Sermons

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SERMONS,

BY

SAMUEL HORSLEY,

LL.D. F.R.S. F.A.S.
LATE

LORD BISHOP OF ST. ASAPH.

a Mt^ C!;tlttiOtt,

INCLUDING

NINE SERMONS ON OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION;

AND
A DISSERTATION ON THE PROPHECIES OF THE MESSIAH
DISPERSED AMONG THE HEATHEN.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. IL
LONDON:

PRINTED FOR C. J. G. & F. RIVINGTON;

LONGMAN, REES, ORME, BROWN, AND GREEN; BALDWIN AND CRADOCK;

HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO.; J. DUNCAN; SIMPKIN

AND MARSHALL; AND J. BOHN.

1829.

London :

Printed by A. & R. Spottiswoodo,

New- Strct't- Square.

i^Kr.o logical/

OF

THE SECOND VOLUME.

SERMON XXVIII.

PAGE

Philippians, iii. 15 Let us therefore, as many as be

perfect, be thus minded; and if in anj^ thing ye be
otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you I

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 - - - - . -15

Preached in the Cathedral Church of St. Asaph, De-
cember 5. 1805,- being the day of public thanks-
giving for the victory obtained by Admiral Lord
Viscount Nelson over the combined fleets of France
and Spain, off" Cape Trajalgar.

SERMON XXX.

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 : Behold He shall
come, saith the Lord of Hosts. But who may abide
the day of his coming ? and w^ho shall stand when he
appeareth ? ... - - 42

a 2

IV

SERMON XXXI.

PAGE

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 : 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 ? - - - - - 52

SERMON XXXH.

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 : Beiiold He shall
come, saith the Lord of Hosts. But who may abide
the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he
appeareth? - - - - - 63

SERMON XXXHL

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 : 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 ? - - . - - - 75

SERMON XXXIV.

Luke, i. 28. — Hail, thou that art highly favoured ! The

Lord is with thee : Blessed art thou among women •• 86

SERMON XXXV.

Deitkuonomy, XV. 11. — I'or (lie poor shall 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 - - - 101

Preached at the Anniversary Meeting of the Sons of
the Clcr<ri/, Mni/ 18. 1786.

SERMON XXXVI.

PAGE

John, xi. 25, 26. — I am the resurrection and the life : 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 ? - - 118

SERMON XXXVII.

Mark, vii. 26. — The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoeni-

cian by nation ----- - 130

SERMON XXXVIII.

Mark, vii. 26. — The woman was a Greek, a Syrophceni-
cian by nation __-..- 141

SERMON XXXIX.

EccLESiASTBS, xii. 7. — Then shall the dust return to the
earth as it was ; and the spirit shall return unto God
who gave it - - - - - 157

Preached for the Humane Society, March 22. 1789.

SERMON XL.

Matthew, xxiv. 12. — Because iniquity shall abound,
the love of many shall wax cold - - - 174

Preached for the Philanthropic Society, March 25. 1792.

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 - - - 190

SERMON XLII.

John, xx. 29. — Thomas, because thou hast seen me,
thou hast believed : Blessed are they who have not
seen and vet have believed _ . . 2OI

SERMON XLIII.

PAGE

1 Joir.v, iii. S. — And every man that hath this hope in
him purifieth himself, even as He is pure - - 214-

Preached at the Anniversary of the Institution of the
Magdalen Hospital, April 22. 1 795.

SEllMOX XLIV.

()0

Romans, xiii. 1 Let every soul be subject unto the

higher powers .._--.

Preached before the Lords Spiritual and Temporal,
Janunn/ SO. 1793; being the Anniversary of the
Martyrdom of King Charles the First.

Appendix to the preceding Sermon - - - 24'7

A DISSERTATION on the Prophecies of the Messiah
dispersed among the Heathen . - - . 259

FOUR DISCOURSES on the Nature of the Evidence
by which the Fact of our Lord's Resurrection is esta-
blished.

SERMON I.

Acts, x.tO, 11. — Him Ciod raised up the third day, and
showed him openly ; not to all the people, but to wit-
nesses chosen before of God ... 321

SERMON 11.

Acts, x.40, 11. — Him (iod raised up the third day, and
showed him openly ; not to all the people, but to wit-
nesses chosen before of f Jod ... 333

SERMON III.

PAGE

Acts, x. 40, 41. — Him God raised up the third day, and
showed him openly ; not to all the people, but to wit-
nesses chosen before of God _ . . 345

SERMON IV.

Acts, x. 40, 41. — Him God raised up the third day, and
showed him openly ; not to all the people, but to wit-
nesses chosen before of God ... 357

FIVE SERMONS.
SERMON I.

Psalm xcvii. 7 Worship him all ye gods - - 373

SERMON II.

Romans, iv. 25. — Who was delivered for our offences,
and was raised again for our justification - - 386

SERMON III.

Matthew, xx. 23. — To sit on my right hand and my
left is not mine to give, but it shall be given to them
for whom it is prepared of my Father - - 402

SERMON IV.

Ephesians, iv. 30. — And grieve not the Holy Spirit of
God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemp-
tion - - - - - - 412

SERMON V.

Ephesians, iv. 30. — And grieve not the Holy Spirit of
God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemp-
tion -...-. 425

if' ^^' 8 i] n M (>;s XX V 1 1 1.

Philij'pians, iii. 15.

Let us tlierefori!^ (is manij as be, pcrfhcJ, he, f/iiis
minded ; and if in any tkinp; ye he idlierwise
minded^ God ahall reveal even this unto you.

1 HE 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 ])er])etual progress and im])rovement
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 princi2)le
of his whole life ; and the perfective quality that he
ascribes to it seems to consist in these three proper-
ties, — that it is boundless in its energy, disinterested
in its object, and yet rational in its oiigin. That
these are the ])io])erties which make this desire of
- proficiency truly ])erfective of the Christian character,
I shall now attempt to prove : and, for this purpose,
it will be necessary to en((uire what man's proper
goodness is; and to take a view of man, both in his
first state of natural innocence, 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 inconnnunicably to

VOL. II. JJ

God ; for this reason, tliat 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 know-
ledge which the created mind receives from God. If
he hath the will to perform it, it is the consequence
of a connection 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 endow-
ments, 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 can-
vass, — 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 neces-
cessity 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
faculties. A creature, therefore, in whatever degree
of excellence it be supposed to be created, cannot
originally have any merit of its own ; for merit must
arise from voluntary actions, and cannot be a natural
endowment ; and it is owing to a wonderful contriv-
ance of the beneficent Creator, 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.
The contrivance that I speak of consists in a prin-
ciple 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 Sove-
reign Intellect. It is a principle which it is in eveiy
man's power to turn, if he be so pleased, to his ov\ti
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 pro-
pensity 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 exter-
nal 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 principle implanted
in him for his good becomes by negligence and mis-
management the instrument of his ruin. It is owing
to this principle that every faculty of the understand-
ing and eveiy sentiment of the heart is capable of
being improved by exercise. It is the leading prin-

B y

ciple in the wliole system of the human constitution,
inodifyiuL;- botli tlie ])liysic;il (jiialities of tlie body and
tlic moral and intellectual endowments of" tlie mind.
We experience the use of it in every calling and con-
dition of life. By tliis tlie sinews of tlie labourer are
hardened for toil ; by this the liand of the mechanic
ac(juires its dexterity ; to this we owe the amaz-
ing ])rogress of the liuman mind in the politer arts
and tlie abstruser sciences ; and it is an engine which
it is in our power to employ to nobler and more bene-
ficial purposes. By the same principle, when the
attention is turned to moral and religious subjects,
the understanding may gradually advance beyond any
limit that may be assigned in (juickness of perce])tion
and truth of judgment ; and the will's alacrity to con-
form to the dictates of conscience and the decrees of
reason will be gradually heightened, to correspond in
some due pro])ortion with the growth of intellect.
" Lord, what is man, that thou art mindful of him,
or the son of man, that thou so regardest him ! Thou
liast made him lower than the angels, to crown him
w ith glory and honour ! " — Destitute as he is of any
original })erfection, — 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
ihou hast planted in the principles of his system, thou
hast given him the capacity of infinite attainments.
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
improvements which he shall make by the vigorous
xert i on of the powers he hath received from thee,
thou ])ermitti'st him to call his own, imj)uting to him

the merit of tlie acquisitions which tliou hast given
him tlie ability to make. What, then, is the consum-
mation 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 improve-
ment, which, enlarging its appetite in proportion to
the acquisitions already made, may correspond with
the increase of his capacities in every stage of a pro-
gressive virtue, in every period of an endless exist-
ence ? And to what purpose but to excite this noble
thirst of virtuous proficiency, — to what purpose but
to provide that the object of the appetite may never
be exhausted by gradual attainment, — hast thou im-
parted to thy creature's mind the idea of thine own
attribute of perfect uncreated goodness ?

But man, alas ! hath abused thy gifts ; and the
things that should have been for his peace are become
to him an occasion of falling. Unmindful of the
height of glory to which he might attain, he has set
his affections upon earthly things. The first com-
mand, which was imposed that he might form himself
to the useful habit of implicit obedience to his Ma-
ker's will, a slight temptation, — the fair show and
fragrance of the forbidden fruit, — moved him to trans-
gress. 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
vSon, God calls his fallen creature to repentance. He
hath provided an atonement for past guilt. He pro-
mises the effectual aids of his Holy Spirit, to counter-

B 3

6

act the power of penTrted habit, to restore light to
the (larkcnccl understanding, to tame tlie Airy of
inflanad ajjpctite, to ])iirify the soiled imagination,
and to foil the grand Deceiver in every new attempt.
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 peii)etual operation of the
Holy Spirit on their minds, and by an alteration which
at the general resurrection shall take place in the con-
stitution of the body, they shall be promoted to a
degree of perfection which by the strength that na-
turally remains in man in his corrupted state they
never could attain. They shall be raised above the
])owcr of temptation, and placed in a condition of
hai)])iness not inferior to that which by God's original
appointment might have corresponded with the im-
provement of their moral state, had that improvement
l)een their own attainment, by a gradual progress from
the lirst state of innocence. That the devout and
well-disposed arc thus by God's power made perfect,
is the free gift of God in Christ, — the effect of un-
desened mercy, exercised ii> consideration of Christ's
intercession and atoneuient. Thus it is that fallen
man is in Chiist Jesus ** created anew unto those good
works which God had before ordained that we should
walk in them." His lost capacity of improvenu'ut is
restored, and the great career of virtue is again before
him. What, then, is the peifection of man, in this
state of redemption, but that which might have been
Adam's ])erfection in Paradise? — a desire of nu)ral
improvement, duly proportioned to his natural eapa-
city of improving, and, for that pui^jiose, expanding
without limit, as he rises in the knowledge of what is
good, and gathers strength in the practical habits of it.

7

Thus, you see, the proper goodness of man con-
sists in gradual improvement ; and the desire of im-
provement, to be truly perfective of his character, and
to keep pace with the growth of his moral capacities,
must be boundless in its energies, or capable of an
infinite enlargement.

Another property requisite in this desire of im-
provement, to give it its perfective quality, is that it
should be disinterested. 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 it affects 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 complacency which his perfect nature
finds in exertions of power to the purposes of good-
ness ; and men are no otherwise good than as they
delight in virtuous actions, from the bare apprehen-
sion that they are good, without any selfish views to
advantageous 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 Christi-

B 4

unity itself; for St. Paul himself places the perfection
of the Christian character in that quality of disin-
terested virtue whicli some have injuriously supposed
cannot belong to it. It may seem, perhaps, that the
strictness and purity of the precepts of Christianity
rather heighten the objection than remove it ; that
the objection, rightly understood, is this, — that the
Christian system is at variance with itself, its precepts
exacting a perfection of which the belief of its doc-
trines must necessarily 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 expect-
ation of an infinite reward ? A little attention to the
nature of the Christian's hope, — to the extent of his
knowledge of the reward he seeks, will solve this
difficulty. 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 hap-
piness, and the pure love of virtue for its own sake,
])aradoxicaI 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 pre-
vious desire of the reward ; but his desire of the
reward arises from a })revious love of virtue. Observe
that I do not speak of any love of virtue previous to
his conversion to Christianity. But I afhrm, that the
first and immediate effect of his conversion is to in-
spire him with the genuine love of virtue and religion;
and that his desire of the reward is a secondary and
subordinate effect, — a consefjuence of the love of
virtue previously fonned in him : for, of the nature
of the reward it j)romises, what does the Ciospel dis-
cover to us more than this, — that it shall be j^reat

9

and endless, and adapted to the intellectual endow-
ments and moral qualities of the human soul in a state
of high improvement ? — And from this general view
of it, as the proper condition of the virtuous, it be-
comes the object of the Christian's desire and his hope.
" It doth not yet appear," saith St. John, *' what we
shall be ; but we know that when he shall appear
(i. e. when Christ shall appear) we shall be like him ;
for we shall see him 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 trans-
formed into the likeness of his glorified Lord, of whose
glory, which, as he hath not seen, he hath no distinct
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 allu-
sions, which lead only to this general notion, that they
will be such as to give entire satisfaction to all the
desires of a virtuous 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 happi-
ness, 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 perfections. 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 perfec-
tions : and the desire of the reward can never divest
the mind of that disinterested love of God and good-

10

ncss on vvliidi it is itself founded ; nor can it assume
the relation of a cause to that of wliich it is itself the
effect. It appears, therefore, that the Christian's love
of {Tjoodness, — his desire of virtuous attainuients, — is,
in the strict and literal nieanin<^ of the word, disinter-
ested, notwithstandinji; the magnitude of the reward
which is the ohject 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 of the imj>oi'tancc of the attainments to which it
is promised.

If any one imagines he can be actuated by prin-
ciples more disinterested than these, he for^^ets that
he is a man and not a ^^od. Happiness nnist ])e a
constant object of desire and pursuit to every intelli-
gent being, — that is, to eveiy being who, besides the
actual perception of present pleasure and present pain,
hath the power of forming general ideas of liap])iness
and misery as distinct states arising from different
causes. Every being that hath this degree of intelli-
gence is under the government of final causes ; and
the advancement of his own. hap])iness, if it be not
already entire and secure, nnist be an end. It is im-
possible, therefore, that any rational agent, unless he
be cither sufficient to his ow^n happiness (which is the
prerogative of Ciod), or hath souie certain assurance
that his condition will not be altered ior 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 ratitmal
being should be altogether unconcerned about the
conseciuences of his moral conduct, as they may affect
his own condition. In the present lifi[', the advan-
tiiges are not on the side of virtue : all comes alike to

11

all, — " to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacri-
ficeth not ; — to him that sweareth, and to him that
feareth an oath : " and if a constitution of thingrs
were to continue for ever in which virtue should
labour under disadvantages, man might still have the
virtue to regret that virtue was not made for him ;
but discretion must be his ruling principle ; and dis-
cretion, 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 ex-
istence, delivers the believer from the uneasy appre-
hension that interest and duty may possibly be at
variance. It delivers him from that distrust of Pro-
vidence 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 that ardour of affection which its native worth
may claim, and gratitude to God his Maker and Re-
deemer may excite.

It is true, the alternative which the Gospel holds
out is endless happiness, in heaven, or endless suffer-
ing 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 preference of its proper enjoy-
ments 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
absence 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 ar«;unient 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 deatli of a sin-
ner, but that the sinner should turn from his way
and live." 15ut, to imagine that any one whom the
waniin<;s of the Gospel may no otherwise affect than
with the dread of the punishment of sin, — that any
one in whom they may work only a reluctant choice
of heaven as eli<?ible only in comparison with a state
of torment, — does merely in those feelings, or by a
certain pusillanimity in vice, which is the most those
feelings can effect, satisfy the duties of the Christian
calling, — to imagine this, is a strange misconce])tion
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 prin-
ciples may take effect. It may bring the sinner to
hesitate between self-denial here with heaven in rever-
sion, and gratification here with future sufferings. In
this state of ambiguity, the mind deliberates : while
the mind deliberates, appetite and passion 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 ])rint
of sovereign goodness, and in the attributes of (lod
descries its first and ])erfe{t form. New views ami
new desires occupy the soul : virtue is understood

13

to be the resemblance of God ; his resemblance is
coveted, as the highest attainment ; heaven is desired,
as the condition of those who resemble him -, and the
intoxicating cup of pleasure is refused, — 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 view^s and these sentiments, then,
and not before, the Christian character, in the judg-
ment of St. Paul, is perfect ; and the perfective qua-
lity of this disposition of the mind lies principally in
this circumstance, that it is a disinterested love of
virtue and religion as the chief object. The dispo-
sition is not the less valuable nor the less good, when
it is once formed, because it is the last stage of a gra-
dual progress of the mind which may too often, per-
haps, 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 vir-
tues of men without more or less of a compulsive dis-
cipline ; 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 the apostle ascribes to the Christian's desire of
improvement consists much in these two proj^erties,
— that it is boundless in its energies, and dis-
interested in its object. A third renders it complete ;

14

which is this, — thul this ;ip])etito of the luind (for
such it may be culled, althou<:;h insatiable, and, in the
strictest sense of the word, disinterested,) is never-
theless rational ; inasniiich as its origin is entirely in
the understanding, and ])ersonal good, though not its
object, is reiulered by the appointment of Trovidence,
and by the i)romises of the Ciospel, its certain conse-
(juence. Upon the whole, it appears that the per-
fection of the Christian character, as it is described
by the apostle, consists hi that which is the natural
perfection of the man, — in a principle w hich brings
every thought and desire of the mind into an entire
subjection to the will of God, rendering a religious
course of life a matter of choice no less than of duty
and interest.

15

SERMON XXIX.

Daniel, iv. I7.

This matter is by tlie decree of the PFatcliers^ and
the demand hy 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. *

The matter wliich 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 fiill 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 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 ac-
cession 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 unparalleled suc-

* Preached in the Cathedral Church of St. Asaph, on Thurs-
day, December 5. 1805; being the day of pubUc thanksgiving
for the victory obtained by Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson,
over the combined fleets of France and Spain, off Cape Tra-
falgar.

16

cess, the whole of tliat immense tract of country wliich
extends from the ])ank.s of tlic Euphrates westward
to the sea-coasts of Palestine and PhdMiicia, and the
])order of K^ypt. Nor was he more renowned in
war than justly admired in peace, for puhlic works of
the hii^hest utility and mairnilieenee. To him the
famous city of Bahylon owed whatever it possessed of
strength, of beauty, or convenience, — 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 con-
fined the river, — the canals, which carried off the
floods, — and the vast reservoir, which in seasons of
drought (for to the vicissitudes of innnoderate rains
and drought the climate was liable) supplied the city
and the adjacent country with water. In a word, for
tlie extent of his dominion, and the great revenues it
supplied, — for his lun-ivalled 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 uKmarch, 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 Egyptian Sesostris and the Indian
Bacchus. But great as this prince's talents and
endowments nuist have been, his uninterrupted and
unexampled prosperity was too much for the digestion
of his miiul : his heart grew vain in the contemplation
of his grandem- : he forgot that he was a man ; and
he affected divine honours. His impious ])ri(ie re-
ceived indeed a check, by the miraculous deliverance
of the three faithful Jews from the furnace to which

17

they had been condemned. His mind at first was
much affected by the miracle ; but the impression in
time wore off, and the intoxication of power and pros-
perity 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 con-
trary, upon no ground at all, by a foreign comment-
ator of great name, it is evident, from the sacred
history, that object was accomplished ; 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 tempered
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 account 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 lodo-ed 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

VOL. II. c

18

him give order, with a loud voice, tliat the tree should
be hewn down, its branches lopped off, and its fruit
scattered, and nothinj;- left of it but " the stump of
its roots in the earth ; " which was to be secured,
however, with a *' band of iron and brass, in the ten-
der irrass of the field." Words of menace follow,
which are ai)plicable only to a man, and plainly show
that the whole vision was typical of some dreadful ca-
lamity, to fall for a time, but for a time only, 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 professed diviners of all denomina-
tions, had ac(|uired 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 Magi. Daniel
told the king, that the tree which he had seen so
strong and flourishing was himself, — that the hewing
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 consternation 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 nu)nths, he was walking in
the palace of the kingdom of Babylon," — probably
on the flat roof of the building, or, ])erha])s, on one of

19

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 em-
pire, 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 pre-
dicted and thus executed, is the matter which the
text refers to " 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 give 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 pro-
vidence perpetually interposes in the affairs of men,
distributing crowns and sceptres, always for the good
of the faithful primarily, ultimately of his whole cre-
ation, but according to his will.

To apprehend rightly how the judgment upon Ne-
buchadnezzar, 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, under-
stood : and the text never can be rightly understood,
until we ascertain who they are, and to what class of

c ^

•20

heings 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 under-
stood ; to most ftilse and dangerous conclusions, if
they are ill interpreted.

I am ashamed to say, that if you consult very pious
and verv learned commentators, justly esteemed for
their illustrations 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 ranks of the different denominations.
The *' \\'atchers," 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 pro-
ceedings of earthly princes, who publish their decrees
with the advice of their chief mim'sters.

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 ex-
ploded -, namely, that God's government of this lower
world is carried on by the administration of the holy
angels, — that the different 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 de-
partments in government assigned to them : some,
constantly attending in the presence of Ciod, form his

21

cabinet council : others are his provincial governors *
every kingdom in the world having its appointed
guardian angel, to whose management it is intrusted :
other again are supposed to have the chai-ge and cus-
tody of individuals. 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
tutelar 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 subordinate,
indeed, but with a high authority, in the exercise of
which they are much at liberty, and at their own dis-
cretion. If this opinion were true, it would be diffi-
cult to show that the heathen were much to blame in
the worship which they rendered to them. The
officers of any great king are entitled to homage and
respect in proportion to the authority committed to
them ; and the grant of the power is a legal title to
such respect. These officers, therefore, of the great-
est of kings will be entitled to the greatest reverence ;
and as the governor of a distant province 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 connection, so the tute-

c 3

22

lar deity or angel will, with those who are put under
him, supersede the Lord of all : and the heathen,
who worshipped those w^ho were supposed to have the
power over them, were certainly more consistent with
themselves than they who acknowledging the power
withhold the worship.

So nearly allied to idolatry — or rather so much
the same thing with polytheism — is this notion of
the administration of God's government by the au-
thority 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 passages of Scripture."

That the holy angels are often employed by God
in his government of this sublunary w orld is, indeed,
clearly to be proved by holy writ. That they have
powers over the matter of the universe, analagous to
the poW'Crs over it which men possess, greater in ex-
tent, but still limited, is a thing wdiich might reason-
ably be supposed, if it were not declared : but it
seems to be confirmed by many passages of holy writ ;
from which it seems also evident that they are occa-
sionally, for certain specific purposes, commissioned
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 hu-
man 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 all this amounts not to any
thing of a discretional authority placed in the hands

of tutelar angels, or to an authority to advise the Lord
God with respect to the measures of his government.
Confidently I deny that a single text is to be found
in holy vs^rit, which, rightly understood, gives the
least countenance to the abominable doctrine of such
a participation of the holy angels in God's government
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 ex-
plicit upon the office and employment of angels.
" Are they not all," saith he, "ministering 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 *' ministering 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 em-
ployed by the Most High God to do his errands for
the elect.

An accurate discussion of all the passages of Scrip-
ture which have been supposed to favour the contrary
opinion would much exceed the just limits of this dis-
course : I shall only say of them generally, that they

c 4

24

are all abused texts, wrested to a sense which never
would have been dreamt of in any one of them, had
not the opinion of the government of angels pre-
viously taken hold of the minds of too many of the
learned. In the consideration of particular texts so
misinterpreted, I shall confine myself to such as occur
in the prophet Daniel, from whose writings this mon-
strous 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 Ga-
briel by name ; who, together with others unnamed,
is employed to exhibit visions tyjMcal 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 connection
with the supposed office of guardian 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 distinguished in
our calendars by the title of " Michael the arch-
angel.'* It has been for a long time a fashion in the
chvn'ch to speak very frequently and familiarly of
archangels, 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

25

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 Okl Testament : 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 cir-
cumstances 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 8t. Jude ; where the title of archangel is
coupled with the name of Michael, — " Michael the
archangel." This passage is so remarkably obscure,
that I shall not attempt to draw any conclusion 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 which it is here coupled
is Michael, — it follows undeniably that the archangel
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 arch-
angel Michael ; 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 aj^plied. 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 argument, that because no other
superiority than that of rank and authority is implied

26

ill the title, no other belongs to the person distin-
guished by the title, and that he is in all other re-
spects 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 described by the prophet Daniel, who never de-
scribes 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 main-
tain to be the full and not more than the full import
of the Hebrew words. Now, since we are clearly
got above the earth, into the order of celestials, who
are the princes that are firsts or rif flie head (tf' all?
— are they any other than the Three Persons 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 ^oz^r
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 children, of that holy seed the elect people
of God, — a description which applies particularly to
the Son of God, and to no one else. And in per-
fect consistence with this description of Michael in
the book of Daniel is the action assigned to him in
the Apocalypse, in which we find him fighting with
the Old Serpent, the deceiver of the world, and vic-
torious in the combat. That combat who was to
maintain, in that combat who was to be victorious,

'27

but the seed of the woman ? From all this it is evi-
dent, 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 Graecia." 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
argument would have no concern with them. If
they are beings of the angelic order, they nmst be
evil angels ; for good angels would not oppose and
resist the great prince Michael and his angel Gabriel :
if they were evil angels, they could not be tutelar
angels of Persia and of Graecia respectively, or of any
other country. But, to come directly to the point,
since they fight with Michael, to those who are con-
versant with the prophetic style, and have observed
the uniformity of its images, it will seem highly pro-
bable 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.

28

" 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 vehement struggles
between Christianity and the old idolatry in the first
ages of the Gospel. The angels of the two opposite
armies represent two opposite parties in the Roman
state, at the time which the vision more particularly
regards. Michael's angels are the party which es-
poused 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 endeavoured to support the old
idolatry. And in conformity with this imagery of
the Apocaly})se, 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 GriEcia 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
angels 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 notion of angels of the presence, although
it has often been assumed in exposition of some pas-
sages 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

29

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 council with his angels,
and advising with them upon measures. 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 counsellers, sitting: they are standing, in the atti-
tude of servants, ready to receive commands, and
to be sent forth each upon his proper errand. " And
Jehovah said. Who shall persuade Ahab, that he may
go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead ? " Here is no con-
sultation : no advice is asked or given : the only
question asked is. Who of the whole multitude assem-
bled, 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 forward 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 consulta-
tion 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.

30

Among those who undei^tand the titles of " Watch-
ers " and ** Holy Ones" of" angelic beings, it is not
quite agreed whether they are angels of the cabinet,
or the provincial governors, — the tutelar angels, to
whom these api)ellations 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 Nebuchad-
nezzar, 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 the judgments of
God himself are founded, and by whom the warrant
for the excution is finally issued ! 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 nuikes them angels ; especially when the
learned Grotius, in the extraordinary manner in
which he reconnnends it, had set forth its merits, as it
should seem, in the true light, when he says that

* Calvin, indeed, seems to have had some apprehension that
this exposition (wliich, however, lie adopted,) makes too nmch
of angels, and to have been embarrassed with the diliiculty.
He has recourse to an admirable expedient to get over it: he
says the whole vision was accommodated to the capacity of a
heathen king, who had but -a confined knowledge of God, and
could not distinguish between him and the angels.

81

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 some-
thing might pass in the celestial senate bearing some
analogy to the forms of legislation used in the assem-
blies of the people at Rome, in the times of the re-
public. It might have been expected that the exposi-
tion would have needed no other confutation, in the
judgment of men of piety and sober minds, than this
fair 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 universal 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 con-
sistency 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 Per-
sons is afterwards 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 confirmation 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,

3^

in speakiiifT of God, in the Hebrew tongue, but un-
exampled in tlie case of any other being.

The assertion, therefore, in my text, is, that God
had decreed to execute a signal judgment upon
Nebuchadnezzar for his pride and impiety, in order to
prove, by the example of tliat mighty monarch, that
** the Most High rulcth in the kingdom of men, and
givetli it to whomsoever he will, and settetli 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 consent and concur-
rence of all the Persons in the Trinity in the design
and execution of this judgment, which must be under-
stood, indeed, in every act of the Godhead. And, in
truth, we shall not find in history a more awful ex-
ample and monument of Providence than the vicissi-
tudes of Nebuchadnezzar's life afford. Raised gra-
dually to the pinnacle of power and human glory, by
a lonu: trahi of those brilliant actions and successes
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 ethcient,) 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 ])ublic dis-
aster, or any mismanagement of the affairs of his em-
pire. At the expiration of a twelvemonth from his
dream, the king, still at rest in his house and flourish-
ing in his palace, surveying his city, and exulting in
the monuments of his own greatness which it presented
to his eye, was smitten by an invisible hand. As the
event stood unconnected with any known natural
cause, it must have been beyond the ken of any fore-

33

sight short of the Divine; and it follows incontestably,
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 evidence of these extraordinary occurrences,
— of the prediction, the fall, and the restoration, —
is perhaps the most undeniable of any thing that rests
upon mere human testimony. 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 ; acknowledging that
" all his works are truth, and his ways judgment, 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 verbatim in the fourth chapter of the book
of Daniel, of which it makes indeed the whole. That
chapter therefore is not Daniel's writing, but Nebu-
chadnezzar's.

Nothing can so much fortify the minds of the faith-
ful against all alarm and consternation, — nothino- so
much maintain them in an unruffled composure of
mind, amid all the tumults and concussions of the
world around them, as deep conviction of the truth
of the principle inculcated in my text, and confirmed
by the acknowledgment of the royal penitent Nebu-
chadnezzar, '« that the Most High ruleth in the king-
dom of men." But as this doctrine, so full of conso-
lation 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-

VOL. II. D

Si

standiiii^ tliat my (liscoiirsc lias already run to a jxreatcr
lengtli than I iiitcndt-d, 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 ol' the text, and the lan-
guage, indeed, of all the Scriptures, that God governs
the world according to his will ; — hy 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 tlie
Divine intellect — by God's own goodness and wis-
dom ; and as justice is included in the idea of good-
ness, it nuist 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
justice which, making the ultimate hap])iness of those
who shall linally be brought by the probationary dis-
cipline to love and fear (iod its end, regards the sum-
total and ultimate issue of things, — not the compara-
tive deserts of men at the present moment. To us,
therefore, who see the present moment only, the
government of the world will ap])ear upon many oc-
casions not conformable, in our judgments, formed
upon limited and narrow views of things, to the
maxims of distributive justice. Me see power and pros-
perity not at all proportioned to merit ; for " the Most
High, who ruleth in the kingdom of men, giveth it
to wliomsoever lie will, and setteth up over it the
!)asest of men," — men base l)y the turpitude of their
wicked lives, nuire than by the obscurity of their ori-
ginal condition ; while good kings are divested of their
hereditary dominions, dethroned, and nnirdered : inso-
uiucli, that if ])ow( r and ])ros|)erity were .sure marks

35

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 approve and honour more the vanquish'd." *

As at this moment the world beholds with wonder
and dismay the low-born usurper of a great monarch's
throne, raised, by the hand of Providence unquestion-
ably, to an eminence of power and grandeur enjoyed
by none since the subversion of the Roman empire,
—a man whose undaunted spirit and success in enter-
prise 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
mdifFerent 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 con-
stant 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 Anti-
ochus Epiphanes of his hate ? But such persons are
raised up, and permitted to indulge their ferocious
passions, — their ambition, their cruelty, and their

* Victrix causa Diis phicuit ; sed victa Catoni.
D '2

.30

reveng^e, — as tlu; instruments of GocUs judp^ncnts
for tlie rcfonnation of his people ; and wlicn tliat
purpose is answered, vengeance is executed upon
them for tlieir own crimes. Thus it was with the
Syrian we liave just mentioned, and witli tliat more
ancient persecutor Sennaclierih, and many more ; and
so, we trust, it sliall be witli liim wlio 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."

Aiiain, if the thoup;ht 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 measure by any successes of an enemy, nor be
unduly elated with their own. The will of God is a
cause ever blended with and over-ruling other causes,
of which it is im])0ssible from any thing past to calcu-
late 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
o-ood grounds of the justice of their cause should not
be discouraged even by great failures in the beginning
of the contest, nor by sudden turns of ill fortune in
the progress of it. U])on such occasions, they should
humble themselves before God, confess their sins, and
deprecate liis judgments : but they should not inter-
pret cveiy advantage gained by the enemy as a sign
that the sentence of CJod is gone forth against them-
selves, and that they are already fallen not to rise
a^-ain. When the tribe of Benjamin refused to give
up " the children of lU-lial wjiich ueiv in Gibeah"

37

to the just resentment of their countrymen, the other
tribes confederated, 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 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 received com-
mand to go out again the third day. They obeyed.
They were victorious : Gibeah was burnt 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 circum-
stances.

Again, a firm belief in God's providence, over-
ruling the fortunes of men and nations, will moderate
our excessive admiration of the virtues and talents of
men, and particularly of the great achievements of
bad men, which are always erroneously ascribed to
their own high endowments. 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 conveyed to us through his highly-favoured
servants. 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 cri-
minal, it is a most dangerous error, and often fatal to
the interests of mankind ; as, in these very times,
nothing has so much conduced to establish the power

D 3

38

of the Corsican and multiply his successes, as the slav-
ish fear of him which has seized the minds of men,
growinj^ out of an admiration of his holdness in enter-
prise on some occasions, and his hair-hreadth escapes
on others, which liave raised in the many an opinion
that he possesses such abilities, both in council and in
the held, as render him an overmatch ibr 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 suc-
cess in the political principles of the times in which
he first arose, independent of any uncommon talents
of his own, — principally in the revolutionary frenzy,
the s])irit 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 successes to himself.
It has been the will of God to set up over the king-
dom " the basest of men," in order to chastise the
profaneness, the irreligion, the lukewarmness, the
profligacy, the turbulent seditious spirit of the times;
and when this ])urpose is effected, and the wrath
of God appeased, "wherein is this man to be ac-
counted of, whose breath is in his nostrils ? "

It is a gross pcn'ersion of the doctrine of Provi-
dence, when any argument is drawn from it for the
indifference of all human actions in the sight of God,
and the insignificance of all liuman efforts. Since every
thing is settled by Providence according to God's own
w ill, to what avail, it is said, is the interference of man ?
At the counnencement of the disordered state wliicli
still subsists in Europe, when apprehensions were ex-
pressed by many (a])))rchenNi()ns uliiili arc still enttr-
tained by those uho lirst e\j)rcsst(l ijit-ni) that the

39

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 opposi-
tion can set aside the fixed designs of Providence ? "
Strange to tell, this argument took with many who
were no 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
Providence 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 knowledge of his
secret will, from their own views as free agents, the
instruments of his purpose. In the case of Antichrist,
in particular, prophecy is explicit. So clearly as it is
foretold that he shall rise, so clearly is it foretold that
he shall fliU : 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 dow^nfall. So false is all the despicable cant of
puritans about the unlawfulness 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 Corsican shall
never set his foot upon our shores, the loyalty and

D 4

valour of the country are, we tniNt, 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 necessan,- at this season that I
should warn vou airainst another jn-oss and danixerous
perversion of the doctrine of Providence ; which is mis-
conceived and abused when we impute any successes
with wliich 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 t\Tant who has surpassed in crime all
former examples of depraA-ity 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 coun-
try, since the begimiing 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 continental ally were fl\'inff
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
wrested from us our ancient sovereignty of the ocean,
and to have extinguished our commerce in all its
branches, — this pround naval armament, encountered
by a far inferior force of British ships, — a force infe-
rior in every- thing but the intrepidity of our seamen
and the skill of their leaders, — was dashed to pieces,
at the mouth of its own harbour, by the cannon of
that great commander whose grave is strewed with
laurels and Wdcwed with liis countn's tears. But

41

let not this inspire the vain thought, that, because we
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 follows most undeniably, that those na-
tions are not always the most righteous who in peace
are the most flourishing and in war the most success-
ful. Let us give, therefore, the whole gloiy to God.
In the hour of defeat let us say, " ^Miy should man
complain ? — man, for the punishment of his sins ? "
In the hour of victor)', *' Let us not be high-mmded,
but fear."

4>2

SER3ION XXX

Malachi, iii. 1, '2.

^J/i(I the Lord, ir/iotn ye seek, .shall suddeidij come
to Ids temple, even tlic Messenger oftlie Covenant,
wlmm ije deligJtf in : behold He shall come, saith
the Lord <>f' Hosts.

But 7cho may abide the day of his coming ? and who
shall stand irJien he appeareth f

For the general meaning of this passage, all exposi-
tors, 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 announced is the appearance of
that Great Deliverer who had for many ages been
the hope of Israel, and was to be a blessing to all
families of the earth. Concerning 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 pr()j)hetical othce had
excited. " Behold He shall come, saifh the Lord
of Hosts'' — Saifh the Lord of Hosts. 'I'iiis was a
solenni fonn of words with all the .lewisli prophets ;

43

when they woiikl express the highest certahity 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 ordained.
And the full import of the expression is nothing less
than this, — that the purpose of Him whose councils
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 solemn 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 pathetic-
ally foretold, and the particulars of the business upon
which he is said to come ; that we may see how ex-
actly the one and the other correspond to the person
and performances of Jesus of Nazareth. These medi-
tations will both much contribute to the general con-
firmation of our faith, and, in particular, they will
put us on our guard against those gross corruptions
of the Christian doctrine which the caprice and vanity
of this licentious age have revived rather than pro-
duced.

First, for the characters under which the person is
described whose coming is foretold. The first is, that
he is the Lord. The word, in the original, is the
same which David uses in the hundred and tenth
psalm, when, speaking of the Messiah, he says, —
*' Jehovah said unto my Lord." The original word

* The season of Advent.

41^

in this passage of Malaclii, and in that of the hun-
dred and tenth psahn, is the same ; and in both phiccs
it is very exactly and properly rendered by the Eng-
lish " Lord." The Hebrew word is not more deter-
minate in its signification than the English : it
denotes 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 common speech, without any notion of supe-
riority, property, or dominion annexed to it, as a
mere appellation of respect, just as the word *' Sir " is
used in our language. Nevertheless, in its primary
signification, it denotes a lord, in the sense of a go-
vernor, master, or proprietor ; and is used by the
sacred writers as a title of the Deity himself; ex-
pressing 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, there-
fore, of large and various signification, denoting do-
minion 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 propliet, cannot be other-
wise miderstood, 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

45

of all writers, and in the natural meaning of the
phrase, is the divinity to whose worship it is conse-
crated. To no other divinity the temple of Jerusa-
lem was consecrated than the True and Everlasting
God, the Lord Jehovah, 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 Jeho-
vah of the Old Testament. Jehovah by his angels
had delivered the Israelites from the Egyptian bond-
age ; and the same Jehovah was to come in person to
his temple, to effect the greater and more general de-
liverance of which the former was but an imperfect
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 Malachi : it was the unani-
mous 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
explain 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 mis-
call the sacred name- of God, they scrupulously ab-
stained 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

46

word of the Hebrew language, which answers to the
English " Lord." The learned Jews who were em-
ployed by Ptolemy to turn the Scriptures of the Old
Testament into Greek, have every where in their
translation substituted the corresponding word of the
Greek lano;uao:e. Later translators have followed
their mischievous example, — mischievous in its con-
sequences, though innocently meant ; and our Eng-
lish translators among the rest, in innumerable in-
stances, forthe original "Jehovah," which ought, upon
all occasions, to have been religiously retained, have
put the more general title of "the Lord." A fla-
grant instance of this occurs in that solemn proem of
the Decalogue, in the twentieth chapter of Exodus,
" I am the Lord thy God," so w^e read in our Eng-
lish Bibles, " who brought thee out of the land of
Egypt, out of the house of bondage. " In the origi-
nal it is "I am Jehovah thy God, who have brought
thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bond-
age." Another example of the same unhappy alteration
we find in that famous passage of the hundred and tenth
psalm which I have already had occasion to produce :
"The Lord said unto my Lord; " which is in the He-
brew "Jehovah said unto my Lord." If translators
have used this unwarrantable license of substituting a
title of the Deity for his proper name in texts where
that name is applied to the Almighty Father, — and in
one, in particular, where the Father seems to be dis-
tinguished 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 intended. It will be much to the purpose
to produce some examples of these disfigured texts, —
not forthe sake of fastening any invidious imputation

47

upon our translators, who were men too eminent for
their piety, and have acquitted themselves too faith-
fully in their arduous task, to be suspected of any ill
designs ; but for the more important purpose of
restoring the true doctrine to that splendour of evi-
dence which an undue deference to the authority of
the ancient Greek translation hath in some degree
unhappily obscured.

The passage I shall first produce is that famous
prediction 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 He-
brew it is *' Jehovah our Righteousness. "-— *' Sing
and rejoice, O daughter of Zion ! " saith the prophet
Zechariah ; " for lo I come ; and I dwell in the midst
of thee, saith the Lord ;" in the original, "saith
Jehovah." — " In the year that King Uzziah died, I
saw the Lord," 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 "Jehovah, 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 John, " when

48

he saw his fjjlory and spake of liini." St. John liad
just alleged that ])articular ])ropliecy 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 liis citation of Isaiah's
words, — *' These things said Esaias, when he saw liis
glory, and spake of him." It was Christ's glory,
tlierefore, that Esaias saw ; and to liim whose glory
he saw the propliet gives tlie name of Jkhovaii, and
the worshipping angels gave tlie name of .Jkiiovah
God of Sabaoth. Again, the prophet Joel, speaking
of the blessings of the Messiah's day, saitli, — *' And
it sliall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the
name of the Lord," in the original "Jehovah,"
*' 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 })y
believing in Christ Jesus. But how is the apostle's
assertion, that all men shall be saved by faith in
Christ, confirmed by the prophet's promise of de-
liverance to all who should devoutly invocate Jeho-
vah, unless Christ were, in the judgment of St. Paul,
the Jkhovaii of the prophet Joel?

Erom the few passages which have been produced,
— more, indeed, might be collected to the same pur-
pose, — but from these few, I doubt not but it suffi-
ciently a])pcars to you that the jmmiised Messiah is
descril)e(l by the niore ancient proj)hets, as by Mala-
chi in the text, as no other than the Everlasting (ion,
the Jkiiovah of the Israelites, — that Almighty (iod
whose hand hath laid the foundations of the earth.

49

whose right hand hath spanned the heavens, — that
jealous God who giveth not his glory to another, and
spareth 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 inven-
tions in divinity (for their corruptions were indeed
the produce of an early age), arc content to acquire a
secondary fame by defending old errors with unex-
ampled rashness. They are said to have gone so far
in their public discourses as to bestow on Christ our
Lord the opprobious appellation of the " Idol of the
Church of England." Let it be remembered, tliat he
who is called the Idol of our church is the God who
was worshipped in the Jewish temple. They have the
indiscretion, too, to boast the antiquity of their dis-
guised 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 cen-
tury, and was the invention of a dark and supersti-
tious age. This assertion, were it not clearly falsified,
as happily it is, by the whole tenour of the apostolical
writings, would cause a more extensive ruin than
they seem to apprehend : it would not so much over-
turn any single article of doctrine, such as men may
dispute about, and yet be upon the whole believers, —
it would cut up by the roots the whole faith in Christ.
Mahomet well understood this : he founded his own
pretensions prudently, however impiously, on a denial
of the Godhead of Christ. '* There is one God,"
said Mahomet, " who was not begotten, and who ne-

VOL. II. E

50

ver did beget." If tlie Father did not beget, 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 pro-
phet 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, how-
ever, of their rash assertion, they are not justly
chargeable : they mean not to invalidate the particular
claims of Jesus of Nazareth as a prophet, and the De-
liverer 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 par-
ticularly 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 his-
torical fact, of which it is strange that any men of
learning should be ignorant, and which will serve to
outweigh all the arguments of their erroneous meta-
physics,— 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 origi-
nal faith of the ancient Jewish church, delivered, as I
have sho^vn you, by her prophets, embraced 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 w^as typified in the
symbols of the most ancient patriarchal worship. The

51

cherubim of glory, afterwards placed in the sanctuary
of the Mosaic temple, and of Solomon's temple, had
been originally placed in a tabernacle on the east
of the garden of Eden, immediately after the fall.
These cherubim were figures emblematical of the
Trine persons in the Godhead, — of the mystery of
redemption by the Son's atonement, — and of the sub-
jection of all the powers of nature, and of all created
things, animate and inanimate, to the incarnate
God.

This, therefore, is the first character und^r 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, therefore, of the subject demands a separ-
ate discourse.

E S

5^Z

SERMON XXXI.

Malachi, iii. 1, '2.

And tlie Lord, irlioui ye seek, shall suddenli/ come fa
his temple, even the Messenger rf the L'ovenanty
ivhom ye delight in : behold, He shall come, saith
the Lord qf Hosts.

3ut irho ma// abide the dai/ qf his coming? and
who shall stand when he appeareth ?

Although tlic words of my text are too perspicu-
ous in their j^cneral sense and mcanin<^ to need eluci-
dation, yet the characters by whicli the person is
described whose coming is announced, and the par-
ticulars of the business upon which he is said to come,
desene a minute and accurate explication. The first
character 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
liad been given of the same person by the earlier pro-
phets ; who unanimously ascribe to him both the at-
tributes and works of (lod, and frecjuently mention
him by (lod's peculiar name, ".Tkhovah ; " whicli,
though it ])e the proper and inconnnunicable name of
God, is not exclusively the name of the Almighty
Father, but equally belongs indifierently to every per-

53

son in the Godhead, since by its etymology it is sig-
nificant of nothing but what is common to them all,
self-existence.

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 superior distinction
of the Gospel covenant, that it was begun to he
spoken by the Lord. The prophet Jeremiah, who
lived long before Malachi, had already spoken in very
explicit terms of a new covenant which God should
establish with his people, by which the Mosaic should
be superseded, 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 covenant that I made with their fa^
thers, in the day that I took them by the hand to
bring them out of the land of Egypt j 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 men-
tions this covenant again, and calls it an everlasting
covenant. He had mentioned it before, in less explicit
terms ; but in such which perspicuously though figur-
atively express the universal comprehension of it,tnd
he abrogation of the ritual law : «' In those days,
saith the Jehovah, they shall say no more, The ark
of the covenant of the Jehovah ! neither shall it come

e 3

54

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 iheif {i.e. the Gentiles) walk any more after the
stubbornness of their evil heart." Of this new co-
venant we have another remarkable prediction, in the
prophecies of Ezekiel : '* Nevertheless I will remem-
ber my covenant with thee in the days ofthyyouih;
and I will establish unto thee an everlasting co-
venant." The youth of any people is a natural meta-
phor in all languages to denote the time of their first
beginnings, when they were few, and weak, and in-
considerable. Here, therefore, by the days of Judah*s
youth, I think is to be understood the very first be-
ginnings of the Jewish j^eople, when they existed
only in the persons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
The covenant made with Judah in these days of his
youth signifies, as I apprehend, the original promises
made to those patriarchs long before the promulga-
tion 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 remembrance
shall be, that " he will establish with Judah an ever-
lasting 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
succeeding patriarchs. The prophet goes on : *' Then
shalt thou remember thy ways, and be ashamed, when
thou shalt receive thy sisters, thine elder and thy
younger." You will observe, that the sisters of Ju-

55

tlah are the nations of Samaria and Sodom ; which,
in that masculine style of metaphor which character-
ies Ezekiel's writings, had been called her sisters in
a former part of the discourse, — Samaria her eldest
sister, Sodom her younger ; her sisters, it is meant,
in guilt and in punishment. Now it is promised that
she shall receive these sisters. The prophet adds, —
** I will give them unto thee for daughters ; " i. e.
the most wicked of the idolatrous nations shall be
brought to the knowledge of the true God, and in-
grafted into his church ; *' but not by thi/ covenant,
— not by that covenant that now subsists with thee ;
but by the terms of the everlasting covenant here-
after to be established. " Of this covenant, so clearly
foretold, and so circumstantially described by the pre-
ceding prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Malachi thinks
it unnecessary to introduce any particular description.
He supposes that it will be sufficiently known by the
simple but expressive title of the covefiant, — 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 refer
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 unexampled, will appear by a remark-
able instance of it in the prophet Micah, In the

E 4

5G

fourth cliapter of liis propliecies, lie speaks very
openly of the conversion of tlie Gentiles ; and in the
be^innin<r of the fifth, he declares that this conver-
sion should not bejjin till the birth of Christ :
" Therefore he will give them up," ?. e. God will
give the Gentiles up, — he will leave them to them-
selves, " until the time when she which travaileth
siiall bring forth : then the remnant of his brethren
shall retuni unto the children of Israel. " Here she
which travaileth is the virgin of whom Isaiah had
already prophecied that she should conceive and bring
forth a son. This virgin, Micah, by a bold and
happy stroke of rhetoric, speaks of as already preg-
nant ; and this brief and animated reference to
Isaiah's jirediction might more effectually revive the
remembrance of it, and excite a renewed attention to
it, than a more direct and explicit repetition ; at the
same time that it was the most respectful manner of
citing the original prophecy, as that which needed not
either comment or confirmation. In like manner,
Malachi, in the text, refers briefly, but emphatically,
to the old prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, con-
cerning a new covenant to be established in the latter
days ; and, at the same time that he points but tran-
siently, and in a single word, at those particulars in
which foi-mer 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 he tJie messenger of this ever-
Insfi?7fr corcvant. And this is the second character
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 |)rophetical writings ;

57

and of which Jeremiah and Ezekiel, in particular,
have expressly foretold the establishment, and clearly
described the nature, 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 Mes-
senger of the Covenant foretold by Jeremiah and
Ezekiel. This is mentioned as a covenant to be estab-
lished between Jehovah and his people : it was doubt-
less to be proposed on the part of God, — to be em-
braced 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 au-
thority to send, — submission to that authority in the
person sent. The Messenger, therefore, of the Co-
venant, is the servant of the Lord Jehovah : but the
same person who is the messenger is the Lord Jeho-
vah himself; not the same person with the sender,
but bearing the same name, because united in that
mysterious nature and undivided substance which the
name imports. The same person, therefore, is ser-
vant and lord ; and, by uniting these characters in
the same person, what does the prophet but describe
thatf 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

58

after the birth of Christ, — an invention of the dark
and sn])erstiti()us ages ! The two, indeed, must stand
or fall toirether : we claim for both a reverend anti-
quity : we a])peal to tlie sacred archives of the ancient
Jewish church, where both are registered in charac-
ters which do to tliis day, and we trust shall to tlie
last, defy the injuries of time.

To these two characters of the Messiah, of Jehovah
and Jehovah's Messenger, — or ratlier to that one
mysterious character wliich arises from tlie union of
these two, — another is to be added, contained in the
assertion that he is the Lord icliom the persons seek
to whom the prophecy is addressed — the Messenger
irlinm flic if (lelight in. I doubt not but you prevent
me in the interpretation of this character : you imagine
that the general expectation of tlie Messiah is alluded
to in these expressions, and the delight and consolation
which the devout part of the Jewish nation derived
fiom 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 wlio <H(l nul
seek the Lord, — who could not delight in the Mes-
senger of his Covenant, — to the profane and atheis-
tical, who, neither listening to the promises iu)r regard-
ing the threatenings of God, take occasion, from the
promiscuous distribution of the good and evil of the
present life, to form rash and impious (onclusions

59

against his providence, to arraign his justice and wis*
dom, or to dispute his existence. The expressions, there-
fore, of seeking the Lord and delighting in his Mes-
senger 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 remarkably distinguished
from the levity of ridicule, and is particularly adapted
to the purposes of invective and rebuke. It denotes
conscious superiority, sometimes indignation, in the
person who employs it ; it excites shame, confusion,
and remorse, in the person against whom it is em-
ployed, — 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 applies it with propriety and address.
I have been thus particular in exjilaining 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 language ; 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 remark-
able instance of it, but of the mildest kind, occurs in
his conversation with Nicodemus, whom he had pur-
posely perplexed with a doctrine somewhat abstruse
in itself, and delivered in a figurative language ; and
when the Pharisee could not dissemble the slowness of

60

liis apprclicnsion, Jesus seems to triumph over his
embarrassment in that ironical question, " Art thou
a master in Israel, and knowest not these things ? "
The question, you see, seems to imply a respectable
estimation of the learninix and abilities of those
masters in Israel of whom this nightly visitor was one,
and to express unich surprise at the discovery of Nico-
demus' ignorance ; whereas the thing insinuated is
the total insufficiency of these self-constituted teachers,
who were ignorant of the first principles of that know-
ledge 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 untainted
w ith the pride and prejudices of his sect. Jesus in-
tended to give him new light ; but for this purpose
he judges it expedient first to make him feel his pre-
sent ignorance ; which the triumph of this ironical
qustion must have set before him in a glaring light.
In the prophetical writings of the Old Testament, ex-
amples of a more austere irony abound ; but we shall
no where find an instance in which it more forcibly
applied than by Malachi in the text. *' Ye liave
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, — " therein
have we wearied him ? " He answers, — " ^^'hen ye
say, Every one that doeth 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 hi the sen-
timents which you express? Is this your quarrel
with Providence, that the blessings of this life are pro-
miscuously distributed ? Is it really your desire that
opulence and honour should be the ])eeiiliar ])ortion
of the righteous, — poverty and shame the certain

61

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 suffer or for vice to prosper ? — Sanctified blas-
phemers ! be content : your just remonstrances are
heard ; you shall presently be friends with Providence :
the God of judgment comes; he is at hand: becomes
to establish the everlasting covenant of righteousness,
— to silence all complaint, — 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, because with the
greatest brevity, in those ironical expressions of the
prophet, " The Lord, y^'\\Q>m. ye seek ; the Messenger
of the Covenant, whom ye 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 cannot 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 delight, because he is the messenger of vengance.
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

62

of the subject, — the particulars of the business upon
which the person announced in the text is said to
come. There remains, besides, the appHcation of every
article of this remarkable prophecy to Jesus of Naza-
reth. These important disquisitions we must still post-
pone ; 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-

6S

SERMON XXXII

Malachi, iii. 1, 2.

And the Lord, ivlwmye seek, shall suddedly come fo
his temple, even the Messenger of the Covenant,
whom ye delight in : behold. He shall come, saith
the Lord of Hosts.

But iclio may abide the day of his coming f and who
shall stand when he appearethf

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 ever-
lasting covenant of which the establishment is so ex-
plicitly foretold by the prophets Jeremiah and Eze-
kiel : 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 vengance 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
undetermined what the particular business is to be ;
intimating only in general terms that something very
terrible will be the consequence of the Messiah's arri-
val : '< But who may abide the day of his coming ?

G4

uiul wlio shall stand whcii he aj)pcareth ? " Vou will
not wonder tliat tlie appearance of that ** Sun of
Righteousness, wlio hath arisen with healing on his
wings," sliould lierc 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
speaking to the profane and atheistical, — to those
wlio had nothing to hope from the mercy of God, and
every thing to fear from his justice. U'o 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 sin-
ner : they make a part of that pow^r of 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 offer
imto 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 adul-
terers, 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 different tempers
and dispositions of men, in order to that judgment ;
and something to be done for their amendment and

65

improvement. The trial is signified under the image
of an essayist's separation of the nobler metals from
the dross with which they are blended in the ore : the
means used for the amendment and improvement of
mankind, by the Messiah's atonement for our sins,
by the preaching of the Gospel, and by the internal
influences of the Holy Spirit, —all these means, em-
ployed inider 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 effect of this purification is to
be, that the sons of Levi will be purified. The wor-
ship of God shall be purged of all hypocrisy and super-
stition, and reduced to a few simple rites, the natural
expressions of true devotion. *' And then shall this
offering of Judah and Jerusalem (^. e. of the true
members of God's true church) be pleasant unto the
Lord." These, then, are the particulars of the busi-
ness on which the Messiah, according to this prophecy,
was to come.

It yet remains to recollect the particulars in which this
prophecy, as it respects both the person of the Messiah
and his business, hath been accomplished in Jesus of Na-
zareth. 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
mmistry at Jerusalem : there he daily taught the peo-
ple ; there he held frequent disputations with the un-
believing 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

VOL. II. F

66

in his coming upon that occasion there was an extra-
ordinary suddenness. It was, indeed, before the com-
mencement 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 Scriptures. 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 Ro-
man 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 coinci-
dence of the subversion of the independent govern-
ment 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 Jerusalem 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 Jerusalem were ac-
commodated with cash for their bills of credit. Fired
with indignation at this daring profanation of his
Father's house, he overset the accounting tables of
the bankers, and with a light whip made of rushes
he drives these irreligious traders from the sacred pre-
cincts. Here was a considerable exertion of authority.
However, on this occasion he claimed not the temple
expressly foi' hi.s own ; he called it his Father's
house, and appeared to act only as a son.

67

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 the temple, and cried saying. If any man
thirst, let him come unto me and drink : he that be-
lieveth 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 neces-
sary that you should know in what the silly multitudes
to whom it was addressed were probably employed at
the time when it was uttered : and for this purpose I
must give you a brief and general account of the cere-
monies of that last day, the great day of the feast of
tabernacles ; the ceremonies, not the original cere-
monies 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 1 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 I " 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 exultation,
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 that
text of Isaiah, — " With joy shall ye draw water from
the fountain of salvation." The fountain of salvation,
in the language of a prophet, is the Messiah ; the

F 2

68

water to be drawn from tliat tountain is the water of"
his Spirit. Ot" this mystical lueaiiinj^' of" tlie water,
the inventors of these superstitious rites, wlioever they
niiglit be, seein to liave had some obscure discern-
ment ; ahlioiinh they understood tlie fountain literally
of the fountain of Siloaui ; for, to encourage the peo-
ple to the practice of this laborious superstition, they
had pursuaded them that this rite was of singular
efficacy to draw down the prophetic spirit. The mul-
titudes zealously 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
f/iirst," are ironical. " Are ye famished," says ho',
*' 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 purifica-
tion 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 ty|^e :
I am the fountain of .salrdfion 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 peqietually
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 ])ros])erous state of the church, which, according
to the proj)het, 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 mv strentith and souij:, he also is

69

become my salvation : therefore with joy shall ye draw
water out of the wells of salvation." Consider these
words as they lie in the context of the prophet ; con-
sider the occasion upon which Jesus standing in the
temple applies them to himself ; consider the sense in
which he applies them ; and judge whether this appli-
cation 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 tlie 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 him-
self, than they perceived the justness of it, and acknow-
ledged in him the fountain of salvation. 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 occa-
sion in the life of Jesus in which Malachi's prediction,
" that the Lord should come to his temple," was ful-
filled 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 ^^ fountain of salvation : " for by appro-
priating the character to himself, he must be under-
stood in effect to claim all those othei' characters which
Isaiah in the same prophecy ascribes to the same per-
son ; which are these : " God, the salvation of Israel;
the Lord Jehovah, his strength and his song ; the

F 3

70

Lord, that liath clone excellent 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 un-
derstanding of our Saviour's conduct upon this occa-
sion depends so much upon seeing certain leading cir-
cumstances in a proper light, — upon a recollection of
ancient prophecies, and an attention to the customs of
the Jewish people, — that I am apt to suspect few now-
a-days discern in this extraordinary transaction what
was clearly seen in it at the time by our Lord's disci-
ples, and in some measure understood by his enemies.
I shall 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 neighbouring 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 clioosing this singular conveyance ? It
could not be that the iUtigue of the short journey
which remained was likely to be too much for him
afoot ; and that no better animal was to be procured.

