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 M, SoljH tjiB 3Ja|iti3t nn ntmplnr to Cjiristinii BimsterB. 
 
 A SEEM ON 
 
 PREACHED 
 
 IN THE CHAPEL OF TRINITY COLLEGE, 
 
 TORONTO, 
 
 ON SUNDAY, JUNE 24, 1800. 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE WHITAKER, M.A., 
 
 I'ROVOST OF TRINITY COLLKGK. 
 
 PUBLISHED AT THE BEQUEST OF THE PROFESSORS AND STUDENTS OF 
 
 THE COLIEOE 
 
 TORONTO : 
 HENRY ROWSELL, KING STREET. 
 
 1800. 
 
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 it ^n tjiB aSairtiat an mmfhx ta (Clinatioii Mmim, 
 
 A SEEMON 
 
 PREACHED 
 
 IN THE CHAPEL OF TRINITY COLLEGE, 
 
 TORONTO, 
 
 ON SUNDAY, JUNE 24, 1860. 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE WHITAKER, M.A, 
 
 PROVOST OF TRINITY COLLEGE. 
 
 PUBLISHED AT THE BEQUEST OF THE PROFESSORS AND STUDENTS 0? 
 
 THE COLLEOE. 
 
 TORONTO : 
 HENRY ROWSELL, KING STREET. 
 
 1860. 
 
TO 
 
 THE RIGHT REVEREND FATHER IN GOD, 
 
 JOHN, 
 
 LORD BISHOP OF TORONTO, 
 
 IN GRATEIUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT 
 
 OF UNVARYING KINDNESS AND CONFIDENCE 
 
 DURING A PERIOD OF NINE YEARS, 
 
 AND WITH AN EARNEST PRAYER 
 
 FOR THE PERMANENT PROSPERITY AND USEFULNESS 
 
 OF A COLLEGii 
 
 WHICH OWES ITS FOUNDATION 
 
 TO HIS EXERTIONS, 
 
 THIS SERMON 
 IS, BY ms LORDSHIP'S PERMISSION, 
 
 INSCRIBED, 
 
 BY HIS OBLIGED AND FAITHFUL ?T:sVANT, 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
Isaiah, xl., 8. — Tim voice or him that cribtu in tub witOERNEss, PnK- 
 
 PARB YB TUB WAT OF TUB LORD, MAKR STRAIGHT IN THB DK8BRT A HIQH- 
 WAY FOR OUR OOD. 
 
 
 Tho Church instructs us on this day to commemorate the 
 great forerunner of our Lord's first coming ; and as, both 
 in the collect for the day, and also in the collect for the 
 third Sunday in Advent, the Baptist is presented to us as a 
 model for our imitation, and more especially as an example 
 to Christian ministers, the thoughts which tho day sug- 
 gests will fully harmonize with our own special circumstan- 
 ces at the close of the academical year, when a larger number 
 than usual are about to take their leave of us for the pur- 
 pose of entering upon the sacred duties of tho ministry. 
 Let us then consider the lessons which may be drawn from 
 the character of that holy man of God, whose memory we 
 are on this day taught to cherish. He stands in a remark- 
 able position between the law and the gospel, yet, surely, 
 far more closely related to the latter than to the former. 
 " All the prophets and the law," says our Lord, "prophe- 
 sied until John," their oflBce was but prophetic ; " but from 
 the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of hea- 
 ven suffereth violence." That kingdom had been announced 
 as close at hand, men had been warned and invited to pre- 
 pare for its coming, and, by listening to that warning — by 
 obeying that invitation — they did, by anticipation at least, 
 " press into it." And, surely, wo form not only an imper- 
 fect, but an erroneous conception of the character of the 
 Baptist, if we consider that the contrast between his disci- 
 pline and that of our blessed Lord is merely to the prejudice 
 of the former ; as if St. John's austerity and severity of 
 tone were but the dark back-ground which should bring out 
 into full relief the meekness and the gentleness of Christ. 
 There was a contrast, indeed, between the forerunner and 
 Him who was to come — between the herald and the Great 
 
6 
 
 King — there was a contrast, yet not an opposition ; Mrisdom, 
 the wisdom of God, was justified in both her children, in the 
 the child who was called " the prophet of the Highest," and 
 in the Child whoso name is " called Wonderful, Counsellor, 
 the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of 
 Peace." 
 
