subsists in Europe, when apprehensions were expressed by many (apprehen- sions which are still entertained by those who first expressed them) that the great antichrist is likely to arise out of the French revolution, it was argued by them who were friends to the cause of France — " To what purpose is it then, upon your own principles, to resist the French ? Antichrist is to arise, — he is to prevail, — he is to exercise a wide dominion; and what human opposition can set aside the fixed designs of Providence?" Stranoe to tell, this aro-ument took with many who were not friends to the French cause, so far at least as to make them averse to the war with France. The fallacy of the argument lies in this, that it considers Provir dence by halves ; it considers Providence as ordaining an end and effecting it without the use or the appointment at least of means : whereas the true notion of Providence is, that God ordains the means with the end ; and the means which he employs are for the most part natural causes ; and among them he makes men, acting without any know- ledge of his secret will, from their own views as freeas:ents,
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tlie instruments of his purpose. In tlie case of antichrist, in particular, prophecy is explicit. So clearly as it is fore- told that he shall rise, so clearly is it foretold that he shall fall : so clearly as it is foretold that he shall raise himself to power by successful war, so clearly it is foretold that war — fierce and furious war, waged upon him by the faithful, shall be in part the means of his downfall. So false is all the despicable cant of Puritans about the un- lawfulness of war. And, with respect to the present crisis, if the will of God should be, that, for the punishment of our sins, the enemy should prevail against us, we must humble ourselves under the dreadful visitation : but if, as we hope and trust, it is the will of God that the vile Cor- sican shall never set his foot upon our shores, the loyalty and valour of the country are, we trust, the appointed means of his exclusion, " Be of good courage, then, and play the men for your people ; and the Lord do that which seemeth him good."
It is particularly necessary at this season that I should warn you against another gross and dangerous perversion of the doctrine of Providence, which is misconceived and abused when we impute any successes with which we may be blessed to any merit of our own engaging on our side that will of God by which the universe is governed. If we are successful in our contest with a tyrant who has surpassed in crime all former examples of depravity in an exalted station, we owe it not to ourselves, but to God's unmerited mercy. Nor are we to ascribe it to any pre- eminent righteousness of this nation, in comparison with others, if we have suffered less and prospered more than others engaged in the same quarrel. This country, since the beginning of Europe's troubles to the present day, has certainly been favoured beyond other nations : and at this very crisis, — at the moment when the armies of our conti- nental ally were flying before those of the common enemy, — in that very moment, the combined fleets of France and Spain, which were to have lowered the British flag, to have
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wrested from us our ancient sovereigntj' of the ocean, and to have extinguished our commerce in all its branches, — this proud naval armament, encountered by a far inferior force of British ships — a force inferior in every thing but the intrepidity of our seamen and the skill of their leaders — was dashed to pieces, at the mouth of its ovv^n harbour, by the cannon of that great commander whose grave is strewed with laurels and bedewed with his country's tears. But let not this inspire the vain thought, that, because w^e are righteous above all the nations of Europe, our lot has therefore been happier than theirs. It has been ruled by the highest authority, that they are not always the greatest sinners on whom the greatest evils fall. The converse fol- lows most undeniably, that those nations are not always the most righteous who in peace are the most flourishing and in war the most successful. Let us give therefore the whole glory to God. In the hour of defeat, let us say — " Why should man complain? — man, for the punishment of his sins :" in the hour of victory — " Let us not be high- minded, but fear."
SERMON XXX.
And the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the Messenger of the Covenant, whom ye delight in : Behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming ? and who shall stand when he appeareth r"'~MALACHi iii. 1, 2.
For the general meaning of this passage, all expositors, both Jewish and Christian, agree, and must indeed agree, in one interpretation ; for the words are too perspicuous to need elucidation or to admit dispute. The event an- nounced is the appearance of that Great Deliverer who had for many ages been the hope of Israel, and was to be a blessinof to all the families of the earth. Concerning:
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this Desire of Nations, this seed of the woman who was to crush the serpent's head, Malachi in the text delivers no new prediction; but, by an earnest asseveration, ut- tered in the name and as it were in the person of the Deity, he means to confirm that general expectation which his predecessors in the prophetical office had excited. "Behold he shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts'' — Saith the Lord of Hosts. This was a solemn form of words with all the Jewish prophets, when they would express the highest certainty of things to come, as fixed in the decrees of Heaven, and notified to man by him to whom power is never wanting to effect what his wisdom hath or- dained. And the full import of the expression is nothing less than this, — that the purpose of him whose counsels cannot change, the veracity of God who cannot lie, stand engaged to the accomplishment of the thing predicted. " He shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts." With this so- lemn promise of the Saviour, Malachi, the last inspired teacher of the Jewish church, closes the word of prophecy, till a greater prophet should arise again to open it. It will be a useful meditation, and well adapted to the present season,* to consider the characters under which the person is here described, whose coming is so pathetically foretold, and the particulars of the business upon which he is said to come; that we may see how exactly the one and the other correspond to the person and performances of Jesus of Nazareth. These meditations will both nmch contri- bute to the general confirmation of our faith, and, in particular, they will put us on our guard against those gross corruptions of the Christian doctrine which the ca- price and vanity of this licentious age have revived rather than produced.
First, for the characters under which the person is de- scribed whose coming is foretold. The first is, that he is the Lord. The word, in the original, is the same which
* The season of Advent. 2 c
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David uses in the hundred and tenth Psahn, when, speak- ing of the Messiah, he says — "Jehovah said unto my Lord." The original word in this passage of Malachi, and in that of the hundred and tenth Psalm, is the same; and in both places it is very exactly and properly rendered by the English " Lord." The Hebrew word is not more determinate in its signification than the English : it de- notes dominion or superiority of any kind, — of a king- over his subjects, of a master over his slave, of a husband over his wife; and it seems to have been used, in com- mon speech, without any notion of superiority, property, or dominion, annexed to it, as a mere appellation of re- spect, just as the word " Sir" is used in our language. Nevertheless, in its primary signification, it denotes a lord, in the sense of a governor, master, or proprietor; and is used by the sacred writers as a title of the Deity himself; expressing either his sovereign dominion over all, as Lord of heaven and earth, or his peculiar property in the Jewish people, as the family which he had chosen to himself, and over which he was in a particular manner their master and head. It is a word, therefore, of large and various signification, denoting dominion of every sort and degree, from the universal and absolute dominion of God to the private and limited dominion of the owner of a single slave. So that this title by itself would be no description of the person to whom it is applied. But the prophet has not left it undetermined what sort of lordship he would ascribe to him whose coming he proclaims. "The Lord shall come to his temple.'" The temple, in the writings of a Jewish prophet, cannot be otherwise under- stood, according to the literal meaning, than of the temple at Jerusalem. Of this temple, therefore, the person to come is here expressly called the lord. The lord of any temple, in the language of all waiters, and in the na- tural meaning of the phrase, is the d'win'iti) to whose wor- ship it is consecrated. To no other divinity the temple of Jerusalem was consecrated than the true and everlasting
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ItoJ, the Lord Jehos^ah, the Maker of heaven and earth. Here, then, we have the express testimony of Malachi, that the Christ, the Deliverer, whose coming he announces, was no other than the Jehov^ah of the Old Testament. Jehovah by his angels had delivered the Israelites from the Egyptian bondage ; and the same Jehovah was to come in person to his temple, to eifect the greater and more general deliverance of which the former was but an im- perfect type.
It is strange that this doctrine should be denied by any in the Christian church, when it seems to have been well understood, and expressly taught, upon the authority of the prophetical writings, long before Christ's appearance. Nor does the credit of it rest upon this single text of Ma- lachi: it was the unanimous assertion of all the Jewish prophets, by whom the Messiah is often mentioned under the name of "Jehovah;"' though this circumstance, it must be confessed, lies at present in some obscurity in our English Bibles, — an evil of which it is proper to ex- plain to you the cause and rise. The ancient Jews had a persuasion, which their descendants retain at this day, that the true pronunciation of the word "Jehovah" was unknown; and, lest they should miscall the sacred name of God, they scrupulously abstained from attempting to pronounce it; insomuch, that when the sacred books were publicly read in their synagogues, the reader, wherever this name occurred, was careful to substitute for it that other word of the Hebrew language which answers to the English " Lord."' The learned Jews who were employed by Ptolemy to turn the Scriptures of the Old Testament into Greek, have every where in their translation substi- tuted the corresponding word of the Greek language. Later translators have followed their mischievous example, — mischievous in its consequences, though innocently meant; and our English translators among the rest, in innumerable instances, for the original "Jehovah," which ought upon all occasions to have been religiously 2 c 2
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retained, }»ave put tlie more general title of " the Lord." A flagrant instance of this occurs in that solemn proem of the Decalogue, in the twentieth chapter of Exodus : " I am the Lord thy God," so we read in our English Bibles, "who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." In the original it is, " I am Jehovah thy God, who have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." Another example of the same unhappy alteration we find in that famous passage of the hundred and tenth Psalm which 1 have already had occasion to produce: "The Lord said unto my Lord;" which is in the Hebrew, "Jehovah said unto my Lord." If translators have used this unwarrantable license of sub- stituting a title of the Deity for his proper name in texts where that name is applied to the Ahnighty Father, — and in one, in particular, where the Father seems to be distin- guished by that name from Jesus as man, — it is not to be wondered that they should make a similar alteration in passages where the Messiah is evidently the person in- tended. It will be much to the purpose to produce some examples of these disfigured texts,^ — not for the sake of fastening any invidious imputation upon our translators, Fvho were men too eminent for their piety, and have ac- quitted themselves too faithfully in their arduous task, to be suspected of any ill designs; but for the more im- portant purpose of restoring the true doctrine to that splendour of evidence which an undue deference to the authority of tlie ancient Greek translation hath in some degree unhappily obscured.
The passage I shall first produce is that famous predic- tion of Jeremiah, " I will raise unto David a righteous branch ; and a king shall reign and prosper, and execute judgment and justice on the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely. And this is his name whereby he shall be called, The Lord our Righteousness."' In the Hebrew it is " Jehovah our Righteousness/" " Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion !"
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saith the prophet Zechariah ; " for lo, I come; and 1 dwell ill the midst of thee, saith the Loud;" in the original, " saith Jehovah." " In the year that kingUzziah died, I saw the Loud," says Isaiah ; in the original it is, "I saw Jehovah," "sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple: above it stood the seraphim; and one cried unto another, and said Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts !" in the original, "Je- hovah, God of Hosts;" "the whole earth is full of his glory." The same Spirit which displayed this glorious vision to Isaiah has given the interpretation of it by the evangelist St. John. St. John tells us that Christ was that Jehovah whom the entranced prophet saw upon his throne, — whose train filled the temple, — whose praises were the theme of the seraphic song, — whose glory fills the universe. " For these things said Esaias," saith St. John, " when he saw his glory, and spake of him." St. John had just alleged that particular prophecy of Isaiah which is introduced with the description of the vision in the year of Uzziah's death. This prophecy the evangelist applies to Christ, the only person of whom he treats in this place ; subjoining to his citation of Isaiah's words — " These things said Esaias when he saw his glory, and spake of him." It was Christ's glory, therefore, that Esaias saw; and to him whose glory he saw the prophet gives the name of Jehovah, and the worshipping angels gave the name of Jehovah God of Sabaoth. Again, the prophet Joel, speaking of the blessings of the Messiah's day, saith — " And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord," in the original, " Je- HOVAH," "shall be delivered." Here, again, the Holy Spirit hath vouchsafed to be his own interpreter; and his interpretation, one would think, might be decisive. St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, alleges this passage of Joel to prove that all men shall be saved by believing in Christ Jesus. But how is the apostle's assertion that all men shall be saved by faith in Christ confirmed by the
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prophets promise of deliverance to all who should de- voutly invocate Jehovah, unless Chrst were in the judg- ment of St. Paul the Jehovah of the prophet Joel?
From the few passages which have been produced, — more indeed might be collected to the same purpose, — but from these few, I doubt not but it sufficiently appears to you that the promised Messiah is described by the more ancient prophets, as by Malachi in the text, as no other than the Everlasting God, the Jehovah of the Israelites, —that Almighty God, whose hand hath laid the founda- tions of the earth, whose right-hand hath spanned the heavens, — that jealous God who giveth not his glory to another, and sparetli not to claim it for himself. These explicit assertions of the Jewish prophets deserve the serious attention of those zealous and active champions of the Arian and Socinian tenets who have within these few years become so numerous in this country; and who, as they cannot claim the honour of any new inventions in divinity (for their corruptions were indeed the produce of an early age), are content to acquire a secondary fame by defending old errors with unexampled rashness. They are said to have gone so far in their public discourses as to bestow on Christ our Lord the opprobrious appellation of the " Idol of the Church of England." Let it be remem- bered, that he who is called the Idol of our church is the God who was worshipped in the Jewish tem.ple. They have the indiscretion too to boast the antiquity of their disguised and mutilated scheme of Christianity ; and tell their deluded followers, with great confidence, that the divinity of the Saviour is a doctrine that was never heard of in the church till the third or fourth century, and was the invention of a dark and superstitious age. This as- sertion, were it not clearly falsified, as happily it is, by the whole tenor of the apostolical writings, would cause a more extensive ruin than they seem to apprehend : it would not so much overturn any single article of doctrine, such as men may dispute about, and yet be upon the
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whole believers, — it would cut up by the roots the whole faith ill Christ. Mahomet well understood this: he founded his own pretensions prudently, however im- piously, on a denial of the godhead of Christ. " There is one God," said Mahomet, "who was not begotten, and who never did beo;et." If the Father did not bep^et, then Christ is not God ; for he pretended not to be the Father: if he claimed not to be God, he claimed not to be the person which the Messiah is described to be by the Jewish prophets: if Christ was not Messiah, the Messiah may come after Christ: if he was a prophet only, a greater prophet may succeed. Thus, Christ's divinity being once set aside, there would be room enough for new pretensions. Mahomet, it should seem, was an abler divine than these half-believers. With the pernicious consequence, however, of their rash assertion, they are not justly chargeable: they mean not to invali- date the particular claims of Jesus of Nazareth as a pro- phet, and the Deliverer promised to the Jews ; but they would raise an objection to the notion of a plurality of persons in the undivided substance of the Godhead. They are particularly unfortunate in choosing for the ground of their objection this imaginary circumstance of the late rise of the opinion they would controvert. Would to God they would but open their eyes to this plain historical fact, of which it is strange that any men of learning should be ignorant, and which will serve to outweigh all the ar- guments of their erroneous metaphysics, — that the divinity of the Messiah was no new doctrine of the first preachers of Christianity ; much less the invention of any later age : it was the original faith of the ancient Jewish church, delivered, as I have shown you, by her prophets, em- braced and acknowledged by her doctors, six hundred years and more before the glorious era of the incarnation. Nor was it even then a novelty : it was the creed of be- lievers from the beginning ; as it was typified in the sym- bols of the most ancient patriarchal worship. The cheru-
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bini of glory, afterward placed in the sanctuary of the Mosaic temple, and of Solomon's temple, had been origi- nally placed in a tabernacle on the east of the garden of Eden, immediately after the fall. These cherubim were figures emblematical of the Triune persons in the Godhead — of the mystery of redemption by the Son's atonement — and of the subjection of all the powers of nature, and of all created things, animate and inanimate, to the incarnate God.
This therefore is the first character under which the person is described whose coming is foretold, that of the Lord Jehovah of the Jewish temple. Other characters follow not less worthy of notice. The prosecution there- fore of the subject demands a separate Discourse.
SERMON XXXI.
And the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the Messenger of the Covenant, whom ye delight in : Behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts, But who may abide the day of his coming ? and who shall stand when he appeareth. — jVL\lachi iii. 1,2.
Although the words of my text are too perspicuous in their general sense and meaning to need elucidation, yet the characters by which the person is described whose coming is announced, and the particulars of the business upon which he is said to come, deserve a minute and accurate explication. The first ch-aracter of the person, that he is the Lord of the Jewish temple, has already been considered. It has been shown to be agreeable to the descriptions which had been given of the same person by the earlier prophets; who unanimously ascribe to him both the attributes and works of God, and frequently mention him by God's peculiar name, "Jehovah;" which, though it be the proper and incommunicable name of God, is not exclusively the name of the Almighty
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Father, but equally belongs indift'ereutly to every person in the Godhead, since by its etymology it is significant of nothing but what is common to them all, self-e.vistcncc.
The next character that occurs in the text of him whose coming is proclaimed, is that of a messenger of a covenant: "The Messenger of the Covenant, whom ye delight in." The covenant intended here cannot be the Mosaic ; for of that the Messiah was not the messenger. The Mosaic covenant was the word spoken by angels ; it is the supe- rior distinction of the gospel covenant, that it was begun to be spoken by the Lord. The prophet Jeremiah, who lived long before Malachi, had already spoken in very ex- plicit terms of a neiv covenant which God should establish with his people, by which the Mosaic should be super- seded, and in which the faithful of all nations should be included: "Behold, the days come, saith the Jehovah, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah : not according to the cove- nant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt ; but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Jehovah, — I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts ; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." In a subsequent prophecy he mentions this co- venant again, and calls it an everlasting covenant. He had mentioned it before, in less explicit terms ; but in such which perspicuously though figuratively express the universal comprehension of it, and the abrogation of the ritual law: "In those days, saith the Jehovah, they shall say no more. The ark of the covenant of the Je- hovah ! neither shall it come to mind ; neither shall they visit it; neither shall any more sacrifice be offered there. At that time, they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Jehovah ; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it — to the name of the Jehovah, to Jerusalem. Neither shall they,'' that is, the Gentiles, " walk anymore after the
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stubbornness of their evil heart." Of this neiv covenant w^e have another remarkable prediction, in the prophecies of Ezekiel : " Nevertheless, I will remember my covenant with thee in the days of thy youth; and I will establish vinto thee an everlasting covenant." The youth of any people is a natural metaphor in all languages to denote the time of their first beginnings, when they were few, and weak, and inconsiderable. Here, therefore, by the days of Judah's youth, I think is to be understood the very first beginnings of the Jewish people, when they existed only in the persons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The cove- nant made with Judah in these days of his youth signifies, as I apprehend, the original promises made to those pa- triarchs long before the promulgation of the Mosaic law. God says by the prophet here, that he will remember the original promises, the same which the Psalmist calls "the covenant which he made with Abraham, and the oath that he sware with Isaac ;" and that the effect of this remem- brance shall be, that " he will establish with Judah an everlasting covenant:" for the establishment of the ever- lasting covenant of the gospel is the completion of the promises made to Abraham, and renewed to the succeed- ing patriarchs. The prophet goes on: "Then shalt thou remember thy ways, and be ashamed, when thou shalt re- ceive thy sisters, thine elder and thy younger." You will observe, that the sisters of Judah are the nations of Sa- mapia and Sodom ; which, in that masculine style of me- taphor which characterizes Ezekiel's writings, had been called her sisters in a former part of the Discourse, — Sa- maria her eldest sister, Sodom her younger : her sisters, it is meant, in guilt and in punishment. Now, it is pro- mised that she shall receive these sisters. The prophet adds — " I will give them unto thee for daughters ;" that is, the most wicked of the idolatrous nations shall be brought to the knowledge of the true God, and ingrafted into his church ; "but not by thy covenant, — not by that covenant that now subsists with thee ; but by the terms of
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the everlasting covenant hereafter to be established." Of this covenant, so clearly foretold and so circumstantially described by the preceding prophets Jeremiah and Eze- kiel, Malachi thinks it unnecessary to introduce any par- ticular description. He supposes that it will be suffi- ciently known by the simple but expressive title of the covenant, — a title which by pre-eminence it might justly bear away from all other covenants, both for the general extent of it and for the magnitude of the blessings it holds out. Nor was it unusual with the Jewish prophets to re- fer in this short and transient manner to remarkable and clear predictions of their predecessors ; a circumstance which I mention, that it may not seem improbable that Malachi should pass over with so brief a mention that covenant to which the law was to give place, — the law which had been delivered on Mount Sinai with so much awful pomp upon the part of God, and embraced with such solemn ceremony by the people. That such brief and indirect reference to a former prophecy is not unex- ampled, will appear by a remarkable instance of it in the prophet Micah. In the fourth chapter of his prophecies, he speaks very openly of the conversion of the Gentiles ; and in the beginning of the fifth, he declares that this conversion should not begin till the birth of Christ: " Therefore he will give them up," that is, God will give the Gentiles up, — he will leave them to themselves, " un- til the time when she which travaileth shall bring forth : then the remnant of his brethren shall return unto the children of Israel." Here she which travaileth is the vir- gin of whom Isaiah had already prophesied that she should conceive and bring forth a son. This virgin, Micah, by a bold and happy stroke of rhetoric, speaks of as already pregnant ; and this brief and animated reference to Isaiah's prediction might more effectually revive the remembrance of it, and excite a renewed attention to it, than a more di- rect and explicit repetition ; at the same time that it was the most respectful manner of citing the original prophecy.
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as that which needed not either comment or confirmation. In like manner, Malachi in the text refers briefly but em- phatically to the old prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel concerning a new covenant to be established in the latter days ; and, at the same time that he points but transiently and in a single word at those particulars in which former prophets had been explicit, the Holy Spirit directs him to set forth in the clearest light an important circumstance, concerning which they had been more reserved, — that the Great Deliverer to come was himself to be the messenger of this everlasting covenant. And this is the second charac- ter by which the Messiah is described in the text, — that of the messenger of that new covenant to which there is frequent allusion in all the prophetical vvritings; and of which Jeremiah and Ezekiel, in particular, have expressly foretold the establishment, and clearly described the na- ture, duration, and extent.
Let us now join this second character with the first, that we may see what will result from the union of the two. The first character of the person to come is the Lord Jehovah; the second, the Messenger of the Co- venant foretold by Jeremiah and Ezekiel. This is men- tioned as a covenant to be established between Jehovah and his people : it was doubtless to be proposed on the part of God, — to be embraced by them. The Messenger of the Covenant can be no other than the messenger sent by Jehovah to make the proposal to his people. The Messenger of the Covenant, therefore, is Jehovah's messenger ; — if his messenger, his servant ; for a message is a service : it implies a person sending and a person sent: in the person who sendeth there must be authority to send, — submission to that authority in the person sent. The Messenger, therefore, of the Covenant, is the ser- vant of the Lord Jehovah : but the same person who is the Messenger is the Lord Jehovah himself; not the same person with the sender, but hearing the same name, because united in that mysterious nature and undivided
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substiince which the name imports. The same person, tlierefore, is servant and lord; and, by uniting these cha- racters in the same person, what does the prophet but de- scribe that great mystery of the gospel, the union of the nature which governs and the nature which serves — the union of the divine and human nature in the person of the Christ? This doctrine, therefore, was no less than that of the divinity of the Messiah ; a novelty, as we are told, in the third or fourth century after the birth of Christ, — an invention of the dark and superstitious ages ! The two, indeed, must stand or fall together: we claim for both a reverend antiquity : we appeal to the sacred archives of the ancient Jewish church, where both are registered in characters which do to this day, and we trust shall to the last, defy the injuries of time.
To these two characters of the Messiah, of Jehovah and Jehovah's Messenger, — or rather to that one mysterious character which arises from the union of these two, — ano- ther is to be added, contained in the assertion that he is the Lord whom the persons seek to whom the prophecy is addressed — the Jllessenger whom they delight in. I doubt not but you prevent me in the interpretation of this cha- racter : you imagine that the general expectation of the Messiah is alluded to in these expressions ; and the de- light and consolation which the devout part of the Jewish nation derived from the hope and prospect of his coming. And if the prophet's discourse were addressed to those who trusted in God's promises, and waited in patient hope of their accomplishment, this would indeed be the natural interpretation of his words: but the fact is otherwise ; and therefore this interpretation cannot stand. The text is the continuation of a discourse begun in the last verse of the preceding chapter, which should indeed have been made the first verse of this. This discourse is addressed to persons who did not seek the Lord — who could not delight in the Messenger of his Covenant, — to the profane and atheistical, who, neither listening to the promises nor re-
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garding tlie tlireatenings of God, take occasion, from the promiscuous distribution of the good and evil of the pre- sent life, to form rash and impious conclusions against his providence, to arraign his justice and wisdom, or to dis- pute his existence. The expressions, therefore, of seek- ing the Lord and delighting in his messenger are ironical, expressing the very reverse of that which they seem to affirm. You will observe, that there is more or less of severity in this ironical language, by which it stands re- markably distinguished from the levity of ridicule, and is particularly adapted to the purposes of invective and re- biike. It denotes conscious superiority, sometimes indig- nation, in the person who employs it : it excites shame, confusion, and remorse, in the person against whom it is employed, — in a third person, contempt and abhorrence of him who is the object of it. These being the affections which it expresses and denotes, it can in no case have any tendency to move laughter : he who uses it is always serious himself; and makes his hearers serious, if he ap- plies it with propriety and address. I have been thus par- ticular in explaining the nature of irony, that it may not be confounded with other figures of an inferior rhetoric, which might less suit the dignity of the prophetical lan- guage ; and that I may not seem to use a freedom with the sacred text when I suppose that this figure may be allowed to have a place in it. Irony is the keenest weapon of the orator. The moralists, those luminaries of the Gentile world, have made it the vehicle of their gravest lessons ; and Christ, our great Teacher, upon just occasions was not sparing in the use of it. A remarkable instance of it, but of the mildest kind, occurs in his conversation with Nico- demus, whom he had purposely perplexed with a doctrine somewhat abstruse in itself, and delivered in a figurative language ; and when the Pharisee could not dissemble the slowness of his apprehension, Jesus seems to triumph over his embarrassment, in that ironical question, " Art thou a master in Israel, and knowest not these thinos ?" The
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question, you see, seems to imply a respectable estimation of the learning and abilities of those masters in Israel of whom this nightly visitor was one, and to express much surprise at the discovery of Nicodemus' ignorance ; whereas the thing insinuated is the total hisufficiency of these self- constituted teachers, who were ignorant of the first prin- ciples of that knowledge which Jesus brought from heaven to make men wise unto salvation, Nicodemus was a man of a fair and honest mind ; but at this time probably not un- tainted with the pride and prejudices of his sect, Jesus intended to give him new light; but for this purpose he judges it expedient first to make him feel his present igno- rance ; which the triumph of this ironical question must have set before him in a glaring light. In the propheti- cal writings of the Old Testament, examples of a more austere irony abound. But we shall no where find an in- stance in which it is more forcibly applied than by Mala- chi in the text. " Ye have wearied the Lord," says this eloquent prophet to the infidels of his- times, "Ye have wearied the Lord with your words." He makes them reply — "Wherein have we w'earied him?" He answers — "When ye say, Every one that doth evil is good in the sight of the Lord ; or when ye say. Where is the God of judgment ? — And are ye then in earnest in the sentiments which you express? Is this your quarrel with Providence, that the blessings of this life are promiscuously distributed ? Is it really your desire that opulence and honour should be the peculiar portion of the righteous — poverty and shame the certain punishment of the wicked? Do you, of all men, wish that health of body and tranquillity of mind were the inseparable companions of temperance — disease and despair the inevitable consequences of strong drink and dalliance ? Do you wish to see a new economy take place, in which it should be impossible for virtue to sufl^er or for vice to prosper? — Sanctified blasphemers ! be con- tent : your just remonstrances are heard ; you shall pre- sently be friends vvith Providence: the God of judgment
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comes; he it is at liand : he comes to establisli tlie ever- lasting covenant of righteousness — to silence all com- plaint— to vindicate his ways to man — to evince his justice in your destruction — to inflict on you a death of which the agonies shall never end." All this reproach and all this threatening is conveyed with the greatest force, be- cause with the greatest brevity, in those ironical expres- sions of the prophet, "The Lord, whom?/e seek; the Mes- senger of the Covenant, whom ijc delight in.'" But although these expressions are ironical, they contain a positive character of the person to come ; for the true sense of irony is always rendered by the contrary of that which it seems to affirm : the Lord and Messenger whom infidels are ironically said to seek and to delight in, is the Lord whom they do not seek, the Messenger in whom they can- not take delight— the Lord who will visit those who seek him not, the Messenger in whom they who have not sought the Lord can take no delio-ht, because he is the messeno-er of vengeance.
This, then, is another character of the person to come, — • that he is to execute God's final vengeance on the wicked. But as this may seem a character of the office rather than of the person, it leads me to treat of what was the second article in my original division of the subject, — the particu- lars of the business upon which the person announced in the text is said to come. There remains, besides, the ap- plication of every article of this remarkable prophecy to Jesus of Nazareth. These important disquisitions we must still postpone ; that no injustice may be done to this great argument, on your part or on mine, — on mine, by a superficial and precipitate discussion of any branch of it; on yours, by a languid and uninterested attention.
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SERMON XXXII.
And the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the Messenger of the Covenant, whom ye delight in : Behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming ? and who shall stand when he appeareth ?" — Malachi iii. I. 2. ^
We have already considered the several characters by which the Messiah is described in this text of the prophet. He is the Lord of the temple at Jerusalem : he is, besides, the Messenger of that everlasting covenant of which the establishment is so explicitly foretold by the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel : he is also the Lord whom the profane seek not — the Messenger in whom they delight not: that is, he is the appointed judge of man, who will execute God's final vengeance on the wicked. We are now to consider the particulars of the business on which the person bearing these characters is to come.
It may seem that the text leaves it pretty much undeter- mined what the particular business is to be ; intimating only in general terms that something very terrible will be the consequence of the Messiah's arrival : " But who may abide the day of his coming ? and who shall stand when he appeareth V You will not wonder that the appearance of that " Sun of Righteousness who hath arisen with heal- ing on his wings " should here be spoken of in terms of dread and apprehension, if you bear in remembrance what I told you in my last Discourse, — that the prophet is speak- ing to the profane and atheistical — to those who had no- thing to hope from the mercy of God, and every thing to fear from his justice. To these persons the year of the redemption of Israel is to be the year of the vengeance of our God. The punishment of these is not less a branch of the Messiah's office than the deliverance of the penitent and contrite sinner: they make a part of that power of 2 D
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the serpent which the seed of the woman is to extinguish. But the prophet opens the meaning of this threatening question in the words that immediately follow it ; and which, if you consult your Bibles, you will find to be these : " For he is like a refiner's fire and a fuller's soap : and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver : and he shall purify the sons of Levi, that they may ofl:'er unto the Lord an offering in righteousness. And I will come near to you to judgment ; and will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, saith the Lord of Hosts.*' Here you see the Messiah's business described in various branches ; which are reducible, however, to these, — the final judgment, when the wicked shall be destroyed ; a previous trial or experiment of the diflferent tempers and dispositions of men, in order to that judgment ; and some- thing to be done for their amendment and improvement. The trial is signified under the image of an assayist's sepa- ration of the nobler metals from the dross with which they are blended in the ore : the means used for the amend- ment and improvement of mankind, by the Messiah's atone- ment for our sins, by the preaching of the gospel, and by the internal influences of the Holy Spirit,— all these means, employed under the Messiah's covenant for the reformation of men, are expressed under the image of a fuller's soap, which restores a soiled garment to its original purity. One particular efiect of this purification is to be, that the sons of Levi will be purified. The worship ofGod shall be purged of all hypocrisy and superstition, and reduced to a few simple rites, the natural expressions of true devotion. " And then shall this offering of Judah and Jerusalem," that is, of the true members of God's true church, " be pleasant unto the Lord." These, then, are the particulars of the business on which the Messiah, according to this prophecy, was to come.
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It yet remains to recollect the particulai's in which this prophecy, as it respects both the person of the Messiah and his business, hath been accomplished in Jesus of Naza- reth. And, first, the prophet tells us that the Messiah is the Lord, and should come to his temple. Agreeably to this, the temple was the theatre of our Lord's public minis- try at Jerusalem : there he daily taught the people ; there he held frequent disputations with the unbelieving Scribes and Pharisees : so that, to us who acknowledge Jesus for the Lord, the prophetical character of coming to his temple must seem to be in some measure answered in the general habits of his holy life. It is remarkable that the temple was the place of his very first public appearance ; and in his coming upon that occasion there was an extraordinary suddenness. It was indeed before the commencement of his triennial ministry : he was but a child of twelve years of age, entirely unknown, when he entered into disputation in the temple with the priests and doctors of the law, and astonished them with his accurate knowledge of the Scrip- tures. And in this very year the sceptre of royal power departed from Judah ; for it was in this year that Archelaus, the son of Herod the Great, was deposed by the Roman emperor, and banished to Lyons, and the Jews became wholly subject to the dominion of the Romans. Thus the prophecy of Jacob was fulfilled, by the coincidence of the subversion of the independent government of the Jews with the first advent or appearance of Shiloh in the temple.
But there are three particular passages of his life in which this prophecy appears to have been more remark- ably fulfilled, and the character of the Lord coming to his temple more evidently displayed in him. The first was in an early period of his ministry; when, going up to Jeru- salem to celebrate the passover, he found in the temple a market of live cattle, and bankers' shops, where strangers who came at this season from distant countries to Jerusa- lem were accommodated with cash for their bills of credit. 1^'ired with indignation at this daring profanation of his •2 D 2
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Father's house, he oversets the accountino--tables of the bankers, and with a light whip made of rushes he drives these irreligious traders from the sacred precincts. TItre was a considerable exertion of authority. However, on this occasion, he claimed not the temple expressly /or his own; he called it his Father's house, and appeared to act only as a son.