71

Nor was the ass in these days (though it had been in
earlier ages) an animal in high esteem in the East,
used for travelling or for state by persons of the first
condition, — that this conveyance 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 apprised that the Mes-
siah was to come to the holy city in that manner.
** Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! shout, O
daughter of Jerusalem ! " saith Zechariah : *' Behold
thy King cometh unto thee ! He is just, and having
salvation ; lowly, and riding upon an ass, even a colt
the foal of an ass I " And this prophecy the Jews
never understood of any other person than the Messiah.
Jesus, therefore, by seating himself upon the ass's colt
in order to go to Jerusalem, without any possible in-
ducement either of grandeur or convenience, openly
declared himself to be that King who was to come, and
and at whose coming in that manner Zion was to
rejoice. And so the disciples, if we may judge from
what immediately 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 content-
ment 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

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72

on occasions of tlie }ii<^licst pomp : they proclaimed
liim the lon^-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
Covenant : and they rent the skies with the exulting
acclamation of " Hosanna in the highest I " On their
way to Jerusalem, 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.
\\ hen they reached Jerusalem, the whole city, says
the blessed evangelist, was moved. Here recollect,
that it was now the season of the passover. The pass-
over was the highest festival of the Jewish nation, the
anniversary of that memorable night when Jehovah
led his armies out of Egyj^t with a high hand and an
extended arm, — "a night much to be remembered
to the Lord of the children of Israel in their genera-
tions ; " and nuich 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 during this festival are beyond imagin-
ation. These strangers, who, living at a distance, knew
little of what had been 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 re-
plied by some of the natives of Judea, — but, as 1
conceive, by none of the disciples ; for any of them
at this time would have given another answer, — it
was replied, " This is the \azarene, the great propliet

73

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 porticoes 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 dis-
play 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 displea-
sure 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 for-
mer occasion, he drove out the traders ; but with a
higher tone of authority, calling it his oz/;?2 house, and
saying, " My house is the house of prayer ; but ye
have made it a den of thieves." — You have now the
story, in all its circumstances, faithfully collected from
the four evangelists ; nothing exaggerated, but set in
order, and perhaps somewhat illustrated by an appli-
cation of old prophecies and a recollection of Jewish

74

customs. Judge for yourselves whether this was not
an advent of the Lord Jehovali takinf^ personal pos-
session 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
Nazareth display in his own person, and in his con-
duct claim, the first and greatest character of the Mes-
siah foretold and described by all the preceding Jewish
pr()])hets, as well as by Malachi in the text, — the
Lord coming to his temple. The other characters,
when we resume the subject, will with no less evidence
appear in him.

15

SERMOJY XXXIII

Malachi, iii. 1, 2.

And the Lord^ whomye seek, shall suddenly come to
his temple^ even the Messenger of the Covenant,
idiom ye delight in : behold, He shall come, saith
the Lord of Hosts.

Bat irho may abide the day of his coming? and who
shall stand when he appearetlt ?

i HIS text of Malachi has turned out a fruitful sub-
ject ; more so, perhaps, than the first general view of
it might seem to promise. \\ e 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 whom we believe our Lord
to be, the ISIessiah : we have had occasion to ex-
pound some important texts, — to open many passages
of prophecy, — to consider some remarkable passages
in the life of Jesus, — to make some general observ-
ations on the style of the sacred writers, — to recall
the remembrance of some customs of the ancient
Jews ; by all which, we trust that we have thrown
some light ujwn interesting texts of Scripture, and
have furnished the attentive hearer with hints which

7G

he who shall bear them in remembrance may apply to
make lij^ht in many other places for himself". This
han-est of edification which hath been already col-
lected encourages me to j)roceed in the remainder of
my subject, with the same diligence and exactness
which I have used in the former })art of it ; and 1
trust that it will enga<!;e you to give me still your se-
rious attention.

We have already found in Jesus of Nazareth that
great character of the Messiah — the Lord of the
Jewish temple. 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 Mes-
senger of tin' CnrciKitif ; of that covenant of which
the establishment was so e\])licitlv foretold bv the
projdiets Jeremiah and Ezekicl.

In general, that Jesus was the ])roposer of a cove-
nant betwet-n (Jod and man, is much too evident to
need any laboured proof. Did he not announce
blessings on the part of God ? did he not accpiire
duties in return from men ? Now, an offer of bless-
ings from (lod, with a demand of duties in return
from men, is, in the Scripture language, a covenant
between God and man. It was thus that the ])ro-
mises to Abraham weie a covenant : it was ])romised
to Abraham, that his ])osterity should become a lui-
merous nation, ])rosj)erous in itself, and a means of
blessing to all the families of the earth : it was re-
(juired, in return, of Abraham and his posterity, to
keej) themselves ])uie from tlu' general corru])ti()n of
idolatrv, and to adhere to the true worshij) of the
true (lod. Thus, also, the Mosaic institution was
a covenant : the land of Canaan was given to the

77

Jews : a strict observance is required of the rituals
of the Mosaic law, and obedience to the prophets who
should succeed Moses. And thus the Christian in-
stitution is a covenant : the sins of men are for-
given, through the sacrifice of Christ ; eternal hap-
piness 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 enemies — to control their
passions, and to deny all sinful appetites. 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 propounded 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 Mes-
siah 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 cove-
nant 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 re-
quired duties of a ceremonial service : Jesus requires
the natural devotion of the heart, the reasonable sa-
crifice of an innocent and holy life. And the social

7S

duty, under the liiw and under the Gospel, is in its
first general prineiples the same : yet Jesus, in his
sermon on tlie Mount, points out imperfections in
certain 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 re-
formation nuist begin ; and the Mosaic institution
is to be considered as the beginning of a ])lan of Pro-
vidence for tlie gradual amendment of mankind,
whidi Cln-istianity was to finish and complete. He
tells the multitudes, that it would not be sufficient
that they should abstain from such criminal actions
as were prohibited by the letter of the Decalogue, —
that they must master the passions which might in-
cline them to such actions. He taught that the law-
was fulfilled in the true and undissemblini; love of
God and man ; and although he did not, during his
own life on earth, release men from the obser\'ance
of the Mosaic rites, he seized all occasions of ex])lain-
ing 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 duties it prescribes.
The promises of the Mosaic covenant were of tem-
poral blessings : the disciples of Christ are taught
to look for nothing in this world but persecution and
affliction, with the grace of God to supj)ort them
under it ; but they are to receive hereafter an in-
heritance that f'adeth not away. 'I'hus new, thus dif-
ferent from the Mosaic, is the covenant of Jesus ;
•agreeing well in this particular with that which is
described by Jeremiah and I'/ekiel. Another cir-
cumstance of the covenant foretold by these ])rophets
was, that it should be universal, comprehending all

79

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 creature ;
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 which 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 whatever,
either in its requisitions or in its promises, to any
peculiarities of place or time. In the Mosaic insti-
tution, we find much attention to the particular tem-
pers and manners of the Jewish people, — - to the
notions they had imbibed in Egypt, — to the circum-
stances in which they were afterwards 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 commanded to offer in
sacrifice the animals which they had seen the Egyp-
tians worship ; that they might not adopt the same
superstitious veneration for them. They were for-
bidden 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 temporary intendments are to be found in the
covenant of Jesus, — no accommodations to the man-
ners of any particular nation, — no caution against
the corruptions of any particular age or place : the

so

whole is j)lann(.'{l upon a couiprehcnsivc view of hu-
man nature hi general, of the original and immutable
relation of things, and of the perfections of the un-
changeable God. The things comnuuuled are such
as ever were and ever will be good ; the things for-
bidden, such as ever were and ever will be evil ; —
ever good and ever evil, not from their adjuncts, their
accidents, {)r their circumstances, which may admit of
change ; but intrinsically, in their own formal 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 love of God are every
where and always good, because his power and good-
ness are every where active ; and power in act is by
its formal nature, not by accident, the object of fear ;
and goodnesf; 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 ; be-
cause man always bears in the natural endowments of
his mind somewhat of that glorious image in which
he was created ; and because by this resemblance
man partakes of the Divine nature, to be enslaved by
the appetites which are common to him with the
luutes, is always evil. And since the whole of the
Christian duty is reducible to these three heads, —
the love of (lod, the love of man, and the govern-
ment of self, — it is evident that in this ])art of it
the Christian covenant is in its very nature calculated
to be everlasting. Nor do the promises of this co-
venant less than its recpiisitions demonstrate its ever-
lasting nature. Its promises are such as cannot be
improved; for what can Ciod promise nu)i'e than ever-
lasting life ? what better reward can Onniipotence
bestow than the participation of the pleasures which

81

are at his own right hand? Evidently, therefore,
in the duties it enjoins, and in the promises it
holds out, the covenant of Jesus appears in its nature
to be everlasting. Another character of the cove-
nant foretold by Jeremiah and Ezekiel is, that it
should be a law written in the hearts of God's peo-
ple. 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 gra-
cious influences of the Spirit on the heart of every
true believer.

Let us now briefly collect the sum of this investi-
gation. The covenant foretold by Jeremiah and
Ezekiel was to be different from the Mosaic, —
general, for all nations j everlasting, for all ages ; a
law written in the hearts of the faithful. The cove-
nant 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 everlasting, for all ages ; it is a law written
in the heart. Assuredly, then, Jesus of Nazareth was
the Messenger of the Covenant foretold by the pro-
phets Jeremiah and Ezekiel. But it is to be observed,
that during his life on earth he was only the Mes-
senger of this covenant : it was propounded, but not
established by him, during his own residence among
the sons of men. The hand-writing of ordinances
remained in force till it was nailed with Jesus to his
cross : then the ritual law lost its meaning and obli-
gation ; but still the new covenant was not established
till it was sealed by the effusion of the Holy Spirit
after Christ's ascension, and the Mosaic law was form-
ally abrogated by the solemn sentence of the apostles
in the council of Jerusalem : this was the authori-

VOL. II. G

tative revocation of the old and the establishment of*
the new covenant. Yon see, therefore, with wliat
accnracy of expression tlic Messiah is called i)y the
prophet tlie Mfsscfi^cr of the C Ovenant, and how
exactly this second characteristic was vcrilied in Jesus
of Nazareth.

Havin«; now traced in Jesus these two characters
of the Lord, and the Lord's Messenjrer, it is not
likely that any other will be wanting : for since we
are assured by the ])rophets that these two characters
should meet in the Messiah, — since we have no rea-
son 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 consecjnence, that all
the other characteristics of that extraordinary per-
sonaire will be found in him. Tlie third is that of
the .Judge, who shall execute God's final vengeance
on the wicked. This, it must be confessed, is a cha-
racter which Jesus of Nazareth hath not vet 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 leather hath com-
mitted all judgment to the Son ; who shall come
again, at the last day, in glory, to judge both the
(juick and dead." It nuist be confessed, that the
j)rophets have so connected the judgment to be ex-
ecuted by the Messiah with his first a])j)earance, that
any one not ac(juainted with the general cast and
genius of the ])rophetic language might not easily
suspect that they speak of two advents of this great
personage, separated from each othei- by a long intenal

83

of time. But if you have observed that this is the
constant style of prophecy, — that when a long train
of distant events are predicted, rising 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 succession ; — if you consider that prophecy, were
it more regularly arranged, and digested in chrono-
logical order, would be an anticipated history of the
world, which would in a great measure defeat the very
end of prophecy, which is to demonstrate the weak-
ness and ignorance of man, as well as the sovereignty
and universal rule of Providence ; — if you take these
things into consideration, you will, perhaps, be in-
clined 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 ini-
quity ; 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 understood of
a single advent. If you recollect that the Messiah
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

G 2

84

Old : and in Jesus of Nazareth, who came in all hu-
mility, and was cut off, but not for himself, yon will
acknowledge Messiah the Prince ; and you will look
for him a second time in glory.

Your faith will he much confirmed, if you recollect
that the particulars of the business upon which the
Messiah was to come appear no less evidently in the
performances of Jesus than the personal characters in
his person. The Messiah was to try the tempers
and dispositions of mankind. 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 misinteqiret 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 be-
come general. Us of the (jcntiles he has reclaimed
from the abominations of idolatry ; and hath taught
us to loathe and execrate the rites whereby our fore-
fathers sought the favour of their devils (for they
were not gods), — the impure rites of human sacri-
fice and public prostitution ; things wliich it were
inifit to nu'ntion or remember, but that we may the
better understand from what a depth of corruption
the mercy of Ciod hath raised us. Blindness, it
must be confessed, is at present u])on Israel ; but the
time shall come when they shall turn to the Lord,
and when we shall unite w ith them in the pure worship
of (iod, and in the just praises of the Lamb. *♦ Then
shall tlu' ofiering ol'.Iu(l;ili and Jerusalem he pleasant

85

unto the Lord : " then shall the Lord Jesus come
again, to execute what remains of the Messiah's of-
fice, — 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 ! "

G 3

8(i

8ER3TON XXXIV.

Luke, i. 28.

Hail, thou tJiat art hi ^hlt/ favoured ! TJie Lord is
witli thee. Blessed art thou amo?/ir iromen*

1 HAT she who in these terms was saluted by an
angel should in after ages become an object of su})er-
stitious adoration, is a thing far less to be wondered at,
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 ((uestion the tnith of the mes-
sage which the angel brought. Some nine years
since, the Christian church was no less astonislied
than offended, by an extravagant attempt to heighten,
as it was pretended, the importance of the Christian
revelation, by overturning one of those first princi-
ples of natural religion which had for ages been con-
sidered as the basis upon which the whole super-
structure of Revelation stands. 'I'he notion of an
immaterial priuci])le in num, which, without an im-
mediate exertion of the Divine power to the express
purj)()se of its destructicm, nuist necessarily survive
the dissolution of the body, — the notion of an im-

• Preached on Christmas-day.

87

mortal 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
inhabitant, was heightened into the mystery of a repro-
duction of the annihilated person. How a person
once annihilated 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 interested in the future
person*s fortunes, — why / should be at all con-
cerned 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,
because his body was to be composed of the same
matter which now composes mine, — these difficul-
ties were but ill explained. It was thought a suf-
ficient recommendation of the system, with all its
difficulties, that the promise of a resurrection of the
body seemed to acquire a new importance from it ;
(but the truth is, that it would lose its whole im-
portance 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 soul's natural
immortality was deemed an unseemly appendage of a
Christian'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 supposed, from any earlier revelation.

It might have been expected, that this anxiety to
G 4

88

t'Xtinjijuish every ray of li()})e uiiicli beams not I'rom
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 \vainiest zeal to maintain every
circumstance in the history of our Saviour's life
which might add autliority to his precepts, and
weight to his promises, by heightening the dignity
of his person : but so inconsistent with itself is hu-
man folly, that they who at one time seemed to think
it a preliminary to be recjuired of every one who
would come to a right belief of the Cios])el, that he
should unlearn and unbelieve what ])hilosophy had
been thought to have in counuon with the Ciospel
(as if reason and Revelation could in nothing agree),
upon other occasions discover an aversion to the be-
lief of any thing which at all puts our reason to a
stand : and in order to wage war with mystery with
the uu)re advantage, they scruple not to deny that
that S])irit uliicli enlightened the first ])reachers in
the delivery of their oral instruction, aiul rendered
them infallible teachers of the age in which they
lived, directed them in the com])()sition of those
writings which they left for the edification of suc-
ceeding ages. They pretend to have made dis-
coveries of inconclusive reasoning in the E})istles, —
of doubtful facts in the (lospels ; and appealing fnmi
the testiuu)ny of the apostles to their own judgments,
they have not scru])le(l to declaiv their opinion, that
the minicii/ou.s conrrj/tiofi ft/' our JLorf/ is a subject
•' with respect to whieh any person is at full liberty
to think as the evidence shall ap})ear to him, uitlu)ut
any impeachment of his faith oi' character as a Chris-

89

tian : " and lest a simple avowal of this extraordinaiy
opinion should not be sufficiently offensive, it is ac-
companied with certain obscure insinuations, ''the
reserved meaning of which we are little anxious to
divine, which seem intended to prepare the world
not to be surprised if something still more extra-
vagant (if more extravagant 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 pro-
phet that this day is sanctified ; but as the anniver-
sary of that great event which had been announced
by the whole succession of prophets from the begin-
ning of the world, and in which the predictions con-
cerning the manner of the Messiah's advent received
their complete and literal accomplishment. In the
predictions, as well as in the corresponding 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 ar-
ticle of the faith. It is evidently the foundation of the
whole distinction between the character of Christ in
the condition 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 intercourse with the Deity could have
been of no other kind than the nature of any other
man might have equally admitted, — an intercourse
of no higher kind than the prophets enjoyed, when

their minds were enlightened l)y tlie extraoi'dinary
influence of the Holy Spirit. 'J'lie information con-
veyed to Jesus might have been clearer and more
extensive than any imparted to any former ])r()i)liet ;
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
proj)hets hath in tliese latter days sj)()ken unto us i)y
his Son ; " evidently establishing a distinction of
Christianity from preceding revelations, upon a dis-
tinction between the two characters of a ])ro])hct
of God and of God's Son. Moses, the great law-
giver of the Jews, is described in the book of Deuter-
onomy 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 Pharaoh, 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
pr()j)het, raised up to be the leader and the legislator
of God's peo])le, — this greatest of the prophets, with
whom Jehovah conversed face to face, as a man talk-
eth with his friend, — bore to Jesus, as we are told,
the hinuble relation of a servant to a son. And lest
the superiority on the side of the Son should be
deemed a mere superiority of the office to which
he was ai)j)()inted, we are told that the Son is " higher
than the angels; being the elliilgenee of Ciod's gh)iv,
the express image of his j)erson ; " the (iod " whose

91

throne is for ever and ever, the sceptre of whose king-
dom is a sceptre of righteousness : " 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 autho-
rity 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 be-
lief 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 en-
joyed : and yet how it should differ, otherwise than
in the degree of frequency and intimacy, it will not
be very easy to explain, 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 doc-
trine, was so united to the Everliving Word, that the
very existence of the man consisted in this union.

We shall not, itideed, find this proposition, that tlie
existence of Mai-y's Son consisted from the first, and
ever shall consist, in his union with the Word, — we
shall not find this ])roposition, in these terms, in Scrip-
ture. Would to God the necessity never had arisen
of stating the discoveries of Revelation in metaphysical
propositions ! The inspired writers delivered their
sublimest doctrines in popular languanje, and abstain-
ed, as much as it was possible to abstain, from a phi-
losophical phraseology. By the perpetual cavils of
gainsayers, and the difficulties which they have raised,
later'teachers, in the assertion of the same doctrines,
have been reduced to the unpleasing necessity of
availing themselves of the greater precision of a less
familiar language.

But if we find not the same j^roposition in the
same words in Scripture, we find in Scri})ture what
amounts to a clear proof of the proposition : we find
the characteristic properties of both natures, the
human and the divine, ascribed to the same person.
Wc read of Jesus, that he suffered from hunger and
from fatigue ; that he wept for grief, and was dis-
tressed with fear ; that he was obnoxious to all the
evils of humanity, except the pr()})ensity 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 uphold-
eth all things by the word of his power :" and that
we may in some sort understand how inlirmity and
perfection should thus meet in the same person, we
are told by St. John, that " the Word was made
flesh."

93

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
ni the ordinary way would have derived the principles
of his existence from the mere physical powers of ge-
neration : 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 Scrip-
tures so clearly assert, had been a physical impossi-
bility.

But we need not go so high as to the divine nature
of our Lord to evince the necessity of his miraculous
conception. It was necessary to the scheme of re-
demption, by the Redeemer's offering of himself as
an expiatory sacrifice, that the manner of his concep-
tion should be such that he should in no degree par-
take of the natural pollution of the fallen race whose
guilt he came to atone, nor be included in the
general condemnation of Adam's progeny. In what
the stain of original sin may consist, and in what man-
ner it may be propagated, it is not to my present pur-
pose to enquire : it is sufficient that Adam's crime, by
the appointment of Providence, involved his whole
posterity in punishment. *' In Adam," says the
apostle, " all die. " And for many lives thus for-
feited, a single life, itself a forfeit, had been no ran-
som. Nor by the Divine sentence only, inflicting
death on the progeny for the offence of the progeni-

91-

tor, but by the proper guilt of his o\ni sins, every one
sprung by natural descent from the loins of Adam is
a debtor to Divine justice, and incapable of becoming
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 advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ
the righteous ; and he is the pro])itiation for our
sins. " Even we Christians all offend, without excep-
tion even of the first and best Christians, the apostles.
But St. John clearly separates the righteous Advo-
cate 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
hhn to the future benefits of the redem})ti()n, is itself
a present benefit of the propitiation which hath been
made for us : and he who, under the assault of eveiy
temptation, maintained that unsullied innocence which
gives merit and efficacy to his sacrifice and interces-
sion, 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 living God. In brief,
the condemnation and the iniquity of Adam's pro-
geny were universal : to reverse the universal sen-
tence, and to purge the universal corruption, a Re-
deemer was to be found pure of every stain of inbred
and c(mtracted guilt ; and since every person ])ro-
duced in the natural way could not but be of the con-
taminated race, the ])urity retpiisite to tlie efficacy of
the Redeemer's atonement luade it necessarv that the
manner of his concej)tion should he sujR'rnaturai.
riuis you see the necessary connection of the u)ira-

9.5

ciilous conception with the other articles of the Chris-
tian faith. The incarnation of the Divine Word, so
roundly asserted by St. John, and so clearly implied
in innumerable passages of Holy Writ, in any other
way had been impossible, and the Redeemer's atone-
ment inadequate and ineffectual ; insomuch, that had
the extraordinary manner of our Lord's generation
made no part of the evangelical 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, na-
turally brings up after it the great doctrines of the
atonement and the incarnation. The miraculous
conception of our Lord evidently implies some higher
purpose of his coming than the mere business of a
teacher. The business of a teacher might have been
performned by a mere man, enlightened by the pro-
phetic 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 super-
natural 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 connection of this extra-
ordinary fact with the cardinal doctrines of the Gos-
pel, 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

96

among the characteristics of the Redeemer, tliat he
shoukl be "made of a woman." In tliis sliort sen-
tence, St. Paul bears a remarkable testimony to the
truth of the evangelical history, in this circumstance.
And you, my l)rethren, liave not so learned 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 in-
accuracy.

Tlie opinion of these men is, indeed, the less to be
regai'ded, for the want of insight whicli they discover
into the real interests and proper connections of their
own system. It is by no means sufficient for their
purpose that they insist not on the belief of the mira-
culous conception : they nuist insist upon the disbelief
of it, if they expect to make discerning men j)roselytes
to their Socinian doctrine : they must disprove it,
before they can reduce the Gospel to what their
scheme of inteii^retation makes it, — a mere religion
of nature, — a system of the best practical deism,
enforced by the sanction of high rewards and formid-
able punishments in a future life ; which are yet no
rewards and no punishments, but simply the enjoy-
ments a)id the sulierings of a new race of men to be
made out of old materials ; and therefore constitute
no sanction, when the ])rinci])les of the materialist
are incoii^orated with those of the Socinian in the
iinished creed of the modern Unitarian.

Having seen the importance of tlie doctrine of the
miraculous conception, as an article of our faith, let
us, in the next ])lace, consider the sufhciency of the
evidence by which tlie fact is supported.

We have for it the express testimony of two out of"
the four evangelists, — of St. Matthew, whose Gospel

97

was published in Judea within a few years after our
Lord's ascension ; and of St. Luke, whose narrative
was composed (as may be collected from the author's
short preface) to prevent 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 furnishing a summary of authentic
facts, and of suppressing spurious narrations. Was it
not ordered by some peculiar providence of God, that
the two great branches of the primitive church, — the
Hebrew congregations for which St. Matthew wrote,
and the Greek congregations for which St. Luke
wrote,' — should find an express recordof the miraculous
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 inspiration, which is not admitted by the adver-
sary, — were not Matthew and Luke, — Matthew
one of the twelve apostles 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 qualified for the work in which he

VOL. H. H

98

engaged, by liis exact kiio\vlc'(l«2;c of the story which
he undertook to write, in all its circumstances, from
the very be^inninjj^. It is said, indeed, by a writer of
the very first antitjuity, and hi<i;h in credit, that his
Cios])el was coni])osed from St. Paul's sermons.
*' Luke, the attendant of St. Paul," says Irenivus,
"put into his book the (jospel preached by that
apostle." This bein<i; premised, attend, 1 beseech
you, to the account which St. Luke gives of his own
undertaking. " 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 mightest know the certainty of
those thinjrs 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 Ciospel, therefore, if the writer's own word
may be taken about his own work, is an historical ex-
position of the catechism which Theoj)hilus had learnt
when he was first made a Christian. The two first
articles in this historical exposition are, — the history
of the Baptist's birth, and that of Mary's miraculous
impregnation. Me have nnich 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 instruc-
tion,— a ])art of the catechism, no doubt, which St.
I'aui'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 you have been
leaniing St. Paul's catechism.

I'rom what hath been said, you will easily perceive,

99

that the evidence of the fact of our Lord's miraculous
conception is answerable to the great importance of
the doctrine ; and you will esteem it an objection of
little weight, that the modern advocates of the Uni-
tarian 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 com-
position 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, should be deserted by
that Spirit when they committed what they had
preached to writing. You will think it improbable,
that they who were endowed with the gift of discern-
ing spirits, should be endowed with no gift of dis-
cerning 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 history of our Saviour's life, than that St. 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 authentic memoirs of their Master's

H 2

KM)

life, narratives compiled with little jud<;nieiit or selec-
tion, from the stories of the day, from facts and fic-
tions in promiscuous circulation. The credulity which
swallows these contradictions, while it strains at mys-
teries, is not the 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 inspir-
ation of the books which they received ; but they
received only one book, — a spurious copy of St. Mat-
thew's Gospel, curtailed of the two first chapters.
You will think it no inconsiderable confirmation of
the doctrine in question, that the sect which first de-
nied it, to palliate their infidelity, found it necessaiy
to reject three of the Gospels, and to mutilate the
fourth.

Not in words, therefore, and in fonu, but with
hearts full of faith and gratitude, you will join in the
solemn service of the day, and return thanks to (jod,
" 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 alwavs remember, that it is the
great use of a sound faith, that it furnishes the most
effectual motives to a good life. You ^vill, therefore,
not rest in the merit of a speculative faith ; you will
make it your constant endeavour that your lives may
adom your profession, — that *' your light may so
shine before men, that they, seeing your good works,
may glorify your Father which is in heaven."

101

SERMON XXXV.

Deuteronomy, xv. 11.

For the poor shall never cease out of the layid :
therefore I command thee^ saying\ Thou shalt
open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy
poor and to thy needy in thy land. *

Since civilised society is unquestionably the life
which Providence designs for man, formed, as he
evidently is, with powers to derive his proper happi-
ness from what he may contribute to the public good,
nor less formed to be miserable in solitude, by want
of employment for the faculties which something of
a natural instinct prompts him to exert, — since what
are commonly called the artificial distinctions of so-
ciety, 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 occupa-
tions and pursuits, arising from those discriminations
of condition, is no less essential to the public weal,
than the diversity 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

* Preached at the Anniversary Meeting of the Sons of the
Clergy, May 18. 1786.

H 3

102

by his powers and capacities, no less than l)y his
wants and infirmities, to seek his ha])piness in civil
life, it is ordained that every rank fnrnish the indi-
vidual with the means, not only of subsistence, but
of comfort and enjoyment, (for aUhou«;li the pleasures
of the different degrees of men are drawn from dif-
ferent sources, and differ greatly in the elegance and
lustre of their exterior form and show, yet the quan-
tity of real happiness within the reach of the indi-
vidual will be found, upon a fair and just comparison,
in all the ranks of life the same,) — upon this view
of tlie Divine original of civil society, with the ine-
qualities of condition which obtain in it, and the
provision which is equally made in all conditions for
the happiness of the individual, — it may seem per-
haps unreasonable, — it may seem a presumptuous
deviation from the Creator's plan, that any should
become suitors to the public charity for a better sub-
sistence than their own labour might procure. Po-
vertv, 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 com-
plaint, it may seem, can never be more indecent, or
less worthy of regard, 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 never-
theless be useful to demonstrate, that they have no
real connection with the principles from which they
seiiu to be drawn, — that tliev are not le.s.^ contrary

103

to reason and to sound policy than to the feelings of
philanthropy and the precepts of the Gospel. For
although I shall not readily admit that the proof of
moral obligation cannot in any instance be complete,
unless the connection 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 Jeel rather than philoso-
phize, 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 Pro-
vidence, the constitution of the world actually admits.

Secondly, That the providential appointment of
this evil, in subservience to the general good, brings
a particular obligation upon men in civilised 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, be-
cause the poor shall never cease, therefore it is com-
manded, " That thou open thine hand wide 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 consi-
derable degree uncertain : for were things so ordered
that every man's fortune should be invariably deter-
mined by the rank in which he should be born, or by

H 4

lUl.

the emplojincnt to whicli lie should hv bred, an
Epicurean indolence, tlie great bane of j)ublic pros-
perity, would inevitably take place anion<j^ all ranks
of" men ; when industry, of all (jualities of the indi-
vidual the most beneficial to the community, would
lose the incitement of its golden dreauis ; and sloth,
of all the vices of the individual the most pernicious
to the comunniity, would be released from its worst
apprehensions. But to be uncertain in the degree
which the public weal demands, the fortunes of the
individual nnist be governed, as we see they are, by
an intricate combination of causes, of which no sa-
gacity of human forecast may predict or avert the
event. The consequence must be, that the indivi-
dual's mcaus 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 \vh()le he is best qualified to
fill with advantage to the community of which he is
a member. 77/ /.v is the evil to which the name of
poverty properly belongs. The man who hath food
to eat and raiment to put on is not poor, because his
diet is plain and his apjiarel homely ; l)ut he is truly
poor whose means of subsistence are insufficient for
his proper place in society, as deteruiined by the
general complication of his circumstances, — by his
birth, his education, his bodily strength, and his
mental endowuients. By the means of subsistence,
I understand not the means of superfluous gratifi-
cations ; but that present competency which every
individual must possess in order to be in a capacity
to derive a su])port from his industry in the proj)er
business of his calling. In every condition of life,
somi'tliiiig uioic is wanting to a man's siij)j)()it than

105

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 trades-
man must have wherewithal to purchase the com-
modities 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
distant 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 ex-
pensive course of education ; and they who are bom
to hereditary honours, if they succeed, as too often
is the case, to estates encumbered by the misfortunes
or misconduct of their ancestors, are restrained, by
the decorums of their rank, from seeking a reparation
of their fortunes in any mercenary occupation.

Without something, therefore, of a previous com-
petency, it is evident, that in every rank of life the
individual's industry will be insufficient to his sup-
port. The want of this previous competency is po-
verty ; 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 which no ele-
vation of rank secures.

Nor is it any indication of inconsistency and con-
tradiction in the management of the world, however
it may seem to superficial enquirers, that the distinc-
tions of rank, which the purposes of civil life demand,
should be occasionally, as it may seem, confounded,
and the different orders mixed and levelled, by a

10(j

calamity like this, universally incidental, it is, ni-
deed, by this expedient that the merciful providence
of God guards civil life a<jjainst the ruin which would
otherwise result from the unlimited j)ro<rress of its
own refinements. The accuundation 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 advan-
tages in some invariable proportion, — would so se-
parate the interests of the different orders, that evei*y
state would split into so many distinct communities
as it should contain degrees : these again would sub-
divide, according to the inequalities of fortune and
other advantages which should obtain in each ; till,
in the })rogress of the evil, civil society would be
dissipated and shivered into its minutest parts, by the
uncontrolled operation of the very principles to which
it owes its existence.

Thus it ap})ears that poverty is, indeed, a real evil in
the life of the individual ; which, nevertheless, the com-
mon good demands, and the constitution of the world
accordingly admits.

But so wonderfully hath l^rovidence interwoven
the public and the private good, that, while the com-
mon weal requires that the life of the individual should
be obnoxious to this contingency, the ])ublic is never-
theless interested in the relief of real ])()verty, where-
cver the calamity alights ; for Providence hath so
ordained, that so long as the individual languishes in
poverty, the ])ublic must want the services of a useful
member. i'his, indeed, woidd not be the case, nor
would the calamity to the individual l)e what it gene-
rally is, were the transition easy in civil society from

107

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, with what is
more unconquerable than habit, — the natural bent of
genius, — a man who is the best qualified to be service-
able to the community and to himself in any one
situation of life, is by that very ability the most dis-
qualified 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 qua-
lifications 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 at-
torney's desk, the accomplishments of the statesman
or the scholar would be rather of dis-service : the me-
chanic'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 activity. Poverty, obstructing political ac-

108

tivity in its j)r()jK'r sphere, arrests and mortifies the
powers of tlie citizen, rendering him not more mi-
serable in himself than useless to the community ;
which, for its own sake, nnist free the ca])tive 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 pro])osition is to be admitted under a par-
ticular interpretal ion : the danger of poverty threat-
ening the individual is the good : poverty in act (if I
may borrow an expression from the schools) is to the
connnunity as well as to the sufferer an evil ; and
since, in the formal nature of the thing, it is an evil
from which the individual cannot be extricated by any
efforts of his own, policy, no less than humanity, en-
joins that the connnunity relieve him.

Nor will the argument from political experience
fail, il' in some instances of poverty the evil to the
public nnist remain when the individual is relieved.
This is, indeed, the case when the calamity arises from
causes which go beyond the obstruction of the poli-
tical activity of the citizen to the extinction of the
natural powers of the animal ; as when the limbs are
lost or rendered useless l)y disease, or when the bodily
strength or the mental faculties are exhausted by old
age. To deny relief in such instances, upon a ])re-
tence that the political reason for il vanishes because
the public can receive no immediate benefit from the
allcvi.itiou of the evil, would be to act in contradiction
to the VI ly first ])riiKiples, or, rather, to the first idea,
of all civil association ; which is that of a union of the
])owers of the many to sup])ly the wants and help the
iiilirnn'ties of the sojitarv animal,

'i'luis it aj)]K'ars, that the ])rovidential appointuieiit

109

of poverty as a means of public good brings an obli-
gation upon men in civil society to exert themselves
for the effectual 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 method
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 dan-
ger of poverty indiscriminately impendent over every
individual in every station, that the community may
receive the full benefit of the universal dread of that
contingency. Whether this joint end, of removing
the evil of actual poverty 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 cei'tain districts in pro-
portion 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 compe-
tency, or of something which idleness will prefer to a
competency, — is a question which it is not my j^ro-
vince to discuss. The fact I may take leave to men-
tion, — that the burden of the imposition in this
country is grown, as all know, to an enormous size :
the benefit to the industrious 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.

110

In another place the question miu;ht deserve a serious
investigation, liow far the manner of our lc<^al pro-
vision for the poor may or may not operate to increase
the frec|ucn(y of criminal executions?

Meanwhile, it is my duty to inculcate, that neither
the heavy burden nor any ill effects of the legal ])ro-
vision for the poor may release the citizen from the
duty of voluntary benefaction ; except, indeed, so far
as what tlie law takes from him diminishes his means
of spontaneous liberality. What the laws claim from
him for public puqioses he is, indeed, not to consider
as his own : what remains after the public claims are
satisfied is his property ; 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 a])]ilied to charitable
purposes. For the fact is, tliat after the law hath
done its utmost, that most interesting species of dis-
tress which should be the especial object of discretion-
aiy bounty goes uin-elieved. The utmost that the
law can do is confined to the ])overty 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 wannth of coarse but clean apparel, and with
the nourishment 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 laborious trades. But to the ])Overty of the
middle and superior orders, the bounty of the law,
after its utmost exactions, can administer no ade-
quate relief.

Thanks be to (lod, that heavy as onr public bur-
dens are, of which the legal provision for the poor is
among the greatest, they seem to be no cluek u|)on

Ill

the charitable 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 en-
riched, by voluntary contribution 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 descriptions of the
people : witness the frequent and ample contributions
to every instance of private distress, once publicly
made known : witness the pious associations for the
support of distant missions, and the promotion of
Christian knowledge : witness this annual celebrity,
the prosperity of this charitable institution, and the
numbers now assembled here. For I trust it is less
the purpose of our present meeting to feast the ra-
vished ear with the enchanting sounds of holy harmony
(which afford, indeed, the purest of the pleasures of
the senses,) than to taste those nobler ecstasies of ener-
gising 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 intellect 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 love of Christ, who died for his enemies,
is our example, and the beneficence of our heavenly
Father, who is kind to the evil and the unthankful,

Ih2

is the model of our cliaiity,) yet our joy in doing
good must tluMi l)t' tlu' most complete, when inno-
cence is united with distress in the objects of" our
bounty, when tlie 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 or[)han 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 particu-
lar, whose cause we plead, should we be questioned
by what means their condition hath been brought
thus low, we will confidently answer, I3y 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 l)y the eccle-
siastical law, under the severest penalties, to engage
in any mercenary business, which might interfere with
the duties of his sacred calling, and derogate in the
eyes of the multitude from the dignity of his charac-
ter, — his profession, in whatever rank he may be
placed in it, the least of any of the liberal ])rofessions
furnishes the means of making a ])rovisi()n 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 (jualified
to improve. Hence it will oftener ha])pen to the
families of clergynu'ii than of any other set of men,
and it will happen, perhaps, oftenest to the families of

113

the worthiest, to l)e left in tliat state which by the
principles established in the former part of this dis-
course is poverty in the truest import of the word, —
to be left destitute of the means of earnino- a liveli-
hood in the employments for which they are not dis-
qualified 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 hu-
man policy ever will remove. Grand in the con-
ception, noble in the motives which suggested it,
promising, perhaps, in its first aspect, but fraught
with ruin in its certain consequences had it been
adopted, was the plan of abolishing the su])ordinate
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 indi-
viduals of which each rank is composed. These in-
equalities, to form a harmonised, consistent whole,
require a regular gradation between the opposite
extremes ; which cannot be taken away, but the ex-
tinction 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 equi-
valent 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

VOL. II. 1

111.

fortunes, and restrained l)y the eireiunstanees of a
predecessor*s family from the attempt to enforee our
ieiial claims. But what would be the situation of a
cler^^ynian who in eoniing- to a living should succeed
to notliin«^ better than a huge dilapidated farm? —
which would too soon become the real state of every
livin"- in the kinirdoui in which the tithes should have
been converted into jrlebe : not to mention the ex-
tinction of our spiritual character, and the obvious
inconveniences to the yeomanry of the kingdom,
wliich would be likely to take place, should tliis new
nunnier of our maintenance send forth the spirit of
farming among the rural clergy.

The truth is, that tlie 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 tlie corrupt
manners of a world at enmity with (iod ; but pri-
marily, from the mysterious counsels of Providence,
which, till the whole world shall be reduced to the
obedience of the (iospcl, 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 tlie work of tlie ministry, for himself and for his
family ; as he liad 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 ])owers can effect it, into
the same situation of credit and respect which might
belong to a diligent exertion of ecpial talents in any
other of the liberal professions. Such j)rovision for
the maintenance and for a pro])er influence of the
clero-y is at least (•\i)i'(lient, if not necess;n-y for the

115

support of Christianity, now that its miraculous sup-
port is withdrawn, and the countenance of the ma-
gistrate is among the means which God employs for
the maintenance of the truth. Yet after all that can
be done by the friendship 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 ordinaiy
course of things, were the means of amassing a for-
tune for posterity, more than of rising to hereditary
honours. Our great Master, when he calls us to the
ministry, holds out no such expectation. He com-
mands 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 pros-
perity of our own families. He warns us, by his
inspired apostle, that all who will live 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 righteousness,
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 manufactures for her kings. On this promise it
is fitting we rely ; and in the effect of this charity,
and of similar institutions 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

I 2

116

which commands us to be ready to fbre<^o tlie enjoy-
ments of the woild, liatli commanded tliat tlie f'aitli-
f'ul hear one another's burdens. The same authority
wliicli promises the faitliful minister support in tliis
worhl and enjoyment in the next, promises an etpial
weiiiht of iih>rv to liim wlio sliall administer relief.
Relyin<jj on these promises, secure of our unwearied
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, wlien in his aujcmies he consiii;ned his mother
to iiis favourite disciple's care,) submitted with com-
posure and complacency to the stroke which severed
them from all which in this world they held dear ;
trusting;' to us, as to Ciod's instruments, for the su])-
port of their unprovided families, destitute of other
aid. Thus we who remain are the guardians of the
widows and the orphans ; appointed to that sacred
ofhce by no violable testaments of uu)rtal men, but
by the inviolable will of the Ever-living God. Let
us see that we be faithful, as tlic deceased were in
their day, to a trust which we may not decline ; look-
ing forward to the joys of that great day when tears
shall be wiped from every eye, and " he that hath
received a prophet in the name o\' a ]u-o])het shall
receive a pro])het's reward," — when his recom])ensc
in nowise shall I)e 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 pro})hets l)e gathered round the
Son of Man, seated on his throne of glory ; and, in
the presence of the angelic host, bear tlieir testimony
to this day's work ol' love. M'hat, then, shall be the

117

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 ye clothed me ;
sick, and ye nursed me. Verily, 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, iiiherit the kingdom prepared 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
minister to the necessities of the saints ; secure of
being doubly repaid, — here, in the delight of do-
ing good ; hereafter, in a share of this glorious
benediction !

1 3

118

SERMON XXXVI.

Joiix, xi. 25, 26.

J am the resurrection and the life : he that heJieveth
in met though he were deady yet shall lie lire ;
and ivhoHoever liveth and hclieveth in me, shall
never die. Believest thou this ?

Except tlic cure of the two l)lind men at Jericho,
some cures in the temple in tlie Passion-week, tlie
malediction of the fig-tree, and certain manifestations
of our Lord's power upon the seizure of liis person
in the garden of Gethsemane, — except these, the
raising of Lazarus from tlie dead was, I think, the last
public miracle performed by Christ during his abode
in the Hesh. It was undoubtedly among the uiost
considerable which we read of in the whole course of
our Lord's ministry ; and was an a])t prelude to that
greatest miracle of all, the seal of his mission and of
our hope, his own resurrection from the dead. Ac-
cordingly, we find him preparing liimself for this
exhibition of his ])ower on the person of his deceased
friend with ])articular care and solemnity. He was
at a distance froni liethany, the i^Iace of Lazarus's
residence, wluii Laz;iriis (list fell sick; the alarm of
the Jewish rulers, excited by his cure of the man
born bbnd, and by his open claim to be the Son of

119

God and One with the Father, havino- ohhged him
to retire to Bethabara. When he received tlie news
of his friend's ilhiess, notwithstanding 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
restored life in two instances : the daughter of Jairus
was one ; and the widow's son of Nain was the
other. But in both these instances, the evidence of
the previous fact, that death had really taken place,
was not so complete and positive as our Lord in-
tended it should be, and as it really was, in the ease
of Lazarus. Accordingly, it is remarkable, that our
'Lord's apostles, although they had been witnesses to
these mn-aculous recoveries of Jairus's daughter and
the widow's son of Nain, entertained not at the time
of Lazarus's death the most distant apprehension that
then- Master's power went to the recovery of life once
truly 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 dis-
suaded him from leaving the place of his retirement-
conceivmg, as it should seem, that the only end of
his proposed visit to Bethany would be to gratify the
feelmgs 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 deter-
mined to go, - Let us also go," said 8t. Thomas

I 4

120

" that uc may die witli him." They ratlicr ex-
pected to be themselves stoned by the Jews tou:cther
witli tlieir ^Master, and to be one and all as dead as
Lazarus, in a few days, than to see the Hie ot" Lazarus
restored.

I must observe, l)y the way, that these sentiments,
expressed by the apostles upon this and similar ocea-
sions, afford a clear proof that the disciples were not
j)ersons of an over easy credulity, who may with any
colour of probability be supposed to have been them-
selves 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 be-
lieve!" They seem to have believed nothini^ till the
testimony of their own senses extorted the belief.
They reasoned not I'rom what they had once seen
done to what more mi<>hL be : they built no proba-
bilities of the future upon the past : they fonued no
general belief concerning" the extent of our Lord's
power from the ellects of it which they had already
seen. After the miraculous meal of the live thousand
uj)on live hiaves and two I'ishes, we liiid them (illed
with woiuler and amazement that he should be able
to walk upon a tri)ubled sea, and to assuage the storm.
And in the ])resent instance, their faith in what was
past carried them not forward to the obvious con-
clusion, that he who snatched the daughter of .lairus
from tlie jaws i)f death, aiul raised a young man from
his coliin, would be able to bring back Lazarus from
the grave. And this, indeed, was what was to be ex-
pected from jK-rsons like theui, of low occupations
and mean attainments, whose minds were unimproved
by education and experience : for however certain

121

modem pretenders to superior wisdom may affect to
sjieak contemptuously of tlie credulity of the vulgar,
and think that they display their own refinement and
penetration l)y a resistance of the evidence which
satisfies the generality of men, the truth is, that
nothing is so much a genuine mark of barbarism as
an obstinate incredulity. The evil-minded and the
illiterate, from very different causes, agree, however,
in this, that they arc always the last to believe upon
any evidence less than the testimony of their own
senses. Ingenuous minds are unwilling to suspect
those frauds in other men to which they feel an
aversion themselves : they always, therefore, give tes-
timony its fair weight. The larger a man's oppor-
tunities have been of becoming acquainted 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 which he cannot trace the cause ;
and of facts in the history of mankind which can be
referred to no principle in human nature, — to
nothing within the heart and contrivance of man.
Hence the man of science and speculation, as his
knowledge enlarges, loses his attachment to a prin-
ciple 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 he will avoid that
obstinacy of unbelief which is satisfied with nothing
but ocular demonstration, as of all erroneous prin-
ciples the most dangerous, and the greatest obstacle
to the mind's improvement. The illiterate man, un-
improved by study and by conversation, thinks that
nothing can be of which he hath not seen the like :

12-2

fioni a (lilKdciicc, j)ci}iaps, of his own ability to exa-
mine evidence, he is always jealous that you have an
intention to ini])ose 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 nothinr^ hath so much contributed to
spread infidelity amon«2; the lower ranks of people,
as tlie fear of 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 La-
zarus's resurrection should be complete and unex-
ceptionable 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 nnd-
titude might be assend)led to be observers and wit-
nesses 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 sur-
viving sisters, met our Lord upon the road, at some
little distance from the town : she accosted him in
terms which rather indicated some distant doubtful
liope of what his compassion and his affection for the
family might incline him to do, than any expectation
th:it her wishes would be realised. " Lord," said she,
" hadst thou been here, my brother had not died :
but I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask
of Ciod, (iod will give it thee." She piesuuies not to
ask him to raise her brother; — it was a thing too
great to be iibru|)tly asked : she indirectly and mo-

destly 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 prac-
tice, — of which I purpose not at present to enquire
the reason (it is a subject by itself which would require
a close investigation) ; — but it was his constant prac-
tice, 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 per-
formance of what might be necessary to their belief.
To Martha's suggestion that God would grant the
resurrection of Lazarus to Christ's prayer, our Lord
was pleased to reply with that reserve and ambiguity
which he sometimes used, in order to throw the minds
of his disciples into that state of suspense and doubt
which disposed them to receive his mercy with the
more gratitude, and his instruction 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 satisfied
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 resurrection at the last day was at that time the
general expectation of the Jewish people. Martha's
profession, therefore, of an expectation of her bro-
ther's resurrection at the last day was no particular
confession of her faith in Christ. Our Lord, there-
fore, requires of her a more distinct confession, 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
believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he

let

live ; and whosoever livcth and l)elievetli in me, shall
never die. Belicvest tliou this ? " ISIartlia's answer
was little less reniarkahle than tlie (juestion : *' She
saitli unto him, Yea, Lord ; I believe that thou art
the Christ, the Son of" God, wliieh 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 wra])t in mystery whicli I
cannot penetrate, — althouiTli I have no distinct un-
derstanding of tlie particulars which you propose to
my belief, nor apprehend how it is that the dead die
not, — yet I believe that you are the iSIessiah pro-
mised to our fathers, — the Emmanuel foretold by our
prophets; and I ])elieve you are possessed of whatever
power you may claim." But let us return to tlie
particulars of our Lord's recjuisition. Martha had
already declared her belief that (lod would grant
whatever Christ would ask, although his request
should go to so extraordinary a thing as a dead man's
recovery. Jesus tells lier that he recjuires a belief of
much more than this : he re(juires her to believe that
he had the principles of life within himself, and at his
own command ; and that even that general resurrec-
tion of the dead in which she expected that her bro-
ther would liave a share was a thing de])ending"entirely
\ipon him, and to l)e effected by his will and power.
" I," said he, " am tlie resurrection and the life."
Since he had the whole disposal of the business, it
followed that he had the a]i])ointment of the time in
which each individual should rise ; and nothing hin-
dered but that Lazarus might innnediately revive, if
he gave the order. \)u\ tliis is not ail : he requires
that she should believe, not only that it de])en(led
ujjon him to restore lile to whom and when it ])leasetl

125

him, but that death is an evil which he hatli 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 liveth and believeth in me,
shall never die."

It is of great importance to enquire 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 ques-
tion, I would observe, that our Lord's words certainly
contain an assertion of much more than was implied
in Martha's previous declaration of her belief in the
doctrine of a future resurrection. This is clearly im-
plied in our Lord's emphatic question, which follows
his assertion of his own power and promise to the
faithful, — " Believest thou this ? " If every Christian,
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 meditations which the question so put to
himself would suggest, we should soon be delivered
from many perplexing doubts and fears, for which a
firm reliance on our Master's gracious promise is in-
deed the only cure. '' Thou believest," said our
Lord to Martha, " that thy brother shall rise in the
resurrection at the last day : thou doest well to be-
lieve. But believest thou this which I now tell thee,
— believest thou that the resurrection on which thy
hopes are built will itself be the effect of my power ?
And believest 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 exemp-
tion of them that believe in me from death, the ge-
neral calamity ? Believest thou that the faithful live

126

when they seem to hu (k-ad ; and tliat they never die ?
If witli tliesc notions of my power over life and death,
and with tliese just views of tlie j)rivileii;es of my
servants, tliou eomest to me to restore thy brother to
a life whieh may he passed in thy society, the innne-
diate act of my power may justify thy faith. IJut
any other belief of my power, — any other ap])re-
hension of thy brother's present state, which may
prompt thee to solicit so singular a favour, — are erro-
neous ; and 1 work no miracle to confirm thee in an
error." xVll this is certainly implied in our Lord's
declaration, and the question with which it was ac-
companied. It is evident, therefore, that under the
notion of not dying, he describes some great })ri-
vilege, which l)elievers, and believers only, really
enjoy. But farther, the })rivilege here promised to
the faithful must be something (piite 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 what is called in
some parts of Scripture the second death, which the
wicked shall die after the general resurrection, — that
is to say, the condenniation of the wicked to eternal
punishment. But such camiot 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 tlie general resurrection. M'hat may
be the state of the departed saints in the interval be-
tween their death and the final judgment, is a (piestion
u])on which all are curious, because all are interested
in it. It is strange that among Christians it should
have been so variously decided i)y various sects, when
an attention to our Lord's promises must have Kd all

127

to one conclusion. Tliosc who imagine that the in-
tellectual faculties of man result from the organization
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 re-assume 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 extinc-
tion of his whole existence ? Of those who acknowledge
the immateriality and immortality of the rational princi-
ple, some have been apprehensive that the condition of
the unembodied soul, with whatever perception may be
asci'ibed to it of its own existence, must, indeed, be a
melancholy state of dreary solitude. Hence that un-
intelligible and dismal doctrine of a sleep of the soul
in the interval between death and judgment; which,
indeed, 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 re-union of soul
and body at the last day, yet we have our Lord's
assurance that the disembodied soul of the believer
truly lives, — that it exists in a conscious state, and

enjoys the pcrce])ti()n at least of its own existence.*
This is the plain import of our Lord's deelaration to
Martlia, that wliosocvcr livetli and hclievetli in liim
sliail never die. The sanie (h)etrine is implied in
many other ])assa<>;cs of Holy Writ, — in our Lord's
pnmiise to the thief u])()n the cross, to be with him in
paradise on the very day of Ins crueilietion ; in his
counneiidation olhis own spirit, in his last a<i;onies, to
the Father ; in St. Paul's desire to he ahsent from
the body, that he mi«rht he present w ith his Lord ;
but, most of all, we may allei>;e the se(]uel of this same
story. The manner in whieli the miracle was per-
formed made it a solenni appeal to Heaven for the
truth of this particular doctrine. Many incidents are
recorded which evince the notoriety of the death :
physical causes could have no share in the recovery ;
for the offensive corpse was not to be approached,
and no means were used upon it : our Li)rd, stiuul-
in^- 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 de-
ceased, in the attire ol' a corpse, walked out of the
sej)ulchre, in the presence of his relations, 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 «j;rief of the surviv-
in<^ 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 c'Utlmsiasm ? (lod forbid dial anv here should
harbour such a suspicion I Ihit let us remeuibcr, that

* Tor a lullcr illut>tralrioii ol' lliis doctrine, sec Sehmon

'I'WENTIETII.

129

the soul's fruition of its separate life is described as a
privilege of true believers, of which there is no ground
to hope that an unbeliever 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-begotten Son, with the
Father, and Holy Ghost, Three Persons but one God
be ascribed, &c. '

VOL. II.

K

ISO

8 E R 31 O N XXXVIl.

Mark, vii. QG.

The woman ivas a Greek, a Sj/rophcenickm bij

7iation.

1 HE maxim of our great moral poet, that the prepon-
derance of some leading passion in the original consti-
tution of every man's mind is that which gives the
character of every individual its ])cculiar 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 discover-
ing 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 pursuits
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 indi-
vidual, and enhance the benefits accruing from his
virtues, — the truth of this piincij)le is coiifinmd, I
believe, to every man who ever thinks upon the sub-
ject, by his own exj)erience of what passes within him-

131

self, 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 vio-
lation 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 cha-
racter in the condition of a man, we apply the same
principles in the study of his singular life which we
should employ to analyse the conduct of a mere mor-
tal. And if we take this method, and endeavour to
refer the particulars of his conduct, in the various
situations in which we find him represented by the
historians of his life, to some one principle, we cannot
but perceive, that the desire of accomplishing the great
purpose for which he came into the v/orld 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 Re-
deemer's sufferings, — who is therefore said to have
bought us with a price ; and the manners of men were
to be reformed by suitable instruction. 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 possession 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, ad-
justed. Li the greater actions of his life, we find him
always pursuing the conduct which might be the most
likely to bring on that tragical catastrophe which the
scheme of atonement demanded, and studious to pre-
vent every obstacle that might be thrown in the way

13^2

of" the event, either hy tlie zeal of liis friends or tlie
malice of his enemies. He works a miraele, at one
time, to avoid beinir made a kinii", — at anotlier, to
secure himself" from tiie fury of a rai>l)li'. The accep-
tance of an earthly kingdom had heen inconsistent
with the estahlishment of his everlasting; monarchy ;
and he declini'd the danjjjer of popular tumult and
private assassination, that he mii;ht die in the charac-
ter of a criminal hy a judiciary process and a public
execution. When by this mana<z;ement things were
brou«^ht to the intended crisis, and his imajjjination
shrunk from the near ])r()spect of ii;'nominy and pain,
the wish that he might be saved from the approaching
hour was overpowered by the reflection that " for this
hour he came into the world." Before the Jewish
Sanhedrim and the Roman governor he maintained a
coiuluct 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 refused 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 redemption, at the time and in the numner
which the ])ro])hets had foretold, — so, in what may
be called the ordinary occurrences of life, we find his
^vll()le eondiul sliajx-d and detennined by a constant
attention to the second branch of the great business
upon which he came, the reformation ofuumkind. In
every incidental situation, something ])eculiarly cha-
racteristic 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 eireuui-
stances ; and all these characteristie peculiarities of

133

his conduct will be found, if I mistake not, when nar-
rowly 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 con-
veyed 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 principle. It is true, in
our Saviour's life nothing was common ; 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 occa-
sions of action arising from the incidents of life and
from external circumstances. The study of his con-
duct upon these occasions is the most useful specula-
tion, for practical improvement, in which a Christian
can engage.

The words of my text stand in the beginning of
the narrative 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 instruction which the men-
tion of each circumstance seems intended to convey.

It was in the commencement, as I think, of the last

K 3

134

year of his ministry, that our Lord, either tor se-
curity from tlie nialice of" his enemies, the Pharisees
(whose resentment lie had excited by a recent provo-
cation — a discovery to the people of the dis<i;iiised
avarice of the sect, and a public assertion of the insi<i:-
nificance of their religious forms), or perhaps tliat he
found his popuhu'ity hi Galilee rWnv^ to a hei«>ht in-
consistent witli his own views and with the public tran-
fpiillity, — thought proper to retire for a season to a
country where his person was little known, although
liis fame, as appears by the event, had reached it —
the border of the Sidonian territory. The inliabitants
of this region were a mixed people, partly Jews, partly
the i)rogeny of those Canaanites who were suffered to
remain in these extreme 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.

