^:/7^m^':^->- :'' '' .,r,^^,T^'':^';:g^-;;>^:;r' J6 5:^ 5:^ o^ o^ .^^ i:^. ^2- (If THK AT PRINCETON, N. J. x> o :v -.^. T" I o :v «* H- SAMUEL AGNE-W, «. O K P H 1 I. A D E I. P II 1 A , P A . fez. /h/a/i/Cyfxy /cf'rLif^^^, • .r, f] • Co Hi', Divi:i'- Sh('lt\ Sccti ' f ♦ is .-- — '£^^^' .11^ SERMONS, PREACHED AT LAURA-CHAPEL, BATH, DURING THE SEASON OF ADVENT 1799. REV. FRANCIS RANDOLPH, D. D. PREBENDARY OF BRISTOL, AND CHAPLAIN TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF TOKK. PRINTED FOR I'. AND C. RIVINGTON, ST. PAUL's CHURCH-YARD. LONDOHj AND R. CRUTTWELL, BATH. 1800. TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF YORK SIR, TTT is not to shelter the following Discourses ■^ under the protecting influence of an il- lustrious name, that I dedicate them to your Royal Highness; because, whatever merit they may be thought to possess, it will only be acknowledged, in proportion as their in- teresting truths shall appear to be sanctioned by higher authority. At the same time, let me own myself far from being indifferent to your Royal High- [ vi ] ness*s approbation of them ; since, in addition to tlie weight of such testimony, in these times, in favour of Religion, when all earthly- possessions are shrinking from the grasp, when every decorating splendour of this life is fa- ding away, they will have furnished reflections to render peaceful its awful close, and, per- haps, perpetuate in your Royal Highness*s memory an esteem for him, who, with pride and gratitude, subscribes himself Your most faithful And obliged humble servant, F. RANDOLPH. CONTENTS. SERMON 1. FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT. Heb. xiii. 8. — Tesiis Christ, the same yesterday j and to-day, and for ever. - - - - - page 1 SERMON 11. SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. Gen. xxvi. 5. — Abraham obeyedmy voice, and keepvv/ charge, my commandments, my statutes, and viy laws. ._----------3l SERMON III. THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT. ^eb. xi. 7. — By faith Noah, being warned of Ood of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he con- demned the world, and became heir of the righteous- ness which is by faith. ------- 57 [ viii ] SERMON IV. FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT. Deut. iv. 11, 12. — And ye came near, and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness. And the Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire. - - - - - - page 81 SERMON V. CHRISTMAS-DAY. St. John i. 1 1. — He came unto his own, and his own received him not. ___-_..- 107 SERMON VI. SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS-DAY. Hcb. xii. 22, 23, 24. — But ye come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, andto an innumerable company of angels. To the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the ynediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel. - - 127 SERMON VII. FIRST SUNDAY IN THE NEW YEAR. Psalm Ixxiv. 9. — We see not our signs. - - 153 SERMON L \ ■'■ ■ ' HEBREWS XI r I, J^rr "''"" Jesus Christy Ihe same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. 1VT0TIIING has done more harm to the cause of Christianity, or furnished stronoer ma- terials of objection to the opposer of its faith and dod;rines, than representing it as of late original; as a scheme of religion entirely new,, and never revealed to mankind till about four thousand years after the creation. Hence it has happened, that amidst the va- riety of religious systems, each claiming a divine orignial, the infidel has classed the christian Avith other impostures of the day ; or allowing, the rational and pradical influence of B I 2 J religion in general, as derived from God's uni- versal law of nature, has disdained to confine it within the ceremonies, or to make it favour the pretensions, of this or that particular church or nation. And hence also, many, who profess and call themselves christians, from neglecting to investio'ate the evidence of the covenant which was from everlasting, and only ratified at the advent of that Saviour, who from the very fall of man stood forth his intercessor, impeach the unity of God's all-merciful design, darken the prospe<5l of universal redemption, abridge the promised benefits of the Gospel, and shut on preceding ages those gates of mercy, which they yet consider as open to themselves. By those, however, who diligently search the scriptures, and thence deduce their belief, a very different dodrine will be maintained. — Holding fast by one unbroken chain of evi- ■ On the appointed morning, with thunder and lightning for his messengers, and preceded by a noise like the blast of an exceeding; crreat trumpet, the Lord proclaims his approach. — Soon He descends, as He had said, upon the mountain, which immediately in a smoak burns and blazes up to the midst of heaven, and trem^ bled to the very foundation at his divine presence. Thus riding in the storm, and situated u])on a throne, towards which the terrified Israelites da- red not turn their eyes, with a voice that shook the earth, He spake, in the hearing of all the congregation, the Ten Commandments. The people, dismayed at thrs tremendous appearance, and humbled before the voice of God sneaking to them out of the midst of the fire, nov,' suppli- cate the interposition