 We cannot, indeed, hope to apprehend fully the wondrous 
 ways and works of God ; our joy and confidence are that 
 they are far wiser and greater than wo can know ; yet wo 
 may ever, if we will, discern at least some glimpses of His 
 glory and of His goodness, something which may set our 
 hearts at rest, and enable us to wait in quiet expectation 
 till His mystery shall be finished. May we not, then, be- 
 lieve that the person, the habits, the character of St. John 
 the Baptist were peculiarly suited to the nation to which ho 
 was sent ? Old faith was dying out among them ; overlaid, 
 in the instance of the Pharisee, by a mass of senseless and 
 immoral traditions ; all but extirpated, in the instance of 
 the Sadducee, by hardened and profligate infidelity. If 
 any thing could successfully appeal to the conscience of 
 either, it would surely be a re-production before their eyes 
 of ancient simplicity and piety ; wo might almost imagine 
 that a Pharisee, hard pressed in argument, would say to an 
 opponent, "If I am wrong, let an old prophet come to be 
 my teacher ;" and that a Sadducee might say, " If I am to 
 believe, it must be at the word of an Elijah." 
 
 And so, on the banks of Jordan, an Elijah stood : a man 
 more fitted to hold converse with Abraham, the friend of 
 God — or with his own great prototype — than with their 
 degenerate descendants of his own time : a man bearing no 
 mark whatever of the days in which he was born ; having no 
 special sympathies with the existing order of things, whe- 
 ther social, political, or religious ; disengaged from all petty 
 ties, from all inferior interests ; a son of Abraham, a true 
 antique Israelite ; speaking, as it were, out of the past to the 
 present, and having nought which bound him to that present 
 but the one common hope of Israel ; announcing, with start* 
 
ling simplicity, that tlio promise which God had made unto 
 the fathers, Ho was now fulfilling unto their children. 
 
 Some strong reason there must have been why " all men 
 counted John, that ho was a prophet indeed," some strong 
 reason why they said, " John did no miracle, but all things 
 that John spako of this man were true ;" and I believe that 
 wo shall find this reason in the fact that he was instructed to 
 present himself to his countrymen under such a form us car- 
 ried their minds back irresistibly to the ancient glories of 
 their history, and thus reminded them strongly that God 
 was over their King — ever ruling over them — oven though 
 Babylon or Homo might for a while interpose its gigantic 
 shadow between Jlis people and the glory of His presence. 
 
 Nor let us forgci that our blessed Lord, while He Himself 
 deigned to present to us a perfect example, and not only 
 that one aspect of holiness Avhich His servant John pre- 
 sented, (for this, let us remember. Ho did present, ^vl en 
 once ho fasted for forty days and forty nights, and when, 
 not once, but often, He continued all night in prayer to 
 God,) still fully recognised the typo of moral and spiritual 
 excellence, which St. John the Baptist exemplified, as ono 
 which was to bo realised in His followers. Did His answer 
 to His questioners on this point imply that St. John's rule 
 was wrong, or that His own disciples wore as yet incapable 
 of following that rule ? New wine was to bo put not in old 
 skins, but in now, and the skins were not new as yet. The 
 old garment would not bear the insertion of the stout new 
 cloth, but this would find its place when all things were 
 made new. Nor, again, could the children of the bride- 
 chamber fast while the bridegroom was with them, but the 
 days would come when the bridegroom should be taken from 
 them, and then they should fast. 
 