Tile 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 ex-
plication, because it is the key to much of the mystery
of our Lord's c(mduct upon the occasion. " The
woman was a (Jreek, a Syroplueiiiciaii 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 ])rivileges of the cliosen people. But that is not
ail ; she was by nation " a Syropluenician." The
Phoenicians were a race scattered over tlic whole world
in numerous colonies. 'I'he difi'erent settlements
were distinguished by names taken Irom the countries
upon which tlu y bordered. I'he Canaanites were one

135

of these Phoenician colonies ; and because they bor-
dered ujion Syria, they were called by the Greeks
and Romans Syro-Phoenicians. 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
was 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 sen-
tence—as Rahab the hostess, by her kind entertain-
ment of the Jewish spies; and the whole city of the
Gibeonites, by a surrender of themselves and their pos-
terity for ever to a personal servitude. But such fami-
lies, 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 within 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 de-
scribes 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 ob-
tained 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
connnunion of the Roman church, though he be a

K 4

13G

Frcncliiiian or a Spaniard, is called a Roman
Catholic.

We now, then, nnderstand what the woman was who
sou;i;ht our Lord's assistance, — by birth a Canaanite,
by profession an idolatress. It ai)pears by the se(|iiel
of the story, (for to understand the parts, we must
keep the wliole in view ; and we must anticipate the
end, to make tlie true use of the beginninji;,) — it ap-
pears, 1 say, from the sequel of the story, that, wliat-
ever the en-ors of her former life had been, when she
came to implore our Lord's compassion she had over-
come the prejudices of her education, and had acquired
notions of the true God and his perfections which
might have done lionour 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 per-
haps more conducive than any thing she could have
suffered in lier 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
pleasm-able objects, it is not attended witli that dis-
turbance and distraction of the thoughts which are

ai)t to be produced !)y the pain and debility of sickness.

Thus we see how (iod rcinembers mercy even in his
judgments ; administering alHictions in the way in

which they most conduce to the suH'erer's benefit.

Nor can it be deemed an injury to the child that

it was subjected to sufferings for another's guilt ;

since the innocence of its own future life might be

best secvn-ed by the mother's reformation.

Conscious of the change that was already wrought

137

in her sentiments and principles, and resolved no
doubt upon a suitable reformation of her conduct, the
converted idolatress of the Syrophoenician race w^ould
not be discouraged, either by the curse entailed upon
her family, or by the remembrance of the guilt and
error of her past life, from trying the success of a per-
sonal 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 government in God's moral kingdom may make it
expedient and even necessary, that the progeny of any
eminent delinquent should for many generations, per-
haps 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 cer-
tainly does, visit the sins of the fjithers upon the child-
ren 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 calamity. These curses,
therefore, on a family hinder not but that every indi-
vidual of the race holds the same place in God's favour
or displeasure as had been due to his good or ill de-
servings 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

1^8

the public eviJ ; hut this is because it is for his advan-
tage in the end that lie he not exempted. " If 1
am of the race of Canaan," said our Syrophcunician
woman, *' it is true I nuist take my share of certain
national disadvantages which God hath been pleased
to lay upon our race as lasting monuments of his ab-
horrence of the crime of our ancestors : but this is no
reason tliat I trust not to his mercy for deliverance
from my own particular atHictions. Nor will I be de-
terred ])y the crimes and follies of my past life. My
JNIaker knows that the understanding which he gave
me is liable to error, — that he hath formed me with
passions apt to be seduced : he hath administered a
correction, by which 1 am brought to a sense of my
error ; and I am, 1 trust, in some degree recovered
from seduction ; 1 am no longer, therefore, the o1)ject
of his displeasure, but of his mercy ; of which my
providential recovery from sin and ignorance, though
effected by a bitter discipline, is itself" a proof. He
hath already shown me his mercy in the very aflhction
which hath wrought my reformation. I should fail
therefore in gratitude to my benefactor were I to in-
dulge a timidity of im])loring 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 ])erson ; and such should be the
sentiments of every sinner, in his first efforts to turn
from the ])()\ver of darkness to serve the living God.
He should harbour no aj)])rehensi()n 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 doubtful, if the resolution be sin-
cere : from the moment that the understand intr is
awakened to a seni>e oi the danger and of the loath-

139

someness 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 moment 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 efficacy of the great sacri-
fice, 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 penitent hath
to overcome. He is not, therefore, to be discouraged
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 audi-
ence of his Maker ; but to a privilege to which inno-
cence might scarce aspire, by the mercy of the Gospel
Covenant, repentance is admitted. Reformation, in-
deed, is innocence in the merciful construction of the
Christian dispensation : the Redeemer stands at God's
right hand, pleading in the behalf of the penitent the
merit of his own humiliation ; and the effect is, that
no remembrance is had in heaven of forsaken sin. The
courage of our converted idolatress is an edifying ex-
ample to all repenting sinners ; and the blessing with
which it was in the end rewarded justified the princi-
ples upon which she acted.

Before we proceed to the more interesting subject
of meditation — our Saviour's conduct upon this oc-
casion, 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, retir-

1 U)

iiiii" I'roiii the inalicc of liis cncniit's or the iini)rii-
(lence ot" liis friends to tlie Sidoiiiaii territory, is
saluted by an idolatress of the Canaanites, by his pro-
per titles — *' the Lord," *' the Son of David." It
is, indeed, little to be wondered, that idolaters li\ii)^ on
the confines of the Jewish territory, and conversin«r
niueh with the Israelites, should be well acquainted
with the ho])e 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 prophecies which marked
the time of his appearance ; and when the nundierless
miracles wrouj^ht by our Lord, in the course of three
successive sunnuers, in every part of Galilee, had
made both tlie expectation of the Messiah and
the claim of Jesus to be the ])erson 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 cir-
cumstance is this, — that this Syropluenician idolatress
nnist have looked for no partial deliverer of the Jewish
nation, but for a general benefactor 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 dauj^hter of Canaan could have had no part or
interest in tlu' Son of David.

Ilavinjj: examined into the character of oin- Lord's
sii])pliant, and remarked the terms in which she ad-
dressed him, \ve \vill in another discourse consider
the remarkabh' iiiaiiner in which on our Lord's pait
hei- |)etilioii was received.

141

SERMON XXXVIII.

Mark, vH. 26.

The woman was a Greeks a Syrophoenician by
nation.

1 HESE words describe what was most remarkable in
the character of a woman, a Canaanite by birth, an
idolatress 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 infer-
ences, 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 senti-
mental 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 distress ; in which the sufferino-
arises from those feelings of friendship, growing out
of natural affection and habitual endearment, which
constitute the perfection of man as a social creature.

112

and (listinguisli the society of tlie Ininian kind from
the instinctive lierdings of the lower animals. When
at the gate of Naiu he met the sad procession of a
youiiij!: man's funeral, — a ])oor widow, accompanied
by her sympathising neiglibours, conveying to the
grave the remains of an only son, suddenly snatched
from her by disease in the flower of liis age, — the
tenderness of his temper appeared, not only in what
he did, but in the kind and I'cady mannei- of his
doing it. He scrupled not to avow how nnieh 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, he went up and
touched the bier ; — he commanded the spirit to
return to its deserted mansion, and restored to the
widow the support and comfort of her age.

The object now beibre 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 busi-
ness, — implores his compassion for her daughter,
visited with the most dreadful 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 ])atient. For my own part, I find
no great difficulty of believing that this was really
the case. I hold those philosophising believers but
weak in faith, and not strong in reason, who measure
the pro])abilities of ])ast events i)y the experience of
the ])resent age, in (i])j)()sition to the evidence of the
historians of" the times. 1 am inclined to think that

143

tlie power of the infernal spirits over the bodies as
well as the minds of men suffered a capital abridg-
ment, 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 be-
fore 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 fall 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 enquiry into the
subject, I am contented to rest, and exhort you all
to rest, in the belief, which in the primitive church
was universal, that possession really was what the
name imports. Be that as it may, whatever the dis-
order was, its effects are undisputed, — a complication
of epilepsy and madness, sometimes accompanied with
a paralytic affection of one or more of the organs of
the senses; the madness in the worst cases, of the
frantic and mischievous kind.

Such was the malady in which our Lord's assist-
ance was implored. The compassion of the case was
heightened by the tender age of the miserable pa-
tient. 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 sprightliness takes place of the insipid
state of puling infancy, and the innocence of child-

144

hood is not yet corniptcd l)y the ill example, nor its
jjjood-hiimour ruffled by the ill usage of the world.
It miglit have been expected, tluit the sliglitest repre-
sentation of this dismal case would liave worked upon
the f'eelin<2;s of our compassionate Lord, and that tlie
nu'rciful sentence would immediately liave issued from
his lips which should have compelled the trembling
fiend to release his captive : but, strange to tell ! lie
made as if he were unmoved by the dismal story ;
and, regardless of the wretched mother's cries, '* he
answered her not a word."

It is certain tliat the most benevolent of men are
not equally inclined at all seasons to give attention to
a stranger's concerns, or to be touclied w ith the re-
cital of a stranger's distress. A suppliant to our
diarity, 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 nnto his brethren, may something ana-
logous to this fretfulness, whicli more or less is inci-
dent to the very best of men, be supposed in him, to
account for the singularity of his conduct in this in-
stance ? Were his spirits exhausted by the fatigue
of a long journey made afoot ? was his mind ruffled
by liis late contentions with the captious Pharisees?
was he wearied out by tlie frequency of })etitions for
liis miraculous assistance? was he disgusted with the
degeneracy of mankind in general, and with the
liardened incre<lulity of his own nation ? was his be-
nevolence, in short, for the moment laid aslee]), by a
lit of teni))()i-ary peevishness ? Ciod forbid that any
here should harbour the injurious, the impious sus-
i)icion ; a suspicion which even the Socinians (not
to charge them wrongfully) have not yet avowed,

145

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 at-
tention of all who stood by should be drawn to the
thing by something singular and striking in the man-
ner 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 consistency of the old dispensation
with the new, by circumstances which should imply,
that the principle upon which mankind in general
were at last received to mercy was the very same
upon which the single family of the Israelites had

VOL. II. L

14(1

been original I y taken into lavour, — nanuly, that
mankind in «r(_>ncral, by tlie li<;ht of the (Jospcl reve-
lation, were at last i)roujj;lit to a capacity at least of
that righteousness of faith whieli was the tliinjjj so
valued in Abraham that it rendered him the friend of
Ood, and procured him the visible and lasting re-
ward of special blessings on his posterity. It was fit
tliat she who was chosen to be the first example of
mercy extended to a heatlien should be put to some
previous trial ; that she miglit give proof of that
heroic faith which acts with an increased vigour un-
der the pressure of discouragement, and show herself
in some sort worthy of so high a preference. The
coldness, therefore, with which her ])etition was at
first received was analogous to the afflictions and dis-
appointments with which tlie best servants of (iod
are often exercised ; which arc intended to call forth
their virtue here and heighten their reward hereafter.
It is one of the many instances presen-ed in Holy
Writ, which teach the useful lesson of entire resigna-
tion to the will of (jrod, midcr protracted affliction
and accumulated disappointments, — upon this prin-
ci))le, that good men are never more in the favour
and innnediate care of God than when in tlie judg-
ment of the ii'iddv woild thev seem the most for«rotten
and forsaken by him.

Our Lord's attendants, touched with the distress
of the case, — penetrated by the woman's cries, —
])erhaps ashamed that such an object should be openlv
treated with neglect (for what had hitherto jVissed
was u])on the public road), — and little entering into
the nu)tives of our Lord's conduct, took upon tlu-ui
to be her advocates. '' I hey besought him, saying,
Send her awav, for sbe crieth after us." -Sv/'/ hrr

147

away, — that is, grant her petition, and give her her
dismissal. That must have been their meaning ; for
in no 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 attendants, — 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 interference of the disciples only
served him with an occasion to prosecute his experi-
ment 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, mi-
serable woman ! offspring of an accursed race ! cease
thy unavailing prayers : — he hath pronounced thy
sentence ! Betake thee to thy home, sad outcast from
thy Maker's love ! 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 consolation of a parent's
tenderness ; — it shall somewhat cheer the melancholy
of the intervals of her frenzy ; — it is the only ser-
vice 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 Ca-
naanite ! thou wast born, and thou hast lived a
stranger !

L 2

US

The faith of the Syrophccnician idohxtress ^^ave
way to no sueh sujTgcstioiis of despair. It leijuired,
indeed, the sagacity of a lively faitli to discern tliat
an absolute refusal of her j)rayer was not contained in
our Lord's discoura^nuii; declaration. In that godly
sagacity she was not deficient. " He is not sent."
Is he then a servant, sent upon an errand, with pre-
cise instructions for the execution of liis business,
wliidi he is not at liberty to exceed ? — Xo : he
comes with the full powers of a son. Wise, no doubt,
and just is the decree that salvation shall be of the
Jews, — that the general blessing shall take its be-
ginning in the family of Abraham, — that the law
shall go 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 ho])e against
liope ; I will cast me on his free uncovenanted mtrcy ;
I will trust to the fervour of my own prayers to
o])tain what seems to be denied to tlie intercession of
his followers.

Supported by this confidence, she followi'd our
Lord into the house where he took up his abode :
there she fell ])rostrate at his feet, crying, — " Lord,
help me!" — O faithful daughter of an unbelieving
race! great is the example which the affficted have in
thee, of an unshaken confidiiue in that mercy which
ordereth all things for the good of them that fear

149

God ! Thy prayer is heard ; help shall be given thee :
but thy faith must yet endure a flnther 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
merciful intentions, he answers the wretched sup-
phant at his feet as if he were upon principle disin-
clined to grant her request, — lest a miracle wrought
m her favour should be inconsistent with the distinc-
tion 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 ! Ter-
rible distinction ! — The Israelites children, the Gen-
tiles dogs! The words, perhaps, in the sense whicli
they bore in the mind of the speaker, were rather
descriptive of the different situation of the Jews and
the Gentiles at that time with respect to the degree
of religious knowledge they had for many ages*' se-
verally enjoyed, than of the different rank they held
ni God's favour. It is certain that God hath made of
one blood all nations of men ; and his tender mercy
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 no where be preserved other-
wise than by miracle. Miracle, perpetual miracle,
was not the proper expedient for its general preserv!
ation ; 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,
m which the truth might be preserved in a way that

L 3

150

f^enerally 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 re(juired it should be used, in the
least possible extent. The family which for the ge-
neral good was chosen to be the immediate object of
this miraculous discipline enjoyed no small privilege :
thev 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 col-
lectively— the Jews " children," and the Cientiles
*' dogs." The Jew, indeed, who duly improved un-
der the light which he enjoyed, and (not relying on
his descent from Abraliam, or on the merit of his
ritual service,) was conscientiously attentive to the
weijrhtier mattei-s of the law, became in another sense
the child of God, as personally the object of his fa-
vour; and theCicntile who, shutting his eyes against
the light of nature, gave himself up to work inicpiity
with greediness, became in another sense a dog, as
personally the obji-ct of God's aversion ; and it is
ever to be remembered, that in this worst sense the
greater part of the Cientile world were dogs, and
lived in enmity with Ciod : but still no Jew was in-
dividually a child, nor any Gentile individually a dog,
as a Jew or a (ientile, ])ut as a good or a bad man,
or as certain (pialities morally good or evil were in-
cluded in the notion of a .Jew or a (Jentile.

151

13iit how great was tliat faith, which, when tlie
great mystery was not yet disclosed — when God's
secret purpose 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 arrangements 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 favourites,
and the whole world beside outcasts ? " She reposes
in a general persuasion of God's wisdom and good-
ness ; she takes it for granted that a distinction which
proceeded from him must be founded in wisdom,
justice, and benevolence, — that however concealed
the end of it might be, it must be in some way con-
ducive to the universal good, — that it ought, there-
fore, to be submitted to with cheerfulness, even by
those on whose side the disadvantage for the present
lay. Would God, that men would imitate the hu-
mility of this pious Canaanite ; that they would con-
sider the scanty measure of the human intellect ; rest

L 4

satisfied in the <j:eneral i)eliet' of the Divine «xoo(lness
and wisdom ; and wait for the event of tilings, 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 Syrophcenieian
sup])liant ; let us next consider her finnness. Hitherto
she had prayed ; — her prayers meet with no en-
couragement : she ventures now to argue. The
principles and frame of her argument are very ex-
traordinary : she argues, from God's general care of
the world, against the inference of neglect in parti-
cular 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
severity in her own case : she seems to say, —
" Though thou slay me, yet will I trust in thee ; 1
will rely on thy general attribute of mercy, against
what, to one less persuaded of thy goodness, might
seem the tenour 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 estal)lish a claim upon his mercy. This
expostulation of the Syrophcenieian woman with our
Lord hath no ])arallel in the whole compass of the
sacred history, exce})t it be in Abraham's ])Ieadings
with the Almighty upon the case of righteous men
involved in national calamities. •♦ It is true," she
said, " () Lord ! 1 am not thy child, — I am a dog ;
but tliat's the worst of my condition, — 1 still am
thine, — I am aj)])ointed to a certain use, — I bear
a certain relation, though no high one, in the family

153

of the universal Lord. The clogs, though not chil-
dren, have, however, their proper share in the care
and kindness of tlie good man of the house : they are
not regaled with the first and choicest of the food
provided for the children's nourishment ; but they
are never suffered to be famished with hunger, —
they are often fed by the master's hand with the
fragments of his own table. Am I 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 thankfully accepts what God is pleased to
give, because he gives it : she is contented to fill the
place which 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 persuasion that every
one is " fed with the food that is convenient 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 Syrophcenician'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 religious subjects, and that, too, upon
certain points upon which even now, in the full sun-
shine of tlie Gospel, it is easy for the unwary to go

]54-

wroii^, and at that time it was hardly to l)c (.•\))t'{tc'd
that the wisest slioidd form a ri^lit judgment. Surely
with triitli the propliet said, " Tlie secret of tlie
Lord is amung tliem that fear liim." Whence, but
from tliat secret illuniiiiatioii wliich is the blessini^ of
tlie pure in heart in every clime and eveiy a«5e, could
this dau<:;hter of the Canaanites have drawn lier in-
formation, that among the various benefits which the
Kedeemer came to bestow upon the children of God's
love, the mercy which she solicited was but of a se-
condary value ? She ventures to ask for it as no ])art
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 woiked their miracles, were objects of a partial
favour not equally extended to believers in these later
ages : and it nnist be confessed their privilege was
great, to receive counsel and instruction from the
First Source of life and knowledge, and from the lii)s
of his inspired messengers ; but it was a privilege, in
the nature of the thing, confined to a certain time,
and, like all temjiorary ])rivileges, conferred on a few
for the general good : the clear knowledge of our
duty, — the jjromise 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 promised 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 l)read which Christ brought down from hea-
ven for the nourishment of the faithful ; — in these
benefits believers in all ages are ecjual sharers with

1.3.5

the first converts, our Lord's own contemporaries,
provided they be equally good Christians. The par-
ticular 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 giving that relief, — these things in
themselves, without respect to their use in promoting
the salvation of men by the propagation of the Gos-
pel, were, as we are taught by our Syrophoenician
sister, but the fragments and the refuse of the bride-
groom's supper.

We have now traced the motives of our Lord's
unusual but merciful austerity in the first reception
of his suppliant. What wonder that so bright an
example of an active faith was put to a trial which
might render it conspicuous ? It had been injustice
to the merit of the character to suffer it to lie con-
cealed. What wonder, when this faith was tried to
the uttermost, that our merciful Lord should conde-
scend 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 edifi-
cation which is conveyed 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," consisting 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 a reliance on his mercy, founded

on a just sense of liis perfections. Jt was a seal of
the acceptance of tlie penitent, and ot" the efficacy of
tlieir prayers ; and a seal of this ini])()rtant truth, that
the aittictions of the righteous are certain si<:^ns of
God's favour, — the more certain in proportion as
they are more severe. Whenever, tlierefore, the
memorv of this fact occurs, let every heart and everv
tonnjue join in praise and thanksgivin*^ to the merciful
Lord, for the cure of the young demoniac on the
Tyrian border ; and never be the circumstance for-
gotten which gives life and spirit to tlie great moral
of the story, — tliat tlie motlier, wliose prayers and
faith obtained the blessing, *' was a Greek, a Nyro-
phoenician by nation."

157

SERMON XXXIX.

ECCLESIASTES, XH. 7-

Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was ; and
the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.*

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 improvement of his present condition which
Providence hath left it to his own industry to make ;
to his future interest, by lessening the credit of Reve-
lation in the esteem of those who will ever lead the
opinions of mankind, — nothing hath been more con-
trary to man's interests both in this world and in the
next, than what hath too often happened, that a spirit
of piety and devotion, more animated with zeal than
enlightened by knowledge in subjects of physical
enquiry, 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

Philosophy, through the indiscretion of their votaries,
in appearance set at variance, form, as it were, their

* Preached tor the Humane Society, March 22. 1789.

1,>8

opposite parties : persons of a religious east are tliem-
selvcs deterred, and would dissuade others, from what
they weakly deem an impious wisdom ; while those
vvlio are smitten with the study of nature revile and
ridicule a revelation wliieli, as it is in some parts inter-
preted by its weak professors, would oblitjje 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 (lod's
own knowledge made by God himself, notwithstanding
that fallible men have been made the instruments of
the connnunication, — nuist be ])erfectly free from all
mixture of human ignorance and error, in the parti-
cular subject in which the discovery is made. The
discovery may, and unless the powers of the human
mind were infinite it cannot but be limited and par-
tial ; 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 vvliatever relates, therefore,
to religion, either in theory or practice, the know-
ledge of the sacred writers was infallible, as far as it
extended ; or their ins])iration had been a mere pre-
tence : and in the whole extent of tliat subject, faith
nuist be renounced, or reason nnist submit iui])licitly
to their oracular decisions. IJut in other subjects,
not immediately connected with theology or nu)rals,
it is by no means certain that tlieir minds were ecjually
enlightened, or that they were even presented froui
gross errors : it is certain, on tlie contrary, that the
])rop]iets and a])Ostles might ])e sulliciently (pialilied
for the task assigned them, to l)e teaciiers of that wis-

159

dom which " maketh 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 perfectly consistent with the ple-
nary inspiration of a religious teacher ; since it is not
all knowledge, but religious knowledge only, that such
a teacher is sent to propagate and improve. In sub-
jects 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 principles 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 of error or imperfect
information upon other 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 enter-
tained opinions in any physical subject which the
accurate researches of later times have refuted, — that
the earth, for instance, is at rest in the centre of the
planetary system ; that fire is carried by a principle of
positive levity towards the outside of the universe, —
or that he had used expressions in which such notions
were implied, — I shovdd think myself neither obliged,
in deference to his acknowledged superiority in another
subject, to embrace his erroneous physics, nor at li-
berty, on account of his want of information on these
subjects, to reject or call in question any part of his
religious doctrine.

KiU

But tlunigh 1 ;ulinit the possibility ot an inspired
teacher's error of opinion in subjects wliich he is not
sent to teacli, (because inspiration is not omniscience,
and some tliinji:s tliere must be wliich it will leave un-
taught,)— though I stand in this point for my own
and every man's liberty, and protest against any ob-
liiration on the believer's conscience, to assent to a
philosophical opinion incidently 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 philosophising, exce])t u])on reli-
gious subjects, should be openly asserted and most
pertinaciously maintained, — yet I confess it appears
to me no very probable su])positi()n, (and it is, as I
conceive, a mere supj)osition, not yet conlirnied by
any one clear instance,) that an inspired writer should
be permitted in his religious discourses to aHirm a
i'alse ])ropositiou in (N/// subject, or in ft//// history to
misrej)resent a fact ; so that 1 would not easily, nor,
indeed, without the conviction of the most cogent
proof, embi'ace any notion in philoso])hy, or attend
to any historical relation, which should be evidently
and in itself repugnant to an explicit assertion of any
of the sacred writers. Their language, too, iu)twith-
standinjx the accommodation of it that miiiht be ex-
pected, for the sake of the vulgar, to the notions of
the vulgar, in points in which it is of little importance
that their erroneous notions should be innnediately
corrected, is, 1 believe, far more accurate, — more
pliilosophically accurate, in its allusions, than is geiu'-
rally imagined. And this is a matter which, if sacred
criticism comes to hi- uu)re generally cultivated, will,
I doubt not, be better unilersttK)d : meanwliilc, anv

161

disagreement that hath been tliought to subsist be-
tween the physics or the records of the Holy Scrip-
tures and the late discoveries of experiment and
observation, I take in truth to be nothing more than
a disagreement between 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 Divine 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 pre-
sently confound with the discoveries themselves, —
although they are not confirmed by any experiments
yet made, and are what a fuller interpretation of the
phenomena 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 constitution of the universe, the errors
of the religious on the one side, and the learned on the
other, run in contrary directions j and the discord-
ance 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 philo-
sophy 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 experiment from all con-
jectural deductions. With the use of this precaution,
revelation and science may receive mutual illustration
from a comparison with each other ; but without it,
while we think that we compare God's works with

VOL. II. M

1&2

God's word, it may chaiicu that ^vc compare no-
thin<r better than different chimeras of the human
imagination.

Of the liglit wliic'h jihilosophy and revehition may
be broii«2;lit to tluow upon eacli otlier, and of tlie
utility of the circumspection wliich 1 recounnend, \\c
shall find an instructive example in a subject in
which the world is indebted for nuich new inform-
ation 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 phi-
lanthro])y, in its endeavours to miti<2;ate the disasters
of our frail precarious state, regardless of the scofis of
vulgar ignorance, hath in effect been prosecuting for
the last fourteen years, not without considerable
expense, a series of difficult and instructive experi-
ments, upon the very first cpiestion for curiosity and
im])()rtance in the whole compass of physical en((uiry,
— what is the true principle of vitality in the human
species ? and what certainly belongs to wliat have
generally been deemed the signs of death ?

The words which 1 have chosen for my text le-
late directly to tliis subject : they make tlie last part
in a descri))tion of the progress of old age, from the
commencement of its inlirmities to its termination
in death, which these words describe. The royal
preacher evidently speaks of man as composed of two
parts, — a body, made originally of the dust of the
earth, and capable of resolution into the material of
which it was at first formed ; and a sj)irit, 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 wndt rgoes
a resolution into its elementary grains of iMilli ; but

163

he teaches us besides, what sense could never ascer-
tain, 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 un-
derstood 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 immortality :" the ori-
ginal words at least express life in its highest force
and vigour. That this " breath of life " is the prin-
ciple 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 passage with other texts in Holy Writ ; parti-
cularly 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 com-
pares 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
Ecclesiastes. And that this spirit is the immaterial

M 2

164

intelligent principle, is evident ; because it is men-
tioned as a distinct thin"; IVoni the body, not partaking
of tlie body's fate, but surviving the putrefaction of
the body, and returning to the giver of it.

l^ut farther : tlie royal ])rcacher in my text, assum-
ing that man is a comjxiund of an organised body
and an innnaterial soul, ])laces the fonnality and es-
sence of death in the disunion and final separation of
these two constituent ])arts : 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 ac-
count of the creation of the first man in the book of
Genesis ; which uuikes the union of these two ])rin-
ciples the immediate cause of animation. " The
Lord God fonncd man of the dust of the giound,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and
man (or, so man) became a living person." (iod's in-
spiration of the breath of life, his infusion of the im-
material principle, the union of the soul to the body,
was the means by wliich man became a living per-
son ; whence the conclusion is obvious and necessary,
that the dissolution of that union is the sole adecpuite
cause of the extinction of tliat life which the union
])i()(luce(l.

It is the exj)licit assertion, therefoi'e, both of Moses
and of Solomon, that man is a compound oi body
and soul ; and that the union of the hnmaterial soul
with the body is the true })rinci])le of" vitality in the
Innnan species. And this account of man is soleundy
<lelivered by them both, as a branch of their religious
doctrine: it demands, tlu-rcfore, tlu' implicit assent
of every true l)eliever ; aiul no philos()j)hy i> to be
lieard that would teach the contrary.

165

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 soul and body is
the first principle of animation in the human subject,
it is by no means a necessary 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 com-
pounded being is itself a compound. And this ex-
2)erience 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 intelligence, or the energy of the intelligent
principle. The animal life is itself a compound, con-
sisting of the vegetable life combined with the prin-
ciple 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 ; consist-
ing 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 agoing,
as the Scriptures teach us, by the presence of the
immaterial soul ; 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 atr

ivi 3

\G6

taclicd to tlic macliinc, that the vegetable life of the
body, considered as a distinct thing, as in itself it is,
from the two princi])les of intelligence and percep-
tion, differs in kind (for in respect of excellence and
nicety of norknianshij) all comparison were impious ;
but in kind the vegetal)lc life of the human body
differs in this circumstance only) from mere clock-
work.

This mechanism of life, in that part whicli belongs
to the body, so evident to the anatomist and ])hy-
sician, and so obvious, indeed, to common observation,
is so little repugnant to Holy Writ, that it is clearly
implied in many passages. It is implied in the ex-
pressions 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 mechani-
cal action of the air, entering at the nostrils, upon
the pulmonaiy coats. The mechanism of life is again
most remarkably implied in the verse which imme-
diately precedes my text ; in which the approaches
of death are described as the gradual ruj)ture of the
parts of a machine ; not without particular allusion
to the true internal structure of the lumian body,
and the distinct offices of the priuci])al viscera in
maintaining the vegetal)le life, — " the silver cord
loosed, — the golden bowl broken, — the pitcher
broken at the well, — the wheel broken at the cis-
tern." I dare not in this assembly, in whicli 1 see
mvself surrounded by so many of the masters of ])hy-
siolog}', attempt a particular exposition of the anato-
mical imagery of this extraordinary text ; lest i
should seem not to have taken waining by thi" eoii-
teuipt which fell on that conceited Cireek who had

167

the vanity to prelect upon the military art before the
conquerors 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 in-
spired writers say upon any subject j which is this :
the images of this text are not easy to be explained
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
obsurity, 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 prin-
cipal 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 principles of intelligence, perception, and
vegetation, — notwithstanding that the vegetable life
be in itself mechanical, it will by no means be a neces-
sary conclusion, that a man must be truly and irre-
coverably dead so soon as the signs 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

M 4

1(J8

j)rinciple of vitality ; and he s])eaks of this disunion
as a thiii«r subsequent, in tlie natural and com-
mon course of things, to the cessation of the me-
chanical life of the body. Some space, therefore,
may intervene, — what the utmost length of the in-
terval 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 oidy from some external
force, some restraint upon the motion of any princij)al
part, without derangement, damage, or decay of the
organisation itself, the presence 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 philo-
sophy, connecting what is clear and indisputal)le in
each, separated from all conjecture and ])recarious in-
ference, we have deduced a proof of those important
truths to which the founders of this Society liave
been indeed the first to turn the attention of mankind,
• — namely, that the vital principle may remain in
a man for some time after all signs of the ve<;etable
life disappear in his body ; that what have hitherto
passed even among physicians for certain signs of a
com])lete death, — the rigid limb, the clay-cold skin,
the silent })ulse, the breathless lij), the livid cheek, the
fallen jaw, the pinched nostril, the fixed staring eye,
— are uncertain and ecpiivocal, insonnich that a human
body, under all these aj)])earances of di-ath, is in mauv
instances capal)le of resuscitation.

The truth of these j)rinciplcs, however contrary to

169

received opinions and current prejudices, is now abun-
dantly confirmed by the success with which Providence
hath blessed the attempts of this Society for the space
of fourteen years. It is universally confirmed by the
equal success 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 institution speaks for itself. The
founders of it are men whom it were injurious to sus-
pect of being actuated in its first formation by the
vain desire of attracting public notice by a singular
undertaking. The plan of the Society is so adverse
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 difficult 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 incredulity. 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 undertaking 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.

170

taken in immoderate and repeated doses : tliey have
rescued the wretched victims of intoxication, — re-
kindled the life extin«^iiished by the sudden stroke of
liii;htniii<i;, — recovered the apoplectic, — restored
lii'e to the infant that had lost it in the birth, — and
they have proved efficacious in cases of accidental
smotherinfi^, and of suffocation by noxious damps, in
instances in whicli the tenderness of the infant body,
or the debility of old age, greatly lessened the previous
probability of success ; insomuch that no s|)ecies of
death seems to l)e placed beyond the reach of this
Society's assistance, where the mischief hath gone no
farther 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 per-
mitted) against the many casualties that threaten it,
— to undo the deadly work of poisons, — to lessen
tlic depredations of natural disease, — whether an in-
stitution so beneficial to individuals, so serviceable to
the public, by its success in preserving the lives of
citizens, deserve not a legal establishment and patron-
age, 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 sup-
ply the want of it, what we can, by the utmost liber-
ality of voluntary contribution.

Nor let any be detered from taking a part in the
views of this excellent institution, by a superstitious
notion, that the attempt to restore life is an iujpious
invasion of Ilis province in whose hands are the issues
ol' life and death. I'he union of soul and bodv onee

171

dissolved, the power which first effected can alone
restore ; but clockwork accidentally stopped may often
be set agoing 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
remain, 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 criminal or
offensive to God to administer a medicine to a man
sick of any common distemper. The province of God,
who wills that at all times we rely upon his blessing
as the first cause of deliverance in all distress, but for-
bids 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 con-
trary, it is not less criminal, less uncharitable, less
offensive to God, to neglect 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 pos-
sibly know to the contrary, is only that of sickness.

Nor let us be deterred from promoting the attempts
to re-animate, by another superstition, — that if we re-
cover 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 appre-
hension, when he revived the widow's son j nor our
Lord, when he re-animated the daughter of Jairus, or
the widow's son of Nain, — nor even when he recalled

17^2

the M)ul uf Lazarus. lie iTcallcd the .soul ol Lazarus !

The soul once gone no lunnan effort ever shall recall ;
])ut if it were criminal to stav the soul not vet j^one,
but upon the j)oint ol" her departin-e, the cure of dis-
eases and of" wounds, and the whole ait of medicine
and of surj^ery, by parity of reason, would be criminal.
IJut in truth, whatever nn"<j;ht be the case of St. Paul
and others of the first preachers and martyrs, who had
no expectation 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 desirable ; and that without re-
gard to secular interests and enjoyments, ( which claim,
however, a moderate subordinate regard,) but ])urely
with a view to the better preparation lor the next.
Upon this ground we pray against sudden death ; and
we may lawfully use other means besides our ])ravers
to rescue ourselves and our brethren from it. The
continuance of the present life gives the good leisure
to impiove, and affords the sinner space for repent-
ance. Nor 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 in-
struction and admonition which they have received
from their deliverers, the occasion that they have been
begotten anew, by the word of (lod and the aid of
liis Holy Spirit, to the ho])e of innuortalitv.

They stand here before you whose recovered and
reformed lives are the proof of my assertions. Let
them j)lea<l, if my ])ersuasion fail, let them ])lea(l the
cause of tlu'ir briicfactors. Stand foith, and tell, uiv
])rethren, to whom you owe it under (lod that you
stand here this day alive ! 'IVll what in those dread-
ful moments were your feelings, when on a sudden

173

you found yourselves surrounded with the snares of
death, when the gates of destruction seemed opening
to receive you, and the overflowings of your own un-
godliness 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 suf-
fered 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 returning 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 satisfac-
tion, sinners rescued from the power of darkness,
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 lengthened, first to pay to God the
true thanksgiving of a holy life ; next, to acknow-
ledge, for the good of others, the instruments of his
mercy. Say, " These are they who saved our bodies
from the power of the grave, and have restored 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 ! '*

174-

SERMON XL.

Matthew, xxiv. 1^2.

Because iniquity sJiall abound, the love of man/j shall
ica.v cold. *

CoMPAinxG tlic actual manners of mankind witli
those ma^nifitont descriptions uliicli occur in every
page of propliecy, of tlie j)r()sperous state of religion,
both speculative and practical, under the Christian
dispensation, — in tliose hapj)y times " when the
mountain of the Lord's house should he exalted ahove
all hills, and all nations should llow unto it," —
•* when the earth should be filled with the knowledyre
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 ser-
vants also and the handmaids" the spirit should be
poured forth,)— r- when the fruit of this knowledge
was to be, that " kings should reign for righteousness,
and for e(piity princes should bear rule ;" that govern-
ment should be aduiinistered, not for the purposes of
avarice and ambition, but lor the advantage of the

• Preached tor the I'liilnntliropic Society, March '2.5. ITJ>'-i.

175

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 full of immortality, be
esteemed as a patriot generously struggling for the
freedom of mankind enthralled by superstitious 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 man-
kind, even in those countries where the Christian
religion is taught and professed in its greatest purity,
with these prophetic descriptions of the state of re-
ligion 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 falsi-
fies the prediction.

Survey the habitable globe, and tell me in what
part of Christendom the fruits of Christianity are vi-
sibly produced in the lives of the generality of its
professors ? in what Christian country is charity the
ruling principle with every man in the common inter-
course of civil life, insomuch that the arts of circum-
vention 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

17G

against liis iieiglil)Our's peace ? Where is it tluit llie
more atrocious crimes of violence and rapine are un-
known ? Where is it tliat religion completely does
the office of" the law, and the general and habitual
dread of" future wrath s]K)ils the trade of the execu-
tioner?— 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 reformation of mankind, has proved
abortive. In truth, since the whole object of Revela-
tion is to recover mankind from the habit and domi-
nion of sin, in which the first transgression had
involved them, — since this was the connnon object
of the earliest as well as of the latest revelations, —
since the promulgation of the (lospel is evidently, in
the nature of the thing, and by the express declar-
ations 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 full
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 ])henouu'nou, it should seem,
if Infinite (loodness. Infinite \\ isdom, and Onnii-
])otence, have really ])een engaged on the one side,
and nothiuii" better than the weakness and malice of
a creature on the other !

But ere we acquiesce in these conclusions, or in-
dulge in the scepticism to which they lead, It-t us
com])are the world, as it now is, not with the perfec-
tion of the ultimate effect ofChristianitv as di-scribed

by the entranced prophets contemplating the great
schemes of Providence in their glorious consumma-
tion, but let us compare the workl 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 mankind,
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 efficacy 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 work so important even to the present interests
of the individual and of society.

Comparing the world as it now is with what it was
before the promulgation of the Gospel, we shell find
the manners of mankind, in this respect at least, im-
proved, — that they are softened. Our vices are of
a more tame and gentle kind than those of the an-
cient 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

VOL. II. N

17«

refinement ratlier tlian of cruelty and barbarism —
crimes of thoii<!:htless gaiety rather than of direct pre-
meditated malice.

To instance in particulars. \\'e are not destitute,
as the heathen were, of natural affection. No man
in a Cln-istian 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 in-
tended wife, before marriage, according to the ancient
practice, tliat the females she might bear should be
all exposed, and the l)oys only reared, — however
inadecjuate 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
symptom, in the heatlien world, of a want of natural
affection, which is not found in modern manners.
The crime, indeed, which justifies divorce is too fre-
quent , but the liusband is not at liberty, as in ancient
times, to repudiate the wife of his youth for any
lighter cause than an offence on her ])art against the
fundamental ])rinci])le of the nuptial contract. Upon
this ])()int the laws of all Christian countries are
framed in strict conformity to the rules of the Gospel,
and the s])irit of the primeval institution.

W'v are not, as the apostle says the heathen were,
♦* full of nnnder." The robber, it is true, to facili-
tate the accjuisition of his booty, or to secure himself
from innnediate ap])rehension and jiunishment, some-
times imbrues his hand in blood ; but scenes of blood

179

and murder make no part, as of old, of" the public
diversions of the people. Miserable slaves, upon oc-
casions 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 en-
gaged 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 com-
posure as to observe and admire 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 anta-
gonist the fatal blow ; nor with cool indifference 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 ex.ception in a single
instance, we are milder in the use of power and autho-
rity of every 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 Chris-
tian governments, is it suddenly inflicted, upon the

* " • Consurgit ad ictus,

Et quoties victor ferrum jugulo inserit, ilia
Delicias ait esse suas, pectusque jacentis
Virgo modesta jubet, converso police, rumpi."

Pnidentius.

N 2

180

bare order of tlie sovereign, without a iorinal aceus-
atioii, trial, conviction, sentence, and warrant of exe-
cution. '1 lie lives of cliildren and servants are no
lon«!;er at the disposal of the father of the family ;
nor is domestic authority maintained, as formerly, by
severities which the mild spirit of modern laws rarely
inflicts on the wjrst public malefactors. Even war
has lost much of its natural cruelty ; and, com])ared
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 Christians ; and their conduct in the
hour of conquest exhibited a new and wonderful ex-
ample 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 tlie unarmed inhabitants who had Hed to the
churches or the sepulchres of the martyrs should be
spared ; and with such cheerfulness were the orders
obeyed, that many who were found running about
the streets in a phrensy of consternation and despair
were conducted by the connnon soldiers to tlu- ap-
])ointed ])laces of retreat : nor was a single article
touched of the rich furniture and costly ornaments of
the churches of St. Peter and St. l*aul. This, you
will observe, was a thing very different from the
boasted examples of Pagan manners, the generosity
of Camillus, and Scipio's continence. In either of
those examples, we see notliing more than the extra-
ordinary virtue of the iiulividuai, because it was ex-
traordinary, ('(pially redecting disgrace on his times
and credit on himself: this was an instance of mercy

181

and moderation in a whole army, — in common
soldiers, flushed with victory, and smarting under the
wounds they had received in obtaining it.

From that time forward the cruelty of war has
gradually declined, till, in the present age, not only
captives among Christians are treated with humanity,
and conquered provinces governed with equity, but
in the actual prosecution of a war it is become a
maxim to abstain from all unnecessary violence : wan-
ton depredations are rarely committed upon private
property ; and the individual is screened as much as
possible from the evil of the public quarrel. Ambi-
tion 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 enter-
prise, for conquest and glory, begin to be reprobated
in the politics of the present day. Nor, in jirivate
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 comparison 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 of even
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 enu-
merate 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 gra-

N S

dual amendment in tlie >vorld, I trust, are numerous
and strikinn;. That they are the effect of Clu'istianity,
is evident fiom this faet, — that in all the instances
which I have- nuiitioned, tht- perceptible beginnin<];s
of amendment cannot be traced to an earlier epoch
than tlie cstahlishment of the Christian religion in
the Roman empire by Constantine ; and immediately
after that event they appeared. The work of God,
therefore, is bq^un, is going on, and will unquestion-
ably be carried to its perfection. But let none ima-
gine that his own or the general conduct of the w orld
is such as may endure the just judgment of (Jod :
sins yet remain among us, which, without farther re-
fonnation and re])entaiice, must involve nations in
judgment and individuals in perdition.

In comparing the manners of the Christian and
the heathen world, impartiality hath com])elli'd me to
remark, that in one instance (and 1 trust in one only)
an abuse of authority, and I nuist add a cruelty of
avarice, obtain auunig us Christians in the present
world, not to be exceeded by the worst examples that
may be found in the annals of heathen anticpiity. I
speak of that worse than Tyrian merchaiulise " 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 infamous
trallic. In this instance, the sordid lust of gain has
hitherto been deaf to the voiee of himianity and reli-
gion. And yet I trust, that the existence of this
ini(juitous trade is less a syuiptom of depravity, than
the loud and general cry of the ])eople of tliis eountry
for its abolition is an argiiuuiit that tlu' mild sj)irit of
Cluistianitv is ^ainiui: more and more of an aseend-

183

ancy ; and that God's good work is tending to its
consummation, by that gradual 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 Devil's 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 wis-
dom and mercy of God in his dealings with such a
creature.

God's power is unquestionably competent to the
instantaneous abolition of all moral evil, by the anni-
hilation at a single stroke of the whole troop of rebel-
lious 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 individuals, — by such ex-
amples of wrath immediately pursuing guilt as might
act with a compulsive force upon those who saw them.
But God " willethnot 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 argu-
ment, 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 inter-

N 4

184

riiptions ; insoimith, that it may st'ein 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 opjMJsition 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 unpromising
appearances might be apt to produce ; that instead of
taking offence at the sin which remains as yet unex-
tiii)ated, or even at an occasional growth and preva-
lence of iniquity, we may h'rmly 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 we should do, for the furtherance of
his work and the removal 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 be-
tween the " abounding of iniquity " ami the decay of
that principle by which alone the abounding of ini-
(juity may be resisted : ** because inicjuity shall abound,
the love of many shall wax cold."

" The love of many " is understood by some expo-
sitors (by St. Chrysostom among the ancients, and by
Calvin anuHig the moderns) of the mutual love of
Christians for each other ; — which, indeed, will be
very aptto languish and die away when inicjuityabounds
and chokes it : but as this discourse of our Lord's is
an ('\))rcss formal jnoplu'cy, and tlie style of |)roplu'<y

185

prevails in every part of it, I am persuaded that love
is to be taken in the same sense here which it mani-
festly bears in the Apocalyptic prophecies ; where it
denotes not brotherly love, but a much higher prin-
ciple, — 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 attach-
ment of affection to the religion of Christ, and a zeal
for its interests. This will naturally decay under the
discouragement 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 retain in their own minds of its
truth, they will think it of no consequence to be active
in the support and propagation of it : their love, there-
fore, will grow torpid and inactive.

Such will be the conduct of many ; but since reli-
gion (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 of this. The more iniquity abounds,
the more diligent it becomes the faithful to be in
calling the attention of mankind to religious instruc-
tion : for sin never could abound if the attention of
men were kept steadily fixed upon their eternal in-
terests. 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 man 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 ;

18(3

and because there is soniethin«j^ in the doctrine of the
Gospel particidarly adapted to work upon the i'eehngs
of a sinner, — insomuch that publicans and harlots
were found to be readier to enter into the kingdom of
God than the scribes and Pharisees.

But here lies the great dithculty, that in seasons of
a particular prevalence of iniquity, those who the most
need instruction, being the most toudied with the
general infection, will l)e the last to seek it or to bear
it. General public instruction at such times will never
prove an effectual remedy for the evil : means must
be found of carrying reproof and admonition home to
the refractory offender, who purposely absents himself
from the assemblies where public instruction is i)ro-
vided 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 en-
deavoured to meet this difficulty, and to supply the
necessary defects of general instruction, by an imme-
diate special application of the ])enefits of a sober
•rodly education to those miserable outcasts of society
the children of convicted criminals and of the profli-
gate poor, accidentally picked up in the ])ublic streets
of this metropolis, or iiulustriously sought out in the
lurking-lioles of vagrant idleness and beggary, and
the nightly haunts of prostitutes and ruihans. Such
children had been too h)ng, indeed, overlooked by the
virtuous ; but in no ])r()])riety of s])eech can it be
said they had been ntglected. 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 will directed

187

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 masters, 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 religion.

Such are its ends : for the efficacy of its plan, the
appearance 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 ! bereaved or deserted of your parents, — dis-
owned by society, — refused as servants in the poorest
families, as apprentices in the meanest trades, — ex-
cluded 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 jus-
tice ! 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 Shep-
herd's fold, — you are become children of God and
inheritors of the kingdom of heaven !

188

Men and bretliren ! countrymen and fellow Chris-
tians ! it is not for me, it is for your own feelinj;\s, to
connnend 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 brin^* it to Christ to be saved by him.
Public liberality must supply the means of carryin*;-
the godly work to perfection. Buildings nuist 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 im])ortant to the individual, the
public, and to the church of God, the present funds
of the Society are altogether unecpial. But public
liberality in this country will not forsake them ; nor
will the blessing of God forsake 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 laud-
able 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 ])iety is the only sure basis of even a
moral life, — that religious principle is the only
groundwork of a permanent reformation ; nor can
any thing less powerful than the grace of (Jod in-
fused into the soul eradicate evil princi})les instilled
in childhood, and evil habits contracted in that early
part of life. Your own experience hatli shown vou
with uhat success religious ])rinci])Ie may be instilled
int(i the niost depraved mind, and with what efficacy

189

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 be true to your own
generous undertaking, religious instruction must be
the first, not a secondary object of your institution.
Nor must the masters of the different trades be suf-
fered 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 chil-
dren to trades, is a wise, beneficial, necessary part of
your institution : but you will remember, that the
eternal interests of man far outweigh 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 as-
suredly crown your labours with success ; nor shall
we scruple to extend to you the benediction, in its
first application peculiar to the commissioned preach-
ers of righteousness, " Blessed are ye that sow beside
all waters, and send forth the feet of the ox and the
ass."

190

SEl^^^o^ xli

John, xx. 29.

T7wmn.s, hecouse thou hast see?! me, thou hast be-
lievcd : blessed are theif who hare not seen and
yet have believed.

Xhese were the words of Christ's reply to his apostle
Thomas, when he, who had refused to credit the
resurrection of Jesus upon the report of the other
apostles, received the conviction of his own senses in
a personal interview, and reco<^nised our Saviour for
Lord and (jod.

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 ador-
ation offered with nuieh warmth and cordiality ; a
circumstance which plainly indicates some defect or
blemish in the offering, by which its value was much
diminished. And this could he nothing hut the
lateness of it, — the apostle's wonderful reluctance to
believe nnich less than what he at last professes : but
eight days since, he would not believe that Jesus to
be alive wliom now he worshi]>s as the living Ciod.

But this is not all : the apostle is not oidy rei)roved
for his past incredulity ; he is told besides, at least it
is indirectly suggested to him, that the belief which

191

he at last so fervently professes hath little merit in it,
— that it was not of that sort of faith which miffht
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 im-
plied in that blessing which our Lord so emphatically
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
testimony 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 instruction which the speculation may afford,
may well deserve 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 im-
mediate evidence of sense for its foundation or sup-
port, that our Saviour should on this sort of faith
exclusively pronounce a blessing? A readiness 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 folly, or incur God's displeasure by his dis-
cretion.

For the clearing up of these difficult questions,
this shall be my method, — First, to consider what
ground there might be for St. Thomas to believe the
fact of our Lord's resurrection upon the report of
the other ten apostles, before he had himself seen
him ; and from what motives it may be supposed that

192

he withheld his assent. In the course of" tliis enquiry,
it will appear that an evidence very different from
ocular demonstration may in many cases connnand
the assent of a reasonahle 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 na-
tural act of the human mind, to which nothing of
moral or religious merit can reasonably be ascribed.
These preliminary disquisitions will furnish the ne-
cessary principles for the resolution of that great and
interesting question. What is the merit, and at the
same time what is the certainty, of that faitli which
believes what it hath not seen ?

In the first })lace, I ])ropose to consider what
ground there miglit be for Thomas to believe the
fact of our Saviour's resurrection, upon the testimony
of the other a])ostles, before he had himself seen him ;
and what nuiy be supposed to have been the motives
upon which he refused his assent. And here the
thing principally to be considered is, what degree of
trust the apostle might reasonably have ])laced 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
Saviour had on many occasions foretold his own
death ; and never without assurances that he would
rise again on the third day. This he generally de-
clared 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 no-

193

thing 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 allusions 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 understood 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 pre-
caution to prevent the success of a counterfeit resur-
rection, nothing could be more remote from the ex-
pectations 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 evidence of this glorious
truth, that *' Christ is risen, and become 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 ob-
tained belief, was by no means rejected with absolute
contempt. On the contrary, it seems to have awak-
ened in all but Thomas some recollection of our
Lord's predictions, and some dubious solicitude what
might be the events of the third day. And yet it
cannot be supposed that St. Thomas at this time had

VOL. II. o

194

no remembrance oiour Lord's predictions of" his resur-
rection ; of uliicli tlic otlierten could not but remind
him : but the consideration, it seems, had no weight
wit]i liim. And yet the person who had given his
followers these assurances was no ordinary nuui :
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
tlie learned of a distant country by a new wonder in
the air ; his high original had been afterwards attested
by voices from heaven ; he had displayed powers
in himself which amounted to nothing less than an
uncontrolled and milimited dominion over every de-
partment of the universe, — over the first elements of
which natural substances are composed, in his first
miracle of changing water mto wine, and in the later
ones of auijmentiuij the mass of a few loaves and a
few snuill fislu's to a quantity sufficient for the meal of
hungry multitudes, — over the most turbulent of the
natural elements, composing the raging winds and
troubled waves, — over tlie laws of nature, exempting
the matter of his body on a particular occasion from
the general force of gravitation, and the power of me-
chanical impulse, so as to tread secure and firm upon
the tossing surface of a stonny sea, — over the vege-
table kingdom, blasting the fig-tree with his word, —
over tlie animal body, removing its diseases, correcting
the original defects and disorders of its organs, and
restoring its nnitilated jiarts, — over the liuman mind,
penetrating the closest secrets of each man's heart,
— over the revolted sjiirits, delivering miserable
mortals from their persecution, and compelling
them to confess liim for their T.ord and the de-
sthied avenger of their crimes j and, wliut might

195

more than all add weight to the promise of his resur-
rection, 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 unblemished life. This extraordinary personage
had predicted 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 ftiith of his disciples. Nature bore witness
to her Lord in awful signs of sympathy ; the sun,
without any natural cause, withdrew his 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 ve-
racity in the course of their attendance on their com-
mon 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 know-
ledge, to a fact which is in itself more probable than

o ^2

190

its opposite, I know not upon wlmt «^roiiiul their tes-
timony can be questioned.

Sucli was the case before us. M'here then can we
look for the ground of tlie apostle's incredulity, but
in the prejudices of his own uiind ? Possibly he might
stand upon what he miglit term liis right. Since eacli
of the other ten had received the satisfaction of ocular
demonstration, he might think he had a just })retence
to expect and to insist upon the same. He had been
no less than they attached, he might say, to his Mas-
ter'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 firnmess and constancy, provided
he might be indulged with the same evidence of the
fact, bear witness to liis resurrection, nor less cheer-
fully seal the glorious attestation with his blood : but
for what reason could it be ex])ected of him to believe,
upon the testimony of the other ten, that for which
each of them pretended to have received the imme-
diate evidence of his own senses ? He never would
believe that his kind Master, who knew his attachment,
— whose affection he had so often exj)eiienced, it 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 befoie him of the
fact in cpiestion ; but made this the condition of his
believing it at all, — that it should be jjidved to him
l)y evidence of one particular kind. Did he ask him-
self upon what evidence he and the Jews his contem-

197

poraries believed in the divine authority of the laws of
Moses ? — upon what evidence they received as ora-
cular the writings of the ancient prophets ?

A general revelation could never be, if no proof
might be sufficient for a reasonable man but the im-
mediate testimony 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 cap-
tivity. 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
measures and degrees, to different ages 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 *' known unto God are
all his ways," and that " the Judge of all the earth
•will do what is right." Every man, .thei'efore, may be
allowed to say that he will not believe without suffi-
cient 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

o 3

198

he may tliink hv should like best should not be
set before him. This is indeed the very spirit of in-
fidelity ; and this was the temper of those brethren of
the rich man, in our Saviour's paral)le, who hearkened
not to Closes and the prophets, 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 generally 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
sheltered under his example, unless they will follow it
in tlie better part, by a recantation of their errors and
a confession of the truth full and ingenuous as his,
when once their hearts and understandings are con-
vinced.

From this sunnnaiy view of the evidence that St.
Thomas 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 incredulity could be founded, — it may
sufficiently a])])ear that the reproof he received was
not unmerited ; and we may see reason to admire and
adore the affectionate mildness with which it was ad-
ministered.

The same thing will still more appear, when it shall
be shown, that in the belief of any thing u])()n such
evidence as was at last exhibited to Thomas of our
Lord's resurrection, there can be no merit ; and for
this ]>lain reason, that a belief resulting from such evi-
dence is a necessary act of the understanding, in which
the heart is totally uninterested. An assent to full

199

and present proof, from whatever that proof may arise,
— whether 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 com-
prehends and masters it, arises as necessarily from the
nature of the understanding as the perception of ex-
ternal objects arises from the structure of the organs
to which they are adapted. To perceive truth by its
proper evidence, 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 dis-
cern the connection 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 employ or not, and hath
a strange power of employing it in some instances per-
versely ; 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 understanding 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 understanding assents in conse-
quence of full proof ; — the completeness 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 respect to

o 4

200

the wliole of their faith, but witli respect to the ])ar-
ticular fact of our Lord's resuiTcction ; — the proof
they liad of it was full and absolute: Jesus in his well-
known person stands alive before them ; and to
believe, ^vhen they saw him alive, that he who had
been dead was then livin<^, could be nothin<j^ more
meritorious than to believe that he was dead when
they saw the body laid in tlie «^rave.

I desire not to be misunderstood. There may be
unicli merit in the dili«^ence, the candour, and sin-
cerity with vvliich a man entpiires and investi<^ates ; —
there may be merit in the conduct he pursues in con-
sequence of particular convictions. In the conduct
of the apostles, there was much merit, under the con-
viction they at last attained of our Lord's resurrection,

— in their zeal to diffuse his doctnnes, — in their firm-
ness in attestin«i; his triumph over the grave, in
defiance of the utmost rigour of persecution, — such
merit as shall be rewarded with unfadinjr crowns of
glory : But in the mere act of believing a fact evi-
denced l)y tlie 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, wliat 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 ])ronounce it
blessed ?

I trust that I shall evince, by God's assistance, that
this blessing to the faithful standeth sure. But this
great subject may well demand a separate discourse.

201

SERMON XLII.

John, xx. 29.

ThomaSy because thou hast seen 7ue, thou hast be-
lieved : Blessed are they who have not seen and
yet have believed,

Ihe propriety of the reproof addressed In these
words to the apostle hath been ah'eady 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, without 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 ques-
tion, the last in my original division of the subject,
which I now pui-pose 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 imper-
fection of the proof should enhance the merit of be-
lief? Will it not follow, if this principle be once
admitted, that where there is the least of proof there

202

^vlll 1)0 the most of this merit ; and tliat the faith
wliich is the most vahiahle in the si^lit of (iod is that
wliieli hath tlie least support and countenance from
the understandin<>; ? — a ])roposition ^vhich the adver-
saries of our holy religion would nnich rejoice that its
professors should affirm.

To clear these difficulties, I know no readier way,
than to enquire 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
enquiry, I hope to make appear both the certainty
and the merit of our faith, — its certainty, as resting
on a foundation no less firm, though far less com-
pulsive, 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 (pialities 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 ])roof nuist ever be divested.

What then is the grouiul upon which the fiiith of
the generality of Clu'istians in the present ages is
built, who all believe what they have not seen ? — I
say, of the generality 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 com-
mon faith of the })lain illiterate believer. \\ hat then
is the ground of his conviction? Is it the historicid
evidence of the facts recorded in the gospehs ? Per-

203

haps no facts of an equal antiquity may boast an his-
torical 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 sufficient conviction :
in the degree in which it may be supposed to strike
the generality of believers, it seems to be that which
may rather finish a proof begun in other principles
than make by itself an entire demonstration.