He came a second time as Lord to his temple, much more remarkably, at the feast of tabernacles ; when, " in the last day, that great day of the feast, he stood in th.e temple, and cried, saying. If any man thirst, let him come unto ME and drink: he that believeth on me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." That you may enter into the full sense and spirit of this extraordinary exclamation, it is necessary that you should know in what the silly multitudes to whom it was addressed wei'e proba- bly employed at the time when it was uttered : and for this purpose, I must give you a brief and general account of the ceremonies of that last day, the great day of the feast of tabernacles ; the ceremonies, not the original ceremonies appointed by Moses, but certain superstitious ceremonies which had been added by the later Jews. The feast of tabernacles continued eight days. At what precise time I know not, but in some part of the interval between the prophets and the birth of Christ, the priests had taken up a practice of marching daily, during the feast, round the altar of burnt-offerings, waving in their hands the branches of the palm, and singing, as they went — " Save, we pray, and prosper us !" This was done but once on the first seven days ; but on the eighth and last it was repeated seven times : and when this ceremony was finished, the people, with extravagant demonstrations of joy and exulta- tion, fetched buckets of water from the fountain of Siloam, and presented them to the priests in the temple ; who mixed the water with the wine of the sacrifices, and poured it upon the altar, chanting all the while tliat text of Isaiah • — " With joy shall ye draw water from the fountain of
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Ivation.'" The fountain of salvation, in the language of a prophet, is the Messiah ; the water to be drawn from that fountain is the water of his Spirit. Of this mystical meaning- of the water, the inventors of these superstitious rites, whoever they might be, seem to have had some ob- scure discernment ; although they understood the fountain literally of the fountain of Siloam ; for, to encourage the people to the practice of this laborious superstition, they had persuaded them that this rite was of singular efficacy to draw down the prophetic spirit. The multitudes zea- lously busied in this unmeaning ceremony were they to whom Jesus addressed that emphatical exclamation — " If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink." The first words, " if any man thirst,'" are ironical. " Are ye famished," says he, " with thirst, that ye fatigue yourselves with fetching all this water up the hill ? O ! but ye thirst for the pure waters of Siloam, the sacred brook that rises in the mountain of God, and is devoted to the purification of the temple ! Are ye indeed athirst for these ? Come, then, unto me, and drink : I am the fountain of which that which purifies the temple is the type : / am the fountain of salvation of which your prophet spake : from me the true believer shall receive the living water, — not in scanty draughts fetched with toil from this penurious rill, but in a well perpetually springing up within him." The words of Isaiah which I have told you the priests were chanting, and to which Jesus alludes, are part of a song of praise and triumph which the faithful are supposed to use in that prosperous state of the church, which, according to the prophet, it shall finally attain under Jesse's Root. " In that day shalt thou say. Behold, God is my salvation : I will trust, and not be afraid ; for the Lord Jehovah is my streno'th and sono-, he also is become mv salvation : there- fore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salva- tion." Consider these words as they lie in the context of the prophet ; consider the occasion upon which Jesus, standing in the temple, applies them to himself; consider
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the sense in which he applies them ; and judge whether this application was less than an open claim to be the Lord Jehovah come unto his temple. It is remarkable, that it had at the time an immediate and wonderful effect. " Many of the people, when they heard this saying, said, Of a truth this is the prophet.'" The light of truth burst at once upon their minds. Jesus no sooner made the application of this abused prophecy to himself, than they perceived the just- ness of it, and acknowledged in him the fountain of salva- tion. What would these people have said had they had our light, — had the whole volume of prophecy been laid before them, with the history of Jesus to compare with it? Would they not have proceeded in the prophet's triumphant song : " Cry out and shout, O daughter of Zion ! Great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee !" — This then I take to be the second particular occasion in the life of Jesus in which Malachi's prediction "that the Lord should come to his temple" was fulfilled in him, — when Jesus, in the last day of the feast of tabernacles, stood in the temple and declared himself the person intended by Isaiah under the image of the '"' fountaui of salvation :'' for by appro- priating the character to himself, he must be understood in effect to claim all those other characters which Isaiah in the same prophecy ascribes to the same person ; which are these : " God, the salvation of Israel ; the Lord Jehovah, his strength and his song ; the Lord, that hath done excel- lent things ; the Holy One of Israel."
A third time Jesus came still more remarkably as the Lord to his temple, when he came up from Galilee to celebrate the last passover, and made that public entry at Jerusalem which is described by all the evangelists. It will be necessary to enlarge upon the particulars of this interesting story : for the right understanding of our Saviour's conduct upon this occasion depends so much upon seeing certain leading circumstances in a proper light, — upon a recollection of ancient prophecies, and an attention to the customs of the Jewish people, — that I am
407 apt to suspect tew iiow-a-days discern in this extraordinary transaction what was clearly seen in it at the time by our Lord's disciples, and in some measure understood by his enemies. I sliall present you with an orderly detail of the story, and comment upon the particulars as they arise : and I doubt not but that, by God's assistance, I shall teach you to perceive in this public entry of Jesus of Nazareth (if you have not perceived it before) a conspicuous advent of the Great Jehovah to his temple. — Jesus, on his last journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, stops at the foot of Mount Olivet, and sends two of his disciples to a neigh- bouring village to provide an ass's colt to convey him from that place to the city, distant not more than half a mile : the colt is brought, and Jesus is seated upon it. This first circumstance must be well considered ; it is the key to the whole mystery of the story. What could be his meaning in choosing this singular conveyance? It could not be that the fatigue of the short journey which re- mained was likely to be too much for him a- foot; and that no better animal was to be procured. Nor was the ass in these days (though it had been in earlier ages) an ani- mal in high esteem in the East used for travelling, or for state, by persons of the first condition, — that this convey- ance should be chosen for the grandeur or propriety of the appearance. Strange as it may seem, the coming to Jerusalem upon an ass's colt was one of the prophetical characters of the Messiah ; and the great singularity of it had perhaps been the reason that this character had been more generally attended to than any other ; so that there was no Jew who was not apprized that the Messiah was to come to the holy city in that manner. " Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion I Shout, O daughter of Jeru- salem!" saith Zechariah: " Behold, thy Kingcometh unto thee! He is just, and having salvation ; lowly, and riding upon an ass, even a colt the foal of an ass ! " And this pro- phecy the Jews never understood of any other person than the Messiah. Jesus, therefoi-e, by seating himself upon
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the asss colt in order to go to Jerusalem, without any possible inducement either of grandeur or convenience, openly declared himself to be that King who was to come, and at whose coming in that manner Zion was to rejoice. And so the disciples, if we may judge from what immedi- ately followed, understood this proceeding ; for no sooner did they see their Master seated on the colt, than they broke out into transports of the highest joy, as if in this great sight they had the full contentment of their utmost wishes ; conceiving, as it should seem, the sanguine hope that the kingdom was this instant to be restored to Israel. They strewed the way which Jesus was to pass with the green branches of the trees which grew beside it ; a mark of honour in the East, never paid but to the greatest emperors on occasions of the highest pomp : they pro- claimed him the long-expected heir of David's throne, — • the Blessed One coming in the name of the Lord ; that is, in the language of Malachi, the Messenger of the Cove- nant : and they rent the skies with the exulting acclama- tion of " Hosanna in the highest !" On their way to Jeru- salem, they are met by a great multitude from the city, whom the tidings had no sooner reached than they ran out in eager joy to join his triumph. When they reached Jerusalem, the whole city, says the blessed evangelist, was moved. Here recollect, that it was now the season of the passover. The passover was the highest festival of the Jewish nation, the anniversary of that memorable night when Jehovah led his armies out of Egypt with a high hand and an extended arm, — " a night much to be remem- bered to the Lord of the children of Israel in their genera- tions f and much indeed it was remembered. The devout Jews flocked at this season to Jerusalem, not only from every corner of Judea, but from the remotest countries whither God had scattered them ; and the numbers of the strangers that were annually collected in Jerusalem, dur- ing this festival, are beyond imagination. These strangers, who living at a distance, knew little of what had been
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passing in Judea since their last visit, were they who were moved (as well they might be) with wonder and astonishment, when Jesus, so humble in his equipage, so honoured in his numerous attendants, appeared within the city-gates; and every one asks his neighbour, " Who is , this ?" It was replied by some of the natives of Judea, — but, as I conceive, by none of the disciples ; for any of them at this time would have given another answer,— it was replied, "This is the Nazarene, the great prophet from Galilee," Through the throng of these astonished spectators the procession passed by the public streets of Jerusalem to the temple, where immediately the sacred porticos resound with the continued hosannas of the multitudes. The chief priests and scribes are astonished and alarmed : they request Jesus himself to silence his followers. Jesus, in the early part of his ministry, had always been cautious of any public display of personal consequence ; lest the malice of his enemies should be too soon provoked, or the unadvised zeal of his friends should raise civil commotions : but now that his work on earth was finished in all but the last painful part of it, — now that he had firmly laid the foundations of God's kingdom in the hearts of his disciples, — now that the apostles were prepared and instructed for their office, — now that the days of vengeance on the Jewish nation were at hand, and it mattered not how soon they should incur the displeasure of the Romans their masters, — Jesus lays aside a reserve which could be no longer useful ; and instead of checking the zeal of his followers, he gives a new alarm to the chief priests and scribes, by a direct and firm assertion of his right to the honours that were so largely shown to him. " If these," says he, " were silent, the stones of this building would be endued with a voice to proclaim my titles:" and then, as on a former occasion, he drove out the traders; but with a higher tone of authority, calling it his own house, and saying, " My house is the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves." — You have
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now the story in all its circumstances, faithfully collected from the four evangelists; nothing exaggerated, but set in order, and somewhat perhaps illustrated by an applica- tion of old prophecies and a recollection of Jewish cus- toms. Judge for yourselves whether this was not an ad- vent of the Lord Jehovah taking personal possession of his temple.
Thus, in one or in all, but chiefly in the last of these three remarkable passages of his life, did Jesus of Naza- reth display in his own person, and in his conduct claim, the first and greatest character of the Messiah foretold and described by all the preceding Jewish prophets, as well as by Malachi in the text, — " the Lord coming to Jiis templet The other characters, when we resume the subject, will with no less evidence appear in him.
SERMON XXXIII.
And the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the Messenger of the Covenant, whom ye delight in : Behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming ? and who shall stand when he appeareth ?" — Malachi iii. 1, 2.
This text of Malachi has turned out a fruitful subject ; more so, perhaps, than the first general view of it might seem to promise. We have already drawn from this text ample confirmation of some of the chief articles of our most holy faith : we have seen their great antiquity: we have found that they affirm nothing of our Lord but what the Jews were taught to look for in the person w^hom we believe our Lord to be, the Messiah : we have had occa- sion to expound some important texts — to open many pas- sages of prophecy — to consider some remarkable passages in the life of Jesus — to make some general observations on the style of the sacred writers — to recall the remem-
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biaiice of some customs of the ancient Jews ; by all which, we trust that we have thrown some light upon interesting texts of Scripture, and have furnished the attentive hearer with hints which he who shall bear them in remembrance may apply to make light in many other places for himself. This harvest of edification which hath been already col- lected, encourages me to proceed in the remainder of my subject, with the same diligence and exactness which I have used in the former part of it; and I trust that it will engage you to give me still your serious attention.
We have already found in Jesus of Nazareth that great character of the Messiah, "the Lord of the Jewish tem- ple." Such Jesus was; and such, by three remarkable actions in three different periods of his ministry, he had claimed to be. Let us now look narrowly for the second character, — that of the jMesscnger of the Covenant; of that covenant of which the establishment was so explicitly foretold by the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
In general, that Jesus was the proposer of a covenant between God and man, is much too evident to need any laboured proof. Did he not announce blessings on the part of God ? Did he not require duties in return from men? Now, an offer of blessings from God, with a de- mand of duties in return from men, is, in the Scripture language, a covenant between God and man. It was thus that the promises to Abraham were a covenant: it was promised to Abraham, that his posterity should become a numerous nation, prosperous in itself, and a means of blessing to all the families of the earth: it was required, in return, of Abraham and his posterity, to keep them- selves pure from the general corruption of idolatry, and to adhere to the true worship of the true God. Thus, also, the Mosaic institution was a covenant : the land of Canaan was ofiven to the Jews : a strict observance is re- quired of the rituals of the Mosaic law, and obedience to the prophets who should succeed Moses. And thus the Christian institution is a covenant: the sins of men are
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forgiven, through the sacrifice of Christ ; eternal happi- ness is offered to them in the world to come : Christians are required, in return, to fear, love, and honour God — to make open profession of the faith in Christ — to love one another — to do good to all men — to forgive their ene- mies— to control their passions, and to deny all sinful ap- petites. Jesus, therefore, it is evident, propounded the terms of a covenant: and he made the proposal on the part of God ; for he declared that he came from God ; and the works which he did by the finger of God bore ample testimony to him. But this is not sufficient: it must be examined whether the covenant which Jesus pro- pounded bears the character of that which is described in the writings of Jeremiah and Ezekiel ; for that being the covenant intended by Malachi in the text, if the covenant propounded by Jesus were any other, although he would still be the messenger of a covenant, he would not be that messenger whom Malachi predicts — that messenger which the Messiah was to be; and, by consequence, he would not be the Messiah. Now, the first remarkable character which we find in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, of the covenant which they describe, is, that it should be new, or different from the Mosaic institution. And this same character we can be at no loss to find in the covenant propounded by Jesus. The Mosaic institution required duties of a cere- monial service : Jesus requires the natural devotion of the heart, the reasonable sacrifice of an innocent and holy life. And the social duty, under the law and under the gospel, is in its first general principles the same : yet Jesus, in his sermon on the Mount, points out imperfections in cer- tain particulars of the Mosaic law, in some of its political institutions ; arising from that necessary accommodation to inveterate prejudices and general corruptions with which every rational scheme of reformation must begin ; and the Mosaic institution is to be considered as the be- ginning of a plan of Providence for the gradual amend- ment of mankind, which Christianity was to finish and
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complete. He tells the multitudes, that it would not be sufficient that they should abstain from such criminal ac- tions as were prohibited by the letter of the Decalogue, — that they must master the passions which might incline them to such actions. He taught that the law was ful- filled in the true and undissembling love of God and man; and althouo-h he did not, durino- his own life on earth, release men from the observance of the Mosaic rites, he seized all occasions of explaining to them the higher works of intrinsic goodness. Nor does his covenant differ less from the Mosaic in the blessings it offers than in the du- ties it prescribes. The promises of the Mosaic covenant were of temporal blessings : the disciples of Christ are taught to look for nothing in this world but persecution and affliction, with the grace of God to support them under it ; but they are to receive hereafter an inheritance that fadeth not away. Thus new, thus different from the Mosaic, is the covenant of Jesus ; agreeing well in this particular with that which is described by Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Another circumstance of the covenant foretold by these prophets was, that it should be universal, com- prehending all the nations of the earth. And such was the covenant of Jesus: he commanded the apostles to go into all nations, and to preach the gospel to every crea- ture; with a promise of salvation to every one that should believe; and he scrupled not to tell the unbelieving Jews, " that many should come from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, and sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of God." A third character attributed by Jeremiah and Ezekiel to the covenant wdiich they foretold was, that it should be everlasting. And such the covenant of Jesus in the very nature of the thing appears to be : it has no respect what- ever, either in its requisitions or in its promises, to any peculiarities of place or time. In the Mosaic institution, we find much attention to the particular tempers and manners of the Jewish people— to the notions they had
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imbibed in Egypt- — to the circumstances in vvhicli the}' were afterward to be placed — to the situation of the land of promise with respect to other nations — to the customs and dispositions of their neighbours. They were com- manded to offer in sacrifice the animals which they had seen the Egyptians worship ; that they might not adopt the same superstitious veneration for them. They were forbidden to use a particular tonsure of the hair ; because a neighbouring nation used it in honour of a dead prince whom they worshipped. They were forbidden certain rites of mourning in use among the bordering people, who deified their dead. None of these local and tempo- rary intendments are to be found in the covenant of Jesus, — no accommodations to the manners of any parti- cular nation, ^ — no caution against the corruptions of this particular age or place : the whole is planned upon a comprehensive view of human nature in general, of the original and immutable relation of things, and of the per- fections of the unchangeable God. The things com- manded are such as ever were and ever will be good ; the things forbidden, such as ever were and ever will be evil ; — ever good and ever evil, not from their adjuncts, their accidents, or their circumstances, which may admit of change ; but intrinsically, in their own form.al natures, which are permanent and invariable as the ideas of the Divine Mind, in which the forms of things originate. Thus the religious fear and iove of God are every vvhere and always good, because his power and goodness are every where active; and power in act is by its formal nature, not by accident, the object of fear ; and goodness in act the object of love. For the same reason, the neglect and disregard of God are always evil. Again, the love of man IS always good ; because man always bears in the natural endowments of his mind somewhat of that glorious image in which he was created : and because by this resem- blance man partakes of the Divine nature, to be enslaved by the appetites which are common to him with the
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brutes, is always evil. And since the whole of the Chris- tian duty is reducible to these three heads, — the love of God, the love of man, and the government of self, — it is evident that in this part of it the Christian covenant is in its very nature calculated to be everlasting. Nor do the promises of this covenant less than its requisitions demon- strate its everlasting nature. Its promises are such as cannot be improved ; for what can God promise more than everlasting life ? What better reward can Omnipo- tence bestow than the participation of the pleasures which are at his own right-hand ? Evidently, therefore, in the duties it enjoins, and in the promises it holds out, the co- venant of Jesus appears in its nature to be everlasting. Another character of the covenant foretold by Jeremiah and Ezekiel is, that it should be a law written in the hearts of God's people. And such is the gospel ; if we consider either the motives by which it operates — those of hope and love, rather than of fear and awe, — or the graci- ous influences of the Spirit on the heart of every true believer.
Let us now briefly collect the sum of this investiga- tion. The covenant foretold by Jeremiah and Ezekiel was to be different from the Mosaic,- — general, for all nations; everlasting, for all ages ; a law written in the hearts of the faithful. The covenant which Jesus as God's Messenger propounded is altogether different from the Mosaic : it is propounded generally, to all nations ; and in the terms of it, is fitted to be everlastino-, for all ao^es ; it is a law writ- ten in the heart. Assuredly, then, Jesus of Nazareth was the Messenger of the Covenant foretold by the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel. But it is to be observed, that during his life on earth he was only the Messenger of this Covenant: it was propounded, but not established by liim, during his own residence among the sons of men. The hand-WTiting of ordinances remained in force till it was nailed with Jesus to his cross : then the ritual law lost its meaning and obligation ; but still the new co-
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venant was not established, till it was sealed by tlieeflu- sion of the Holy Spirit after Christ's ascension, and the Mosaic law was formally abrogated by the solemn sen- tence of the apostles in the comicil of Jerusalem : this was the authoritative revocation of the old and the esta- blishment of the new covenant. You see, therefore, with what accuracy of expression the Messiah is called by the prophet the iMessengtr of the Covenant ; and how ex- actly this second characteristic was verified in Jesus of Nazareth.
Having now traced in Jesus these two characters, of the Lord, and the Lord's Messenger, it is not likely that any other will be wanting: for since we are assured by the prophets that these two characters should meet in the Messiah, — since we have no reason to believe that they ever shall meet in any other person, — and since we have seen that they have met in the person of Jesus, — it follows undeniably, from the union of these two characters in his person, that Jesus was the Messiah; and of conse- quence, that all the other characteristics of that extraordi- nary personage will be found in him. The third is that of the Judge, who shall execute God's final vengeance on the wicked. This, it must be confessed, is a character which Jesus of Nazareth hath not yet assumed, otherwise than by declaring that hereafter he will assume it. His first coming was not to judge the world, but that the world through him might be saved. " Nevertheless, the Father hath committed all judgment to the Son, who shall come again at the last day in glory, to judge both the quick and dead." It must be confessed, that the prophets have so connected the judgment to be executed by the Messiah with his first appearance, that any one not acquainted with the general cast and genius of the pro- phetic language might not easily suspect that they speak of two advents of this great personage, separated from each other by a long interval of time. But if you have observed that this is the constant style of prophecy, — that
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when a long train of distant events are predicted, risino- naturally in succession one out of another, and all tending to one great end, the whole time of these events is never set out in parcels, by assigning the distinct epoch of each : but the whole is usually described as an instant — as what it is in the sight of God ; and the whole train of events is exhibited in one scene, without any marks of suc- cession ; — if you consider that prophecy, were it more re- gularly arranged, and digested in chronological order, would be an anticipated history of the world, which would in great measure defeat the very end of prophecy, which is to demonstrate the weakness and ignorance of man, as well as the sovereignty and universal rule of Pro- vidence ; — if you take these things into consideration, you will perhaps be inclined to think, that they may best interpret the ancient prophecies concerning the Messiah who refer to two different and distant times as two distinct events, — his coming to make reconciliation for iniquity; and his coming to cut off the incorrigibly wicked. Again, if you consider the achievements which the prophets ascribe to the Messiah, which are such as cannot be accomplished but in the course of many ages; and that the general judgment must in the reason of the thing be the last of all ; — if you consider that the Messiah was to come in humility before he should be revealed in glory, you will be convinced that the prophets cannot be under- stood of a single advent. If you recollect that the Mes- siah was to be cut off before he should reign, you will probably allow that the history of the New Testament is the best exposition of the types and oracles of the Old: — and in Jesus of Nazareth, who came in all humility, and was cut off, but not for himself, you will acknowledge Messiah the Prince; and you will look for him a second time in glory.
Your faith will be much confirmed, if you recollect that the particulars of the business upon which Messiah was to come appear no less evidently in the performances of •2 !•;
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Jesus than the }Dersonal characters in his person. The Messiah was to try the tempers and dispositions of man- kind. This Jesus does, by the duties to which he calls us, and the doctrine he has left with us ; — duties in which faith alone can engage us to persist; a doctrine which the pure in heart ever will revere, and the children of this world ever will misinterpret and despise. " Thus many shall be purified, and made white, and tried ; but the wicked shall do wickedly." Messiah was to purify the sons of Levi. The doctrine of Jesus has in many nations reformed the public worship of God ; and we trust that the reformation will gradually become general. Us of the Gentiles he has reclaimed from the abominations of idolatry; and hath taught us to loathe and execrate the rites whereby our forefathers sought the favour of their devils (for they were not gods), — the impure rites of hu- man sacrifice and public prostitution; things which it were unfit to mention or remember, but that we may the better understand from what a depth of corruption the mercy of God hath raised us. Blindness, it must be con- fessed, is at present upon Israel; but the time shall come when they shall turn to the Lord, and when we shall unite with them in the pure worship of God, and in the just praises of the Lamb. " Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the Lord:" then shall the Lord Jesus come again, to execute what remains of the Messiah's office, — to absolve and to condemn. God grant that every one here may be enabled "to abide the day of his coming, and to stand when he appeareth."
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SERMON XXXIV.
Hail, thou tliat art highly favoured : The Lord is with thee : Blessed art thou among women. — Luke i. 28.*
That she who in these terms was sakited by an angel should in after ages become an object of superstitious adoration, is a thing far less to be wondered, than that men professing to build their whole hopes of immortality on the promises delivered in the sacred books, and closely interwoven with the history of our Saviour's life, should question the truth of the message which the angel brought. Some nine years since, the Christian church was no less astonished than oftended, by an extravagant attempt to heighten, as it was pretended, the importance of the Chris- tian revelation, by overturning one of those first princi- ples of natural religion which had for ages been consi- dered as the basis upon which the whole superstructure of revelation stands. The notion of an immaterial prin- ciple in man, which, without an immediate exertion of the Divine power to the express purpose of its destruction, must necessarily survive the dissolution of the body — the notion of an immortal soul — was condemned and exploded as an invention of heathen philosophy : Death was repre- sented as an utter extinction of the whole man ; and the evangelical doctrine of a resurrection of the body in an improved state, to receive again its immortal inhabi- tant, was heightened into the mystery of a reproduction of the annihilated person. How a person once annihi- lated could be reproduced, so as to be the same person which had formerly existed, when no principle of sameness, nothing necessarily permanent, was supposed to enter the original composition, — how the present person could be
* Preached on Christmas-day. 2 E 2
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interested in the future person's fortunes, — why / should be at all concerned for the happiness or misery of the man who some ages hence shall be raised from my ashes, when the future man could be no otherwise the same with me than as he was arbitrarily to be called the same, be- cause his body was to be composed of the same matter which now composes mine, — these difficulties were but ill explained. It was thought a sufficient recommendation of the system, with all its difficulties, that the promise of a resurrection of the body seemed to acquire a new im- portance from it (but the truth is, that it would lose its whole importance if this system could be established; since it would become a mere prediction concerning a future race of men, and would be no promise to any men now existing) ; and the notion of the souVs natural immor- tality was deemed an unseemly appendage of a Chris- tian's belief, — for this singular reason, that it had been entertained by wise and virtuous heathens, who had received no light from the Christian, nor, as it was sup- posed, from any earlier revelation.
It might have been expected, that this anxiety to extin- guish every ray of hope which beams not from the glorious promises of the gospel, would have been accompanied with the most entire submission of the understanding to the letter of the written word — the most anxious solicitude for the credit of the sacred writers — the warmest zeal to main- tain every circumstance in the history of our Saviour's life which might add authority to his precepts and weight to his promises, by heightening the dignity of his person : but so inconsistent with itself is human folly, that they who at one time seemed to think it a preliminary to be re- quired of every one who would come to a right belief of the gospel, that he should unlearn and unbelieve what philosophy had been thought to have in common with the gospel (as if reason and revelation could in nothing agree), upon other occasions discover an aversion to the belief of any thing which at all puts our reason to a stand : and
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in order to wage war with mystery with the more advan- tage, they scruple not to deny that that Spirit which en- lightened the first preachers in the delivery of their oral instruction, and rendered them infallible teachers of the age in which they lived, directed them in the composition of those writings which they left for the edification of suc- ceeding ages. They pretend to have made discoveries of inconclusive reasoning in the epistles — of doubtful facts in the gospels ; and appealing from the testimony of the apostles to their own judgments, they have not scrupled to declare their opinion, that the miraculous conception of our Lord is a subject " with respect to which any person is at full liberty to think as the evidence shall appear to him, without any impeachment of his faith or character as a Christian :" and lest a simple avowal of this extraor- dinary opinion should not be suflSciently offensive, it is accompanied with certain obscure insinuations, the re- served meaning of which we are little anxious to divine, which seem intended to prepare the world not to be sur- prised if something still more extravagant (if more extra- vagant may be) should in a little time be declared.
We are assembled this day to commemorate our Lord's nativity. It is not as the birth-day of a prophet that this day is sanctified ; but as the anniversary of that great event which had been announced by the whole succession of prophets from the beginning of the world, and in which the predictions concerning the manner of the Messiah's advent received their complete and literal accomplish- ment. In the predictions, as well as in the correspond- ing event, the circumstance of the miraculous conception makes so principal a part, that we shall not easily find, subjects of meditation more suited either to the season or to the times than these two points, — the importance of this doctrine as an article of the Christian faith ; and the sufficiency of the evidence by which the fact is supported.
First, for the importance of the doctrine as an article of the faith. It is evidently the foundation of the whole
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distinction between the character of Christ in the condi- tion of a man and that of any other prophet. Had the conception of Jesus been in the natural way — had he been the fruit of Mary's marriage with her husband — his inter- course with the Deity could have been of no other kind than the nature of any other man might have equally ad- mitted,— an intercourse of no higher kind than the prophets enjoyed, when their minds were enlightened by the extra- ordinary influence of the Holy Spirit. The information conveyed to Jesus might have been clearer and more ex- tensive than any imparted to any former prophet ; but the manner and the means of communication must have been the same. The holy Scriptures speak a very different language: they tell us, that "the same God who spake in times past to the fathers by the prophets, hath in these latter days spoken unto us by his Son ;" evidently esta- blishing a distinction of Christianity from preceding reve- lations, upon a distinction between the two characters of a prophet of God, and of God's Son. Moses, the great lawgiver of the Jews, is described in the book of Deu- teronomy as superior to all succeeding prophets, for the intimacy of his intercourse with God, for the variety of his miracles, and for the authority with which he was invested. " There arose not a prophet in Israel like unto Moses, whom Jehovah knew face to face, — in all the signs and wonders which Jehovah sent him to do in the land of Egypt, to Pharoah, and all his servants, and to all his land, — and in all that mighty hand, and in all the great terror, which Moses showed in the sight of all Israel." Yet this great prophet, raised up to be the leader and the legislator of God's people — this greatest of the prophets, with whom Jehovah conversed face to face, as a man talketh with his friend — bore to Jesus, as we are told, the humble relation of a servant to a son. And lest the supe- riority on the side of the Son should be deemed a mere superiority of the office to which he was appointed, we are told that the Son is " higher than the angels ; being
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the eft'ulgeiice of God's glory, the express image of his person ;" the God " wliose throne is for ever and ever, the sceptre of whose kingdom is a sceptre of righteous- ness.'" And this high dignity of the Son is alleged as a motive for religious obedience to his commands, and for reliance on his promises. It is this, indeed, which gives such authority to his precepts, and such certainty to his whole doctrine, as render faith in him the first duty of re- ligion. Had Christ been a mere prophet, to believe in Christ had been the same thing as to believe in John the Baptist. The messages, indeed, announced on the part of God by Christ and by John the Baptist might have been different, and the importance of the different messages unequal; but the principle of belief in either must have been the same.
Hence, it appears, that the intercourse which Christ as a man held with God was different in kind from that which the greatest of the prophets ever had enjoyed. And yet how it should differ, otherwise than in the degree of frequency and intimacy, it Avill not be very easy to ex- plain, unless we adhere to the faith transmitted to us from the primitive ages, and believe that the Eternal Word, who was in the beginning with God, and was God, so joined to himself the holy thing which was formed in Mary's womb, that the two natures, from the commencement of the virgin's conception, made one person. Between God and any living being, having a distinct personality of his own separate from the Godhead, no other communion could obtain than what should consist in the action of the Divine Spirit upon the faculties of the separate person. This communion with God the prophets enjoyed. But Jesus, according to the primitive doctrine, was so united to the Ever-living Word, that the very existence of the man consisted in this union.* We shall not indeed find
* So Theodoret, in the fourth of his Seven Dialogues about the Tri- nity, published under the name of Athanasius. The persons in this Dialogue are an orthodox believer and an Apoliinariau. The Apolli- narian asks, Ova eo-tiv ouv Iria-ovi; avQfU7vo<; ; The believer replies, A.nv lov
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this proposition, that the existence of Mary's Son con- sisted from the first, and ever shall consist, in his union with the Word, — we shall not find this proposition, in these terms, in Scripture. Would to God the necessity never had arisen of stating the discoveries of revelation in metaphysical propositions ! The inspired writers de- livered their sublimest doctrines in popular language, and abstained as much as it was possible to abstain from a philosophical phraseology. By the perpetual cavils of gainsayers, and the difiiculties which they have raised, later teachers, in the assertion of the same doctrines, have been reduced to the unpleasing necessity of availing them- selves of the greater precision of a less familiar language. But if we find not the same proposition in the same words in Scripture, we find in Scripture what amounts to a clear proof of the proposition : we find the charac- teristic properties of both natures, the human and the di- vine, ascribed to the same person. We read of Jesus, that he suffered from hunger and from fatigue; that he wept for grief, and was distressed with fear ; that he was obnoxious to all the evils of humility, except the propen- sity to sin. We read of the same Jesus, that he had " glory with the Father before the world began ;" that "all things were created by him, both in heaven and in earth, visible and invisible, — whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by him, and for him ;" and " he upholdeth all
AoyOU OVTi a.WpWTVOV aUTOV OlOCt, UTtOCTTCiVTOC^ TflV yOCB VTiCy^aqtV CCVTOV IV TYI ivuau Toy
Koyov yvwpj^w. To the Same purpose .Toainies Damascenus : ov yap
'Ttfoviroa-Tot.G-^ >ta6' loivrnv crcifKt rJvwStj o ©sto? Aoyo?, aAA' evomna-cct; rii ycccnft TVi ayio,/; TrapGfvou a.nrifiyfo.'itTuii;, ev t»i \a.vrou \iiro(7ra,(7u fx ruv ocyiuv rrit; a-UTrupOevov aj/xocTwv, croc.fx.ci e-\-v^ufjiSVYiv 4-i'p^»i XoyiKri ts xa,t vospa i'aca'Tna-ccro, (/.Trap^riv irpoir- XaCojiAEvo? Tov o.vQpui'TrHov ipvpoc^jiccroi;, AYTOS 'O AOFOE TENOMENOS TH SAPKI "rnOSTASIS.— De Fide Orthodoxa, lib. 3. cap. ii. And again,
cap. VU. Ecrapjii'Tat Totvvv ujctts avTYiv ^pYtfM0CTK7ai rn crapxt VTrocrroccriv r, rov
©sou Aoyov v'TToa-Tc/.a-n;. So also Gregory Nazianzen : Et rn; ^io.'jrs'^Xoicr^ai
rov avopoiTTov, siS' ii'jrooEdvx.iva.t T^syot ^tov, x-ccTccKpiToi;. EtTK w? fv 7rpo<PnrYi Xeyoi
xara J^aptv syvpynx-svon, oJKKot, fx'/i kcx.t ovo-khv a-vvntp^cA te koh o-yvccTTTEO-Oat, fm- y(.ivo(; TU? xpsiTTovo? mpyuui;, {jlkWov h ."TrXvpriq rn<; evxvna.i;, — Epist. ad Gle- don. I.
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things by the word of his power:" and that we may in some sort understand how infirmity and perfection should thus meet in the same person, we are told by St. John, that the "Word was made flesh."
It was clearly, therefore, the doctrine of holy writ, and nothing else, which the fathers asserted in terms borrowed from the schools of philosophy, when they affirmed that the very principle of personality and individual existence in Mary's Son was union with the uncreated Word ;* a doctrine in which a miraculous conception would have been implied, had the thing not been recorded, — since a man conceived in the ordinary way would have derived the principles of his existence from the mere physical powers of generation : union with the divine nature could not have been the principle of an existence physically de- rived from Adam ; and that intimate union of God and man in the Redeemer's person which the Scriptures so clearly assert had been a physical impossibility.
But we need not o-o so hioh as to the divine nature of our Lord to evince the necessity of his miraculous concep- tion. It was necessary to the scheme of redemption, by the Redeemer's offering of himself as an expiatory sacri- fice, that the manner of his conception should be such that he should in no degree partake of the natural pollu- tion of the fallen race whose guilt he came to atone, nor be included in the general condemnation of Adam's pro- geny. In what the stain of original sin may consist, and in what manner it may be propagated, it is not to my pre- sent purpose to inquire: it is sufficient that Adam's crime, by the appointment of Providence, involved his whole pos-
* 'O ovv ©£0? Aoyot; (7a.fX.u9in;, ovte rnv v/ t*) \)^^^rJ Sswp»« }<.a.ra]/ovfMsvvv (pva-tv anXocSiv {ov yap a-ccpmaa-K; rovro, ocK^ a-xocrr) kcx-i ■^vXcca-jji.x crapjtwcrEW?) aAX» Tt)v £V ccrofjuii, Tm at/rnv ova-xv t») ev no sidsi (a7rap;:^»]v yocp avsXabf tou rijxeTEfov ^vpacfxaroi;) ov kkS' Ixvttiv u7ro(7T«(rc»v xai cx,to[j.ov ;;^p*)jU.aTJcrac7«v TrpoTfpov, K</A ovTuq vi: avTov Trfoa-T^ri^^Horoiv, aXX' £V rri avrov V'ttoo-tkcth ii'Tra.p^a.cra.v' auin yccp ri V7roiTTa(7K tov @;ov Aoyov lyivsTo t*i <7X.(Kt viroarTO.m. — JoailU. DailUlS-
cen. De Fide Orthodoxa, lib. 3. cap. xi.
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terity in punishment. " In Adam," says the apostle, " all die." And for many lives thus forfeited, a single life, it- self a forfeit, had been no ransom. Nor by the Divine sentence only, inflicting death on the progeny for the of- fence of the progenitor, but by the proper guilt of his own sins, every one sprung by natural descent from the loins of Adam is a debtor to Divine justice, and incapable of be- coming a mediator for his brethren. " In many things," says St. James, " we offend all." " If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves," saith St. John, " and the truth is not in us. And if any man sin, we have an ad- vocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous ; and he is the propitiation for our sins." Even we Christians all offend, without exception even of the first and best Christians, the apostles. But St. John clearly separates the Righteous Advocate from the mass of those offenders. That any Christian is enabled, by the assistance of God's Spirit, to attain to that degree of purity which may entitle him to the future benefits of the redemption, is itself a present benefit of the propitiation which hath been made for us : and he who under the assault of every tempta- tion maintained that unsullied innocence which gives me- rit and efficacy to his sacrifice and intercession, could not be of the number of those whose offences called for an expiation, and whose frailties needed a divine assistance to raise them effectually from dead works to serve the liv- ing God. In brief, the condemnation and the iniquity of Adam's progeny were universal : to reverse the universal sentence, and to purge the universal corruption, a Re- deemer was to be found pure of every stain of inbred and contracted guilt ; and since every person produced in the natural way could not but be of the contaminated race, the purity requisite to the efficacy of the Redeemer's atone- ment made it necessary that the manner of his conception should be supernatural.