 If we study the example of St. Paul, we may see in beau- 
 tiful harmony the characteristics both of the forerunner and 
 of our Lord : we may see on the ono side the austerity of 
 St. John sublimed into Christian endurance, the obligatory 
 and ceremonial abstinence of the Nazarite transfigured into 
 
8 
 
 the voluntary and moral self-denial which the vow of cha- 
 rity prescribes ; we may see, on the other side, the gracious 
 condescension of our blessed Lord imitated by His apostle, 
 in becoming " all things to all men." And, if we turn to 
 St. Paul's last instructions to his dearly beloved son Timo- 
 thy, do we not hear an echo of the voice which cried on the 
 banks of the Jordan, in those remarkable words, " Thou 
 therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. 
 No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of 
 this life, that he may please him who hath chosen him to be 
 a soldier." 
 
 We may, then, without hesitation, both as Christians and 
 as Christian ministers, seek instruction from the example of 
 St. John the Baptist ; nor can we do ootter, in seeking that 
 instruction, than to turn to the language of the collect for 
 the day, and observe in what way we are there directed to 
 ask of God that we may follow his example. And first, "by 
 constantly speaking the truth," that is, by steadfastly, and 
 without hesitation, avowing and inculcating sacred verities. 
 This we must do, if we would be useful ministers of the 
 church ; perhaps I should rather say, if we would not be 
 positively dangerous and injurious to others in the exercise 
 of our sacred office. And, if we would constantly — firmly 
 — steadfastly — speak the truth, we must constantly believe 
 it. We are not sent to preach our own opinions, to give 
 utterance to our own fancies, to hazard our own rash conjec- 
 tures, but to declare the truth of God. What would that 
 voice have been, which cried in the wilderness, had it pro- 
 ceeded from one who was not strongly persuaded of the 
 truth of his great message ? How could the simple recluse 
 have met the gaze of Pharisee and Sadducee, the cold con- 
 tempt of worldly learning, and the hardened scorn of self- 
 indulgence, had he not felt that he bore God's message to 
 man, and had he not been empowered, by the very depth 
 and earnestness of this conviction, to make the most stubborn 
 and the most indifferent feel it also ? 
 
 There is no man to be regarded with deeper pity than 
 
9 
 
 one who has adventured to assume the sacred office which 
 obliges him " constantly to speak the truth," while he has 
 not as yet heartily embraced the truth which he is bound to 
 speak. Brethren, how can we speak that which we do not 
 cordially believe ? how can we use words which we accept 
 not in their plain meaning ? how can we dare to inculcate, 
 as a holy faith, that which Ave ourselves regard only as a 
 vague and visionary philosophy ? 
 
 There is great danger in this regard in our days, and I 
 am bound not to disguise it. We havf high examples, which 
 may appear to some to palliate, if not to justify, this grievous 
 offence ; we have instances of men who seem to think that 
 creeds and confessions are made only for ignorant and vulgar 
 minds — are merely a gross exoteric husk, which may be 
 utterly contemned by those who have grasped, as they con- 
 ceive, the inward truth, which this rude and shapeless cover- 
 ing, in their apprehension, at once protects and obscures. 
 
 One, ^^^ who well knows the state of things at home, speaks, 
 in a recent publication, of " some of our best and noblest 
 minds having made shipwreck concerning the faith," and he 
 adds, that even when this fatal consequence has not been 
 fully realised, there are other cases in which the result has 
 been " either a most timid and uncertain grasp of all revela- 
 tion, or else the selection of a few scattered portions of it 
 and the rejection (secret or avowed) of all the rest." " That 
 which is saved out of the wreck," he adds, "is too often 
 little more than a Gospel without its Gospel, a creed which 
 reason could have taught without revelation, and which is 
 accepted just because it is reason, and not revelation, which 
 warrants it and vouches for it." These are, indeed, pregnant 
 words, and teach us very forcibly what it is to come short of 
 " constantly speaking the truth." 
 
 As members and ministers of the Church of England, we 
 have a plain guide to follow in our Creeds, our Liturgy, and 
 our Articles. I believe that the day will never come when 
 a Christian man will see good cause to be ashamed of the 
 
 (1) See note (A) at the end. 
 