What then is that which, in connection with that
portion of the historical evidence which common men
may be supposed to perceive, affords to them a ra-
tional ground of conviction ? Is it the completion of
prophecy ? This itself must have its proof from his-
tory. To those who live when the things predicted
come to pass, the original delivery 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 his-
tory ; and moreover, by the figured language of pro-
phecy, the evidence which it affords is of all the most
removed from popular apprehension. What then is
the great foundation of proof to those who are little
read in history, and are ill qualified to decypher pro-
phecy, and compare it with the records of mankind ?
Plainly this, which the learned and the ignorant may
equally comprehend, — the intrinsic excellence of the
doctrine, and the purity of the precept ; — a doctrine

'201-

wliich conveys to the rudest umleistaiuling just and
I'xalted notions of the Divine perfections ; exacts a
worship pureed of all iiypocrisy and superstition, —
the most adapted to the nature of liini wlio offers, —
the most worthv, if ought may l)e northy, of the
Beinj^ that accepts it ; prescrihes tlie most rational
duties, — things intrinsically tlie best, and the most
conducive to jM-ivate and to ])ublic good ; proposes
rewards ade(piate to tlie vast desires and ca])acities of
the rational soul ; promises mercy to infirmity, with-
out indulgence to vice ; holds out pardon to the
penitent offender, in that j)articular way which se-
cures to a frail imjierfect race the blessings of a mild
government, and secures to the majesty of the Uni-
versal Governor all the useful ends of punishment ;
and builds this scheme of redemption on a history of
man and Providence, — of man's original corruption,
and the various inter])ositions of Providence for his
•gradual recovery, — which clears uj) many peqilexing
(juestions concerning the origin of evil, the unecjual
distribution of present ha])])iness and misery, and the
disadvantages on the side of virtue in this constitution
of" things, which seem inexplicable upon any other
priiKi])les.

'Hiis excellence of the Christian doctrine considered
in itself, as without it no external evidence of revela-
tion could 1)1' sutlicicnt, so it gives to those who are
(|ualitied to perceive it that internal probability to the
whole scheme, that the external evidence, in that
pro))ortion of it in which it may be supjxised to be
understood bv connuon incn, may be wc 11 allo\M'd to
complete the proof. This, I am persuaded, is the
consideration that chiefly weighs with those who are
(piite unable to collect and unite for themselves the

205

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 :
when I speak of that 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 ovei'powered with the
force of it. Some there will always be who will profit
by this proof, and will be curious to seek after it ; and
mankind in general will be advantaged 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 con-
viction there may be for all men, of which the ignorant
and the learned may equally take advantage ; and I
took this enquiry, in order to discover wherein that
merit of faith consists which may entitle to the bless-
ing 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 conviction, 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 argu-

'20G

1111

mcnt about the nature of its certainty, — with h
who holds the plougli or tends tlie loom, who liath
never been siitficieiitly at leisure fioin the laborious
occupations of" necessitous lite to speculate upon moral
truth and ))eauty in the abstract : for a (piick disceni-
ment and a truth of taste in religious subjects proceed
not from that subtilty or refinement of the under-
standing 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
refers to the doctrines and precepts of religion that
exem])lar 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 : understand-
ing their excellence, it is disposed to embrace them and
to obey them ; and in this disposition listens with can-
dour 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 things jjiopound-
ed, — that is, it may be said, into a prejudice. But this
is a mistake : I suppose no favour of the mind for the
doctrine propounded but what is founded on a sense
and perception of its ])urity and excellence, — none
but what is tlie consequence of that perception, and
in no degree the cause of it. We suppose no previous
disposition of the mind, ])ut a gtiu ral seiist" and ap-
pr()l)ati()n of what is good ; which is never called a
prejudice but by those who have it not, and l)y a gross
abuse of language. I'he sense and a])pr()bation of
what is good is no infirmity, but the perfection of our
nature. Of our nature, did I say ? — the aj)probation
of what is good, joined with the |)erfect understanding
of it, i$ the perfection of the Divine.

207

The reason that the authority of these internal
perceptions 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 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 probability 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 differently; both therefore cannot judge aright,
unless right judgment may be different from itself.
Must it not then be granted, either that these per«
ceptions are uncertain and fallacious, — or, which
may seem more reasonable, since no man can have a
higher certainty than that which arises from a con-
sciousness 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

•208

have affected to be sovelicmeiitly enamoured, aiuhvhich
is set up as the ultimate test of truth in the lii^liest
speculations, is a nu-ro fiction of" tlic ini:ii::inati()n 'i

It is not to be Avondered that many have been car-
ried away by the fair appearance of this argument,
in which nothing seems to be alleged that is open to
objection. Xevertheless, the conclusion is false, and
the whole reasoning is nothing better than a cheat
and a lie ; the premises 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
o])inions will no longer be a proof of a diversity 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 stiHed and overcome, — in
some, by education, fashion, 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 l)y 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 ])erceive them as they are, because there are those
who have not that percej)tion. 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 mankind, because a

S09

disordered eye confounds them. The same reasoninff
may be applied to our mental perceptions : the Chris-
tian's discernment of the purity of the Gospel doc-
trine is not the less clear, — his veneration for it arisino;
from that discernment not the less rational, because
a Mahometan may with equal ardour embrace a cor-
rupt system, and may be insensible to the greater
beauty of that which he rejects. In a word, every
man implicitly trusts his bodily senses concerning ex-
ternal 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 con-
scious 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 intellect.

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 cer-
tainty in our natural sense of moral right and wrong,
purity and turpitude ; 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 foundation. The
external evidence which is to complete the proof is
much the same to every man at this day as the exter-
nal evidence of the resurrection was to Thomas upon
the report of the other ten apostles, with this differ-
ence, — that those wonderful facts of our Saviour's

VOL. II. p

^210

life whicli Thonia.s knew l)y ocular proof we receive
from the testimony of others.

The credibility of this testhnony it is not dithcnlt
for any one to estimate, who considers how improbable
it is that the ])reachers of a rij^hteous doctrine, a pure
morality, a strict religion, should themselves be im-
postors, — how improbable that the apostles and first
preachers could be deceived in tlnnj2;s which passed
before their eyes ; and how much credit is naturally
due to a number of well-informed men, of unim-
peached 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 ap-
pear 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 ])roba-
bilitv of the doctrine, may reasonably work that deter-
mined conviction which nuiy 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 evi-
dence that is before him.

It is to be observed, that all the writers who liave
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 incon-
siderate as to assert, that if the Christian scheme
were jirobable in itself, the evidence we have of it,
with all the difficulties they have Ijcen able to raise
in it, would not be amply sufficient. That tluy do
not perceive the intrinsic probability of Christianity, —
those of them, I mean, who discover a due respect

«11

for natural religion, — that these do not perceive 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 at-
tended 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 bless-
ing. 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 has not
these effects is dead : there can be no sincere and sa-
lutary 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 give to every action, much
more than its consequences, its proper character and
denomination ; 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 be-
ginning than the perfection of the Christian charac-

p 2

-212

tor : but if in any instance the force of external
evidence should work an unwillinir belief where these
qualities of the heart are \vantin<»;, in the mere act of
forced belief there is no merit : '* the devils ])elieve
and tremble." Hence, we may understand upon what
ground and with what e(|uity and reason salvation is
promised in Scripture to faith, without the express sti-
pulation of any other condition. Every thing that
could be named as a condition of salvation on the Gos-
pel ])lan is included in the princi])le no less than in the
effect of that faith to which the promises are made.

On the other hand, it is easy to perceive that the
sentence of condemnation denounced against the un-
believing 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 dis-
honest resistance of conviction, — from a distaste for
nu)ral truth, — from an alienation of the mind from
God and goodness. This unbelief contains in it all
tliose base and odious qualities which are the o})po-
sites of the virtue of which true faith is composed :
it nuist be " nigh unto cursing," in as nuich as in
the very essence and formality of its nature it is an
accursed thing.

Lest any thing that has l)een said sliould seem to
derogate from the merit of the apostles' faith, 1 would
observe, that whatever degree of evidence they might
have for some part of their belief, in ])articular for
the important fact of our Lord's resurrection, they
had am])le exercise for it in other points where the
evidence of their sense was not to be juocured, or
any external evidence that might be c(jually compul-
sive, for the whole of their faith. Vov the great

^213

doctrines of the Father's acceptance of Christ's sacri-
fice of himself, — of the efficacy of the mediatorial
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 meritorious faith which be-
lieveth 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
delegated band, set the world a glorious example of
an active fiiith, which they are the happiest who best
can imitate : and, seeing faith hath been shown to
partake in its beginnings of the evidence of conscious-
ness 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 Father to shed more
and more of the light of his Holy Spirit, and to help
our unbelief.

p 3

'214

SERMON XLIII.

1 John, iii. 3.

And every man that hath this hope in him purifeth
himself, even as He is pure,*

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 pre])ared for his dehuled fol-
lowers, in his paradise of dalliance and revelry, — but
that certain exquisite sensations of delight, produced
by externd objects acting upcm corporal organs, will
constitute some ])art of the happiness of the just, is a
truth with no less certainty deducible from the terms
in which the Holy Scriptures describe the future life,
than that corporal sufferance, on the other hand, will
make a ])art of the ])miishuu'nt of the wicked.

Indeed, were Holy Writ less e\i)licit upon the sub-
ject 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 })romised resurrection of the body : for to
wliat purpose of God's wisdom or of his justice, — to

• rrtaclltd at tlic Anniversary of the Institution of the
Magdalen Hospital, April 22. 17'J5.

'215

what purpose of the creature's own existence, should
the soul either of saint or sinner be re-united to the
body, as we are taught in Scripture to believe the
souls of both shall be, unless the body is in some way
or another to be the instrument of enjoyment to
the one and of suffering 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 be-
comes 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 at-
tached, and the motions of the body governed 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
2)0wer 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 between soul and body being once
established, it is impossible but that the conscious soul
must be pleasurably or othewise affected, accordino-
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 j^lea-
sure and the bad suffer corporal pain, would be a
necessary consequence of that re-union of the soul

r i

^216

and the body which we are taiinht to expect at the
hist day, liad tlie Holy Scriptures given no other in-
formation upon the subject.

But tliey are expHcit in the assertion of this doc-
trine. Witli respect to the wicked, the case is so
very phiin tliat it is unnecessary to dwell upon the
proof. M'itli respect to the righteous, the thing might
seem more doubtful, except so fai' as it is deducible,
in what manner 1 have shown, from the general doc-
trine 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 unnecessaiy
words, without any other amendment of the trans-
lation, the passage in our English Bibles will be
restored 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 ior which all must a])pear 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

• Ta tia Te truixoclo<;, — not ill rtMulcrcd by tlie N'ulgatc pro»
pria corporis. But tliis rendering, thougli tlic Latin words,
rightly understood, convey the true sense of the Greek, has
given occasion, through a misapprehension of the true force of
tlic \von\ propria, to tliose paraplirastic renderings which we fnid
in our Knglish Bible, and in many other modern translations;

217

every one may receive in his body 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 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, according
as his behaviour in this life shall have been found to
have been generally good or bad, upon an exact ac-
count taken of his ffood and evil deeds.

What those external enjoyments will be which will
make a portion of our future bliss, — in what particu-
lars they will consist, we are not informed ; probably
for this reason, — because our faculties, in their pre-
sent imperfect and debased state, the sad consequence
of Adam's fall, are not capable of receiving the inform-
ation. 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

which entirely 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, — «^»a for ra lia., 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, to. ha. ra (juiA-aloq,
with precision and without ambiguity.

'218

hath prepared for them that love him." Niiniherless
and ravisliiii*^ are the beauties whieh tlie mortal eye
beholds in the various works of creation and of art!
Elejj^ant and of endless variety the entertainments
which are provided for the ear, — wliether it de]i<:;ht
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 abstruse de-
monstrations of science, the round periods of elo-
quence, the sprightly flourishes of rhetoric, the smooth
numbers and bold flights of poetry, or catch the en-
chanting sounds of hannony, — that poetry which
sings in its inspired strains the wonders of creating
power and redeeming love, — that hannony which
fims the pure flame of devotion, and wafts our praises
upon its swelling notes up to tlie eternal throne
of God I Infinite is the multitude of pleasurable
fonns which Fancy's own creation can at will call
forth : but in all this inexhaustible treasure of exter-
nal gratifications with which this present world is
j^tored, — amidst all the objects which move the senses
with pleasure, aiul fill the admiring soul with rapture
and delight, — nothing is to be found which may con-
vey to our present faculties so much as a remote con-
ception of those transporting scenes which the better
world in which they shall be placed shall hereafter
present to the children of (Jod's love.

It is farther revealed to us, that these future enjoy-
ments of the body will be widely different in kind
from the pleasures which in our ])resent state result
even from the most innocent aiul lawful gratifications
of the corporal appetites. *' In the resui rictiou they
neither mari^," saith our Lord, " nor are given in
marriage ; but are as the angels oi' (rod in heav«.ii."

219

But this is not all : another circumstance is re-
vealed to us, which opens to our hope so high a
prospect as must fill the pious soul no less with won-
der than with love. It is plainly intimated, that the
good things which the righteous will receive in their
bodies will be the same in kind, — far inferior, doubt-
less, 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 re-
ceiving 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 trans-
formed into the likeness 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 clay, 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, tho same apostle in
another place calls '' the redemption of the body ;"
and he speaks of it as '* the adoption" for 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. *' Be-
loved," 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 tlie former cha})ter, — we
know this, thoui^li we know notliini; else, that when
Christ sliall a])pear,)we shall be like hiui ; for we
shall see liini as he is." To this tleclaration the
apostle sul)j()ins the solemn admonition which I have
chosen for my text : " And every man that hatli this
hope in him," this hope of being transformed in his
body into the likeness 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 wlio seriously cherislies this glorious hope ♦* pu-
rifies liimself as Christ is pure." It is the purity,
therefore, of the human nature in Christ Jesus, not
the essential purity of tlie Divine nature, that is pro-
posed to us as an exami)le for our imitation. An
inattention to this distinction was the cause of nuich
folly in the speculations, and of much impurity 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
distance and separation of the Deity from all inferior
natures whicli is the sole prerogative of Self-existence
and Onmipotence. Suflicient in liimself to liis own
haj)j)iness and to the purposes of his own will, it is im-
possible that God can be moved by any desires to-
wards 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 anti(|uity, rightly
conceivhig this purity of the Divine nature, but not
attending tt) the infinite distance l)etween the First
Intellect and the intelligent principle in man, absurdly

221

imagined that this essential purity of God himself was
what they were required to imitate : then observing,
what plainly is the fact, that all the vices of men pro-
ceed from the impetuosity of those appetites which
have their origin in the imperfections and infirmities
of the animal nature, — but forgetting that the irre-
gularity 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 contaminated with vicious inclin-
ations, and weakened in its powers, by its connection
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 Di-
vine 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, regardless 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 im-
practicable, 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 j

25'2

that the rational soul was not in any degree sullied
or debased by the vicious a])j)etites of the de})raved
aiiiiual nature ; and under this, wjiether serious per-
suasion or hypocritical ])retence, they })rof'anely boasted
of an intimate connuunion of their souls with (iod,
wliile thev openly wallowed in tlie grossest impurities
of the Hesh. These errors and these enormities had
been prevented, had it been understood, that it is not
tlie purity of the Divine nature in itself, but the
purity of the human nature in Christ, which religion
proposes to man's imitation.

But again : the purity of the liuman nature in
Christ, which we are re(juired to imitate, is not that
purity which the manhood in Christ now enjoys in
its present state of exaltation ; for even tliat will not
be attainable to fallen man, till " the redemption of
the body" shall have taken ])lace : the ])urity which
is our present example is the purity of" Christ's life
on earth in his state of Innniliation ; in which " he
was tempted in all things like unto us, and yet was
without sin." In what that ])urity consisted, may be
best learnt in the detail by diligent study and medi-
tation 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 uu)st opposite to it, and are
tlie chief causes of defilement : " These," saith our
Lord, '* are the things which defile a man, — evil
thoughts, nun-ders, adulteries, fornications, thefts,
false witness, blas])hemies."

Of these general defilements, the most ditlicult to
be entirely escai)ed are the three of evil thoughts,
adulteries, and fornications. Few have hardened
their hearts to the cruelty of murder, or their fore-
lieads against the shame of theft or perjury ; few are

223

capable of the impiety of direct blasphemy : but to
the solicitations of what are called the softer passions
we are apt to yield with less repugnance ; 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
deterred from the crime by any atrocious malignity
or disgusting meanness that it carries in its very first
aspect. Hence these are the sins with which the
generality of mankind, in the gaiety of their thought-
less 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 wanderings of a corrupt ima-
gination, the principal seat of fallen man's depravity,
towards the enticing objects of illicit pleasures.

For this reason, the Holy Scriptures with particular
earnestness enjoin an abstinence from these defile-
ments. *' Flee from fleshly lusts," says St. Peter,
" which war against the soul." And to these pol-
lutions the admonition in the text seems to have a
particular regard ; for the original word which we
render '* pure " is most properly applied to the purity
of a virgin.

*' Purifies himself as He is pure." Would to God,
a better conformity to the example of his purity than
actually obtains were to be found in the lives of no-
minal 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, repentance, in this as in other
cases, — genuine, sincere repentance, — shall stand the
sinner in the stead of innocence : the penitent is al-

'2'24

lowed to wash the stains even of tliesc 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 <j!;reater or a less de^i^ree, few
have not contracted, — the individual's personal pu-
rification must, under God, depend principally upon
himself, — upon his care to watch over the motions
of his own heart, — upon his vigilance to jx^'ii'd
against temptations from without, — u})()n his medi-
tation of Christ's example, — upon his assiduity 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 progress 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
understood and very generally ado})ted in the policy
of all civilised nations ; in which the preservation of
female chastity, in all ages and in all parts of the
world, hath been an object of prime concern. Of
various means that have been used for its secunty,
none seem so well calculated to attain tlie end, nor
have any other proved so generally successful, 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 East-
ern manners ; but under this iiulis])ensable condition,
that the female, in whatever rank, who once abuses
her liberty to bring a stain upon her iharacter, shall

225

from that moment 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 conducive 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 infamy 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 affords not to the weaker
sex the protection which in justice and sound policy
is their due against the arts of the seducer. The
Jewish law set an example of a better policy and more
equal justice, when, in the case of adultery, it con-
demned both parties to an equal punishment ; which
indeed was nothing less than death.

A worse evil, a mischief, attending the severity,
the salutary severity upon the whole, of our dealing
with the lapsed female, is this, — that it j^roves 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 hospitable door ; she is cast a wanderer upon the
streets, without money, without a lodging, without

VOL. ir. Q,

22G

food : in this forlorn and hopeless situation, suicide
or prostitution is the alternative to which she is re-
duced. Tluis, the very possihility of repentance is
almost cut off; unless it he 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
victims of man's seduction, plead hard for mercy, if
mercy might be consistent with the safety of the
treasure we so sternly guard. We have high au-
thority to say, that these fallen women are not of all
sinners the most incai)able 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 : sin-
ners such as these, upon John the Baptist's first
preaching, found their way into the kingdom of hea-
ven before the Pharisees, with all their outward show
of sanctity 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 exten-
uations, have forfeited the protection of their near-
est friends ; but even for those, generally the most
unjiitied, but not always the nu)st undeserving of pity
among the daughters of Eve, whom desperation, the
effect of their first false step, hath driven to the low-
est walks of vulgar prostitution. In the retirement
of this])eaceful mansion, — withdrawn from the tempt-
ations of the world, — concealed from the eye of
public scorn, — protected iVom tlie insulting tongue

227

of obloquy, — provided with tlie necessaries of life,
though denied its luxuries, — furnished with religious
instruction, and with employment suited to their se-
veral 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 situ-
ation to recover their lost habits of virtuous in-
dustry, — the softness of their native manners, and
to make their peace with their offended God.

The best commendation of this charity is the suc-
cess with which its endeavours, by God's blessing,
have been crowned. Of three thousand women ad-
mitted 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 com-
forts 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 se-
ducers ! 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 laid up the cause of [ruined innocence :
he hath said, and he will make it good, " Vengeance
is mine, and I will repay."

Q 2

2-28

SERMON XLIV.

Romans, xiii. 1.
Let every soul he suhject unto the Ii/'g/ier powers. *

1 in: freedom of dispute, in wliich for several years
past it liatli been the folly in this country to in-
dulge, upon matters of such hiii^h importance as the
origin of government and the authority of sovereigns,

— the futility of the ])rinci])les whicli the assertors, as
they have been deemed, of tlie natural rights ol" 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 govern-
ment), — this forwardness to dispute about the limits
of the sovereign's power, and the extent of the ])eo-
ple's rights, with this evident desire to set civil autho-
rity u])on a foundation on which it cannot stand secure,

— argues, it should seem, that something is forgotten
auunig the writers who have ])resumed to treat these
curious (questions, and among those talkers who with

* Preached before tlie Lords Spiritual and Temporal, Ja-
nuary . SO. 17f>;J; being the Anniversary of the Martyrdom of
King C'liarlcs the Tirst.

2^29

little knowledge or reflection of their own think they
talk safely after so high authorities : — it surely is for-
gotten, that whatever praise may be due to the philo-
sophers of the heathen world, who, in order to settle,
not to confound, the principles of the human conduct,
set themselves to investigate the source of the obliga-
tions of morality and law, — whatever tenderness may
be due to the errors into which they would inevitably
fall in their speculations concerning the present condi-
tion of mankind, and the apparent constitution of the
moral world, — of which, destitute as they were of the
light of Revelation, they knew neither the beginning
nor the end, — the Christian is possessed of a written
rule of conduct delivered 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 cor-
respond 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 anti(piity alone, independent of their
Divine authority, might claim to be consulted in all
enquiries 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 existence of the whole or of any large portion of
mankind in that state which liath 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 magis-

Q 3

Q30

tratc under whatever denomination, upon any eompaet
or agreement l)etueen the individuals of a multitude
living previously in the state of nature, is in truth to
build a reality upon a fiction. That govennnent, in
various fonns, 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 govern-
ments which now are from a supposed pre\'ious con-
dition of mankind which never was, 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 peo-
pled with a multitude of individuals no otherwise re-
lated 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 appro-
priate each to himself of the earth's common store, —
without any governor, head, or guardian, — no govern-
ment could ever have been fonned by any compact
between the individuals of this multitude, but what
their children in the very next generation would have
had full right to abolish ; or any one or more of those
children, even in opj)osition to the sense of the majo-
rity, with perfect innocence, though not without im-

231

prudence, might have disobeyed : insomuch, that if
such compact be the true foundation of sovereign au-
thority, the foundation is weaker than these repub-
lican 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 un-
born 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 existence. The
obligations on the minority and on the child to stand
by the resolutions of the majority and the engagements
of the father, arise not from any thing in the nature
of man individually considered : they are rather in-
deed unnatural ; for all obligations, strictly speaking,
are unnatural, which bind a man to the terms of a cove-
nant 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 pub-
lic 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 government, is the condition to which

Q 4-

232

God originally destined man: whence, the obliga-
tion on the citizen to submit to government is an
immediate result from that first principle of religious
duty which requires tliat man confonn 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-goveniment, falsely called the
state of nature ; but from that original government
under which tlie first generations of men were brought
into existence, variously changed and modified, in a
long course of ages, under the wise direction of God's
over-ruling providence, to suit the various climates of
the world and the infinitely varied manners and con-
ditions of its inhabitants. And the principle of sub-
jection is not that principle of common honesty which
binds a man to his own engagements, much less that
principle of political honesty which binds the child to
the ancestor's engagements ; but a conscientious sub-
mission to the will of God.

I must observe, that the priciples which I advance
ascribe no greater sanctity to monarchy * than to any
other form of established government ; nor do they at
all involve that exploded notion, that all or any of the
present sovereigns of the earth hold their sovereignty
by virtue of such innnediate or implied nomination on
the part of God, of themselves personally, or of the
stocks from which they are descended, as might con-

* It is true, tliat for many generations after the creation, tlie
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, was so much sui orncris, so dif-
ferent from any of the monarchical forms which have since
taken place, that none of these can build any right of preference
ii))on those cxamj)lc.s.

233

fer an endless indefeasible right upon the posterity of
the persons named. In contending that government
was coeval with mankind, it will readily be admitted,
that all the particular forms of government which now
exist are the work of human policy, under the con-
trol of God's general over-ruling providence j 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 contended, 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. Not only in elective monarchies, upon the
natural demise of the reigning prince, is the successor
raised to the throne by the suffrage of the people ;
but in governments of whatever denomination, if the
form of government undergo a change, or the esta-
blished rule of succession be set aside by any violent
or necessary revolution, the act of 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 resemblance
or analogy to that anarchy which hath been called

the state of nature : the people !)eeoiue 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-})reservation inherent in the body
politic no less than in the solitary animal, a society so
situated hath a riii;ht to use the best means for its
own preservation and perjietuity. A people, therefore,
in these circumstances hath a right, which a mere
nudtitude unassociated could never have, of appoint-
ing, by the consent of the majority, for themselves and
their ])osterity, 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 uj)on
the private citizen to submit himself to the authority
thus raised arises wholly from the act of the ])eople
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 secondarily only
from the act of man, but primarily from the will of
(jodt; who hath appointed civil life for man's con-
dition, and requires the citizen's submission to the

* *' Quasi vcro Deus non ita rcf^^at populuni, ut cui Deus vult,
rcgnum tradat populus." — Milt mi, Dcfiiisio pro Pop. Aiigl.

f " Uatio cur dcbeamus subject! esse magistratibus, quod
Dei ordiiiatioiie sunt constituti : (juod si ita placet Donu'no
inunduin gubernare, Dei ordinem iuvertere nititur, adeocjue
Deo ipsi resistil, quisquis potestatein aspernatur ; quaiulo ejus,
qui juris politici auctor est, Providentiani eoiiteiunere, bellum
cum CO bUbciperc Cbl."— Calvin, in Hum, xiii. 1.

Q35

sovereign whom his providence shall by whatever
means set over him.

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 confessedly 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 something universally known, and easy to be
understood. The ground of the sovereign's public
title, in governments in which the fabric of the con-
stitution is in any degree complex and artificial, can
be known only to the few who have leisure and ability
and inclination for historical and political researches.
In this country, how many thousands and ten thou-
sands 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
acquire 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 history of their country ?
where shall we find it, but among those general rules

'286

of" duty which ])rocccd iinnicdiatcly from tlic will of
the Creator, and have been impressed u])on the con-
science of every man hy the original constitution of
tlu' worhl ?

Tliis divine ri<;lit of the first magistrate in every
polity to the citizen's obedience is not of tluit sort
which it were hij2;li treason to chiim for tlie soverei«]^s
of tliis country : it is quite a distinct tlnn«^ from the
pretended divine riglit to the inheritance of tlie crown:
it is a right which the most zeah)us rei)ublicans ac-
knowledged to be divine, in former times, before re-
pul)lican zeal had ventured to espouse the interests of
atheism * : it is a right which in no country can be
denied, without the highest of all treasons ; — the
denial of it were treason against the paramount au-
thority of ifod.

These views of the authority of civil governors, as
thev are obviously suggested by the Mosaic liistory of
the first ages, so they are confirmed by the precepts

* " All kings but such as arc immediately named by God
himself have their power by human right only ; though,
after human composition and agreement, their lawful choice
is approved of (lod, and obedience required to them by
divine right." These are the words in which Bishop Iloadly
states Hookers sentiments. Hooker's own words arc stronger
and more extensive. But the sentiment, to the extent in
which it is conveyed in these terms, the republican Bishop
approved. — Srr Ilondli/s Defence of Hooker.

" Quod Dii nuncujiantur, (juicunquc magistratum gcrunt,
jie in ea appellatione leve inessc momentum cjuis putet : ca
cniiu signilicatur, mandatum a Deo habere, Divina auctori-
tate prxdilos esse, ac onuiino Dei personam sustinere, cujus
vices quodanunodo aguiit." — Calvin. Inst, lib, iv. cap. 'JO.

sect. 4-.

" Hesisti magistratui noii putt-^i. ipiin simul Deo rosista-
tur." — Calvin. Inst. lib. iv. cap. '20. sect. '23.

237

of the Gospel : in which, if any thing is to be found
clear, peremptory, and unequivocal, it is the injunc-
tion 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 subject to the higher powers."

The word " powers" here signifies persons bearing
power : any other meaning of it, whatever may be
pretended, is excluded by the context. * The text,

* 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 expe-
dient, than to say that the word " powers," e^aa-iat, 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 administered to their mind (for they never make
allowance for the inevitable imperfection and infirmity of all
thino-s 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 s^sa-icct, the
epithet which is joined to it in the text shows that it must
be understood here of something which admits the degree
of hio-h and low. But of this, forms of government are in-
capable : 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 [e^a-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

538

indeed, liad l)een better rendered — " Let every soul
be subject to the sovereign powers." The word
" sovereign " renders the exact meaning of tliat
Greek word for wliich the English Bible in tliis jilace
ratlier unliappily puts the comparative " liiglier :" in
anotlier 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
innnediate 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 immediately subjoins to enforce his precept, seems
to obviate an olijectlon which he was well aware the
example of Nero's tyranny might suggest. His rea-
soning 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 haiuls of sensual
rapacious men, of capricious women, and of ill-con-
ditioned 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

In the twelfth chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, the first
preachers are warned that tlicy are to be brought before
synagogues, and magistrates, and powers (tfeo-ia,-). 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 proHmc, of the use of the word t^aa-ia to signify form
of government ; nor is that serise to be extracted by any cri-
tical chemistry from the etymology and radical meam'ng of
the word.

239

would never be so misplaced, nor be permitted to be
so misused ; and you may, perhaps, be ready to con-
clude, that the father 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 king, however he might
use or abuse authority, ever reigned but by the ap-
pointment 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 good ends of his
own, not always to be foreseen by us, to be effected by
the abuse of power, 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 judg-
ments. The opposition of the individual to the

* Hoc nobis si assidue ob animos et oculos obversetur,
eodum decreto constitui etiatn nequissimos reges, quo regum
authoritas statuitur ; nunquam in animum nobis seditiosae illae
cogitationes venient, " tractandum esse pro mentis regem, nee
aequum esse ut subditos ei nos praestemus, qui vicissim regem
nobis se non praestat." — Calvin. Inst. iv. 20. sect. 27.

" Si in Dei verbum respicimus longius nos deducet, ut non
eorum modo principum imperio subditi simus, qui probe, et
qua debent fide, munere suo erga nos defunguntur, sed om-
nium, qui quoquo modo rerum potiuntur, etiamsi nihil minus
prsestent, quam quod ex officio erat principum."

" In eo probando insistamus magis, quod non ita facile in
hominum mentes cadit, in homine deterrimo, honoreque omni
indignissimo, penes quern modo sit publica potestas, praeclaram
illam et Divinam potestatem residere, quam Dorainus justitiae
ac judicii sui ministris, verbo suo, detulit : proinde a subditis
eadem in reverentia et dignitate habendum, quantum ad pub-
iicam obedientiam attinet, qua optimum regem, si deretur,
habituri essent." — Calvin. Inst. iv. 20. 25.

240

sovereign power is an opposition to God's providential
arran<^enicnts ; and it is tlie more inexciisal)Ie, be-
cause tlie nell-being of mankind is the j^eneral end
for which government is obtained ; and this end of
government, nndtr all its abuses, is generally answered
by it : for the good of govermnc-nt is ])i'r|)ctiial and
universal ; the mischiefs resulting from the abuse of
power, temporary and partial : insomucli, that in go-
vernments ^vhich are the worst administered the
sovereign ])o\vcr, 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 se-
cured upon any other terms than the submission of
the individual to what may be called its extraordinary
evils."

Such is the general scope and tenour of tlie argu-
ment by wliidi St. Paul enforces the duty of the pri-
vate citizen's subjection to the sovereign authority.
He never once mentions that god of the republican's
idolatiy — the consent of the ungoverned millions of
mankind t : he represents the earthly sovereign as
the vicegerent of God, accountable for misconduct to

* *' Nulla tyrannis esse potest, quic non aliqua ex parte
subsidio sit ad tuendain hoininuui societateni." — Calvin, in
Horn. xiii. 1.

■)• The first mention tliat 1 rcnieniber to liave found any where
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 w hich he
thought himself subject — of implicit obedience even to an un-
just sentence. It is remarkable, that this fictitious compact,
which in modern times hath been made the basis ofthe unqua-
lified doctrine of resistance, should have been set up by Plato
in the person of Socrates as the foundatittn of the opposite doc-
trine ofthe passive obedience of the imlividuil.

241

his heavenly Master, but entitled to obedience from
the subject. *

AVhile thus we reprobate the doctrine of the first
formation of government out of anarchy by a general
consent, we confess, — with thankfulness to the over-
ruling providence of God we confess, and we maintain,
that in this country the king is under the obligation
of an express contract with the people. I say, of an
express 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
cust(mi or to a fixed rule of law, something of a com-
pact 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 ex-
pressed 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 exercise of their sove-
reignty are held to the terms of this express 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

* " Neque enim si ultio Domini est effroenatae doininationis
correctio, ideo protinus demandatam nobis arbitremur, quibus
nullum aliud quam parendi et patiendi datum est mandatum."
— Calvin. lust. iv. 20. 31. " De privatis hominibus semper
loquor." — Ibid.

VOL. II. R

242

are the servants of the people ; and that it is the rif^ht
of the people to cashier them for misconduct." Our
ancestors are slandered, — their wisdom is insulted, —
their virtue is defamed, when these seditious maxims
are set forth as the principles on w^hich the great busi-
ness of the Revolution was conducted, or as the ground-
work on which that noblest production of human
reason, the wonderful fabric of the British consti-
tution, stands.

Our constitution hath indeed effectually secured the
monarch's performance of his engagements, — not by
that clumsy contrivance of republican wit, the esta-
blishment 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 nndtitude, —
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 prin-
ciples 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
authority 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 nobles and the representatives of the
commons are severally armed with a power of consti-
tutional resistance, to oppose to prerogative over-
stepping its just bounds, by the exercise 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

21<3

elective franchise and of the riglit of petition for the
redress of grievances : by tlie second, those wlio might
be willing to be the instruments of despotism are de-
terred by the dangers which await the service. Hav-
ing thus excluded all probability of the event of a
systematic abuse of royal power, or a dangerous
exorbitance of prerogative, our constitution 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 the subject's liberty with the most absolute
inviolability of the sacred person of the sovereign.

Such is the British constitution, — its basis, reli-
gion ; its end, liberty ; its principal means and safe-
guard 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 im-
puting to the people of this land the atrocious deed of
a desperate faction, — it was a signal instance of Ciod'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. Iii
the madness and confusion which followed the shed-
ding 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 in-
fernal maxims, that kings are the servants of the
people, punishable by their masters. The same lesson
is confirmed by the horrible example which the pre-

K 2

sent hour exhibits, in the unparalleled misery of a
neighi)ouring nation, once j^reat in learning, arts, and
arms; now torn by contending factions, — her govern-
ment demolished, — her altars overthrown, — her
firstborn despoiled of their birthright, — her nobles
degraded, — her best citizens exiled, — her riches
sacred and profane given up to the jiillage of sacrilege
and rapine, — atheists directing her councils, — des-
peradoes conducting her armies, — wars of unjust and
chimerical ambition consuming her youth, — her gra-
naries 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 pui'])Oses, — a monarch deliberately
nuu'dered, — a monarch, whose only crime it was that
he inherited a sceptre the thirty-second of his illus-
trious stock, butchered on a public scaffold, after the
mockery of arraignment, trial, sentence, — butchered
■without the merciful formalities of the vilest male-
factor's execution, — tlie sad privilege of a last fare-
well to the surrounding populace refused, — not the
pause of a moment allowed for devotion, — honourable
interment denied to the corpse, — the royal widow's
anguish embittered bv the rigour of a close iui])rison-
ment ; with hope, indeed, at no great distance, of re-
lease, of such release as hath been given to lier lord !

This foul nnirder, and thesi' liarbarities, have filled
the uu'asure oftlie guilt and infamy of I'rance. O my
country! read the horror of thy own deed in this
recent heightened imitation! lanuiit and ui-ej) tl)at

245

this black French treason should have found its ex-
ample in the crime of thy unnatural sons ! Our con-
trition for our guilt that stained our land, — our
gratitude to God, whose mercy so soon restored 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 dutifuh 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 administers justice with an even,
firm, and gentle hand, — a king who in many public
acts hath testified his affection 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 remem-
ber, 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 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 indis-
criminate application. We ought to mark those who
cause divisions and offences. Nice scruples about ex-
ternal forms, and differences of opinion upon contro-
vertible points, cannot but take place among the best
Christians, and dissolve not the fraternal tie : none,

R 3 ■

246

indeed, at this season, are more entitled to our offices
of love, than those with whom the difference is wide,
in points of doctrine, discipline, and external rights, —
those venerable exiles, the prelates and clergy of the
fallen church of France, endeared to us by the edify-
in<^ exam])li' they exhibit of ])aticnt sufferiuf^ for con-
science 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 England, 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 I •' they are in the
gall of bitterness and in the ])()nd of ini(juity : " it is
our duty to pray God, if perhaps the thought of their
heart may be forgiven them.

2'i7

APPENDIX

TO

THE PRECEDING SERMON.

It is much less from any high opinion of the importance
of Calvin's authority to confirm the assertions of the fore-
going discourse, that reference has been so frequently made
in the notes at the bottom of the page to his " Theological
Institutions," than from a desire of vindicating the cha-
racter of Calvin himself from an imputation which they
who think it ill-founded will be concerned to find revived
in a late work of great erudition, and for the ability of the
execution, as well as for the intention, of great merit, —
the " Jura Anglorum " of die learned Mr. Francis Plow-
den. In a matter in which the sense of the Holy Scrip-
tures is so plain as it certainly is upon the questions
which are treated in the foregoing discourse, the preacher
esteems the additional weight of any human authority of
little moment: but he cannot allow himself not to take
advantage of an occasion spontaneously as it were arising
from his subject, of rescuing the memory of a man, to
whom the praise of conspicuous talents and extensive
learning must be allowed by all, from unjust aspersions ;

the injustice of which lies not properly, however, at the

door of die learned author of the " Jura."

Calvin was unquestionably in theory a republican : he
freely declares his opinion, that the republican form, or
an aristocracy reduced nearly to the level of a republic,

II 1

248

was. of all the best calculatecl 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 republican
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 dis-
course; and will be still more evident to anv who will take
the trouble to peruse the whole of the last chapter of the
last book of his " Institutions of the Christian Reliiiion."
In that chapter, he professedly treats the question of the
consistency of civil government with the scheme of Chris-
tianity ; 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 I : 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 0 : 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 oidinanceH; that the
variety of governments in the diflerent 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 cli-
mates**: and with respect to monarchy in particular, (by
which, it is to be observed, he means absolute monarchv,)
he remarks, that submission to monarchical governments
is particularly enjoined in holy wiit ; for this especial rea-
son,— that monarchy was the foiin which in the early ages

* Institiit. lib.iv. cap. xx. sect. 1,2, 3. + Soet.S.

t Sect. 8. II 76. § U. ^Sctt. i. **Sect. 8.

249

was the most disliked.* Whatever preference, therefore, in
speculation, he might give to the republican form, he could
not, with these principles, be practically an enemy to the
government of kings. This last chapter of his " Institu-
tions," in which he expressly 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 re-
ference to this, any passages in other parts of his writings,
in which subordinate questions are incidentally touched,
ought in candour 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 im-
posed 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 these shall arise another kingdom, inferior to thee,"
this difficulty presents itself: with what truth could the pro-
phet 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 Cyrus.
Calvin's solution of the difficulty is this, — whether it be
the true one or no, is not the question ; but it is this, —
that the Medo-Persian empire was in this respect inferior
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 (/. e. em-
pires, under whatever form of government) extend them-
selves to distant regions, the more licentiousness rages in

* Sect.7.

^^50

the world. * That the word " nionarcliiae " he renders
" empires," without regard to any particular form of go-
vernment, is most manifest, from the use of it in the
connnent on the very next verse ; where, after the example
of his insj)ired author, the expositor applies it to the Roman
empire under its popular government. From this general
observation upon the baleful influence of overgrown em-
pires uj)on 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 impaired where a single
person occupies so wide a space." f It is evident that this
passage expresses no general disapprobation 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 arbitrary dominion founded
upon concjuest. In truth, irresistible military force is the
specific thing intended under the epithet " potentissimos ;"
as ajipears by the reference to the projihet Isaiah ; for that
is the })ower represented by Isaiah under the image of a
flood, when he would expose 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 pleni-
tude, yet it is not said, nor is it insinuated, that the govern-

* " Quo sese longius extendunt nionarchiie, co ctiam plus
liccntia: in niuiulo grassatur."

•f " I'lule apparel, quanta sit onniiuni fcrc stuhitia ct vcsania,
qui cupiunt habere reges potentissimos; pcrinde ac siquis
appeterct fluvium rapidissimuni, (jueniadnioduni Icsaias loqui-
tur, coarguens lianc stultitiam." " Prorsus igitur dclirant, <|ui
aj)pctunt sunimas nionarcliias ; (juia fieri non potest, quin tan-
tundeni dcccdat ex kgitinio ordiiic, ubi unus occupat tani latum
ppatium.'

251

ment of a conqueror is not to be quietly submitted to, when
once his 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 epi-
thets " potentissimos" and " summas " is neglected, and
their specific application in these sentences, taken in con-
nection with the entire discourse, overlooked, that the pas-
sage 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 diou know that the Most High
ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever
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." " Mo-
narchs," says he, " hold forth in their tides, that they are
kings, 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
reign. 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 doctrine that princes reign by the grace of
God ; of which he was indeed a strenuous assertor : he
condemns not the use of such titles, but the abuse of them :

* " Iterum docet hie locus, quam difficile sit nobis Deo tri-

buere summam potentiam. Praesertim ubi Deus nos extulit

in aliquem dignitatis gradum, obliviscimur nos esse homines. —
Hodie monarchiae semper in suis titulis hoc obtendunt, se esse
reges, et duces, et comites, Dei gratia : sed quam multi falso
nomen Dei practextunt in hunc finem, ut sibi asserant summum

imperium. Interea Ubenter Deum, cujus clypeo se prote-

gunt, calcarent pedibus ; tantum abest ut serio reputent se
habere ejus beneficio ut regnent. Merus igitur fucus est, quod
jactant se Dei gratia pollere dominatione."

25*2

be says the title is abused when it is made the pretence
and instrument of tyranny : he says, that the prince wlio in
the exercise of liis powt-r profanely forgets the God whom
he confesses in his title is a hypocrite : he says, tiiese
solemn titles have in fact heen so abused, and that jirinces
have been guilty of this hypocrisy. Would God that
history refuted him in these assertions !

Chajner vi. 25. 27. — Upon the etlict of Darius enjoin-
in"- the worship of the God of Danit-l, Calvin remarks to
this effect: "Darius, by his example, will condemn all
those who at this day profess themselves either cadiolic 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 won-
dered, that this exaggerated and indecent language of invec-
tive should be offensive to the learned author of the " Jura
Anglorum : " it is to be hoped, that in the present age it is
offensive to every one, of whatever communion he may be,
who reads the passage. It is not indeed to be borne, that
the forms of worship of any Christian church, however
grievous its corruptions, should be uncharitably stigmatized
in the gross wiUi the odious name of im})ious superstitions;
nor is it true of die princes who persecuted the reformed
churches, cruel as the persecutions were, that their object
was to ovcrtiu'n the whole worshij) of God, and blot his
name out of the world : that project was reserved for the
accursed crew of French philosophers, turned politicians,
at the close of the eighteenth century. liut it is to
be remembered, that Calvin lived in an age when neither

*" Darius exemplo suo, claiHnaI)it oiunes cos, qui hodie se

j)rt)fitenlur vel catholicos reges, vol Clu'istianos, vc! protectores
fiilei ; et interea non iiiodo obruunt veruiu pietatcni, scd ctiaiu,
quantum in se est, labefactant totum Dei cullum, et lihentcr
noiiieii ejus extinguereiit e luuiulo ; exercent sjcvam tyranniilcm
advcrsuh uiiuies pios, stubiliuiit sua sievitiu impias Mq)erstitioiics."

Q53

the Christianity nor the good policy of religious toler-
ation was understood ; and he himself 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 pj'iuces 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 un-
worthy 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 throne, as if
they were able to drag him down from heaven." f This
passage, taken by itself, may seem, it must be confessed,
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 magistriite;" and that " a king not
having the Spirit of God forfeits his dominion." Accord-
ingly, it is produced as affirming the same or equivalent
propositions. But if it be considered not by itself, but in
its connection 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

* " Discamus igitur, exemplo prophetae, bene precari pro
inimicis nostris, qui cupiunt nos perditos; maxime vero precari
pro tyrannis, si Deo placeat nos subjici eorum libidini : Quia,
etsi indigni sint ullo humanitatis officio, quia tamen non praesunt
nisi Deo ita volente, modeste feramus jugum ; neque id tantum
propter iram, ut Paulus admonet, sed propter conscientiam .
alioqui, non tantum illis, sed etiam Deo ipsi, sumus rebelles."

+ " Abdicant enim se potestate terreni principes, dum insur-
gunt contra Deum ; imo, indigni sunt qui censeantur in homi-
num numero. Potius ergo conspuere oportet in ipsorum capita,
quam illis parere, ubi ita proterviunt, ut velint etiam spoliare
Deum jure suo, ac si possent eum e ccelo detrahere."

254.

his God, during tlie 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 pursuance 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 deliver-
ance : " My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions'
mouths that they have not hurt me ; forasmuch as before
him innocence 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 de-
liverance; 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 jus-
tice that the prophet thus asserted 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 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 connection, 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 govern-
ment of God that he neglected what the king commanded
in opposition to it. For earthly }irinces abdicate their own
authority," &c. * It is evident, that the subject matter re-

* " Scimus constitui tcrrona impcria a Deo, sccl liac lege, ut

ipse sibi nihil derogct et quicquid est prncstantiae in mundo,

ejus gloriac sit subjcctum. ' Dcuni timctc, rcgcm honoratc :'

255

strains this implied abdication of authority to autliority
exercised in those individual commands which expressly
contravene some express command of God ; and it is in the
individual instances of such commands that Calvin asserts
that the guilt and danger of contempt accompanying the
just refusal 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 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 forfeiture 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 prin-
ciple upon which the faithful are bound to act when the
dreadful necessity arises. Calvin could never support the
abominable doctrine that the ordinary misconduct of a
king sets the subject free, without contradicting the principles
he lays down, in the last chapter of his " Theological In-
stitutions," of the duty of submission, even to the worst of
kings, in things not contrary to the express commands of
God.

It is not to be apprehended that the learned and candid
author of " Jura Anglorum " will be displeased that the
memory of a great man should be vindicated from an un-
founded accusation ; which has been revived, not originally
set up, by him upon the authority of Helin, and other
writers, on whom he thought he might rely. No injustice

Sunt haec duo inter se connexa, nee potest alteram ab altero
divelli : Praecedat igitur oportet timor Dei, ut reges obtineant

suamauctoritatem. Jure ergo Daniel hie se defendit, 'Quod

nullam pravitatem commiserit adversus regem/ quia scilicet,
coactus parere Dei imperio, neglexerit quod in contrariam
partem rex raandabat. Abdicant enira," &c.

256

of intention, — nothing worse than a very pardonable mis-
take,— is imputed to this respectable author. The Chris-
tian spirit of charity and tolerance which breathes through
this work, and aj^pears in tiie sentiments which the author
avowed in a former publication, entitled " The Case .Stat-
ed," * acquits him of the most distant suspicion of a design
to advance the credit of iiis own church by wilfully depreci-
atiu'T the character of an illustrious adversary. In the cita-
tion of passages in proof of the charge, it is justice to him
to acknowledge, that he hath only copied vcrhativi as it
should seem from an anonymous work, entitled " Philanax
Anglicus." He will certainly esteem it no disservice done
to that great cause in wliich his learning and his talents
have been so honourably engaged, — the cause of govern-
ment and liberty united, if 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 Reformation. When Salmasius upbraided Crom-
well'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 celebrated theologians of the orthodox, must be
included in the same reproach, f A grosser falsehood, as
far as Luther, Calvin, and many others are concerned, never
It'll from the un})rinciplcd jien of a party-writer. However
sedition might be a part of the puritanic creed, the general
faith of the Reformcis rejects the infamous alliance.

It is alleged indeed against Calvin, by grave and respect-
able historians, that he expressed a|)juobatic)n of the out-
rages of John Knox in Scotland. II' the charge be true,

* See " The Case Stated," page 42— -iH.; but particularly
page 47, 1-8.

f '* Ita Luthcrus, Culvinus, Zwinglius, Bucerus, ct orthodox-
orum quotquot celebcrrimi thcologi, fuerc, tuo judicio, Bru.
nistae sunt." — Defcns. pro Pop. Aug. cap. v. siibfni.

257

his conduct in this instance was contrary to his avowed prin-
ciples. But the accusation requires better yiroof than
Knox's own interpretation of some general expressions in
Calvin's letters. It cannot, however, be denied, that he too
often indulijes in a strain of coarse invectives ajjainst 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 contempo-
raries, with indecent ill language. Some allowance is to be
made for the natural harshness of the man's temper; more,
for his keen sense of the cruel treatment of Protestants in
many kingdoms ; but the best apology for him is, that he
lived before a perfect specimen of a just limited monarchy
had been anywhere exhibited, — before the example of the
British constitution in its finished slate, and of the princes of
the Brunswick line, had taught the world this comfortable
lesson, — that monarchy and civil liberty are things com-
patible, and may be brought to afford each other the most
effectual support.

VOL. IT.

JNriJYE SERMOJYS,

ON THE

NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE

BY WHICH

-THE FACT OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION

IS ESTABLISHED ;

ANn

ON VARIOUS OTHER SUBJECTS.

TO WHICH IS PREFIXED,

A DISSERTATION

ON THE PROPHECIES OF THE MESSIAH DISPERSED
AMONG THE HEATHEN.

S 2

ADVERTISEMENT.

The Dissertation which stands first in the following
pages was evidently written in connection with the
three Discourses on the Faith of the Samaritans, and
appears by the form of compilation to have been, like
them, originally delivered from the pulpit.

It came into the Editor's hands in loose and un-
connected sheets, and these were not arranged and
examined by him till long after the publication of the
two first volumes of Sermons. After he had ex-
amined them, he found them to contain an unfinished
Essay, which evidently had never been prepared by
the Author for the press. He therefore laid it aside.
But having shown it, during his stay in London, in
the month of May last, to some literary friends, he
was strongly advised to publish it ; for though con-
fessedly an incomplete work, yet it was deemed worthy
of publication, as displaying the Bishop*s thoughts on
an important subject.

In this opinion he anxiously hopes the literary
world in general may be disposed to agree. But if
not, let it be remembered, that the blame of publica-
tion (if there be any) rests with the Editor, not the
Author ; for it is again repeated, that the Manu-
script was not left in that state in which the latter,
had he been living, would have published it : indeed

s 3

26!^

a note found in one of the pages of tlie Manuscript
expressly states, that it was the Author's intention to
have revised it.

To the Dissertation the Editor has added nine
liitlierto unpublislied Sermons, collected and arrani2:ed
from scattered and nuitilated Manuscripts; but which,
in his opinion, now that they are arranged, display
the same vigour of thought, and tlie same masterly
powers of expounding Scripture, as characterise his
Father's other Theological M'orks.

^63

A

DISSERTATION

THE PROPHECIES OF THE MESSIAH DISPERSED
AMONG THE HEATHEN.

I^HE expectation of an extraordinary person who
should arise in Jiidea, and be the instrument of great
improvements in the manners and condition of man-
kind, was ahnost 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 flict is so notorious to all who have any know-
ledge 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 dis-
pute with such an adversary, as too ignorant to re-
ceive conviction, or too disingenuous to acknowledge
what he must secretly admit.

If we enquire what were the general grounds of
the expectation which so generally prevailed, the
answer to the question is exceedingly obvious : that
the ground of this expectation was probably some
traditional obscure remembrance of the original pro-
mises. But the great point is, to discover by what
means this remembrance was perpetuated in the
latter and darker ages of idolatry, when the name of
Jehovah was forgotten, and his worship neglected,
except in one nation, in which the knowledge and

s 4

•2G4

worsliip of tlie invisible Creator was miraculously
preserved.

Now, my conjecture is, that this was effected by a
collection of very etn'ly prophecies, wliicli weie com-
mitted to writin«^ in a very early age, and were ac-
tually existing in many parts of the world, though
little known till the extirpation of paganism, by the
propagation of the Gospel. I am well a^vare how
extravagant such an opinion may appear in this in-
credulous age. But I stand not in the judgment of
infidels ; I speak to a Christian audience. They will
judge of the probability of my assertion, when I have
stated the grounds on which I build it.

For the more perspicuous arrangement of my ar-
gument, I shall divide it into two parts : —

First, I shall prove the fact from historical evidence,
that the Gentile world in the darkest ages was in
])osscssion, not of vague and traditional, but of ex-
plicit written prophecies of Christ. M hen I have
established the fact, and by that means shown the
immediate cause of the expectation which so gene-
rally prevailed, I shall then produce the more renu)te
and higher cause, and prove that these written pro-
phecies v>ere the remains of Divine oracles of the
earliest ages.

Jursf, For the fact that the (Jentile world in the
darkest ages was possessed of ex])licit written pro-
phecies of Christ, 1 shall lonnd the ])ro()f ofit on the
contents of a very extraordinary book, v>hich was
])reserved at Rome under the name of the oracles of
the Cuuiiean Sibyl, which was held in such veneration
that it was deposited in a stone chest in the temple
of .Inpiter in the Capitol, and connnitted to the care
of two ])ersons expressly a])])()inted to that ollice. Vov
the contents of this book 1 shall make no a])peal (o

265

the quotations of the ancient fathers. I am well
persuaded that many of them were deceived *, and
that the verses which they produce as prophecies of
Christ found in the Sibylline books, and which con-
tain rather a minute detail of the miraculous circum-
stances of our Saviour's life than general predictions
of his advent and his office, were scandalous forgeries.
And God forbid that I should endeavour to restore
the credit of an imposture that hath been long since
exploded. At the same time I must observe, that
though this censure be just as applied to the later
fathers, yet the testimony of the earlier, of Justin
Martyr in particular, and of Clemens Alexandrinus,
seems deserving of more credit : not so much for the
great learning and piety of those venerable writers,
for with all this they were very capable of giving too
easy credit to what might seem to serve their cause ;
but because they lived before the age of pious frauds,
as they were called, commenced, and while the Si-
bylline books were extant ; so that they might easily
have been confuted by the heathens, had they alleged
as quotations from those books, forged predictions,
which appeared not in the authentic copies. Of their
evidence, however, I shall not avail myself; for I
would build my assertion on none but the most solid
ground. I shall therefore take my idea of the con-
tents of these books entirely from the testimony of
heathen writers. At least I shall make no use of
any assertion even of the earliest fathers ; much less

* It is remarkable, however, that Celsus charged the Chris-
tians of his time with interpolating the Sibylline books. Origen
challenges him to support the accusation by specific instances
of the fraud, and insinuates that the most ancient copies of those
books had the passages which Celsus esteemed insertions of the
Christians. Contra Celsl m, pp. 368, S69. E.

266

shall I credit any of the quotations of the latter, ex^
cept so far as I find them supported by the most
unquestionable heathen evidence.

Among heathen writers, I believe, it would be in
vain to seek for any f/uofafiofis of particular passages
from the Sibylline oracles. They never made any.
For, to produce the words of the Sibylline text
would have been a dangerous violation of a law, by
which the publication of any part of these writings
was made a capital offence. We have, however, such
representations of the general argument of the book,
and of the general purport of particular prophecies,
as afford a strong presumption in favour of the opinion
we have advanced, that it was composed of adulterated
fragments of the patriarchal prophecies and records,
and that put it out of doubt, that of much of the
prophetic part the Messiah was the specific subject.

From the jreneral arsrument of the book as it is
represented by heathen writers, it is very evident that
it could be no forgery of heathen priestcraft ; for this
reason, that it was exceedingly unfavourable to that
system of idolatrous superstition, which it was the
great concern and interest of the heathen priesthood
to propagate and support ; and this was probably the
true reason that the Roman senate committed the
book to the custody of two of the Augural College,
and kept it from the inspection of the vulgar by the
severest laws. Now this extraordinary fact, that it
was little for the interests of idolatry that the con-
tents of the Cuma?an oracles should be divulged, we
learn from a dispute which was keenly agitated at
Rome, between the friends of Julius Cavsar and the
leader of the republican ])arty ; in the course of which
a member of the Augural College in the heat of ar-
iruuKut let the secret out.

267

Julius Caesar, you know, attained the height of his
power within a few years before our Saviour's birth :
little was wanting to his greatness but the title of a
king, of which he was aml)itious. The difficulty was
to bring the Senate to confer it ; for without their
sanction it was unsafe to assume it. One of his ad-
herents thought of an expedient not unlikely to suc-
ceed. He produced a prophecy from the Cumaean
Sibyl of a king who was to arise at this time, whose
monarchy was to be universal, and whose government
would be necessary and essential to the happiness of
the world. The artful statesman knew, that if he
could once create a general persuasion upon the credit
of this prophecy, that universal monarchy was to be
established, and that the state of the world required
it, the difficulty would not be great to prove, that
C^sar was the person of his times best qualified to
wield the sceptre.