of i\Ioses; they earnestly / [ 88 J intreat, that God would be pleased to commu- nicate his will through him, and not speak any more himself, lest they should die. God (for an obvious reason to be mentioned hereafter) approves of their request, and appoints Moses a mediator between himself and them. He is called up to the top of the mountain, and there, the tables of the Ten Commandments are sfiven to him, written with the finger of God. He is shewn the heavenly patterns of the earthly ta- bernacle, and of all its service ; he receives, by the ministry of Angels attending on God at this great solemnity, the Dispensation of the Law, which he delivered to the people, first by word of mouth, and afterwards in writing; the origi- nal of which was with the tables of stone depo- sited in the ark, and faithful copies taken and transmitted for public and private use through all succeeding generations. Such are the events to which our text refers. Events, that involve in their consequences the whole race of man, but which exemplify to a Christian people (to whom the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, hath spoken through an heavenly Redeemer) the danger of doubting [ 89 ] his authority, or of reje6ting his admonitions. Infidelity may deny the fa6t, but it cannot get rid of the evidence; it cannot falsify the his- torical records of a whole people; it cannot persuade them, that the memorials of their an- cestors, the code of their laws, the manual of their devotion, and the celebration of their or- dinances, had no foundation in truth. A\'ith as little prospe6l of success could it attribute the series of miracles, the accomplishment of pro- phecy, and all the pretensions of their favoured nation, to the common arts of human lejrisla- tion. And though it might lind the unbelieving Jew ready to join in an opposition to Christi- anity, it never could excite a prejudice against their great and revered legislator ; it never could convert their faith into a system of credulity, nor change the Mosaic ritual into an engine of superstition. To these hard speeches, and to this contra- diction of sinners, we need not furnish the Jewish believer with an answer. But in the face of avowed hostility to Him who is the same yesterday^ to-day^ and for ever, the Christian will reply, that He who gave the law, came to fulfil I 90 ] ;jnd not to annul its injun6iions; that the u:co- nomy of grace lightened only the burthen of legal ceremonies; and tliat the gracious Au- thor of their redemption from Egyptian bond- age and Babylonish captivity was only mani- festing, in their deliverance, the power and design of Him Avho was finally to l^ad captivi'ti/ captive, to triumph over sin and death, and in whom all the seed of Israel shall be justified and shall glory. The sanctions and dodrines of both dispensations, like those of every other preceding covenant, were confirmed by the Avord and in the presence of the Deity. And the revelation of his will from mount Sinai is only preparatory to a more tremendous display of his majesty, m hen not the mountain alone, |)ut the whole earth, shall be on fire, and the uni- versal race of mankind be assembled before Him. In the redemption of fidlen man, and in liis justification through Christ, ends every covenant; and through Him will be accom- plished every promise made to the faithful. — Upon this foundation, tlie pillar of all true. and spiritual religion, were the holy livc5 of the Patriarchs supported; and when tlicy arc said [ 91 1 to have worshipped God in a right faith, it is that faith which looked with eager longing after that gracious Redeemer, who was to come the light of the world, and to join the chain of heavenly love, which the disobedience of man had broken. From Adam to Noah, from Noah to Abraham, from Abraham to J\Ioses, and throughout all the successive ages of the Old Testament, wc find a divine Ambassador, a spiritual Deliverer, an everlasting Redeemer, taking upon him the cause of his church, issuing his commands, aid- ing it by his protection, or comforting it by his assurances. And under the Jewish theocracy, temporal punishments and temporal deliver- ances were only a covenanted interposition of God's providence on striking occasions, to shew that the God of Israel alone had power to save or to destroy; and that the one God, from whom both Jew and Gentile Merc fallen away, by departing from the faith and religion of their first fathers, was the only Goj», in whose hands the promised reward was as unfailing as his nature, and in whose hands the threatened chastisement was as sure as the denunciation. [ 92 ] The nature of their hope in the IMessiah, and the opinion they entertained of him who. was to come, till it was corrupted by worldly expeda- tions, may be learnt from the exalted titles and attributes with which He is every where in- vested. He is called — the Lord or Jehofah, the mighty God, t\\Q Prince of Peace, the Saviour znd Redeemer, the Angel of the Covenant, and the Strength of Israel i ^Prophet, Priest, said King ^ the Portion of Jacob, the Light of his People, and the Rock of their Salvation. In short, imder every claim of inherent divinity, under every title and name assertive of power and defence,, was He known and acknowledged by the Jewish nation, whom they