10 
 
 i! I 
 
 confession which we make in those formularies ; at all 
 events, no man who is not prepared frankly and cordially to 
 accept them, as the rule and measure of his own teaching, 
 can have any right to intrude himself into the ministry of 
 our branch of the Church. He cannot, in so doing, look 
 for the blessing of Almighty God, for the approval of honest 
 minds, or for the repose of a quiet conscience. 
 
 But we are next directed to pray that we may follow the 
 example of St. John the Baptist, "by boldly rebuking vice." . 
 And here recent events remind us, in a very startling man- 
 ner, how soon we may be called upon to follow his example 
 to the very letter. His words, " it is not lawful for thee to 
 have her," have a strange application to the circumstances 
 of the present time, when the lawfulness and expediency of 
 that very connexion, which this servant of God denounced 
 in the case of a degenerate Jew, is publicly and unblush- 
 ingly advocated by men who claim for themselves the name 
 of Christians. St. John said, ^^^ " It is not lawful for thee 
 to have thy brother's wife." Christian legislators are found 
 to say, "It is lawful for thee to have thy sister's husband." 
 Thus are men seeking to infringe the only authoritative 
 marriage law which the world has ever received — to break 
 through the one sacred defence, which the wisdom and 
 benevolence of the Almighty have set around the peace and 
 purity of the domestic circle, elevating thereby unspeakably 
 the moral sense in man, and making his earthly existence 
 incomparably more precious to him than it could otherwise 
 have been, by restraining, by a positive enactment, his 
 absolute freedom in respect of marriage. Let this one great 
 law of God be broken through, and we have no guard what- 
 ever against the flood of iniquity ; marriage, accounted no 
 longer a holy and honourable thing, will gradually become 
 a thing profane and contemptible, till all distinction between 
 vice and virtue, in this momentous regard, will be utterly 
 obliterated. 
 
 Nor can we forget that a step has already been actually 
 (1) See note (B) at the end. 
 
11 
 
 taken in this perilous course by the introduction of a law of 
 divorce, which offers a miserable facility for the dissolution 
 of the marriage tie, under the plea that it has been unwisely 
 or unhappily contracted ; a facility which directly tends to 
 multiply and to aggravate the mischiefs for which it claims 
 to be the remedy. 
 
 We cannot look upon these things without entertaining 
 the apprehension that the duty of the ministers of Christ, 
 in the assertion of moral obligations, may in future become 
 far more arduous than it has hitherto been, at least within 
 this realm : that they may have occasion to urge the law of 
 God upon the consciences of men, unsupported by the au- 
 thority of human law or of public opinion, and to point to 
 the great tribunal, where sin will surely be visited, though 
 neither disgrace nor punishment await its commission here. 
 
 We must imitate, then, the boldness of St. John, and let 
 us remember that, if we would be successfully bold against 
 this or any other form of evil, we must possess the boldness 
 of innocence, — a boldness which none can feel but he who 
 knows that it is not a thing impossible to serve God — not a 
 thing impossible to lead a godly, righteous, and sober life ; 
 the boldness of him who knows that the love of God is the 
 keeping of His commandments, and that His commandments 
 are not grievous. 
 
 But, again, we are directed to pray that, after the exam- 
 ple of St. John, we may patiently suffer for the truth's sake. 
 The discharge of the duties already mentioned implies at 
 least the possibility of suffering ; men do not always love 
 the truth, so that it will not always be an acceptable office 
 to speak it constantly ; men often excuse vice, or desire, at 
 all events, in order to gratify themselves, to relax the re- 
 straints imposed by religion and morality, and therefore 
 they who boldly rebuke vice will hardly escape censure and 
 harsh treatment. 
 