Thus you see the necessary connexion of the miracu- lous conception with the other articles of the Christian
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faith. The incarnation of the Divine Word, so roundly asserted by St. John, and so clearly implied in innu- merable passages of holy writ, in any other way had been impossible, and the Redeemer's atonement inadequate and ineffectual ; insomuch, that had the extraordinary manner of our Lord's generation made no part of the evan- gelical narrative, the opinion might have been defended as a thing clearly implied in the evangelical doctrine.
On the other hand, it were not difficult to show that the miraculous conception, once admitted, naturally brings up after it the great doctrines of the atonement and the incarnation. The miraculous conception of our Lord evi- dently implies some higher purpose of his coming than the mere business of a teacher. The business of a teacher might have been performed by a mere man enlightened by the prophetic spirit ; for whatever instruction men have the capacity to receive, a man might have been made the instrument to convey. Had teaching, therefore, been the sole purpose of our Saviour's coming, a mere man might have done the whole business ; and the superna- tural conception had been an unnecessary miracle. He, therefore, who came in this miraculous way came upon some higher business, to which a mere man was unequal: he came to be made a sin-offering for us, "that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."
So close, therefore, is the comiexion of this extraor- dinary fact with the cardinal doctrines of the gospel, that it may be justly deemed a necessary branch of the scheme of redemption. And in no other light was it considered by St. Paul; who mentions it among the characteristics of the Redeemer, that he should be " made of a woman." In this short sentence, St. Paul bears a remarkable testi- mony to the truth of the evangelical history, in this cir- cumstance. And you, my brethren, have not so learnt Christ, but that you will prefer the testimony of St. Paul to the rash judgment of those who have dared to tax this "chosen vessel" of the Lord with error and inaccuracy.
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The opinion of these men is indeed the less to be re- garded, for the want of insight which they discover into the real interests and proper connexions of their own sys- tem. It is by no means sufficient for their purpose that they insist not on the belief of the miraculous conception: they must insist upon the disbelief of it, if they expect to make discerning men proselytes to their Socinian doctrine : they must disprove it, before they can reduce the gospel to what their scheme of interpretation makes it — a mere religion of nature — & system of the best practical Deism, enforced by the sanction of high rewards and formidable punishments in a future life ; which are yet no rewards and no punishments, but simply the enjoyments and the sufferings of a new race of men to be made out of old materials ; and therefore constitute no sanction, when the principles of the Materialist are incorporated with those of the Socinian in the finished creed of the modern Uni- tarian.
Having seen the importance of the doctrine of the mira- culous conception as an article of our faith, let us, in the next place, consider the sufficiency of the evidence by which the fact is supported.
We have for it the express testimony of two out of the four evangelists, — of St. Matthew, whose gospel was pub- lished in Judea within a few years after our Lord's ascen- sion ; and of St. Luke, whose narrative was composed (as may be collected from the author's short preface) to pre- vent the mischief that was to be apprehended from some pretended histories of our Saviour's life, in which the truth was probably blended with many legendary tales. It is very remarkable, that the fact of the miraculous conception should be found in the first of the four gospels, — written at a time when many of the near relations of the holy family must have been living, by whom the story, had it been false, had been easily confuted ; that it should be found again in St. Luke's Gospel, written for the peculiar use of the converted Gentiles, and for the express purpose of fur-
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nishing a summary of aiitlientic tacts, and of suppressing spurious narrations. Was it not ordered by some peculiar providence of God, that the two great branches of the pri- mitive church, the Hebrew congregations for which St. Matthew wrote, and the Greek congregations for which St. Luke wrote, should find an express record of the mira- culous conception each in its proper gospel ? Or if we con- sider the testimony of the writers simply as historians of the times in which they lived, without regard to their in- spiration, which is not admitted by the adversary, — were not Matthew and Luke — Matthew, one of the twelve apos- tles of our Lord, and Luke, the companion of St. Paul — competent to examine the evidence of the facts which they have recorded ? Is it likely that they have recorded facts upon the credit of a vague report, without examination ? And was it reserved for the Unitarians of the eighteenth century to detect their errors ? St. Luke thought himself particularly well c^ualitied for the work in which he en- gaged, by his exact knowledge of the story which he under- took to write, in all its circumstances, from the very begin- ning. It is said, indeed, by a writer of the very first anti- quity, and high in credit, that his gospel was composed from St. Paul's sermons. " Luke, the attendant of St. Paul," says Irenseus, " put into his book the gospel preached by that apostle."^ This being premised, attend, I beseech you, to the account which St. Luke gives of his own under- taking. " It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee, in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou might- est know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed."' The last verse might be more literally rendered — " That thou mightest know the exact truth of those doctrines wherein thou hast been catechised." St. Luke's Gospel, therefore, if the writer's own word may be taken about his own work, is an historical exposition of the catechism which Theophilus had learnt when he was first made a Christian. The two first articles in this histo-
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rical exposition are — the history ot the Baptist's birtli, and that of Mary's miraculous impregnation. We have much more, therefore, than the testimony of St. Luke, in addition to that of St. Matthew, to the truth of the fact of the miraculous conception : we have the testimony of St. Luke that this fact was a part of the earliest catechetical instruction, — a part of the catechism, no doubt, which St. Paul's converts learnt of the apostle. Let this then be your answer, if any man shall ask you a reason of this part of your faith, — tell him that you have been learning St. Paul's catechism.
From what hath been said, you will easily perceive that the evidence of the fact of our Lord's miraculous conception is answerable to the great importance of the doctrine ; and you v/ill esteem it an objection of little weight, that the modern advocates of the Unitarian tenets cannot otherwise give a colour to their wretched cause than by denying the inspiration of the sacred historians, that they may seem to themselves at liberty to reject their testimony. You will remember, that the doctrines of the Christian revelation were not originally delivered in a system, but interwoven in the history of our Saviour's life. To say, therefore, that the first preachers were not inspired in the composition of the narratives in which their doctrine is conveyed, is nearly the same thing as to deny their inspiration in general. You will perhaps think it incredible, that they who were assisted by the Divine Spirit when they preached shoidd be deserted by that Spirit when they committed what they had preached to writing. You will think it improbably that they who were endowed with the gift of discerning spirits should be endowed with no gift of discerning the truth of facts. You will recollect one instance upon record, in which St. Peter detected a falsehood by the light of inspiration ; and you will perhaps be inclined to think, that it could be of no less importance to the church that the apostles and evangelists should be enabled to detect falsehoods in the Instorv of our Saviour's life than that St.
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Peter should be enabled to detect Ananias's lie about the sale of his estate. You will think it unlikely, that they who were led by the Spirit into all truth should be permitted to lead the whole church for many ages into error, — that they should be permitted to leave behind them, as authen- tic memoirs of their Master's life, narratives compiled with little judgment or selection, from the stories of the day, from facts and fictions in promiscuous circulation. The credulity which swallows these contradictions, while it strains at mysteries, is not tlie faith which will remove mountains. The Ebionites of antiquity, little as they were famed for penetration and discernment, managed, however, the affairs of the sect with more discretion than our modern Unitarians. They questioned not the inspiration of the books which they received ; but they received only one book — a spurious copy of St. Matthew's Gospel, curtailed of the two first chapters. You will think it no inconsi- derable confirmation of the doctrine in question, that the sect which first denied it, to palliate their infidelity, found it necessary to reject three of the gospels, and to mutilate the fourth.
Not in words therefore and in form, but with hearts full of faith and gratitude, you will join in the solemn service of the day, and return thanks to God, " who gave his only- begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and, as at this time, to be born of a pure virgin." You will always re- member, that it is the great use of a sound faith, that it furnishes the most effectual motives to a good life. You will therefore not rest in the merit of a speculative faith ; you will make it your constant endeavour that your lives may adorn your profession, — that "your light may so shine before men, that they, seeing your good works, may glo- rify your Father which is in heaven."
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SERMON XXXV.
For the poor sliall never cease out of the land : therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy in thy land. — Deut. xv. U.*
Since civilized society is unquestionably the life which Providence designs for man, formed, as he evidently is, with powers to derive his proper happiness from what he may contribute to the public good, nor less formed to be miserable in solitude, by want of employment for the facul- ties which something of a natural instinct prompts him to exert, — since what are commonly called the artificial dis- tinctions of society, the inequalities of rank, wealth, and power, must in truth be a part of God's design, when he designs man to a life in which the variety of occupations and pursuits, arising from those discriminations of condi- tion, is no less essential to the public weal, than the diver- sity of members in the natural body, and the different functions of its various parts, are essential to the health and vigour of the individual, — since, in harmony with this design of driving man by his powers and capacities, no less than by his wants and infirmities, to seek his happi- ness in civil life, it is ordained that every rank furnish the individual with the means, not only of subsistence, but of comfort and enjoyment (for although the pleasures of the different degrees of men are drawn from different sources, and differ greatly in the elegance and lustre of their exterior form and show, yet the quantity of real happiness within the reach of the individual will be found, upon a fair and just comparison, in all the ranks of life the same), — upon this view of the divine original of civil society, with the inequalities of condition which obtain in it, and the pro-
* Preached at the Anniversary Meeting of the Sons of the Clergy, May 18, 178G.
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vision which is equally made in all conditions for the hap- piness of the individual, — ^it may seem perhaps unreason- able— it ma}^ seem a presumptuous deviation from the Creator's plan, that any should become suitors to the public charity for a better subsistence than their own labour might procure. Poverty, it may seem, can be nothing more than an imaginary evil ; of which the modest never will com- plain, which the intelligent never will commiserate, and the politic never will relieve. And the complaint, it may seem, can never be more indecent, or less worthy of re- gard, than when it is used by those who profess to be strangers and pilgrims upon the earth, and to have a balm for all the evils of the present world in the certainty of their prospects in a better country.
Shocking as 1 trust these conclusions must be to the feelings of a Christian assembly, it may nevertheless be useful to demonstrate, that they have no real connexion with the principles from which they seem to be drawn, — that they are not less contrary to reason and to sound policy than to the feelings of philanthropy and the pre- cepts of the gospel. For although I shall not readily admit that the proof of moral obligation cannot in any instance be complete unless the connexion be made out between the action which the heart naturally approves and that which a right understanding of the interests of mankind would recommend (on the contrary, to judge practically of right and wrong, we should feel rather than philosophize ; and we should act from sentiment rather than from policy), — yet we surely acquiesce with the most cheerfulness in our duty when we perceive how the useful and the fair are united in the same action.
I therefore undertake to prove these two things : —
First, That poverty is a real evil ; which, without any impeachment of the goodness or wisdom of Providence, the constitution of the world actually admits.
Secondly, That the providential appointment of this evil, in subservience to the general good, brings a particular 2 F
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obligation upon men in civilized society to concur for the immediate extinction of the evil, wherever it appears. " The poor shall never cease out of the land." And for this especial reason, because the poor shall never cease, therefore it is commanded, " that thou open thine hand w^ide unto thy brother ; that thou surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth."
The distribution of mankind into various orders is not more essential to the being of society than it is conducive to the public good that the fortunes of every individual in every rank should be in a considerable degree uncertain : for were things so ordered that every man's fortune should be invariably determined by the rank in which he should be born, or by the employment to which he should be bred, an Epicurean indolence, the great bane of public prosperity, would inevitably take place among all ranks of men ; when industry, of all qualities of the individual the most beneficial to the community, would lose the in- citement of its golden dreams; and sloth, of all the vices of the individual the most pernicious to the community, would be released from its worst apprehensions. But to be uncertain in the degree which the public weal demands, the fortunes of the individual must be governed, as we see they are, by an intricate combination of causes, of which no sagacity of human forecast may predict or avert the event. The consequence must be, that the individual's means of subsistence will not always correspond with other circumstances, — that they will sometimes fall greatly short of what belongs to the particular sphere which upon the whole he is best qualified to fill with advantage to the community of which he is a member. This is the evil to which the name of poverti/ properly belongs. The man who hath food to eat and raiment to put on is not poor be- cause his diet is plain and his apparel homely ; but he is truly poor whose means of subsistence are insufficient for his proper place in society, as determined by the general complication of his circumstances^ — by his birth, his edu-
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cation, his bodily strength, and his mental endowments. By the means of subsistence, I understand not the means of superfluous gratiiications ; but that present competency which every individual must possess in order to be in a capacity to derive a support from his industry in the pro- per business of his calling. In every condition of life, something more is wanting to a man's support, than that he should earn by his industry, from day to day, the price of lodging, food, and raiment, for himself and for his family. The common labourer must be furnished with his mattock and his spade ; the tradesman must have wherewithal to purchase the commodities from the sale of which he is to derive his livelihood ; in commerce, a large capital must often be expended upon the expectation of a slow and dis- tant return of profit; those who are destined to the liberal professions are to be qualified for the part which they are to sustain in life, by a long and expensive course of educa- tion ; and they who are born to hereditary honours, if they succeed, as too often is the case, to estates encumbered by the misfortunes or misconduct of their ancestors, are re- strained, by the decorums of their rank, from seeking a reparation of their fortunes in any mercenary occupation. Without something therefore of a previous competency, it is evident, that in every rank of life the individual's in- dustry will be insufficient to his support. The want of this previous competency is poverty ; which, with respect to the whole, is indeed, in a certain sense, no evil : it is the necessary result of that instability of the individual's prosperity which is so far from an evil that it is essential to the general good. Yet the difficulty is a calamity to those on whom it lights, — a calamity against v;hich no elevation of rank secures.
Nor is it any indication of inconsistency and contra- diction in the management of the world, however it may seem to superficial inquirers, that the distinctions of rank, which the purposes of civil life demand, should be occa- sionally, as it may seem, confounded, and the different 2 F 2
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orders mixed and levelled, by a calamity like this, univer- sally incidental. It is indeed by this expedient that the merciful providence of God guards civil life against the ruin which would otherwise result from the unlimited pro- gress of its own refinements. The accumulation of power in the higher ranks, were they secure against the chances of life and the shocks of fortune, — that is, in other words, were the constitution of the world such, that wealth should always correspond with other advantages in some invari- able p-oportion,- — -would so separate the interests of the different orders, that every state would split into so many distinct communities as it should contain degrees : these again would subdivide, according to the inequalities of fortune and other advantages which should obtain in each ; till, in the progress of the evil, civil society would be dis- sipated and shivered into its minutest parts, by the uncon- trolled operation of the very principles to which it owes its existence.
Thus it appears that poverty is indeed a real evil in the life of the individual ; which nevertheless the common good demands, and the constitution of the world accordingly admits.
But so wonderfully hath Providence interwoven the public and the private good, that, while the commonweal requires that the life of the individual should be obnoxious to this contingency, the public is nevertheless interested in the relief of real poverty, wherever the calamity alights ; for Providence hath so ordained, that so long as the indi- vidual languishes in poverty the public must want the ser- vices of a useful member. This indeed would not be the case, nor would the calamity to the individual be what it generally is, were the transition easy in civil society from one rank to another. But the truth is, that as our abilities for any particular employment are generally the result of habits to which we have been formed in an early part of life, combined perhaps vrith what is more unconquerable than habit— the natural bent of genius, — a man who is the
437 best qualified to be serviceable to the community and to himself in any one situation of life, is by that, very ability the most disqualified for the business of any other.
This is readily understood, if the supposition be made of a sudden transition from the lower stations to the higher. It is easily perceived, that the qualifications of a mechanic or a tradesman would be of no advantage in the pulpit, at the bar, or in the senate, — that the clumsy hand of the common labourer would be ill employed in finishing the delicate parts of any nice machine. But though it may be less obvious, it is not less true, that the difficulty would be just the same in descending from the higher to the lower stations; as there is still the same contrariety of habit to create it. At the tradesman's counter or the attorney's desk, the accomplishments of the statesman or the scholar would be rather of disservice; the mechanic's delicacy of hand would but unfit him for the labours of the anvil; and he who has once shone in the gay circles of a court, should he attempt in the hour of distress to put his hand to the plough, would be unable to earn any better wages than the ridicule of every peasant in the village.
Thus, every man's ability of finding a subsistence for himself, and of being serviceable to the public, is limited by his habits and his genius to a certain sphere; which may not improperly be called the sphere of his political uctivitif. Poverty, obstructing political activity in its proper sphere, arrests and mortifies the powers of the ci- tizen, rendering him not more miserable in himself than useless to the community; which, for its own sake, must free the captive from the chain which binds him, in order to regain his services. So that, in truth, when it is said, as it is most truly said, that the evil of poverty is a public good, the proposition is to be admitted under a particular interpretation; the danger of poverty threatening the individual is the good ; poverty in act (if I may borrow an expression from the schools) is to the community as well
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as to the sufferer an evil : and since, in the formal nature of the thine:, it is an evil from which the individual cannot be extricated by any efforts of his own, policy, no less than humanity, enjoins that the community relieve him.
Nor will the argument from political expedience fail, if in some instances of poverty the evil to the public must remain when the individual is relieved. This is indeed the case when the calamity arises from causes which go beyond the obstruction of the political activity of the citizen, to the extinction of the natural powers of the ani- mal ; as when the limbs are lost or rendered useless by disease, or when the bodily strength or the mental faculties are exhausted by old age. To deny relief in such in- stances, upon a pretence that the political reason for it vanishes, because the public can receive no immediate benefit from the alleviation of the evil, vvould be to act in contradiction to the very first principles, or rather to the first idea, of all civil association ; which is that of a union of the powers of the many to supply the wants and help the infirmities of the solitary animal.
Thus it appears, that the providential appointment of poverty as a means of public good, brings an obligation upon men in civil society to exert themselves for the effec- tual relief of those on whom the mischief falls.
I would now observe, that sacred as this obligation is, it is rather a duty which all individuals owe to the public than what the public owes to its members. I mean to say, that the most natural and the best me- thod of relief is by voluntary contribution. It may be proper that the law should do something for the pro- tection of the necessitous. The law should be careful not to do too much : its provisions should be such as may save poverty from neglect, and yet leave the danger of poverty indiscriminately impendent over every individual in every station; that the comnumity may receive the full benefit of the universal dread of that contingency. Whe- ther this joint end, of removing the evil of actual poverty
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from private life without losing the public advantage of the danger, may be attained by any laws which give the poor a claim to a maintenance to be levied upon certain districts in propoition to the wants of the poor which each shall at any time contain, — when the effect of all such laws must be to change the dread of want in the lowest orders of the people into an expectation of a com- petency, or of something which idleness will prefer to a competency, — is a question which it is not my province to discuss. The fact I may take leave to mention, — that the burden of the imposition in this country is grown, as all know, to an enormous size: the benefit to the indus- trious poor, I fear, is less than the vast sum annually levied on the nation ought to procure for them; and the pernicious effect on the manners of the lowest rank of people is notorious. In another place the question might deserve a serious investigation, how far the manner of our legal provision for the poor may or may not operate to increase the frequency of criminal executions.
Meanwhile, it is my duty to inculcate, that neither the heavy burden nor any ill effects of the legal provision for the poor, may release the citizen from the duty of volun- tary benefaction; except indeed so far as what the law takes from him diminishes his means of spontaneous liberality. What the laws claim from him for public pur- poses he is indeed not to consider as his own; what remains after the public claims are satisfied is his pro- perty; out of which he is no less obliged to contribute what he can to the relief of poverty, than if no part of what is taken out of his nominal property by the law were applied to charitable purposes. For the fact is, that after the law hath done its utmost, that most interestino- species of distress which should be the especial object of discretionary bounty goes unrelieved. The utmost that the law can do is confined to the poverty of the lowest rank of the people: their old age or their debility it may furnish with the shelter of a homely lodging, with the warmth of coarse but clean apparel, and with the nourish-
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ment of wholesome food : their orphans it should cherish, till they grow up to a sufficiency of strength for the business of husbandry, or of the lowest and most labo- rious trades. But to the poverty of the middle and superior orders, the bounty of the law, after its utmost exactions, can administer no adequate relief.
Thanks be to God, that heavy as our public burdens are, of which the legal provision for the poor is among the greatest, they seem to be no check upon the cha- ritable spirit of this country ; in which free bounty is still dispensed with a wide and open hand. Witness the many large and noble edifices, the pride and ornament of this metropolis, many raised, all enriched, by voluntary con- tribution and private legacy, for the supply of every want, the mitigation of every disaster, with which frail mortality is visited, in every stage and state of life, from helpless infancy to withered age: witness the numerous charitable associations in all parts of the country, among all descrip- tions of the people: witness the frequent and ample con- tributions to every instance of private distress, once pub- licly made known : witness the pious associations for the support of distant missions, and the promotion of Chris- tian knowledge: witness this annual celebrity, the pros- perity of this charitable institution, and the numbers novv assembled here. For I trust it is less the purpose of our present meeting to feast the ravished ear with the en- chanting sounds of holy harmony (which afford indeed the purest of the pleasures of the senses), than to taste those nobler ecstacies of energizing love of which flesh and blood, the animal part of us, can no more partake than it can inherit heaven. They are proper to the intel- lect of man, as an image of the Deity ; they are the certain symptoms of the Christian's communion with his God, and an earnest of his future transformation into the perfect likeness of his Lord.
Although every species of distress, not excepting that which may have taken rise in the follies and the vices of the sufferer, is an object of the Christian's pity (for the
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love of Christ, who died for his enemies, is our example; and tlie beneficence of our heavenly Fatlier, who is kind to the evil and the unthankful, is the model of our cha- rity); yet our joy in doing good must then be the most complete, when innocence is united with distress in the objects of our bounty, when the distress is out of the reach of any other help, and when in the exercise of the general duty we fulfil the special injunctions of our Lord. In the distress which our present charity immediately regards we find these circumstances united. The widow and the orphan are our objects: their claim to misery is in the common right of human nature; it stands not on the ground of guilt and ill desert: and for those widows and those orphans, in particular, whose cause we plead, should we be questioned by what means their condition hath been brought thus low, we will confidently answer, by no sins of their husbands or their parents more than of their own. It is peculiar to the situation of a clergyman, that while he is ranked (as the interests of religion require that he should be ranked) with the higher orders of the people, and is forbidden by the ecclesiastical law, under the severest penalties, to engage in any mercenary busi- ness, which might interfere with the duties of his sacred calling, and derogate in the eyes of the multitude from the dignity of his character,— his profession, in whatever rank he may be placed in it, the least of any of the liberal professions furnishes the means of making a provision for a family. It may be added with great truth, that what means the profession furnishes, the cleric who is the most intent upon its proper duties, the most addicted to a life of study and devotion, is the least qualified to improve. Hence it will oftener happen to the families of clergymen than of any other set of men, and it will happen perhaps oftenest to the families of the worthiest, to be left in that state which, by the principles established in the former part of this Discourse, is poverty in the truest import of the word, — to be left destitute of the means of earnini!: a live-
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liliood ill employments for whicli they are not disqutililied by the laudable habits of their previous lives.
This evil in the domestic life of the minister of the gospel, I will venture to predict, no schemes of human policy ever will remove. Grand in the conception, noble in the motives which suggested it, promising perhaps in its first aspect, but fraught with ruin in its certain conse- quences had it been adopted, was the plan of abolishing the subordinate dignities of the hierarchy, in order to apply their revenues to the better maintenance of the parochial clergy. The parts of civil societies, as of all things in this nether world, are severally wholes, similar to the compounds. Every order of men in the great society of a nation is but a smaller society within itself. The same principles which render a variety of ranks essential in the composition of a state, require inequalities of wealth and authority among the individuals of which each rank is composed. These inequalities, to form a harmonized, consistent whole, require a regular gradation between the opposite extremes; which cannot be taken away, but the extinction must ensue of the whole description of men in which the chain is broken.
Nor less fatal to our order would be any change in the tenure of ecclesiastical property; especially the favourite project of an exchange of tithes for an equivalent in land. Many of us here have felt, in some part of our lives, the inconvenience of succeeding to dilapidated houses, with small resources in our private fortunes, and restrained by the circumstances of a predecessor's family from the attempt to enforce our legal claims. But what would be the situation of a clergyman who in coming to a living should succeed to nothing better than a huge, dilapidated farm? — which would too soon become the real state of every living in the kingdom in which the tithes should have been converted into glebe; not to mention the ex- tinction of our spiritual character, and the obvious incon- veniences to the yeomanry of the kingdom, which would
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be likely to take place, should this new manner oC our maintenance send forth the spirit of fanning among the rural clergy.
The truth is, that the hardships of our order arise from causes which defy the relief of human laws and mock the politician's skill. They arise, in part from the nature of our calling; in part from the corrupt manners of a world at enmity with God ; but primarily, from the mysterious counsels of Providence, which, till the whole world shall be reduced to the obedience of the gospel, admit not that the ministry should be a situation of ease and enjoyment. The Christian minister, in the present state of Christianity, hath indeed an indisputable right to a maintenance, from the work of the ministry, for himself and for his family ; as he had indeed from the very earliest ages; "For the labourer is worthy of his hire." In a Christian government, he justly may expect to be put, so far as the secular powers can effect it, into the same situation of credit and respect which might belong to a diligent exertion of equal talents in any other of the liberal professions. Such provision for the maintenance and for a proper influence of the clergy is at least expedient, if not necessary for the sup- port of Christianity, now that its miraculous support is withdrawn, and the countenance of the magistrate is among the means which God employs for the maintenance of the truth. Yet after all that can be done by the friendship of of the civil powers, since our Lord's kingdom is not of the present world, it would indeed be strange, if his service, in the ordinary course of things, were the means of amass- ing a fortune for posterity, more than of rising to here- ditary honours. Our great Master, when he calls us to the ministry, holds out no such expectation. He commands us to wean our affections from this transitory world, and to set our hearts upon a heavenly treasure, — to be more anxious for the success of our labours upon the hearts and lives of men than for the prosperity of our own families. He warns us, by his inspired apostle, that all v/ho will live
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godly in Christ Jesus will more or less sustain a damage by it in their temporal interests. Yet he promises, that " if we seek first the kingdom of God and his righteous- ness, all those things" that are necessary for our support and consolation in our pilgrimage shall be added to our lot, by him who feeds the fowls of the air with grain which they neither sow nor reap, and arrays the lilies of the field in a more elegant apparel than the East manu- factures for her kings. On this promise it is fitting we rely; and in the eflfect of this charity, and of similar in- stitutions in different parts of the kingdom, the clergy of the Church of England see its daily verification.
As the Providence of God for the most part effects its purposes by secondary causes, the charity of the church is the means which it hath appointed for the relief of her suffering ministers. The same authority which commands us to be ready to forego the enjoyments of the world, hath commanded that the faithful bear one another's burdens. The same authority which promises the faithful minister support in this world and enjoyment in the next, promises an equal weight of glory to him who shall administer relief. Relying on these promises, secure of our un- wearied attention to the commands of our invisible but not absent Lord, our departed brethren (not insensible in death to that concern for their surviving families which they knew to be sanctified by Christ's own example, when in his agonies he consigned his mother to his favourite disciple's care) submitted with composure and compla- cency to the stroke which severed them from all which in this world they held dear; trusting to us, as to God's instruments, for the support of their unprovided families, destitute of other aid. Thus we vi^ho remain are the guar- dians of the widows and the orphans ; appointed to that sacred office by no violable testaments of mortal men, but by the inviolable will of the Ever-living God. Let us see that we be faithful, as the dec^sed were in their day, to a trust which we may not decline; looking forward to the
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joys of that great day when tears sliall be Aviped from every eye, and " he that hath received a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward," — when his recompense in nowise shall be lost "who shall have given but a cup of cold water only to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple." In that day shall these sons and daughters of the prophets be gathered round the Son of man, seated on his throne of glory; and, in the presence of the angelic host, bear their testimony to this day's work of love. What then shall be the joy of those to whom the King shall say — " I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat ; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink ; naked, and j/e clothed me; sick, and ye nursed me. Ve- rily, I say unto you, as much as ye have done it to the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom pre- pared for you from the beginning of the world !" O rich requital of an easy service! — love the duty; heaven the reward ! Who will not strive to be the foremost to mi- nister to the necessities of the saints; secure of being doubly repaid, — here, in the delight of doing good ; here- after, in a share of this o-lorious benediction!
SERMON XXXVI.
I am the resurrection and the life : he that believeth in nie^ though he were dead, yet shall he live ; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die. Believest thou this? — Johx xi. 25, 2G.
Except the cure of the two blind men at Jericho, some cures in the temple in the Passion-week, the malediction of the fig-tree, and certain manifestations of our Lord's power upon the seizure of his person in the garden of Gethsemane, — except these, the raising of Lazarus from the dead was, I think, the last public miracle performed
44G
by Clirist during' liis abode in tlie flesh. It was un- doubtedly among' the most considerable which we read of in the whole course of our Lord's ministry; and was an apt prelude to that greatest miracle of all, the seal of his mission and of our hope, his own resurrection from the dead. Accordingly, we find him preparing- himself for this exhibition of his power on the person of his deceased friend with particular care and solemnity. He was at a distance from Bethany, the place of Lazarus's residence, when Lazarus first fell sick; the alarm of the Jewish rulers, excited by his cure of the man born blind, and by his open claim to be the Son of God and One with the Father, having obliged him to retire to Bethabara. When lie received the news of his friend's illness, notwithstand- ing his affection for Lazarus and his sisters, he continued two days in the place where the message found him ; that the catastrophe might take place before his miraculous power should be interposed. He had indeed already re- stored life in tw'o instances : the daughter of Jairus was one; and the widow's son of Nain was the other. But in ])oth these instances, the evidence of the previous fact, that death had really taken place, was not so complete and positive as our Lord intended it should be, and as it really was, in the case of Lazarus. Accordingly, it is re- markable, that our Lord's apostles, although they had been witnesses to these miraculous recoveries of Jairus's daugh- ter and the widow's son of Nain, entertained not at the time of Lazarus's death the most distant apprehension that their Master's power went to the recovery of life once trul}^ and totally extinguished. This appears from the alarm and the despair indeed which they expressed, when he informed them that Lazarus was dead, and declared his intention of visiting the afflicted family. They had so little expectation that the revival of Lazarus could be the effect, or that it was indeed the purpose of his journey, that they would have dissuaded him from leaving the place of his retirement ; conceiving, as it should seem,
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tliat tlie only end of his proposed visit to Bethany wonUl be to gratify the feelings of a useless sympathy at the hazard of his own safety. " Master," they say unto him, " the Jews of late sought to stone thee, and goest thou thither again?" And when they found him determined to go, " Let us also go," said St. Thomas, " that we may die with him." They rather expected to be themselves stoned by the Jews, together with their Master, and to be one and all as dead as Lazarus in a few days, than to see the life of Lazarus restored.
I must observe, by the way, that these sentiments, ex- pressed by the apostles upon this and similar occasions, aftbrd a clear proof that the disciples were not persons of an over easy credulity, who may with any colour of pro- bability be supposed to have been themselves deceived in the wonders which they reported of our Lord. They seem rather to have deserved the reproach which our Lord after his resurrection cast upon them, — " Fools, and slow of heart to believe !" They seem to have believed nothing till the testimony of their ow^n senses extorted the belief. They reasoned not from what they had once seen done to what more might be: they built no probabilities of the future upon the past : they formed no general belief con- cerning the extent of our Lord's power from the effects of it which they had already seen. After the miraculous meal of the five thousand upon five loaves and two fishes, we find them filled with wonder and amazement that he should be able to walk upon a troubled sea and to assuage the storm. And in the present instance, their faith in what was past carried them not forward to the obvious conclusion, that he who snatched the daughter of Jairus from the jaws of death, and raised a 3'oung man from his coffin, would be able to bring back Lazarus from the grave. And this indeed was what was to be expected from persons like them, of low occupations and mean at- tainments, whose minds were unimproved by education and experience: for however certain modern pretenders
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to superior wisdom may affect to speak contemptuously of the credulity of the vulgar, and think that they display their own refinement and penetration by a resistance of the evidence which satisfies the generality of men, the truth is, that nothing is so much a genuine mark of barba- rism as an obstinate incredulity. The evil-minded and the illiterate, from very different causes, agree however in this, that they are always the last to believe upon any evi- dence less than the testimony of their own senses. In- genuous minds are unwilling to suspect those frauds in other men to which they feel an aversion themselves : they always therefore give testimony its fair weight. The larger a man's opportunities have been of becoming ac- quainted with the occurrences of his own and former ages, the more he knows of effects daily arising from causes which never were expected to produce them, — of effects in the natural world of v^diich he cannot trace the cause ; and of facts in the history of mankind which can be re- ferred to no principle in human nature — to nothing within the art and contrivance of man. Hence the man of science and speculation, as his knowledge enlarges, loses his at- tachment to a principle to which the barbarian steadily adheres — that of measuring the probability of strange facts by his own experience. He will be at least as slow to reject as to receive testimony ; and lie will avoid that ob- stinacy of unbelief which is satisfied with nothing but ocular demonstration, as of all erroneous principles the most dangerous, and the greatest obstacle to the mind s improvement. The illiterate man, miimproved b}^ study and by conversation, thinks that nothing can be of which he hath not seen the like : from a diffidence perhaps of his own ability to examine evidence, he is always jealous that you have an intention to impose upon him, and mean to sport with his credulity : hence his own senses are the only witnesses to which he will give credit. I am per- suaded that nothing hath so much contributed to spread infidelity among the lower- ranks of people, as the fear of
449 discovering their weakness by being over credulous, and the use which artful men have made of that infirmity.
But to return from this digression to my subject. It was our Lord's intention, that the miracle of Lazarus's resur- rection should be complete and unexceptionable in all its circumstances : he continued, therefore, at Bethabara till the man was dead ; and he seems to have made delays upon the road, to give time for the report of his arrival to be spread, that a multitude might be assembled to be ob- servers and witnesses of his intended miracle. Lazarus had been dead four days when our Lord arrived ; a space of time in which, in the warm climate of Judea, a general putrefaction was sure to take place, and render the signs of death unequivocal. Martha, one of the surviving sis- ters, met our Lord upon the road, at some little distance from the town : she accosted him in terms which rather indicated some distant doubtful hope of what his com- passion and his affection for the family might incline him to do, than any expectation that her wishes would be rea- lized. "Lord," said she, "hadst thou been here, my bro- ther had not died : but I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee." She pre- sumes not to ask him to raise her brother ; — it was a thing too great to be abruptly asked : she indirectly and modestly suggests, that were Christ to make it his request to God that Lazarus might revive, Christ's request would be granted. It was our Lord's practice, — of which I purpose not at present to inquire the reason (it is a subject by it- self which would require a close investigation), — but it was his constant practice, to exact of those who solicited his miraculous assistance, a previous belief that the power by which he acted was divine, and that it extended to the performance of what might be necessary to their belief. To Martha's suggestion that God would grant the resur- rection of Lazarus to Christ's prayer, our Lord was pleased to reply with that reserve and ambiguity which he some- times used, in order to throw the minds of his disciples 2 G
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into that state of suspense and doubt which disposed them to receive his mercy with the more gratitude, and his in- struction with the more reverence and attention : " Thy brother," said he, " shall rise again ;" not declaring at what time his resurrection should take place. Martha, not sa- tisfied with this indefinite promise, nor certain of its mean- ing, and yet not daring to urge her request, and afraid to confess her doubts, replied — " I know that he shall rise again, in the resurrection of the last day." A resurrec- tion at the last day was at that time the general expecta- tion of the Jewish people. Martha's profession, there- fore, of an expectation of her brother's resurrection at the last day, was no particular confession of her faith in Christ. Our Lord, therefore, requires of her a more distinct con- fession, before he gave her any hope that his power would be exerted for the restoration of her brother's life. " I," said Jesus, " am the resurrection and the life : he that be- lieveth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live ; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die. Be- lievest thou this ?" Martha's answer was little less remark- able than the question : " She sa'th unto him. Yea, Lord ; I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world :" as if she had said — " Yea, Lord, I believe whatever thou requirest of me. Although the sense of thy words is wrapt in mystery which I cannot penetrate, — although I have no distinct understanding of the particulars which you propose to my belief, nor appre- hend how it is that the dead die not, — yet I believe that you are the Messiah promised to our fathers — the Emmanuel foretold by our prophets ; and I believe you are possessed of whatever povi^er you may claim." But let us return to the particulars of our Lord's requisition. Martha had already declared her belief that God would grant whatever Christ would ask, although his request should go to so extraor- dinary a thing as a dead man's recovery. Jesus tells her that he requires a belief of much more than this : he re- quires her to believe that he had the principles of life
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witliin himself, and at liis own command ; and that even that general resurrection of the dead in which she expected that her brother would have a share was a thing depend- ing- entirely upon him, and to be effected by his will and power. " I," said he, " am the resurrection and the life." Since he had the whole disposal of the business, it fol- lowed that he had the appointment of the time in which each individual should rise; and nothing hindered but that Lazarus might immediately revive, if he gave the or- der. But this is not all: he requires that she should be- lieve, not only that it depended upon him to restore life to whom and when it pleased him, but that death is an evil which he hath the power to avert, and ever does avert, from his true disciples. " He that believeth in me, though he die, yet shall he live ; and whosoever livetli and be- lieveth in me, shall never die."