trusted should have redeemed Israel. They never disputed the dignity of the chara6ler, but the humility of the person who. assumed it. When they ignorantly crucilied the Lord of Glory, they crucified him for blasphe- mously arrogating a title, which could belong only to the exalted personage who was to reign over them. They challenge him to an exertion of that divinity, which was to prove his right to the sovereignty ; they connect deity with roy-^ alty, they even interchange the terms, and in [ 93 ] their revilings in our Saviour's last moments, If, say they, he he the Son of God, if he be the King of Israel, let him come down from the cross, and we will believe on Jiim. Thus link- ing their promised, ruler in community of power with the patron God of their fathers, and un- consciously raising at the foot of the cross the ladder of faith that was to reach from earth to heaven. This was the avowed belief of the Jewish na- tion ; not the offspring of superstitious confes- sion, but publicly proclaimed with all the inso- lence of bitter invedive. And if He who was born of a virgin, be the same who expired oli the cross, to divest him of his divinity is more than a participation of Jewish guilt. They fixed their hopeson adivine Mediator, but rejected him who came, and still look for another. The ob- jc6lor to the Christian creed acknowledges that Christ was he that should come, and yet with- holds from him the claim of divine mediation. But the time will come, when the Law and the Gospel shall be proved to have preached one and the same doctrine ; when the Jew shall look unto him whom he had pierced, and the Christian rejoice [ 9i ] ill Him who made atonement for transerressions. And if one Gospel, one Faith, one Saviour, be the unvaried tone of the scripture language — if the earthly be a figure of the heavenly Canaan—^ a rejedion from the one must be a rejection from the other; let the sinner and unbeliever read it thus standing upon heavenly record — As I live, saith the Lord, none of the men that have seen my glory, and my miracles, and have not hearkened unto my voice, shall see the land zvhich I sware unto their fathers. But of these matters m'C shall find occasion to speak more at large in the progress of our enquiry. We will now return to tliat singular people, whose history was written for our ex- ample; and to those peculiar rites and obser- vances, which, except as significative emblems of the properties and aftions of Him who was to fill the real tabernacle, could never have been the shadow of good things to come, could never have been our school-master to bring us unto Christ; would have only burthened the Mosaic ccconomy with a load of unmeaning forms, and filled the sandluary of God with the ministration of useless ceremonies. [ 95 ] The Mosaic history is not, like that of any other nation, a mere detail of poHtical occur- rences, or a summary of civil regulations ; it is rather a family narrative (if we may so express it) of the whole house of God, in which Moses was formerly a servant, and over which Christ our Redeemer is the head. Descriptive, there- fore, of the glory and majesty of Him who go- verned, his language must be inspired and pro- phetic ; and being but an image of good things to come, the whole oeconomy of his household could be only figurative and typical. Me may not be able to explain satisfactorily every part of the plan, and future consummation alone can interpret justly each separate prediction; definition may be too vague, or illustration too remote; what is exhibited as proof may fail in its conneftioUj and ingenious research may end in barren speculation. But we know enough of the ceremonial law, to make it an emblem of Christianity; we have seen enough of accom- plished prediction, to prove our Sa\ iour to be the end of the Law and the Prophets.^ Not to detain you with a citation of examples which are within the reach of every onesappli- [ 90 ] cation, we will simply refer you to the Apostle's address to the Hebrews; wherein he not only argues, from the prophetic writings, on the ex- pe6tation of a great and universal blessing, and the fulfilment of it in Jeslis Christ, but even proves the ceremonial rites and the respedive ofiices of their church to be Constituent and immediate parts in the scheme of redemption, and as so many regular steps to lead us to the throne of mercy and forgiveness; thus repel- ling every arrogant claim of the Jewish nation, by grounding the Gospel on the Law, and ta- king aM'ay from their sacrifice and peace-offer- ing all merit of justification, till their purifying- conditions were connefted with the atonement of our great and eternal High-Priest. Thus far then have we brought the scriptures to bear witness of that eternal Life, which was with the Father, and which was manifested to us; we have watched the dawning light, and followed its course, till the luminous track be- gins to announce the glory that will soon arise. \ye have from the shadows discovered the sub- stance; we have traced the typical images to the person of Christ, and incorporated every [ 97 ] word of truth with the Gospel of the everlasting God. Without reposing on apostolic assertion, we have endeavoured to establish on scriptural evidence, that Christ is the Alpha and Omega of his own revelations, and