 It is not, therefore, without some dark forebodings, that 
 we see a great assault preparing, both against the Christian 
 truth which we are bound to speak, and against the Chris- 
 
12 
 
 tian morality which we are bound to uphold ; and we must, 
 if we would do our duty, be prepared to suffer for the truth's 
 sake. And what are we to suffer ? It may be violence 
 from those who openly reject God, both as the revealer of 
 truth, and as the dispenser of moral laws ; or it may be the 
 more dangerous trial of being subjected to the derision of 
 those who affect to understand, far better than ourselves, 
 both Christian doctrine and Christian practice. And so we 
 may have to suffer as bigots, as men hopelessly enthralled 
 to obsolete dogmas, to creeds outworn — as men who derive 
 their rules of social order from the barbarous legislation of 
 an ancient nomad race — a race utterly ignorant of the re- 
 finements of modern society, and of the requirements of an 
 advanced civilization. I think that we must expect the 
 sneer rather than the sword, the trial of cruel mockings ra- 
 ther than of bonds and imprisonment. 
 
 And, if it be so, let us patiently suffer for the truth's 
 sake. For, beyond all doubt, there is a holy truth for which 
 to suffer, a truth of which Christ Himself is the centre, lay- 
 ing His sacred hand upon both Testaments, upon their doc- 
 trine and their discipline — telling us what has been fulfilled 
 for evermore in Him — and what is evermore to be fulfilled 
 in us ; Himself the centre of Patriarchs and Prophets — of 
 Evangelists and Apostles, making every word of theirs His 
 own — their teaching the truth of God ; and still assuring 
 us, as the deceits of the world would bewilder or allure us, 
 that " the world passeth away and the lust thereof, but he 
 that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." 
 
 In conclusion, suffer me to remind you that as it is our 
 duty thus to speak the truth, and thus to bear witness against 
 moral evil, in our capacity as ministers of the Christian 
 Church ; so also does this duty devolve upon us in a special 
 manner as members of this College. I trust that those who 
 have gone forth, or are now going forth, from these walls to 
 serve the Church in this Province, feel that at least something 
 has been done, during their period of study here, to prepare 
 them to discharge that service. They have, at all events, 
 
 \ 
 
13 
 
 .0 
 
 ;o 
 
 g 
 •e 
 
 enjoyed the opportunity of becoming conversant with sacred 
 truth ; they have learned how to prove, from holy Scrip- 
 ture, the doctrines which our Church affirms ; they have 
 seen something at least of tno marvellous coherence of the 
 articles of our faith one with another ; they have felt, again 
 and again, how complicated is the testimony which God has 
 given to the great verities which are to be the subject of 
 their teaching. Let them think then of the good providence 
 of God, in appointing for them this place of preparation for 
 their arduous duty, and let them ever pray Him to give 
 them grace to turn to good account the advantages which 
 they have here enjoyed. 
 
 Nor let any, who are receiving instruction within this 
 college, imagine that their position here does not entail upon 
 them a peculiar responsibility, and lay them under special 
 obligations. The youngest amongst us may remember the 
 circumstances under which this college was founded, and is 
 aware of the end which its founders had in view. More 
 especially do we know the object which the Bishop of this 
 diocese proposed to himself, when, after a long series of 
 discouragements and disappointments, he saw the labour of 
 many yeu,rs, so far as the direct influence of the Church 
 and the inculcation of religious truth were concerned, utterly 
 thrown away ; and was compelled to begin anew, from the 
 foundation, with greatly diminished resources, the work of 
 his earlier days. 
 
 At the close of our ninth year, we have much to be thank- 
 ful for, in the success of our Bishop's pious endeavours ; but 
 we must also feel that there is room for regret that the suc- 
 cess has not been more complete, and that, at all events, 
 steady exertion is required to ensure the permanent pros- 
 perity of our society. 
 
 Let us, then, remember that this exertion must be made 
 by all, that every one must put his hand to the work. Were 
 our numbers tenfold greater than they are, we might still 
 urge this argument; bat while they are so small, it must 
 apply with tenfold force. Any single instance of neglect of 
 
14 
 
 duty is an appreciable loss to us ; if there be any one among 
 us, whose misconduct throws suspicion on our discipline, or 
 whose indolence suggests disparaging remarks upon our 
 course of study, such misconduct or such indolence is no 
 small damage to the college. 
 