The republican party took the alarm. Tully was
at that time its chief support ; and his great abilities
were called forth to oppose this stratagem of the dic-
tator's faction. In his opposition to it he brhigs no
charo-e of falsification against those who alleged this
prophecy. He denies not that a prophecy to this
effect was actually contained in the Sibylline books,
to which as a member of the Augural College he had
free access ; and when he allowed the existence of
the prophecy, he was a better politician than to make
the application of it to Caesar the point of controversy,
and to risk the success of his opposition to the schemes
of Ceesar's party upon the precarious success of that
particular question. Confessing the prophecy, he
knew it was impolitic to attempt to apply it to any
but a Roman, and applying it to a Roman it had
been difficult to draw it away from Caesar. He

268

tlicrcfore takes another ground. Having granted
that tlic propliecy was fairly alleged hy the opposite
party from the Sihylline hooks, lie attempts to over-
throw the credit of the propliecy hy a general attack
on the credit of the hooks in which it was found.
He affirms that these Sihylline oracles were no pro-
phecies. His argument is, that in the writings of
the Sihyl no marks are to be found of frenzy or
disorder, which the heathens conceived to be the
necessary state of every prophet's mind while he pro-
phesied, because the prophets of their oracular tem-
ples affected it. But these books, he says, carried
such evident marks of art and study, particularly in
the regular structure of the verse, as proved that it
was the work of a writer who had the natural use and
possession of his faculties. This statement of Tully's
may be correct, but his conclusion is erroneous, at
least it must a])])ear so to us who take our notions of
prophetic style from the specimens which the IJible
furnishes ; for the true prophets were never impeded
or disturbed in the natural use and possession of their
faculties by the Divine impulse. Their faculties were
not disturbed, Init exalted and invigorated ; and in
the most animated of the sacred ])ro])hecies we find,
beside what might be the natural character of the
pro])hetic style, force, elevation, and sudden transi-
tion ; we find, beside, an exquisite art of composition,
and a wonderful regularity of versification. However,
tlie Uoniaii critic having jiroved, as he imagined,
from this circumstance, that these Sibylline oracles
were no pro])lu'cies, concludes his whole argument
with this edifying remark : — " Let us, then," says he,
" adhere to the ])iudent practice of our ancestors ;
kt us keep the Sil)yl in religious privacy ; these

2C9

writings are, indeed, rather calculated to extinguish
than to propagate superstition." This testimony is
above all exception. Tully, as an augur, had free
access to the book in question. It cannot be doubted
that he would improve his opportunities ; for he was
a man of an exquisite taste, of much learned curiosity;
and, with these endowments, of a very religious turn
of mind. It is certain, therefore, that he speaks upon
the best information ; and he is the more to be
credited, as this frank confession fell from him in the
heat of a political debate in which he took an inter-
ested part. And from this testimony we may con-
clude, that the ancient fathers, whatever judgment is
to be passed upon their pretended quotations from the
Sibylline books, were not mistaken in the general
assertion, that the worship of the one true God, the
doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and of a fu-
ture retribution, were inculcated in these writings ;
which it seems, in Tully's judgment (and a com-
petent judge he was), were proper weapons to com-
bat idolatry : and by what weapons may error be more
successfully combated than by the truth ?

If the Sibylline oracles in their general tenour were
mifriendly to the interests of idolatry, it is the less to
be wondered, that they should contain predictions of
its final extirpation : of this I shall now produce the
evidence ; still relying, not upon particular quotations,
but upon the general allusions of the heathen writers.

Virgil, the celebrated Roman poet, flourished in
the court of Augustus no long time before our Sa-
viour's birth, when the general expectation of a person
to appear who should abolish both physical and moral
evil was at the highest.

Among his works still extant is a congratulatory
poem addressed to a noble Roman, the poet's friend,

^270

who bore the hijjjh office of consul at the time when it
was written. The occasion seems to liave been tlie
birth of some cliihl, in wliose fortunes PolHo, the
poet's friend, was nearly interested. I'he compliment
to Pollio is double, ])ein«r partly drawn from a liatter-
inji; ])rediction of the infant's future greatness, (for it
is atiirmed, that he will prove nothing less than the
expected deliverer,) and partly from this circumstance,
that the year of Pollio's consulate should be distin-
guished by the birth of such a child. Whoever should
read this poem without a knowledge of the history of
the times would conclude, that it was a compliment to
Pollio upon the birth of his own son.

But it is a very extraordinary, but a vei7 certain
fact, that the consul had no son born in the year of
his consulate, or within any short time before or alter
it. Nor will the history of these times furnish us
with any child born within a moderate distance of
Pollio's year of office, which, by its rank and con-
nection with his family, might seem of sufficient im-
portance to be the subject of this congratulation, even
when all ])ossible allowance has been made for a poet's
exaggeration and a courtier's flattery. But what is
most worthy of remark, and the most for my present
purpose, is the description which the heathen poet
gives of the extraordinary person that he ex])ected ;
of his origin, his achievements, and the good conse-
quences of his appearance ; which is such, that if any
illiterate person who was to hear this poem read in an
exact translation, with the omission only of the names
of heathen deities, and of allusion to profane mytho-
logy, which occur in a few passages, — any illiterate
person who was to hear the ])oeni read with these
omissions, which would not at all affect tlie general

271

sense of it, if he had not been told before that it was
the composition of a heathen author, woukl, without
hesitation, pronounce it to be a prophecy of the Mes-
siah, or a poem at least upon that subject written in
express imitation of the style of the Jewish prophets.
The resemblance between the images of this poem and
those in which the inspired prophets describe the
times of the Messiah has ever been remarked with
surprise by the learned, as indeed it is much too
striking to escape notice ; and many attempts have
been made to account for it. It has been imagined,
that the poet had actually borrowed his images from
the prophets. The books of the Old Testament hav-
ing been translated into the Greek language long
before the days of Virgil, it has been supposed that
he might have become conversant with the sacred
writings in the Greek translation.

But I see no reason to believe that these books
were ever in any credit among the Romans, or that
the contents of them were known at all, except to
some few who were proselytes to the Jewish religion.

It has been supposed, that Herod's visit at the
court of Augustus might be the means of making
the Roman poet acquainted with the Hebrew bards.
Herod, indeed, was some months at Rome ; but there
is little probability that the king^ or any of his train,
had leisure to be the poet's tutor in Hebrew learning.
It is very strange that in so many attempts to account
for the extraordinary fact under consideration, more
attention shoidd not have been paid to the account
which the poet himself has given of it. He refers to
the oracles of the Cumaean Sibyl as the source from
which he drew these predictions. And in this lay
the whole force of his compliment to Pollio, — That

^27^2

fhc cliihl ir/tos-f fittio'c. iircdf/icss ii-as flir nhji'cf of
P()///(t\s- (iiuhltinn, uutidd prore to he thof pcrsonoire
U'liom the ('iun(P<tn ^'Si/hH hod (uuunuiced <is ti (Icli-
vprer of ihe world from phi/sical and moral rril.
For that is tliu smn and substance of tlic character
according- to the ])oet's description. Here, tlien, wc
have the clear testimony of tliis heatlien poet, tliat the
oracles of the Sibyl contained a prophecy, not accom-
plished when he wrote this con<^ratulatory poem to
his friend, but likely to be accomplished in the risinj^
generation, of the appearance of a very extraordinary
person. We know that the Jewish prophets marked
the same time for the season of the Messiah's advent.
From the strain of the j)oet's compliments, we gather
the j)articulars of the Sibylline prophecy in regard to
the character which it ascribes to the person whose ap-
pearance it ainiouuced ; we find that this character
perfectly agrees with that of the Messiah as it is drawn
by the .Jewish prophets ; the difference being only
this, that the Jewish pro])hecies are more circum-
stantial than the Sibylline.

The sum of the character is the same in both ; in
its nature unequivocal, and such as even in the general
outline could not possibly belong to diflerent persons
in the same age.

The object of the Sibylline oracle, as well as the
Messiah of the Jews, was to be of heavenly ex-
traction, — the high oHspring of the gods, the great
seed of Jupiter. lie was to strike an universal peace,
and to connnand the whole world ; and in this uni-
versal government he was to exercise his father's vir-
tues. He was to abolish all violence and injustici-, to
restore the life of man to its original simj)licity and
innocence, ami the condition of man to its original

£73

happiness. He was to abolish the causes of violent
death ; and all death, considered as a curse, is vio-
lent. He was to kill the serpent, and purge the
vegetable kingdom of its poisons. The blessings of
his reign were to reach even to the brute creation ;
for the beasts of the forest were to lose their savage
nature, that the ox might graze in security within
sight of the lion.

It is evident, therefore, that the Jewish prophecies
and the Sibylline oracles announce the same person,
and of consequence, that the Sibylline oracles con-
tained a prediction of the Messiah. Nor is it to be
wondered, that the images of sacred prophecy should
abound in this treasure of the heathen temples if it
was composed of adulterated fragments of true pro-
phecies. The thing seems inexplicable upon any
other supposition.

Thus it appears, that the Romans at least, in the
ages of their worst idolatry, were in possession of a
book which they held, though they knew not why, in
religious veneration, containing explicit prophecies of
Christ. An extraordinary accident recorded in his-
tory furnishes an incontestable proof that the same
prophecies were extant in a very late age, in various
parts of the world.

About a century before our Saviour's birth, the
book of the Cumaean Sibyl was destroyed by a fire
which broke out in the Capitol, and consumed the
temple where those writings were deposited. The
Roman senate thought it of so much importance to
repair the loss, that they sent persons to make a new
collection of the Sibylline oracles in different parts of
Asia, in the islands of the Archipelago, in Africa,
and in Sicily ; for in all these parts copies, or at least

VOL. II. T

-I

fragments, of tluse ])ro])lK'cii's \vcrc' supposed to 1)l'
preserved. The deputies after some time returned
■with a thousand verses, more or less, eollected in dif-
ferent plaees, from which tlie most learned men at
Rome were employed to select what they judged the
most autlientic ; and this collection was deposited to
supply the loss of the original.

I have now established my fact, that I'rom the first
ages of profane history to the very time of our Sa-
viour's birth explicit predictions of him were extant
in the Gentile world, in books which were ever holden
in religious veneration, and which were deposited in
their temples. The matter of these prophecies, and
the agreement of the imagery of their language with
what we find in the pro])hecies of Holy Writ, is, I
think, a sulHcient argument ol" their Divine original.
Observe, I affirm not in general of the Sibylline books
that they were divine, nnuh less do I affirm that the
Sibyls were women who had the gift of ])rophecy. 1
believe that they were fabulous personages, to whom
the ifjnorant heathens ascribed the most ancient of
their sacred books, when the true origin of them was
forgotten. But the existence of these imaginary j)ro-
phetesses, and the authority of the writings ascribed
to them, are distinct (juestions. Whether these
books contained prophecies of Christ is a (juestion of
fact in which the affirmative is supported by the
highest historical evidence. That these prophecies,
wherever they might be found, could be of no other
than Divine original, the matter and the style of them
is in my judgment an irrefragable argument ; when
and where these prophecies were originally delivered,
to whom they were addressed, and how they came to
make a ])art of the treasure ol' the lu'athen temples,
aie (|uestions which remain to be considered.

275

That they were drawn from the Jewish prophecies
is improbable ; for the books of the Cumaean Sibyl
fell into the hands of the Romans, if we may credit
their historians, in a very early age, when they were
an obscure, inconsiderable people, without any con-
nections in the East, and long before any part of the
Old Testament was extant in the Greek language.
And yet after the first settlement of the Jews in
Canaan, I am persuaded that true prophets were
nowhere to be found but in the Jewish church.
These prophecies, then, that were current in the
Gentile world in later ages, since they were neither
forgeries of the heathen priests, nor founded on the
Jewish prophecies, must have been derived from pro-!-
phecies more ancient than the Jewish. They were
fragments, (mutilated, perhaps, and otherwise cor-
rupted,) but they were fragments of the most ancient
prophecies of the patriarchal ages. By what means
fragments of the prophecies of the patriarchal ages
might be preserved among idolatrous nations is the
difficulty to be explained.

To clear this question it will be necessary to con-
sider, what was the actual state of revealed religion
in the interval between the first appearance of idolatry
in the world and the institution of the Jewish church
by Moses.

I shall show you, that though the beginning of
idolatry through man's degeneracy was earlier than
might have been expected, its progress, through God's
gracious interposition, was slower than is generally
believed : that for some ages after it began the world
at large enjoyed the light of Revelation in a very
considerable degree : that, while the corruption was
gradually rising to its height. Providence was taking
measures for the general restoration at the appointed

T '2

\X

07G

season : that tlie gift of" prophecy was vouchsafed
lonjx before tlie institution of the Mosaic church :
that letters being in use in the East long before that
epoch, the ancient prophecies were connnitted ta
writing ; and that, by the mysterious operation of
that Providence which directs all temporary and par-
tial evil to everlasting and universal good, the blind
superstition of idolaters was itself made the means of
preserving these writings, not pure, but in a state
that might serve the purpose of preparing the Gen-
tiles for the advent of our Lord, and maintaining a
religious veneration for them.

I am then to consider what was the actual state
of revealed religion, between the first appearance of
idolatry in the world and the institution of the Mo-
saic church by jNIoses.

Firsts It is obvious that the worship of Jehovah
was originally universal, without any mixture of
idolatry among the sons of Adam for some time after
the creation ; and that it became universal again
among the descendants of Noah for some ages after
the flood. It is obvious, that so long as this was
universal, the jn'oniises would be universally reuiem-
bered ; both the general promises of man's redemj)-
tion and the particular ])r()uiises of blessings to certain
families ; and when the defection to idolatry began,
these particular promises would be the means of re-
tarding its j)rogress, and of preserving the worship of
the true God in the descendants of those to whom
these promises were made, for souie ages, at least, after
the revolt of the rest of uiankind.

And, on the other haiul, wherever the true wor-
ship kept its ground the promises could not sink into
oblivion.

277

: Thus I conceive the promises to Abraham would
for some time be remembered, not only in Isaac's
family, and in the twelve tribes of Arabians descend-
ing from Ishmael, but among the nations that arose
from his sons by his second wife, Keturah ; and these,
if I mistake not, peopled the whole country that lay
between the Arabian and the Persian Gulf, and oc-
cupied considerable tracts in Africa, and in the upper
part of Asia near the Caspian Sea ; and the memory
of these promises, in all these nations, would for
several ages keep the true religion in some degree
alive. So the earlier promises to Shem, contained in
Noah's prophetic benediction, would be for some
time remembered among his posterity ; and accord-
ingly we find from ancient history, that the Persians,
the Assyrians, and the people of Mesopotamia, the
offspring of Shem, through his sons Elam, Ashur,
and Aram, were among the last nations that fell into
any gross idolatry.

Now, if we are right in these principles (and I
think they are principles in which it is impossible to be
greatly in the wrong, for the memory which I suppose
of blessings promised to the head of a family, with
which some degree of veneration for the Deity from
whom they came and by whose providence they were
to be accomplished, that is, some degree of the true
religion would be inseparably connected ; —the me-
mory, I say, of such blessings seems but a necessary
effect of that complacency which men naturally feel
in the notion that they have a claim, or that they
stand within a probable expectation of a claim, to he-
reditary honour and distinctions) ; but if we are right
in the supposition of some long remembrance of the
promises, and a preservation of the true religion

T 3

•278

among the descendants of the patriarchs to wlioni
tlie promises were given, tlie first defection from the
worship of the true God could not be universal, it
could only be partial. And the effect of a partial
defection would be, tluit all the nations whose loyalty
to the sovereign Lord remained unshaken would take
measures to resist the corruption and maintain among
themselves the true worship of the true God.

Something of this kind seems to have happened
early in the antediluvian world. *' In the days of
Enos, men began to call themselves by the name
of Jehovah.** At this time, pious men took alann at
the beginning of idolatry in the reprobate family of
Cain, and formed themselves in a distinct party,
and took a name of distinctitm to themselves as
worshippers of the true God. They called themselves
by the name of Jehovah, as we now call ourselves
by the name of Christ ; and they probably made pro-
fession of the true religion by some public rites.

As human nature is in all ages much the same,
something similar is likely to have happened n])on
the first revival of idolatry after the Hood. I'he mea-
sures that were used for the ])reseiTation of the true
religion were likely to be some one* or all of tliese.

If any of the nations that adhered to the true God
had in these ages the use of letters, (and the use of
letters in the East, I am persuaded, is of unich greater
antiquity than is generally supposed,) they would
commit to writing, and collect in books what tradition
had preserved of the beginning of the world and the
prouiises to their ancestors. 'I'hese books would be
committed to some ])Ml)lie custody, and preserved as
a sacred treasure.

That something of this kind \v;is done, appears, I

'279

tliink, from fragments which still remain of ancient
Eastern liistories, whicli in certain particulars of the
deluge, and in the dates which they assign to the rise
of the most ancient kingdoms, are wonderfully con-
sonant with the Mosaic records.

Again, the most interesting passages of the ancient
history of the world, particularly the promises, they
would put into verse, that they might more easily be
committed to memory. It would be part of the edu-
cation of the youth of both sexes, and of all con-
ditions, to make them get these verses by heart.
They would be set to music, and sung at certain stated
festivals. That this was done (that it could hardly
be omitted) is highly probable, because it was the
universal practice of all the nations of antiquity to
record in song whatever they wished should be long
remembered, — the exploits of their warriors, their
lessons of morality, their precepts of religion, and
their laws. They would institute public rites, in
whicli the history of the old world, and of the pri-
vileged patriarchs in particular, would be commemo-
rated in certain enigmatical ceremonies. In these
there would be allusions to the deluge, to the ark, to
the raven and the dove, to Noah's intoxication, to the
different behaviour of his three sons upon that occa-
sion, to Abraham's entertainment of his three guests
from heaven, to his battle with the confederate kings,
to the offering of Isaac, to the exile of Hagar and
her son, and other parts of patriarchal history. That
something of this kind was done, appears, I think,
by manifest allusions that we find to some of these
particulars in the religious rites of some ancient na-
tions, even after they became idolaters. These insti-
tutions would, perhaps, in the end be the means of

T 4

spreading; the corruption tliey wtiv iiitciulcd to resist.
At tlic first thc'Y would be siin])le, siguiiicant, per-
spicuous, and of good effect ; but by degrees addi-
tions would be made to tliem without any attention
to tlie original meaning, for no other jiurjiose but to
add to the gaiety and splendour of the spectacle : and
these improvements of the show would be multiplied
till they destroyed the significance of the symbol, and
rendered the simple and instructive rite, first incon-
sistent, then obscure, absurd, and unintelligible, at
last, perhaps, lascivious and obscene.

This, however, would be the consequence of a slow
and gradual corruption ; and I mention it only to
remark, what extreme caution should be used in intro-
ducing any thing into religious rites which may too
forcibly strike the grosser senses, and by imperce])-
tible degrees change public worship from an employ-
ment of the intellect into an amusement of the
imagination. Our church, when slie separated from
the Roman connnunion, wisely retrenched the pomp
and gaiety of shows and processions, while she re-
tained every thing that was truly majestic, and might
seiTe to elevate the mind of the worshipper. Public
worship should be sim])le without meanness, dignified
without i)ageantry. But this by the wav. I return
to my subject : —

These were the means which mi:\ irrrr likch/ in
employ (I shall come afterwards to speak of means
employed, as I conceive, by CJod himself) : but these
are means which men would be likely to em])loy to
resist the progress of idolatry when it first began.

M^ritten collections of traditional history, songs of
high and holy arguuient, rites and shows of historical
allusion : and these means could not but have a lastiu"

281

and a great effect to preserve the true religion, in
some considerable degree at least, among all tlie nations
where thy were practised ; that is, not only among
Abraham's descendants, but in all the other branches
of Shem's posterity, — among the Edomites, Moab-
ites, Arabians, Assyrians, Persians, and many other
people of less note, notwithstanding that many of these
in later times became the worst of idolaters.

In what age or in what country idolatry made its
first appearance, we have no certain information. The
suspicion, I think, may reasonably fall upon Canaan,
from the curse which is so emphatically pronounced
upon him upon the occasion of his father's crime,
rather than upon any other of Ham's descendants,
which must have had its reason in some particular im-
piety in the character of Canaan himself, or of his
early descendants. We have it, however, from the
highest authority, that it prevailed in that part of Me-
sopotamia where the race of the Chaldeans afterwards
arose, in the days of Terah the father of Abraham.
For Joshua begins his last exhortation to the Israel-
ites with reminding them, that *' in old time their
fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood, even Te-
rah the father of Abraham and the father of Nachor,
and they served other gods." This passage puts it out
of doubt that some sort of idolatry prevailed in Terah's
time in his country. But it amounts not to a certain
proof that Terah, or any of his ancestors, were them-
selves idolaters ; for the expression, that they served,
necessarily imports no more than that they lived as
subjects in countries where other gods were worship-
ped. In this sense it is said of the Jewish people in
their dispersion, they should serve other gods ; and
yet the Jews in their dispersions have never been ido-

Q8Q

latcrs. In tlic sequel of tliis same speeeli, tlie
service whicli tlie fathers of the Israelites, while they
dwelt beyond the Hood, jKiid id otlier goods, is so ex-
pressly opix)sed to the worship of Jehovah now re-
(|uired of the Israelites, that little doubt can remain that
the expression oi serving other gods is to be taken
here in its literal meaning, — that the ancestors of
Abraham, and Abraham himself, before God's gra-
cious call, were infected with the idolatry which in
that age prevailed.

It is not to my present purpose to trace the ])ro-
gress of idolatry through all its different stages ; it
will be sufficient for me to show, that for many ages
the worship of the true God subsisted, though pre-
posterously blended with the superstitious adoration
of fictions deities and even of images. Just as at this
day in the church of Rome, the worship of the ever-
blessed Trinity subsists in preposterous conjunction
with the idolatrous worship of canonized men and
inanimate relics.

When Abraham took up his abode in Gerar, the
the chief city of the Philistines, Abimelech, the king
of Gerar, became enamoured of his wife. Upon this
occasion God came to Abimelech ; and the motive of
his coming was in mercy to Abiuu'lech, that he might
not draw destruction upon himselt and uj)on his family,
by the indignity which he was ii])«)n the point of oH'er-
ins: to Abraham's wife. From this it has been, with
great probability, concluded, that this Abiuu'lech, and
the ])eo])le which he governed, were worshippers of
(jod ; inr it is not likely that such tiiulerness
should have been shown to a wiekid ])iin(e and a
wicked nation. Sarah's purity might have been pre-
served 1)V other uieinis. Nor does the liinuility and

283

submission with which Abimelech receives the heavenly
warning, nor the severity with which he expostulates
with the patriarch for his unjust suspicion of him and
his subjects, suit the character of one who feared not
God.

Again, in the days of Isaac, another Abimelech,
the son or grandson of the former, in an interview
with Isaac (the object of which was to compose some
quarrels that had arisen between Isaac's herdsmen and
his own subjects), tells Isaac that he saw certainly
that Jehovah was with him. That under this con-
viction he solicited his friendship and his peace ; and
he calls Isaac the Blessed of Jehovah, This is the lan-
guage of one who feared Jehovah and acknowledged
his providence. In the days of Abraham, therefore,
and of Isaac, the worship of the true God was not
yet extinguished among the idolaters of Palestine.

In Mesopotamia, in the same age, the family of
Nachor, Abraham's brother, was not untainted with
idolatry. Laban had certain images which he calls
his gods, for which it should seem that his daughter
Rachel entertained some degree of Veneration. Yet
two occasions are recorded, upon which Laban men-
tions the name of Jehovah, and acknowleges his provi-
dence. The first is, when he receives Abraham's
steward, who came as a suitor on the part of Isaac to
Rebecca; the second, when he solemnly calls Jehovah
to witness the reciprocal engagements of friendship
between Jacob and himself at their parting.

In Egypt, the great workshop of Satan, where the
molten images were cast which in later ages all the
world adored, — in Egypt idolatry was in its infancy
(if it had at all gotten ground) in the days of Joseph.
For when Joseph was brought to Pharaoh to inter-

284

prct his dream, the holy patrlarcli and tlie Ei^yptiaii
king speak of God in much the same huigua<j;e, and with
tlie same acknowledgment ofhis over-ruling providence.

It may be added that this dream, though, ])erha])s,
the chief" end of it was the elevation of .Iose])h and the
settlement of Jacob's family in Goslien, is some argu-
ment of a care of Providence for the Egyptian people ;
for by this merciful warning they were enabled to
provide against tlie seven years of famine.

Idolatry, therefore, in this country was in no ad-
vanced state in Joseph's time ; and the settlement of
the patriarchs tliere, and the rank and authority that
Joseph held, nnist have checked its growth for some
considerable period.

At the time when the Israelites went out of Egy])t,
that country and the land of Canaan were sunk in the
grossest idolatry. The name of Jehovah was forgot-
ten, and in the public religion no traces were remaining
of his worship. And yet the examples upon record
of particular persons, who amid tlie general apostasy
retained some attachment to the service of the true
God, afford, I think, an argument, that in either
country this extreme degeneracy was at that time of
no very ancient date.

Tlie two Egy])tian women to wliom Pharaoli com-
mitted the inicjuitous l)usiness of stiHing the male
children of the Hebrews in the l)irth ^'fhirrd Gody'
i.e. they feared the true (iod ; ft)r the superstitious
fear of idols is never, in the Scripture language, called
the fear of (jod. They feared (Jod in that degree,
tliat they would not execute the king's counnaiul; and
that the true fear of (iod was the motive from which
they acted appears from the recompense they received:
" Ik'cauM' the uiidwives feared ( iod, (iod dealt well

285

with them, and made their families great and pros-
perous." The mixed multitude which went with
Moses out of Egypt, though not genuine Israelites,
were surely in some degree worshippers of the God
of Israel ; for idolaters, in the proper sense of the
word, would hardly have been permitted to follow the
armies of the Lord. And after forty years, when the
Israelites arrived at the land of Canaan, Joshua's
spies found, in the town of Jericho, a woman who
confessed that *' Jehovah the God of Israel, he is
God in heaven above and in the earth beneath." And
from this persuasion, and in confident expectation of
the execution of his vengeance on her guilty country,
she entertained the Israelitish spies, and managed
their escape ; for which she is commemorated by St.
Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews among the eminent
examples of faith.

These remains of true religion, which were found in
Egypt and Canaan so late as the days of Moses and
Joshua, are, I think, a proof, that a total apostasy
from the invisible Creator to the w^orship of fictitious
deities as the sole managers and masters of this lower
world, general as it was now become, had not, how-
ever, long prevailed in the countries where the cor-
ruptions of idolatry were of the longest standing, and
may be supposed to have made the greatest advances.

And as for the idolatry of the older and the milder
sort, which, retaining the worship of the true God
and acknowledging his providence, added a super-
stitious adoration of certain inferior spirits, who were
supposed to have a delegated command, under the
control of the Supreme, over different parts of nature,
from this even the chosen family itself was not al-
ways pure.

^286

Wlien the patriarcli was to take up his aboile at
Bctlic'l, the ])lace wliere God appeared to him when
he lied from Esau, which lie considered as sanctified
by God's immediate presence, we find liim ordering!;
his liouselioUl to ])ut away tlieir stninii^e i^od.s ; of
wliicli tliey had no small variety, as appears by the
sacred historian's expression, that in compliance with
this injnnction they «^ave unto Jacob <ill their strange
gods. These were, probably, the idols which llachel
brought with her from jMeso])otamia, with others
introduced by Judah's marriage with the daughter
of a Canaanite.

Upon occasion of his removal to Bethel, the patriarch
reformed the worshij) of his family and his de])endents,
and took measures to prevent an innnediate revival of
the corruption. He put the objects of superstitious
adoration out of sight, burying the idols under an oak
near Shechem. But none that is conversant with the
sacred history of the Israelites can doubt, that alter
Jacob's deatli, his descendants contracted a new stain ;
and in the later years of their sojournment in Goshen,
were deeply infected with the idolatry which then
prevailed in Egypt, to which in the desert they disco-
vered an attachment. The molten calf they made in
Horeb was surely not the first they had worshipj)ed.

I have now considered, as I proposed, the gi'Ueral
state of reliirion in the world before the institution of"
the Jewish church. I have shown you tlie seductive
form in which idolatry began, and the slow progress
that it made ; which is partly to be ascribed to the
means eujployed by pious nations in the beginning to
resist the corruj)ti()n, but in nnich greater part, as I
sliall hereafter show, to the uu'rciful providence of
God. Idolatry, in that malignant form which disowns

287

the true God, and attaches itself entirely to fictitious
divinities, prevailed nowhere till some short time, per-
haps a century or more, before the deliverance of the
Israelites from their Egyptian bondage. Idolatry in its
milder form, acknowledging the Supreme Providence,
and retaining the fear and worship of the true God, but
adding the superstitious worship of fictitious deities,
prevailed everywhere from the days of Abraham, his
single family excepted ; insomuch that, after the death
of Abraham and Isaac, the chosen family itself was
from time to time infected.

Now it is to be observed, that paganism in this
milder form was rather to be called a corrupt than a
false religion ; just as at this day the religion of the
church of Rome is more properly corrupt than false.
It is not a false religion ; for the professors of it re-
ceive, with the fullest submission of the understanding
to its mysteries, the whole Gospel. They fear God.
They trust in Christ as the author of salvation. They
worship the^ three persons in the unity of the God-
head. The Roman church, therefore, hath not re-
nounced the truth, but she has corrupted it ; and she
hath corrupted it in the very same manner, and nearly
in the same degree, in which the truth of the patri-
archal religion was corrupted by the first idolaters ;
adding to the fear and worship of God and his Son
the inferior fear and worship of deceased men, whose
spirits they suppose to be invested with some delegated
authority over Christ's church on earth. Now, the
corruptions being so similar in kind, and pretty equal
in deo-ree, the idolaters of antiquity and the Papists
of modern times seem much upon a footing.

Nor can I understand that these idolaters, so long as
they acknowledged the providence and retained the

"288

worship of tlio true God, and believed in tlie promises
to tlie fhtliers, were more se])arated from the chureli of*
Xoali by their eorruptioiis tluiu tlie Papists now, by
similar eorriij)tions, are separated from the true ca-
tholic cliurcli of Christ.

The ancient idolaters were not separated frcmi the
patriarchal church till their superstition ended in a
total a])ostasy. The superstitions of Romanists may
teniiinate in a similar apostasy equally complete,
and then will they be equally se])arated from the
church of Christ. And this I say not in any bitter-
ness of zeal against those of the Roman comnuniion,
whom I maintain to be as yet a part of the great
Shepherd's flock, although in danger of being lost,
but merely to compare past things with present, and
to show by the analogy of modern times wliat was the
true state of religion in the world at large in the
middle ajjes of idolatry between its first rise and its
hist stage of a total apostasy.

A\'hen this took place, the Gentile world were cut
off from all communion with the worship})ers of the
true God by the institution of the .Jewish church,
from which idolaters of every degree and denomin-
ation were excluded. Rut in the whole intermediate
period, the Gentiles were nothing less than the cor-
rupt branch of the old patriarchal church, the church
of Noah and of Shem ; and the family of Abraham
were nothing nu)re than the reformed part of it. Now,
since a church in any state of corru])tion sliort of
apostasy, through God's merciful forbearance, retains
the j)ririlfu;(>s of a church ; that is, is indulged in
those advantages which (iod of his free mercy grants
to the general society of his worshippers on earth, aiul
for tliis reason, that in the merciful judgment of our

289

heavenly Father, in his pity for the infirmities of the
human understanding, nothing but the apostacy of
the heart extinguishes the character of a worshipper. —
I sliall now enquire how far the Gentile world, in the
middle ages between Abraham and Moses, considered
as a corrupt branch of the patriarchal church, might
be in the merciful care of Providence ; what means
might be used on the part of God to keep up the re-
membrance of himself among them, by a right use of
which they might have recovered the purity from
which they fell, and which, though through the ex-
treme degeneracy of mankind they prevented not a
general apostacy for many ages, had a tendency how-
ever to the general restoration by raising an universal
exjiectation of the great Restorer. And in this en-
quiry, I shall proceed as I have done in the preceding
part of my subject, by making the analogy of modern
times the interpreter of ancient history.

I recur, therefore, to my former example, and I set
out with this principle, that the church of Rome is
at this day a corrupt church, — a church corrupted
with idolatry ; with idolatry very much the same in
kind and in degree with the worst that ever prevailed
among the Egyptians or the Canaanites till within
one or two centuries at the most of the time of Moses.
Yet we see this corrupt, this idolatrous church of
Rome, has her priests and her bishops, who, deriving
in continual succession from the apostles, are . true
priests and true bishops, invested with the authority
which, by the original institutions, belongs to those
two orders. The priests of the corrupt church of
Rome have a true authority (I speak not of an ex-
clusive authority in prejudice of the Protestant priest-
hood), but they have their share of the common

VOL. II. u

•^290

authority of priests of the church catlu)lic to preach
the word of (iod, althou^li tlu-y preach otlicr things
for which they liave no authority.

They have a true authority to administer the sacra-
ments, although they liave no authority to institute
ne^r sacraments ; and we doubt not, notwithstanding
their presum])tion in prcacliing adventitious doctrines,
and in obtruding supernumerary sacraments, that the
frue word preached by them, and the true sacraments
administered, are accompanied with God's bk^ssing,
and produce a sahitary effect on tlie heart of tlie
hearer.

Again, the bisliops of this corru])t cluu'ch have, in
common witli the bishops of the Protestant and of
the Greek churches, all the authority of the first
successors of the apostles, that may be supposed to
subsist without the miraculous gifts of the Holy
Spirit.

If they usurj) rights which the inspired ajmsties
never claimed, their />^^Y claims are not invalidated
by those unwarrantable pretensions : they are to judge
of the qualifications of those that would be ordained :
they have authority to appoint to the priest's office,
and to consecrate to their own by the imposition of
their hands: they are the overseers of Christ's flock:
they have the power to suspend heterodox or iunuoral
priests from the exercise of their iunction, and to ex-
clude laics of scandalous lives from the sacraments :
in a word, to inflict ecclesiastical censures and pe-
nalties ior ecclesiastical offences. Like other ma-
o;istrates, they are accountable to (iod for any abuse
of power, but still the I'ight of government is in their
hands. In llitir own church, and over those of their
own connuunion, they have a true episco])al jurisdic-

291

tion. And this is the avowed opinion of the church
of England, as it must be the opinion of all who ac-
knowledge the divine institution of the episcopal
order. For when a priest who has received his orders
from a bishop of the church of Rome openly abjures
the errors of that church, and declares his assent to
the articles of the church of England, he becomes
immediately a priest in our church without any se-
cond ordination from a Protestant bishop : as a laic
of that church who openly abjures its errors is ad-
mitted to our communion without any second bap-
tism by the hands of a Protestant priest.

Now, since in these days the church of Rome,
though corrupted with idolatry, has her priests and
her bishops, it may seem the less strange that the
ancient patriarchal church, when she became corrupted
with a similar idolatry in an equal degree should have
her priests and her prophets. True priests and true
prophets, though not perhaps untainted with the
errors of their times ; priests who offered sacrifices
to the true God, and had authority to accept the
oblations of the laity ; prophets who were commis-
sioned to resist the prevailing corruption, and to pro-
phesy of the great redemption. That these two
orders were maintained through the wonderful mercy
of God in idolatrous countries, till the degeneracy
came to that extreme degree that he judged it fit to
separate the apostates, and to put his chosen people
under the safe keeping of the law, I shall now prove
from the sacred records.

And, first, for the priests of the patriarchal church
in her corrupted state.

In the days of Abraham, a prince of a Canaanitish
nation, Melchizedek, king of Salem, was the priest of

u 2

29^

tlio Most Ilioh God. The Jews liave, indeed, a vain
tradition tliat tliis Melchizedek was tlie patriarch
Sheni. AccordinfT to the chronolofry wliicli tlic Jews
choose to follow, Sliein iiii<j;]it be alive at the time
that Melchizedek received the tenths from Abraham.
But by a truer account, which the Jews followed in
more ancient times, and which was followed by all
the primitive fathers of the Christian church, Shcm
was dead above four Innulred years before Abraham
^vas born ; and if we were even to j^rant that he
mi<j:ht be living in the days of Abraham, the Jews
have not yet explained how he came ])y the kingdom
which this tradition gives him in the land of Canaan.
But we have it on l)etter than rabbinical authority, on
the authority of an apostle, that Melchizedek had no
connection with the family of Abraliam. *' He counted
not his descent," saith St. Paul, ♦♦ from them." And
St. Paul's argument, as is acutely remarked by the
learned Pishop Patrick, would be ecpially inconclusive
wliether Melcliizedek's descent were counted from
Al)raham, or Abraham's from him. Melchizedek,
therefore, was neither descendant nor any ancestor
of Abraham. He was, as Josephus, the learned his-
torian of the Jews, candidly acknowledges, a prince
of Canaan.

Yet was he no self-constituted usurjiing priest, but
a priest by divine aj)])oiiitnu'nt and commission, as
appears by tlu' derereucc which Abraham j);ii(l liim :
" For consider how great this man was, unto whom
even the patriarch Abraham gave the tenth of the
sj)oils." I'liis tenth of the sjjoils was no j)avment to
Melchizedek in liis tem])()ral capacity as kijig of Salem,
for any assistance he had given Abraliam in the battle;
for he ^vent out to mei't hini when lu- was nhiniinu;

^93

from the slaughter of the kings. The king of Salem,
therefore, had taken no part in the expedition ; he had
remained at home inactive, and went out to meet the
patriarch upon his return, in the quality of God's
high priest, to pronounce God's blessing upon him,
to bear his public testimony to Abraham as God's
chosen servant, and to declare that it was by the
immediate succour of the arm of the Most High God,
whose priest he was, that Abraham's little army had
overthrown the confederate kings ; and the tenths,
being no payment for a military service, could be no-
thing else than a religious offering on the part of
Abraham, by which he acknowledged the protection
of the Most High God, and acknowledged the au-
thority of Melchizedek's priesthood ; the divine au-
thority of which appears again more strongly in this
circumstance, that this priest Melchizedek was no
less than the type of that high-priest who now stand-
eth at God's right hand making intercession for the
sins of all mankind. Of his universal everlastinir
priesthood, the priesthood of Melchizedek was the
type.

The prophet David declares the nature of Christ's
priesthood, by the analogy it bears to the priesthood
of Melchizedek. And from this analogy, St. Paul
builds his great argument for the superiority of
Christ's priesthood above the Levitical. Christ is
for this reason a priest for ever, because he is after
the order of Melchizedek.

From all this it appears, that in the days of Abra-
ham, at least, there was a priesthood among the Ca-
naanites of higher rank than the Levitical, and more
exactly typical of the priesthood of the Son of God.
Again, in the days of Joseph, we find in Egypt a
u 3

l*otipherah a priest of On, wliose (lau«^hter Joseph
iiiairied ; and in the days of Moses, a Jethro a priest
of Midian, whose daughter Moses married. It has
been made a question eoneerning both tliese persons,
wlit'tlier tliey wore priests at all. Tlie doubt arises
from the aml)iguity of the Hebrew word, wliicli is
used in some parts of Scripture for a prince or magis-
trate. But it is to be observed, that not a single
passage is to be found in tlie books of Moses where it
is used in these senses, except it be in tliese two
instances. That they were both priests, was clearly
the opinion of the Jews wlio made the first (ireek
translation of the Pentateuch, of the Jewish historian
Josephus, and of St. Jerome.

And if they were priests at all, they were priests
of the true (lod, the one in Egypt in the tomi of
On in the days of Joseph, the other among the Mi-
dianites in the days of Moses. For it is liardly cre-
dible, that Providence should have permitted either
Jose])h or Moses to contract an alliance by marriage
with a priest of any idolatrous temple.

Thus it appears, that the true God had an order
of priests in the Gentile world down to the time of
the Mosaic institution. These priests were the cor-
rupt remains of the ancient priesthood of Noah's
universal church.

Wc have then, I think, found the priests ol" the
])atriarchal church in its corru])ted state ; let us now
look ibr its prophets. This is a point still more ma-
terial to establish than the existence of tlie priesthood,
because it is the existence of true prophecies among
idolatrous nations which is the chief subject of our
iiKjuiry ; and true prophecies, that is, prophecies ol'
divine tuiginal, could not have been found among

295

idolatrous nations, unless certain persons had lived
amongst them who were gifted by the spirit of God,
and favoured with divine communications.

But of this order we have two undoubted in-
stances, — the one in Job, the other in Balaam.

Job, by the consent of the learned of all ages, was
no Israelite. He was certainly of the family of Abra-
ham ; for whatever difficulties may be raised about his
particular country, none will deny that it lay in some
part of that region of which the whole was occupied by
Abraham's descendants. He was not, however, of the
elected branch of the family, and was probably of that
stock which became at last the worst of idolaters, the
Edomites. That the country in which he lived was
in his time infected with an incipient idolatry, appears
from the mention that he makes of the worship of the
sun and moon as a crime with which he was himself
untainted ; a circumstance from which he could have
pretended no merit, had not the prevailing fashion of
his country and his times presented a strong temptation
to the crime. And as there is no mention of any other
kind of idolatry in the book of Job, it is reasonable
to conclude, that in his time the corruption had gone
no greater length.

Now, that Job was a prophet is so universally con-
fessed, that it is needless to dwell upon the proof of
it. He was a prophet in the declining age of the
patriarchal church, in the interval between Esau,
from whom he was descended, and Moses, whose
time he preceded ; and he prophesied in an ido-
latrous country, where the sun and moon were
worshipped.

In this idolatrous country he prophesied of the
Redeemer ; and it is a circumstance that deserves

u 4

^96

particular attention, that lie ])r()pliesies of the Re-
deemer, not without manifest allusion to the divinity
of his nature, and express mention of the resurrec-
tion of the hody as the effect of his redemption ; —
two articles of our creed, which, we are told with
jrreat confidence, are modern innovations; whereas, we
find them not only in the Jewish prophets, hut in far
more ancient prophets of a more ancient church.

*' I know," saith Job, " that my Redeemer liveth;
I know that he now liveth ; that is, that his nature
is to live. He describes the Redeemer, you sec, in
laniruajre much allied to that in which Jehovah de-
scribes his own nature in the conference with Moses
at the bush. Jehovah describes himself by his un-
caused existence ; Job describes the Redeemer by a life
inseparable from his essence. " I know that in the
latter days this ever-living Redeemer shall stand \\\nn\
the earth. He shall take up his residence among'
men in an embodied form ; God shall be manifested
in the flesh to destroy the works of the Devil : he
shall stimd upon the earth in the latter days ; in the
last period of the world's existence ; " which implies
that this standing of the Redeemer upon the earth
will close the great scheme of Providence for man's
restoration : ** and although he shall not stand upon
tlie earth before the latter days, yet I know that he
is MY Redeemer ; that my death, which nnist take
place many ages before his a]>j)earance, will not ex-
(lude me froui my share in his redemption. I-'or
though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet
in mv flesh shall I see Gotl. Though nothing will
be then reuiaiuing of my external person, though tlu'
form of'tliis bodv will lia\c been long di'stroyi'd, the
organisation of its eonstilueiit |)aits (leiiiolished, and

297

its very substance dissipated, the softer part become
the food of worms bred in its own putrefaction, the
soHd bones moulded into powder ; notwithstanding
this ruin of my outward fabric, the immortal principle
within me shall not only survive, but its decayed
mansion will be restored. It will be re-united to a
body, of which the organs will not only connect it
with the external world, but serve to cement its union
with its Maker. For in my flesh, with the corporeal
eye, with the eye of the immortal body which I shall
then assume, I shall see the divine Majesty in the
person of the glorified Redeemer.'*

Such was the tenor of Job's prophecies, of a pro-
phet of the Gentiles ; and such was the light which
God granted to the Gentile world in the first stage
of its corruption. And that this light was not with-
drawn till the corruption attained its height, we learn
from the second instance, the Aramaean prophet
Balaam.

What might be the exact degree of the degeneracy
in Balaam's country, I cannot take upon me to de-
termine. But the bordering nation, the Moabites,
were addicted to that gross idolatry which made
homicide and prostitution an essential part of its re-
ligious rites. From the extreme depravity of the
times, and from the wickedness of Balaam's own cha-
racter, it has been doubted whether he was properly
a prophet. It has been imagined that he might be a
sorcerer, who practised some wicked arts of magical
divination, and owed his fame to the casual success of
some of his predictions ; that those remarkable pro-
phecies which he delivered when Balak called him to
curse the Israelites, were the result of an twtraoidi-
nari) impulse upon his mind upon that particular

occasion, and no more prove tliat tlie gift of pro-
])liecy was a ])ernianent endowment of his mind, as it
was in Job and the Jewisli propliets, tlian the speak-
inu; of his ass uj)()n tlie same occasion proves tliat tlie
animal liad a permanent nse of tlie faculty of speecli.

The dilHculty of conceivinijj that true prophets
should he found in an idolatrous nation, if I mistake
not, I have already removed, by the analogy whicli I
liave slio\vn to subsist between ancient and modern cor-
ruptions. The difficulty of conceiving that tlie gift of
prophecy should be imparted to a wicked character,
will be much softened, if not entirely removed, if we
recollect the confessed crimes of some of the Jewish
pro])hets, and the confessed indiscretions of some jier-
soiis who shared in the miraculous gifts of the Spirit
in the primitive churches. And if once we admit,
as the evidence of plain fact compels us to admit, that
the gift of pro])hecy is not always in proportion to
the moral worth of the character, we must confess it
to be a question which is beyond the ability of human
reason to decide, in what proportion they must neces-
sarily corres})ond, or with what degree of depravity in
the moral character the prophetic talent may be incom-
patible. Balaam's impiety at last ran to the length of
open rebellion against God; for he suggested to the
king of Moab, as the only means by which the fortunes
of the Israelites could be injured, the infernal strata-
gem of enticing them to take a part in that idolatry
for which, by the tenor of his owu predictions, the
Moabites were destined to destruction. But this
ajiostacy of Halaam's was subse(|uent to the j)ro])hecies
that he delivered to Halak, and was the effect of tlu-
temptation whuli the octasion ))rc>c'ntc(i, tlu' oiler of
liches and preferment in Balak's court. it is pro-

^299

bable, indeed, that his heart had never been right
with God, or these objects could not have kid hold
of him so forcibly. But this, for any thing that ap-
pears from the sacred history, might be his first act
of open impiety and rebellion ; and the conclusion,
that in the former part of his life he had been too
bad a man to be honoured with the prophetic gift, is
precarious. The circumstances of the story are of
far more weight than any reasoning built upon such
precarious principles as man's notion of the manner
in which the divine gift should be distributed ; and,
from the circumstances of the story, it appears that
he was a true prophet of the true God. When
Balak's messengers first came to him, he speaks the
lano-uage of one who had the fear of God habitually
upon his mind. He disclaims all power of his own
to bless or curse, to take any step in the business but
under God's express direction and permission. He
must have God's leave to go Balak ; and when he
comes to Balak, he must take heed to speak what
Jehovah puts into his mouth. Although Balak would
give him his house full of silver and gold, he could
not transgress the word of Jehovah his God, to do
less or more. This was his language in the ordinary
state of his mind, when he was under no prophetic
impulse ; and it is remarkable that he speaks of God
in the same terms which were afterwards in use
among the Jewish prophets : " Jehovah my God,''
" Jehovah, the God whose prophet am I." In
ecstasy he expresses the same sentiments in a more
fio-ured lanffuao-e. He describes his own faculty of
prediction in images the most exactly expressive ot
the prophetic gifts and the prophetic office ; expres-
sive of no singular unexampled impulse upon this

300

occasion, but of frequent and habitual intercourse
with the Most High God, l)y voice and visions, in
dream and in trance.

It is very remarkable, that in the strain of" tlicse
predictions there is no indication of tliat violent con-
straint \vliich some have imagined upon tlie mind of
tlie speaker, or tliat he was more a necessary agent
than any other prophet under the divine impulse.
In every instance of prophecy by divine inspiration,
thoughts and images were presented to the propliet's
mind by the inspiring Spirit, which no meditation or
study of his own could have suggested ; and there-
fore the mind of the man under this influence miglit
properly be considered as a machine in the liand of
God. Yet the will of the man in this, as in every
instance in which man acts under the control of
Providence, seems to have been the spring by which
the machine was put in motion.

And though in conceiving the prophecy the man
was passive, in uttering it he was a free and voluntary
agent ; which appears from this circumstance, that
the prophet had it in his choice to dissemble and
prevaricate, to utter smooth things, and to prophecy
deceits. And this was Balaam's situation when he
tells Halak's messengers that he cannot go l)i'yond
the word of Jehovah his Ciod ; that what God should
j)ut in Iiis mouth, that he must speak. It is not that
his organs of speech were not n])on these occasions
in liis own connnand, that they were detenuined by
some other ])rinci})le than his own will to the utter-
ance ol" certain words which uiight convey certain
thoughts, but that he had no power of uttering true
])redictions, oi pronouncing either blessing or curse
tluit might prove elfectual, otherwise than as hes])ake

301

in conformity to the divine motions ; and the alacrity
and ardour of his prophetic strains indicate a satis-
faction and complacency of his own mind in uttering
his conceptions.

There is one passage in his second song, which, as
it lies in the English Bibles, may seem to contradict
this assertion : " Behold, I have received command-
ment to bless, and he hath blessed, and I cannot
reverse it." Which may seem to say, that if he
could, he would have reversed the blessing. But the
original, according to the reading of the best manu-
scripts, expresses a very different sentiment : " Be-
hold, to bless was I brought hither {brought, not by
Balak's invitation, but by God), to bless was I brought
hither. I will bless, and 1 will not decline it." And
the same sense appears in the Greek translation of
the Septuagint ; and, accordingly, he pronounces his
blessing without reserve or reluctance. He discovers
no unwillingness to paint the prosperity of the Jewish
nation in the highest colours, no concern for the
calamities that awaited their enemies ; and in his last
effusions, his mind seems to enjoy the great scene
that was before him, of the happiness and glory of
the Messiah's reign, and the final extermination of
idolaters.

Another circumstance to be remarked is, that no
traces of idolatrous superstition or magical enchant-
ment appear in the rites which were used upon this
occasion. We read, indeed, that after the third sa-
crifice, *' he went not, as at other times, to seek en-
chantments." Some have taken alarm at the word
encluuitments, taking it in a bad sense. No con-
clusion can be drawn from a passage so obscure, as
all who are versed in the Hebrew language must

30Q

confess tliis to be in the original. Tlic wonls wliicli
are rendered '* as at other times," seem not to alhide,
as these Englisli words slioukl do, to sonietliing tliat
liad been Bahuun's ordinary practice upon furnn'r
occasions, l)iit to what he liad done before upon tliis
occasion. " He went not as from time to time be-
fore ;" or, *' lie went not as lie had done once and
asain, to seek enchantments." What these enchant-
ments might be whidi he went to seek, since it can-
not be determined by the mere force of tlie word
eiicliantments^ may be best conjectured by consider-
ing wliat Bahiam had done once and again -upon tlie
present occasion.

Now once and again after each of the first sacri-
fices lie retired to a solitary place. And what sought
he in this retirement ? AMiat he sought may be
divined by what he met with. He met (Jod, and
God put a word in his mouth ; and this the third
time Balaam did not. He stayed with Balak and the
Moabitic chiefs in the place where the third sacrifice
had been performed, patiently waiting the event, with
his face toward the wilderness, where the Israelite
army lay encamped. These enchantments, therefore,
which once and again he went to seek, and which the
third time he sought not, were, as it should seem, no
idolatrous or magical enchantments, but either some
stated rites of invocation of the ins])iriiig spirit which
he practised in retirement, or, as I rather think, some
sensible signs by which, in the early ages of the
world, (iod was pleased to communicate with his
prophets; some voice or vision. His preparatory
rite was, that in each ])lace where he took his station
he directed the king of Moab to make seven altars,
and to ofier seven bullocks and seven rams. In this

303

tliere is nothing of idolatry, but every circumstance
is characteristic of a solemn sacrifice to the true God.
The altars were raised expressly for the particular
purpose of this sacrifice. He used no altar that was
ready made, lest it should have been profaned by
ofFerings to the idols of the country. And being
raised in a hurry upon the spot, they could not be
durable or stately erections of workmanship and art
(such altars as the Israelites were permitted to erect),
but simple mounds of earth, or heaps of unpolished
stone, which could not long remain after they had
served the present solemn business, to be afterwards
profaned by idolatrous sacrifices.

Some have suspected something of idolatrous super-
stition in the number of the altars and of the victims.
On the contrary, I am persuaded, that the choice of
the number seven was a solemn and significant appro-
priation of the ofFerings to the Supreme God, the
Maker of the world. The last business in the book
of Job, when the great argument between Job and
his friends is brought to a conclusion, is a solemn
sacrifice, not devised by Job or any of his friends,
but prescribed by the express voice of God. And
this sacrifice, like Balaam's, consists of seven bullocks
and of seven rams. It should seem, therefore, that
in the earliest ages it was a characteristic rite of the
pure patriarchal worship to sacrifice on occasions of
great solemnity by sevens. The key to this rite is
the institution of the Sabbath. The observance of
the seventh day was the sacrament of the ancient
church ; of that church, which was more ancient than
the Jewish ; of that priesthood, which was more dig-
nified than Aaron's ; of the church of Adam before
the flood ; of the church of Noah after it. For the

304

same reason that tlic sevcntli clay was sanctified, the
victims bled l)y sevens ; and to sacrifice seven rams or
seven bullocks at a time, was to declare that the
off'erinfjj was made to that God who created the world
in six days, and to wliose service the seventh day was
therefore consecrated. Upon the same principle it
was that much of the Jewish ritual was governed by
the number seven. The golden candlestick had seven
branches supporting seven burning lamps. AVhen
atonement was to be made for the sin of a priest or
of tlie congregation, the vail was to be sprinkled seven
times with the blood of the offering, and the mercy-
seat was to be sprinkled seven times on the great day
of annual expiation. The festivals of the Jews were
celebrated each for seven days successively, and among
the extraordinary sacrifices of each day were seven
or twice seven lambs. When the ark of the covenant
was brought from the house of Obed-Edom to Jeru-
salem, the sacrifice on that great occasion was seven
bullocks and seven rams. Perhaps, in a much hiter
aire than Balaam's, the number of his altars and his
victims would have afforded no certain character of a
pure worship ; for in the later ages of idolatry we
find a superstitious veneration for the number seven
among the heathens. But thus it is with all cere-
monies, that their significance dejKnds upon the in-
terpretation which custom makes of them. And the
inteiin-etation of the same ceremony will be different,
according to the different state of opinions in different
countries and at different times. Hence what was
originally an act of pure devotion, may become, in
later times, a superstitious rite. The stone wliich
Jacob erected at Betliel, became afterwards an oc-
casion of idolatry. -So, to offer aniuials by sivciis

305

was no longer an appropriation of the sacrifice to the
invisible Creator, when it could no longer be under-
stood to allude to that particular circumstance in the
ci'eation, that it was finished in six days. And to
this no allusion could be understood, where the cir-
cumstance itself was not remembered. But this
hinders not but that in the days of Balaam, who
lived within a century of Job, the same ceremonies
had the same meaning in Balaam's worship as in
Job's ; and that the number of his altars and his
victims, was a circumstance which in that age gave a
public character to his sacrifice, by which Balak and
his princes, and the confederate armies of Moab and
Midian, might understand that it was offered in con-
tempt of their idols, and in honour of the God who
rested from the business of creation on the seventh
day.

Now, when all these circumstances are put toge-
ther ; the age of Balaam, that he lived within a century
after Job ; his country, which was in the neighbour-
hood of Job's, — part, at least, of a tract which was
occupied by descendants of Abraham, or by colla-
teral branches of the family ; his open acknowledg-
ment of Jehovah as his God ; that both in his ordinaiy
state of mind and under the divine impulse, he refers
his prophetic talent to the inspiration of Jehovah ;
that he disclaims any power of his own to bless or to
curse, otherwise than as the interpreter of the counsels
of Heaven j that he practises no magical enchant-
ments, but offers sacrifices to God after the patri-
archal rites ; that in uttering his predictions, he
appears not to have been more a necessary agent than
every other prophet : when to all these circumstances
we add, that he uttered a true prophecy, a prophecy

VOL. II. X

30()

extending, if I read its meaning aright, from his o^vn
time to tlie Messiali's second advent ; a prophecy
which in every part which rehites to times whicli are
now gone by, hath been fulfilled with wonderful ex-
actness, and in other parts which relate to ages yet to
come, harmonises with the predictions of the Jewish
prophets and of the Apocalypse ; — can a doubt
remain, that the man who, to all secondary characters
of a })rophet, added this great cliaracter, that by a
divine impulse, as is confessed, he delivered a pro-
phecy of things too distant to fall within any man's
natural foresight ; a prophecy which the world hath
seen in part accomplished, and which, in its other
parts, resembles other prophecies not yet accom-
plished, but confessedly divine ; a prophecy whicli,
for the variety of its composition in its various parts,
for the aptness, the beauty, the majesty, the honor
of its images, may compare with the most animated
effusions of the Hebrew bards ; can a doubt remain
whether this man, with all the imperfections of his
private character, was a true prophet ?

I am not ignorant that Origen, and other divines
of ancient and modern times, have been unwilling to
acknowledge his pretensions. If their authority should
seem to outweigh the evidence drawn from the parti-
culars of his story, I have a greater authority to pro-
duce against them, the authority of an inspired apostle.
*' The dumb ass," saith St. Peter, alluding to Bahuun's
story, " the dumb ass, speaking with man's voice,
forbade the madness of the jn'op/ief ; " acknowledging
him, you see, for a prophet, though, for the folly of
loving the wages of unrighteousness, he calls him mad.

Balaam, therefore, was -a ])r(>plu't ; for, with the
evidence of facts and the aiitlioiity of" an inspireil

307

apostle on our side, we will be confident in the asser-
tion, though Origen and Calvin be against us. Balaaui
was a prophet. He lived in an age of gross idolatry,
and prophesied to idolaters. In him, as I conceive,
the prophetic order without the pale of the Mosaic
church, which was now formed, was extinguished ;
for I find no traces in history, sacred or profane, of a
true prophet out of Israel after the death of Balaam.
He fell, you know, in the general carnage of the
Midianites, and was himself among the first instances
of God's vengeance on apostates. It is probable,
therefore, that the prophecies which he delivered at
Shittim were the last that were addressed to the old
patriarchal church, now corrujit in the extreme, and
on the verge of dissolution. It is remarkable that
this church should be admonished by the last words of
her last prophet of the impending vengeance, as the
Jewish church, by a greater prophet, within a few years
of her dissolution, was admonished of her fate. It is
remarkable that this last call of God to that apostat-
ising church should be the first occasion, upon record
at least, upon which the Messiah is described in images
of terror, as a warlike prince reducing the world by
conquest, and putting his vanquished enemies to the
sword. With these predictions of the Messiah (pre-
dictions which, by all expositors, Jews as well as
Christians, by Rabbis of later times as well as by the
more candid and more knowing Jews of earlier ages,
are understood of the Messiah), with these predictions,
Balaam intermixes many brief but eloquent assertions
of the first principles of natural religion : — the om-
nipotence of the Deity, his universal providence, and
the immutability of his counsels. And, to be a stand-
ing monument of these great truths, he leaves a very

X 2

308

general hut very exact })re{licti()n of tlie fortunes of
the empires and kingdoms tliat were at that time the
most consideral)Ie, and of those that in succeeding
ages were successively to arise and perish in their turns.
And his images bear all the analogy to those of later
prophets, of Daniel in j)articular, and the sublime
author of the Apocalypse, which the language of a
general sketch can bear to that of a minute detail ;
and the names and epithets which he a])plies to the
Supreme Being are the very same which are used by
Moses, Job, and the inspired writers of the Jews ;
namely, Go(U the Abtiighfi/, the Most Hig/iy and
Jehovah ; which is a proof, that, gross as the corrup-
tions of idolatry were now become, the patriarchal
religion was not sufficiently forgotten for its language
to be grown obsolete.