It is of great importance to inquire in what sense it is promised to true believers (for in some sense the promise is certainly made to them) that they shall never die. For the resolution of this important question, I would observe, that our Lord's words certainly contain an assertion of much more than was implied in Martha's previous decla- ration of her belief in the doctrine of a future resurrection. This is clearly implied in our Lord's emphatic question, which follows his assertion of his own power and promise to the faithful,^ — " Believest thou this ?" If every Chris- tian, when he reads or hears this promise of our Lord, " He that believeth in me shall never die," would put this same question to his own conscience, and pursue the me- ditations which the question so put to himself would sug- gest, we should soon be delivered from many perplexing doubts and fears, for which a firm reliance on our Master's gracious promise is indeed the only cure. " Thou be- lievest," said our Lord to Martha, " that thy brother shall rise in the resurrection at the last day : thou doest well to believe. But believest thou this which I now tell thee, — believest thou that the resurrection on v/hich thy hopes 2 G 2
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are built will itself be the effect of my power? And be- lievest thou yet again that the effect of my power goes to much more than the future resurrection of the bodies of the dead, — that it goes to an exemption of them that be- lieve in me from death the general calamity? Believest thou that the faithful live when they seem to be dead ; and that they never die? If with these notions of my power over life and death, and with these just views of the privileges of my servants, thou comest to me to restore thy brother to a life which may be passed in thy society, the immediate act of my power may justify thy faith. But any other belief of my power — any other apprehen- sion of thy brother's present state, which may prompt thee to solicit so singular a favour — are erroneous ; and I work no miracle to confirm thee in an error." All this is cer- tainly implied in our Lord's declaration, and the question with which it was accompanied. It is evident, therefore, that under the notion of not dying, he describes some great privilege, which believers, and believers only, really enjoy. But farther, the privilege here promised to the faithful must be something quite distinct from any thing that may be the consequence of the general resurrection at the last day. It has been imagined, that the death from which the faithful are exempted by virtue of this promise, is vi^hat is called in some parts of Scripture the second death, which the w^icked shall die after the general resur- rection,— that is to say, the condemnation of the wicked to eternal punishment. But such cannot be its meaning; for the exemption of the faithful from the second death is a thing evidently included in Martha's declaration of her faith in the general resurrection. What may be the state of the departed saints in the interval between their death and the final judgment, is a question upon which all are curious, because all are interested in it. It is strange that among Christians it should have been so variously decided by various sects, when an attention to our Lord's promises must have led all to one conclusion. Those who imagine
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that the intellectual faculties of man result from the orga- nization of the brain and the nervous system, maintain that natural death is an utter extinction of the man's whole being, which somehow or other he is to reassume at the last day. It is surely a sufficient confutation of this strange opinion, — if that may deserve the name of an opinion which hath less coherence than the drunkard's dream, — but it is a sufficient confutation of this strange opinion, that if this be really the case, our Lord's solemn promise hath no meaning : for how is it that a man shall never die who is really to be annihilated and dead in every part of him for many ages? Or what privilege in death can be appointed for the faithful — what difference between the believer and the atheist, if the death of either is an absolute extinction of his whole existence ? Of those who acknowledge the immateriality and immortality of the rational principle, some have been apprehensive that the condition of the unembodied soul, with whatever percep- tion may be ascribed to it of its own existence, must in- deed be a melancholy state of dreary solitude. Hence that unintelligible and dismal doctrine of a sleep of the soul in the interval between death and judgment ; which in- deed is nothing more than a soft expression for what the Materialists call by, its true name — annihilation. Thanks be to God ! our Lord's explicit promise holds out better prospects to the Christian's hope. Though the happiness of the righteous will not be complete nor their doom publicly declared till the reunion of soul and body at the last day, yet we have our Lord's assurance that the disem- bodied soul of the believer truly lives, — that it exists in a conscious state, and enjoys the perception at least of its own existence. *" This is the plain import of our Lord's declaration to Martha, that whosoever liveth and believeth in him shall never die. The same doctrine is implied in many other passages of holy writ, — in our Lord's promise
* For a fuller illustration of this doctrine, see Sermon XX.
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to the thief upon the cross, to be with him in paradise on the very day of his crucifixion; in his commendation of his own spirit, in his last agonies, to the Father; in St. Paul's desire to be absent from the body, that he might be present with his Lord ; but, most of all, we may allege the sequel of this same story. The manner in v/liich the miracle was performed made it a solemn appeal to Hea- ven for the truth of this particular doctrine. Many inci- dents are recorded which evince the notoriety of the-death ; physical causes could have no share in the recovery ; for the offensive corpse w^as not to be approached, and no means were used upon it : our Lord, standing at the mouth of the cave, called to the dead man, as to one to whom his voice was still audible: his voice was heard, and the call obeyed ; — the deceased, in the attire of a corpse, walked out of the sepulchre, in the presence of his rela- tions, who had seen him expire, — in the presence of a concourse of his townsmen, who had been witnesses, some to the interment of the body, some to the grief of the sur- viving friends. Is it to be supposed that he who is truth itself would by such a miracle become a party in the scheme of imposture, or set his seal to the dreams of en- thusiasm ? God forbid that any here should harbour such a suspicion ! But let us remember, that the soul's fruition of its separate life is described as a privilege of true be- lievers, of which there is no ground to hope that an un- believer will partake; for to them only who believe in Jesus, is it promised that "they shall live though they be dead," and that "they shall never die."
Now, to him that hath called us to this blessed hope of uninterrupted life, terminating in a glorious immortality, ■ — to him with whom the souls of the faithful, after they are delivered from the burden of the flesh, are in joy and felicity, — to him who shall change our vile body, that it may be made like to his glorious body, — to the only-be- gotten Son, with the Father, and Holy Ghost. Three Persons but One God, be ascribed, &c.
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SERMON XXXVII.
The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by nation. — Mark vii. 26.
The maxim of our great moral poet, that the prepon- derance of some leading passion in the original constitu- tion of every man's mind is that which gives the character of every individual its peculiar cast and fashion, influencing him in the choice of his profession, in the formation of his affinities and friendships, colouring both his virtues and his vices, and discovering its constant energy in the least as well as the more important actions of his life, — that the variety of this predominant principle in various men is the source of that infinite diversity in the inclinations and pur- suits of men which so admirably corresponds with the variety of conditions and employments in social life, and is the means which the wise Author of our nature hath contrived to connect the enjoyment of the individual with the general good, to lessen the evils which would arise to the public from the vices of the individual, and enhance the benefits accruing from his virtues, — the truth of this principle is confirmed, I believe, to every man who ever thinks upon the subject, by his own experience of what passes within himself, and by his observation of what is passing in the world around him. As our blessed Lord was in all things made like unto his brethren, it will be no violation of the respect which is due to the dignity of his person, if, in order to form the better judgment of the transcendent worth and excellence of his character in the condition of a man, we apply the same principles in the study of his singular life which we should employ to ana- lyze the conduct of a mere mortal. And if we take this method, and endeavour to refer the particulars of his con- duct, in the various situations in which we find him repre- sented by the historians of his life, to some one principle,
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we cannot but perceive, that tlie desire of accomplishing the great purpose for which he came into the world was in him what the ruling passion is in other men.
Two things were to be done for the deliverance of fallen man from the consequences of his guilt : the punishment of sin was to be bought off by the Redeemer's sufferings, — who is therefore said to have bought us with a price ; and the manners of men were to be reformed by suitable in- struction. From the first commencement of our Lord's public ministry, — perhaps from a much earlier period, — the business on which he came had so entirely taken pos- session of his mind, that he seems in no situation to have lost sight of it for a moment. On the contrary, it was the end to which every action of his life was, not so much by study as by the spontaneous habit of his mind, adjusted. In the greater actions of his life, we find him always pur- suing the conduct which might be the most likely to bring on that tragical catastrophe which the scheme of atonement demanded, and studious to prevent every obstacle that might be thrown in the way of the event, either by the zeal of his friends or the malice of his enemies. He works a miracle, at one time, to avoid being made a king, — at another, to secure himself from the fury of a rabble. The acceptance of an earthly kingdom had been inconsistent with the esta- blishment of his everlasting monarchy ; and he declined the danger of popular tumult and private assassination, that he might die in the character of a criminal by a judi- ciary process and a public execution. When by this ma- nagement things were brought to the intended crisis, and his imagination shrunk from the near prospect of ignominy and pain, the wish that he might be saved from the approach- ing hour was overpowered by the reflection that " for this hour he came into the world." Before the Jewish Sanhe- drim and the Roman governor he maintained a conduct which seemed to invite his doom : before the Sanhedrim, he employed a language by which he knew he should incur the charge of blasphemy ; and at Pilate's tribunal he re-
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fused to plead " not guilty" to the false accusation of treason.
As the more deliberate actions of our Saviour's life were thus uniformly directed to the accomplishment of man's re- demption, at the time and in the manner which the prophets had foretold, — so, in what may be called the ordinary oc- currences of life, we find his whole conduct shaped and de- termined by a constant attention to the second branch of the great business upon which he came, the reformation of mankind. In every incidental situation, something pecu- liarly characteristic is discernible in his actions, by which they were marked as it were for his own, and distinguished from the actions of ordinary men in similar circumstances ; and all these characteristic peculiarities of his conduct will be found, if I mistake not, when narrowly examined, to convey some important lesson in morals or religion, first to his immediate followers, and ultimately to all mankind. Hence it is, that his actions, upon every occasion, as they are recorded by his evangelists, are no less instructive than his solemn discourses. I speak not now of the instruction conveyed by the general good example of his holy life, or in particular actions done upon certain occasions for the express purpose of enforcing particular precepts by the authority of his example ; but of particular lessons to be drawn from the peculiar manner of his conduct, upon those common occasions of action which occur in every man's daily life, when the manner of the thing done or spoken seems less to proceed from a deliberate purpose of the will than from the habitual predominance of the ruling prin- ciple. It is true, in our Saviour's life nothing was com- mon ; his actions, at least, were in some measure always extraordinary : but yet his extraordinary life was so far analogous to the common life of men, that he had frequent occasions of action arising from the incidents of life and from external circumstances. The study of his conduct upon these occasions is the most useful speculation, for practical improvement, in which a Christian can engage.
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The words of my text stand in the beginning of the nar- rative of a very extraordinary transaction ; which, for the useful lessons it contains, is related in detail by two of the evangelists. It is my intention to review the particulars of the story ; and point out to you, as I proceed, the in- struction which the mention of each circumstance seems intended to convey.
It was in the commencement, as I think, of the last year of liis ministry, that our Lord, either for security from the malice of his enemies the Pharisees (whose resentment he had excited by a recent provocation — a discovery to the people of the disguised avarice of the sect, and a public assertion of the insignificance of their religious forms), or perhaps that he found his popularity in Galilee rising to a height inconsistent with his own views and with the public tranquillity, — thought proper to retire for a season to a country where his person was little known, although his fame, as appears by the event, had reached it — the border of the Sidonian territory. The inhabitants of this region were a mixed people, partly Jews, partly the progeny of those Canaanites who were suffered to remain in these ex- treme parts when the children of Israel took possession of the promised land. On his journey to the destined place of his retirement, he was met by a woman, who with loud cries and earnest entreaties implored his aid in behalf of her young daughter, possessed by an evil spirit.
The first circumstance in this story which engages our attention, is the description of the woman which is given in my text. This requires a particular explication, because it is the key to much of the mystery of our Lord's conduct upon the occasion. " The woman was a Greek, a Syro- plicenician by nation :" she was by nation therefore not a Jewess ; she was not of the family of the Israelites, and had no claim to the privileges of the chosen people. But that is not all ; she was by nation " a Syrophcenician." The Phoenicians were a race scattered over the whole Vv^orld in numerous colonies. The different settlements were dis-
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tinguished by names taken iVom tlie countries upon which they bordered. The Canaanites were one of these Phoeni- cian colonies ; and because they bordered upon Syria, they were called by the Greeks and Romans Syro-Phcenicians. A Syrophcenician therefore is a Canaanite under another name : the woman therefore who came out to meet our Lord was not only an alien from the stock of Israel, — she v/^.s a daughter of the accursed Canaan ; she came of that impure and impious stock, which the Israelites, when they settled in Palestine, were commissioned and commanded to exterminate. Particular persons, it is true, at that time found means to obtain an exemption of themselves and their families from the general sentence,— as Rahab the hostess, by her kind entertainment of the Jewish spies ; and the whole city of the Gibeonites, by a surrender of themselves and their posterity for ever to a personal servitude. But such families, if they embraced not the Jewish religion in all its forms, at least renounced idolatry ; for the Israelites were not at liberty to spare their lives, and to suffer them to remain v/ithin the limits of the Holy Land, upon any other terms. Our Lord's suppliant was not of any of these reformed families ; for she was not only " a Syrophcenician by nation," — she was besides " a Greek." She was a " Greek." This word describes not her country, but her religion : she was an idolatress, bred in the principles of that gross idolatry which consisted in the worship of the images of dead men. And because idolatry in this worst form obtained more among the Greeks than the nations of the East, such idolaters, of whatever country they might be, were by the Jews of the apostolic age called Greeks ; just as, among us, any one who lives in the communion of the Roman church, though he be a Frenchman or a Spa- niard, is called a Roman Catholic.
We now then understand what the woman was who sought our Lord's assistance, — by birth a Canaanite, by profession an idolatress. It appears by the sequel of the story (for to understand the parts, we must keep the whole
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in view ; and we must anticipate the end, to make tlic true use of the beginning), — it appears, I say, from the sequel of the story, that whatever the errors of her former life had been, when she came to implore our Lord's compassion she had overcome the prejudices of her education, and had acquired notions of the true God and his perfections which might have done honour to a Jew by profession, a native Israelite. To this happy change the calamity with which she was visited in the person of her child had no doubt conduced : and to this end it was perhaps more conducive than any thing she could have suffered in her own person ; because her distress for her child was purely mental, and mental distress is a better corrective of the mind than bodily disease or infirmity, — because, equally repressive of the levity of the mind and the wanderings of the imagination to pleasurable objects, it is not attended with that disturbance and distraction of the thoughts which are apt to be produced by the pain and debility of sickness. Thus we see how God remembers mercy even in his judg- ments ; administering afflictions in the way in which they most conduce to the sufferer's benefit. Nor can it be deemed an injury to the child that it was subjected to suf- ferings for another's guilt ; since the innocence of its own future life might be best secured by the mother's refor- mation.
Conscious of the change that was already wrought in her sentiments and principles, and resolved no doubt upon a suitable reformation of her conduct, the converted idola- tress of the Syrophcenician race would not be discouraged, either by the curse entailed upon her family, or by the re- membrance of the guilt and error of her past life, from try- ing the success of a personal application to our Lord. She well understood, that no individual, of any nation or family, could without personal guilt be excluded from God's love and mercy, by virtue of any curse entailed upon the race in its political or collective capacity. Reasons of govern- ment in God'^ moral kingdom may make it ^pedient and
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even necessary, that the progeny of any eminent delinquent should for many generations, perhaps for the whole period of their existence upon earth as a distinct family, be the worse for the crimes of their progenitor. God therefore may, and he certainly does visit the sins of the fathers upon the children collectively for many generations ; as at this day he visits on the Jews collectively the infidelity of their forefathers in the age of our Lord and his apostles. But these visitations are in truth acts of mercy ; and, rightly understood, they are signs of favour to the persons visited. They are intended not only for the general admonition of mankind, but for the particular benefit of those on whom the evil is inflicted ; who are taught by it to abhor and dread the crime which hath been the source of their cala- mity. These curses therefore on a family hinder not but that every individual of the race holds the same place in God's favour or displeasure as had been due to his good or ill deservings had the public malediction never been in- curred. It is true, the innocence of an individual may not procure him an exemption from his share of the public evil ; but this is because it is for his advantage in the end that he be not exempted. " If I am of the race of Canaan," said our Syrophoenician woman, " it is true I must take my share of certain national disadvantages which God hath been pleased to lay upon our race as lasting monuments of his abhorrence of the crime of our ancestors : but this is no reason that I trust not to his mercy for deliverance from my own particular aflflictions. Nor will I be deterred by the crimes and follies of my past life. My Maker knows that the understanding which he gave me is liable to error, — that he hath formed me with passions apt to be se- duced : he hath administered a correction, by which I am brought to a sense of my error ; and I am, I trust, in some deo-ree recovered from seduction : I am no lonofer therefore the object of his displeasure, but of his mercy ; of which my providential recovery from sin and ignorance, though eflected by a bitter discipline, is itself a proof. He hath
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already shown me his mercy in the very affliction wliich hath wrought my reformation. I should fail therefore in gratitude to my benefactor were I to indulge a timidity of imploring his assistance."
Such were the sentiments of the reformed idolatress, when she had the courage to become a suppliant to our Lord in her own person ; and such should be the senti- ments of every sinner, in his first efforts to turn from the power of darkness to serve the living God. He should harbour no apprehension that his past sins will exclude him from the Divine mercy, if he can but persevere in his resolution of amendment. Nor is the perseverance doubt- ful, if tlie resolution be sincere : from the moment that the understanding is awakened to a sense of the danger and of the loathsomeness of sin — to a reverent sense of God's per- fections— to a fear of his anger, as the greatest evil — to a desire of his favour, as the highest good, — from the mo- ment that this change takes place in the, sinner's heart and understanding, whatever may have been the malignity, the number, and the frequency of his past crimes, such is the efhcacy of the great sacrifice, he is reconciled to God, — he obtains not only forgiveness, but assistance ; and the measure of the assistance, I will be bold to say, is always in proportion to the strength of evil habit which the peni- tent hath to overcome. He is not therefore to be discou- raged from addressing himself to God in prayer, by a sense of unworthiness arising from his past sins. Upon the ground of merit, no man is worthy to claim an audience of his Maker; but to a privilege to which innocence might scarce aspire, by the mercy of the gospel covenant, repent- ance is admitted. Reformation indeed is innocence in the merciful construction of the Christian dispensation : the Redeemer stands at God's right hand, pleading in the be- half of the penitent the merit of his own humiliation ; and the eiTect is, that no remembrance is had in heaven of for- saken sin. The courage of our converted idolatress is an edifying example to all repenting sinners ; and the bless-
4G3
ing with which it was in the end rewarded justified the principles upon which she acted.
Before we proceed to the more interesting- subject of meditation — our Saviour's conduct upon this occasion, we must consider another circumstance on the woman's part — the manner in which her supplication was addressed. She came from her home to meet him on the road ; and she cried out — " Have mercy upon me, O Lord, thou Son of David !" Jesus, retiring from the malice of his enemies or the imprudence of his friends to the Sidonian territory, is saluted by an idolatress of the Canaanites by his proper titles, — " the Lord," " the Son of David." It is indeed little to be wondered, that idolaters living- on the confines of the Jewish territory, and conversing much with the Israelites, should be well acquainted with the hope which they entertained of a national deliverer to arise in David's family, at a time when the expectation of his advent was raised to the height, by the evident completion of the pro- phecies which marked the time of his appearance ; and when the numberless miracles wrought by our Lord, in the course of three successive summers, in every part of Galilee, had made both the expectation of the Messiah and the claim of Jesus to be the person the talk of the whole country to a considerable distance. It is the less to be wondered, because we find something of an expectation of the Messiah of the Jews in all parts of the world at that season. But the remarkable circumstance is this, — that this Syrophcenician idolatress must have looked for no par- tial deliverer of the Jewish nation, but for a general bene- factor of all mankind, in the person of the Jewish Messiah ; for had he been to come for the particular benefit of the Jews only, this daughter of Canaan could have had no part or interest in the Son of David.
Having examined into the character of our Lord's sup- pliant, and remarked the terms in wdiich she addressed him, we will in another Discourse consider the remarkable man- ner in which on our Lord's part her petition was received.
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SERMON XXXVIII.
The woman was a Greek, a Syroplioenician by nation. — Mark vii. 16.
These words describe what was most remarkable in the character of a woman, a Canaanite by birth, an idola- tress by education, who implored our Lord's miraculous assistance in behalf of her young daughter tormented with an evil spirit. In my last Discourse, the lessons to be drawn from this character of the woman, and from the manner in which her petition was preferred, were distinctly pointed out. I come now to consider, still with a view to practical inferences, the manner in which on our Lord's part the petition was received.
In the lovely character of the blessed Jesus, there was not a more striking feature than a certain sentimental tenderness, which disposed him to take a part in every one's affliction to which he chanced to be a witness, and to be ready to afford it a miraculous relief. He was apt to be particularly touched by instances of domestic dis- tress; in which the suffering arises from those feelings of friendship, growing out of natural affection and habitual endearment, which constitute the perfection of man as a social creature, and distinguish the society of the human kind from the instinctive herdings of the lower animals. When at the gate of Nain he met the sad procession of a young man's funeral, — a poor widow, accompanied by her sympathizing neighbours, conveying to the grave the remains of an only son, suddenly snatched from her by disease in the flower of his age, — the tenderness of his temper appeared, not only in what he did, but in the kind and ready manner of his doing it. He scrupled not to avow how much he was affected by the dismal scene: he addressed words of comfort to the weeping mother; unasked, upon the pure motion of his own compassion.
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lie went up and touched the bier; — he connnanded the spirit to return to its deserted mansion, and restored to the widow the support and comfort of her age.
The object now before him might have moved a heart less sensible than his. A miserable mother, in the highest agony of grief, — perhaps a widow, for no husband appeared to take a part in the business, — implores his compassion for her daughter, visited with the most dread- ful malady to which the frail frame of sinful man was ever liable — possession. In this reasoning age we are little agreed about the cause of the disorder to which this name belongs. If we may be guided by the letter of holy writ, it was a tyranny of hellish fiends over the imagination and the sensory of the patient. For my own part, I find no great difiiculty of believing that this was really the case. I hold those philosophizing believers but weak in faith, and not strong in reason, who measure the probabilities of past events by the experience of the present age, in opposition to the evidence of the historians of the times. I am inclined to think that the power of the infernal spirits over the bodies as well as the minds of men suffered a capital abridgment, an earnest of the final putting down of Satan to be trampled under foot of men, when the Son of God had achieved his great undertaking: that before that event, men were subject to a sensible tyranny of the hellish crew, from which they have been ever since emancipated. As much as this seems to be implied in that remarkable saying of our Lord, when the seventy returned to him expressing their joy that they had found the devils subject to themselves through his name. He said unto them — " I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven " Our Lord saw him fail from the heaven of his power: what wonder then that the effects should no longer be perceived of a power which he hath lost? Upon these general principles, without any particular inquiry into the subject, I am contented to rest, and exhort you all to rest, in the belief which in the primitive church was 2 H
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luiiversal, that possession really was what the name im- ports. Be that as it may, whatever the disorder was, its effects are undisputed, — a complication of epilepsy and madness, sometimes accompanied with a paralytic affec- tion of one or more of the organs of the senses ; the mad- ness, in the worst cases, of the frantic and mischievous kind.
Such was the malady in which our Lord's assistance was implored. The compassion of the case was heigh- tened by the tender age of the miserable patient. St, Mark calls her the "young daughter" of the unhappy suppliant; an expression which indicates that she had just attained that engaging season when a winning sprightli- ness takes place of the insipid state of puling infancy, and the innocence of childhood is not yet corrupted by the ill example, nor its good humour ruflied by the ill usage, of the world. It might have been expected, that the slightest representation of this dismal case would have worked upon the feelings of our compassionate Lord, and that the merciful sentence would immediately have issued from his lips which should have compelled the trembling fiend to release his captive : but, strange to tell ! he made as if he were unmoved by the dismal story ; and, regardless of the wretched mother's cries, " he answered her not a word. "
[t is certain that the most benevolent of men are not equally inclined at all seasons to give attention to a stranger's concerns, or to be touched with the recital of a stranger's distress, A suppliant to our charity, whose case deserves attention, sometimes meets with a cool or with a rough reception, because he applies in an unlucky moment. Since our Lord was made like unto his brethren, may something analogous to this fretfulness, which more or less is incident to the very best of men, be supposed in him, to account for the singularity of his conduct in this instance? Were his spirits exhausted by the fatigue of a long journey made afoot? ^ynshis mind ruffled by his late
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contentions witli the captious Pharisees? Was he wearied out by the frequency of petitions for his miraculous assist- ance? Was he disgusted with the degeneracy of mankind in general, and with the hardened incredulity of his own nation? Was his benevolence, in short, for the moment laid asleep, by a fit of temporary peevishness? — God forbid that any here should harbour the injurious, the impious suspicion; a suspicion which even the Socinians (not to charge them wrongfully) have not yet avowed, however easily it might be reconciled with their opinions. The Redeemer, though in all things like unto his brethren, was without sin: the fretfulness which is apt to be excited by external circumstances, whatever excuses particular occasions may afford, is always in some degree sinful Benignity was the fixed and inbred habit of his holy mind; a principle not to be overcome in him, as in the most perfect of the sons of Adam, by the cross incidents of life. We must seek the motives of his present conduct in some other source — not in any accidental sourness of the moment.
This was the first instance in which his aid had been invoked by a person neither by birth an Israelite nor by profession a worshipper of the God of Israel. The miracle which he was presently to work for the relief and at the request of this heathen suppliant was to be an action of no small importance. It was nothing less than a prelude to the disclosure of the great mystery which had been hidden for ages, and was not openly to be revealed before Christ's ascension, — that through him the gate of mercy was opened to the Gentiles. When an action was about to be done significant of so momentous a truth, it was expedient that the attention of all who stood by should be drawn to the thing by something singular and striking in the manner of the doing of it. It was expedient that the manner of the doing of it should be such as might save the honour of the Jewish dispensation, — that it should mark the consistencv of the old dispensation with the 2 H 2
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new, by circumstances which should imply, that the prin- ciple upon which mankind in general were at last received to mercy was the very same upon which the single family of the Israelites had been originally taken into favour, — namely, that mankind in general, by the light of the gospel revelation, were at last brought to a capacity at least of that righteousness of faith which was the thing so valued in Abraham that it rendered him the friend of God, and procured hin the visible and lasting reward of special blessings on his posterity. It was fit that she who was chosen to be the first example of mercy extended to a heathen should be put to some pre- vious trial; that she might give proof of that heroic faith which acts with an increased vigour under the pressure of discouragement, and show herself in some sort worthy of so high a preference. The coldness therefore with which her petition was at first received was analogous to the afflictions and disappointments with which the best ser- vants of God are often exercised ; which are intended to call forth their virtue here and heighten their reward hereafter. It is one of the many instances preserved in holy writ, which teach the useful lesson of entire resigna- tion to the will of God under protracted affliction and accumulated disappointments, — upon this principle, that good men are never more in the favour and immediate care of God, than when, in the judgment of the giddy world, they seem the most forgotten and forsaken by him.
Our Lord's attendants, touched with the distress of the case — penetrated by the woman's cries — perhaps ashamed that such an object should be openly treated with neglect, for what had hitherto passed was upon the public road — and little entering into the motives of our Lord's conduct, took upon them to be her advocates. "They besought him, saying, Send her away, for she crieth after us." Setid her away, — that is, grant her petition, and give her her dismissal. That must have been their meaning: for
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in 110 instance had they seen the prayer of misery re- jected; nor would they have asked their Master to send her away without relief. If our Lord had his chosen at- tendants— if among those attendants he had his favourites, yet in the present case the interest of a favourite could not be allowed to have any weight. He had indeed belied his own feelings had he seemed to listen more to the importunities of his friends than to the cries of distress and the pleadings of his own compassion. The interfe- rence of the disciples only served him with an occasion to prosecute his experiment of his suppliant's faith. He framed his reply to them in terms which might seem to amount to a refusal of the petition which before he had only seemed not to regard : he said, " I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Oh miserable woman! offspring of an accursed race! cease thy una- vailing prayers ; — he hath pronounced thy sentence ! Be- take thee to thy home, sad outcast from thy Maker's love 1 Impatience of thy absence but aggravates thy child's distraction: nor long shall her debilitated frame support the tormentor's cruelty : give her while she lives the conso- lation of a parent's tenderness; — it shall somewhat cheer the melancholy of the intervals of her phrensy ; — it is the only service thou canst render her. For thyself, alas ! no consolation remains but in the indulgence of despair : the Redeemer is not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel; and to that house, ill-fated Canaanite, thou wast born and thou hast lived a stranger !
The faith of the Syrophcenician idolatress gave way to no such suggestions of despair. It required indeed the sagacity of a lively faith to discern that an absolute refu- sal of her prayer was not contained in our Lord's discou- raging declaration. In that godly sagacity she was not deficient. " He is not sent !" Is he then a servant sent upon an errand, with precise instructions for the execu- tion of his business, which he is not at liberty to exceed ? — No : he comes with the full powers of a son. Wise, no
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doubt, and just is the decree that salvation shall be of the Jews — that the general blessing shall take its beginning in the family of Abraham, — that the law shall g'o forth of Zion, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem : be it, that by disclosing the great scheme of mercy to the chosen people, he fulfils the whole of his engagement ; yet though he is sent to none but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, no restriction is laid upon him not to receive his sheep of any other fold, if any such resort to him. What though it be my misfortune to have been born an alien from the chosen stock ? What though I have no claim under any covenant or any promise? — I will hope against hope ; I will cast me on his free, uncovenanted mercy ; 1 will trust to the fervour of my own prayers to obtain what seems to be denied to the intercession of his followers.
Supported by this confidence, she followed our Lord into the house where he. took up his abode : there she fell prostrate at his feet, crying — " Lord, help me !" — 0 faithful daughter of an unbelieving race ! great is the example which the afflicted have in thee, of an unshaken confi- dence in that mercy which ordereth all things for the good of them that fear God ! Thy prayer is heard ; help shall be given thee ; but thy faith must yet endure a farther trial. By his answer to the disciples, our Lord seemed studious only to disown any obligation that the nature of his undertaking might be supposed to lay upon him to attend to any but the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Stifling the emotions of his pity, and dissembling his mer- ciful intentions, he answers the wretched suppliant at his feet as if he were upon principle disinclined to grant her request, — lest a miracle wrought in her favour should be inconsistent with the distinction due to the chosen family. " It is not meet," he said, " to take the children's bread and cast it to dogs." Children'' s bread ; and cast to dogs! Terrible distinction! — the Israelites children, the Gentiles dogs! The words perhaps, in the sense which they bore in the mind of the speaker, were rather descriptive of the
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differeiil situation of the Jews and the Gentiles at that time, vvith respect to the degree of religious knowledge they had for many ages severally enjoyed, than of the dif- ferent rank they held in God's favour. It is certain that God hath made of one blood all nations of men ; and his tender n^iercy is over all his works. The benefit of the whole world was ultimately intended in the selection of the Jewish people. At the time of the call of Abraham, the degeneracy of mankind was come to that degree that the true religion could nowhere be preserved othervv^ise than by miracle. Miracle (perpetual miracle) was not the proper expedient for its general preservation ; because it must strike the human mind with too much force to be consistent with the freedom of a moral agent. A single family therefore was selected, in which the truth might be preserved in a way that generally was ineligible. By this contrivance, an ineligible way was taken of doing a necessary thing (a thing necessary in the schemes of mercy) ; but it was used, as wisdom required it should be used, in the least possible extent. The family which for the general good was chosen to be the immediate object of this miraculous discipline enjoyed no small privilege : they enjoyed the advantages of the light of revelation ; while among the Gentiles, the light of nature itself, in what regards morals and religion, bright as it may shine in the writings of their philosophers, was to the general mass of mankind almost extinguished. It was for this advantage which the one enjoyed, and the others were allowed to want, that they might feel at length the dismal consequences of their defection from the worship of their Maker, that they are called collectively — the Jews " chil- dren," and the Gentiles " dogs." The Jew, indeed, who duly improved under the light which he enjoyed, and (not relying on his descent from Abraham, or on the merit of his ritual service) was conscientiously attentive to the weightier matters of the law, became in another sense the child of God, as personally the object of his favour; and
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the Gentile who, shutting his eyes against the light of na- ture, gave himself up to work iniquity with greediness, became in another sense a dog, as personally the object of God"s aversion ; and it is ever to be remembered, that in this worst sense the greater part of the Gentile world were dogs, and lived in enmity with God : but still no Jew was individually a child, nor any Gentile individually a dog, as a Jew or a Gentile, but as a good or a bad man, or as certain qualities morally good or evil were included in the notion of a Jew or a Gentile.
But how great was that faith, which, when the great mystery was not yet disclosed — when God's secret pur- pose of a general redemption had not yet been opened, was not startled at the sound of this dreadful distinction, — the Israelites, children ; the Gentiles, dogs ! How great was the faith which was displayed in the humility and in the firmness of the woman's reply ! She said — " Truth, Lord ; yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table."
First, observe her humility — her submission to the ar- rangements of unerring wisdom and justice. She admits the distinction, so unfavourable as it might seem to her own expectations, so mortifying as it unquestionably was to her pride: she says — "Truth, Lord: I must confess the reality of the distinction which thou allegest: thy nation are the children ; we are dogs!" She admits not only the reality but the propriety of the distinction ; she presumes not to question the equity and justice of it ; she says not — ■" Since God hath made of one blood all nations of men, why should a single family be his favour- ites, and the whole world beside outcasts ?"' She reposes in a general persuasion of God's wisdom and goodness ; she takes it for granted that a distinction Vv^hich proceeded from him must be founded in wisdom, justice, and bene- volence,— that however concealed the end of it might be, it must be in some way conducive to the universal good, — that it ought therefore to be submitted to with cheer-
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fulness, even by those on whose side the disadvantage for the present lay. Would God, that men would imitate the humility of this pious Canaanite, — that they would consider the scanty measure of the human intellect — rest satisfied in the general belief of the Divine goodness and wisdom, and wait for the event of things, to clear up the things " hard to be understood" in the present constitution of the moral world as well as in the Bible !