 On the other hand, what can be a more cheering incite- 
 ment to good conduct — to regularity — and to diligence, 
 than the conviction which every one among you may justly 
 entertain, that, by the conscientious discharge of his Chris- 
 tian duty in the place in which God has set him, he is doing 
 very much to build up the general reputation of the society 
 to which he belongs, and to secure results which lie very 
 near the heart of the venerable prelate, who laboured so 
 assiduously for its establishment, and who has ever discov- 
 ered so constant and solicitous an interest in its welfare. 
 
 Give to this college, then, one and all, the help of your 
 earnest efforts and of your constant prayers, both while you 
 are studying here, and when you shall have left us ; and if, 
 unhappily, you have proof that there are those who have 
 evil will at this nursery of the Church, or who speak calum- 
 niously of it, be it your care to disappoint, by your own 
 intellectual and moral excellence, the expectations of its 
 adversaries ; and to stop the mouth of calumny, by proving, 
 in your own persons, that within these walls the young are 
 taught to believe the holy doctrines, and to practise the 
 pure morality, of the Gospel of Christ. 
 
16 
 
 ^f 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 Note (A), page 9. 
 
 The quotations made in the text are taken from Dr. Vaughan's " Memo- 
 rials of Harrow Sundays ;" the whole passage is so striking and painfully 
 important, that it is here given in full : — 
 
 " I fear it cannot be denied that there is a great and extensive shaking 
 of men's minds at this time as to the truth and authority of the Christian 
 doctrine. We see it with great sorrow. It is indicated in many ways. 
 To think only of our own class of society, it is intimated not obscurely by 
 a great and growing indisposition, on the part of young men otherwise 
 admirably qualified for it, to the profession of a clergyman. How many of 
 those whose character, whose gifts, whose education, and we are sure also 
 (in some cases) whoso inclination, destined them for that useful and honour- 
 able service, are seen to turn away from it when the time comes ! Any 
 thing rather than that ; no obscurity, no drudgery, no want of attractive- 
 ness and no want of direct usefulness, is enough to deter them from any 
 other calling, so they may escape the necessity of declaring themselves to 
 believe all the articles of the Christian faith, or to assent with all their 
 hearts to the prescribed order of our Church's worship. We do not blame 
 them for this scrupulosity : we can even admire that candour which forbids 
 the concealment of such a hesitation, if it exists. But we deeply lament 
 its existence ; we deeply lament its cause. We see how perilous it is to 
 the stability, or at least to the influence, the just and salutary influence, of 
 Christ's Church and of Christ's religion in this country. When once the 
 highest gifts of intellect and of character are refused to the ministry of the 
 Gospel amongst us, the ministry itself will lose much of its real, and all its 
 superficial, influence upon the higher classes of the people of England. 
 The common people may and will, as they always have done in every land 
 and age, hear Christ gladly, even when He speaks to them through the 
 half-educated and the unrpfined. But this, though it be a great matter, 
 is far less than might have been or (with many deductions) than is. We 
 want to see the teaching of the true faith powerful with all classes ; with 
 the very highest, who perhaps, of all, need it most. And therefore we 
 desire that men of that highest class in every sense, in social position, in 
 intellectual attainments, ns well as in purity and nobleness of character, 
 should be found largely sprinkled amongst the very teachers and ministers 
 of our national Church. And the fear that in this coming generation it 
 may not be so, that even in the present generation it is far less so in pro- 
 portion than once it was, saddens the heart and weakens the hands of many 
 who deeply love the work to which their own lives have been dedicated." 
 