In this Balaam set the sun of prophecy in the ho-
rizon of the (ientile world, and yet a total night came
not. For some ages a twiliglit glimmered in their sky,
which gradually decayed, and became at last almost
insensible, but began to brighten again during the
captivity of the Jews under the Babylonian monarchs,
and from that period continued to gather strength,
till at length the morning-star took its station over
the stable at Bethlehem. The Sun of righteousness
arose to set no more, and the light again was clear and
universal.

You will recollect what I advanced as a probable
conjecture in a fonner part of these disquisitions, that
upon the first ap))earance of idolatry, when the unin-
fected part of mankind would be taking all means to
check the progress of the contagion, the traditional
history of the creation, the deluge, and the j)romises
to the first patriarchs, which at that time uouhl, pro-

309

bably be pretty perfect, would be committed to writ-
ing. We may assert, I think, with more certainty,
that the prophecies of Job and Balaam, and of other
prophets of that period, if any other existed, (and
many might, although their works and their very
names have been long since forgotten;) it is more
certain, I say, of the prophecies of these ages, that
they would be committed to writing, than of the
earlier traditions. For that letters were older than
the beginnings of idolatry cannot be proved, though,
in my opinion, it is more probable than the contrary.
Whereas it is certain, not only that the Israelites had
letters before the law, but tliiit books and writing were
in use in the days of Job, in that part of the country
where Job and Balaam lived ; and if in use in the
days of Job, certainly not out of use in the later days
of Balaam. For although religion in these ages was
upon the decline, arts and sciences were in a stage of
progress and advancement. — That Balaam's pro-
phecies, at Shittim in particular, were committed to
writing among the Moabites and the Midianites, is,
I think, incontestable. For to the Moabites and
Midianites they were delivered, not within hearing
of the Israelites. And how did Moses, who heard
them not, come by the knowledge of them, unless it
were that they were committed to writing, and that
the books of the Moabites or the Midianites fell into
the conqueror's hands ? Moses, it is true, was an in-
spired writer, which may seem to some to account
sufficiently for his knowledge of every thing that he
relates.

But God, even in the more immediate interposi-
tions of his providence, acts by natural means and
second causes, so far as natural means and second

X 3

310

causes may be made to serve the purpose. The in-
fluence, therefore, of tlie inspirinji; Spirit on the mind
of an liistorian, can be notliinj^ more tlian to secure
him iiom mistake ami falsity, by strentj^hening his
memory, and by maintainin<r in his heart a religious
love and reverence for trutli, that lie may be incajiable
of omission tlu'ough forgetfuhiess, and may be in-
vincibly fortified against all temptations to forge,
conceal, disguise, or prevaricate. That inspiration
ever was the means of conveying the first knowU-dire
of facts to an historian's mind, is a very unreasonable
supposition. It is to suppose an unnecessary miracle.
For a miracle is always unnecessary where natural
means might serve the jmqiose. And the supposition
of an unnecessary miracle is always an unreasonable,
and indeed a dangerous supposition. Unreasonable,
because no evidence can jirove it, and no ])lausible
argument can be alleged for it ; dangerous, because
it leads to an unlimited and pernicious credulity. We
conclude, therefore, that Balaam's jirophecies at Shit-
tim were committed to writing by the people to whom
they were delivered, because they are recorded by the
inspired historian, to whom they were n(/f delivered,
who could not by any other means have come to the
knowledge of them, and who, by virtue of his inspir-
ation, was incai)able of the dishonest act of for'nu'r
facts of which he had no knowledge. But further, it
appears from another insjiired writer of the Jewish
church, that otluT aittluiitie accounts of l)alaam's
prophecies at Shittim, besides that which Moses had
transmitted, was current among the Jews in a very
late age, which contained some jiarticulars which
Moses, as foreign to the subject of liis historv, has
omitted. Moses has jireserved the j)ui)lic predictions

311

which related to the fortunes of the Israelites and
their adversaries in all ages, and to the universally in-
teresting subject of the Messiah.

These other accounts contained the particulars of
a private conference between Balaam and Balak, in
which the idolatrous king enquires of God's prophet,
in what way he the king might make expiation for
his offences. *' Remember, O my people," saith the
prophet Micah, '* what Balak king of Moab con-
sulted, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered
him, from Shittim unto Gilgal." And then he
relates the conference. The word remember evi-
dently refers the Israelites of Micah's time to some
account of this conference which' they might remem-
ber, which they ought to have holden in remembrance.
Which account, in the judgment of Micah, who thus
solemnly appeals to it, was authentic, and we must
believe it to be authentic upon the credit of Micah's
inspiration. Now what could this be but some writ-
ten records of the prophecies at Shittim, transmitted
from the times of Balaam, which must have come to
the Israelites, as the other account came to them,
from the original books of the Moabites ?

Balaam's prophecies at Shittim, therefore, were
committed to writing among the people to whom they
were first delivered. If these prophecies, why not
earlier prophecies of Balaam's ? for that these were
not the first and only prophecies, appears from the
reputation he held as a prophet when the war between
Balak and the Israelites broke out.

If Balaam's prophecies, why not those of earlier
prophets? The idolatry of the age in which they
lived would not prevent it ; for idolatry is always
superstitious, and superstition would receive without

X 4

312

distinction whatever went under the name of a pro-
phecy, especially if the style in which it was con-
ceived might at all suit with its pretensions. Accord-
ingly we find, that idolaters were not at all deficient
in their veneration for the true })rophets. It was
rather their error, that without distinguishing between
the true prophet and the false, they entertained an
extravagant respect for both, ascribing to them not
only a foresight, but a connnand of futurity. This
unreasonable belief in the prophet, not as the mes-
senger, but as the assessor of the gods, sharing their
power rather than declaring their will, was itself a
branch of idolatry, even when the true prophet was
the object of it. But the consequence of this super-
stition would be, that all proj)liecies, true and false,
would be promiscuously recorded. At first, perhaps,
while idolatry, in Shem's family at least, was the
crime of individuals only, and the true worship of
God had the support of the civil magistrate ; (and in
the country where Job and Balaam lived, the first
public defection must have taken place in the interval
between Job and Balaam ; for, in Job's time, the first
and mildest species of idolatry, the worship of the
sun and moon, was an inicpiity punished by the judge; )
while this state of things continued, prophecies would
be added from time to time, as they were delivered,
to those earlier collections of sacred history, which,
if our conjecture be admitted that they existed, would
probably be in the custody of the priests.

If no collections of history of the antiquity we have
supposed existed, the first pro])hecies that were com-
mitted to writing would form a sacred volume, which
miquestionably would be committed to the care of" the
priests, whose oflice it would be to add to it from time

SIS

to time any later prophecies that might seem of suffi-
cient importance to be registered in the archives of the
church ; for this is agreeable to what we find to have
been in later ages the universal practice of all nations.
Among all nations certain books, from the supposed
authenticity of early records and pretended oracles
which they contain, have been holden in religious
veneration ; and these have ever been preserved in
the temples under the care of the priests, who from
time to time have added such new matter as to them-
selves and the civil rulers, might seem of sufficient
moment to challenge a place in these sacred registers.
We have an instance of this practice among God's
people ; for when Joshua, some little time before his
death, by his last pathetic exhortation to the general
assembly of the tribes of Israel, had brought the peo-
ple to a solemn renewal of their vows of obedience to
Jehovah, he wrote the story of the whole transaction
in the book of the law of God. He added this nar-
rative to the sacred volume of the law, which, by Moses*
express command, was deposited in the sanctuary on
one side of the ark of the covenant. Now, while the
priests and the magistrates were themselves free from
any idolatrous taint, the sacred books in their custody
would suffer no wilful corruption. But when the
keepers of these books became themselves infected
with idolatrous superstition, they would not lose their
veneration for writings which had long been esteemed
divine, nor would they be so hardy as to destroy any part
of the original deposit, or even to make any considerable
alterations in the text, however unfavourable it might
be to the new system in the interests of which they were
now engaged. The contrariety would not be perceived,
nor would such measures be taken to abolish it. Priest-

314

craft indeed is politic and daring, but simple supersti-
tion is both timid and indiscreet. Priestcraft was the
growth of later ages, and the conse(iuence of a further
corruption. For priestcraft, which is a cunning man-
agement of the superstitions of the people for the
temporal advantage of the priesthood, supposes a
priesthood itself free of superstition, and was never
known in the world till the Gentile priests of sincere
idolaters (if the expression may be allowed) became
intidels. Simple superstition was the first stage of
the corruption among priests, no less than laics ;
and simple superstition hath no freedom in the
pursuit of ends, no determination in the choice of
means, but is the slave of fear and habit.

Habit therefore previously formed, would, for some
time, preserve a respect for the records of the ancient
church, when the pure religion was forsaken. And
while this habit operated, fear would prevent any cor-
ruptions of them by wilful mutilaticm, changes or
erasures. They would be liable, however, to a corrup-
tion of another kind. The priests receiving false oracles
with no less veneration than the true, and zealous for
the credit of superstitious rites of worship, would
make large additions of fable to the historic part, and
of feigned })redictions of impostors to the j)ro})hetic.
Still the original true history and true prophecy would
])e preserved, and, blended with the false, would,
iVom age to age, while the corruption lasted, be care-
fully laid up under the care of the priests, and make
a part of the treasures of the heathen temples.

Nor is the strange mixture of sense and absurdity,
of rational religion and impious su])erstition, which
ap])ear in the lives and opinions of the wiser heathens,
to be traced with equal probability to any other
jiource.

315

The purest morals in the ordinary life, joined with
obscene and impious rites of worship ; a just notion
of the moral attributes of the Deity, accompanied
with a belief in the subordinate power of impure and
cruel dsemons ; a clear understanding of the nature
of the human mind as an immaterial substance and a
voluntary agent, connected with a persuasion of the
influence of the stars on the affairs of men, not only
in the revolutions and commotions of empires, but
on the private fortunes of every individual : — these
were the inconsistencies, not only of the popu-
lar creed and of the popular practice, but of the
creed and of the practice of the wisest and the best
of their philosophers. Socrates himself, pure as his
morality and sublime as his theology were, so far as
the supreme God was their object, worshipped the gods
of his country according to the established rites.*

Now, how may we account for these contradictions
in the opinions, and these inconsistencies in the con-
duct, of wise and conscientious men ? for such, it must
be confessed, many of the heathen philosophers were,
notwithstanding the abuse which is sometimes so
liberally bestowed upon them by ignorant declaimers.
Whence was it, that the same men should practise
rational devotion in the closet, and come abroad to
join in a rank superstition ? that they shoidd form
themselves to the general habits of sobriety and tem-
perance, and yet occasionally partake of the indecent
liberties of a Greek festival ? unless it was that they
found the principles of true religion and the rites of an
idolatrous worship established on what appeared to them
the same authority, upon the credit of their sacred

* That he died a martyr to the doctrine of the unity of the
Divine substance, is a vulgar error.

.SlO

books, in which both were alike inculcated ; books,
to which they could not but allow some authority, at
the same time that they had no certain means of dis-
tinguishing the authentic part from later and corrupt
additions. Be that as it may, whether this might
be the true source of that inconsistency of principle
and practice which was so striking in the lives of
virtuous heathens, and is really a phenomenon in the
history of mankind, (which I mention, only because
it affords a collateral argument for the truth of per-
haps the only supposition by which it may be satis-
factorily explained;) the existence of such books
as I have described, composed of fable joined with
true history and of ftdse prophecies of great antiquity,
added to more ancient jiredictions of (lod's true pro-
phets, will hardly bear a doubt. Since it is the neces-
sary consequence of principles which cannot reasonably
be disputed, that in early ages the worshippers of the
true God would use all means to ])reserve the me-
mory of the first revelations, and that the first idola-
ters, retaining a blind veneration for these ancient
collections, when they no longer knew the real im-
portance of them, would not be less careful to ])reserve
the false oracles in which they ecjualiy believed. If
such books existed, it cannot bear a doubt that they
made the ground-work of all the idolatrous worship
of later ages, and, together with the corruption,
were the means of perpetuating souie disguised and
obscure remembrance of true j)rophecies. So wonder-
fully liath Providence over-ruled the follies and
the criuies of men, rendering them the instruments
of his own purpose, and the means of general and
lastinti jrood. It was to the reuuiins of these
books, which I have shown you to have been in
fact the corrupted and nnitilated records of the patii-

317

archal church, that the Greek philosophers were
probably indebted for those fragments of the patri-
archal creed, from which they drew the just notions
that we find scattered in their writings, of the immor-
tality of the soul, a future retribution, the unity of the
Divine substance, and even of the trinity of Persons ;
for of this the sages of the Pythagorean and Platonic
schools had some obscure and distorted apprehensions.
And to no other source can we refer the expectation
that prevailed in the heathen world at large, of a
great Personage to arise in some part of the East for
the general advantage of mankind.

And in this, I think, you will now agree with me,
if you bear in mind the fact that I set out with prov-
ing from historical evidence, that certain books which
were preserved as a sacred treasure in the heathen
temples, contained explicit prophecies of Christ;
which are more likely to have been ancient prophe-
cies preserved in the manner I have described, though
not without a mixture of corruption, for which, too,
I have accounted, than the involuntary effusions of
the impostors of later ages, occasionally uttering true
predictions under a compulsive influence of the Divine
Spirit: an opinion which, I am persuaded, would
never have been adopted, had not the severe notions
that too long prevailed of an original reprobation of
the greater part of mankind, made men unwilling to
believe that heathens could be in possession of the
smallest particle of true prophecy, and of course cut off
all enquiry after the means by which it might be con-
veyed to them. Beside that, in all questions of dif-
ficulty, as this must be confessed to be, men are apt
rather to consult their ease, by taking up with the
first plausible solution their invention may devise,
than to submit to the labour of an accurate investi-

gatioii of facts, and a circumspt'ct deduction of con-
sequences. The fact, however, that l)ooks were pre-
served ill the heathen temples, wliich contained true
jiropliecies of Christ, rests, as I li.ive shown you, upon
tlie hi«rlicst historical evidence. Xor does it rest alone
upon the contents of tliose books which were preserved
at Rome under the name of tlie (3racles of the Cu-
maian Sibyl ; the same, perhaps, mij^ht be established
by another work, which was of no less authority in the
East, where it passed for the work of llystaspes, a
Persian iVIagus of high antiquity. I forbear, how-
ever, to exhaust your patience by pushing the enquiry
any farther, and shall now dismiss the subject by cau-
tioning you not to take alarm at the names of a Sibyl
or a Magus. I assert, not that any of the fabled Sibyls
of the old mythology uttered true prophecies, but that
some of the ])r()})liecies which were ascribed to Sibvls
were true pro})]iecies, which the ignorant heathens
ascribed to those fal)ulous personages, when the true
origin of them was forgotten. For Hystaspes, I will
not too confidently assert that he was not the com-
piler of the writings which were current under his
name ; but I conceive he was only tlie compiler from
orijjinals of hiirh authoritv. And a Ma<rus, in the
old sense of the word, had nothing in connnon with
the impostors that are now called ujagicians. 'J'he
Magi were wise men who applied tliemselves to the
study of nature and religion. The religion of the
Persians in the latest age that can be given to llys-
taspes, if it was at all tainted with idolatry, was only
tainted in the fust degree. And even in much later
times Eastern Magi were the first w«)rshippers of
Mary's Holy Child; which sliould remove anv pre-
judice tlu' nanu" of a M;igus might create.

FOUR DISCOURSES

ON THE

NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE

BY WHICH THE FACT

OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION

IS ESTABLISHED.

321

SERMON I.

Acts, x. 40, 41.

Hhn God liaised up the third day^ and showed him
openly ; not to all the people^ hut to witnesses
chosen before of God,

1 HE prop and pillar of the Christian's hope (which
being once removed the entire building would give
way), is the great event which we at this season com-
memorate, the resurrection of our Lord ; insomuch
that the evidence of that fact may properly be consi-
dered as the seal of his pretensions, and of the ex-
pectation of his followers. If, notwithstanding the
pure and holy life which Jesus led, the sublimity of
the doctrine which he taught, and the natural excel-
lence of the duties which he enjoined ; if, after all the
miracles which he performed, he was at last forsaken
of the God to whose service his life had been devoted;
if his soul at last was left in hell, and the Holy One
of God was suffered, like a common man, to become
the prey of worms and putrefaction, then truly is our
preaching vain, and your faith is vain. It is to no
purpose that we exhort you to sacrifice present interest
to future hopes ; to renounce the gratifications of sense
for those promised enjoyments in the presence of God ;
to rely on his atonement for the pardon of involuntary

VOL. II. Y

offences ; and to trust to a continual sup])ly of the
Holy Spirit, proportioned to the temptations \vliich
the worhl presents. It is to no purpose tliat ye sub-
mit to a life of mortification and constraint, of warfare
with the world, and of conHict with the sensual ap-
petite : it is to no ])uiiiose that ye stand in jeopardy
every hour, in painful a})prehension of the wiles of the
great deceiver, the treachery of your own unguarded
hearts, and the sallies of unconquered appetites. *' If
Christ he not risen from the dead," all promises that
are made to you in his name are vain, and the contempt
of the present world is folly. If Christ be not risen
from the dead, the consequence must either be, that
he was an inijioster, and that his whole doctrine was
a fraud ; or if the purity of his life might still screen
him from so foul an imputation, and the truth of his
pretensions be supposed consistent with a faihue of
his predictions in the most important article, you
woukl only have in him a discouraging example of"
how little estimation in the sight of Ciod is the utmost
heicrht of virtue to which human nature can attain.
If neither the unsjiotted sanctity of our Saviour's cha-
racter, nor his intimate union with the first principle
of life itself, could give him a deliverance from the
bonds of death, what hope for us wlio have neithei-
claim nor plea but what is founded on the value of the
Redeemer's sufferings ; no union with (lod i)ut what
we enjoy as the disciples and worshippers of" his incar-
nate Son. But, beloved, ♦' Christ is risen from the
dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept."
His rrsf/rrrcfiofi was the accom])lishment both of the
ancient jjrophecies and of his own prediction ; a de-
claration on the ])art of God that the great atonement
was accej)ted ; an attestation to the truth of our Sa-

323

vioiir*s doctrine and of his high pretensions ; a con-
firmation of the hopes of his followers, which renders
it no less unreasonable, as the case stands, to doubt of
the ultimate completion of his largest promises, than
it would have been to hope, had his promises been
actually found to fliil in so principal an instance. We
have reason, therefore, to be thankful, that in the first
preaching of the Gospel, Providence ordained that a
fact of such importance should be accompanied with
irresistible evidence. Nor can we better employ the
present season which the church devotes to the com-
memoration of this great event, than in considering
how complete the evidence of the fact is, notwith-
standing the cavils that may be raised against it. For
this reason I have chosen for my text a passage of
Holy Writ, in which, as it stands at least in our
English Bibles, the evidence is set forth to the least
advantage.

The proof of the fact arises, we are told, from the
testimony of those, who, from the time of our Lord's
first entrance on his ministry, had been his constant
attendants. Their report was, that the sepulchre, in
which his body had been laid, was found empty on the
third morning from the day of his crucifixion, not-
withstanding the precaution which the Jews had taken
to set sentinels to prevent a fraudulent removal of the
body by his disciples ; — that his resurrection was
declared by angels to certain of his female attendants,
who, for the purpose of embalming his body, made an
early visit to the sepulchre ; — that he appeared to
these women on their return to the city, and that
same evening came unexpectedly upon the eleven
apostles as they sat at meat ; — that for forty days
after this he appeared from time to time to the apostles,

Y 2

324

sometimes partaking of their meals, discoursing; with
them upon tlie propapjation of tlie Gospel, and show-
ing himself alive hy many infallible proofs.

The credibility of evidence in all cases arises from
the number, the information, and the veracity of the
witnesses. The ninnber of the witnesses in the pre-
sent case, if we reckon only the eleven apostles (and
many more might be reckoned), was far greater than
has ever been deemed sufficient to establish a fact in
a court of justice in the most intricate and weighty
causes. Their information upon the general point
in question, " that our Lord was seen alive after his
crucifixion," was the most complete that can be
imagined : — they could not be mistaken in his per-
son, who had so long and so constantly attended him.
The veracity of a witness is to be measured, not sim-
ply by the probity of his disposition and his habits of
sincerity, but by the motives which circumstances may
present to him to adhere to the truth, or to deviate
from it. No man loves falsehood for its own sake : no
man, therefore, deliberately propagates a lie, but for
tlie sake of some advantage to himself; and the advan-
tage which a man pursues by falsehood must always
be something in the present world : his ease and
security, or the advancement of his fortune. For
no one who looks forward to a future state thinks
that his interest there may be served by falsehood.
It always, therefore, heightens the credit of a witness,
if he is materially a sufferer by the testimony which
he gives, when he could not suffer, either in fortune,
ease, or reputation, by a contrary testimony. The
a])Ostles asserted our Lord's resurrection to their o\mi
loss, and at tlie hazard of their lives. To have
denied his resurrection, at least to have disproved it.

325

wliicli the apostles might easily have done had the
thing been a fiction ; to have rendered it in any liigh
degree questionable, which any of the apostles might
have done, had not the guilt of falsehood and pre-
varication seemed to them a greater evil than any suf-
ferings which the powers of tliis world could inflict,
had been the certain road to wealth and honours.

To the charms of wealth and honours the apostles
were not insensible. It was evidently the hopes of
becoming the first ministers of the first monarch upon
earth, which at first attached the sons of Zebcdee to
their master's service. The twelve were thrown into
a consternation, by our Lord's reflection on the in-
consistency of the love of riches and the pursuit of
heaven ; conscious, no doubt, that they were not
exempt from the desire of riches, although not born to
the expectation of them ; and Simon Peter discovered
a great anxiety to know what valuable acquisitions he
was to make in our Lord's service, in consideration
of the old crazy boat and tattered nets, (his all, he
called them,) which he had left upon the Galilean
lake to follow Christ. Nor were the apostles regard-
less of suffering and danger. Their desertion of our
Lord in the garden of Gethsemane showed them by
no means unconcerned about the safety of their own
persons. Not, therefore, to insist on the probity of
the apostles (which appears in many circumstances
of the evangelical history), their veracity, by the cir-
cumstances in which they were placed, is, I maintain,
rendered unquestionable. They persevered in an as-
severation which exposed them to the highest indig-
nities, and to the cruellest persecution ; to the loss of
fame, of property, of liberty, and life, when a denial
or recantation might have secured to them the most

Y 3

3'26

liberal rewards, and the most honourable distinctions,
which the favour of princes and statesmen could
bestow. In evei'y circumstance, therefore, for the
numbers, the iiiforwatiou, and the reracity of the
witnesses, no testimony could surpass in its de«i;ree of
credibility that which was borne by the apostles to
the fact of our Lord's resurrection.

It is a very singular circumstance in this testimony,
that it is such as no length of time can diminish. It
is founded upon the universal principles of human
nature, upon maxhns which are the same in all ages,
and operate with equal strength in all mankind, under
all the varieties of temper and habit of constitution.
So long as it shall be contrary to the first principles
of the human mind to delight in falsehood for its
own sake ; so long as it shall be true that no man
willingly propagates a lie to his own detriment and to
no puq)Ose ; so long it will be certain that the apos-
tles were serious and sincere in the assertion of our
Lord's resurrection. So long as it shall be absurd to
suppose, that twelve men could all be deceived in the
person of a friend with whom they had all lived three
years, so long it will be certain that the apostles were
competent to judge of the truth and leality of the
fact which they asserted. So long as it shall be in
the nature of man, for his own interest and ease, to
be dearer than that of another to himself, so long it
will be an absurdity to supjjose, that twelve men
should persevere for years in the joint attestation of a
lie, to the great detriment of every individual of the
conspiracy, and without any joint or si'parate advan-
tage, when any of theui had it in his pouir, by a
discovery of the fraud, to advance his tnni fnnr mid
forfiuir bv the saciiliee of nothing nion- dear to him

327

than the reputation of the rest ; and so long will it
be incredible that the story of our Lord's resurrection
was a fiction which the twelve men (to mention no
greater number), with unparalleled fortitude, and with
equal folly, conspired to support. So long, there-
fore, as the evangelical history shall be preserved
entire ; that is, so long as the historical books of the
New Testament shall be extant in the world, so long
the credibility of the apostles' testimony will remain
whole and unimpaired. As this circumstance, to
have in itself the principle of permanency, never hap-
pened to human testimony in any other instance, this
preservation of the form and integrity of the apos-
tolic evidence, amidst all the storms and wrecks which
human science, like all things human, hath in the
course of ages undergone, is, like the preservation of
the Jewish nation, something of a standing miracle.
It shows, in the original propagation of the Gospel,
that contrivance and forecast in the plan, that power
in the execution, which are far beyond the natural
abilities of the human mind, and declares that the
whole work and counsel was of God.

It may seem, perhaps, that the veracity of the
apostles, in the report of our Lord's resurrection, is
too hastily concluded, from the hardships which they
incurred by their constancy in the asseveration.
Wealth and power are not the only objects to which
men will sacrifice their ease, their fortinies, and their
lives. That personal consequence which is acquired
by bold and arduous undertakings, and the fame which
follows them in after-ages, are sought by some as the
highest ffood : and as this ambition is incident to the
most generous and the most active minds, it is in this
pursuit that we see men the most ready to encounter

Y 4

3-28

danf]^cr and renounce enjoyment. The honour of
beinjj: hum reuienibered as the founders of a sect,
nn'glit, with men of a certain turn of mind, be a
motive to endure all the hardships which the apostles
underwent. It must be confessed, that men will
sacrifice much to rescue their memories from oblivion,
and that the itmie of being the first teachers of a new
philosophy or a new religion, will, by its singularity,
be preferred to any other by minds of a particular
complexion. But, of all men that ever lived, the
apostles were, perhaps, the least likely to be touched
with this ambition. Their birth was mean, their occu-
pation laborious, their highest attainments were proba-
bly no more than to be able to repeat the Ten Com-
mandments, and to have learned by rote some of the
first principles of the Jewish faith. Such men were
likely to be strangers to the ])ride of learning, and the
ambition of invention and discovery. At least, that
twelve men of their condition should be found in any
one country, at any one time, inflamed with this
passion in the degree in which they nnist all have
})een, if it was the ])rinciple which produced their
unanimity tuid firmness in the propagation of a fiction
at all hazards ; that but one of the twelve should
prove false to so strange a combination ; that he in a
lit of despair and reuu)rse, the effect oi' his treachery,
should hang himself, and dying by his own hand, not
die without evident signs of CJod's anger ])ursuing
him in his last moments ; — all this seems a unich
g eater improbability than the extraordinary fact which
is supported by their testimony. It might seem
less extravagant to suppose, that the saugiiiue hopes
which they had conceived, of the advancement of
their itwn fortunes in the kingdom of that temporal

329

Messiah which they had expected in our Lord, toge-
ther with his promise of rising on the third day after
the death which he foretold he was to suffer (to which
promise, however, as well as to the prediction of his
death, the fact seems to be they had given little at-
tention) : it might, I say, be less extravagant to
suppose, that this repeated promise of our Lord's, to-
gether with their own hopes of advancement in his
temporal kingdom, might make them after his death
an easy prey to the art of some new imposter, who
might take advantage of some general resemblance in
himself to the person and features of the blessed Je-
sus, to personate their crucified Master. This might
seem a supposition less extravagant than the former,
that the apostles ivere supported in the asseveration
of a falsehood Jjy an ambition seldom incident to
men of low birth and mean attainments. But the
fact is, that the evangelical history equally excludes
the one and the other supposition. If there was any
thing of fraud and delusion in the story of our Lord's
resurrection, it is very evident the apostles must have
had a principal share in the contrivance ; if his resur-
rection was a fiction, the body was conveyed away in
the night.

The report of his resurrection was spread early in
the next morning by some of his female disciples ;
their tale was presently confirmed, not, indeed, in the
whole, but in some collateral and secondary circum-
stances, by the testimonies of St. Peter and St. John.
Some few hours after, Peter vouches that he had seen
our Saviour. Li the afternoon two of the disciples
bring the news to the apostles, that they had met with
him in their way to a village in the neighbourhood of
Jerusalem ; and they relate, that they had no sooner

330

recofTiiised liis person thiiii he suddenly disappeared.
Their tale was hardly finished uhen Jesus in person
salutes the company. From this time ten of the eleven
apostles are loud in the assertion of his recovery from
the <j;rave ; and, a week after, tlie eleventh is cured
of his aii'ected incredulity, and joins in the report of
his associates. The apostles, either separately or in
company, converse with him repeatedly. He tells
them that all power is given him in heaven and in
earth ; he formally invests them with a connnission to
preach the Gospel to the whole world, and to form a
universal church, open to all nations ; at last, he leads
them out to Bethany, and there, in the act of bestow-
ing on them a solemn benediction, he was raised from
the earth and carried to hc^aven in their sight. Of
the four writers who have transmitted this story, two,
Matthew and John, were apostles. The other two,
Mark and Luke, by the consent of all anti(|uity, wrote
under the inspection of apostles, — Mark under the
direction of St. Peter, Luke of St. Paul. The credit,
therefore, of the apostles is pledged for the particulars
of the narrative ; and whether we consider the story
in itself, or the writers of the story, it is evident, that
if it was at all a fiction the apostles had a principid
share in the fabrication of it. 15ut since the apostles
had no motive to fabricate the lie, or to persevere in
the propagation of it, since the force of teni])tation
drew the other way, that is, to iuduci' them to deny
the fact, or desist at least from the avowal of it ; that
is, since their very veracity in this ])articular instance
at least is uncpiestionable, it follows, that if" their re-
])ort was a fiction, it was not of" tluir invention ; and
yet it lias l)een sliown, that in the invention they nnist
have had a ])rijicipal part. A fiction not coined bv

331

them, and of which they were still the coiners, is surely
the fiction of a fiction, the dream of a distempered
brain. So that if any hmiian testimony ever attained
the certainty of demonstration, it is in this instance of
our Lord's resurrection ; which is established with far
greater certainty by the evidence of the apostles than
any other fact in the whole compass of history, sacred
or profane. Thus complete and perfect is the testi-
mony of the twelve apostles to the matter in question.
But a greater testimony is yet behind.

Let it be supposed that the apostles, to avoid the
infamy of having been themselves deceived, might
conspire to propagate the delusion, and either fabri-
cated the story of our Lord's resurrection with all its
circumstances, or entered into the views of some new
deceiver who had the resolution to personate Jesus
after his crucifixion. Whence, then, was it that this
deceit obtained the testimony of the Holy Spirit ?
The concurrent testimony of the apostles themselves
and the Holy Spirit form the evidence of our Lord's
resurrection. " He shall testify of me," said our Lord
before he suffered, " and ye also shall bear witness."
That notable miracles were done by the apostles in
the name of the Lord Jesus was so manifest to all
them that dwelt in Jerusalem, that the bitterest ene-
mies of their doctrine could not deny it ; nor was it
ever denied by the infidels of antiquity. On the con-
trary, their attempt to account for it by the power of
magic is a confession of the fact ; and while the fact
is confessed, the conclusion from the fact is obvious
and inevitable. To refer the miracles, which were
wrouo-ht in confirmation of a doctrine which went to
the extirpation of every corruption in morals and in
worship, and to the establishment of a practical reli-

332

j]jion of good works spiiiiiring from an active faith, to
the spirit of dehision, is a subterfuge for inlidelity
whicli that spirit only could suggest.

I have now, briefly indeed, ami i)i a summary way,
but more ])artieulariy than 1 thought to do, laid before
you the irrefragable and permanent nature of the
testimony by which the fact of our Lord's resurrection
is supported. It is my intention to discuss a certain
objection to this evidence, as the evidence is stated in
my text, which nnist be allowed to be very plausible
in the first appearance of it. I mean to show, that it
is the necessary consequence of certain circumstances,
which indispensably recpiire that the evidence of tlie
resurrection should be just what it is ; insomuch that
the proof would be rather weakened than im])roved by
any attempt to complete it in the ])art in which it is
supposed to be deficient. But this I shall reserve for
future discourses. jNIeanwhile you will remember,
that the entire evidence of our Lord's resurrection
consists of two parts, — the testimony of the apostles,
and the testimony of the Spirit. The testimony of
the apostles is the most complete that human testi-
mony every was; the testimony of the Spirit is unex-
ceptionable. The fact, therefore, is established. So
certain as it is that Christ died, so certain it is that
lie is risen. He died for om- sins, he is risen for our
justilication. And remember, that the oidy pur])ose
for which Christ died and rose again was, that we,
enlightened by his doctrine, edilied by his example,
encouraged with the certain hope of mercy, aniuiated
by the prospect of eternal glory, " may rise froui the
death t)f sin unto the life of righteousness."

333

SERMON II.

Acts, x. 40, 41.

Him God raised up the tliird day, and sliowed him
openly ; 7iot to all the people, but unto witnesses
chosen before of God.

1 HE return of the season devoted by the church to
the solemn commemoration of our Lord's glorious
resurrection seemed to admonish us, that we should
direct our attention to the evidence by which the
merciful providence of God was pleased to confirm
so extraordinary a fact. The entire evidence consists
of two branches : it is in part human, and in part
divine. The attestation of the apostles to the fact
makes the human part of the evidence ; the testimony
of the Spirit in the miraculous powers exercised by
the apostles was divine. The human part is what is
chiefly to be examined ; for the credibility of tliat
being once established, the force of the testimony of
the Spirit is obvious and irresistible : for, provided
the fact be once established, that such miracles were
performed by the apostles, these miracles were mani-
festly the ^Hvitness of God" which he bore to his
own Son. The historical evidence of the fact lies in
the testimony of the apostles themselves, and in the
concession of their adversaries. The human testi-

334

moiiji, therefore, the testimony of the apostles, is
to us, who were not eye-witnesses of tlie miracles
which they performed, the groundwork of the whole
evidence.

In my last discourse I explained to you, in a sum-
mary way, that the credihility of this testimony arises
from the uioii/m'}', the itifoDnatitni, and the verarltj/
of the witnesses. Their lunnber^ more than is re-
quired by any law to establish a fact in a court of
justice ; their iiiformatioi infallible, if an infallible
knowledge of their Master's person was the result of
an attendance upon him for three years ; their vera-
city, by the circumstances in which they were placed,
is rendered uncjuestionable : so that, in this singular
instance, if in any, the evidence of testimony emulates
the certainty of mathematical demonstration. I
showed you, that the testimony of the apostles to the
fiict of our Lord's resurrection is not more extraor-
dinarv in the degree than in the permanency of the
credibility which belongs to it. It is not only so
constituted that it must have been satisfactoiy and
irrefi'agable at the time when it was delivered, but so
innnutable are the principles on which the credit of it
stands, that by no length of time can it suffer diminu-
tion. AMiat it was to the contemporaries of the
a])()stles, the same it is to us now in the end of the
eighteenth century ; and so long as the historical
books of the New Testament shall be extant in the
world, (and to suppose that a time shall come when
they shall be no longer extant, were, I think, to mis-
trust our Master's gracious promise,) so long as
these books then shall be extant, so long the testi-
mony of the a])()stles shall ])reserve its original cre-
dibility.

335

Another circumstance must be mentioned, not less
extraordinary than the permanent nature of the testi-
mony, which may be called the popularifj/ of the
evidence. It is not always the case that a proof built
on true principles, and sound in every part, which,
when it is narrowly examined, must of consequence
be satisfactory to men of knowledge and discernment,
is of a sort to be easily and generally understood.
For the most part, perhaps, the proof of fact is a
thing more remote from popular apprehension than
scientific demonstration : for the connection of an
argument is what every one naturally and necessarily
perceives ; but between a fact and the testimony of
the witnesses who affirm it there is indeed no physical
and necessary connection. A witness may speak
rashly, without a sufficient knowledge of the fact
which he pretends to assert, or he may speak falsely,
contrary to his knowledge. Thus the folly and the
vices of men have rendered it for the most part very
difficult to perceive, how the certainty of a fact arises
from the attestations given to it ; and to appreciate
the credibility of historical evidence is become a task
for the highest and most improved abilities ; requiring
a certain dexterity and acuteness of the mind in de-
tecting great fallacies, and in reconciling seeming
inconsistencies, which is seldom to be acquired in any
considerable degree but by a practical familiarity with
the habits of the world, joined to an accurate and
philosophical study of mankind. And, accordingly,
we see, that men of the slowest apprehension, if they
have had but a sufficient degree of experience to make
them jealous of being imposed upon, are always the
most averse to believe extraordinary narrations. But,
in the case before us, no extraordinary penetration is

336

requisite to perceive the infaUHiilitif of ihe evidefice.
Every man has experienced the certainty with which
lie distinguishes the person and the features of a
friend. Every one knows how dearly he loves him-
self; with what reluctance he would sacrifice his ease
and expose his person in any project, from which he
expected no return of profit or enjoyment. And with
this experience and these feelings, every one is quali-
fied to sit in judgment upon the fact of our Lord's
resurrection, and to decide upon the evidence. And
in this circumstance, no less than in the permanent
nature of the evidence, we may see, and we have rea-
son to adore, the hand of Providence. For to what
can we ascrihe it hut to the over-ruling j)rovidence of
God, that while the ])roof of historic facts is, for the
most part, of the most intricate and embarrassed na-
ture, the most extraordinary event which history
records should be accom])anied with a proof as uni-
versally perspicuous as the fact itself is interesting?
Every man born into the world is interested in the
event which has opened to us all the gate of heaven.
And the evidence \vhich accompanies the fact is such,
that every man born into the world is in a capacity to
derive conviction from it.

Notwithstanding, however, the solidity and the
general perspicuity of the proof, considered in itself,
it may seem to lie open to d vcnisidrnthlr oh/rctlo/i.
Many objections have indeed been brought against it.
Some have been taken from the varieties with \vhich
tlie four Evangelists relate the first declaration of the
event by the angels to the (lalilean women at tiie
sepulchre. These I consider as cavils rather than
objections. Every attentive reader of the Gosj>el know >
that the female followers of our Lord were nuuKrous.

337

He will easily discover that these numerous female
followers had made an appointment to meet at the
sepulchre at an early hour of the first day of the
week, for the purpose of embalming the body ; a bu-
siness which the intervention of the Sabbath had
obliged them to postpone. He will easily imagine
that these women would be lodged in different parts
of the city, and of consequence would come to the
sepulchre in several parties and by different paths ;
that they arrived all early, but not exactly at the same
time. He will perceive, that the detachments of the
heavenly squadron, the angels who attended on this
great occasion, to whom the business was committed
of frightening the Roman sentinels from their station,
of opening the sepulchre for the admission of the
women, and of announcing the resurrection, became
visible and invisible at pleasure, and appeared to the
women of the different parties, as they successively
arrived, in different forms, and accosted them in dif-
ferent words ; and in this way the first evidences of
the fact were multiplied, which had been single, had
the women all arrived in a body at the same instant,
and seen all the same vision.* Each evangelist, it

* The company which saw what is related by St. Matthew
(of which company Mary Magdalene, although mentioned by
the Evangelist, was not, I think, included,) went by a path
which led to the front of the sepulchre, and came within sight
of it early enough to be witnesses to the descent of the angel,
the flight of the guard, and the removal of the stone. While
these things passed, Mary Magdalene with her party were com-
ing by another path which led round the back part of the
sepulchre, and came not within sight of the entrance of the
sepulchre till the first party had left it. They, therefore, no
sooner came within sight than they saw that the stone was re-
moved, and Mary Magdalene immediately ran back to inform
VOL. TI. Z

338

may be supposed, has confined himself to that part of
tlie story wliich lie had at the first hand from the
women who had first fallen in his way, and each
woman related what she herself had seen and heard,
which was different from what had been seen and
heard by the women of another company. These few
simple observations, as they reconcile the narratives
of the several evangelists with each other, and the
particulars of each narrative with the general fact in
which they all consent, dissipate any objections that
may be raised from the varieties of their story. The
objection which I purpose to consider, in the first face
of it, is far more specious. It seems to arise spon-
taneously from the state of the evidence which is given
in the text ; and thus throwing itself in the way of
every one who reads the Bible, or \vh() hears it read,
it seems to be a stumbling-block in the way of the be-
liever, which it is our duty, if (iod shall give us the
ability, to remove. " Him hath God raised up, and
showed him openly ; not to all the people, but to wit-
nesses cliosen before of God."

Peter and John of her suspicions. The rest of the women of
tliat party proceeded to the sepulclire, entered it, and were
assured of our Lord's resurrection by the angel wlioni tiiey
found within the tomb in tlie maimer related by St. Mark. Pre-
sently after these women had left the sepulchre, Peter and John
arrived, followed by Mary Magdalene ; for .she hastened back
to the sepulchre when she apprised the apostles of her fears.
After Mary Magdalene, waiting at the sepulchre, had seen our
Lord, and was gone away to carry his message to the apostles,
Luke's women arrive, and are informed by two angels within the
tomb. In the interval between our Lord's apj)earance at the
sepulchre to Mary Magdalene, and the arrival of Luke's party,
he appeared to St. Matthew's party, who were yet upon the way
back to the city. For that the appearance to Mary Magdalene
was the first, St. Mark testifies.

339

The selection of witnesses carries, it may be said,
no very fair appearance. Jesus was seen alive after
his crucifixion, but he was seen, it should appear, by
those only who had been his early associates, who had
been employed by him to travel over the coinitry as
his heralds, proclaiming him as the long-expected
Messiah, who, by the event of his public and igno-
minious end, were involved in general contempt and
ridicule. Why was he not shown to all the people, if
the identity of his person would stand the test of a
public exhibition ? Was it not more likely, that the
Jewish people would be sooner convinced by his own
public appearance, than by the report of those who
had long been considered as the first victims of his
imposture, or the sworn accomplices of his fraud ?
The most incredulous of his enemies had declared
they would believe in him, if they might but see him
descend from the cross. Would they not much more
have believed, had they seen him on the third day
arisen from the grave ? Were the Jewish people
kindly treated when they were punished for their in-
fidelity, of which they might have been cured, had
the evidence been afforded them, which in so extra-
ordinary a case they might reasonably demand ? In
such a case, the choice of witnesses brings a suspicion
on their whole testimony ; a surmise that they were
chosen, not of God, but of themselves and their con-
federates. Perhaps they preferred persecution, with
the fame attending it, to security accompanied with
contempt ; and they pretended a selection of them-
selves to be witnesses on the part of Heaven, to give
the better colour to the lie, which they were deter-
mined, at all hazards, to maintain.

This imperfection, as it may seem, in the proof of our
z 2

340

Lord's resurrection, was not overlooked by the in-
fidels of antiquity. It was urj^ed in one of the first
written attacks upon Christianity; and Ori^a'n, wliose
elaborate confutation of that able adversary is still
extant, allows that the objection is not contemptible.
The fact which creates the whole difficulty (that Jesus
was not seen in jjublic after his interment) seems, in-
deed, confessed in the text, and confirmed in general
by the evangelical history. Nevertheless, this fact is
not to be admitted without some limitation. We read
in St. Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians, of a cer-
tain appearance of our Lord to more than five hundred
brethren at once. So large a company is not likely
to have been assembled in a house, nor is it likely that
they met by accident ; the assembly must have been
called together for some express purpose, and what
purpose so likely as to receive the satisfaction which
was absolutely afforded them, of beholding with their
own eyes their crucified Lord restored to life ? Nor
is it to be supposed, that an object of the human size
and form could be seen distinctly by five hundred per-
sons all at once, but by day-light. Here, then, is one
appearance of our Lord, in which no circumstance of
privacy could be pretended. It was by day-light ; in
the open air. Notice had been given of the time and
place of the appearance. The notice which drew
together so numerous an assembly, at a distance from
the ca])ital, or any populous town, nuist have been
very public ; and from a sight to which five hundred
brethren were admitted, it is not easy to conceive that
any who were not brethren, if they ^v^ re phased to
repair to the appointed ])lace at the ajjpointed time,
could be exchuled. Indeed, if this a))i)earance of the
five hundred, recorded by St. Paul, was the same with

341

that on the Galilean hill, recorded by St. Matthew,
which is the opinion of the most learned critics and
divines, and is highly probable, because the appear-
ance on the Galilean hill was an appearance at a
set time and place, as that to the five hundred must
have been ; — if these, I say, were one and the
same appearance, it is certain that our Lord was seen
upon this occasion by some who were not brethren.
For St. Matthew relates, that when Christ was seen
and worshipped on the Galilean hill, *' some doubted."
Not some of the eleven who are mentioned in the
preceding verse, for the eleven doubted not. Thomas
was the last of the eleven to believe, yet l^homas
ceased to doubt upon our Lord's second appearance
in the evening assembly, on the Sunday se'nnight
after his resurrection. Nor is it likely that doubters
should be included by St. Paul in the number of those
whom he dignified with the appellation of brethren.
This appearance, therefore, in Galilee was j^ublic, not
to the disciples only, but to a promiscuous multitude
of disciples and of doubtful, unbelieving Jews. The
assertion, therefore, of my text, that Christ, raised
from the dead, was not shown openly to all the people,
is to be understood with some limitation. Once he
certainly was shown openly, perhaps not oftener than
once ; and if once or twice more, still his appearance
was not public compared with the unreserved manner
of his conversation with the world during his triennial
ministry. He resorted not daily to the temple ; he
preached to no multitudes in the fields ; he performed
no public miracles ; he held no public disputations ;
he was present at no weddings ; he ate not with pub-
licans and sinners. They were only his chosen wit-
nesses to whom ocular proof was repeatedly given that

z 3

:U^2

hv was iiidet'd alive a^^aiii. In a L;ciuial way of speak-
ings it is to be confessed that lie was not shown openly
to (i// the people. But what if the assertion were
true in the utmost sense in which tlic adversary would
wish it to be accepted ? Wliat if it were ^nanted, that
the pretended appearances after the interment were
not public in any single instance ? It will follow that
our Lord, if he was really alive again, was not seen by
many : what of that ? Is it a necessary consequence
that he was not seen by some ? Is tlie no evidence
of the many who saw liim not, and liave, tlierefore,
nothing positive to say upon the ((uestion, to over-
power the explicit assertions of those who depose to
the ftict of repeated appearances ? It will hardly be
pretended tliat the bare fact, that he was not seen by
the many, amounts in itself to a ])roof that the story
of his resurrection was a iiction.

But it is supposed, I a])})rehend, that had tlie re-
surrection been real, })ui)lic a])pearances would have
heightened the proof of it ; and that, on the other
hand, if the thing was a fiction, the concealment of
tlie person who was made to pass for Jesus among the
credulous disciples was a means of preventing a de-
tection of the i'raud. And it is thought unieasonal)le
to suppose, that tlic belief of so extraordinaiy a thing
should be i-e(|uired of the world on the ])art of Hea-
ven, without the highest jiroof that could be given,
or without a lair submission of the evidence to the
strictest scrutiny. The objection, therefore, is this,
that the ])roof which is produced of the fact is less
than might have been ])rocured had the thing averred
been a reality, and that, such as it is, it was not sub-
mitted at tlie time to the examination of the public.
In niv next discoursi' I >li;ill ciKlcavniir to show vou.

343

that the objection is of" a sort to deserve less attention
than you may at first imagine, even if what it pre-
sumes were true, that the frequency of public appear-
ances would have been a means of heighteuing the
evidence of fact on the one hand, or of detecting an
imposition on the other. Secondly, I shall show you
that both these presumptions are indeed erroneous :
that an open conversation with the world would nei-
ther have added to the proof of a real resurrection,
nor contributed to the detection of a counterfeit.
And, after all, I shall show you, that frequent public
exhibitions of the person after the resurrection, if they
could have heightened the proof of the fact, had been
on other accounts improper. Insomuch, that what
the story might have gained in credit by an addition
of testimony, it would have lost in another way, by
an impropriety and inconsistency which might have
been charged upon the conduct of our Lord.

Meanwhile, if it should occur to you to wonder
that Jesus, after his resurrection, should not be shown
openly, but to chosen witnesses, remember, that by
the fundamental maxims of the doctrine which Jesus
preached, it is the privilege of the " pure in heart,"
and of them only, to see God. In some sense, in-
deed, God is seen by all mankind, and by the whole
rational creation. God is seen by all men in his
works, in the fabric and the motions of the material
world. " The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the firmament showeth his handy-work." The
very devils see him in his judgments : wise men see
him in his providential government of human actions,
in the rise and fall of states and empires : the pious
believer sees him with the eye of faith, in the miracu-
lous support and preservation of his church from the

z 4

311-

attacks of open enemies, the treacliery of false friends,
and the intemperate or the hikewarm zeal of its
weaker members. He sees liim witli the intellectual
eye discerning, in part at least, his glorious perfec-
tions ; and they, and only they who thus see him
now, shall at last literally see the majesty of the
Godhead in the person of their glorified Lord. By
the lost world Jesus shall be seen no more, except as
he hath been seen by the unbelieving Jews, in judg-
ment, when he comes to execute vengeance on them
who know not God, and obey not the Gospel ; but if
any man keep his saying, he shall be admitted to his
presence, *' that where his Saviour is, there he may
be also,"

345

SERMON III.

Acts, x. 40, 41.

Him God raised up the third day^ and showed him
openly ; not to all the people^ hut unto witnesses
chosen before of God.

In my first discourse upon this text, I endeavoured
to explain to you the credibility of the testimony
which was borne by the apostles to the fact of our
Lord's resurrection ; its original credibility at the
time when it was delivered ; its undiminished credi-
bility in all succeeding times ; and the universality of
the proof, not only as it must subsist to all ages, but
as it is accommodated to all capacities.

In a second discourse, I stated some of the principal
objections which our adversaries have raised, to elude
the force of this invincible proof. I showed you the
futility of those which are taken from a pretended
disagreement of the evangelists, in their relation of
the manner in which the discovery was made to the
women who visited the sepulchre on the Sunday
morning. I showed you, that the whole force of these
objections rests on a very improbable supposition,
which has not the least countenance in the circum-
stances of the story, that the numerous female
followers of our Lord went all in one body to the

Sl6

sepulchre ; that they all arrived, at least, in the same
instant of time, and all saw the same vision. Admit
only that the women went in different parties, that
they arrived some a little earlier, some a little later,
and that the attending angels showed themselves to
the different companies in different forms, and accosted
them in different words, and yon will find no disagree-
ment of the four evangelists, no differences in their rela-
tion, which should affect the credit of their testimony
to the general fact. Their several narrations harmo-
nise as different parts of one story, each relating the
particular part which he could hest attest.

I engaged in a more i)articular discussion of an ob-
jection, in the first face of it far more specious, found-
ed on the acknowledged concealment of the person of
Jesus after his resurrection. Forty days elapsed be-
fore he took leave of this sublunary world, by an
ascension to heaven in the sight of his apostles. In
the interval he was seen repeatedly by them and by
other disciples ; but it seems to be acknowledged in
the text, that he was not shown openly to all the
people.

I showed you, that the assertion that he was not
publicly seen, is to be understood with certain limita-
tions. That once, at least, our Lord was shown oj)enly
to as many as thought proper to repair to an appointed
place. The circumstances of this appearance will not
admit of the sup])ositi()n that any were excluded from
the sight, unless the body in which he was seen by
the five Innidrc'd was, u])on this occasion, visible only
to the brethren : — a suj)p()sition in itself not absurd,
perhaj)s not improbable, were it not set aside by St.
Matthew's testimony, that he was actually seen by
some at least who were not brethren, bv some who

347

doubted while the eleven worshipped. He was, there-
fore, upon this occasion, visible to all without distinction.

Of any other public exhibition of the person, no trace
is to be found in the history of the forty days. And if
we might suppose it to have been once or twice re-
peated, still his appearance was not public compared
with what it had been during his triennial ministry.
Nothing like an open familiar conversation with the
world can be pretended or indeed supposed. It
must be confessed, with a certain limitation, that he
was not shown openly to all the people. To the
rulers of the people he was never shown at all. His
single public appearance was not in the metropolis or
its vicinity, but in a remote corner of Galilee, where
his friends and followers were the most numerous, and
his enemies in the least credit ; insomuch that, even
in this instance, there was something of a selection of
spectators ; and the candid believer, by the evidence
of the Gospel history itself, is reduced to a concession,
(a concession, however, in which he will find cause
to glory,) that whatever reality there may be in the
story of his resurrection, Jesus ever after it shunned
the public eye.

It is imagined by the adversary, that had the re-
surrection been real, public appearances would have
heightened the proof of it ; and that, on the other
hand, if the thing was a fiction, concealment of the
person was a means of preventing a ready detection
of the fraud. And he thinks it unreasonable to sup-
pose, that the belief of a thing so extraordinary should
be required of the world on the part of Heaven,
without the highest proof that could be given, or
without a fair submission of the evidence, such as it
might be, to the severest scrutiny. The sum of the

8 IS

objection, then, is this, that tlic proof which is pro-
duced of tlie fact is less tliaii nii<r]it liave been given
had tlie tiling averred been a reality, and that, such
as it is, it was not fairly submitted at the time to the
examination of the public.

I come now to show you, as I engaged to do,^r.v^,
That the objection is really of a sort to deserve little
attention, even if what it presumes were true, that
the frequency of public appearances would have
heightened proof on the one hand, or facilitated the
detection of fraud on the other.

Secondh/, That the objection is erroneous in both
these suppositions.

And when I shall have thus overturned the ob-
jection, I shall show you, that without any regard to
what the proof of the fact might have gained by the
frequency of public appearances, or what it might
lose by the want of them, other considerations ren-
dered it improper and indecent, that our Lord, arisen
from the grave, should renew his open conversation
with the world in general. So that, be the force of
the objection what it may, if there be any truth in
our Saviour's high pretensions, any thing of reality
in the evangelical scheme of redemption, his resur-
rection, 1)0 it ever so much a fact, must, in the nature
of the thing, be obnoxious to this objection. That
Christ should rise from the dead, and that risen he
should converse openly and familiarly with the world
in the manor in which he did before his passion, these
two things are incompatible ; so that if both appeared
as facts u])on the sacred records, the ])r()of whicli it is
sup])osed might have accrued to the resurrection from
the fre(piency of public appearances, would have been
ovei-powered by the general incoherence oi' the story.

3W

First, I say, the objection, were the assumptions
true on which it rests, would be of little weight. The
reality of a fact is always to be measured by the posi-
tive proof on one side or the other, which is really
extant in the world. If no proof is found but what
is in itself imperfect, as when the witnesses seem too
few, or their reports contradictory, the fact is ques-
tionable. But if any proof exists in itself unexception-
able, the thing is not to be questioned for the mere
want of other proofs, which men, living at a distance
from the time and the scene of the business, may
imagine it might have had. Men are very apt to lose
sight of this principle. They are apt to amuse them-
selves with a display of their sagacity (for such they
think it) in alleging the proof that might have been,
when their penetration would be better shown in a
fair examination of what is actually extant. They
are not aware, that in thus opposing proof which is
not, to that which is, they are really weighing a
shadow against a substance ; and that the highest
argument of a weak mind (an imputation which they
most dread) is not to feel the force of present evi-
dence. Thus it is, that " professing themselves wise
they become fools." This is an answer which will ap-
ply on every occasion, when men resist the conviction
of a proof, in which they can discover no fallacy or im-
perfection, upon a pretence that some collateral proof
of the same fact, which w^ould have been more satis-
factory, is wanting. An objection of this sort is
always frivolous, even when it is true that the re-
quired proof, had it been extant, would have been
more satisfactory than any that is found, provided what
is found be in itself a just proof, true in its principles,
coherent in its parts, and fair in its conclusions.

350

But, secoiully, I affirm, that in tlie particular case
before us, tlie rccpiirecl proof wliich is supposed to be
wanting, had it been <ijiven, would have been no addi-
tion to the evidence of the thin<^ in question. If our
Lord really rose from the grave, as we believe lie did,
the evidence of the fact would not have been heighten-
ed by repeated j)ublic appearances to the Jewish
people. It is evident, that to have seen him ever so
often after his resurrection would have qualified no
one to be a witness of the fact, who had not such a
previous knowledge of his person as might enable
him to perceive and attest its identity. Perhaps we
may insist upon another circumstance, that every one
pretending to avouch the resurrection should have
been an eye-witness of the crucifixion. For the fact
to be attested is, that this same man " was dead and
is alive ao-ain." But in the innumerable multitude
that was assembled to behold the tragic scene on
Calvary, how many may be supposed to have had such
a view of the Divine Sufferer, as might bring them
ac(punnted with his person ? The far greater ])art not
only saw him at a distance, but, in the tumult which
would attend the dismal spectacle, they would never
get a steady view : they would now and then catch a
momentary glimpse of a part only of his ])erson, wliich
they would lose again before any distinct impression
could be made. Those who saw the whole trans-
action from the most advantageous stations would
see the cheeks pale, the features convulsed, the whole
body distorted with the torture of the punishment.
Those who saw the very beginning of this horrid
business, who saw Jesus before he was fastened to
the cross, would see him exhausted with the mental
agony in the garden, worn down with the fatigue of

351

his long examination, and with the pain of those pre-
paratory inflictions, which, by the Roman law, by
the terms of which he suffered, were the constant
prelude to a capital execution, and in this instance
had not been spared. Nor would the spectators be
sufficiently composed, agitated as they all would be,
some with the horror of the scene, some with pity of
his sufferings, some with joy for the success of their
infernal machinations ; under one or another of these
various emotions none would be sufficiently composed
to observe and remark the peculiarities of his person.
Insomuch, that of those who saw him now for the first
time, few, perhaps, had he ever been seen by them
again, would have known him from either of the
malefactors who were made the companions of his
agonies.