We have seen the humility of the Syrophcenician sup- pliant; let us next consider her firmness. Hitherto she had prayed; — her prayers meet with no encouragement: she ventures now to argue. The principles and frame of her argument are very extraordinary ; she argues from God's o^eneral care of the world, aoainst the inference of neglect in particular instances ; — such was the confidence of her faith in God's goodness, that she argues from that general principle of her belief against the show of seve- rity in her own case : she seems to say — " Though thou slay me, yet will I trust in thee ; I will rely on thy gene- ral attribute of mercy, against what, to one less per- suaded of thy goodness, might seem the tenor of thine own words and the sense of thy present conduct." Nor were the grounds of her argument less extraordinary than the drift of it: she avails herself of the distinction which our Lord had himself alleged, as it should seem, in bar of her petition, to establish a claim upon his mercy. This expostulation of the Syrophcenician woman with our Lord hath no parallel in the whole compass of the sacred his- tory, except it be in Abraham's pleadings with the Al- mighty upon the case of righteous men involved in na- tional calamities. " It is true," she said, " O Lord ! I am net thy child, — I am a dog; but that's the worst of my condition, — I still am thine, — I am appointed to a certain use, — I bear a certain relation, though no high one, in the family of the universal Lord. The dogs, though not children, have however their proper share in the care and kindness of the good man of the house: they are not
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regaled with the lirst a)id choicest of the food provided for the children's nourishment; but they are never sutfered to be famished with hunger, — they are often fed by the master's hand with the fragments off his own table. Am 1 a dog? — It is well : I murmur not at the preference justly shown to the dearer and the worthier children: give me but my portion of the scraps and offal."
O rare example, in a heathen, of resignation to the will of God — of complacency and satisfaction in the general arrangements of his providence, which he is the best Christian who best imitates ! The faithful Canaanite thank- fully accepts what God is pleased to give, because he gives it : she is contented to fill the place wdiich he assigns to her, because he assigns it ; and repines not that another fills a higher station: she is contented to be what God ordains — to receive what he bestows, in the pious per- suasion that every one is " fed with the food that is con- venient for him,'' — that every being endued with sense and reason is placed in the condition suited to his natural endowments, and furnished with means of happiness fitly proportioned to his capacities of enjoyment.
We have yet another circumstance to remark in our Syrophoenician's faith ; which is less indeed a part of its merit than of the blessing which attended it; but it is extraordinary, and deserves notice. I speak of the quick discernment and penetration which she discovers in reli- gious subjects, and that too upon certain points upon which, even now, in the full sunshine of the gospel, it is easy for the unwary to go wrong, and at that time it was hardly to be expected that the wisest should form a right judgment. Surely with truth the prophet said, "The secret of the Lord is among them that fear him." Whence, but from that secret illumination which is the blessing of the pure in heart in every clime and every age, could this daughter of the Canaanites have drawn her information, that among the various benefits which the Redeemer came to bestow upon the children of God's love, the mercy
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which she solicited was but of a secontlaiy value? She ventures to ask for it as no part of the children's food, but a portion only of the crumbs which fell from their richly-furnished table. We are apt to imagine that the Christians of the first age, among whom our Lord and the apostles lived and worked their miracles, were objects of a partial favour not equally extended to believers in these later ages: and it must be confessed their privilege was great, to receive counsel and instruction from the First Source of life and knowledge, and from the lips of his inspired messengers ; but it was a privilege, in the na- tu?'e of the thing, confined to a certain time, and, like all temporary privileges, conferred on a few for the gene- ral good. The clear knowledge of our duty — the promise of immortal life to the obedient — the expiation of our sins by a sufficient meritorious sacrifice — the pardon secured to the penitent by that atonement — the assistance pro- mised to the well disposed — in a word, the full remission of our sins, and the other benefits of our Saviour's life and death, of his doctrine and example, — these things are the bread which Christ brought down from heaven for the nourishment of the faithful; — in these benefits believers in all ages are equal sharers with the first converts, our Lord's own contemporaries, provided they be equally good Christians. The particular benefits which the first Christians received from the miraculous powers, in the cure of their diseases and the occasional relief of their worldly afflictions, and even in the power of performing those cures and of Q:iving: that relief, — these thinos in themselves, without respect to their use in promoting the salvation of men by the propagation of the gospel, were, as we are taught by our Syrophosnician sister, but the fragments and the refuse of the bridegroom's supper.
We have now traced the motives of our Lord's unusual but merciful austerity in the first reception of his sup- pliant. What wonder, that so bright an example of an active faith was put to a trial which might render it con-
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spicuous? It bad been injustice to the merit of the cha- racter to suffer it to lie concealed. What wonder, when this faith was tried to the uttermost, that our merciful Lord should condescend to pronounce its encomium, and crown it with a peculiar blessing? — " O woman! great is' thy faith ! Be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And when she was come to her house, she found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed." The mercy shown to this deserving woman, by the edification which is con- veyed in the manner in which the favour was conferred, was rendered a blessing to the whole church ; inasmuch as it was the seal of the merit of the righteousness of faith, — not of "faith separable from good works," con- sisting in a mere assent to facts ; but of that faith which is the root of every good work — of that faith which consists in a trust in God and reliance on his mercy, founded on a just sense of his perfections. It was a seal of the accept- ance of the penitent, and of the efficacy of their prayers; and a seal of this important truth, that the afflictions of the righteous are certain signs of God's favour, — the more certain in proportion as they are more severe. Whenever, therefore, the memory of this fact occurs, let every heart and every tongue join in praise and thanksgiving to the merciful Lord, for the cure of the young demoniac on the Tyrian border; and never be the circumstance forgotten, which gives life and spirit to the great moral of the story, — that the mother, whose prayers and faith obtained the blessing, " was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by nation."
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SERMON XXXIX.
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was ; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. — Ecclesiastes xii. 7*
Nothing hath been more detrimental to the dearest interests of man — to his present and his future interests, — to his present interests, by obstructing- the progress of scientific discovery, and retarding that gradual improve- ment of his present condition which Providence hath left it to his own industry to make ; to his future interests, by lessening the credit of revelation in the esteem of those who will ever lead the opinions of mankind, — nothing- hath been more contrary to man's interests both in this world and in the next, than what hath too often hap- pened, that a spirit of piety and devotion, more animated with zeal than enlightened by knowledge in subjects of physical inquiry, hath blindly taken the side of popular error and vulgar prejudice : the consequence of which must ever be an unnatural war between Faith and Reason, ■ — between human science and divine. Religion and Phi- losophy, through the indiscretion of their votaries, in ap- pearance set at variance, form as it were their opposite parties : persons of a religious cast are themselves deterred, and would dissuade others, from what they weakly deem an impious wisdom ; while those who are smitten with the study of nature revile and ridicule a revelation which, as it is in some parts interpreted by its weak professors, would oblige them to renounce their reason and their senses, in those very subjects in which reason is the competent judge, and sense the proper organ of investigation.
It is most certain, that a Divine revelation, if any be extant in the world — a Divine revelation, which is, in other words, a discovery of some part of God's own know-
* Preached for the Humane Society, March 22, 17S9.
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ledge made hy God himself, notwithstanding that t'allibltr men have been made the instruments of the communication — must be perfectly free from all mixture of human igno- rance and error, in the particular subject in which the dis- covery is made. The discovery may, and unless the powers of the human mind were infinite it cannot but be limited and partial ; but as far as it extends, it must be accurate ; for a false proposition, or a mistake, is certainly the very reverse of a discovery. In whatever relates therefore to religion, either in theory or practice, the knowledge of the sacred writers was infallible, as far as it extended ; or their inspiration had been a mere pretence: and in the whole extent of that subject, faith must be renounced, or reason must submit implicitly to their oracular decisions. But in other subjects, not immediately connected with theology or morals, it is by no means certain that their mmds were equally enlightened, or that they were even preserved from gross errors : it is certain, on the contrary, that the prophets and apostles might be sufficiently qualified for the task assigned them, to be teachers of that wisdom which " raaketh wise unto salvation," although in the structure and mechanism of the material world they were less informed than Copernicus or Newton, and were less knowing than Harvey in the animal economy. Want of information and error of opinion in the profane sciences, may, for any thing that appears to the contrary, be per- fectly consistent with the plenary inspiration of a religious teacher ; since it is not all knowledge, but religious know- ledge only, that such a teacher is sent to propagate and improve. In subjects unconnected therefore with religion, no implicit regard is due to the opinion which an inspired writer may seem to have entertained, in preference to the clear evidence of experiment and observation, or to the necessary deduction of scientific reasoning from first prin- ciples intuitively perceived : nor, on the other hand, is the authority of the inspired teacher lessened, in his proper province, by any symptoms that may appear in his writings
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ot" error or imperfect information upon othei- subjects. If it could be clearly proved (which, I take it, hath never yet been done) against any one of the inspired writers, that he entertained opinions in tAiy physical subject which the accurate researches of later times have refuted, — that the earth, for instance, is at rest in the centre of the plane- tary system ; that fire is carried by a principle of positive levity toward the outside of the universe, — or that he had used expressions in which such notions were implied, — I should think myself neither obliged, in deference to his- acknowledged superiority in another subject, to embrace his erroneous physics, nor at liberty, on account of his want of information on these subjects, to reject or call in question any part of his religious doctrine.
But though I admit the possibility of an inspired teacher's error of opinion in subjects which he is not sent to teach (because inspiration is not omniscience, and some things there must be which it will leave untaught), — though I stand in this point for my own and every man's liberty ; and protest against any obligation on the believer's conscience, to assent to a philosophical opinion inciden- tally expressed by Moses, by David, or by St. Paul, upon the authority of their infallibility in divine knowledge, — though I think it highly for the honour and the interest of religion that this liberty of philosophizing (except upon religious subjects) should be openly asserted and most pertinaciously maintained, — yet I confess it appears to me no very probable supposition (and it is, as I conceive, a mere supposition, not yet confirmed by any one clear in- stance), that an inspired writer should be permitted in his religious discourses to affirm a false proposition in any subject, or in anij history to misrepresent a fact ; so that I would not easily, nor indeed without the conviction of the most cogent proof, embrace any notion in philosophy, or attend to any historical relation, which should be evi- dently and in itself repugnant to an explicit assertion of any of the sacred writers. Their language too, uotvvith-
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standing the accomiuodatiou of it that might be expected, , for the sake of the vulgar, to the notions of the vulgar, in points in which it is of little importance that their errone- ous notions should be immediately corrected, is, I believe, far more accurate — more philosophically accurate, in its allusions, than is generally imagined. And this is a mat- ter which, if sacred criticism comes to be more generally cultivated, will, I doubt not, be better understood : mean- while, any disagreement that hath been thought to subsist between the physics or the records of the Holy Scriptures and the late discoveries of experiment and observation, I take in truth to be nothing more than a disagreement be- tween false conclusions drawn on both sides from true premises. It may have been the fault of divines to be too hasty to draw conclusions of their own from the doctrines of holy writ, which they presently confound with the di- vine doctrine itself, as if they made a part of it ; and it hath been the fault of natural philosophers to be no less hasty to build conjectures upon facts discovered, which they presently confound with the discoveries themselves, — although they are not confirmed by any experiments yet made, and are what a fuller interpretation of the pheno- mena of nature may hereafter perhaps refute. Thus, while genuine revelation and sound philosophy are in perfect good agreement with each other, and with the actual con- stitution of the universe, the errors of the religious on the one side, and the learned on the other, run in contrary directions ; and the discordance of these errors is mistaken for a discord of the truths on which they are severally grafted.
To avoid this evil, in every comparison of philosophy with revelation, extreme caution should be used to separate the explicit assertions of holy writ from all that men have inferred beyond what is asserted, or beyond its immediate and necessary consequences ; and an equal caution should be used to separate the clear, naked deposition of experi- ment from all conjectural deductions. With the use of
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tliis precaution, revelation and science may receive mu- tual illustration from a comparison with each other ; but without it, while we think that we compare God's works with God's word, it may chance that we compare nothing better than different chimeras of the human imagina- tion.
Of the light which philosophy and revelation maybe brought to throw upon each other, and of the utility of the circumspection which I recommend, we shall find an in- structive example in a subject in which the world is in- debted for much new information to the learned and charitable founders of that Society of which I am this day the willing advocate ; a Society which, incited by the purest motives of philanthropy, in its endeavours to miti- gate the disasters of our frail, precarious state, regardless of the scoffs of vulgar ignorance, hath in effect been pro- secuting for the last fourteen years, not without consi- derable expense, a series of difficult and instructive ex- periments, upon the very first question for curiosity and importance in the whole compass of physical inquiry, — Avhat is the true principle of vitality in the human species ; and what certainty belongs to what have generally been deemed the signs of death ?
The words which I have chosen for my text relate di- rectly to this subject : they make the last part in a de- scription of the progress of old age, from the commence- ment of its infirmities to its termination in death, which these words describe. The royal preacher evidently speaks of man as composed of two parts, — a body, made origi- nally of the dust of the earth, and capable of resolution into the material of which it was at first formed ; and a spirit, of a very different nature, the gift of God. The royal preacher teaches us, what daily observation indeed sufficiently confirms, that in death the body actually under- goes a resolution into its elementary grains of earth ; but he teaches us besides, what sense could never ascertain, . 2 I
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that the spirit, liable to no such dissolution, " returns to God who gave it."
All this is perfectly consistent with the history of the creation of the first man, delivered in the book of Genesis. There we read, first, of a man created after God's own image (which must be understood of the mind of man, bearing the Divine image in its faculties and endowments ; for of any impression of the Maker's image the kneaded clay was surely insusceptible ) ; next, of a body, formed out of the dust of the earth, and animated by the Creator by the infusion of the immaterial principle. " The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life," or, as the words might perhaps more properly be rendered, " the breath of im- mortality :" the original words at least express life in its highest force and vigour. That this "breath of life" is the principle of intelligence, the immaterial soul, might be made evident from a careful examination of the text itself, as it stands connected with the general story of the creation, of which it is a part ; but more readily perhaps, to popular apprehension, by the comparison of this pas- sage with other texts in holy writ ; particularly with that passage in Job in which it is said that the breath of the Almighty is that which " giveth man understanding," and with the text of the royal preacher immediately before us : for none who compares the two passages can doubt, that the " breath of life" which " God breathes into the nostrils of the man" in the book of Genesis is the very same thing with the spirit " which God gave" in the book of Eccle- siastes. And that this spirit is the immaterial, intelligent principle is evident ; because it is mentioned as a distinct thing from the body, not partaking of the body's fate, but surviving the putrefaction of the body, and returning to the giver of it.
But farther : the royal preacher in my text, assuming that man is a compound of an organized body and an im-
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material soul, places the t'ormality and essence of death in the disunion and final separation of these two constituent parts : death is, when " the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it."
And this again is perfectly consistent with the account of the creation of the first man in the book of Genesis ; which makes the union of these two principles the imme- diate cause of animation. " The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man (or, so man) became a living person." God's inspiration of the breath of life, his infu- sion of the immaterial principle, the union of the soul to the body, was the means by w^hich man became a living- person ; whence the conclusion is obvious and necessary, that the dissolution of that union is the sole adequate cause of the extinction of that life which the union produced.
It is the explicit assertion therefore both of Moses and of Solomon, that man is a compound of body and soul ; and that the union of the immaterial soul with the body is the true principle of vitality in the human species. And this account of man is solemnly delivered by them both, as a branch of their religious doctrine. It demands therefore the implicit assent of every true believer ; and no philoso- phy is to be heard that would teach the contrary.
But now let the divine be careful what conclusion he draw from this plain doctrine, and what notions he ingraft upon it. Although we must believe, if we believe our Bible, that the union of scul and body is the first principle of animation in the human subject, it is by no means a ne- cessary consequence that the life of man is in no degree and in no part mechanical. Since man is declared to be a compound, the natural presumption seems to be, that the life of this compounded being is itself a compound. And this experience and observation prove to be indeed the case. Man's life is compounded of the life of the intellect and the animal life. The life of the intellect is simply in- telligence, or the energy of the intelligent principle. The 2 I 2
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animal life is itself a rompound, consisting of the vegetable life combined with the principle of perception. Human life, therefore, is an aggregate of at least three ingredients, — intelligence, perception, and vegetation. The lowest and the last of these, the vegetable life, is wholly in the body, and is mere mechanism, — not a mechanism which any human ingenuity may imitate, or even to any good degree explore ; but the exquisite mechanism of a Divine artificer : still it is mechanism ; consisting in a symmetry and sympathy of parts, and a correspondence of motions, conducive, by mechanical laws established by the Creator's wisdom, to the growth, nourishment, and conservation of the whole. The wheels of this wonderful machine are set a-going, as the Scriptures teach us, by the presence of the immaterial soid ; which is therefore not only the seat of intelligence, but the source and centre of the man's entire animation. But it is in this circumstance only, namely, that the immaterial mover is itself attached to the machine, that the vegetable life of the body, considered as a distinct thing, as in itself it is, from the two principles of intelli- gence and perception, differs in kind (for in respect of ex- cellence and nicety of v/orkmanship all comparison were impious ; but in kind the vegetable life of the human body differs in this circumstance only) from mere clockwork.
This mechanism of life, in that part which belongs to the body, so evident to the anatomist and physician, and so obvious indeed to common observation, is so little re- pugnant to holy writ, that it is clearly implied in many passages. It is implied in the expressions in which Moses describes the animation of the first man ; which, though it be referred to the union of soul and body as a principle, is described however in'' expressions which allude to the mechanical action of the air, entering at the nostrils, upon the pulmonary coats. The mechanism of life is again most remarkably implied in the verse which immediately precedes my text ; in which the approaches of death are described as the gradual rupture of the parts of a machine;
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not without particular allusion to the true internal structure of the human body, and the distinct offices of the principal viscera in maintainino- the veoeiable life, — " the silver cord loosed — the golden bowl broken — the pitcher broken at the well — the wheel broken at the cistern.'' I dare not in this assembly, in which I see myself surrounded by so many of the masters of physiology, attempt a particular exposition of the anatomical imagery of this extraordinary text ; lest I should seem not to have taken warning by the contempt which fell on that conceited Greek who had the vanity to prelect upon the military art before the con- querors of Asia. I shall only venture to offer one remark, to confirm what I have said of the attention (not of implicit assent, except in religious subjects, but of the attention) which is due to what the inspired writers say upon any subject ; which is this : The images of this text are not easy to be explauied on any other supposition, than that the writer, or the Spirit which guided the writer, meant to allude to the circulation of the blood, and the structure of the principal parts by which it is carried on. And upon the supposition that such allusions were intended, no ob- scurity, I believe, will remain for the anatomist in the whole passage: at any rate, it is evident that the approaches of death are described in it as a marring of the machine of the body by the failure of its principal parts ; and this amounts to an assumption of the mechanism of life, in that part which belongs to the body.
Thus revelation and philosophy agree, that human life, in the whole a compounded thing, in one of its constituent parts is mere mechanism.
But let the philosopher in his turn be cautious what conjectures he build upon this acknowledged truth. Since human life is undeniably a compound of the three princi- ples of intelligence, perception, and vegetation, — notwith- standing that the vegetable life be in itself mechanical, it will by no means be a necessary conclusion, that a man must be truly and irrecoverably dead, so soon as the signs
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of this vegetable life are no longer discernible in his body. Here Solomon's opinion demands great attention : he makes death consist in nothing less than the dissolution of that union of soul and body which Moses makes the principle of vitality ; and he speaks of this disunion as a thing sub- sequent, in the natural and common course of things, to the cessation of the mechanical life of the body. Some space therefore may intervene, — what the utmost length of the interval in any case may be, is not determined, — but some space of time, it seems, may intervene between the stopping of the clockwork of the body's life and the finished death of the man by the departure of the immortal spirit. Now, in all that interval since the union of the spirit to the body first set the machine at work, if the stop proceed only from some external force, some restraint upon the motion of any principal part, without derange- ment, damage, or decay of the organization itself, the pre- sence of the soul in the body will be a sufficient cause to restore the motion, if the impediment only can be removed. Thus, by the united lights of revelation and philosophy, connecting what is clear and indisputable in each, separated from all conjecture and precarious inference, we have de- duced a proof of those important truths to which the founders of this Society have been indeed the first to turn the attention of mankind, — namely, that the vital princi- ple may remain in a man for some time after all signs of the vegetable life disappear in his body ; that what have hitherto passed, even among physicians, for certain signs of a complete death — the rigi'd limb, the clay-cold skin, the silent pulse, the breathless lip, the livid cheek, the fallen jaw, the pinched nostril, the fixed, staring eye — are uncertain and equivocal, insomuch that a human body, under all these appearances of death, is in many instances capable of resuscitation.
The truth of these principles, however contrary to re- ceived opinions and current prejudices, is now abundantly confirmed by the success with which PiX)vidence hath
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blessed the attempts of this Society for the space of four- teen years. It is universally confirmed by the equal suc- cess vouchsafed to the attempts of similar societies, formed after the example of this, in other parts of Great Britain, and in foreign countries. The benevolence of the institu- tion speaks for itself The founders of it are men whom it were injurious to suspect of being actuated in its first for- mation by the vain desire of attracting public notice by a singular undertaking. The plan of the Society is so ad- verse to any private interested views, that it acquits them of all sordid motives ; for the medical practitioners accept no pecuniary recompense for the time which they devote to a diflicult and tedious process — for the anxiety they feel while the event is doubtful — for the mortification which they too often undergo when death, in spite of all their efforts, at last carries off his prey — nor for the insults to which they willingly expose themselves from vulgar incre- dulity. Their sole reward is in the holy joy of doing good. Of an institution thus free in its origin from the suspicion of ambitious views, and in its plan renouncing self-interest in every shape, philanthropy must be the only basis. The good intention therefore of the Society is proved by its constitution ; the wisdom and public utility of the under- taking are proved by its success. The good intention, the wisdom, and the public utility of the institution, give it no small claim upon the public for a liberal support. I must particularly mention, that the benefit of this Society is by no means confined to the two cases of drowning and suspension : its timely succours have roused the lethargy of opium, taken in immoderate and repeated doses ; they have rescued the wretched victims of intoxication — rekin- dled the life extinguished by the sudden stroke of light- ning— recovered the apoplectic — restored life to the infant that had lost it in the birth — and they have proved eflica- cious in cases of accidental smothering, and of suffocation by noxious damps, in instances in which the tenderness of the infant body, or the debility of old age, greatly lessened
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the previous probability of success ; insomuch that no spe- cies of death seems to be placed beyond the reach of this Society's assistance, where the mischief hath gone no far- ther than an obstruction of the movements of the animal machine, without any damage of the organs themselves. Whether an institution of which it is the direct object to guard human life (as far as is permitted) against the many casualties that threaten it — to undo the deadly work of poisons — to lessen the depredations of natural disease, — whether an institution so beneficial to individuals, so ser- viceable to the public, by its success in preserving the lives of citizens, deserve not a legal establishment and patronage, to give it the means and the authority to prose- cute its generous views with the more advantage — it is for statesmen to consider, who know the public value of the life of every citizen in a free state. It is for us, till this public patronage be obtained, to supply the want of it, what we can, by the utmost liberality of voluntary con- tribution.
Nor let any be deterred from taking a part in the views of this excellent institution, by a superstitious notion, that the attempt to restore life is an impious invasion of His province in whose hands are the issues of life and death. The union of soul and body once dissolved, the power which first effected can alone restore ; but clockwork accidentally stopped may often be set a going again, without the hand of the original artificer, even by a rude jog from the clumsy fist of a clown, who may know next to nothing of the nicer parts of the machine. If the union of soul and body re- main, as we have seen reason to believe, for some time after the vegetable life hath ceased, — whilst it remains, the man whom we hastily pronounce dead is not indeed a dead man, but a living man diseased : " he is not dead, but sleepeth ;" and the attempt to awaken him from this morbid sleep is nothing more criminal or offensive to God than it is cri- minal or offensive to God to administer a medicine to a man sick of any common distemper. The province of
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God, who wills that at all times we rely upon his blessiug as the first cause of deliverance in all distress, but forbids not that we use the instruments which his mercy hath put in our own hands, — his province is no more invaded in the one case than in the other. On the contrary, it is not less criminal, less uncharitable, less offensive to God, to neg- lect the man under the recent symptoms of death, than to neglect the sick man, in whom those symptoms have not taken place ; since the true condition of both, for any thing we can possibly know to the contrary, is only that of sickness.
Nor let us be deterred from promoting the attempts to reanimate, by another superstition,— that if we recover the man apparently dead, we do him no good office ; we only bring him back from the seats of rest and bliss to the regions of misery. Elijah had no such apprehension, when he re- vived the widow's son ; nor our Lord, when he reanimated the daughter of Jairus, or the widow's son of Nain, — nor even when he recalled the soul of Lazarus. He recalled the soul of Lazarus ! The soul once gone no human effort ever shall recall ; but if it were criminal to stay the soul, not yet gone, but upon the point of her departure, the cure of diseases and of wounds, and the whole art of medi- cine and of surgery, by parity of reason would be criminal. But in truth, whatever might be the case of St. Paul and others of the first preachers and martyrs, who had no ex- pectation in this world but misery, and were secure of their crown of glory in the next, — to the generality of men, even of Christians, continuance in the present life is highly de- sirable ; and that without regard to secular interests and enjoyments (which claim however a moderate subordinate regard), but purely with a view to the better preparation for the next. Upon this ground we pray against sudden death ; and we may lawfully use other means besides our prayers to rescue ourselves and our brethren from it. The continuance of the present life gives the good leisure to improve, and affords the sinner space for repentance. Nor
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is it the least part of the praise of this Society, that the restoration of the present life, effected by its means, hath been to many, by the salutary instruction and admonition which they have received from their deliverers, the occa- sion that they have been begotten anew, by the word of God and the aid of his Holy Spirit, to the hope of immor- tality.
They stand here before you whose recovered and re- formed lives are the proof of my assertions. Let them plead, if my persuasion fail, let them plead the cause of their benefactors. Stand forth, and tell, my brethren, to whom you owe it under God that you stand here this day alive ! Tell what in those dreadful moments were your feelings, when on a sudden you found yourselves sur- rounded with the snares of death, when the gates of de- struction seemed opening to receive you, and the over- flowings of your own ungodliness made you horribly afraid ! Tell what were your feelings, when the bright scene of life opened afresh upon the wondering eye, and all you had suffered and all you had feared seemed vanished like a dream ! Tell what were the mutual feelings, when first you revisited your families and friends ! — of the child re- turning to the fond parent's care — of the father receiving back from the grave the joy, the solace of his age — of the husband restored to the wife of his bosom — of the wife, not yet a widow, again embracing her yet living lord ! Tell what are now your happy feelings of inward peace and satisfaction, sinners rescued from the power of dark- ness, awakened to repentance, and reconciled to God ! Your interesting tale will touch each charitable heart, and be the means of procuring deliverance for many from the like dangers which threatened your bodies and your souls. Let it be the business of your days, so unexpectedly length- ened, first to pay to God the true thanksgiving of a holy life ; next, to acknowledge, for the good of others, the in- struments of his mercy. Say, " These are they who saved our bodies from the power of the grave, and have restored
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us to thy fold, O Shepherd and Bishop of our souls ! ' What though the dead praise thee not, nor they that go down to the regions of silence ? yet we will bless the Lord from this time forth for evermore !'"
SERMON XL.
Because iuiquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.* — Matthew xxiv. 12.
C0MP7VRING the actual manners of mankind with those magnificent descriptions which occur in every page of pro- phecy, of the prosperous state of religion, both speculative and practical, under the Christian dispensation, — in those happy times " when the mountain of the Lord's house should be exalted above all hills, and all nations should flow unto it" — " when the earth should be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea" — when this knowledge should not only be imparted to all nations, but indiscriminately dispensed to all ranks and conditions of men (for the promise was, that not only on " the sons and daughters," but on " the servants also and the handmaids" the spirit should be poured forth) — when the fruit of this knowledge was to be, that " kings should reign for righteousness, and for equity princes should bear rule ;" that government shovild be administered, not for the purposes of avarice and ambition, but for the advantage of the subject, and the general happiness of mankind — " when the vile person should no more be called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful" — when the foolish preacher of infidelity (a mean and sordid doctrine, which perplexes the understanding and debases the sentiments of man) should no longer have the praise of greatness of mind ; nor the atheistic churl, who envies the believer his hope
* Preached for the Philanthropic Society, March 25, 1792.
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full of immortality, be esteemed as a patriot generously struggling for the freedom of mankind enthralled by super- stitious fears — " when nothing to hurt or destroy should be found in all the holy mountain" — when all pernicious opinions should be banished from the schools of the learned, and all evil passions weeded out of the hearts of men — *' when the work of righteousness should be peace, and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever," — comparing the actual manners of mankind, even in those countries where the Christian religion is taught and professed in its greatest purity, with these prophetic descriptions of the state of religion under the gospel, we may perhaps imagine that we see too much reason to conclude, that the liberality of the promise is balked in the poverty of the accomplishment — that the event of things falsifies the prediction.
Survey the habitable globe, and tell me in what part of Christendom the fruits of Christianity are visibly pro- duced in the lives of the generality of its professors : in what Christian country is charity the ruling principle with every man in the common intercourse of civil life, insomuch that the arts of circumvention and deceit are never practised by the Christian against his brother, nor the appetites of the individual suffered to break loose against the public weal, or against his neighbour's peace? Where is it that the more atrocious crimes of violence and rapine are unknown? Where is it that religion completely does the office of the law, and the general and habitual dread of future wrath spoils the trade of the executioner ? If that zeal for good works which ought to be universal in Christendom is nowhere to be found in it, it may seem that Christianity, considered as a scheme for the reforma- tion of mankind, has proved abortive. In truth, since the whole object of revelation is to recover mankind from the habit and dominion of sin, in which the first transgression had involved them, — since this was the common object of the earliest as well as of the latest revelations, — since
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the promulgation ot" tlie g'ospel is evidently, in the nature of the tliing-j and by the express declarations of holy writ, the last effort to be made for the attainment of that great object, — if that last effort still proves unsuccessful, the conclusion may seem inevitable, that in a contest for the recovery of man from sin and perdition, continued for the space of fidl seven thousand years, from the hour of the fall to the present day, between the Creator of the world and man's seducer, the advantage still remains (where from the first indeed it hath ever been) on the side of the apostate angel. A strange phenomenon it should seem, if Infinite Goodness, Infinite Wisdom, and Omnipotence, have really been engaged on the one side, and nothing better than the weakness and malice of a creature on the other !
But ere we acquiesce in these conclusions, or indulge in the scepticism to which they lead, let us compare the world as it now is, not with the perfection of the ultimate effect of Christianity as described by the entranced pro- phets contemplating the great schemes of Providence in their glorious consummation; — but let us compare the world as it now is with what it was before the appearance of our Saviour. We shall find, if I mistake not, that the effect of Christianity in improving the manners of man- kind, though as yet far less than may be ultimately hoped, is already, however, far from inconsiderable. Let us next consider by what means God vouchsafes to carry on this conflict of his mercy with the malice of the Devil. We shall see, that the imperfection of what is yet done so little justifies any sceptical misgivings, that in the very nature of the business itself ages are necessary to the completion of it ; and that the considerable effect already wrought is an argument of the elhcaey of the scheme to the intended purpose, and an earnest of the completion of the work in God's good season. We shall also be enabled to discern what we may ourselves contribute to the furtherance of a
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work so important even to tlie present interests of the in- dividual and of society.
Comparing- the world as it now is with what it was before the promulgation of the gospel, we shall find the manners of mankind in this respect at least improved, — that they are softened. Our vices are of a more tame and gentle kind than those of the ancient heathen world ; they are disarmed of much of their malignity, by the general influence of a spirit of philanthropy, which, if it be not the same thing in principle with Christian charity (and it may indeed be different), is certainly nearly allied to it, and makes a considerable part of it in practice. The effect of this philanthropic spirit is, that the vices which are still generally harboured are sins of indulgence and refinement rather than of cruelty and barbarism — crimes of thoughtless gayety rather than of direct, premeditated malice.
To instance in particulars. We are not destitute, as the heathen were, of natural affection. No man in a Christian country would avoid the burden of a family by the exposure of his infant children: no man would think of settling the point with his intended wife, before mar- riage, according to the ancient practice, that the females she might bear should be all exposed, and the boys only reared, — however inadequate his fortune might be to the allotment of large marriage portions to a numerous family of daughters : nor would the unnatural monster (for so we now should call him) who in a single instance should attempt to revive the practice of this exploded system of economy escape public infamy and the vengeance of the laws.
The frequency of divorce was another striking symp- tom, in the heathen world, of a want of natural affection, which is not found in modern manners. The crime indeed which justifies divorce is too frequent; but the hus- band is not at liberty, as in ancient times, to repudiate the
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wife ot" his youth for any lighter cause than an otience on her part against the fundamental principle of the nuptial contract. Upon this point the laws of all Christian coun- tries are framed in strict conformity to the rules of the gospel, and the spirit of the primeval institution.
We are not, as the apostle says the heathen were, " full of murder." The robber, it is true, to facilitate the acqui- sition of his booty, or to secure himself from immediate apprehension and punishment, sometimes imbrues his hand in blood ; but scenes of blood and murder make no part, as of old, of the public diversions of the people. Miserable slaves, upon occasions of general rejoicing and festivity, are not exposed to the fury of wild beasts for a show of amusement and recreation to the populace, nor engaged in mortal combat with each other upon a public stage. Such bloody sports, were they exhibited, would not draw crowds of spectators to our theatres, of every rank, and sex, and age. Our women of condition would have no relish for the sight: they would not be able to behold it with so much composure as to observe and ad- mire the skill and agility of the champions, and interest themselves in the issue of the combat: they would shriek and faint; — they would not exclaim, like Roman ladies, in a rapture of delight, when the favourite gladiator struck his antagonist the fatal blow; nor with cool indiiierence give him the signal to despatch the prostrate suppliant.* Nor would the pit applaud and shout when the blood of the dying man, gushing from the ghastly wound, flowed upon the stage.
We are not, in the degree in which the heathen were, " unmerciful.'* With an exception in a single instance, we are milder in the use of power and authority of every
Cousurgit ad ictus,
Et quoties victor feiTum jugulo inserit, ilia Delicias ait esse suas, pectusque jacentis Virgo modesta jnbet, converso police, rumpi.'
Prinlenthis.
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sort; and the abuse of authority is now restrained by law in cases in which the laws of ancient times allowed it. Capital punishment is not inflicted for slight offences ; nor, in the most arbitrary Christian governments, is it suddenly inflicted, upon the bare order of the sovereign, without a formal accusation, trial, conviction, sentence, and warrant of execution. The lives of children and ser- vants are no longer at the disposal of the father of the family ; nor his domestic authority maintained, as formerly, by severities which the mild spirit of modern laws rarely inflicts on the worst public malefactors. Even war has lost much of its natural cruelty; and, compared with itself in ancient times, wears a mild and gentle aspect. The first symptom of the mitigation of its horrors appeared early in the fifth century, when Rome was stormed and plundered by the Goths under Alaric. Those bands of barbarians, as they were called, were Christian; and their conduct in the hour of conquest exhibited a new and won- derful example of the power of Christianity over the fierce passions of man. Alaric no sooner found himself master of the town, than he gave out orders that all of the un- armed inhabitants who had fled to the churches or the sepulchres of the martyrs should be spared ; and with such cheerfulness were the orders obeyed, that many who w^ere found running about the streets in a phrensy of con- sternation and despair, were conducted by the common soldiers to the appointed places of retreat. Nor was a single article touched of the rich furniture and costly ornaments of the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul. This, you will observe, was a thing very different from the boasted examples of Pagan manners, the generosity of Camillus and Scipios continence. In either of those examples, we see nothing more than the extraordinary virtue of the individual, because it was extraordinary, equally reflecting disgrace on his times and credit on him- self; this was an instance of mercy and moderation in a whole army — in common soldiers, flushed with victory,
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and smarting under the wounds tliey had received in ob- taining it.