 " The immediate cause of this defalcation is that to which the text refers. 
 Some of our best and noblest minds have made shipwreck concerning the 
 faith ; they have wrecked themselves on the faith. It is said that there 
 are few, amongst the men of real ability and of high attainment in our 
 great seats of learning, who have not known what it was to doubt more or 
 less seriously, or more or less extensively, or more or less permanently^ 
 the truth of what St. Paul here calls the faith. It is of no practical im- 
 portance to settle the question what proportion the numbers of these may 
 bear to that of those who have not thus doubted. But that there is ground 
 for the apprehension, that there is truth in the statement, none, I fear, 
 can gainsay. And the result too often is, even in cases which end less 
 
16 
 
 than fatally, even in cases, I mean, in which the faith wit .11 its hopes 
 and all its requirements is not finally flung away, either a n. jil,! timid and 
 uncertain grasp of all revelation, or else the selection of a few scattered 
 portions of it and the rejection (secret or avowed) of all the rest. These, 
 when the general wreck is complete, have contrived to save out of it a few 
 fragments and relics of the ruined vessel, liico those boards and broken 
 pieeea of tht ship of which we read in the description of an apostle's ship- 
 wreck, on which, amidst waves and storms and under the very darkness of 
 a midnight sky, they seek, as it were, to escape safe to land. But, alas ! 
 it is a poor hope, in many cases, if the Scriptures say truly that in Christ 
 and in Christ alone is there hope of salvation for fallen man. That which 
 is saved out of the wreck, that on which the chance of escape and safety 
 all depends, is too often little more than a Gospel without its Gospel, a 
 creed which reason could have taught without revelation, and which is 
 accepted just because it is reason and not revelation which warrants it and 
 
 vouches for it." 
 
 Note (B), page 10. 
 
 An objection may be urged against the assertion in the text, on the 
 ground that Philip was still living, and that St. John rebuked Herod for 
 simple adultery. It has been asserted that Josephus testifies that Philip 
 died in the 20th year of Tiberius, about five years later than St. John's 
 imprisonment. The Philip, however, of whom Josephus speaks, is Philip, 
 tctrarch of Itunea and Trachonitis (St. Luke, iii. 1,) not Philip, the hus- 
 band of Herodias. Thus there is no proof that Philip was still living, but 
 there is also no proof that he was dead. What, then, is to determine the 
 nature of the offence with which St. John charged Herod ? We must ap- 
 peal to the language of the Baptist himself. He accused Herod, not of 
 adultery, but of incest. He did not say " It is written. Thou shalt not 
 commit adultery," nor did he say, " It is not lawful for thee to have the 
 wife of another," but, •• It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother'a wife." 
 (St. Mark, vi. 18.) If Philip were dead at the time, (which, for aught we 
 know, he was,) John forbad Herod to maintain his union with the widow 
 of Philip. If Philip were still living, John urged against Herod the sin of 
 incest rather than of adultery, probably because incest was a bar to the 
 lawfulness of the union, which could never be removed ; while the bar pre- 
 sented by adultery might be removed by the murder, or by the natural 
 death, of Philip. 
 
 At all events, the words of the Baptist, addressed to Herod, unquestion- 
 ably involve, if Philip were living, the charge of incestuous adultery ; and 
 though on the death of Philip the connexion would cease to be adulterous, 
 it could not cease to be incestuous. Josephus (Ant., xvii. 15, 1,) tells us 
 that Archelaus, " transgressing the institutions of his ancestors, married 
 Glaphyra, who had beea the wife of his brother Alexander, and had borne 
 him children ; it being a thing detestable to the Jews to marry their bro- 
 thers' wives." In this instance there is no uncertainty whatever as to the 
 circumstances under which the union was contracted, as Alexander was 
 put to death by his father Herod the Great ; and Archelaus married Gk" 
 phyra, after his father's decease, on his return from Rome as Ethnarch of 
 Judsea. That which Josephus, then, so strongly denounced in the instance 
 of Archelaus, St. John would, assuredly, have denounced no less strongly 
 ia the instance of his brother Herod. 
 
 
 ' I 
 
 V.