It may seem, perhaps, that at the time of our Sa-
viour's crucifixion, his person must have been gene-
rally well known among the Jews, when, for a longer
time than three years, he had sustained the public
character of a teacher and a prophet. He had been
much resorted to for the fame of his doctrine, and
for the benefit of his miracles, as well as for an
opinion which, to the moment of his apprehension,
prevailed among the common people, that he would
prove the long-expected deliverer of the nation. It
may be presumed, therefore, that many who saw him
expire on the cross were previously well acquainted
with his person. But if it be considered, that during
the whole period of his ministry he was constantly in
motion, travelling from place to place ; that the mul-
titudes that followed him, whenever he appeared in pub-
lic, were for the most part numerous, to the amount
of several thousands, it will seem improbable that the

332

number of those could be great, who luid the good
fortune to get a distinct siglit of him oftcner than
once in tlie whole course of his triennial ministry.
Of conse(juence, it is impro])able that many beside his
constant followers knew him well enough to identify
his person. They who had not this di.stinct know ledge
of his person, liowever frequent the public appearances
liad been after tlie resurrection, were not qualified to
be irifnes.se.s of the fact even to themselves. The
conviction that the person whom they now saw alive
was the same person who had been put to death, they
must liave owed to the attestations of those who
knew him better than they. And the few who might
be the best acquainted with his person, still were not
qualified to be initneHses of liis resurrection fo the
icorldy unless tlieir knowledge of the person wtis
itself a fact of public notoriety. For, to establish
the credit of a witness, it is not sutKcient that he be
really competent to judge for himself of the reality of
the fact which he takes it upon him to attest, but his
competency in the matter must be a thing generally
known and understood. Now this wus the case of
the apostles. It is a notorious fact, that they could
not be incompetent in the knowledge of their Mas-
ter's person presented to tlieir senses. But the same
thing, although it might have been etjually true,
could not be equally manifest of any who had pre-
tended to join in their attestation, from a knowledge
of his person actpiired in accidental interviews, of
which the reality was known only to themselves.
Their testimony would rather have discredited the
cause than heightened the evidence ; as in all cases
the depositions of witnesses suspected of incompe-
tency have no effect but to create a prejudice against

353

the fact which they assert, and to diminish the force
of better testimony, which, left to itself, would have
produced conviction.

It appears, therefore, upon a nice discussion of the
question, that the evidence which we actually have of
our Lord's resurrection, in the testimony of the
chosen witnesses^ is indeed the greatest of which the
fact is naturally capable. No other could have been
transmitted as original testimony to posterity, no
other could have been satisfactory to the public at
the time. The demand of frequent public exhibitions
of the person is the demand of folly ; not perceiving
the distinction between a just proof, by which a fact
may be established, and those vague reports which
every one adopts and no one owns, which serve only
to multiply doubt and to propagate uncertainty.
Public appearances could have added nothing to the
testimony of the chosen witnesses. By destroying
the precision of the story, they might have diminished
the efficacy of its proper evidence. The conviction
to be derived from them would have been appropriated
to the few who had a distinct knowledge of our Sa-
viour's person, and the whole benefit of their convic-
tion would have been confined to themselves. If it
should seem that such persons had a right to the
evidence of their own senses, because they were qua-
lified to receive it, the principle perhaps might be
doubted ; for the testimony of the apostles was of no
less force with respect to these persons than to the
rest of the world ; and I cannot see that any man in
any case has a right to more than proof. Yet it may
be presumed, that a provision was mercifully made
for their particular conviction by the appearance in
Galilee. It is remarkable at least, that the province

VOL. n. A A

^54.

where our Saviour's person must have been the most
generally known, was chosen for the scene of the single
public exhibition. The testimony of sense was, by
this choice of" the ])lace of appearance, made as ge-
neral as a single ap])carance couhl make it ; and nu)re,
perhaps, was not to be done for the satisfaction of
individuals, without hazardhig the credit of the pub-
lic evidence.

For the same reasons for which frequent public
appearances would not have heightened the evidence
of the fact, if the resurrection was real, they would
have contributed nothing to the detection of the fal-
lacy, had it been a fiction. Those to whom the living
person had been unknown were as ill ([ualified to deny
as to affirm the identity ; and any wliose knowledge
of the ])erson had been so ac(juired as not to be no-
torious to the ])ublic, however they might decide ujuni
the fact for themselves, their testimony on either side
was insignificant. At the same time, an appearance
in Galilee, the province where the family of the real
Jesus lived, where the whole of his own life had been
passed before the connnencement of his ministry, and
the greater part of it afterwards ; where he performed
his first miracles, and delivered his first discourses ; a
public a])])earance in this part of the country, at a set
time and ])lace, was a step on which an impostor
hardlv would have risked his credit.

Thus it ap])ears, that the objection to the fact of
our Lord's resurrection, arising from the concealment
of his person, specious as at first it seems, rests upon
no solid foundation. The fact being of such a nature,
that howi'vci- nni('scr\e(l the exhibition of tlu' j>erson
had been, its evidence nuist still have rested on the
testimony of chosen witnesses, which, notwithstand-

355

ing any frequency of public appearances, would still
have been the single proof. For to the perfection of
this proof, taken by itself, the certainty of the fact
must still have been proportional. Had it been im-
perfect, public appearances could not have supplied
the deficiency. Perfect as it is, its validity is nothing
weakened by the mere absence of insignificant attest-
ations.

There were, perhaps, among the enemies of our
Lord, some who were well acquainted with his per-
son. Such were many of the Pharisees with whom
he disputed, the chief priests before whom he was
examined, Herod and his courtiers, Pontius Pilate,
and the great officers of his train. It may be ima-
gined that many, if not all of these, would have been
converted by repeated public appearances after the
resurrection. Their attestations would certainly have
carried considerable weight ; and infidelity may dream,
that it is a suspicious circumstance that the method
was not taken which might have procured so import-
ant an addition to the evidence, and to any but an
impostor must have ensured success. The truth is,
that all this evidence would have consisted in the
testimony of particular persons ; and any testimony
of particular persons which the frequency of public
appearances might have procured, would still have
been the evidence of chosen witnesses. To ask,
therefore, why the evidence of the Pharisees or the
priests, of Herod or the Roman governor, was not
secured, is only to ask, why the chosen witnesses were
not other than they are ? or why the number was not
multiplied ? It might be sufficient to reply, that the
number was more than sufficient, that the persons
chosen, for their competency and veracity, were un-

A A 2

356

exceptionable. But a special reason will a]>])ear, why
the rulers of the Jews were not admitted to the honour
of bearing witness to him whom they had crucified
and slain, when I come to allege the particular con-
siderations which, witliout regard to what tlie proof
of the fact might have gained by the frequency of
public ap])earances, or what it may have lost by the
want of them, rendered it improper that our Lord,
arisen from the grave, should resume his open con-
versation with the world. Improper in that degree,
that in the same sense in which we say of (rod that
he cannot be unjust or cannot lie, it may be said of
Christ that he could not, after his resurrection, be
openly conspicuous to all the people.

357

SERMON IV.

Acts, x. 40, 41.

Him God raised up the third day, and showed hm
openly ; not to all the people^ hut unto witnesses
chosen hefoi'e of God.

We are still upon the propriety of a selection of wit-
nesses to attest the fact of our Lord's resurrection.
In my last discourse, I discussed the objection which
may be brought against the fact, from the acknow-
ledged concealment of the person. The whole force
of the objection rests on an assumption, that the
frequency of public appearances, on the one hand,
would have heightened the evidence of the fact, if it
were real ; on the other, would have been a means of
detecting the fallacy had it been a fiction. I have
shown you, that the objection is of a sort to deserve
little attention, were the assumption true: because
the reality of a fact is always to be measured by the
positive proof, on one side or the other, which is
really extant in the world ; which is never to be set
aside by the mere absence of another proof, which
men, living at a distance from the time and scene of
the transaction, may imagine might have been had.

A A 3

358

For this, indeed, were to make the caprice of men
the standard of" historic truth.

I sliowed you fartlicr, that the assumption, on
which tlie ohjection is built, is false in both its
branches : that the frequency of public appearances
would have been no means of hei<^htening evi-
dence, or of detecting- fallacy. It is essentially ne-
cessary to the proof of any fact by testimony, that
the witnesses should be chosen. "Witnesses must
be chosen who arc competent to tlie knowledge of
the thing which they attest, and whose C(mipe-
tency is itself a fact of public notoriety. In the
case in question, witnesses were to be chosen who
had a distinct knowledge of the person of Jesus be-
fore his passion, and of whom it \vas pu})licly known
that they had this previous knowledge of the person. I
showed yon, that this was likely to be the case of very
few among tlie Jews, except our Lord's constant fol-
lowers, and certain leading persons in the faction of
his persecutors. A particular reason why the latter
were excluded from the honour of bearing their tes-
timony to him whom they had persecuted and slain,
will presently appear : for 1 come now to the last
part of tlie task in which I am engaged, which is to
show you, that, without any regard to what the proof
of the fact might have gained by the frecjuency of
public appearances, or what it might lose by the want
of them, other considerations rendered it improper and
indecent that our Lord, arisen from the grave, should
renew his open conversation with the unbelieving
world ; — improper in that degree, that in the same
sense in which we say of God that he cannot lie un-
just, and cannot lie, it may be said of Clirist that he
(•(H/f(/ fiof, after his resurrection, be universallv and

359

ordinarily conspicuous to all the people. And this,
indeed, is the only answer which Origen thought it
worth while to give to the objection brought against
the fact of the resurrection from the concealment of
our Saviour's person. He is at no pains to show,
what he wanted not acuteness to discern, or eloquence
to persuade, that the evidence of the fact could not
have been heightened by any frequency of public ap-
pearances ; but as if he would allow the advantage
resulting from them to the proof to be any thing the
adversary might be pleased to suppose, he rests his
reply on the sole consideration of an unseemliness in
the thing required, constituting what may be called a
moral impossibility.

To understand this, it will be necessary to con-
sider the manner of our Lord's appearance to his
disciples after his resurrection. We shall find, even
in his interviews with them, no trace of that easy
familiarity of intercourse which obtained between
them before his death, when he condescended to lead
his whole life in their society, as a man living with
his equals. Had the history of his previous life been
as mysteriously obscure as that of the forty days be-
tween the resurrection and ascension is in many cir-
cumstances ; had his previous habits been as studiously
reserved, proof would, indeed, have been wanting
that he had ever sustained the condition of a mortal
man, and the error of the Docetae, who taught that
he was a man in appearance only, might have been
universal. But the truth is, that the scheme of re-
demption required, that before the passion the form
of the servant should be predominant in the Re-
deemer's appearance ; that after the resurrection the
form of God should be conspicuous. Accordingly,

A A 4

'3f)0

tlirou^liout Ills previous life his manners were fj:rave but
inu'eservetl, serious rather than severe; his deportment
highly dignified, but unassuming ; and tlie wliole
course and method of his life was uneoneealed, and
it appears to have been tlie life of a man in evury cir-
cumstance. He had a home at Capernaum, where he
lived with his mother and lier family, except when
the stated festivals called him to Jerusalem, or the
business of liis ministry induced him to visit other
towns. When he travelled about the country to
propagate his doctrine, and to heal those that were
vexed of the devil, the evangelical history, for the
most part, informs us whence he set out and whither
he went ; and, with as nuich accuracy as can be ex-
pected in such compendious commentaries as the
Gospels are, we are informed of the time of his de-
parture from one ])lace, and of his arrival at another.
A\ e can, for the most part, trace the road by Nvhich
he passed ; ^ve can mark the towns and villages whicli
he touched in his way ; and in many instances we
are told, that in such a place he was entertained at
the house of such a person. Upon these journies he
was attended by the twelve and other disciples ; and,
except upon one or two very extraordinary occasions
he travelled along with them, and just as they did.
Upon some occasions his own body was the subject of
Jiis miraculous power. In its natural constitution, how-
ever, it was plainly the mortal body of a num. It
suffered from inanition, from fatigue and external vio-
lence, and needed the refection of food, of rest, and
sleep: it was confined by its gravity to the earth's sur-
face : it was translated from one ])lacr to another by a
successive motion through the intermediate sj)ace ; and
if^, in a few instances, and u))on some very extraordinary

361

occasions, it was exempted from the action of mechanical
powers, and divested of its physical qualities and rela-
tions,— as when, to escape from the malice of a rabble,
he made himself invisible, and when he walked upon a
stormy sea ; these were the only instances of our Lord's
miraculous powers in his own person, which no more
indicate a preternatural constitution of his body, than
his other miracles indicate a preternatural constitution
of the bodies on which they were performed. That he
walked upon the sea is no more a sign of an uncom-
mon constitution of his own body, which sunk not,
than of the water which sustained it. In every cir-
cumstance, therefore, of his life, before his passion,
the blessed Jesus appears a mortal man. An ex-
ample of virtue he, indeed, exhibited, which never
other man attained. But the example was of human
virtues ; of piety, of temperance, of benevolence, and
of whatever in the life of man is laudable. Before
his resurrection it was in power only, and in know-
ledge, that he showed himself divine.

After his resurrection the change is wonderful ;
insomuch that, except in certain actions which were
done to give his disciples proof that they saw in him
their crucified Lord arisen from the grave, he seems
to have done nothing like a common man. What-
ever was natural to him before seems now miraculous ;
what was before miraculous is now natural.

The change first appears in the manner of his re-
surrection. It is evident that he had left the sepulchre
before it was opened. An angel, indeed, was sent to
roll away the stone ; but this was not to let the Loi'd
out, but to let the women in. For no sooner was the
thing done than the angel said to the women, " He
is not here, he is risen ; come and see the place where

the Lord lay." St. Matthew's women saw the whole
process of the opening of the sepulchre; for they were
there before it was ()))ene{l. They felt the earth
quake ; — they saw the angel of the Lord descend
from heaven; — they saw him roll away the vast stone
which stop])ed the mouth of the se])ulchre, and, with
a threatening aspect, seat himself upon it ; — they
saw the sentinels fall down petrified with fear. Had
the Lord been waiting within the tomb for the removal
of the stone, whence was it that they saw him not walk
out ? If he had a body to be confined, he had a body
to be actually visible ; and it is not to be supposed,
tliat with or without the heavenly guard which now-
attended him, he was in fear of being taken by the
sentinels and put a second time to death, that for his
security he should render himself invisible. But he
was already gone. The huge stone, which would
have barred their entrance, had been no bar to his
escape.

\\'ith the manner of leaving the sepulchre, his
a])pearances first to the women, afterwards to the
apostles, correspond. They were for the most ])art
unforeseen and sudden ; nor less suddenly he disap-
peared. He was found in company without coming
in ; he was missing again without going away. He
ji)ine(l, indeed, the two disci])les on the road to Vaw-
maus, like a traveller passing the same way ; and he
walked along with them, in order to prepare them, by
his conversation, for the evidence which they were to
receive of his resurrection. I5ut no sooner was the
discovery made, by a ])eculiar attitude which he as-
sumed in the breaking of bread, than he disappeared
instantaneously, 'i'he same evening he presented
himself to the apostles, at a late hour, assembled iti a

363

room with the doors shut ; that is, fast made up with
bolts and bars, for fear of a visit from the unbelieving
Jews, their persecutors. To him who had departed
from the unopened sepulchre, it was no difficulty to
enter the barricadoed chamber. From all these cir-
cumstances, it is evident that his body had undergone
its change. The corruptible had put on incorruption.
It was no longer the body of a man in its mortal state ;
it was the body of a man raised to life and immor-
tality, which was now mysteriously united to divinity.
And as it was by miracle that, before his death, he
walked upon the sea, it was now by miracle that, for
the conviction of the apostles, he showed in his person
the marks of his sufferings.

Consonant with this exaltation of his human nature,
was the change in the manner of his life. He was
repeatedly seen by the disciples after his resurrection ;
and so seen as to give them many infallible proofs
that he was the very Jesus who had suffered on the
cross. But he lived not with them in familiar habits.
His time, for the forty days preceding his ascension,
was not spent in their society. They knew not his
goings out and comings in. Where he lodged on the
evening of his resurrection, after his visit to the
apostles, we read not ; nor were the apostles them-
selves better informed than we. To Thomas, who
was absent when our Lord appeared, the report of
the rest was in these words : " We liave seen the
Lord." That was all they had to say : they had seen
him, and he was gone. They pretend not to direct
Thomas to any place where he might find him, and
enjoy the same sight. None of them could now say
to Thomas, as Nathaniel once said to Philip, " Come
and see." On the journey from Jerusalem to Galilee,

364

he was not their companion, — he went before them.
How he went we are not informed. The way is not
described : the phices are not mentioned tln()un;h
whicli he passed : their names are not recorded who
accompanied him on the road, or wlio entertained him.
Tlie disciples were connnanded to repair to (lalilee.
They were not told to seek him at Capernaum, liis
former residence, or to enquire for him at his motlier's
liouse. Tliey were to assemble at a certain hill.
Thither they repaired ; they met him there ; and
there they worshipped him. The place of his abode
for any single night of all the forty days is nowhere
mentioned ; nor, from the most diligent examination
of the story, is any place of his abode on earth to be
assigned. The conclusion seems to be, that on earth
he had no longer any local residence, his body recpiir-
ing neither food for its subsistence, nor a lodging for
its shelter and repose : he was become the inhabitant
of another region, from which he came occasionally
to converse with his disciples. His visible ascension,
at the expiration of the forty days, being not the ne-
cessaiy means of his removal, but a token to the
disciples that this was his last visit ; an evidence to
them that the heavens had now received him, and
that he was to be seen no more on earth with the
c()r|)()rc'al eye, till the restitution of all things.

1 might have been less particular in the detail of
circumstances which lead to this conclusion, liad it
a])peared in our English Bibles, as it does in the
original, that St. Peter roundly asserts the very same
thing in the words of my text : " Him (iod raised up
the third day," says St. Peter, " and showed him
openly," as our English Bibles have it, " not to all
the i)eople." liut here is a manifest contradiction.

365

Not to be shown to all the people, is not to be shown
openly. To be shown openly, therefore, not to all the
people, is to be shown and not to be shown at the
same time. The literal meaning of the Greek words
is this, " Him God raised up the third day, and
gave him to be visible." * Not openly visible ; no such
thing is said ; it is the very thing denied : but, " He
gave him to be visible." Jesus was no longer in a
state to be naturally visible to any man. His body
was indeed risen, but it was become that body which
St. Paul describes in the fifteenth chapter of his first
epistle to the Corinthians, which having no sympathy
with the gross bodies of this earthly sphere, nor any
place among them, must be indiscernible to the human
organs, till they shall have undergone a similar refine-
ment. The divinity united to the blessed Jesus pro-
duced, in a short space, that change in him which, in
other men, according to the mysterious physics of
St. Paul, must be the effect of a slower process. The
divinity united to him having raised him on the third
day from the grave, in a body incorruptible and invi-
sible, gave him to become visible occasionally, not to
all the people, but to his chosen witnesses ; to those
who were chosen to the privilege of beholding God
face to face in the person of his Son, of attesting the
fact of Christ*s resurrection, and of publishing through
the world the glad tidings of the general redemption.
Thus, you see, every appearance of our Lord to the
apostles, after his resurrection, was in truth an appear-
ance of the great God, the Maker of Heaven and
earth, to mortal man. The conferences, though

* Et dedit eum manifestum fieri. — Vulg. Et dedit eum ut
conspicietur aperte. — Tremell. ex Syr. Fecitque ut is con-
spicuus fieret. — Beza.

366

frequent, seem to have been short, and upon each
occasion mixed \vith tliat condescension wliicli was
necessary to give the disciples sensible evidence of the
reality of the resurrection, ^\'e discover much of a
reserved dipiity in his deportment ; a tone of hi«^h
autliority ])revaiis in his lan^iia^c, and something
profoundly mystericms in his actions. His familiar
conversation with the world before his passion, was a
principal branch of his humiliation ; and his humili-
ation was an essential part of those sufferings by which
the guilt of man was expiated. But the atonement
being once made, the form of a servant was to be re-
moved ; Christ was to reassume his glory, and to be
seen no more but as the only-begotten of the Father.
Would you now ask, Why Jesus, after his resur-
rection, was not rendered visible to all the ])eople ?
\\'ill you not rather stand aghast at the imj)iety of
the (piestion ? Ask, \\'hy Ciod is of ])urer eyes than
to behold iniquity ? Ask, Why he who conversed
with Abraham as a man talketh with his friend, con-
versed not but in judgment with the vile inhabitants
of Sodom ? Ask, ^\'hy Closes only of all the congre-
gation, was allowed to enter the thick darkness where
God was ? The appearances to the apostles after the
resurrection were of the same kind with the a])]H'ar-
ances, in the earliest ages, to the patriarchs anil the
chosen rulers of the Jewish nation. He who, to con-
verse with Abraham, veiled his glory in a traveller's
disguise ; he who appeared to Joshua, uiuler the walls
ol Jericho, in the habit of a warrior, with his sword
ready drawn for the attack ; he who was seen by
Gideon and Manoali in tlu" human foi'ui ; the same
showed hiuiself at the se])ulchre to Mary Magdalen,
in the form of a gardener j to the two disciples on

367

the road to Emmaus, as a wayfaring man ; to the
eleven separately, or altogether, in various forms, at
various times ; upon every occasion, in the manner of
his appearance, manifesting his exaltation, and yet
finding means to afford them satisfactory proofs that
he was the same Jesus who had died.

It is true, that in those earlier ages the ever-blessed
Son of God appeared in a body assumed, it is pro-
bable, for each particular occasion, whereas his appear-
ances after the resurrection were in that permanent
body to which, after Mary's conception, he was inse-
parably united. But this circumstance may hardly
be supposed to make any material difference. The
difference, whatever it may seem, was overlooked by
St. Paul *, who, in the 15th chapter of his first epistle
to the Corinthians, enumerating the principal appear-
ances after the resurrection, closes the catalogue with
the appearance to himself, which wrought his conver-
sion. The mention of this, as the last in order, shows
that he considered it as of the same kind with all the
rest. But this appearance to St. Paul, was an appear-

* The argument drawn, in this paragraph, from the appear-
ance to St. Paul, may seem, in some degree, precarious. Be-
cause it may be thouglit uncertain, whether the appearance
mentioned, 1 Cor. xv. 8., be that on the road to Damascus, or
the vision afterwards in the temple. This latter was a vision
to the apostle in a trance. It appears not certainly that Jesus
was in this instance seen in the human form ; but the contrary
appears not. However, as the apostle saw this vision in a
trance, in seems more reasonable to understand what is said,
1 Cor. XV. 8., of the appearance on the road to Damascus,
when the apostle was in no trance. For what men see en-
tranced, is generally deemed less real than what they see in
their natural state, and less fit to be alleged in evidence or
argument.

368

ance of the Lord in glory. It was no less an appear-
ance of God, in the form ofCiod, than that to Moses
at the hush. St. Paul saw nothinj;' hut tliat tre-
mendous light, which >truck hiuiself and liis com-
panions to tlie ground. He saw not the man Jesus,
he saw only the light, — the token of the divine
presence ; and from the midst of that light he heard
the voice of Jesus speaking. Yet this appearance, in
wliich the human form of Jesus was not rendered
visihle, is mentioned as the last instance in which
Jesus was seen after his resurrection ; whicli proves,
that all the rest in which the human form was seen,
were considered hy the aj)ostles as, e({ually with this,
manifestations of the Deity.

This circumstance, the confessed divinity of the
person who ap])eared, was the ohstacle to ])uhlic ap-
pearances. 'J'he Jewish nation, in the rejection of
our Lord, had filled the measure of its guilt. They
were cast off. (lod no longer lield Jiis visihle resi-
dence among them ; and hencefor\vard he was to he
found only in the Christian church. Our Saviour
had, accordingly, puhlicly warned the .Jews, when he
was led to crucifixion, that " theij should see Itiiii no
more" till they should he prepared to acknowledge
his authority. He had privately told the apostles
that *' f/ic// should see hi)u (iiiaiii^ hut the trttrid should
see /ilui uo lunre." In conformity \\\\\\ these pre-
dictions of his own, and with the whole plan of reve-
lation, his single puhlic a])])earance after the resur-
rection was not at Jerusalem, hut in a renu)te corner
of (ialilee, which was in some degree a selection of
spectators. It is remarkahle, that Ananias tells St.
Paul, that (lod had ehnse/t him to see the Just One.
In short, from every circumstance of the story of the

369

forty days which intervened between our Lord's re-
surrection and his visible ascension, from the assertion
of my text, and from the intimations of other pas-
sages of Scripture, it is evident that our Lord arisen
from the grave, could not be shown openly to all the
people : he could not resume his familiar conversation
with the world ; because they who may be admitted
to this immediate communion with the Deity must
be persons distinguished by their godly dispositions
from the mass of the corrupt world, and chosen by
God himself to so high a privilege.

Hence we are taught the universal importance of
the precept so often inculcated upon the Israelites
under the law, and adopted by St. Peter as a general
maxim of the Christian's duty, " Be ye holy, for I,
Jehovah, your God, am holy." If the want of holi-
ness excluded the mass of the Jewish people from that
sight of God, in the person of our Lord, which was
granted to the apostles and other believers here on
earth, and from the benefits whicli that sight might
have conveyed to them, — the testimony of their own
senses to the truth of our Lord's pretensions, and the
certainty thence arising of the salvation of the faithful ;
much more shall the w^ant of holiness finally exclude
from the sight of God in Heaven, and from that
fulness of joy which shall be the portion of those who
shall be admitted to his presence. To see the God-
head in the person of our Lord, is proposed to the
Christian's hope as the highest privilege of the saints
that shall overcome. The physical capacity of this
vision is placed by St. John in a resemblance and
sympathy that the glorified bodies of the saints shall
bear to the body of our Lord in glory. " We know,"
says St. John, *' that when he shall appear we shall be

VOL. II. B B

370

like liim :" we must be like liiin, "because we sliall
see liiui as he is." St. Paul speaks witli no less con-
fidence of the resemblance we shall bear to him.
<' Our Lord Jesus Christ," he says, " shall clianjie
our vile body, that it nuiy be fashioned like unto his
glorious body, according to the workings whereby he
is able to subdue all things to himself." Or, as the
passage might more properly be rendeied, " Who
shall cause the fashion of our body of humiliation to
be made like unto his body of glory, according to the
energy of his power of subduing all things to him-
self." This transformation of the bodies of the faith-
ful, by the power of our Lord, requires a previous
transformation of the mind to a resemblance of him,
by faith in his word, by reliance on his atonement, by
conformity to his precepts, and imitation of his ex-
amj)le. For he that hath this hope in him, of being
transformed into the likeness of his Lord, of seeing
him as he now is, and of staiuling for ever in his
presence ; he that hath this hope " purilieth himself
as he is pure."

FIVE SERMONS.

B B ^Z

373

SERMON I.

Psalms, xcvii. 7*
Worship him, all ye gods.

It should be a rule with every one who would read
the Holy Scriptures with advantage and improve-
ment, to compare every text, which may seem either
important for the doctrine it may contain, or remark-
able for the turn of the expression, with the parallel
passages in other parts of Holy Writ ; that is, with
the passages in which the subject-matter is the same,
the sense equivalent, or the turn of the expression
similar. These parallel passages are easily found by
the marginal references in the Bibles of the larger
form. It were to be wished, indeed, that no Bibles
were printed without the margin. It is to be hoped
that the objection obviously arising from the necessary
auo-mentation in the price of the book may some time
or other be removed by the charity of religious as-
sociations. The Society for the Promotion of Chris-
tian Knowledge could not more effectually serve the
purpose of their pious institution, than by applying
some part of their funds to the printing of Bibles, in
other respects in an ordinary way, for the use of the
poor, but with a full margin. Meanwhile those who
can afford to purchase the larger Bibles should be
dilio-ent in the improvement of the means with which
Providence has furnished them. Particular diligence

13 B 3

374

should be used in coiuparin«^ tlic parallel texts of the
Old and the New Testaments. When you read tlie
Old Testament, if you pereeive by the margin that
any particular passaj^e is cited in the New, turn to
that passage of the New to which the margin refers,
that vou may see in what manner, in what sense, and
to what purpose, the words of the more ancient are
alleged by the later writer, who, in many instances,
may be supposed to have received clearer light u])on
the same subject. On the other hand, when in the
New Testament you meet with citations from the
Old, always consult the original writer, that you may
have the satisfaction of judging for yourselves, how
far the passage alleged makes for the argument which
it is brought to support. In doing this you will
imitate the example of the godly Jews of Beroea,
which is recorded with approbation in the Acts of the
Apostles, who, when Paul and Silas reasoned with
them out of the Scriptures of the Old Testament,
clearly setting before them the prophecies concerning
the Messiah, and the accomplishment of those pro-
phecies in Jesus, whom they preached, " searched the
Scriptures daily, whether these things were so."
These Benean Jews compared the ])arallel passages
of St. Paul's oral ddctrine, with tlie written Scriptures
of the Old Testament. And ire now sliould with
e(|ual diligence compare the written doctrine of St.
Paul, and of his fellow-labourers, with the writings of
till' Old Testament. It is incredible to any one, who
has not in some degree made the experiment, what a
proficiency may be made in that knowledge which
maketh wise unto salvation, by studying the Serij)-
tures in this manner, without any other eonunentary
or exposition than what the dilierent parts of the

375

sacred volume mutually furnish for each other. I
will not scruple to assert, that the most illiterate
Christian, if he can but read his English Bible, and
will take the pains to read it in this manner, will not
only attain all that practical knowledge which is ne-
cessary to his salvation, but, by God's blessing, he
will become learned in every thing relating to his
religion in such a degree, that he will not be liable to
be misled, either by the refined arguments, or by the
false assertions of those who endeavour to engraft
their own opinion upon the oracles of God. He may
safely be ignorant of all philosophy, except what is to
be learned from the sacred books ; which, indeed,
contain the highest philosophy adapted to the lowest
apprehensions. He may safely remain ignorant of
all history, except so much of the history of the lii'st
ages of the Jewish and of the Christian church, as is
to be gathered from the canonical books of the Old
and New Testament. Let him study these in the
manner I recommend, and let him never cease to pray
for the illumination of that Spirit, by which these
books were dictated ; and the whole compass of ab-
struse philosophy and recondite history, shall furnish
no argument with which the perverse will of man
shall be able to shake this learned Christian's faith.
The Bible thus studied, will, indeed, prove to be
what we Protestants esteem it, a certain and sufficient
rule of faith and practice, a helmet of salvation, which
alone may quench the fiery darts of the wicked. My
text, I trust, will prove a striking instance of the
truth of these assertions.

If, in argument with any of the false teachers of
the present day, 1 were to allege this text of the
Psalmist in proof of our Lord's divinity, my anta-

B B 4

SJC)

<^oiii.st would j)n)lKil)ly reply, tliut our Lord is not
once mentioned in the psalm ; that the subject of" the
psjdm is an assertion of the j)ropcr divinity of Jehovah,
the God of the Israelites, as distinguished from the
ima<jjinary deities which the heathen worshi])ped. 'i'his
psalm, therefore, which pro})oses Jehovah, the God
of the Israelites, as the sole object of worship to men
and angels, is alleged, he would say, to no ])urpose, in
justification of worship paid to another person. And
to any one, who might know nothing more of the true
sense of this passage than may appear hi the words
taken by themselves, my adversary might seem to have
the better in the ar<xument. I think I should seem to
myself to stand confuted, if I knew no more of the
meaning of my text, or rather of the inspired song of
which it makes a part, than an inattentive reader
might collect from a hasty view of its general purport.
But observe the references in tlie margin of the Bible,
and you will find that a parallel passage occurs in the
epistle to the Hebrews, in tlie first chapter at the sixth
verse. Turn to this passage of the epistle, and there
you will find this text of the Psalmist cited by St. Paul
to this very purjiose ; namely, to jirove that adoration
is due from the blessed angels of God to the only-
begotten Son; for thus he reasons: " When he briiig-
eth in the First Begotten into the world, he saith,
And let all the Angels of (lod worshij) him." The
only ])assage in the Old Testament, as the Hebrew
text now stands, is this seventh verse of the ninety-
seventh psalm. The words of the Psalmist, indeed,
are these: " M'orshij) him, all ye gods." 'I'lu' apostle,
that he miglit ( Kaily exclude a ])lurality of gods, while
lie asserts the (iodhead of the Son, thinks proper to
(•\])lain the I'salniist's words, bv substituting " all the

377

angels of God" for " all the gods." But it is very
evident that the First Begotten was, in the apostle's
judgment, the object of worship propounded by the
Psalmist ; otherwise, these words of the Psalmist, in
which he calls upon the angels to worship Jehovah,
were alleged to no purpose in proof of the Son's na-
tural pre-eminence above the angels. For either the
Son is the object of worship intended by the Psalmist,
or the Son himself is to bear a part in the worship so
universally enjoined.

But, further, the collation of the Psalmist's text
with the apostle's citation, will not only enable the
unlearned Christian to discover a sense of the Psalm-
ist's words not very obvious in the words themselves,
but it will also give him certain, although summary,
information upon a point of ecclesiastical antiquity of
great importance, upon which the illiterate cannot be
informed by any other means. In the late attempts
to revive the Ebionaean heresy, much stress has been
laid, by the leaders of the impious confederacy, upon
the opinions of the primitive church of Jerusalem.
They tell you, with great confidence, that the Re-
deemer was never worshipped, nor his divinity acknow-
ledged, by the members of that church. The assertion
has, indeed, no other foundation but the ignorance of
those who make it, who confound a miserable sect,
which separated from the church of Jerusalem, with
the church itself. But how is the truth of the fact to
be proved to the illiterate Christian, unread in the
history of the primitive ages, who yet must feel some
alarm and disquietude when he is told, that he has
been catechised in a faith never held by those first and
best Christians, the converts of the apostles, among
whom James, the brother of our Lord, was bishop.

.'378

Iloly writ, if he is (lilijj^ent in con.sultin«>; it, will re-
lieve his scni])les, and remove his doubts, not only
upon the principal matter in dispute, but upon this
particular historical question. It must be o])vi()us to
every understanding, that when any passage of the
Old Testament is cited by writers of the New, in
confirmation of any particular doctrine, without any
disquisition concerning the sense of the citation, or
any attempt to fix a particular sense upon it which
may suit the writer's purpose ; it must be evident, I
say, that a text thus cited, without any solicitude to
settle its true meaning, was generally understood at
the time by those to whom the argument was ad-
dressed. For a text alleged in any sense not generally
admitted could be no proof to those who should be
inclined to call in question the sense imposed. The
Hebrews, therefore, to whom the apostle })roduces
this text of the Psahnist in proof of the high digm'ty
of the Kedeemer's nature, agreed with the apostle
concerning the sense of the Psalmist's words. They
well understood that the Psalmist calls u})()n the
angels to worship the only-begotten Son. And who
were these Hebrews ? The very name imports that
they were Jews by birth : they were, indeed, the
Jewish converts settled in Palestine. And since the
epistle was written during St. Paul's first imprison-
ment at Rome, which might easily be made to a])pear
from the epistle itself, and St. Paul's first imprison-
ment at Rome ended about the thirtieth year after our
Lord's ascension, they were no other than thv firs f race
of Jewish Christians, who agreed with St. Paul that
the Redeemer is the object of worship })roj)ounded to
the angels by the Psalmist. Ami thus, by this plain
remark, and by the authority of the sacred books, the

379

unlearned Christian may settle his own mind, and put
to shame and silence the disturbers of his faith.

But this is not the whole of the information which
the unlearned Christian may draw from the Psalmist's
text, compared with the apostle's citation. The
apostle cites the Psalmist's words as spoken when the
First Begotten was introduced into the world, that is
to say, to mankind ; for the word, in the original,
literally signifies not the universe, for in that world
the First Begotten ever was from its first formation,
but this globe, which is inhabited by men, to which
the First Begotten was in these later ages introduced
by the promulgation of the Gospel. Now, since the
occasion upon which these words were spoken was an
introduction of the First Begotten into the world, if
these words are nowhere to be found but in the ninety-
seventh psalm, it follows that this ninety-seventh psalm
is that introduction of the First Begotten into the
world of which the apostle speaks. — Hence the mi-
learned Christian may derive this useful information,
that the true subject of the ninety-seventh psalm, as
it was understood by St. Paul and by the church of
Jerusalem, to which this epistle is addressed, within
thirty years after our Lord's ascension, when that
church must have been entirely composed of our
Lord's own followers and the immediate converts of
the apostles, was not, as it might seem to any one not
deeply versed in the prophetic language, an assertion
of God's natural dominion over the universe, but a
prophecy of the establishment of the Messiah's king-
dom by the preaching of the Gospel, and the general
conversion of idolaters to the service of the true God.
The First Begotten is the Lord, or rather the Jehovah,
for that is the word used in the original, whose king-

.380

dom is proclaimed as an occasion of joy and tlianks-
givinji; to tlie wliole world.

And tluit this was no arbitrary inteiiM*etation of
the psalm, imajrined by enthusiasts, or invented by
impostors, to make the sacred oracles accord witli
tlieir own conceits, or witli their own designs, will
appear by a closer inspection of the psalm itself,
whicli cannot be consistently expounded of any other
kintr or of anv other kingdom.

That Jehovali's kin<ji;(h)m in some sense or other is
the subject of tliis divine song, cannot be made a
question, for thus it opens, — *' Jeliovah reigneth."
The psalm, therefore, must be understood either of
God's natural kingdom over his whole creation ; of
his particular kingdom over the Jews, his cliosen peo-
ple ; or of that kingdom which is called in the New
Testament the kingdom of Heaven, the kingdom of
God, or the kingdom of Christ. For of any otlier
kingdom of Ciod, besides these three, man never heard
or read. God's peculiar kingdom over the Jew s can-
not be tlie subject of tliis psalm, because all nations
of tlie eartli are called upon to rt^joice in the ac-
knowledgment of this great truth, *' Jehovah reigneth,
let the earth rejoice ; let the many isles be glad
thereof." The many isles are the various regions of
the habitable world : for the word isles in the Old
Testament denotes a region circumscribed by cer-
tain boundaries though not surrounded l)y the sea ;
as ap])ears by the use of it in the tenth chapter of
(ienesis, at the fifth verse, wlu-re the sacred writer
says of the sons of Ja])hetli, mentioned in the three
preceding verses, " By these were the isles of the
(ientiles divided," though all the sons of Jaj)lu'th
had their si'ttU-uu'iits citlur in the Asiatic or the

381

European continent. The same consideration, that
Jehovah's kingdom is mentioned as a subject of gene-
ral thanksgiving, proves that God's universal dominion
over his whole creation cannot be the kingdom in the
prophet's mind : for in this kingdom a great majority
of the ancient world, the idolaters, were considered,
not as subjects who might rejoice in the glory of their
Monarch, but as rebels who had every thing to fear from
his just resentment. God's government of the world
was to them no cause of joy, otherwise than as the
erection of Christ's kingdom, which was to be the
means of their deliverance, was a part of the general
scheme of Providence. It remains, therefore, that
Christ's kingdom is that kingdom of Jehovah, which
the inspired poet celebrates as the occasion of uni-
versal joy. And this will further appear by the
sequel of the song. After four verses, in which the
transcendent glory, the irresistible power, and inscrut-
able perfection of the Lord, who, to the joy of all
nations, reigneth, are painted in poetical images,
taken partly from the awful scene on Sinai which ac-
companied the delivery of the law, partly from other
manifestations of God's presence with the Israelites
in their journey through the wilderness ; he proceeds,
in the sixth verse, ** The heavens declare his righte-
ousness, and all the people see his glory." We read in
the nineteenth psalm, that " the heavens declare the
glory of God." And the glory of God, the power and
the intelligence of the Creator, is indeed visibly de-
clared in the fabric of the material world. But I cannot
see how the structure of the heavens can demonstrate
the righteousness of God. Wisdom and power may be
displayed in the contrivance of an inanimate machine ;
but righteousness cannot appear in the arrangement of

3H-2

the parts, or tlio direction of the motions of lifeless
matter. The heavens, therefore, in their external
structure, cannot declare their Maker's rij^hteousness :
but the heavens, in another sense, attested tlie righte-
ousness of Christ, when the voice from lieaven declared
him the beloved Son of God, in whom the Father was
well pleased ; and when the preternatural darkness of
the sun at the crucifixion, and other ajz;onies of nature,
drew that confession from the heathen centurion who
attended the execution, that the suffering Jesus was
the Son of God : " And all the people see his glory."
It is much to be regretted that our translators, over
studious of the purity of their English style, have,
through the w hole liible, neglected a distinction con-
stantly observed in the original, between people in the
singular, and peoples in the plural. The word peo-
ple, in the singular, for the most part, denotes God's
chosen people, the Jewish nation, unless any other
particular people happen to be the subject of dis-
course. But peoplesy in the plural, is put for all the
other races of mankind, as distinct from the chosen
people. The word here is in the plural foini, " And
all the peoples see his glory." But when, or in what
sense, did any of the peoples, the idolatrous nations,
see the glory of God ? Literally they never saw his
glory. The effulgence of the Shechinah never was
displayed to them, except when it blazed forth upon
the Egyptians to strike them with a j>anic ; or when
tlie towering pillar of flame, which marshalled the
Israelites in the wilderness, was seen by the inhabit-
ants of Palestine and Aral)ia as a threatening meteor
in their sky. Intellectually, no idolaters ever saw the
glory of God, for they never acknowledged his power
and CJ(Mlhend : had thev thus sctMi his i^lorv, thev

388

had ceased to be idolaters. But all the peoples^ upon
the preaching of the Gospel, saw the glory of Christ.
They saw it literally in the miracles performed by
his apostles ; they saw it spiritually when they per-
ceived the purity of his precepts, when they acknow-
ledged the truth of his doctrine, when they embraced
the profession of Christianity, and owned Christ for
their Saviour and their God. The Psalmist goes on j
" Confounded be all they that serve graven images,
that boast themselves of idols : worship him, all ye
gods." In the original this verse has not at all the
form of a malediction, which it has acquired in our
translation from the use of the strong word confound-
ed. " Let them be ashamed*^ This is the utmost
that the Psalmist says. The prayer that they may
be ashamed of their folly, and repent of it, is very
different from an imprecation of confusion. But in
truth the Psalmist rather seems to speak prophetic-
ally, without any thing either of prayer or impre-
cation, — " they shall be ashamed." Having seen
the glory of Christ, they shall be ashamed of the
idols, which in the times of their ignorance they wor-
shipped. In the eighth and ninth verses, looking
forward to the times when the fulness of the Gentiles
shall be come in, and the remnant of Israel shall turn
to the Lord, he describes the daughters of Judah as
rejoicing at the news of the mercy extended to the
Gentile world, and exulting in the universal extent
of Jehovah's kingdom, and the general acknowledg-
ment of his Godhead. In the tenth verse, having
the sufferings, as it should seem, in view, which the
first preachers were destined to endure, he exhorts
those who love Jehovah to adhere at all hazards to
their duty, in the assurance that their powerful Lord,

384.

on whom tliey have tixed their love, " preseiveth the
souls of his saints, and deliveretli them out of the
hand of tlie wicked." " Lij^ht," lie adds, " is sown
for the rit^hteous ; " or, to render the words more
strictly, " Lij^ht is shed over the Just One, and glad-
ness upon the upright of heart." The just and the
///sf one are two different words ; tlie one a collective
noun expressing a multitude, the other expressive of
a single person. These two words are unfortunately
confounded in our English Bibles. The Just One
is, I think, in many passages of the Psalms, of which
I take this to be one, an appellation which exclusively
belongs to Christ in his human character.* Light,
or splendour, is an easy image for a condition of pros-
perity and grandem-. " Light is shed over the Just
One, the man Christ Jesus, who is now exalted at
the right hand of God." And light, if I mistake
not, is, without any metaphor, literally shed over him.
By virtue of Ids union to the sacred person of the
Godhead, this Just One, the man Christ, is now so
taken into olorv that he is become an inhabitant of
the Shechinah, dwelling bodily in the centre of that
insufferable light ; in which situation he showed him-
self before he suffered to the three apostles on the
Mount, to animate their faith, and after his ascension
to the unconverted Saul, to check his persecuting
zeal upon liis journey to Damascus. Thus light, the
light of God's own glory, is shed over the Just One,
over the glorified ])erson of our Lord. And this
light thus slied on him is a source of gladness to all

* Psalm xxxiv. 19. " (Jreat are the troubles of the Just
One, but Jehovah delivcreth him out of all." And again, 2\-
" God shall slay the ungodly, and they that iiatc tht.- Just One
shall he made desolate."

38.5

the upright in heart. " Rejoice in Jehovah, there-
fore, ye righteous, rejoice in him by whom ye are
yourselves united to the first principle of goodness,
being, power, happiness, and glory ; and give thanks
at the remembrance of his holiness."

Thus by a brief, but, I hope, a perspicuous expo-
sition of this whole psalm, I have shown you that
every part of it easily applies to the subject of the
Messiah's ascension to his kingdom, and that many
parts of it cannot be expounded of any other kingdom
of God. This psalm is, indeed, one of five psalms,
from the ninety-sixth to the hundredth inclusive,
which, if they are not all parts of one entire poem, at
least all relate to the same subject, " the introduction
of the First Begotten to the world." Christ is
the Jehovah whose dominion is proclaimed ; who is
declared to be the God whom men and angfels are
bound to serve and worship. Such is he who for our
deliverance condescended to assume our nature, and
upon this day was born of a pure virgin. For thus
it seems the matter stood in the counsels of Eternal
Wisdom : it behoved him *' to be made like unto his
brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful
High Priest in things pertaining unto God, to make
reconciliation for the sins of the people."

VOL. ir. c c

386

SERMON 11.

Romans, iv. Q5.

Jflio was delivered for our offences, and fca.s raised
ciLra i/tjor our justijiad ion.

1 HE manner in whidi tlie apostle connects, in these
remarkable words, both the sufferings of Christ with
the sins of men, and the resurrection of Christ with
the absolution of the sinners, deserves a deep consider-
ation, and leads, if I mistake not, to conclusions of
the hi<j^hest moment in speculation aiul in practice.
The apostle not only speaks of the sins of men as the
cause or occasion of our Lord's death, but lie speaks
of the justification of men as equally the cause or oc-
casion of his resurrection. For the elucidation and
improvement of this doctrine, I shall treat the subject
in the followin<ij order : —

First, TakinjT the first clause of my text by itself,
I shall eiKjuire in what sense it may seem to be
implied, in these expressions, " delivered for our
offences," that the sins of mankind were the cause or
occasion of Christ's sufferin«j;s.

I shall, in the ne.rf place, show, that if aught of
ambiguity may seem to adhere to these expressions,
it is entirely renmved by the similarity of connection
which is alleged \\\ the two elauses taken jointly ; be-
tween tlu' siu'^ of" men, with the death of ("lirist, on

887

the one hand, — and the justification of" men, with the
resurrection of Christ, on the other. I shall show
you, that the similarity of these connections, — men
sinned, therefore Christ died ; men are justified, there-
fore Christ was raised again, — necessarily leads to
the particular notion of Christ's death as an expiatory
sacrifice, in the most literal meaning of which the
words are capable ; that it leads to this notion of
Christ's death in particular, because it excludes all
other notions of it.

And, lastlt/, I shall point out the important conse-
quences that follow from this great article of our faith,
— that Christ's blood was spilt for the expiation of the
sins of the penitent.

Now, for the sense in which it may seem to be
asserted, that the sins of men were the cause or the
occasion of our Lord's bitter sufferings and ignomi-
nious death ; since his death, with all the circumstances
of pain and ignominy which attended it, was brought
about by the malice of his enemies, it may seem that,
in this sense, the sins of men were literally the causes
of his sufferings. But the apostle says, that he was
delivered for " our offences." The expression, " our
offences " is general, and cannot be expounded of the
particular sins of our Lord's personal enemies ; of the
malice of the Pharisees, who procured his death ; of
the perfidy of Judas, w^ho betrayed him ; of the injus-
tice of Pilate, who, against his own conscience, and in
defiance of the Divine warnings, condemned him ; of
the cruelty of the Jewish populace, who derided him
in his agonies. Of any or of all of these particular sins
of the persons concerned, as contrivers, as directors,
as instruments, or as gratified spectators in the horrid
business of his death, the apostle's expression, " our

cc 2

.S88

offences," is too freneial to be understood. It can
oidy l)e expounded of the sins of all us men, or at
least of all us Christians.

Nor is it a^-reeable to the usual cast of the Scripture
language, that the persons immediately concerned in
procuring and in executin<^ tlie unjust sentence upon
our Lord, should be sjioken of as the original agents
or causes in the dreadful business of his deatJi. They
were only instruments in the hand of a higher cause.
They were the instruments whidi Providence cm-
ployed to bring about the counsels of his own wisdom.
This is implied in the words of my text : " He was
delivered ior our oltences." These words, '* he was
delivered," refer to a purpose and design of God's
over-ruling Providence, l)y wliich the Redeemer was
delivered over to the pains which he endured. The
unbelieving Jews, — the false traitor, — the unrighteous
judge, — the unfeeling executioner, — the insulting-
rabble, — were but tlie instruments of that purpose,
which, in some way or otlier, liad a general respect to
" our offences; " that is, to the offences of all us men,
or, in the most limited sense in whidi the words can be
taken, of all that portion of mankind whicli should
liereafter be l)rought to the knowledge and worship of
tliat God who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead,
and by faith in tlie crucified Redeemer, should become
admissible to a share in those benefits, whatever they
may be, in order to which the sufferings of the Sou of
God were ordained.

If the single service \\hi(h Christ rendered toman-
kind was in the chaiactei- of a teacher of reliijion ; if
men were not otherwise to be reclaimed from tlicir
vices, than by the discovery which our Lord hath
made of the different conditions of the righteous and

o8f)

the wicked in a future life ; if by tliis discovery every
man once brought to a belief of the doctrine, might
be reclaimed in such degree as to merit, by his future
conduct, not only a free pardon of his past offences,
but a share of those good things which " God hath
prepared for them that love him ; " if our Lord's
doctrine might of itself, in this way, be a remedy for
the sins of men, and his sufferings and death were
necessary only for the confirmation of his doctrine, —
the sins of men might, figuratively and indirectly, be
said to be the occasion of his death ; his doctrine being
the means of their reformation, and his death the
means of establishing his doctrine. But if the case
really be, that nothing future can undo the past ; that
the guilt of past crimes cannot be done away by future
innocence ; if, after we have done all that is com-
manded us, we are still to say, " we are unprofitable
servants ; " if we have incurred guilt w ithout so much
as the ability of meriting reward ; if all that is com-
manded us, which, were it done, would not amount
to merit, be still more than ever is performed ; if the
utmost height of human virtue consists in a perpetual
conflict with appetites which are never totally sub-
dued, in an endeavour after a perfection which never
is attained ; if the case be, that " if we say," that is,
if we who believe, if we Christians say, " that we have
no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in
us J " if, nevertheless, the faith and veracity of God
himself is pledged, " if we confess our sins, to forgive
us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteous-
ness;" — " if it be the blood of Christ which cleanseth
us from sin ; " if the benefit of his death be in some
degree extended to those who are unacquainted with
his doctrine, who by consequence are not within the

ceo

reach of any iiiHiicnct' tliat may l)e ascribed to his
instruction, " for Christ is the propitiation for our
sins ; and not for ours onlv, hut also for the sins of
the whole world; " — it is evident that the Redeemer's
death nnist have been otherwise available to the expi-
ation of the sins of men, than by its remote effect upon
the manners of mankind, by the confirmation which
it affords of the truth of the Christian Revelation.

Indeed, were it only as a proof of doctrine, or as
an example of patient suffering, that the death of
Christ had been serviceable to mankind, similar bene-
fits would ])c, in some degree, to be ascribed to the
sufferings of many of our Lord's first disciples. And
yet, though the early martyrs were, in the common
acceptation of the word, just men, who suffered un-
justly for the service of God and for the good of man,
and in the cause of the true religion, yet it is never
said of them that they suffered " the just for the
unjust, that they might bring us to Ood."

We read not, that we have access to the Father
through, the blood of St. Peter or St. Paul ; and yet,
if the expiatory virtue of our Saviour's death consisted
merely in what it contributed towards the reformation
of mankind, by giving evidence and effect to his doc-
trine, it would be injustice to St. Peter and St. Paul,
and all the other martyrs whose deaths contributed,
in the same remote way, to the same effect, to deny
them a share in the business of expiation. St. Paul,
indeed, in the first cha])ter of his epistle to the Colos-
sians, s])eaking of his own sufferings, savs, that *' he
was filling up in his own flesh that which was behind
of the afflictions of Christ." Hut in this passage he
is speaking of the church under the image of Christ's
body. U\ the afflictioiis ofChiMst. which he speaks

391

of as unfinished, he means the afflictions of the church:
and he speaks of his own sufferings, not as supplying
any supposed deficiency of our Lord's sufferings, but
as filling up the appointed measure of the afflictions
of the church, and laying the foundation of its future
prosperity and peace. Of the proper sufferings of
our Lord in his own person, the apostles every where
speak a very different language ; describing them as
the means by which the apostles themselves, no less
than other Christians, were each individually recon-
ciled to God, and admitted to the hope of future
glory. " Li him we have redemption, — through his
blood the forgiveness of sins." — " The blood of Jesus
Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin." — " My
blood is shed for you," said our Lord himself to the
apostles, " and for many, for the remission of sins."
Expressions of the like import so frequently occur in
the sacred writings, the notion of the blood of Christ,
as the matter of an expiatory sacrifice, is so stre-
nuously inculcated, that it is not easy to conceive
that nothing more is meant than to describe, in
figurative expressions, the great importance of our
Lord's death as a proof of his doctrine, when a similar
importance might be ascribed to the deaths of other
preachers, to which the same figure never is applied. It
should rather seem that the blood of Christ had some
direct and proper efficacy to expiate the guilt of men,
independent of any remote effect upon their actions.

That this is really the case, appears with the highest
evidence from that view of the mystery of redemption,
which my text, in the second clause, more particularly
sets forth, in which the resurrection of Christ is con-
nected with our justification in the same manner as,
in the first clause, his death is connected with our

c c 4

sins. As our Lord's death was, in tlie scheme of
Providence, the consequence of our sins, so, by the
same scheme of Providence, his resurrection was tlie
consequence of our justification.

The Enghsh expressions, it nuist be confessed, are
in themselves in some degree ambiguous. That he
rose again *' for our justification," may be either an
assertion that the justification of man naturally brought
on the event of our Lord's resurrection, or that their
justification is some future benefit, which the event of
Christ's resurrection shall, in due season, surely bring
about ; and the latter may seem the more obvious
sense of the expression. But that this is not the true
exposition, even of the English words, evidently ap-
pears when the two clauses are considered in connec-
tion : for, as the death of Christ had no tendency to
})roduce those offences for which he was delivered,
but, on the contrary, our offences were the reason of
liis humiliation (and it were unreasonable to suppose
that similar expressions should be used in opposite
senses in different ])arts of the same sentence), our
justification, for which Christ rose, nuist be some-
thing which, in the order of things, led to the Re-
deemer's resurrection. The original words are w ithout
;nubiguity, and clearly represent our Lord's resurrec-
tion as an event which took place in consequence of
man's justification, in the same manner as his death
took place in consequence of man's sins.

It follows, therefore, that our justification is a t]n*n«T
totally distinct from the final salvation of the 2;odlv.
It is some part of the wonderful business of redemp-
tion wliich was to be finished befoic our Lord, con-
sistently with the scheme of his great undertaking,
could rise from the dead. It is sonu'tliini^ annexed

393

to no condition on the part of man, a benefit freely
and generally bestowed, witliout any regard to any
previous effect of the evangelical doctrine upon the
lives of individuals. Now this is easily explained, if
the death of Christ was literally an atonement for the
sins of the penitent ; but in any other view of the
scheme of redemption it is inexplicable.

Christ in his original nature, as the uncreated
Word, the ever-living Image of the Father, was in-
capable of sin, as he was far above all infirmity and
imperfection. It were the height of impiety to ima-
gine that it was for any sins of his own in a pre-
existent state, that he was delivered over to a condition
of weakness and mortality. Christ, in assuming our
mortal nature, contracted nothing of the general pol-
lution. The miraculous manner of his entrance into
human life, excluded the possibility of his being
touched with that contagion. He died not, there-
fore, for any share belonging to himself of the uni-
versal corruption. Christ, in the form of a servant,
was subject to temptation, but still not liable to actual
sin. He died not, therefore, for his own sins : he
died as the proxy of guilty man. As he died not,
therefore, for any delinquency of his own, there was
nothing to detain his soul in hell or his body in the
grave ; nothing to protract his continuance in the
condition of a dead man, that is, of an executed
criminal, when once the atonement of our sins was
made, and the justice of our offended God was satis-
fied. So soon as the expiation was complete, justice
required that the Redeemer's sufferings should ter-
minate, and his resurrection to life and glory was the
immediate consequence. Our justification, you will
observe, is (j[uitc a distinct thing from the final abso-

lutioii of good UK'ii ill the nviiiTai ju(i>2;iiic'iit. Every
man*s final doom will depend u])oii the dili<rence wliich
he uses in tlie present life, to improve under the
means and motives for improvement which the Gos-
pel furnishes. Our justification is tlie grace " in
whicli we now stand." It is that general act of mercy
which was previously necessary on the ])ait of God,
to render the attainment of salvation possible to those
wlio had once been wilfully rebellious, and to the last
continue liable to the surprises of temptation. It is
that act of mercy which conveys to all true penitents
a free pardon of all sins committed before conversion,
and a free pardon of the sins of incurable infirmity
after conversion. This act of mercv is the immediate
benefit of Christ's death ; it hath no respect to any
merits of the individuals to whom it is a])])lied ; its
very foundation is, that all are concluded under sin ;
it embraces all without distinction, and is procured
by the sole merit of our Lord's atonement. If the
purpose of the Redeemer's death was to procure this
mercy, it is evident, tliat wlien he liad endured what
was necessary to procure it, the purpose of his death
was answered, and his resurrection could not but
ensue. In any otlier view of the scheme of redemp-
tion, it is not easy to understand wliat tliat justification
of man should be, of which the apostle speaks in the
text as requisite in the order of things to the Re-
deemer's resurrection. If" any one imagines, that the
pardon of sin in the present life with that tolerance of
man's infirmity, the promise of wliich under the (los-
pel is the great motive to renewed obedience ; — if
any one imagines, tliat tliis double act of mercy,
freely remitting })a,st guilt, and acce})ting a sincere
instead of a perfect obedience, proceeds from the

395

pure benignity of" God the Father, in consideration of
the sinner's own repentance, and without regard to
the virtue of any atonement, he will find it difficult
to assign a reason why the grant of the pardon upon
these terms should follow rather than precede the
death of Christ. He will find it difficult to explain,
upon what principle our justification should be an
intermediate event between the death of Christ and
his resurrection, rather than between his nativity and
his baptism ; or upon what principle indeed it should
be connected with any particular circumstance in the
life of Christ, more than with any imaginable circum-
stance in the life of any other man, — of Pontius
Pilate for instance, or Gamaliel. The text, there-
fore, is one remarkable passage out of a great number
which exhibits such a view of the scheme of redemp-
tion which is incapable of any rational exposition, if
the notion of Christ's death as an actual atonement
for the sins of men be rejected.