From that time forward the cruelty of war has gra- dually declined, till, in the present age, not only captives among Christians are treated with humanity, and con- quered provinces governed with equity, but in the actual prosecution of a war it is become a maxim to abstain from all unnecessary violence. Wanton depredations are rarely committed upon private property ; and the individual is screened as much as possible from the evil of the public quarrel. Ambition and avarice are not eradicated from the heart of man; but they are controlled in the pursuit of their objects by the general philanthropy. Wars of en- terprise, for conquest and glory, begin to be reprobated in the politics of the present day. Nor, in private life, have later ages seen the faithless guardian mix the poisoned cup for the unhappy orphan, whose large property has been intrusted to his management.
In the virtues of temperance and chastity, the practice of the present world is far below the standard of Christian purity; but yet the worst excesses of modern voluptuaries seem continence and sanctity, when they are set in com- parison with those unnatural debaucheries of the heathen world, which were so habitual in their manners, that they stained the lives of their gravest philosophers, and made a part even of the religious rites of the politest nations.
You will remember that it is not to extenuate the sins of the present times that I am thus exact to enumerate the particulars in which our heathen ancestors surpassed us in iniquity: I mean not to justify the ways of man, but of God. The symptoms of a gradual amendment in the world, I trust, are numerous and striking. That they are the effect of Christianity, is evident from this fact, — that in all the instances which I have mentioned, the percep- tible beginnings of amendment cannot be traced to an earlier epoch than the establishment of the Christian reli- gion in the Roman empire by Constantine; and imme- 2k-
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d lately after that event they appeared. The work of God therefore is begun, is going on, and will unquestionably be carried to its perfection. But let none imagine that his own or the general conduct of the world is such as may endure the just judgment of God : sins yet remain among us, which, without farther reformation and repent- ance, must involve nations in judgment and individuals in perdition.
In comparing the manners of the Christian and the heathen world, impartiality hath compelled me to remark that in one instance (and I trust in one only) an abuse of authority, and I must add a cruelty of avarice, obtain among us Christians in the present world, not to be ex- ceeded by the worst examples that may be found in the annals of heathen antiquity. I speak of that worse than Tyrian merchandise "in the persons of men" which is still carried on under the express sanction of the laws; and the tyranny which, in despite of law, is exercised by Christian masters on the miserable victims of that in- famous traffic. In this instance, the sordid lust of gain has hitherto been deaf to the voice of humanity and reli- gion. And yet I trust, that the existence of this iniquitous trade is less a symptom of depravity, than the loud and general cry of the people of this country for its abolition is an argument that the mild spirit of Christianity is gaining more and more of an ascendancy; and that God's good work is tending to its consummation, by that gra- dual progress by which, from the very nature of the means employed, the business must be expected to proceed.
The means which God vouchsafes to employ for the perfect overthrow of the DeviFs kingdom, are not such as he might be expected to put in use if his omnipotence alone were regarded; but they are such as are consistent with the free agency of man — such as are adapted to the nature of man as a rational and moral agent, and adapted to the justice and wisdom and mercy o£ God in his deal- ings with such a creature.
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God s power is unquestionably competent to the instan- taneous abolition of all moral evil, by the annihilation at a single stroke of the whole troop of rebellious angels and the whole race of sinful man, and the production of new creatures in their room. God's power is competent to the speedy abolition of moral evil, by the sudden execution of severe judgments on wicked nations or sinful indivi- duals— by such examples of wrath immediately pursuing guilt as might act with a compulsive force upon those who saw them. But God " willeth not the death of the sinner, but that the sinner turn from his way and live;" and he seeks an obedience to his will founded less on fear than love. He abstains therefore from these summary, abrupt, coercive measures; and he employs no other means than the preaching of the gospel, — that is, in effect, no other means than those of persuasion and argument, invitation and threatening. It is very obvious that ages must elapse before these means can produce their full effect, — that the progress of the work will not only be gradual, but liable to temporary interruptions; insomuch, that it may seem at times not only to stand still, but even to go backwards, as often as particular circumstances in the affairs of the world draw away the attention of men from the doctrines of the gospel, or rouse an extraordinary opposition of their passions to its precepts. Our Saviour in the text apprises his apostles that this would be the case in the season of the Jewish war; and St. Paul has foretold an alarming increase of wickedness in the latter days. The use of these prophetic warnings is to guard the faithful against the scepticism which these unpro- mising appearances might be apt to produce; that instead of taking offence at the sin which remains as yet unex- tirpated, or even at an occasional growth and prevalence of iniquity, we may firmly rely on the promises of the prophetic word, and set ourselves to consider what may be done on our own part, and what God may expect that 2 K 2
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we should do, for the furtherance of his work and tlie re- moval of impediments.
This we are taught pretty clearly, though indirectly, in the words of the text; which, though they were uttered by our Saviour with particular reference to the Jewish war, remind us of a general connexion between the " a- bounding of iniquity " and the decay of that principle by which alone the abounding of iniquity may be resisted : " because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold."
"The love of many" is understood by some expositors (by St. Chrysostom among the ancients, and by Calvin among the moderns) of the mutual love of Christians for each other; — which indeed will be very apt to languish and die away when iniquity abounds and choaks it: but as this discourse of our Lord's is an express, formal pro- phecy, and the style of prophecy prevails in every part of it, I am persuaded that love is to be taken in the same sense here which it manifestly bears in the Apocalyptic prophecies; where it denotes not brotherly love, but a much higher principle — the root of brotherly love, and of all the Christian virtues — the love of God and of Christ, or, which is much the same thing, a devout attachment of affection to the religion of Christ, and a zeal for its in- terests. This will naturally decay under the discourage- ment of the abounding of iniquity ; because many will grow indifferent about a religion which seems to have no permanent good effect. Whatever opinion they may re- tain in their own minds of its truth, they will think it of no consequence to be active in the support and propaga- tion of it: their love therefore will grow torpid and inac- tive.
Such will be the conduct of many ; but since religion (by which I mean the Christian religion ; for no other has a title to the name) is the only sure remedy against the growth of iniquity, the wise conduct would be the reverse
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of this. The more iniquity abounds, the more diligent it becomes the faithful to be in calling the attention of man- kind to religious instruction ; for sin never could abound if the attention of men were kept steadily fixed upon their eternal interests. Eternal happiness and eternal misery, the favour and the wrath of God, are things to which it is not in the nature of man to be indifferent, when he seriously thinks about them. The success, therefore, of instruction is certain, if men can be made to listen to it. It is the more certain, because we are assured that the Divine mercy interests itself in the conversion of every individual sinner, just as the owner of a large flock is solicitous for the recovery of a single stray ; and because there is some- thing in the doctrine of the gospel particularly adapted to work upon the feelings of a sinner, — insomuch that publi- cans and harlots were found to be readier to enter into the kingdom of God than the Scribes and Pharisees.
But here lies the great difficulty, that in seasons of a particular prevalence of iniquity, those who the most need instruction, being the most touched with the general infection, will be the last to seek it or to bear it. General public instruction at such times will never prove an effec- tual remedy for the evil : means must be found of carry- ing reproof and admonition home to the refractory offen- der, who purposely absents himself from the assemblies where public instruction is provided for him, and refuses the general invitation to the marriage-feast.
It is the singular praise of the charitable institution of which I am this day the advocate, that the founders of it have been the first in this country who have endeavoured to meet this difficulty, and to supply the necessary defects of general instruction, by an immediate special applica- tion of the benefits of a sober, godly education to those miserable outcasts of society, the children of convicted criminals and of the profligate poor, accidentally picked up in the public streets of this metropolis, or industriously sought out in the lurking-holes of vagrant idleness and
502 beggary, and the nightly haunts of prostitutes and ruffians. Such children had been too long indeed overlooked by the virtuous ; but in no propriety of speech can it be said they had been neglected. Under the tuition of miscreants old and accomplished in the various arts of villany, they had been in training, by a studied plan of education, well contrived and vi^ell directed to its end, for the hopeful trades of pilferers, thieves, highwaymen, housebreakers, and prostitutes. From this discipline of iniquity they are withdrawn by this Society, and placed under proper mas- ters, to reclaim them from the principles instilled by their first tutors, to infuse the contrary principles of religion, and to instruct them in the mysteries of honest trades. The utility of the undertaking is so evident, that its merit would be injured by any attempt to set it forth in words : it conduces to the security of the person and property of the individual ; it conduces to the public prosperity, by the diminution of vice and the increase of industry ; and it is directed to the noblest purposes of humanity and re- ligion.
Such are its ends : for the efficacy of its plan, the ap- pearance here before you best may answer for it. These are its first-fruits, — these are they whom its first efforts have rescued from perdition. Wretched orphans! be- reaved or deserted of your parents — disowned by society — refused as servants in the poorest families, as appren- tices in the meanest trades — excluded from the public asylums of ignorance and poverty ! your infancy was nourished to no better expectation than to be cut down in the very morning of your days by the unrelenting stroke of public justice ! By the mercy of God, working through these his instruments, your benefactors, you are born again to happier hopes — you are acknowledged by society — you are become true denizens of your native land — you are qualified to live in this world with comfort and credit to yourselves and with advantage to your country — you are brought back to the great Shepherd's fold — you are be-
503
come children of God und inheritors of the kingdom of heaven !
Men and brethren ! countrymen and fellow-christians ! it is not for me, it is for your own feelings, to commend to your support and protection the interests of this Society — this work and labour of love. Christ our Lord came into the world "to seek and to save that which was lost:" this Society, we trust, are humble imitators of his example — labourers under Christ, To the extent of their ability, they seek what was lost, and bring it to Christ to be saved by him. Public liberality must apply the means of car- rying the godly work to perfection. Buildings must be erected, where the children may be kept secure from any accidental interviews with their old connexions. To this purpose, so essential to the attainment of their object — an object so important to the individual, the public, and to the church of God, the present funds of the Society are altogether unequal. But public liberality in this country will not forsake them ; nor will the blessing of God for- sake them, while they trust in him, and lose not sight of the first end of their institution.
Those illustrious persons who with a zeal so laudable condescend to direct the affairs of this charity, " will suffer from their brother and fellow-servant in the Lord" the word of exhortation. Remember, brethren, that piety is the only sure basis even of a moral life, — that religious principle is the only groundwork of a permanent reforma- tion ; nor can any thing less powerful than the grace of God infused into the soul eradicate evil principles in- stilled in childhood, and evil habits contracted in that early part of life. Your own experience hath shown you with what success religious principle may be instilled into the most depraved mind, and with what efficacy the grace of God counteracts evil principles and evil habits ; for you have found that " the situation of infant thieves is peculiarly adapted to dispose their minds to the reception of better habits." Remember, therefore, that if you would
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be true to your own generous undertaking, religious in- struction must be the first, not a secondary object of your institution. Nor must the masters of the different trades be suffered so severely to exact the children's labour as to defraud them of the hours that should be daily allotted to devotion, nor of some time in every week, which, besides the leisure of the Sundays, should be set apart for religious instruction. To educate the children to trades, is a wise, beneficial, necessary part of your institution : but you will remember, that the eternal interests of man far out- weigh the secular ; and the work of religion, although the learning of it require indeed a smaller portion of our time, is of higher necessity than any trade. While your work is directed to these good ends, and conducted upon these godly principles, the blessing of God will assuredly crown your labours with success ; nor shall we scruple to extend to you the benediction in its first application peculiar to the commissioned preachers of righteousness, " Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters, and send forth the feet of the ox and the ass."
SERMON XLI.
Thomas, because thou hast seen nie, thou hast believed : blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed. — John xx. 29.
These were the words of Christ's reply to his apostle Thomas, when he, who had refused to credit the resur- rection of Jesus upon the report of the other apostles, re- ceived the conviction of his own senses in a personal inter- view, and recognised our Saviour for Lord and God.
What is most remarkable in these words, on the first general view of them, is the great coolness with which our Lord accepts an act of homage and adoration offered with much warmth and cordiality ; a circumstance which
505
plainly indicates some defect or blemish in the oft'ering, by which its value was much diminished. And this could be nothing but the lateness of it — the apostle's wonderful reluctance to believe much less than what he at last pro- fesses : but eight days since, he would not believe that Jesus to be alive whom now he worships as the living God.
But this is not all : the apostle is not only reproved for his past incredulity ; he is told besides, at least it is indi- rectly suggested to him, that the belief which he at last so fervently professes hath little merit in it, — that it was not of that sort of faith which might claim the promises of the gospel ; being indeed no voluntary act of his own mind, but the necessary result of irresistible evidence. This is clearly implied in that blessing which our Lord so empha- tically pronounces on those who, not having seen, should yet believe. " Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed :" you now indeed believe, when the testi- mony of your own senses leaves it no longer in your power to disbelieve. I promise no blessing to such reluctant faith : " blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed."
Here arise two questions, which, either for the difficulty which each carries in the first face of it, or for the in- struction which the speculation may afford, may well de- serve an accurate discussion. The first is, why Thomas was reproved for not believing till he was convinced ? The second, what should be the peculiar merit of that faith which hath not the immediate evidence of sense for its foundation or support, that our Saviour should on this sort of faith exclusively pronounce a blessing? A readi- ness to believe wonders upon slender evidence hath ever been deemed a certain mark of a weak mind ; and it may justly seem impossible that man should earn a blessing by his foliy, or incur God's displeasupe by his discretion.
For the clearing up of these difficult questions, this shall be my method, — First, to consider what ground there
50G
might be for St. Thomas to believe the fact of our Lord's resurrection upon the report of the other ten apostles, be- fore he had himself seen him ; and from what motives it may be supposed that he withheld his assent. In the course of this inquiry, it will appear that an evidence very different from ocular demonstration may in many cases command the assent of a reasonable man ; and that no man can be justified in setting a resolution within himself, as Thomas did, that he will not believe without this or that particular kind of proof. Secondly, I shall show that the belief of any thing upon such evidence as Thomas at last had of Christ's resurrection is a natural act of the human mind, to which nothing of moral or religious merit can reasonably be ascribed. These preliminary disquisi- tions will furnish the necessary principles for the resolu- tion of that great and interesting question. What is the merit, and at the same time what is the certainty, of that faith which believes what it hath not seen ?
In the first place, I propose to consider what ground there might be for Thomas to believe the fact of our Sa- viour's resurrection, upon the testimony of the other apos- tles, before he had himself seen him ; and what may be supposed to have been the motives upon which he refused his assent. And here the thing principally to be consi- dered is, what degree of trust the apostle might reasonably have placed in our Lord's promise of rising again after the event of his crucifixion ; and what there might be on the other hand to outweigh the expectation of the thing, and the positive testimony of his fellow-disciples. Our Sa- viour had on many occasions foretold his own death ; and never without assurances that he would rise again on the third day. This he generally declared enigmatically to the Jews, but in the most explicit terms to the apostles in private : and it is very remarkable, that though he had spoken of nothing more plainly in private or more darkly in public than of his resurrection, describing it under the figure of rebuilding a demolished temple, and under allu-
507
sions to the prophet Jonah's miraculous deliverance, — yet the Jews, whose understandings had been blind to the meaning of the easiest parables, took the full meaning of these figured predictions ; while the apostles either under- stood them not, or retained not in their memory the plain, unequivocal declarations which our Lord had made to them ; so that while the rulers of the Jews were using all precaution to prevent the success of a counterfeit resurrec- tion, nothing could be more remote from the expectations of the apostles than a real one. In this we see the hand of Providence wonderfully directing all things for the conviction of after ages. Had the caution of the Jews been less or the faith of the apostles more awake, the evi- dence of this glorious truth, that " Christ is risen, and be- come the first-fruits of them that slept," might not have been to us what now it is. Nevertheless, though none of the apostles seem to have had positive expectations of our Lord's resurrection before it happened, yet St. Thomas seems to have been singular in treating the report of the resurrection as a manifest fiction.
From the conversation of the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, it may be gathered that the first report of the holy women, though it had not yet obtained belief, was by no means rejected with absolute contempt. On the contrary, it seems to have awakened in all but Thomas some recollection of our Lord's predictions, and some du- bious solicitude what might be the events of the third day. And yet it cannot be supposed that St. Thomas, at this time, had no remembrance of our Lord's predictions of his resurrection ; of which the other ten could not but remind him : but the consideration, it seems, had no weight with him. And yet the person who had given his followers these assurances was no ordinary man : his miraculous conception had been foretold by an angel ; his birth had been announced to the peasants of Judea by a company of the heavenly host — to the learned of a distant country by a new wonder in the air; his high original had been
508
afterwards attested by voices from heaven ; he had dis- played powers in himself which amounted to nothing less than an uncontrolled and unlimited dominion over every department of the universe, — over the first elements of which natural substances are composed, in his first mira- cle of changing water into wine, and in the later ones of augmenting the mass of a few loaves and a few small fishes to a quantity sufficient for the meal of hungry mul- titudes— over the most turbulent of the natural elements, composing the raging winds and troubled waves — over the laws of nature, exempting the matter of his body on a particular occasion from the general force of gravitation, and the power of mechanical impulse, so as to tread se- cure and firm upon the tossing surface of a stormy sea — ■ over the vegetable kingdom, blasting the fig-tree with his word — over the animal body, removing its diseases, cor- recting the original defects and disorders of its organs, and restoring its mutilated parts — over the human mind, penetrating the closest secrets of each man's heart — over the revolted spirits, delivering miserable mortals from their persecution, and compelling them to confess him for their Lord and the destined avenger of their crimes ; and, what might more than all add weight to the promise of his resurrection, he had shown that life itself was in his power, restoring it in various instances — in one when it had been so long extinguished that the putrefaction of the animal fluids must have taken place.
These wonders had been performed to confirm the purest doctrine, and had been accompanied with the most un- blemished life. This extraordinary personage had pre- dicted his own death, the manner of it, and many of its circumstances; all which the apostles had seen exactly verified in the event. Even when he hung upon the cross in agonies — agonies of body, and stronger agonies of mind, which might more have shaken the faith of his disciples, Nature bore witness to her Lord in awful signs of sym- pathy ; the sun, without any natural cause, withdrew his
509
light ; and in the moment that he yielded up the ghost, the earth shook and the rocks were rended.
From this series of wonders, to most of which he had been an eye-witness, had not St. Thomas more reason to expect the completion of Christ's prediction at the time appointed, than to shut his ears against the report of the other ten, of whose probity and veracity in the course of their attendance on their common Lord he must have had full experience ? Cases may possibly arise, in which the intrinsic improbability of the thing averred may outweigh the most positive and unexceptionable evidence ; and in which a wise man may be allowed to say, not, with Thomas, " I will not believe" (for a case can hardly be supposed in which testimony is to be of no weight), but he might say, " I will doubt:" but where ten men of fair character bear witness, each upon his own knowledge, to a fact which is in itself more probable than its opposite, I know not upon what ground their testimony can be questioned.
Such was the case before us. Where then can we look for the ground of the apostle's incredulity, but in the pre- judices of his own mind ? Possibly he might stand upon what he might term his right. Since each of the other ten had received the satisfaction of ocular demonstration, he might think he had a just pretence to expect and to in- sist upon the same. He had been no less than they at- tached, he might say, to his Master's person — no less an admirer of his doctrine — no less observant of his precepts — nor less a diligent though distant copier of his great example ; not less than the rest he revered and loved his memory ; he would not less rejoice to see him again alive; nor would he with less firmness and constancy, provided he might be indulged with the same evidence of the fact, bear witness to his resurrection, nor less cheerfully seal the glorious attestation with his blood : but for what reason could it be expected of him to believe, upon the testimony of the other ten, that for which each of them pretended to have received the immediate evidence of his own senses?
510
He never would believe that his kind Master, who knew his attachment — whose affection he had so often experienced, if he were really alive, would deny the honour and satis- faction of a personal interview to himself alone of all his old adherents.
If these were the apostle's sentiments, he did not fairly weigh the evidence that was before him of the fact in question ; but made this the condition of his believing it at all, — that it should be proved to him by evidence of one particular kind. Did he ask himself upon what evi- dence he and the Jews his cotemporaries believed in the divine authority of the laws of Moses? — upon what evi- dence they received as oracular the writings of the ancient prophets ?
A general revelation could never be, if no proof might be sufficient for a reasonable man but the immediate testi- mony of his own senses. The benefit of every revelation must in that case be confined to the few individuals to whom it should be first conveyed. The Mosaic institution could have been only for that perverse race which perished in the Wilderness through unbelief; and the preaching of the prophets, for those stubborn generations which refused to hearken, and underwent the judgments of God in their long captivity. These examples might have taught him that the advantage of ocular proof is no mark of God's partial favour for those to whom it may be granted. Were it not unreasonable to suppose that Enoch, and Noah, and Abraham, and Jacob, and Job, and Daniel, who saw the promises of the Messiah only afar off, were less in the favour of Heaven than they who lived in later times, when the promises began to take effect ?
Religious truth itself, and the evidence of religious truth, is imparted, like all other blessings, in various mea- sures and deo-rees, to different ao-es and different countries of the world, and to different individuals of the same country and of the same age. And of this no account is to be given, but that in which all good men will rest satisfied, — that
511
" known unto God are all his ways," and that " the Judge of all the earth will do what is right," Every man there- fore may be allowed to say that he will not believe without sufficient evidence ; but none can, without great presump- tion, pretend to stipulate for any particular kind of proof, and refuse to attend to any other, if that which he may think he should like best should not be set before him. This is indeed the very spirit of infidelity ; and this was the temper of those brethren of the rich man, in our Sa- viour's parable, who hearkened not to Moses and the pro- phets, and yet were expected to repent if one should arise from the dead : this is the conduct of modern unbelievers, who examine not the evidence of revelation as it actually stands, but insist that that sort of proof should be gene- rally exhibited which from the nature of the thing must always be confined to very few. The apostle Thomas, in the principles of his unbelief, too much resembled these uncandid reasoners. Yet let them not think to be shel- tered under his example, unless they will follow it in the better part, by a recantation of their errors and a confes- sion of the truth full and ingenuous as his, when once their hearts and understandings are convinced.
From this summary view of the evidence that St. Tho- mas might have found of our Lord's resurrection, before it was confirmed to him by a personal interview,— and from this state of the principles upon which alone his incredu- lity could be founded, — it may sufficiently appear that the reproof he received was not unmerited ; and we may see reason to admire and adore the affectionate mildness with which it was administered.
The same thing will still more appear, when it shall be shown, that in the belief of any thing upon such evidence as was at last exhibited to Thomas of our Lord's resurrec- tion there can be no merit ; and for this plain reason, that a belief resulting from such evidence is a necessary act of the understanding, in which the heart is totally unin- terested. An assent to full and present proof, from what-
512
ever that proof may arise — whetlier from the senses, from historical evidence, or from the deductions of reason, — an assent, I say, to proof that is in itself complete and full, when the mind holds it in immediate contemplation and comprehends and masters it, arises as necessarily from the nature of the understanding as the perception of external objects arises from the structure of the organs to which they are adapted. To perceive truth by its proper evi- dence, is of the formal nature of the rational mind ; as it is of the physical nature of the eye to see an object by the light that it reflects, or of the ear to hear the sounds which the air conveys to it. To discern the connexion between a fact and its evidence, a proposition and its proof, is a faculty fixed in the nature of the mind by God; which faculty the mind is pretty much at liberty to em- ploy or not, and hath a strange power of employing it in some instances perversely ; but when it is employed aright — when proof is brought into the mind's view, either by its own fair investigation or by the force of external ob- jects striking the bodily organs, assent and conviction must ensue. The eye may be shut; the ear may be stopped; the luiderstanding may turn itself away from unpleasing subjects : but the eye, when it is open, hath no power not to see; the ear, when open, hath no power not to hear; and the understanding hath no power not to know truth when the attention is turned to it. It matters not of what kind the proposition may be to which the under- standing assents in consequence of full proof; — the com- pleteness of the proof necessarily precludes the possibility of merit in the act of assenting. Now this was the case of Thomas, and indeed of all the apostles, — not with re- spect to the whole of their faith, but with respect to the particular fact of our Lord's resurrection; — the proof they had of it was full and absolute: Jesus in his well known person stands alive before them; and to believe, when they saw him alive, that he who had been dead was then living, could be nothing more meritorious than to believe
513
that he was dead when they saw the body laid in tlie grave.
I desire not to be Uiisunderstood. There may be much merit in the diligence, the candour, and sincerity with which a man inquires and investigates; — there may be merit in the conduct he pursues in consequence of par- ticular convictions. In the conduct of the apostles, there was much merit, under the conviction they at last attained of our Lord's resurrection — in their zeal to diffuse his doctrines — in their firmness in attesting his triumph over the grave, in defiance of the utmost rigour of perse- cution,— such merit as shall be rewarded with unfadino- crowns of glory: but in the mere act of believing a fact evidenced by the senses, or a proposition legitimately proved, of whatever kind, there can be none.
But here arises that most interesting question, Since there is confessedly no merit in that act of belief which is the result of ocular conviction, what is the merit of that faith which hath no such foundation — which " believes that which it hath not seen," that our Saviour should so emphatically pronounce it blessed?
I trust that I shall evince, by God's assistance, that this blessintr to the faithful standeth sure. But this o-reat subject may well demand a separate Discourse.
SERMON XLII.
Thomas, because tliou hast seen me, thou hast believed : blessed are they M'ho have not seen and yet have believed. — John xx. 29.
The propriety of the reproof addressed in these words
to the apostle hath been already shown. It was not his
fault that he did not believe before he was convinced ;
but that he had hastily set a resolution of unbelief, with-
2 L
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out attending to a proof which, however inferior to the evidence of sense, might have given him conviction.
It hath been shown besides, that a faith which is the result of the immediate testimony of the senses must be altogether destitute, as our Saviour intimates, of moral merit. Hence arises this interesting question, the last in my original division of the subject, which I now purpose to discuss, — Since there is no merit in believing upon ocular conviction, what is the merit of that faith which hath not that foundation? Is it that it is taken up upon slighter grounds? Is this possible in the nature of things, that the imperfection of the proof should enhance the merit of belief? Will it not follow, if this principle be once admitted, that where there is the least of proof there will be the most of this merit; and tliat the faith which is the most valuable in the sight of God is that which hath the least support and countenance from the understand- ing?— a proposition which the adversaries of our holy re- ligion would much rejoice that its professors should affirm. To clear these difficulties, I know no readier way, than to inquire on what grounds their faith for the most part is likely to be built, who believe, as all Christians do who at this day believe the gospel, without the evidence of their senses. From this inquiry, I hope to make appear both the certainty and the merit of our faith, — its cer- tainty, as resting on a foundation no less firm, though far less compulsive, than the evidence of sense itself; its merit, as a mixed act of the understanding and of the will — of the understanding, deducing its conclusions from the surest premises — of the will, submitting itself to the best of motives. Our faith, therefore, will appear to be an act in which the moral qualities of the mind are no less active than its reasoning faculties; and upon this account, it may claim a moral merit of which the involuntary assent of understanding present to sense or to necessary proof, must ever be divested.
What, then, is the ground upon which the faith of the
515
generality of Christians in the present ages is built, who all believe what they have not seen ? — I say, of the gene- rality of Christians; for whatever it may be which gives faith its merit in the sight of God, it is surely to be looked for not in any thing peculiar to the faith of the learned, but in the common faith of the plain, illiterate believer. What then is the ground of his conviction? Is it the his- torical evidence of the facts recorded in the gospels? Per- haps no facts of an equal antiquity may boast a historical evidence equally complete: and without some degree of this evidence there could be no faith: yet it is but a branch of the proof, and, if I mistake not, far from the most considerable part; for the whole of this evidence lies open but to a small proportion of the Christian world; it is such as many true believers, many whose names are written in the book of life, have neither the leisure nor the light to scrutinize so as to receive from this alone a suf- ficient conviction: in the degree in which it may be sup- posed to strike the generality of believers, it seems to be that which may rather finish a proof begun in other prin- ciples, than make by itself an entire demonstration.
What then is that which, in connexion with that por- tion of the historical evidence which common men may be supposed to perceive, affords to them a rational ground of conviction ? Is it the completion of prophecy ? This it- self must have its proof from history. To those who live when the things predicted come to pass, the original deli- very of the prophecy is a matter to be proved by historical evidence : to those who live after the things predicted are come to pass, both the delivery of the prophecy and the events in which it is supposed to be verified are points of history ; and moreover, by the figured language of pro- phecy, the evidence which it affords is of all the most re- moved from popular apprehension. What then is the great foundation of proof to those who are little read in history, and are ill qualified to decipher prophecy, and compare it wath the records of mankind? Plainly this, 2 L 2
51G
wliich the learned and the ignorant may equally compre- hend,— the intrinsic excellence of the doctrine, and the purity of the precept ; — a doctrine which conveys to the rudest understanding just and exalted notions of the Di- vine perfections ; exacts a worship purged of all hypocrisy and superstition — the most adapted to the nature of him who offers — the most worthy, if aught may be worthy, of the Being that accepts it; prescribes the most rational duties — things intrinsically the best, and the most con- ducive to private and to public good ; proposes rewards adequate to the vast desires and capacities of the rational soul; promises mercy to infirmity, without indulgence to vice ; holds out pardon to the penitent offender, in that particular way which secures to a frail, imperfect race the •blessings of a mild government, and secures to the majesty of the Universal Governor all the useful ends of punish- ment ; and builds this scheme of redemption on a history of man and Providence — of man's original corruption, and the various interpositions of Providence for his gra- dual recovery,— which clears up many perplexing ques- tions concerning the origin of evil, the unequal distribu- tion of present happiness and misery, and the disadvan- tages on the side of virtue in this constitution of things, which seem inexplicable upon any other principles.
This excellence of the Christian doctrine considered in itself, as without it no external evidence of revelation could be suflScient, so it gives to those w^io are qualified to perceive it that internal probability to the whole scheme, that the external evidence, in that proportion of it in which it may be supposed to be understood by common men, may be well allowed to complete the proof. This, I am persuaded, is the consideration that chiefly weighs with those who are quite unable to collect and unite for them- selves the scattered parts of that multifarious proof which history and prophecy afford.
I would not be understood to disparage the proof of revelation from historical evidence or from prophecy :
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-.Jifl rtielation
517
when 1 speak of that part of it which lies w of unlettered men as small, I speak of it wi its whole. I am satisfied, that whoever is qn a view of but one half, or a much less prop proof of that kind which is now extant in th6 be overpowered wath the force of it. Some tl\ ways be who will profit by this proof, and will ue curious to seek after it ; and mankind in general will be advan- taged by their lights. But of those in any one age of the world who may be capable of receiving the full benefit of this proof, I question whether the number be greater than of those in the apostolic age who were in a situation to receive the benefit of ocular demonstration. And I would endeavour to ascertain what common ground of conviction there may be for all men, of which the ignorant and the learned may equally take advantage ; and I took this in- quiry, in order to discover wherein that merit of fiiith con- sists which may entitle to the blessing pronounced in the text and in various other parts of Scripture ; for whatever that may be from which true faith derives the merit, we are undoubtedly to look for it, not in any thing peculiar to the faith of the learned, but in the common faith of the plain, illiterate believer. Now, the ground of his convic- tion, that which gives force and vigour to whatever else of the evidence may come within his view, is evidently his sense and consciousness of the excellence of the gospel doctrine. This is an evidence which is felt, no doubt, in its full force by many a man who can hold no argument ! about the nature of its certainty — with him who holds the plough or tends the loom, who hath never been sufficiently at leisure from the laborious occupations of necessitous life to speculate upon moral truth and beauty in the ab- stract ; for a quick discernment and a truth of taste in religious subjects proceed not from that subtilty or refine- ment of the understanding by which men are qualified to figure in the arts of rhetoric and disputation, but from the moral qualities of the heart. A devout and honest mind
c# .'* ># -^^'f i«- .^
^;n^^'^^^^:^3.
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vvbicli the learned and the ignorant may equally compre- hend,— the intrinsic excellence of the doctrine, and the purity of the precept ; — a doctrine which conveys to the rudest understanding just and exalted notions of the Di- vine perfections ; exacts a worship purged of all hypocrisy and superstition — the most adapted to the nature of him who offers — the most worthy, if aught may be worthy, of the Being that accepts it; prescribes the most rational duties — things intrinsically the best, and the most con- ducive to private and to public good ; proposes rewards adequate to the vast desires and capacities of the rational soul ; promises mercy to infirmity, without indulgence to vice ; holds out pardon to the penitent offender, in that particular way which secures to a frail, imperfect race the blessings of a mild government, and secures to the majesty of the Universal Governor all the useful ends of punish- ment ; and builds this scheme of redemption on a history of man and Providence — of mans original corruption, and the various interpositions of Providence for his gra- dual recovery,- — which clears up many perplexing ques- tions concerning the origin of evil, the unequal distribu- tion of present happiness and misery, and the disadvan- tages on the side of virtue in this constitution of things, which seem inexplicable upon any other principles.
This excellence of the Christian doctrine considered in itself, as without it no external evidence of revelation could be sufficient, so it gives to those who are qualified to perceive it that internal probability to the whole scheme, that the external evidence, in that proportion of it in which it may be supposed to be understood by common men, may be well allowed to complete the proof. This, I am persuaded, is the consideration that chiefly weighs with those who are quite unable to collect and unite for them- selves the scattered parts of that multifarious proof which history and prophecy afl[brd.
I would not be understood to disparage the proof of revelation from historical evidence or from prophecy :
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when I speak of tluit part of it which lies within the reach of unlettered men as small, I speak of it with reference to its whole. I am satisfied, that whoever is qualified to take a view of but one half, or a much less proportion of the proof of that kind which is now extant in the world, will be overpowered with the force of it. Some there will al- ways be who will profit by this proof, and will be curious to seek after it ; and mankind in general will be advan- taged by their lights. But of those in any one age of the world who may be capable of receiving the full benefit of this proof, I question whether the number be greater than of those in the apostolic age who were in a situation to receive the benefit of ocular demonstration. And I would endeavour to ascertain what common ground of conviction there may be for all men, of which the ignorant and the learned may equally take advantage ; and I took this in- quiry, in order to discover wdierein that merit of faith con- sists wdiich may entitle to the blessing pronounced in the text and in various other parts of Scripture ; for whatever that may be from which true faith derives the merit, we are undoubtedly to look for it, not in any thing peculiar to the faith of the learned, but in the common faith of the plain, illiterate believer. Now, the ground of his convic- tion, that which gives force and vigour to whatever else of the evidence may come within his view, is evidently his sense and consciousness of the excellence of the gospel doctrine. This is an evidence which is felt, no doubt, in its full force by many a man who can hold no argument about the nature of its certainty — with him who holds the plough or tends the loom, who hath never been sufficiently at leisure from the laborious occupations of necessitous life to speculate upon moral truth and beauty in the ab- stract ; for a quick discernment and a truth of taste in religious subjects proceed not from that subtilty or refine- ment of the understanding by which men are qualified to figure in the arts of rhetoric and disputation, but from the moral qualities of the heart. A devout and honest mind
51-8
refers the doctrines and precepts of religion to that ex- emplar of the good and the fair which it carries about within itself in its own feelings ; by their agreement with this, it understands their excellence : understanding their excellence, it is disposed to embrace them and to obey them ; and in this disposition listens with candour to the external evidence. It may seem, that by reducing faith to these feelings as its first principles, we resolve the grounds of our conviction into a previous disposition of the mind to believe the thing propounded, — that is, it may be said, into a prejudice. But this is a mistake : I sup- pose no favour of the mind for the doctrine propounded but what is founded on a sense and perception of its pu- rity and excellence, — none but what is the consequence of that perception, and in no degree the cause of it. We suppose no previous disposition of the mind, but a general sense and approbation of what is good ; which is never called a prejudice but by those who have it not, and by a gross abuse of language. The sense and approbation of what is good is no infirmity, but the perfection of our na- ture. Of our nature, did I say? — the approbation of what is good, joined with the perfect understanding of it, is the perfection of the Divine,
The reason that the authority of these internal percep- tions of moral truth and good is often called in question is this, — that from the great diversity that is found in the opinions of men, and the different judgments that they seem to pass upon the same things, it is too hastily inferred that these original perceptions in various men are various, and cannot therefore be to any the test of universal truth. A Christian, for example, imagines a natural impurity in sensual gratifications; a Mahometan is persuaded that they will make a part of the happiness of the righteous in a future state : the Christian reverences his Bible because it prohibits these indulgences ; the Mahometan loves the Koran because it permits them. Whence, it is said, is this diversity of opinion, unless the mind of the Christian
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perceives those things as impure which the mind of the Mahometan equally perceives as innocent? From these equal but various perceptions they severally infer the pro- bability of their various faiths ; and who shall say that the one judges more reasonably than the other, if both judge from perceptions of which they are conscious ? Yet they judge diflerently ; both therefore cannot judge aright, un- less right judgment may be different from itself. Must it not then be granted, either that these perceptions are un- certain and fallacious, — or, which may seem more reason- able, since no man can have a higher certainty than that which arises from a consciousness of his own feelings, that every man hath his own private standard of moral truth and excellence, purity and turpitude ; that right and wrong- are nothing in themselves, but are to every man what his particular conscience makes them ; and that the universal idea of moral beauty, of which some men have affected to be so vehemently enamoured, and which is set up as the ultimate test of truth in the highest speculations, is a mere fiction of the imagination ?
It is not to be wondered that many have been carried away by the fair appearance of this argument, in which nothing seems to be alleged that is open to objection. Nevertheless, the conclusion is false, and the whole rea- soning is nothing better than a cheat and a lie; the pre- mises on which it is founded being a false fact, with much art tacitly taken for granted. The whole proceeds on this assumption, — that men, in forming their judgments of things, do always refer to the original perceptions of their own minds, that is, to conscience. Deny this, and the diversity of opinions will no longer be a proof of a diver- sity of original perceptions ; from which supposed diversity the fallaciousness of that perception was inferred. And is not this to be denied ? Is it not rather the truth, that no man is at all times attentive to these perceptions? that many men never attend to them at all ? that in many they are stilled and overcome, — in some, by education, fashion.
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or example ; in others, by the desperate wickedness of their own hearts? Now, the mind in which this ruin hath been effected hath lost indeed its natural criterion of truth ; and judges not by its original feelings, but by opinions taken up at random. Nevertheless, the nature of things is not altered by the disorder of perverted minds ; nor is the evidence of things the less to those who perceive them as they are, because there are those who have not that per- ception. No man the less clearly sees the light, whose own eye is sound, because it is not seen by another who is blind ; nor are the distinctions of colour less to all man- kind, because a disordered eye confounds them. The same reasoning may be applied to our mental perceptions : the Christian's discernment of the purity of the gospel doc- trine is not the less clear — his veneration for it arising from that discernment not the less rational, because a Ma- hometan may, with equal ardour, embrace a corrupt sys- tem, and may be insensible to the greater beauty of that which he rejects. In a word, every man implicitly tinists his bodily senses concerning external objects placed at a convenient distance ; and every man may, with as good a reason, put even a greater trust in the perceptions of which he is conscious in his own mind ; which indeed are nothing else than the first notices of truth and of Himself which the Father of Spirits imparts to subordinate minds, and which are to them the first principles and seeds of intel- lect.
I have been led into an abstruse disquisition ; but I trust that I have shown, and in a manner that plain men may understand, that there is an infallible certainty in our natural sense of moral right and wrong, purity and turpi- tude ; and that I have exposed the base sophistry of that ensnaring argument by which some men would persuade the contrary : consequently, the internal probability of our most holy religion is justly inferred from the natural sense of the excellence of its doctrines; and a faith built on the view of that probability rests on the most solid foun-
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elation. The external evidence which is to complete the proof is much the same to every man at this day as the external evidence of the resurrection was to Thomas upon the report of the other ten apostles ; with this diiference, — that those wonderful facts of our Saviour's life which Thomas knew by ocular proof, we receive from the testi- mony of others.
The credibility of this testimony it is not difficult for any one to estimate, who considers how improbable it is that the preachers of a righteous doctrine, a pure mora- lity, a strict religion, should themselves be impostors, — how improbable that the apostles and first preachers could be deceived in things which passed before their eyes ; and how much credit is naturally due to a number of well- informed men, of unimpeached character, attesting a thing to their own loss and at the hazard of their lives. This is the summary of the external evidence of Christianity as it may appear to men in general — to the most illiterate who have had any thing of a Christian education. The general view of it, joined to the intrinsic probability of the doctrine, may reasonably work that determined con- viction which may incline the illiterate believer to turn a deaf ear to objections which the learned only can be competent to examine; and to repose his mind in this persuasion, — that there is no objection to be brought, which, if understood, would appear to him sufficient to outweigh the mass of evidence that is before him.
It is to be observed, that all the writers who have attacked the external evidence, seem to have taken it for granted that the thing to be proved is in itself improbable. None, I believe, hath been so inconsiderate as to assert, that if the Christian scheme were probable in itself, the evidence we have of it, with all the difficulties they have been able to raise in it, would not be amply sufficient. That they do not perceive the intrinsic probability of Christianity," — those of them, I mean, who discover a due respect for natural religion, — that these do not perceive
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the intrinsic probability of the doctrines of our religion, I would not willingly impute to any moral depravity of heart : I will rather suppose that they have attended singly to the marvel of the story, and have never taken a near view of the beauty and perfection of the moral and theological system.
From this general state of the principles on which the faith of Christians in these ages may be supposed to rest, when none can have the conviction of ocular proof, it is not difficult to understand what is the peculiar merit of that faith which believes what it hath not seen, whereby it is entitled to our Saviour's blessing. The merit of this faith is not to be placed merely in its consequences, in its effects on the believer's life and actions. It is certain, that faith which hath not these effects is dead : there can be no sincere and salutary faith, where its natural fruit, a virtuous and holy life, is wanting. But faith, if I mistake not, hath, besides, another merit more properly its own, not acquired from its consequences, but conveyed to it from the principles in which it takes its rise. These, indeed, are what gives to every action, much more than its consequences, its proper character and de- nomination ; and the principles in which faith is founded appear to be that integrity, that candour, that sincerity of mind, that love of goodness, that reverent sense of God's perfections, which are in themselves the highest of moral endowments and the sources of all other virtues, if indeed there be any virtue which is not contained in these. Faith, therefore, in this view of it, is the full assemblage and sum of all the Christian graces, and less the beginning than the perfection of the Christian character : but if in any instance the force of external evidence should work an unwilling belief where these qualities of the heart are wanting, in the mere act of forced belief there is no merit : " the devils believe and tremble." Hence, we may under- stand upon what ground and with what equity and reason salvation is promised in Scripture to faith, without the ex-
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press stipulation of any other condition. Every thing that could be named as a condition of salvation on the gospel plan is included in the principle no less than in the effect of that faith to vv^hich the promises are made.
On the other hand, it is easy to perceive that the sen- tence of condemnation denounced ao^ainst the iinbelievino- is not to be applied to the ignorance or the error of the understanding; but to that unbelief which is the proper opposite of the faith which shall inherit the blessing, — that which arises from a dishonest resistance of conviction — from a distaste for moral truth — from an alienation of the mind from God and goodness. This unbelief contains in it all those base and odious qualities which are the op- posites of the virtue of which true faith is composed : it must be " nigh unto cursing," inasmuch as in the very essence and formality of its nature it is an accursed thing.
Lest any thing that has been said should seem to dero- gate from the merit of the apostles' faith, I would observe, that whatever degree of evidence they might have for some part of their belief, in particular for the important fact of our Lord's resurrection, they had ample exercise for it in other points, where the evidence of their sense was not to be procured, or any external evidence that might be equally compulsive, for the whole of their faith. For the great doctrines of the Father's acceptance of Christ's sacrifice of himself — of the efficacy of the Media- torial intercession — of the ordinary influences of the Holy Spirit — of the resurrection of the body — of the future happiness of the righteous and misery of the wicked — of the future judgment to be administered by Christ, — for these and many other articles, the apostles had not more than we the testimony of their senses : it is not, therefore, to be imagined that they were deficient in that merito- rious faith which belie.veth what it hath not seen ; nor is the reproof to Thomas to be extended to the whole of his conduct, but confined to that individual act of incredulity which occasioned it. Thomas, with the rest of the dele-
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gated band, set the world a olorious example of an active faith, which they are the happiest who best can imitate : and, seeing faith hath been shown to partake in its begin- nings of the evidence of consciousness itself, and to hold of those first principles of knowledge and intellect of which it cannot be doubted that they are the immediate gift of God, let us all believe ; and let us pray to the Fa- ther to shed more and more of the light of his Holy Spirit, and to help our unbelief.
SERMON XLIII.
And every man that hath this hope in liim purltieth himself, even as He is pure. — 1 John iii. 3.*
That the future bliss of the saints in glory will in part at least consist in certain exquisite sensations of delight, — not such as the debauched imagination of the Arabian impostor prepared for his deluded followers, in his para- dise of dalliance and revelry, — but that certain exquisite sensations of delight, produced by external objects acting upon corporeal organs, will constitute some part of the happiness of the just, is a truth with no less certainty de- ducible from the terms in which the Holy Scriptures de- scribe the future life, than that corporal sufferance, on the other hand, will make a part of the punishment of the wicked.
Indeed, were holy writ less explicit upon the subject than it is, either proposition, that the righteous shall be corporally blessed, and the wicked corporally punished, seems a necessary and immediate inference from the pro- mised resurrection of the body : for to what purpose of God's wisdom or of his justice — to what purpose of the
* Preached at the Anniversary of tlie Institution of the Magdalen Hospital, April 22^ 1795.
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creature's own existence, should tlie soul either of saint or sinner be reunited to the body, as we are taught in Scrip- ture to believe the souls of both shall be, unless the body is in some way or another to be the instrument of enjoy- ment to the one and of sufiering to the other? Or how is the union of any mind to any body to be understood, without a constant sympathy between the two, by virtue of which they are reciprocally appropriated to each other, in such sort that this individual mind becomes the soul of that individual body, and that body the body of this mind, • —the energies of the mind being modified after a certain manner by the state and circumstances of the body to which it is attached, and the motions of the body go- verned under certain limitations by the will and desires of the mind ? Without this sympathy, the soul could have no dominion over the body it is supposed to animate, nor bear, indeed, any nearer relation to it than to any other mass of extraneous matter : this, which I call my body, would in truth no more be mine than the body of the planet Jupiter : I could have no more power to put my own limbs in motion, as I find I do, by the mere act of my own will, than to invert the revolutions of the spheres ; — which were in effect to say, that no such thing as animation could take place. But this sympathy be- tween soul and body being once established, it is impos- sible but that the conscious soul must be pleasurably or otherwise affected, according to the various impressions of external objects upon the body which it animates. Thus, that in the future state of retribution, the good will enjoy corporal pleasure and the bad suffer corporal pain, would be a necessary consequence of that reunion of the soul and the body which we are taught to expect at the last day, had the Holy Scriptures given no other informa- tion upon the subject.
But they are explicit in the assertion of this doctrine. With respect to the wicked, the case is so very plain that it is unnecessary to dwell upon the proof. With respect
o26 to tlie righteous, the thing migjit seem more doubtful, ex- cept so far as it is deducible, in what manner I have shown, from the general doctrine of the resurrection, — were it not for one very explicit and decisive passage in the second of St. Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians. This passage hath unfortunately lost somewhat, in our public translation, of the precision of the original text, by an injudicious insertion of unnecessary words, meant for illustration, which have nothing answering to them in the original, and serve only to obscure what they were intended to elucidate. By the omission of these unne- cessary words, without an}^ other amendment of the translation, the passage in our English Bibles will be re- stored to its genuine perspicuity ; and it will be found to contain a direct and positive assertion of the doctrine we have laid down. " We must all appear," says the apostle, "before the judgment-seat of Christ." And this is the end for which all must appear before that awful tribunal, • — namely, " That every one may receive the things in the body, according to that he hath done, whether good or ■ bad ;"* that is to say, that every one may receive in his bod}^ such things as shall be analogous to the quality of his deeds, whether good or bad, — good things in the body, if his deeds have been good ; bad things, if bad. Thus, the end for which all are destined to appear before
* Tec ^la rov ax'ij.o'.To; — not ill rendered by the Vulgate, propria cor- poris. But this rendering, though the Latin words, rightly understood, convey the true sense of the Greelc, has given occasion, through a mis- ap])rehension of the true force of the word propria, to those paraphras- tic renderings which we find in our English Bible,' and in many other modern translations ; which entiiely conceal the particular interest the body hath in this passage. To the same misapprehension of the true sense of the Vulgate, we owe, as I suspect, a various reading of the Greek text — ihcx, for ra ^*«, which appears in the Complutensian and some old editions ; and is very injudiciously approved by Grotius, and by Mills, if I understand him right ; though it has not the authority of a single Greek manuscript, or the decided authority of any one of the Greek fathers, to support it. The Syriac renders the true sense of the Greek, rcc ^ix rov auixoiTo;, with precision and without ambiguity.
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the judgment-seat of Christ is declared by the apostle to be this, — that every individual may be rewarded with corporal enjoyment, or punished with corporal pain, ac- cording as his behaviour in this life shall have been found to have been generally good or bad, upon an exact account taken of his good and evil deeds.
What those external enjoyments will be which will make a portion of our future bliss — in what particulars they will consist, we are not informed ; probably for this reason, — because our faculties, in their present imperfect and debased state, the sad consequence of Adam's fall, are not capable of receiving the information. And yet we are not left destitute of some general knowledge, of no inconsiderable importance.
It is explicitly revealed to us, that these joys will be exquisite in a degree of which, in our present state, we have neither sense nor apprehension. " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, such good things as God hath pre- pared for them that love him," Numberless and ravish- ing are the beauties which the mortal eye beholds in the vafious works of creation and of art ! Elegant and of end- less variety the entertainments which are provided for the ear, — whether it delight to listen to the sober narratives of history, or the wild fictions of romance, — whether it hearken to the grave lessons of the moralist, to the ab- struse demonstrations of science, the round periods of elo- quence, the sprightly flourishes of rhetoric, the smooth numbers and bold flights of poetry, or catch the enchant- ing sounds of harmony — that poetry which sings in its inspired strains the wonders of creating power and re- deeming love — that harmony which fans the pure flame of devotion, and wafts our praises upon its swelling notes up to the eternal throne of God ! Infinite is the multitude of pleasurable forms which Fancy's own creation can at will call forth : but in all this inexhaustible treasure of external gratifications with which this present world is
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stored, — amidst all the objects which move the senses with pleasure, and fill the admiring soul with rapture and delight, — nothing is to be found which may convey to our present faculties so much as a remote conception of those transporting scenes which the better world in which they shall be placed shall hereafter present to the children of God's love.
It is farther revealed to us, that these future enjoyments of the body will be widely different in kind from the plea- sures which in our present state result even from the most innocent and lawful gratifications of the corporeal appe- tites. " In the resurrection, they neither marry," saith our Lord, "nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels of God in heaven."
But this is not all : another circumstance is revealed to us, which opens to our hope so high a prospect as must fill the pious soul no less with wonder than with love. It is plainly intimated, that the good things which the righ- teous will receive in their bodies will be the same in kind, — far inferior, doubtless, in degree, — but the same they will be in kind, which are enjoyed by the human nature of our Lord, in its present state of exaltation at the right hand of God. It is revealed to us, that our capacity of receiving the good things prepared for us will be the effect of a change to be wrought in our bodies at Christ's second coming, by which they will be transformed into the like- ness of the glorified body of our Lord. " The first man," saith St. Paul, " was of the earth, moulded of the clay; the second man is the Lord from heaven." " And as we have borne the image of the man of cleiy, we shall also bear the image of the man in heaven." And in another place, " We look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself." This change the same apostle in another place calls " the redemption of the body;" and he speaks of it as " the adoption" for
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which we wait. The apostle St. John, in the former part of the Discourse from which my text is taken, speaks of this glorious transformation as the utmost that we know with certainty about our future condition. " Beloved," he saith, " now we are the sons of God : and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know, that when He shall appear'" (that is, when Christ shall appear, of whose appearance the apostle had spoken just before in the former chapter : we know this, though we know nothing else, that when Christ shall appear), " we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." To this declaration the apostle subjoins the solemn admonition which I have chosen for my text : " and every man that hath this hope in him," this hope of being transformed in his body into the like- ness of his glorified Lord, '' purifies himself, as He is pure."
For the right understanding of this admonition, it is of importance to remark, that the pronoun " He" is to be expounded not of God, but of Christ. Every one who seriously cherishes this glorious hope "purifies himself, as Christ is pure." It is the purity, therefore, of the human nature in Christ Jesus, not the essential purity of the Divine nature, that is proposed to us as an example for our imitation. An inattention to this distinction was the cause of much folly in the speculations, and of much im- purity in the lives, of many of the ancient Mystics. The purity of the Divine nature is one of the incommunicable and inimitable perfections of God : it consists in that dis- tance and separation of the Deity from all inferior natures which is the sole prerogative of Self-existence and Omni- potence. Sufficient in himself to his own happiness, and to the purposes of his own will, it is impossible that God can be moved by any desires towards things external, — except it be in the delight he takes in the goodness of his creatures ; and this ultimately resolves itself into his self- complacency in his own perfections. The Mystics of antiquity, rightly conceiving this purity of the Divine 2 M
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nature, but not attending to the infinite distance between the first intellect and the intelligent principle in man, absurdly imagined that this essential purity of God him- self was what they were required to imitate : then observ- ing, what plainly is the fact, that all the vices of men proceed from the impetuosity of those appetites which have their origin in the imperfections and infirmities of the animal nature, — but forgetting that the irregularity of these appetites is no necessary effect of the union of the soul to the body, but a consequence of that depravity of both which was occasioned by the first transgression, — they fell into this extravagance, — they conceived, that the mind, in itself immaculate and perfect, became contami- nated with vicious inclinations, and weakened in its powers, by its connexion with the matter of the body, to which they ascribed all impurity: hence they conceived, that the mind, to recover its original purity and vigour, must abstract itself from all the concerns of the animal nature, and exercise its powers, apart as it were from the body, upon the objects of pure intellect. This effort of enthusiasm they vainly called an imitation of the Divine purity, by which they fancied they might become united to God. This folly was the most harmless when it led to nothing worse than a life of inoffensive quietism; which, however, rendered the individual useless in society, re- gardless of the relative duties, and studious only of that show of " will worship and neglecting of the body" which is condemned by St. Paul. But among some of a warmer temperament, the consequences were more pernicious. Finding that total abstraction from sense at which they aimed impracticable, and still affecting in the intelligent part parity with God, they took shelter under this prepos- terous conceit, — they said, that impurity so adhered to matter, that it could not be communicated to mind ; that the rational soul was not in any degree sullied or debased by the vicious appetites of the depraved animal nature: and under this whether serious persuasion or hypocritical
531
pretence, they profanely boasted of an intimate commu- nion of their souls with God, while they openly wallowed in the grossest impurities of the flesh. These errors and these enormities had been prevented, had it been under- stood that it is not the purity of the Divine nature in itself, but the purity of the human nature in Christ, which reli- gion proposes to man's imitation.
But again: the purity of the human nature in Christ, which we are required to imitate, is not that purity which the manhood in Christ now enjoys in its present state of exaltation ; for even that will not be attainable to fallen man, till "the redemption of the body' shall have taken place: the purity which is our present example is the purity of Christ's life on earth in his state of humiliation; in which " he was tempted in all things like unto us, and yet was without sin."' In what that purity consisted, may be best learnt in the detail by diligent study and meditation of Christ's holy life. A general notion of it may easily be drawn from our Lord's enumeration of the things that are the most opposite to it, and are the chief causes of defilement: "These," saith our Lord, "are the things which defile a man, — evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies."
Of these general defilements the most difficult to be entirely escaped are the three of evil thoughts, adulteries, and fornications. Few have hardened their hearts to the cruelty of murder, or their foreheads against the shame of theft or perjury; few are capable of the impiety of di- rect blasphemy : but to the solicitations of what are called the softer passions, we are apt to yield with less repug- nance; probably for this reason, — that neither the injury of our neighbour, nor a sordid self-advantage, nor the affront of God, being so immediately the object of the act in these as in the other instances, we are not equally de- terred from the crime by any atrocious malignity or dis- gusting meanness that it carries in its very first aspect. Hence these are the sins with which the generality of 2 M 2
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mankind, in the gaiety of their thoughtless hearts, are most easily beset; and perhaps very few indeed hold in such constant and severe restraint as might be deemed any thing of an imitation of Christ's example, the wan- derings of a corrupt imagination, the principal seat of fallen mans depravity, toward the enticing objects of illicit pleasures.
For this reason, the Holy Scriptures with particular earnestness enjoin an abstinence from these defilements. " Flee from fleshly lusts," says St. Peter, " which war against the soul." And to these pollutions the admoni- tion in the text seems to have a particular regard; for the original word which we render " pure" is most pro- perly applied to the purity of a virgin.
" Purifies himself as he is pure." Would God, a better conformity to the example of his purity than ac- tually obtains were to be found in the lives of nominal Christians ! — the numbers would be greater which might entertain a reasonable hope that they shall be made like to him when he appeareth. But, thanks be to God, re- pentance, in this as in other cases — genuine, sincere repentance, shall stand the sinner in the stead of inno- cence: the penitent is allowed to wash the stains even of these pollutions in the Redeemer's blood.
By the turn of the expression in my text, the apostle intimates, that every one's purification from defilements, which in a greater or a less degree few have not con- tracted— the individual's personal purification, must, under God, depend principally upon himself — upon his care to watch over the motions of his own heart — upon his vigilance to guard against temptations from without — upon his meditation of Christ's example — upon his assi- duity to seek in prayer the necessary succour of God's grace. Much, however, may be done for the purification of the public manners, by wise and politic institutions; — in which the first object should be, to guard and secure the sanctity of the female character, and to check the pro-
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gress of its incipient corruption; for the most effectual restraint upon the vicious passions of men ever will be a general fashion and habit of virtue in the lives of the women.
This principle appears indeed to have been well under- stood and very generally adopted in the policy of all civi- lized nations ; in which the preservation of female chastity, in all ages and in all parts of the world, hath been an ob- ject of prime concern. Of various means that have been used for its security, none seem so well calculated to at- tain the end, nor have any other proved so generally suc- cessful, as the practice which hath long prevailed in this and other European countries, of releasing our women from the restraints imposed upon them by the jealousy of Eas- tern manners; but under this indispensable condition, that the female, in whatever rank, who once abuses her liberty to bring a stain upon her character, shall from that mo- ment be consigned to indelible disgrace, and expelled for the whole remainder of her life from the society of the virtuous of her own sex. But yet, as imperfection attends on all things human, this practice, however generally con- ducive to its end, hath its inconveniences, I might say its mischiefs.
It is one great defect, that by the consent of the world (for the thing stands upon no other ground), the whole in- famy is made to light upon one party only in the crime of two ; and the man, who for the most part is the author, not the mere accomplice of the woman's guilt, and for that reason is the greater delinquent, is left unpunished and uncensured. This mode of partial punishment af- fords not to the weaker sex the protection which injustice and sound policy is their due against the arts of the se- ducer. The Jewish law set an example of a better policy and more equal justice, when, in the case of adultery, it condemned both parties to an equal punishment; which indeed was nothing less than death.
A worse evil, a mischief, attending the severity, the
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salutary severity upon the whole, of our dealing with the lapsed female, is this, — that it proves an obstacle almost insurmountable to her return into the paths of virtue and sobriety, from which she hath once deviated. The first thing- that happens, upon the detection of her shame, is, that she is abandoned by her friends, in resentment of the disgrace she hath brought upon her family; she is driven from the shelter of her father's house ; she finds no refuge in the arms of her seducer, — his sated passion loathes the charms he hath enjoyed ; she gains admittance at no hos- pitable door; she is cast a wanderer upon the streets, without money, without a lodging, without food : in this forlorn and hopeless situation, suicide or prostitution is the alternative to which she is reduced. Thus, the very possibility of repentance is almost cut off; unless it be such repentance as may be exercised by the terrified sinner in her last agonies, perishing in the open streets, under the merciless pelting of the elements, of cold and hunger and a broken heart. And yet the youth, the inexperience, the gentle manners once, of many of these miserable vic- tims of mans seduction, plead hard for mercy, if mercy might be consistent with the safety of the treasure we so sternly guard. We have high authority to say, that these fallen women are not of all sinners the most incapable of penitence — not the most unlikely to be touched with a sense of their guilt — not the most insusceptible of religious improvement; they are not of all sinners the most without hope, if timely opportunity of repentance were afforded them : sinners such as these, upon John the Baptist's first preaching, found their way into the kingdom of heaven, before the Pharisees, with all their outward show of sanc- tity and self-denial.
This declaration of our Lord justifies the views of this charitable institution, which provides a retreat for these wretched outcasts of society, — not for those only who by a single fault, seldom without its extenuations, have forfeited the protection of their nearest friends; but even for those,
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generally the most unpitied but not always the most un- deserving of pity among the daughters of Eve, whom desperation, the effect of their first false step, hath driven to the lowest walks of vulgar prostitution. In the retire- ment of this peaceful mansion — withdrawn from the temptations of the world — concealed from the eye of public scorn — protected from the insulting tongue of ob- loquy— provided with the necessaries of life, though de- nied its luxuries — furnished with religious instruction, and with employment suited to their several abilities — they have leisure to reflect on their past follies; they are rescued from despair, that worst enemy of the sinner's soul ; they are placed in a situation to recover their lost habits of virtuous industry — the softness of their native manners, and to make their peace with their offended God.
The best commendation of this charity is the success with which its endeavours, by God's blessing, have been crowned. Of three thousand women admitted since the first institution, two-thirds, upon a probable computation formed upon the average of four years, have been saved from the gulf in which they had well nigh sunk, restored to the esteem of their friends, to the respect of the world, to the comforts of the present life, and raised from the death of sin unto the life of righteousness and the hope of a glorious immortality.
Happier far their lot than that of their base seducers ! who, not checked, like these, in their career of guilty pleasure, by any frowns or censures of the world, " have rejoiced themselves in their youth" without restraint — " have walked," without fear and without thought, " in the ways of their heart, and in the sight of their eyes" — and at last perhaps solace the wretched decrepitude of a vicious old age with a proud recollection of the triumphs of their early manhood over unsuspecting woman's frailty; nor have once paused to recollect, that *'God for these things will bring them into judgment." But with Him is
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laid up the cause of ruined innocence: he hath said, and he will make it good, " Vengeance is mine, and I will repay."
SERMON XLIV.
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. — Romans xiii, 1.*
The freedom of dispute, in which for several years past it hath been the folly in this country to indulge, upon matters of such high importance as the origin of govern- ment and the authority of sovereigns, — the futility of the principles which the assertors, as they have been deemed, of the natural rights of men, allege as the foundation of that semblance of power which they would be thought willing to leave in the hands of the supreme magistrate (principles rather calculated to palliate sedition than to promote the peace of society and add to the security of go- vernment),— this forwardness to dispute about the limits of the sovereign's power, and the extent of the people's rights, with this evident desire to set civil authority upon a foun- dation on which it cannot stand secure, — argues, it should seem, that something is forgotten among the writers who have presumed to treat these curious questions, and among those talkers who, with little knowledsfe or reflection of their own, think they talk safely after so high authorities : it surely is forgotten, that whatever praise may be due to the philosophers of the heathen world, who, in order to settle, not to confound the principles of the human con- duct, set themselves to investigate the source of the obli- gations of morality and law, — whatever tenderness may
* Preached before the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, January 30, 1793 ) being the Anniversary of the Martyrdom of King Charles the First.
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be due to the errors into which they would inevitably fall, in their speculations concernuig- the present condition of mankind, and the apparent constitution of the moral world — of which, destitute as they were of the light of revela- tion, they knew neither the beginning- nor the end, — the Christian is possessed of a written rule of conduct deli- vered from on high, which is treated with profane contempt if reference be not had to it upon all questions of duty, or if its maxims are tortured from their natural and obvious sense to correspond with the precarious conclusions of any theory spun from the human brain: it hath been forgotten, that Christians are possessed of authentic records of the first ages, and of the very beginning of mankind, which for their antiquity alone, independent of their Divine au- thority, might claim to be consulted in all inquiries, where the resolution of the point in question depends upon the history of man.
From these records it appears, that the Providence of God was careful to give a beginning to the human race, in that particular way which might for ever bar the exist- ence of the whole or of any large portion of mankind in that state which hath been called the state of nature. Mankind from the beginning never existed otherwise than in society and under government: whence follows this important consequence, — that to build the authority of princes, or of the chief magistrate under whatever deno- mination, upon any compact or agreement between the individuals of a multitude living previously in the state of nature, is in truth to build a reality upon a fiction. That government, in various forms, is now subsisting in the world, is a fact not easily to be denied or doubted; that the state of nature ever did exist, is a position of which proof is wanting : that it existed not in the earliest ages, the pretended time of its existence, is a fact of which proof is not wanting, if credit may be given to the Mosaic records : but to derive governments which now arc from a supposed previous condition of mankind wliich never was,
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is at the best an absurd and unphilosophical creation of something out of nothing.
But this absurdity is in truth but the least part of the mischief which this ill-conceived theory draws after it. Had what is called the state of nature, — though a thing so unnatural hath little title to the name, — but had this state been in fact the primeval condition of mankind ; that is, had the world been at first peopled with a multitude of individuals no otherwise related than as they had partaken of the same internal nature and carried the same external form — without distinct property, yet all possessing equal right to what they might have strength or cunning to ap- propriate each to himself of the earth's common store — without any governor, head, or guardian, — no government could ever have been formed by any compact between the individuals of this multitude, but what their children in the very next generation would have had full right to abo- lish, or any one or more of those children, even in opposi- tion to the sense of the majority, with perfect innocence, though not without imprudence, might have disobeyed: insomuch, that if such compact be the true foundation of sovereign authority, the foundation is weaker than these republican theorists themselves conceive.
The whole foundation of government, in their view of it, is laid in these two assumptions, — the first, that the will of a majority obliges the minority; and the second, that the whole posterity may be bound by the act and deed of their progenitors. But both these rights, — that of the many to bind the few, and that of the father to make a bargain that shall bind his unborn children, — both these rights, though sacred and incontrovertible in civil society, are yet of the number of those to which civil society itself gives birth ; and out of society they could have no exist- ence. The obligations on the minority and on the child to stand by the resolutions of the majority and the engage- ments of the father, arise not from any thing in the nature of man individually considered : they are rather indeed
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unnatural; lor all obligations, strictly speaking, are unna- tural, which bind a man to the terms of a covenant made without his knowledge and consent : but they arise from the condition of man as a member of society, — that is, from the relation of the individual to the public ; a relation which subsists not till a public is formed. And to make those civil rights and obligations the parents of public authority which are indeed its offspring, is strangely to confound causes and effects.
The plain truth is this : the manner in which, as we are informed upon the authority of God himself, God gave a beginning to the world, evidently leads to this conclusion, — namely, that civil society, which always implies govern- ment, is the condition to which God originally destined man : whence, the obligation on the citizen to submit to government is an immediate result from that first principle of religious duty which requires that man conform himself, as far as in him lies, with the will and purpose of his Maker. The governments which now are have arisen not from a previous state of no government, falsely called the state of nature ; but from that original government under which the first generations of men were brought into ex- istence, variously changed and modified, in a long course of ages, under the wise direction of God's overruling pro- vidence, to suit the various climates of the world, and the infinitely varied manners and conditions of its inhabitants. And the principle of subjection is not that principle of common honesty which binds a man to his own engage- ments, much less that principle of political honesty which binds the child to the ancestor's engagements; but a con- scientious submission to the will of God.
I must observe, that the principles which I advance ascribe no greater sanctity to monarchy* than to any other
* It is true, that for many generations after the creation, the whole world must have been under the monarchy of Adam ; and of Noah, for some time after the flood : but this primitive patriarchal government, in which the sovereign was in a literal sense the father of the people.
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form of established government ; nor do they at ail involve that exploded notion, that all or any of the present sove- reigns of the earth hold their sovereignty by virtue of such immediate or implied nomination on the part of God, of themselves personally, or of the stocks from which they are descended, as might confer an endless, indefeasible right upon the posterity of the persons named. In con- tending that government was coeval with mankind, it will readily be admitted, that all the particular forms of govern- ment which now exist are the work of human policy, un- der the control of God's general overruling providence ; that the Israelites were the only people upon earth whose form of government was of express Divine institution, and their kings the only monarchs who ever reigned by an indefeasible divine title : but it is contended, that all government is in such sort of Divine institution, that be the form of any particular government what it may, the submission of the individual is a principal branch of that religious duty which each man owes to God : it is con- tended, that the state of mankind was never such, that it was free to any man or to any number of men, to choose for themselves whether they would live subject to government and united to society, or altogether free and unconnected. It is true, that in the world, taken as it now is and hath been for many ages, cases happen in which the sovereign power is conferred by the act of the people, and in which that act alone can give the sovereign a just title. Wot only in elective monarchies, upon the natural demise of the reigning prince, the successor is raised to the throne by the suffrage of the people ; but in governments of whatever denomination, if the form of government under- go a change, or the established rule of succession be set aside by any violent, or necessary revolution, the act of
was so much sui generis, so different from any of the monarchical forms which have since taken place, that none of these can build any right of preference upon those examples.
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the nation itself is necessary to erect a new sovereignty, or to transfer the old right to the new possessor. The condition of a people, in these emergencies, bears no re- semblance or analogy to that anarchy which hath been called the state of nature : the people become not in these situations of government what they would be in that state, a mere multitude ; they are a society, — not dissolved, but in danger of dissolution ; and, by the great law of self- preservation inherent in the body politic no less than in the solitary animal, a society so situated hath a right to use the best means for its own preservation and perpetuity. A people therefore in these circumstances hath a right, which a mere multitude unassociated could never have, of appointing, by the consent of the majority, for them- selves and their posterity, a new head : and it will readily be admitted, that of all sovereigns, none reign by so fair and just a title as those who can derive their claim from such public act of the nation which they govern. But it is no just inference, that the obligation upon the private citizen to submit himself to the authority thus raised arises wholly from the act of the people conferring it, or from their compact with the person on whom it is conferred. In all these cases, the act of the people is only the means*" which Providence employs to advance the new sovereign to his station : the obligation to obedience proceeds secon- darily only from the act of man, but primarily from the will of God;t who hath appointed civil life for man's condition, and requires the citizen's submission to the sovereign whom his providence shall by whatever means set over him.