This doctrine of an atonement, by which the repent-
ing sinner may recover, as it were, his lost character of
innocence, and by which the involuntary deficiencies
are supplied of his renewed obedience, is so full of
comfort to the godly, so soothing to the natural fears
of the awakened sinner's conscience, that it may be
deemed a dreadful indication of the great obduracy
of men, that a discovery of a scheme of mercy, which
might have been expected to have been the great
recommendation of the Gospel to a world lost and
dead in trespasses and sins, the means of procuring it
an easy and favourable reception, should itself have
been made the ground of cavil and objection. And
it is a still worse symptom of the hardened hearts of
men, if, among those who profess themselves disciples

of a ciiicilit'cl Saviour, any may be foimd who allow
no real efficacy to tliat " blood of sj)rinklinn; which
speaketh better thin<rs than the blood of Abel." Let us
rather charitably hope, that this misbelief and contra-
diction have arisen fn)m some misapprehension of the
Scripture doctrine, and that the real doctrine of our
Lord's atonement has all the while had no opponents.
Those who speak of the wrath of (iod as appeased
by Christ's sufFerintrs, speak, it must be confessed, a
figurative lanjruage. The Scriptures speak figuratively
when they ascribe wrath to God. The Divine nature
is insusceptible of the perturbations of passion ; and
when it is said that God is angry, it is a figure which
conveys this useful warning to mankind, that God will
be determined by his wisdom, and by his providential
care of his creation, to deal with the wicked as a prince
in anger deals with rebellious subjects. It is an ex-
tension of the figure when it is said, that (lod's wrath
is by any means appeased. It is a figure, therefore, if
it be said that God's wrath is appeased by the suflfer-
ings of Christ. It is not to be supposed that the sins
of men excite in God any appetite of vengeance, which
could not be diverted from its piirj)ose of punishment
till it had found its gratification in the sufferings of a
righteous person. This, iiuleed, were a view of our
redempti(m founded on a false and unworthy notion
of the Divine character. But nothing; hinders but
that the sufferings of Clirist, which could only in a
figurative sense be an apj>easement or satisfaction of
(rod's / rntf If, m'u^ht l)e, in the most literal meaning of
the words, a satisfaction to his justia;. It is easy to
understand that the interests of God's govennnent,
the peace aiul ordci" of the great kingdom ovi-r which
lie lilies the whole worhl of moial ajxents, nii«fht re-

397

quire that his disapprobation of sin should be solemnly
declared and testified in his manner of forsivina' it :
it is easy to understand, that the exaction of vicarious
sufferings on the part of him who undertook to be the
intercessor for a rebellious race amounted to such a
declaration. These sufferings, by which the end of
punishment might be answered, being once sustained,
it is easy to perceive, that the same principle of wis-
dom, the same providential care of his creation, which
must have determined the Deity to inflict punishment,
had no atonement been made, would now determine
him to spare. Thus, to speak figuratively, his anger
was appeased, but his justice was literally satisfied ;
and the sins of men no longer calling for punishment
when the ends of punishment were secured, were lite-
rally expiated. The person sustaining the sufferings
in consideration of which the guilt of others may,
consistently with the principles of good policy, be
remitted, was, in the literal sense of the word, so
literally as no other victim ever was, a sacrifice, and
his blood shed for the remission of sin was literally the
matter of the expiation.

It now only remains that I point out to you, as
distinctly as the time will permit, the important
lessons to be drawn from this view of the scheme of
man's redemption.

First, then, we learn from it that sin must be some-
thing far more hateful in its nature, something of a
deeper malignity, than is generally understood. It
could be no inconsiderable evil that could require such
a remedy as the humiliation of the second Person in
the Godhead. It is not to be supposed, that any light
cause would move the merciful Father of the universe
to expose even an innocent man to unmerited suffer-

ings. Wliat must be tlie enoniiity of tliat guilt, wliich
God's mercy could not pardon till tiie only-begotteu
Son of God had undergone its punishment? How
great nnist be the load of crime, wliich could find no
ade(piate atonement till the Son of Ciod descended
from the bosom of the Father, clothed himself with
flesh, and being found in fasjiion as a man, submitted
to a life of hardship and contempt, to a death of igno-
miny and pain ?

Again, we learn that the good or ill conduct of
man is a thing of far more importance and concern in
the moral system than is generally imagined. Man's
deviation from his duty was a disorder, it seems, in
the moral system of the universe, for ^vhich nothing
less than Divine wisdom could devise a remedy, — the
remedy devised nothing less than Divine love and
power could apply. Man's disobedience was in the
moral world what it would be in the natural, if a
planet were to wander from its orbit, or the constel-
lations to start from their a])])ointed seats. It was an
evil for which the regular constitution of the world
had no cure, which nothing but the immediate inter-
position ot" Providence could repair.

We learn still further, that as the malignity of sin
is so great, and the im])ortance of man's conduct so
considerable, tlu- danger of a life of wilful sin must be
nuich more formidable than iuujgination is apt to paint
it. The weight of punishuieut naturally due to sin
must bear some just pro|)()ition to its intrinsic malig-
nity, and to the extent of the mischiefs which arise
from it. Its ])unishment must also bear some just
])roportion to the ])rice which has been paid tor our
redemption. Terrible must have been the punishment
which was bought off at so great a price as the blood

399

of" the Son of God ; and terrible must be the punish-
ment which still awaits us, if " we count the blood of
the covenant an unholy thing," and forfeit the benefit
of that^atonement.

Another lesson to be drawn from the doctrine of
our redemption is, that man, notwithstanding his
present degeneracy, notwithstanding the misery and
weakness of his present condition, the depravity of
his passions, and the imbecility of his reason, hath
nevertheless a capacity of high improvement in intel-
lect and moral worth. For it cannot reasonably be
supposed, that so much should be done for the deli-
verance of a creature from the consequence of its o^vn
ffuilt, of whom it was not understood that it had the
capacity of being rendered, by the discipline applied
in some future stage at least of its existence, in some
degree worthy of its Maker's care and love. The
scheme of man's redemption originated, we are told,
from God's love of man. In man, in his fallen state,
there is nothing which the Divine love could make its
object. But the Divine intellect contemplates every
part of its creation in the whole extent of its existence;
and that future worth of man, to which he shall be
raised by the Divine mercy, is such as moved the
Divine love to the work of his redemption. For, to
say that God had loved a creature which should be
unfit to be loved in the whole of its existence, were
to magnify the mercy of God at the expence of his
wisdom.

But, since all improvement of the intellectual
nature must, in some degree, be owing to its own
exertions to the purpose of self-improvement, the
prospect of the great attainments which the grace of
God puts within our reach, ought to excite us to the

lf)()

utmost diligence *' to make our calling and election
sure ;" as, on the other hand, the ])rospcct of" the
danger whicli threatens the perverse, tlic careless, and
the secure, should keep us in a state of constant
watchfulness against the temptations of the world,
the surprises of passion, and the allurements of sense.
The Christian should remember, that the utmost he
can do or suffer for himself, by a denial of his appe-
tites, and a resistance of temptation, or even l)y
exposing himself to the scorn and persecution of the
world, is far less than hath been done and suffered
for him. And ^vhat has he to ex])ect from a merci-
ful, but withal a wise and righteou.s Judge, who thinks
it hard to mortify those passions in himself, for which
the Lord of life made his life an offering ?

Who ever thinks without just indignation and al)-
horrence of the Jewish rulers, who, in the ])hrenzy
of envy and resentment, — envy of our Lord's credit
with the people, and resentment of his just and affec-
tionate rebukes, — spilt his righteous blood ? Let us
rather turn the edge of our resentment against those
enemies which, while they are harboured in our own
bosoms, " war against our souls," and were, more
truly than the Jews, the nuuderers of our Lord.
Shall the Christian be enamoured of the pomp and
glory of the world when he considers, that for the
crimes of man's ambition the Son of (lod wa^ hum-
bled ? Shall he give himself up to those covetous
desires of the world, which were the occasion that
his Lord lived an outcast from its comforts? Will
the disciples of the holy Jesus submit to be the slaves
of those l)ase a])petites of the Hesh, which were, in-
deed, the nails which pierced his Master's hands and
feet? Will he, in any situation, be intiuiidated by

401

the enmity of the world, or abashed by its censures,
when he reflects how his Lord endured the cross, and
despised the shame ? Hard, no doubt, is the conflict
which the Christian must sustain with the power of
the enemy, and with his own passions. Hard to
flesh and blood is the conflict ; but powerful is the
succour given, and high is the reward proposed. For
thus saith the true and faithful Witness, the Original
of the creation of God : " To him that overcometh
will I grant to sit down with me in my throne, even as
also I overcame, and am sitten down with my Father
in his throne." Now, unto Him that loved us, and
hath washed us from our sins in his own blood ; to
Him that liveth and was dead, and is alive for ever-
more ; to Him who hath disarmed sin of its strength,
and death of its sting ; to the only-begotten Son, with
the Father and the Holy Ghost, three Persons and
one only God, be glory and dominion, praise and
thanksgiving, henceforth and for evermore.

VOL. ir. D D

4( i^^

SERMON III.

Matthew, xx. ^23.

To sit on my right hrmd and mij left is not mine to
give ; hut it shall he give)L to them for ichum it is
prepared of my Fatlier.**

1 iiESE, yoii know, were the concliuliiig words of our
blessed Lord's reply to tlie mother of Zebedee*s
children, when she came with a petition to him for
her two sons, that they might be the next persons to
himself in honour and authority in his new kintrdom,
sitting the one on his right hand, the other on his
left. It was, snrely, with great truth he told them
" they knew not what they asked." At the time
when their })Ltition was preferred, they had, pro-
bably, little apprehension what that kingdom was to
be in which they solicited promotion ; and were not
at all aware that their request went to any thing
higher, or that it could indeed go to any higher
thing than the first situations in the king of Israel's
court. He told them tliat they sought a pre-eminence
not easily attained, to be earned only by a patient
endurance of unmerited sufrerin'j:s for the service of
mankind and the propagation of the true religion ;
and he asks them, in enigmatical language, whether
they were ])repared to follow his examj)le ? It is of
the nature of ambition to overlook all difficulties, and

40'i

to submit to any hardships for the attainment of its
ends. Two miserable fishermen of the Galilean lake,
raised to the near prospect, as they thought, of wealth
and grandeur, thought no conditions hard by which
they might become the favourites and ministers of a
king; nor, perhaps, did they understand in what
extent it was ordained that they must suffer, before
they could be permitted to enjoy. They answered,
that they were prepared for all difficulties. Our
blessed Lord, continuing his enigmatical language,
(for although their ambition was to be repressed, it
was but too evident that their fiiith was not yet
ripened to bear a clear prospect of the hardships
which they had to undergo,) tells them, "that they
shall drink, indeed, of his cup, and be baptized with
the baptism with which himself should be baptized."
Expressions upon which, at the time, they would
probably put some flattering interpretation, under-
standing them only as a general declaration, that they
were to*^share their Master's fortunes. *' But to sit,"
says he, " upon my right hand and my left is not
mine to give ; but it shall be given to them for whom
it is prepared of my Father."

These last words deserve particular attention.
There can be no question that the kingdom of which
our Saviour speaks is his future kingdom, and " to
sit upon his right hand and his left," in the sense,
which, in his own private thoughts, he put upon the
words when he used them, denotes a situation of dis-
tinguished happiness and glory in the future life.
This is evident from the means which he points out
for the attainment of this promotion. His question
to the apostles implies, that what they ignorantly
sought was unattainable, except to those only who

D D 2

should have the fortitude to (hink ot It is cuj), and to
he baptized with his haj)tisin. 1 1 is cu}) was the cup
of sufferinjij ; lii.s baptism, tlie baptism of a violent
and ijj^noniinious death. Hut the only promotion to
which this cup and this ba})tism can ever lead must
be a situation of glory in the life to come. This life
is to be thrown away in the acquisition. The next,
therefore, must necessarily be the season when the
reversion is to take effect. Our Lord, therefore,
speaks of the distinctions of the blessed in the future
life, when he says, that ** to sit on his right hand and
his left is not his to give ; but it shall be given to them
for whom it is prepared of the lather."

It must, therefore, strike evei'y attentive reader,
that our Lord, in these very remarkable words,
seems to disclaim all property in the rewards and
honours of the future life, and all discretionary power
in the distribution of them. They are not mine,
he says. Not being mine, I have no right to
give them away ; and as I have no right, so nei-
ther have I authority for the distribution of them :
the whole business is, indeed, already done : there
are certain persons for whom these things are j)re-
pared, and to them, and them only, they shall be
given. This declaration is the more extraordinary,
not only as it is inconsistent with our general notions
of the Son of God to sup])()se that there should be
any thing not absolutely in his disposal (for all things
that the Father hath are his), but because it is the
clear doctrine of the Scriptures, that the general
judgment is particularly connnitted to his manage-
ment ; that he is the a])p()inted Judge who is to
decide upon every man's merit ; and is to assign to
every individual the particular proportion of reward

1-05

or punishment, happiness or suffering, glory or shame,
that may be due to his good or ill deservings in the
present life. This business is allotted to the Son,
not as peculiarly his in his original Divine character,
like the business of creation, but as proper to his
assumed character of the incarnate God. *' The
Father judgeth no man, but he hath commited all
judgment to the Son." And judgment is committed
to him for this especial reason, that he is the Son of
Man. *' God hath appointed a day in which he will
judge the world by the man whom he hath ordained,
even the man Christ Jesus." To recite all the texts
in which the general judgment is described as a busi-
ness in which Christ, as the Christ, shall have the
whole direction, would be an endless task. I shall
produce only one more : " To him that overcometh
will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I
also overcame, and am sitten down with my Father in
his throne." In these words our Saviour expressly
claims that very power which he seems to disclaim in
the words of my text.

Much of this difficulty arises from an inaccuracy in
our English translation. The Greek words might be
more exactly rendered thus : " To sit upon my right
hand and my left is not mine to give, except to those
for whom it hath been prepared of my Father." Our
Saviour, therefore, in these words, disclaims not the
authority which the Holy Scriptures constantly ascribe
to him, and which, in the epistle to the church of
Laodicea, in the book of Revelations, he claims for
himself in the most peremptory terms. He disdains
not the authority of making the final distribution of
reward and punishment, and of appointing to situ-
ations of distinction in his future kingdom. But yet

D D 3

lOI)

he speaks as it" in the inanaf^enient ot" this business he
were tied (h)\vii to certain rules prescribed by the
Ahiii<^]ity J'ather, from which lie would not be at
liberty to depart. But in this manner of spcakin<^
there is nothin;^ but what is conformable to the usual
language of Holy \\'rit. Tlie Son is everywhere
spoken of as giving effect to the original purposes of
the j)aternal mind, by his innnediate action upon the
external world, with which the Father, otherwise than
through the agency of the Son, liolds, as it were, no
intercourse. Not that the purposes and counsels of
the Father arc not equally the purposes and counsels
of the Son, or that the Son acts without original au-
thority by a mere delegated power ; but that this
notion of the lather's purpose executed by the Son
is the best idea that can ])e conveyed to the human
mind of the manner in which (iod governs his creation.
And beyond this it becomes us not to be curious to
enquire. But uj)on another j)oint we may be per-
mitted to be more inquisitive, because it touches our
interests more nearly. Our Saviour's words intinuite,
that the business of the future judgment is already
settled ; that the particular situations of the future
life are allotted to particular persons ; and that his
office, when he shall come to execute judgment, will
only be to see that each individual is put in possession
of the office and the station, which, by the wise coun-
sels of Providence, have been long ago set apart for
him. " To sit upon my right hand and mv left is
not mine to give, except to those for whom it is pre-
pared of my Father." It should seem, therefore, that
the first stations in Christ's future kingdom are aj)j)r()-
priatcd to particular persons, who nuist enjoy tlum.
If the first, whv n )t tin- second stations r If the se-

407

cond, why not the third ? And thus it will follow,
that every station in Christ's future kingdom, from the
highest to the lowest, is appropriated ; and, of conse-
quence, that the condition of every individual is irre-
sistibly determined by a decree, which was passed upon
him ages before he was brought into existence.

St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans has been
thought to teach the same doctrine. And if this
doctrine were to be found clearly asserted in the
apostle's writings, this discouraging interpretation of
our Lord's declaration would seem but too certain.
The fiict is, that St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans
represents the degeneracy of mankind as so great in
consequence of the fall, that if God had been pleased
to make an arbitrary selection of certain persons to be
admitted to mercy upon their repentance, and had
consigned the rest of the race to the natural punish-
ment of their guilt, the proceeding could not have
been taxed either with cruelty or injustice. But he
affirms, that God hath actually dealt with mankind in
a far milder and more equitable way, admitting all,
without exception, who are willing to repent, to repent-
ance, and all who do repent to the benefit of our Lord's
atonement ; inviting all men to accept the proffered
mercy ; bearing with repeated provocation and affront ;
and leaving none but the hardened and incorrigible
exposed to final wrath and punishment. This being
the true representation of God's dealings with man-
kind, the happiness of the future life being open to
all men upon the condition of faith, repentance, and
amendment, the degrees of that happiness will un-
questionably be proportioned to the proficiency that
each man shall have made in the emendation of his
heart and his manners by the rules of the Gospel.

D D 4

Tliosc, thc'icibre, ibr whom it is prepared to sit iij)oii
our Lord's right hand and his left cannot be any
certain persons miconditionalhj predestined to situ-
ations of glory in tlie life to come.

I say they cannot be any certain persons uncon-
ditionally predestined after this manner : John the
son of Zebedee to this office, James the son of Zebcdee
to that, Peter to a third ; whatever the conduct of
John, James, or Peter, in their apostolical ministry
in the present life may have been. It is certain that
God's foreknowledge hath from the beginning ex-
tended, not only to the minutest actions of the life of
every man who ever was to live, but even to the most
secret motives from which each man's actions were
to spring ; to his thoughts, his wishes, his fears, his
likings, and aversions. God, therefore, had from all
eternity as exact a knowledge of every man's charactei',
as true an estimation of his good or ill deserts, as can
be had when the man shall have lived to finish the
career of" virtue or of vice which (iod hath ever fore-
seen that he would run. "^Jhis foreknowledge of every
man's character cannot but be accompanied with a
foreknowledge of the particular lot of ha})j)iness or
misery which it will be fit he should receive. And
since to perceive what is fit, and to resolve that what
is fit shall be, nmst be one act, or if not absolutely
(iiif, tliey Hiusl be inseparable acts in the Divine mind,
it should seem, indeed, that every man's final doom,
in conse(}uence of" an exact view of his future life,
must have been eternally determined. iJut this is
only to say, that the world, w ith its w hole consequence
of events, has ever been present to the Creator's mind.
Aiul however diilicult the thing mav be for the human
apprehension, this predetermination of all things, which

109

is implied in this idea of the Divine omniscience, leaves
men no less morally free, and makes their future doom
no less subject to the contingency of their own actions,
than if nothing were foreseen, nothing decreed in con-
sequence of foreknowledge. The foreknowledge of
an action, and the purpose of reward or punishment
arising from that foreknowledge, being no more a
cause of the action to which reward or punishment
will be due, than the knowledge of any past action,
and the resolution of certain measures to be taken in
consequence of it, are causes of the action which give
rise to the resolution ; the knowledge of a fact, whe-
ther the thing known be past or future, being quite
a distinct thing from the causes that produce it.
Neither the foreknowledge, therefore, of the Deity,
though perfect and infallible, nor any predestination
of individuals to happiness or misery, which may ne-
cessarily result from that foreknowledge, however
iniaccountable the thing may seem, is any impediment
to human liberty ; nor is any man's doom decreed,
unless it be, upon a foresight of his life and character.
Nor is it prepared for Peter and Paul to sit upon
Christ's right hand and his left, in preference to John
or James, who may be more deserving. It is no such
arbitrary arrangement which our Lord disclaims any
discretionary power to put by. The irreversible ar-
rangement, which he alleges as a bar against any
partial operation of his own particular affections, is
an arrangement founded on the eternal maxims of
justice, in favour, not of certain persons, but of per-
sons of a certain character and description; of persons
who will be found distinguished by particular attain-
ments of holiness, by the fruits of a true and lively
faith, by an extraordinary proficiency in the habits of

110

true piety, charity, and temperance. His declaration
is no renunciation of" liis jjroperty in the rewards to
be bestowed, or of his autliority for the distribution of
them ; but it is a very forcible and striking declaration
of the absolute impartiality with which the ])usiness
of the last judgment will be conducted. The Son of
God, when he assumed our mortal nature, became so
truly man, that we may be allowed to say, that he
formed, like other men, his particular friendshij)s and
attachments ; as appeared strongly in the case of
Lazarus, and in some other instances. One of the
brothers, for whom the request was made which occa-
sioned the declaration in my text, was his favourite
disciple in such a degree, as to excite the envy of the
rest. But he tells them, that in the distribution of
the glories of his future kingdom, no private feelings
which may belong to him as a man will be allowed to
operate. That justice, the Creator's justice, tempered
indeed with mercy, with general and ecpiitable mercy,
but unbribed by favour and affection, will hold its firm
and even course. So that every man will be placed
in the situation to which his comparative merit shall
entitle him, without any preference in favour even of
those who were chosen by our Lord to be his earliest
associates and his most familiar friends. The lesson
to be drawn from this explicit declaration of our Lord
is, the necessity of an actual repentance on the one
hand, and the certainty of acceptance on the other, if
this necessary work is once accomplished. Our Lord's
declaration, that every man will at last find himself in the
station which eternal justice has ordained that he shall
hold, cuts off all ho])e but what is founded on an active
and sincere rej)entance ; on such a repentance as may
entitle to the benefit of the Redeemer's expiation, which

Ml

is ever to be kept in view ; for, without that, our Sa-
viour's declaration would render every man altogether
hopeless. On the other hand, this declaration holds
out to the sincere penitent the most animating hope.
If the highest stations in the future life are reserved
for the apostles, it is because the apostles will be found
to have excelled all other Christians in the love of
God and the duties of the Christian life. Should
two persons appear at the great judgment more worthy
than the sons of Zebedee to sit upon Christ's right
hand and his left (the supposition is, perhaps, extra-
vagant, and, otherwise than as a mere supposition to
illustrate a point of doctrine, it is unwarrantable) ;
should two such persons appear, the sons of Zebedee
will not be permitted to take place of them. Such
being the equity with which the future retribution
will be administered, there is evidently no hope for
sinners but in a true repentance, and for a true repent-
ance there will be no disappointment in its glorious
hope. Nor let any one be discouraged from the work
of repentance by any enormities of his past life. Con-
firmed habits of sin heighten the difficulty of repent-
ance ; but such are the riches of God's mercy, that
they exclude not from the benefits of it. This our
Lord was pleased to testify in the choice that he
made of his first associates, who, with the exception,
perhaps, of two or three who had been previously tu-
tored in the Baptist's school, had been persons of
irregular irreligious lives ; and yet these we know are
they who hereafter shall be seated on twelve thrones
judging the twelve tribes of Israel. *' Be ye zealous,
therefore, and repent ;" " for so an entrance shall be
ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting
kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."

41 '2

S E K y] O \ TV.

Ephesians, iv. 30.

^nd grieve not the Holy Spirit of Gody w hereby ye
are scaled unto the day of redemption.

A SEAL has been in use from tlie earliest antiquity,
to autlientieate writings of importance, botli in public
and private transactions. When tlie prophet Jeremiah
purcliased, by God's connnand, his uncle Ilananeel's
estate, the conveyance of the property was by deeds
tliat were signed and scaled ; and the letters which
Jezebel issued for Naboth's destruction were sealed
with Ahab's seal. In allusion to this practice, what-
ever may seem to justify a claim to any particular
privilege, commission, or authority, or to afford a con-
firmation of a ])romise that is hereafter to take effect,
is, by an easy figmv, called a seal. Thus, St. Paul
calls the Corinthian church the seal of hisapostleship :
" The seal of mine apostleship are ye in the Lord."
Tlic blessing of God whicli crowned my labours
among you with such success, as to reclaim you from
the idolatry and the debaucheries to which idolaters
arc addicted, is a certain evidence that God sent me
to perform that work which his providence hath
brought to so happy an effect. \\\ the s.iuic figure

413

he calls circumcision the seal of Abraham's righte-
ousness of faith. It was the appointed mark, and
standing memorial of the promises which were made
to Abraham, in consideration of that righteousness of
faith which Abraham had exercised before those
promises were given, or this right was appointed. It
was an evidence of the acceptance of this righteous-
ness in the person of Abraham ; and, by consequence,
since there can be no respect of persons with the all-
righteous God, since the qualities that he accepted in
Abraham he must equally accept in every other person
in whom they may be equally conspicuous, this seal
of Abraham's righteousness was a general seal of the
righteousness of faith. It was an evidence to every
one who should in after-times become acquainted with
the patriarch's history, that righteousness would be
imputed to all who should walk in the steps of Abra-
ham's faith, which he had being uncircumcised. And
again, by the same figure, the apostle in the text calls
the gifts and graces of the Holy Ghost the seal of the
Christian's hopes : " Grieve not the Holy Spirit of
God, by whom ye are sealed to the day of redemp-
tion." The same image occurs frequently in his
writings. Thus in the first chapter of this same
epistle he says, *' In whom," i. e. in Christ, " having
believed, ye have been sealed with the Holy Spirit
of promise." And in the second to the Corinthians,
*• It is God that hath sealed us, and given the
earnest of his Spirit in our hearts."

In all these passages, the seal of the Holy Spirit
is to be understood of those gifts and graces which the
Scriptures teach us to ascribe to his immediate oper-
ation. And taken in the utmost latitude, as including
both the miraculous gifts which were peculiar to the pri-

i 1 1

mitive ap^es, and the «j;encral sanctifViriiz: influence on
the licart of every true believer, the Spirit may, on
various accounts, be justly called tlie seal of our final
redemption ; iiiasnnich as it is that uhith gives the
utmost certainty to our hopes of future bliss and
glory, which any thing antecedent to the actual pos-
session can afford.

In the firs f place, the visible descent of the Holy
Spirit on the first Christians, and the extraordinary
powers which they displayed in consequence of it,
were the proper seal of the general trutli of Chris-
tianity. These gifts had been predicted by the
earliest prophets as a part of the blessings of the
Messiah's reign, to be enjoyed under the covenant
which he should establish. '* It shall come to pass,"
says Joel, " tliat I will pour out my Spirit upon
all flesh ; and your sons and your daughters shall
prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your
young men shall see visions ; and also upon the ser-
vants and upon the handmaids in those days will I
])our out my Spirit." John the Baptist, when he
declared himself to be the ])romised forerunner of
the Messiah, and announced his s])eedy advent, places
the great superiority of his character and office in
this circumstance, — that he should fulfil these an-
cient predictions by baptizing his disciples with the
fire of the Holy (ihost. Alluding, as 1 conceive, in
that expression, both to the active nature of that holy
j)rinciple which the Christian baptism conveys into
the converted heart, and to the form in which the
Almighty Sj)irit made his visible descent upon the
first Christians. Christ himself prouiiscd his dis-
ci])les, that " when he should leave them to return to
the Father, he would send them another Comforter

4 1 .3

to abide with them for ever ; even the Spirit of truth,
who should lead them into all truth;" give them
just views of that scheme of mercy which they were
to publish to the world ; a right understanding of
the ancient prophecies ; a discernment of their true
completion in the person of Christ, and the esta-
blishment of his religion ; bring all things to their
remembrance which Christ had told them ; and sup-
ply them, without previous study or meditation of
their own, with a ready and commanding eloquence,
when they should be called to make the apology of
the Christian faith before kings and rulers. But this
Comforter, he told them, could not come before his
own departure ; and this was agreeable to ancient
prophecy. David, in the sixty-eighth psalm, pre-
dicting, according to St. Paul's interpretation of the
passage, these miraculous gifts of the Spirit, speaks
of them as subsequent to the Messiah's ascension :
*' Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led cap-
tivity captive, thou hast received gifts for men."
What these gifts should be, is declared in the conclu-
sion of the verse, — " that the Lord God may dwell
among them." This dwelling of God must signify
somethino; more than God's residence in the Jewish
sanctuary ; for whatever might be in the mind of the
prophet, the prophetic spirit looked forward to later
times. It cannot signify the Son's dwelling among
men, when he came to preach the doctrine of life,
and to pay the forfeit of their crimes, because it is
described as subsequent to his ascension. It can
signify, therefore, no other dwelling of God than the
residence of the Holy Spirit in the Christian church.
I must not pass over this passage of the Psalmist
without remarking, that the original word which is

416

rendered Lord is Jahy one of the proper names of
(jod, of the same ctymolon^y and import witli the
name Jeliovali ; of wliicli, indeed, some have tlioiight
it only an abbreviation. I liavc upon former occa-
sions exphiined to you, that the name Jeliovali is in
various ])assages of the holy prophets applied to the
Messiah. You liave here an instance of a name of
the same kind equally proper to the Deity applied to
the Holy Spirit, provided we are rijj^ht in the appli-
cation of this last clause to him. Concerninfij the
former part, " the ascending on high, and the receiv-
ing of gifts for men,*' there can be no doubt. A\'e
have the apostle's authority for applying it to Christ's
ascension, and the gifts afterwards im])arted by the
Spirit. The application of the concluding clause I
confess is not equally certain, because it makes no
part of the apostle's quotation ; and the great ob-
scurity of the grammatical construction in the original
throws something of uncertainty upon the meaning.
In the sense which our English translators have ex-
pressed, the words evidently respect the Holy Spirit.
And in this sense the Jews of the second century
seem to have acquiesced.* These predictions of the
ancient propliets and the Baptist, and these promises
of our Lord, were largely and exactly verified in the
event. After frequent appearances to his disciples,
within the sj)ace of forty days after his rcsunection,
Jesus took a sokinn leave, and ascended on high as
David had foretold, having connnanded the apostles

* For the words were rendered to tlie same effect Acjuila.
Houl)igaiit, upon the autiiority of tlie Syriac, proposes a vio-
lent alteration of the present reading, for which, however, I
find no authority in Dr. Kennicott's Collection of Various
Readings.

417

to *' wait ill Jerusalem for tlie promise of the Fa-
ther." They were not disobedient to our Lord's
injunction ; and their waiting was not long, nor was
it fruitless. For when the day of Pentecost was come,
that is, the fiftieth day from the festival of the Pas-
sover on which our Lord had suffered, and, by conse-
quence, the eighth or ninth only after his ascension,
the apostles being assembled, suddenly the sound of
a blast rushing with violence through the air filled
the house where they were sitting. The sound was
immediately succeeded by the appearance of parted
tongues of fire, (fire from the first institution of the
law, if not, indeed, from earlier ages, had been the pe-
culiar symbol of God's immediate presence,) settling
upon each of them. The immediate effect was what
our Saviour had foretold; and more, indeed, than
might at first appear in the words in which his
promise had upon any occasion been conveyed. He
had promised them a ready utterance in the defence
of the Christian doctrine : but they find themselves
suddenly endued with the power of utterance in a
variety of languages which they had never learned.
Jerusalem was at this time, as it always was during the
festivals of the Passover and the Pentecost, crowded
with strangers from every quarter of the world. The
sacred historian mentions by name not fewer than
fifteen countries, of which the natives with astonish-
ment confessed that they heard the wonders of God
declared, each in the proper language of the country
where he had been born. The testimony of these
impartial foreigners was a sufficient confutation of
that base insinuation, — that the speakers were filled
with new wine. This seems, indeed, to have been
the illiberal surmise of the meanest only of the

VOL. II. E E

118

rabble of Jt'iusalcni, wlio, mulcr.>tanclin;4 none of' tlie
languaj^es in wliich tlie apostles s])ake, iniajrined tluit
they were iittcrin<^ a jarjj^on, and that the uliole trans-
action was eitlier an iinj)ostuie, or, as they ratlier
believed, a drunken i'rolie. But we have the testi-
mony of those wlio were the only competent judj^es
of the fact, that nothing of the levity or incoherence
of drukenness ap])eared either in the matter or the
manner of these extraordinary discourses. The mat-
ter was the wonderful works of God, the great mys-
tery of godliness displayed in man's redemption.
And upon this abstruse and weighty subject each
speaker delivered liimself with perspicuity and pro-
priety in tlie language that he used ; though this was
probably the first occasion in his life on which lie had
either used it himself or heard it spoken. For of the
fifteen lantrua<j:es which the sacred text eiumierates,
many, I believe 1 might have said the greater part,
were as little known in .Judea in the time of" the
apostles, as the languages of China and Japan are at
this day in Europe. Our Saviour had also promised,
that the Holy Spirit should lead his disci])les into all
truth : accordingly, the immediate illumination of the
understanding upon his visible descent was not less
remarkable than the new powers of elocution. To
the very last moment of our Lord's continuance on
earth, the apostles cherished the fond exjjcctation of
a temporal kingdom to be innnediately established :
*' Lord, wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom
to Israel ?" was the last (piestion that they asked just
before Christ ascended. After tlic descent of the
Holy Spirit, we find no traces of this jirejudice re-
maining. The charge of intoxication drew from St.
I'eter an apology, very remarkable for the brevity and

419

the perspicuous arrangement of the unstudied argu-
ment, as well as for the commanding strain of manly
rhetoric in which it is conveyed. In this speech the
apostle discovers a clear insight into the sense of
prophecies, which, till this hour, it is certain he had
never understood. He insists on the spiritual nature of
the kingdom to which he now understands his Lord
to be exalted at God's right hand ; he proves it by
prophetic passages of the Psalms ; and he insists
upon the present miracle as an instance of his power.
" Being exalted," says he, *' to the right hand of
God, and having received the promised Holy vSpirit
from the Father, he has poured out that which ye
now see and hear.'* I would remark by the way,
that these last words, " ye see and hear," deserve
attention. Something extraordinary, it seems, was
publicly seen, as well as heard, by the multitude upon
this occasion. But we read of nothing that was
visible but the appearance of the fiery tongues. This
appearance, therefore, was not a private one, confined
to the chamber where the apostles were sitting when
the Holy Spirit came upon them ; but it continued
visible on the head of each when they came abroad
to speak to the multitude. So that the appearance
of this glorious light, the token of God's immediate
presence, no less than the consistence and propriety of
the discourses that were delivered, refuted the base
charge of intoxication.

Thus the visible descent of the Holy Ghost upon
the day of Pentecost, as it was a completion of the
earliest prophecies, and a verification of the Baptist's
prediction, and of our Saviour's promises, is a seal of
the general truth of the Christian doctrine. And as
the private hopes of every Christian depend upon the

E E 2

420

general truth of the revelation, the Holy Spirit tluisi
sealing the doctrine, in some sense " seals every true
believer to the day of redeni])tion."

l^ut again: — This visible descent of the Holy
Spirit was in itself, without any reference to former
prophecies and promises, a seal of the general truth
of Christianity, as it was a token of the merit of
Christ's atonement, and the efficacy of his interces-
sion with the Father, *' the Author of every good
and perfect gift." — " I will pray the Father," said
Jesus to his disciples, '* and he shall give you another
Comforter." The coming of that other Comforter
is a certain armnnent that Christ's intercession has
prevailed, and a sure ground of hope that it shall
equally prevail for all the puq^oses for which it shall
be exerted. A<rain : — If we consider the Comforter
as sent immediately to the church by Christ himself,
which is the Sciipture doctrine, his visible descent
was an instance of that power which Christ exercises
at the right hand of God, for the welfare and pre-
servation of his church. In this light, therefore, as a
token of the Father's acceptance of Christ's atone-
ment, and of the ])ower exercised by Christ in his
exalted state, the visible descent of the Holy Ghost
was a seal of the Christian doctrine. And the hoj)e
of every believer being built on the acceptance of that
meritorious sacrifice, and on Christ's power to raise
tlu' dead bodies of his servants from tlu' grave, and
transform them to the likeness of his own ; whatever
is, in the nature of the thing, a certain sign of Al-
mighty ])ower exercised by Christ, and of the lueiit
of his sacrifice, is a seal of eveiy believer's hope of his
own final redemption.

As the visible descent of the Holy Gho>t, and the

421

powers which were conveyed by it to the first^Chris-
tians, made the proper seal of" the Christian doctrine,
so the power of imparting these extraordinary endow-
ments, in certain due proportions to other Christians,
was the seal of the apostolical office and authority.
That the apostles were exclusively possessed of this
extraordinary privilege, is evident from the history
of the first converts of Samaria. The Gospel was
preached to them by Philip the deacon, who baptized
his converts of both sexes. And when the apostles,
who as yet resided at Jerusalem, heard of Philip's
success in Samaria, they sent thither Peter and John,
who seem to have been deputed for the express pur-
pose of communicating the miraculous gifts of the
Spirit. For, when they were come down, they prayed
for them, " that they might receive the Holy Ghost :
for as yet he was fallen upon none of them.'* And
after these prayers the two apostles *' laid their hands
upon them, and they received the Holy Ghost."
That the gifts conveyed to these Samaritan converts,
by the imposition of the hands of the apostles, were of
the miraculous kind, is evident, in the first place,
from this general consideration, that the persons who
received these gifts had already been baptized by
Philip ; and the ordinary gifts of the Spirit, those
moral influences by which every believer must be
regenerated in order to his being saved, are conferred
in baptism. The same thing is further evident from
the particulars of the story. Simon the sorcerer was
of the number of Philip's converts : — " When Simon
saw that the Holy Spirit was given by the imposition
of the apostles' hands, he offered them money, saying.
Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I may
lay my hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost." It

E E 3

4<22

is evident, that the Holy Ghost, which was given
upon this occasion hy tlie apostles, was some sensible
gift of a very extraordinary and notorious kind, which
Simon saw ; and he vainly and impiously iuiagined,
that the power of conferring it might be of great use
to him in carrying on his trade of magical delusion.
The power, therefore, of imparting these miraculous
gifts was the peculiar seal of the apostolical office,
and some sliare of them seems to have been the con-
stant effect of the imposition of tlieir hands. Tlie
gift that seems to have been the most generally be-
stowed is that of tongues. For when St. Paul laid
his hands upon the Ephesian converts of Apollos, the
effect was, that the Holy Ghost came upon them in
his sensible operations, and they *' spake with tongues
and pn)j)liesied ;" that is, they celebrated the praises
of God and of Christ. And, in the first Epistle to the
Corintliians, the apostle, making a distinct and orderly
enumeration of the miraculous gifts, })laces that of
tongues last, as among great things the least consi-
derable. Indeed, it appears from that epistle, that it
was possessed and exercised by many in the Corin-
thian church, who had little discretion in the use of
it. This, therefore, seems to have been of the ex-
traordinary gifts the most connnon. And the con-
ceit of some learned men, who have iuiagined that
this gift was not one of the standing powers of the
])rimitive chuith in the apostolic age, i)ut a particular
miracle that accom])anied the first descent of" the
Holy (jhost u})(>n the day of Pentecost, and his sub-
secpient descent on the family of Cornelius, the first
(i entile convert ; and that it was never heard of but in
these two instances ; this conceit of some learned
men, who lixi'd about the l)ci:;innin<4' of tlu' Keforui-

4^23

ation, is vain, and destitute of all foundation. But
to return : — The Holy Spirit, by the power with
wliich he invested the apostles of communicating his
extraordinary gifts to their converts in due proportion,
according to the exigencies of the church and the
merits of the persons on whom their hands were laid,
sealed their authority. And as the true believer's
hopes rest on the authority of the apostles to preach
Christ's religion, the Holy Spirit thus sealing their
authority, seals all those who embrace and practise
the faith they taught *' to the day of redemption.'*

The miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit were also
a visible mark of God's acceptance of the Gentile
converts, and a particular seal of tJiem " to the day
of redemption."

But the seal of which the apostle speaks in my text
I rather take to be the ordinary influence of the
Holy Ghost than any or all of the miraculous endow-
ments. This may be inferred with certainty from the
parallel passage in the second Epistle to the Corin-
thians, where he says, that God has sealed us, by
" giving the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts."
Many of the passions of the mind, — anger, fear, joy,
grief, surprise, and others, — when they rise to any
considerable height, have a sensible effect on the
motion of the blood, to accelerate or retard its circu-
lation, to collect and confine it in the heart, or to
drive it to the external surface of the body. Hence
the effect of these passions on the body is particularly
felt in the region of the heart, which was therefore
the part first thought of for the seat of the soul.
Afterwards, when men came to understand that the
brain is the immediate organ of sensation, they refined,

E E 1

424

and allotted distinct seats * to the understanding, the
manly passions, and the appetites ; ])]acintr the first
in tlie brain, the second in the heart, and the last in
the liver. Hence in all languages, and with all writers
sacred and profane, the heart is used figuratively
to denote the moral qualities and dispositions of the
mind. And this expression, " the Holy Spirit in
our hearts," can signify no other thing than his ordi-
nary influences on these moral qualities and disposi-
tions in every true believer. These influences, the
apostle asserts, are to every Christian the seal of
his redemption. And this, which is the doctrine
most immediately arising from my text, I puqjose
hereafter to discuss : imploring the assistance of that
Spirit who is with the faithful to the end of the world,
to give me the power to declare, and you to appre-
hend, this great and interesting, but difficult and
mysterious, branch of the doctrine of redemption.

* Plato in the Tiniaeus.

425

SER3ION V.

Ephesians, iv. 30.

And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye
are sealed unto the day of redemption.

In my last discourse upon these words of the apostle,
I told you, that the seal of the Spirit, in this and all
other passages where the same image may occur, is
to be understood of those gifts and graces which the
Scriptures teach us to ascribe to the immediate oper-
ation of the Holy Spirit of God. And taking the
expression in its most extensive meaning, as compre-
hending the miraculous, as well as what are called the
ordinary, influences, I showed you, that those mira-
culous powers which subsisted in the primitive ages,
may with great propriety be esteemed a seal of every
private Christian's hope ; inasmuch as they were the
seal of the general truth of the Christian doctrine ;
the seal of Christ's power ; the seal of the efficacy of
his intercession, and the merit of his sacrifice ; the
seal of the authority of the apostles to establish that
new religion, by the terms of which we hope for
mercy ; and the seal of the acceptance of the Gentile
converts, who enjoy their share of these extraordinary
endowments, so long as they subsisted at all in the
Christian church.

4'2G

I come now to treat a (loctrinc, which, if I mistake
not, is a source of "greater and more <:;ciieral comfort,
and is tlie doctrine more innnediately arising from
the text, — that the ordinaiy influences of the Holy
Spirit on tlie mind of every true heliever are to every
individual of that description a particular seal of his
personal interest in the glorious promises of the
Gospel : — a doctrine full of the truest consolation
and the highest joy, l)ut very liable to be misunder-
stood. Cireat difficulties have indeed been raised in
it, by those who have unskilfully maintained, and
those who have rashly denied it. It is to be treated,
therefore, with accuracy and caution ; and we must
rely on the assistance of that Spirit, who, we trust, is
in this and in all ages with the faithful teacher and
diligent hearer of the word, to conduct us to the truth
in this important but difficult disquisition.

The proposition which we a])prehend to be implied
in the text, and which is inculcated in iniunnerable
passages of Holy Writ, is this, — that the ordinary in-
fluences of the Holy Spirit on the heart of every true
believer are to every such person an earnest of his final
salvation. These influences are an innnediate action
of the Holy Spirit of God upon the mind of man,
by which he is brought to will, and enabled to do ac-
cording to God's ])leasure ; to master the importunity
of appetite ; to curb the impetuosity of ])assion ; to
resist the tem])tations of the world ; to baffle the
wiles of the devil ; to deny himself; to take up his
cross, and follow his crucifled Lord through the
strait and thorny paths of virtue, to the peaceful
seats of endless bliss and glory. It is the doctrine
of the Scriptures, that a strength convcved from (iod
into the (liristian's uiiud renders him sufficient for

427

these great performances. And the text, assummg
this doctrine as a confessed and certain truth, teaches
liim to conckide, that God's enabhng him to do what,
without God's assistance, could not be done, is a cer-
tain argument of God's merciful design to promote
him to that happiness hereafter, for which the habits
of a religious temper here are the natural preparative.
And admitting the premises, the conclusion seems
obvious and inevitable. It was wisely said by the
philosophers of old, that nature does nothing in vain.
It was said wisely, because the whole of nature is
conducted by the continual Providence of the Being
who created it. In what are called the operations of
nature, God is the first and sovereign agent. And
a wise being cannot act but to some end ; nor can it
be but that infinite power must attain the ends to
which it is exerted. The maxim, therefore, that
nature never acts in vain, is true ; but the truth of
it rests upon the wisdom and power of God, who
made and governs nature. And it is improperly
alleged as itself a first principle of science, of original
and intrinsic evidence, since it is only a consequence
from a higher and more general principle, " that
God never acts in vain." This principle obtahis uni-
versally in the moral no less than the material world.
No act of the Deity can be without an end ; and when
God enables the believer to become that character
which shall be the object of his mercy in a future life,
the only end to which this action can be directed is,
to bring the person on whom it is performed to that
state of future happiness in which this character fits
him to be placed. So that if the principle be true,
that without a constant action of God's Spirit on the
mind of man no man can persevere in a life of virtue

428

and religion, tlie C'liristian wlio finds himself em-
powered to lead this life cannot err in his conclusion,
that God's power is at present exerted upon himself
in his own person for his final preservation.

13ut here it may reasonably be asked, by what sen-
sible evidence any private Christian may be assured
that he is himself a sharer in these sanctifying influ-
ences of the Spirit ? For when they are mentioned as
the seal of his future hopes, there seems to be an ap-
peal to something, of which there is a sensible per-
ception as an evidence of the reality of those things
which are not yet become the objects of perception
and sense. -As the seal affixed to a declaratory deed
is a sensible mark and token of the internal purposes
and invisible resolutions of the human mind, the sen-
sible evidence of the action of God's Spirit on his own,
the Christian must look for in the integrity of his own
principles and the innocence of his life. It may be
said of the Holy Spirit what Christ has said of other
spirits, " by his fruits ye shall know him." — " The
fruit of the Spirit is love : " love of Cxod, from a just
sense of his perfections, which render him no less the
object of rational love than of holy fear ; love of man,
as created in the image of God ; a more especial love
of Christians, as ])retlHen and members of" Christ.
*' Joy : " a mind untroubled and serene amidst all
the discouragements and vexations of the world ; a
full satisfaction aiul entire complacency in the ability
of a holy life. " Peace:" a dis})osition aiul endea-
vour to live peaceably with all men, not only by avoid-
ing wluit might justly provoke their enmity and ill will,
but by a studious cultivation of the friendship of man-
kind by all means which may l)e consistent with the
purity of our own conduct, and with the interests of

that religion which we are called upon at all hazards
to profess and to maintain. " Long-suffering :" a
patient endurance of the evil qualities and evil prac-
tices of men, even when they create particular disturb-
ance and molestation to ourselves, founded on an
equitable attention to that natural infirmity and cor-
ruption from which none of us are entirely exempted ;
a temper more inclined to bear than to retaliate much
unprovoked injury and undeserved reproach, esteem-
ing injury and reproach a lighter evil of the two
than the restless spirit of contention and revenge.
*' Gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, tem-
perance : " these are the fruits by which the Spirit
of God is known. But every man's own conscience
must decide whether these fruits are ripened to any
perfection in his heart ; whether these are the ruling
principles of his conduct. If his conscience is void of
offence towards God and towards man : if he makes
it the business of this life to prepare for his future
existence : if he uses the present world without abus-
ing it : if he is patient in affliction, not elated in
prosperity ; mild in power, content in servitude ; li-
beral in wealth, honest in poverty; fervent in devotion,
temperate in pleasure : if he rates not the present
world above its real worth, and sets his chief affection
on eternity : — this propriety of conduct in the va-
rious situations of life ; this holy habit of the soul,
turning from the things that are seen, and looking
forward to the things invisible, is the undoubted work
of God's Holy Spirit. It is, therefore, an instance of
mercy extended in the present life to the person on
whom the effect is wrought, and the surest earnest of
the greater mercies promised in the life to come. For
God being immutable in his nature and his attri-

430

butes, and unifonn in tlie nietliods oC liis govenimcnt,
the experience of his present goodness is the finiiest
ground of future hope. But of tlie reaHty of tliat
improved state of sentiment and manners from wliicli
the merciful interposition of (iod's Spirit is inferred,
every man's omi spirit, tliat is, liis conscience, is the
judge ; and the judgment of conscience must be taken
from tlic sensible effects of godly dispositions and a
lioly life.

But is this all ? Is the believer's assurance of his
sanctihcation nothing more at last than an inference
of his own mind from the favourable testimony of his
conscience ? This is indeed the case. Yet this assur-
ance is no inconsiderable thing ; for the inference is
certain and infallible. " Beloved," says St. John, " if
our hearts condemn us not, tlicn have we confidence
towards God." And the rule by which the heart must
judge is this: — " He that practiseth righteousness
is righteous, in like manner as he, that is as Christ, is
rigliteous." And " eveiy one that ])ractiseth righte-
ousness is born of him." And to the same ])urpose
our Lord himself: — *' If any one lov.e me, he will keep
my word : and the Father will love him ; and we will
come unto liim, and make our abode with him."
Thus, you see, he that keeps Christ's connnandments
is in the love of Christ and of the Father : he that
doeth righteousness is born of (iod : he that is ab-
solved by his conscience may be confident (Jod absolves
him. And yet St. Paul assures us, that he " wlio has
not the spirit of Christ is none of his." And St.. John,
that the evidence that we are in his love and under
the ])r()tecti()n of his ])rovidence is, " that he has given
us of his own Spirit." In these texts the very same
things are denied of him who shall be without the

431

Spirit, which, in those before alleged, are affirmed of
him whose conscience shall be pure. Evidently, there-
fore, the connection is necessaiy and constant between
a good life and a regenerate mind ; and where there
is a conscience void of offence, there is the sanctifying
Spirit of the Lord.

Many, it is true, pretend to something more than
this, and speak of the action of the Holy Ghost upon
their minds as something of which they have an im-
mediate and distinct perception independent of the
testimony of conscience ; and they describe it as some-
thing that they know by what they feel to be the in-
ternal operation of the Spirit. This is, indeed, a
bewitching doctrine, which may easily steal upon the
unwaiy, upon men of a sanguine temper and a weak
judgment, because it seems to open a new source of
comfort. But this persuasion is not of Him that
calleth us. It is visionary and vain. We have the
express declaration of Him who alone has a perfect
understanding of man's nature and of God's, and who
alone, therefore, understands the manner in which
the Divine Spirit acts on man's ; — we have the ex-
press declaration of Him who sends the Spirit into the
hearts of his disciples, that its operation is no other-
wise to be perceived than in its effects. He compares
it to the cause of those currents of the atmosphere of
which the effects are manifest and notorious, though
the first efficient is what no sense discerns, and the
manner of its operation what no philosophy can ex-
plain:— "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou
hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence
it Cometh, or whither it goeth. So is every one that
is born of the Spirit."

Those who, unmindful of this declaration of our

43^2

Lord, stand for a perception of" the Spirit independent
of eonseienee, it is to be supposed are little aware tliat
no greater certainty of the Spirit's operation ^\ould
arise from the feelings tliey describe, were it real, tlian
conscience may afford without it. For of the reality
of this feeling, could we suppose it real, conscience
still must be the judge, because conscience is the seat
of all internal perception. Conscience is the faculty
whereby the mind, in every moment of its existence,
perceives itself, with every thing that either naturally
belongs, or for the present time is incident to its being
and condition ; its present thoughts, its present de-
signs, its present hopes, fears, likings, and aversions.
Of these or any other circumstances of its present
state, — of any thing itself may do, or of any thing
which may be done to it, — the mind can have no feel-
ing but by this faculty, ^^'hatever may excite or
impress the feeling, conscience is the place, if the
expression may be allowed, where it must be felt. A
perception, therefore, of the mind of any thing done
to itself, distinct from the j)erceptions of the con-
science, is no less an absurdity, in the very first con-
ception, than an object that should be seen witliout
meeting the eye, or a sound that should be heard
without striking on the ear. It is something to be
internally perceived otherwise than by the faculty of
internal ])erception. And it is in vain to allege God's
power lor the production of such feelings, because no
power can effect impossibilities. li\ therefore, that
internal feeling, to which enthusiasts pretend, were
real, it would, indeed, be a new matter of employment
for the conscience ; but it would add nothing to the
security of our present condition, or to the certainty
of our distant hopes. For, consider how the case

433

stands without these feelings. Conscience attesting
that the Hfe is innocent and the heart sincere, Faith
draws the conchision that this upright heart and
blameless conduct is the work of the Holy Spirit of
God. And thus, in the sensible effect of a reformed
life and regenerate mind, it discovers a token of God's
present favour. Consider, on the other hand, how
far the case will be altered by the supposition of an
internal feeling of the Holy Spirit's influence. All
that could be felt would be the effect, an impression
on the mind. This impression the conscience alone
could feel. That this impression felt in the conscience
should be from God's Spirit rather than from any
other agent, would still be a conclusion to be made by
faith. And by what sign or token could faith discern
between the Divine Spirit and another, but by those
good works which the Divine Spirit claims as his
proper and his constant fruits ? You see, therefore,
that the accession of these pretended internal feelings
would neither change the ground nor improve the
certainty of the Christian's hope. The ground of his
hope would remain what it has been shown to be with-
out them, — the conclusions of faith from the testi-
mony of conscience. Only this difference is to be
observed between the fictitious and the real case, that
no internal feeling, other than the consciousness of
good qualities, and holy habits, and dispositions,
could be interpreted by a true and unenlightened
faith as a part of the Spirit's sanctifying influence.
Because, the express doctrine of the Gospel being
what it is, it is no less the part of a true faith to dis-
believe the reality of any immediate perception of the
mysterious intercourse between God's Spirit and the
human soul, than to embrace, with all thankfulness,

VOL. II. F F

181.

tlu' belief of a constant iinj)ei(eivetl connnunion. For
the one is denied hy tlie very same autliority by whidi
the other is asserted. And to disbelieve what Christ
hath denied, no less than to believe what he liatli af-
firmed, is an essential part of the faith in Christ.

If I have delivered myself with the perspicuity at
which I have aimed, you will be sensible that we
neither abolish nor weaken the testimony of the Spirit
by brin«];inj]f it to rest upon the testhnony of conscience.
This does by no means reduce the hopes of the Chris-
tian to what they might be, if the testimony of the
Spirit were removed. To perceive this the more
clearly, make the supposition for a moment, that the
doctrine of the Gospel l)eing in all other points exactly
what it is, this article of the Spirit's general and ordi-
nary influence had been kept entirely out of sight ;
there is no absurdity in supposing that God nnglit
have acted just as we are taught he does upon the
hearts of the faithful, although man had never been
made acquainted with this wonderful part of the
scheme of his salvation. And, notwithstanding his
ignorance in this particular, the good Christian would
still have found in the favourable testimony of his
conscience a solid ground of future hoi)e. liut
this hope, though, perhaps, not less firm, must have
been by many degrees less vigorous and imimating
than that which he now derives from the belief of the
Holy Spirit's constant operation on his heart. For
on the supposition of his ignorance upon this point,
his conclusicm concerning his own future condition
must have been drawn from a persuasion of the truth
of (iod's general promises, to all persons of that re-
formed character, wliidi he might understand to be
his own. \\'heieas, with the knowledge tlwit he

435

actually enjoys, his hopes are built on a personal ex-
perience of God's present goodness. You see, there-
fore, what gratitude we owe to God, both for the
unspeakable gift and for the clear knowledge of it
which he has given us ; which renders it to every
Christian in the present life the private and personal
seal of his future expectations.

It remains for me briefly to remind you, that the
effect of a seal in any civil contract is to fasten the
conditions of the covenant upon both parties. And
thus it is to be understood, that the seal of the Spirit,
as it confirms the promises on the part of God, and
renders them in some measure personal to every one
who find the impression of this seal in the testimony
of his conscience, so it confirms the obligation to
a holy life, and renders it personal on the part of
the Christian. There is a general obligation upon
all mankind to a strict discharge of the duties of re-
ligion as far as they are made known to them, arising
from their intrinsic fitness and propriety, and from
the common relation in which all men stand to God,
as their Creator and Preserver. There is a more
particular obligation upon Christians to observe the
injunctions of their Lord, arising from the particular
benefits and blessings of the Christian covenant, from
the clear discovery of future rewards and punish-
ments, and from the wonderful manifestation of the
riches of God's mercy, who gave his Son to die for
us while we were enemies. But there is besides these
general obligations, — besides the obligation upon all
men to their natural duties, upon all Christians to
the public injunctions of their Lord, — there is, I
say, besides, upon every true Christian who has
tasted of the heavenly gift, and been made partaker

of the Holy (iliost ; who experiences in tlie im-
provement of his own mind and manners, the pre-
sent powers of the world to come ; upon every such
person, there is a special and personal obligation,
to cleanse himself from all impurity of flesh and
spirit, and to perfect holiness in the fear of God ;
especially to listen with a vigilant and interested at-
tention to the private admonitions of his own consci-
ence, which is, indeed, nothing less than the voice of
God within him. For as it is certain, on the one hand,
that no man has any testimony from the Spirit of his
present sanctification, no assurance of his final sal-
vation but what is conveyed to him through the con-
science ; so it is equally certain, on the other, that
every good suggestion of the conscience proceeds from
the Spirit of God. And whoever stifles these sug-
gestions, whoever is not diligent to consult this in-
ternal monitor, or reluctantly and imperfectly obeys
him, grieves the Spirit whose oracle he is. And the
danger is, that the Sjiirit will be quenched, that those
assistances will be withdrawn which negligence and
perverseness render ineffectual and useless. For God*s
grace is given to help the infirmities of the upright
and sincere, but it will not forcil)ly reclaim the refrac-
tory or the thoughtless. " (iive, therefore, all dili-
gence to make your calling and election sure :" For
this shall effectually secure your admission into the
everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ. To whom, tScc.

THE END.

LoNnoN :

Printc<> by A. A U. SpottiswofMlo,

Ncw-Strcot-Sqnarc.

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