*■ " Quasi vero Deus non ita regat populum, ut cui Deus vult, reg- mim tradat popuhis." — Milton, Defensio pro Pop. Angl.
t " Ratio cur debearaus subject! esse magistratibus, quod Dei ordi- natioue sunt constituti : quod si ita placet Domino mundum gubernare, Dei odinem invertere nititur, adeoque Deo ipsi resistit, quisquis potes- tatem aspernatur ; quaudo ejus, qui juris politici auctor est, Providen- tiam contemnere, bellum cum eo suscipere est." — Calvin, in Rom. xiii. I.
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Thus, in our own country, at the glorious epoch of the Revolution, the famous Act of Settlement was the means which Providence employed to place the British sceptre in the hands which now wield it. That statute is con- fessedly the sole foundation of the sovereign's title ; nor can any future sovereign have a just title to the crown, the law continuing as it is, whose claim stands not upon that ground. Yet it is not merely by virtue of that act that the subject's allegiance is due to him whose claim is founded on it. It is easy to understand, that the principle of the private citizen's submission must be quite a distinct thing from the principle of the sovereign's public title ; and for this plain reason, — the principle of submission, to bind the conscience of every individual, must be some- thing universally known, and easy to be understood ; the ground of the sovereign's public title, in governments in which the fabric of the constitution is in any degree complex and artificial, can be known only to the few who have leisure and ability and inclination for historical and f)olitical researches. In this country, how many thousands and ten thousands of the common people never heard of the Act of Settlement ! — of those to whom the name may be familiar, how many have never taken the pains to ac- quire any accurate knowledge of its contents ! — yet not one of these is absolved from his allegiance, by his ignorance of his sovereign's title. Where then shall we find that general principle that binds the duty of allegiance equally on all, read or unread in the statute-book and in the his- tory of their country? Where shall we find it, but among those general rules of duty which proceed im.mediately from the will of the Creator, and have been impressed upon the conscience of every man by the original consti- tution of the world ?
This divine right of the first magistrate in every polity to the citizen's obedience is not of that sort which it were high treason to claim for the sovereigns of this country: it is quite a distinct thing from the pretended divine right
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to the inlieritance of the crown : it is a right which the most zealous republicans acknowledged to be divine, in former times, before republican zeal had ventured to es- pouse the interests of atheism :* it is a right which in no countiy can be denied, without the highest of all treasons ; — the denial of it were treason against the paramount authority of God.
These views of the authority of civil governors, as they are obviously suggested by the Mosaic history of the first ages, so they are confirmed by the precepts of the gospel ; — in which, if any thing is to be found clear, peremptory, and unequivocal, it is the injunction of submission to the sovereign authority ; and, in monarchies, of loyalty to the person of the sovereign.
" Let every soul," says the apostle in my text, " be sub- ject to the higher powers."
The word " powers" here signifies persons bearing- power : any other meaning of it, whatever may be pre- tended, is excluded by the context.'!' The text, indeed,
* " All kings but such as are immediately named by God himself have their power by human right only ; though, after human composi- tion and agreement, their lawful choice is approved of God^ and obedi- ence required to them by divine right." These are the words in which Bishop Hoadly states Hooker's sentiments. Hooker's own words are stronger and more extensive : but the sentiment to the extent in which it is conveyed in these terms, the republican Bishop approved. — See Hoadly' s Defence of Hooker,
" Quod Dii uuucupantur, quicunque magistratum gerunt, ne in ea ap- pellatione leve inesse momentum quis putet : ea enim significatur, man- datum a Deo habere, Divina auctoritatc praeditos esse, ac omnino Dei personam sustinere, cujus vices quodammodo agunt." — Calvin. Inst, lib. iv. cap. 20. sect. 4.
" Resisti magistratui non potest, quin simul Deo resistatur." — Cal- vin. Inst, lib. iv. cap. 20. sect. 23.
t It has been a great point with republican divines to explain away the force of this text. But, for this purpose, they have never been able to fall upon any happier expedient, than to say that the word " power," e|oi/(tiki, signifies not persons bearing power, but forms of government : then, restraining the precept to such governments as are perfectly well administered, and finding hardly any government upon earth adminis-
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had been better rendered — " Let every soul be subject to the sovereign powers," The word " sovereign" renders the exact meaning of that Greek word for which the Eng- lish Bible in this place rather unhappily puts the compa- rative " higher :" in another passage it is very properly rendered by a word equivalent to sovereign, by the word " supreme." — " Let every soul be subject to the sovereign powers." The sovereignty particularly intended, in the immediate application of the precept to those to whom the Epistle was addressed, was the sovereign authority of the Roman Emperor. Nero was at the time the possessor of that sovereignty ; and the apostle, in what he immedi- ately subjoins to enforce his precept, seems to obviate an
tered to their mind (for tliey never make allowance for the inevitable imperfection and infirmity of all things human), they get rid of the constraint of this Divine injunction ; which, by this interpretation and this limitation, they render as nugatory as any of their own maxims; and find their conscience perfectly at ease while they make free in word and in deed with thrones, dominions, and dignities. Whatever be the natural import of the word i^oxjo-ioti, the epithet which is joined to it in the text shows that it must be understood here of something which admits the degree of high and low. But of this forms of government are incapable : every form is supreme where it is established ; and since different forms of government cannot subsist at the same time among the same people, it were absurd to say of forms of government that one is higher than another. Again, in the third verse of this same chapter, the power (sloyo-ta) is said to bestow praise upon those who do good; in the fourth, to be ''the minister of God;" and in the sixth, to receive tribute as the wages of a close attendance upon that ministry. None of these things can be said of forms of government, without a harshness of metaphor unexampled in the didactic parts of holy writ : but all these things may be said with great propriety of the persons governing.
In the twelfth chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, the first preachers are warned that they are to be brought before synagogues, and magistrates, and powers (floi-a-ja?)- There the word evidently signifies persons bearing power. I will venture to add, that not a single instance is to be found in any writer, sacred or profane, of the use of the word c^ovo-kx. to signify form of government ; nor is that sense to be extracted by any critical chemistry from the etymology and radical meaning of the word.
I
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objection which he was well aware tlie example of Nero's tyranny might suggest. His reasoning is to this effect : " The sovereignty, you will say, is often placed in unfit hands, and abused to the worst purposes. It is placed in the hands of sensual, rapacious men, of capricious women, and of ill-conditioned boys. It is in such sort abused, as to be made the instrument of lust and ambition, of avarice and injustice : you yourselves, my brethren, experience the abuse of it in your own persons. It may seem to you, that power derived from the Author of all Good would never be so misplaced, nor be permitted to be so misused ; and you may perhaps be ready to conclude, that the Fa- ther of Lies once at least spake truth, when he claimed the disposal of earthly sceptres as his own prerogative. Such reasonings (saith the apostle) are erroneous : no kmg, however he might use or abuse authority, ever reigned but by the appointment of God's providence.* There is no such thing as power but from God : to him, whatever powers, good or bad, are at any time subsisting in the world, are subordinate : he has Q-ood ends of his
* " Hoc nobis si assidue ob animos et oculos obversetur, eodem de- creto constitui etiain nequissimos reges, quo regum authoiitas statuitur j iiunquain in animum nobis seditiosa ilia; cogitationes venient, ' trac- tandum esse pro mentis regem, nee aequum esse ut subditos ei nos praestemus, qui vicissiui regem nobis se non prjestat.' " — Calvin. Inst, iv. 20. sect. 27.
" Si ill Dei verbum respicimus longius nos deducet, ut non eorum modo priucipum imperio sabditi simus, qui probe, et qua debent fide, nuuiere suo erga nos defunguuiur, sed omnium, qui quoquo modo rerum potiuntur, etiamsi nihil uiiuais praestent, quam quod ex officio erat priu- cipum."
" In eo probando insistamus magis, quod nou ita facile in hominum mentes cadit, in homine deterrimo, houoreque omni indignissimo, penes quem modo sit publica potestas, praeclaram illam et Divinam potesta- tem residere, quam Dominus justitiae ac judicii sui ministris, verbo suo, detulit : proinde a subditis eadem in reverentia et dignitate habendum, quantum ad publicam obedientiam attinet, qua optimum regem, si dare- tur, habituri essent." — Calvin. Inst. iv. 20. 25. 2 \
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own, not always to be foreseen by us, to be eft'ected by the abuse of povfer, as by other partial evils ; and to his own secret purpose he directs the worst actions of tyrants, no less than the best of godly princes. Man's abuse, therefore, of his delegated authority is to be borne with resignation, like any other of God's judgments. The op- position of the individual to the sovereign power is an opposition to God's providential arrangements ; and it is the more inexcusable, because the well-being of mankind is the general end for which government is obtained ; and this end of government, under all its abuses, is generally answered by it : for the good of government is perpetual and universal ; the mischiefs resulting from the abuse of power, temporary and partial : insomuch, that in govern- ments which are the worst administered, the sovereign power, for the most part, is a terror not to good works, but to the evil ; and upon the whole, far more beneficial than detrimental to the subject.* But this general good of government cannot be secured upon any other terms than the submission of the individual to what may be called its extraordinary evils."
Such is the general scope and tenor of the argument by which St. Paul enforces the duty of the private citizen's subjection to the sovereign authority. He never once mentions that god of the republican's idolatry, the consent of the ungoverned millions of mankind if he represents
* " Nulla tyrannis esse potest, quae non aliqua ex parte subsidio sit ad tuendam homimim societatem." — Calvin, in Rom. xiii. 1.
t The first meutioM that I remember to have found anywhere of compact as the first principle of government is in the " Crito" of Plato; where Socrates alleges a tacit agreement between the citizen and the laws as the ground of an obligation to which he thought himself sub- ject— of implicit obedience even to an unjust sentence. It is remark- able, that this fictitious compact, which in modern times hath been made the basis of the unqualified doctrine of resistance, should have been set up by Plato in the person of Socrates as the foundation of the opposite doctrine of the passive obedience of the individual.
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the earthly sovereign as the vicegerent of God, accounta- ble for misconduct to his heavenly Master, but entitled to obedience from the subject.*
While thus we reprobate the doctrine of the first forma- tion of government out of anarchy by a general consent, we confess — with thankfulness to the overruling provi- dence of God we confess, — and we maintain, that in this country the king is under the obligation of an express con- tract with the people. I say, of an e.vpress contract. In every monarchy in which the will of the .sovereign is in any degree subject (as more or less indeed it is in all) either to the control of custom, or to a fixed rule of law, something of a compact is implied at least between the king and nation ; for limitation of the sovereign power implies a mutual agreement, which hath fixed the limits : but in this country, the contract is not tacit, implied, and vague ; it is explicit, patent, and precise ; it is summarily expressed in the coronation oath ; it is drawn out at length and in detail in the Great Charter and the corroborating statutes, in the Petition of Right, in the Habeas Corpus Act, in the Bill of Rights, and in the Act of Settlement Nor shall we scruple to assert, that our kings in the exer- cise of their sovereignty are held to the terms of this ex- press and solemn stipulation ; which is the legal measure of their power and rule of their conduct. The conse- quence which some have attempted to deduce from these most certain premises we abominate and reject, as wicked and illegitimate, — namely, that " our kings are the ser- vants of the people ; and that it is the right of the people to cashier them for misconduct." Our ancestors are slan- dered— their wisdom is insulted — their virtue is defamed, when these seditious maxims are set forth as the princi- ples on which the great business of the Revolution was
* " Neque enira si ultio Domini est effraenatae dominationis correc- tio, ideo protinus demandatam nobis arbitremur, quibus nullum aliud qiiam parendi et patiendi datum est niandatftm." — Calvin. Inst. iv. 20. 31. De pvivatis hominibns semper loquor. Ibid.
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conclucted, or as the groundwork on which that noblest production of human reason, the wonderful fabric of the British constitution, stands.
Our constitution hath indeed effectually secured the monarch's performance of his engagements, — not by that clumsy contrivance of republican wit, the establishment of a court of judicature with authority to try his conduct and to punish his delinquency, — not by that coarser expedient of modern levellers, a reference to the judgment and the sentence of the multitude — wise judgment, I ween, and righteous sentence ! — but by two peculiar provisions of a deep and subtle policy, — the one in the form, the other in the principles of government ; which, in their joint operation, render the transgression of the covenant on the part of the monarch little less than a moral impossibility. The one is the judicious partition of the legislative autho- rity, between the King and the two houses of Parliament; the other, the responsibility attaching upon the advisers and official servants of the Crown. By the first, the no- bles and the representatives of the commons are severally armed with a power of constitutional resistance, to oppose to prerogative overstepping its just bounds, by the exer- cise of their own rights and their own privileges; which power of the estates of Parliament with the necessity takes away the pretence for any spontaneous interference of the private citizen, otherwise than by the use of the elective franchise and of the right of petition for the redress of grievances : by the second, those who might be willing to be the instruments of despotism are deterred by the dan- gers which await the service. Having thus excluded all probability of the event of a systematic abuse of royal power, or a dangerous exorbitance of prerogative, our con- stitution exempts her kings from the degrading necessity of being accountable to the subject : she invests them with the high attribute of political impeccability ; she declares, that wrong, in his public capacity, a king of Great Britain cannot do ; and thus unites the most perfect security of
549
the subject's liberty with the most absokite inviolability of the sacred person of the sovereign.
Such is the British constitution,— its basis, religion ; its end, liberty; its principal means and safeguard of liberty, the majesty of the sovereign. In support of it the king is not more interested than the peasant.
It was a signal instance of God's mercy,— not imputing to the people of this land the atrocious deed of a desperate faction ; it was a signal instance of God's mercy, that the goodly fabric was not crushed in the middle of the last century, ere it had attained its finished perfection, by the phrensy of that fanatical banditti which took the life of the First Charles. In the madness and confusion which followed the shedding of that blood, our history holds forth an edifying example of the effects that are ever to be expected— in that example, it gives warning of the effects that ever are intended, by. the dissemination of those infernal maxims, that kings are the servants of the people, punishable by their masters. The same lesson is confirmed by the horrible example which the present hour exhibits, in the unparalleled misery of a neighbouring nation, once great in learning, arts, and arms; now torn by contending factions — her government demolished — her altars over- tlirown— her firstborn despoiled of their birth-right— her nobles degraded — her best citizens exiled— her riches, sa- cred and profane, given up to the pillage of sacrilege and i-apine— atheists directing her councils— desperadoes con- ductincr her armies — wars of unjust and chimerical ambi- tion consuming her youth — her granaries exhausted— her fields uncultivated— famine threatening her multitudes— her streets swarming with assassins, filled with violence, deluged with blood !
Is the picture frightful? Is the misery extreme— the guilt horrid? Alas ! these things were but the prelude of the tragedy : public justice poisoned in its source, profaned in the abuse of its most solemn forms to the foulest pur- poses a monarch deliberately murdered — a monarch,
550
whose only crime it was that he inherited a sceptre the thirty-second of his illustrious stock, butchered on a public scaffold, after the mockery of arraignment, trial, sentence — butchered without the merciful formalities of the vilest malefactor's execution — the sad privilege of a last farewell to the surrounding populace refused — not the pause of a moment allowed for devotion — honourable interment de- nied to the corpse — the royal widow's anguish imbittered by the rigour of a close imprisonment; with hope indeed, at no great distance, of release, of such release as hath been given to her lord !
This foul murder, and these barbarities, have filled the measure of the guilt and infamy of France. O my coun- try ! read the horror of thy own deed in this recent heigh- tened imitation ! lament and weep that this black French treason should have found its example in the crime of thy unnatural sons ! Our contrition for our guilt that stained our land — our gratitude to God, whose mercy so soon re- stored our church and monarchy — our contrition for our own crime, and our gratitude for God's unspeakable mercy, will be best expressed by us all, by setting the example of a dutiful submission to government in our own conduct, and by inculcating upon our children and dependants a loyal attachment to a king who hath ever sought his own glory in the virtue and prosperity of his people ; and ad- ministers justice with an even, firm, and gentle hand, — a king who, in many public acts, hath testified his aiiection for the free constitution of this country, — a king, of whom, or of the princes issued from his loins and trained by his example, it were injurious to harbour a suspicion that they will ever be inclined to use their power to any other end than for the support of public liberty. Let us remember, that a conscientious submission to the sovereign powers is, no less than brotherly love, a distinctive badge of Christ's disciples. Blessed be God, in the Church of England both those marks of genuine Christianity have ever been conspicuous. Perhaps in the exercise of brotherly love it is
551
the amiable infirmity of Englishmen to be too easy to admit the claim of a spiritual kindred : the times compel me to remark that brotherly love embraces only brethren : the term of holy brotherhood is profaned by an indiscriminate ap- plication. We ought to mark those who cause divisions and oftences. 'Nice scruples about external forms, and differences of opinion upon controvertible points, cannot but take place among the best Christians, and dissolve not the fraternal tie : none indeed, at this season, are more entitled to our offices of love, than those with whom the ditlerence is wide, in points of doctrine, discipline, and external rites — those venerable exiles, the prelates and clergy of the fallen church of France, endeared to us by the edifying example they exhibit of patient suffering for conscience' sake : but if any enjoying the blessings of the British government, living under the protection of its free constitution and its equal laws, have dared to avow the wicked sentiment, that this day of national contrition, this rueful day of guilt and shame, " is a proud day for Eng- land, to be remembered as such by the latest posterity of freemen," with such persons it is meet that we abjure all brotherhood. Their spot is not the spot of our family ; they have no claim upon our brotherly affection : upon our charity they have indeed a claim. Miserable men ! " they are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity:" it is our duty to pray God, if perhaps the thought of their heart may be forgiven them.
.5o2
APPENDIX
PRECEDING SERMO
N.
they who thinUt n,i:red X^Xdtfit'^'' v.ve in a la.e work of great erud.io^l' /rb ,[: of he execution, as well as for the intention, of o-reat „ ril
^:^.rL1r^t:L;^r:ro^^^^^^^^^^^ the additional weight 0^^^:;!'^:::;' :;^
~t: but he cannot allow himself not toli ad age of an occasion spontaneously as it were arisin!.f
SiTe^r °'"^™'"" ^ '"™«'^ of ^ -" to whL'r bTirw^dTrc':":' ^^*™^'- '-"'-^^ --
553
Calvin was unquestionably in tlieoiy a republican : he freely declares his opinion, that the republican form, or an aristocracy reduced nearly to the level of a republic, was of all the best calculated in general to answer the ends of government. So wedded indeed was he to this notion, that, in disregard of an apostolic institution and the ex- ample of the primitive ages, he endeavoured to fashion the government of all the Protestant churches upon repub- lican principles ; and his persevering zeal in that attempt, though in this country through the mercy of God it failed, was followed upon the whole with a wide and mischievous success. But in civil politics, though a republican in theory, he was no leveller. That he was not, appears from the passages cited in the notes upon the foregoing Discourse; and will be still more evident to any who will take the trouble to peruse the w^iole of the last chapter of the last book of his "Institutions of the Christian Reli- gion." In that chapter, he professedly treats the question of the consistency of civil government with the scheme of Christianity; which he maintains against the fanatics of his times.* He shows that submission to the magistrate is under all forms of government a religious duty :f he de- clares his preference of a republican aristocracy to any other form :f but this declaration is prefaced with an ex- press protest against the futility of the question, what form is absolutely and in itself the best if he affirms, that the advantage of one government above another depends much upon circumstances;'}" that the circumstances of different countries require different forms ; that govern- ment under every form is a divine ordinance ;J that the variety of governments in the different regions of the earth is no less conducive to the general benefit of mankind, and no less the work of Providence, than the variety of climates :§ and with respect to monarchy in
* Institut. lib. iv. cap. xx. sect. 1 — 3. t Sect. 8. t Sect. 4. § Sect. 8.
554
particular (by vvliich, it is to be observed, he means absolute monarchy), he remarks, that submission to mo- narchical governments is particularly enjoined in holy writ; for this especial reason, — that monarchy was the form which in the early ages was the most disliked.* Whatever preference, therefore, in speculation, he might give to the republican form, he could not, with these prin- ciples, be practically an enemy to the government of kings. This last chapter of his " Institutions," in which he ex- pressly treats the general question of government, must be supposed to contain the authentic exposition of his deliberate opinions upon the whole of the subject, — -the confession of his political faith ; and by reference to this, any passages in other parts of his writings, in which subor- dinate questions are incidentally touched, ought in can- dour to be interpreted. The passages in which he has been supposed to betray the principles of a leveller lie widely scattered in his comment on the book of Daniel. They shall be briefly examined, nearly in the order in which they occur. If it should be found that they bear a different sense from that which hath been imposed upon them, it will necessarily follow, that they will not justify the reflections which have been cast.
In the thirty-ninth verse of the second chapter, " And after thee shall arise another kingdom, inferior to thee," this difficulty presents itself: with what truth could the prophet say, that the kingdom which was to arise next after Nebuchadnezzar's, namely the Medo-Persian, should be inferior to his, when in fact, in wealth and power it was greatly the superior of the two ; for Nebuchadnezzar's Chaldean kingdom, with its appendages, made a part only of the vast empire of the Medes and Persians under Cy- rus? Calvin's solution of the difficulty is this, — whether it be the true one or no, is not the question ; but it is this,
* Sect. 7.
— that the Medo-Persian empire was in this respect inte- rior to Nebuchadnezzar's, that it was worse in a moral sense; the condition of mankind being more miserable, and the manners more degenerate : the cause of which he refers to this general maxim, — that the more monarchies (that is, empires, under whatever form of government) ex- tend themselves to distant regions, the more licentiousness rages in the world.* That the word " monarchiae" he renders *' empires" without regard to any particular form of government, is most manifest, from the use of it in the comment on the very next verse ; where, after the example of his inspired author, the expositor applies it to the Ro- man empire under its popular government. From this general observation upon the baleful influence of over- grown empires upon the happiness and morals of man, he draws this conclusion: "Hence it appears, how great is the folly and madness of the generality, who desire to have kings of irresistible power ; which is just the same as to desire a river of irresistible rapidity, as Isaiah speaks, exposing this folly :" and again, " They are altogether mad who desire monarchies of the first magnitude ; for it cannot be but that political order should be much im- paired where a single person occupies so wide a space. "f It is evident that this passage expresses no general disap- probation of monarchy, but of absolute monarchy — of the arbitrary rule of one man — of such arbitrary rule stretched over a vast extent of country — and of such extensive arbi- trary dominion founded upon conquest. In truth, irre- sistible military force is the specific thing intended under
* " Quo sese longius extendunt monarchiae, eo etiam plus licentiae in mundo grassatur."
t " Unde apparet, quanta sit omnium fere stiiltitia ct vesauia, qui cupiunt habere reges potentissimos ; perinde ac siquis appeteret (lu- vium rapidissimum, quemadmodum lesaias loquitur, coarguens hanc stultitiam." " Prorsus igitur delirant, ([ui appetunt summas monar- chias 3 quia fieri non potest, quin tantundem decedat ex legitimo ordine, u&i unus occupat tarn latum spatium."
556
the epithet "potentissimos ;" as appears by the reference to the prophet Isaiah ; for tliat is the power represented by Isaiah under the image of a flood, when he would ex- pose the folly of those who court the alliance of such princes. And it is to be observed, that though such power is reprobated in speculation, as what none but a madman could wish to see in its plenitude, yet it is not said, nor is it insinuated, that the o-overnment of a conqueror is not to be quietly submitted to, when once liis dominion is established, or that conquest may not be the foundation of a just title to dominion. It is only in a loose translation^ in which the natural force of the epithets " potentissimos" and " summas" is neg- lected, and their specific application of these sentences, taken in connexion with the entire discourse, overlooked, that the passage can appear as a sly insinuation against monarchical government in general, or an oblique hint to the subjects of any monarchy to rise in rebellion against their prince.
Chapter iv. 25 : " Till thou know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whom- soever he will." — Upon this passage Calvin remarks, that " it teaches us how difficult it is for us to ascribe supreme power to God : especially when God hath raised us to any degree of dignity, we forget that we are men." " Monarchs," says he, " hold forth in their titles, that they are ki-ngs, and dukes, and counts, by the grace of God: but many of them make a false pretence of the name of God, to found a claim of absolute dominion for themselves ; meanwhile they would willingly trample under foot that God under whose shield they shelter themselves; so little do they seriously reflect that it is by his favour that they i-eign. It is mere disguise, therefore, when they give it out that they reign by the grace of God."* In this he means not to deny the
* " Iterum docet hie locus, quani difficile sit nobis Deo tribuere summain potentiaiii. Praisertim iibi Deus nos extulit in aliqiieai
5.57
doctrine that princes reion by tlie grace of God ; of which he was indeed a strenuous assertor : lie condemns not the use of such titles, but the abuse of them : he says the title is abused when it is made the pretence and in- strument of tyranny : he says that the prince who in the exercise of his power profanely forgets the God whom he confesses in his title, is a hypocrite : he says these solemn titles have in fact been so abused, and that princes have been guilty of this hypocrisy. Would God that history refuted him in these assertions !
Chapter vi. 25, 27. — Upon the edict of Darius enjoin- ing the worship of the God of Daniel, Calvin remarks to this effect : " Darius, by his example, will condemn all those who at this day profess themselves either Catholic kings, or Christian kings, or Defenders of the Faith ; and at the same time not only bear down true piety, but, as far as lies in them, shake the whole worship of God, and, could they have their will, would blot his name out of the world, — who exercise tyranny against all pious men, and by their cruelty establish impious superstitions."* It is not to be wondered, that this exaggerated and indecent language of invective should be offensive to the learned author of the " Jura Anglorum :" it is to be hoped, that in the present age it is oti'ensive to every one, of whatever
dignitatis gradum, oblivlscimur nos esse homines. Hodie monar-
chiae semper iu suis titulis hoc obtendunt, se esse reges, et duces, et comites, Dei gratia : sed qnam multi falso nomen Dei praetextunt in
huuc finem, ut sibi asseraut sumniiim imperium. Interea libentcr
Deiini, cujus cb^>eo se proteffint, calcarent pedibus ; tantum abest ut serio reputent se hal)cre ejus beneficio ut regnent. Meius igitur fucus est, quod jactant se Dei gratia pollere domiiiatione."
* " Darius exemph) suo, damnabit omnes eos, qui hodie se pro-
fitentur vel Catholicos reges, vel Christianos, vel Protectores Fidei ; et interea non^iodo obruuut verani pietatem, sed etiam, quantum in seest, labefactant %tum Dei cultum, et libcnter nomen ejus extinguerunt e mundo ; exercent saevam tyrannidem adversus omnes pios, stabiliuiit sua saevitia impias snperstitiones."
558
communion he may be, who reads the passag-e. It is not indeed to be borne, that the forms of worship of any Chris- tian church, however grievous its corruptions, should be uncharitably stigmatized in the gross with the odious name of impious superstitions ; nor is it true of the princes who persecuted the reformed churches, cruel as the perse- cutions were, that their object was to overturn the whole worship of God, and blot his name out of the world : that project was reserved for the accursed crew of French phi- losophers, turned politicians, at the close of the eighteenth century. But it is to be remembered, that Calvin lived in an age when neither the Christianity nor the good po- licy of religious toleration was understood ; and he him- self possessed a large share of the intolerant spirit of his times. How little he possessed of the spirit of a leveller, appears from what he says, upon chapter iv. 19, of the duty of submission to those very princes whose conduct he so vehemently arraigns. The learned reader will find the passage entire at the bottom of the page.*
Chapter vi. 22. — The exposition of this verse concludes thus: " Earthly princes divest themselves of their authority when they rise in rebellion against God ; nay, they are unworthy to be reputed among men. It were better there- fore to spit upon their persons than to obey them, where they so far exceed all bounds as to attempt to rob God of his right, and as it were take possession of his tiirone, as if they were able to drag him down from heaven."t
* " Dlscamus igitur, exemplo prophetae, bene precari pro inimicis iiostris, qui cupiunt nos perditos ; maxime vero precari pro tyrannis, si Deo placeat nos siibjici eorum libidini : quia, etsi indigni sint ullo humanitatis officio, quia tamen non praesunt nisi Deo ita volente, nio- deste feranms jugum j neque id tantum propter iram, ut Paulus adrao- net, sed propter conscientiam ; alioqui, non tantum illis, sed etiain Deo ipsi, sumus rebelles."
t " Abdicant enim se potestate terreni principes, dom insurgunt contra Deum ; imo, indigni sunt qui censeantur in hominum nuraero.
559
This passage, taken by itself, may seem, it must be con- fessed, to go to the full extent of those detestable maxims which had been propagated in an earlier age, — that " he who is in mortal sin is no civil magistrate;" and that "a king not having the spirit of God forfeits his dominion." Accordingly, it is produced as affirming the same or equi- valent propositions : but if it be considered not by itself, but in its connexion with the discourse of which it makes the close, the sense of the expressions will be found so restrained by the subject-matter as to convey nothing of this pernicious meaning. Daniel, having openly paid his daily devotions to his God, during the time that the edict of Darius was in force prohibiting the adoration of god or mortal but the king himself for thirty days, was in pursu- ance of the edict thrown to the lions, and lay in the den the whole night: the next morning, when he was found alive by the king himself, he gives the king this account of his deliverance : " My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths, that they have not hurt me : forasmuch as before him innocency was found in me; and also before thee, O king, have I done no hurt." Daniel had disobeyed the king's edict; yet he says that even with respect to the king he had committed no offence ; and he alleges his innocence in that respect as in part the ground of his miraculous deliverance ; intimating, that he should not have been thought worthy of the Divine protection, could he not have said for himself with truth that " before the king he had done no hurt." Calvin contends, that it was with great truth and justice that the prophet thus as- serted his innocence, even as a subject. To make this out, it is necessary to show (for the thing could be made out in no other way) that the king's edict was in itself a
Potius ergo conspuere oportet in ipsorum capita, quam illis parere, ubi ita proterviunt, ut veliut etiam spoliare Deuin jure suo, ac si possent cum e coelo detraheie."
560
nullity. This is the point which Calvin argues ; and thus he argues it : " Earthly kingdoms are established by God ; but under this condition, that God derogates nothing from himself, but that whatever there may be of pre-eminence in the world be subordinate to his glory. ' Fear God, and honour the king,' is one entire precept: the two parts are to be taken in connexion, and cannot be separated; and the fear of God must precede, in order that kings may maintain their proper authority. Daniel, therefore, upon just ground here defends himself, as having done no harm against the king; inasmuch as it was under the obligation of paying obedience to the government of God that he neglected what the king commanded in opposition to it. For earthly princes abdicate their own authority," &c. * It is evident, that the subject-matter restrains this implied abdication of authority to authority exercised in those in- dividual commands which expressly contravene some ex- press command of God ; and it is in the individual in- stances of such commands that Calvin asserts that the guilt and danger of contempt accompanying the just re- fusal to obey would be nothing in comparison of the guilt and danger of obedience. Certainly the priest Urijah, had he spit upon king Ahaz when the king commanded him to make an altar after the fashion of the idolatrous altar at Damascus, though such contempt of majesty would not have been altogether free of blame, had done however better than he did when he executed the king's order; and yet this wicked act of the king's was no for-
* " Sciinus constitui terrena imperia a Deo, sed hac lege, ut ipse
sibi nihil deroget et quicquid est praestantiae in mundo, ejus
gloriae sit subjectum. ' Deuin timete, regem honorate :' sunt
!ia?c duo inter se connexa, nee potest alteram ab altero divelli : prae- cedat igitur oportet timor Dei, ut reges obtineant suani auctoritatem.
Jure ergo Daniel hie se defendit, * Quod nullam pravitatem
commiserit adversus regem/ quia scilicet, coactus parere Dei im- perio, neglexerit quod in contrariam partem rex mandabat. Abdicant enim," &c.
561
feiture of his title to the crown, nor a general release of his subjects from their allegiance. This passage therefore of Calvin carries in it no such meaning as may appear upon the first view of it, detached from the context; but it contains, indeed, a principle upon which the faithful are bound to act when the dreadful necessity arises. Calvin could never support the abominable doctrine that the or- dinary misconduct of a king sets the subject free, without contradicting the principles he lays down, in the last chapter of his "Theological Institutions," of the duty of submission, even to the worst of kings, in things not con- trary to the express commands of God.
It is not to be apprehended that the learned and candid author of the " Jura Anglorum" will be displeased that the memory of a great man should be vindicated from an unfounded accusation ; which has been revived, not origi- nally set up, by him, upon the authority of Heylin and other writers, on whom he thought he might rely. No injustice of intention, nothing worse than a very pardon- able mistake, is imputed to this respectable author. The Christian spirit of charity and tolerance which breathes through this work, and appears in the sentiments which the author avowed in a former publication, entitled " The Case Stated,"* acquits him of the most distant suspicion of a design to advance the credit of his own church by wilfully depreciating the character of an illustrious adver- sary. In the citation of passages in proof of the charge, it is justice to him to acknowledge, that he hath only copied verhat'mi, as it should seem, from an anonymous work entitled " Philanax Anglicus." He will certainly esteem it no disservice done to that great cause in which his learning and his talents have been so honourably en- gaged— the cause of government and liberty united, — if
* See " The Case Stated,"' pages 42 — 48 ; but particularly ])ages 47, 48.
2o
562
the levellers are deprived of the authority of Calvin's name; to which, together with that of Luther and of other celebrated reformers, some among them have pretended, in the pious design, no doubt, of passing off their political opinions as a branch of the general doctrine of the refor- mation. When Salmasius upbraided Cromwell's faction with the tenets of the Brownists, the chosen advocate of that execrable faction replied, that if they were Brownists, Luther, Calvin, Bucer, Zwinglius, and all the most cele- brated theologians of the orthodox, must be included in the same reproach.^ A grosser falsehood, as far as Luther, Calvin, and many others are concerned, never fell from the unprincipled pen of a party-writer. However sedition might be a part of the puritanic creed, the general faith of the reformers rejects the infamous alliance.
It is alleged indeed against Calvin, by grave and re- spectable historians, that he expressed approbation of the outrages of John Knox in Scotland. If the charge be true, his conduct in this instance was contrary to his avowed principles. But the accusation requires better proof than Knox's own interpretation of some general expressions in Calvin's letters. It cannot, however, be denied, that he too often indulges in a strain of coarse invective against the foibles and the vices incident to kings; of which he sometimes speaks as if he thought them inseparable from royalty; and that he treats many of the princes of Europe, his contemporaries, with indecent ill-language. Some al- lowance is to be made for the natural harshness of the man's temper — more for his keen sense of the cruel treat- ment of Protestants in many kingdoms : but the best apo- logy for him is, that he lived before a perfect specimen of a just limited monarchy had been any where exhibited — before the example of the British constitution in its finished
* " Ita Lutherus, Calviaus, Zwinglius, Bucerus, et orthodoxorum (^uotquot celeberrimi theologi, fuere, tuo judlcio, Brunistse sunt." — De- fens, pro Pop. Angl. cap. v. sub fin.
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state and of the princes of the Brunswick line, had taught the world this comfortable lesson, — that monarchy and civil liberty are things compatible, and may be brought to afford each other the most effectual support.
THE END.
PRINTED BY W. BAYNES, J UN. BABTHOLOMEW CL03E.
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