that they are a book scaled without him. They begin with his wisdom and power, and they end with his faithfulness and truth. All the intermediate pages are filled with the description of his person, divinity, and names, or with the recital of his providences in nature, and of his wonders in grace. From this root has sprung every dispensation, and through this root, though now separated from it, must the seed of Abraham be nourished, till they grow into faith, and are again united to the parent tree. But may it not be a matter of enquiry, and an answer to it will go to resolve many ques- tions of adventurous sophistry, why the Law was promulgated, and particularly in this man- ner? Why at all.'' Wliy in so public, why in so terrible a way ? It would impeach, indeed, no article of our faith, to» reply to such en'quiries with a confession of our ignorance; because, H [ 98 ] where the testimony of God is sure, it becomes us to honour it with a dutiful belief, though the cause of his operations be placed beyond the reach of human solution. The declarations, however, of God concerning his Son, and the way of salvation, being not only proposed in distinct articles of faith, but interwoven in the relation of circumstances, we may reason upon these circumstances, as upon so many scriptural proofs, diversified and extended through all ages of the world, to lead the thoughts to Him, who is the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever. If it were necessary to call Abraham out from his country and kindred so many years before, to secure a holy and believing line, in which the promise should be accomplished, much more was it necessary for the performance of that promise to re-publish the Divine Law, and to separate a peculiar people for the preservation of it, when the corruptions of traditional reli- gion had filled the world with idolatry, and every consequent abomination; when among the most civilized nations, those of Canaan and Egypt, there was a general apostacy froih the knowledge and worship of the true God, and [ 99 ] his name and honour were to be rescued from the hands of their senseless deities. The re-publication, therefore, of the antient Law, with the pecuHar additions now made to it, and the severe punishments infilled upon idolatry, seems to have been the only mound that could in wisdom or mercy be opposed to the overflowing of transgressions. And with all their errors and corruptions, let the state of the Jews be compared with that of the greatest and the wisest nations in political estimation; let the degrading and abominable rites of the deities which they left behind them in Egypt, and Avhich were afterwards transplanted to the altars of Greece and Rome, be opposed by the advocates for natural religion to the superstition of the tabernacle, and the ceremonial worship of the temple of Jerusalem. The Law, also, as a partition-wall between the Jew and Gentile, now deposited in the ark in writing, transcribed from thence with the most accurate diligence for general use, and guarded with the most zealous caution, affords another convincing evidence of one Almighty purpose, and what was in fulness of time to be [ 100 ] produced, as bearing testimony of Christianity, was to be free from every suspicion, to be dis- tinguished for the fidelity of its narrative, to confront the boldness of obje6lion, to endure the severest scrutiny, to stand, as it ever has done, on the immoveable Rock of our salvation, and to bear aloft the features of its heavenly Legislator. Thus also the question is resolved, why it was promulgated in so public a manner. Ordained to give a rationally incontestible evidence of its divine original, it was to produce an attestation from Heaven too positive to admit a doubt, and too general to suifer contradidion. And to suppose such a prodigious number of people not to know what they saw and heard; or that Moses would repeat to them (as he does in the text) Av^hat he knew had not been seen and heard, and then deliver the lie to them in wri- ting, to obtain their future favour and confi- dence ; to suppose, that any voice of man could be articulately heard by six hundred thousand persons at once, and what is more, shake the very earth itself; to suppose, that such a mighty commotion in the heavens above, and in the [ 101 ] earth beneath, together with the trumpet and voice heard out of the cloud and fire, could be the effeft of human policy or contrivance; or that the Almighty should suffer any imposition, where his name was concerned, tobepra6tised by any supernatural means; — is to oppose creden- tials properly divine, to believe impossibilities against the sure word of revelation, to make the voice of God the herald of a falsehood, and the power of God set his seal to an imposture. The truth of the Law, therefore, and the ter- ror of its publication, go together. Its object was to excite in the people awful sentiments of the power and majesty of the Lawgiver, to de- clare the purity, truth, and justice of his nature, and the corruption of theirs ; to discover every man's heart to himself, and convince him of that corruption ; to display the guilt and con- sequent punishment of sin ; to awaken in the soul a fear of God, and of judgment to come; and to guide them by these means to repentance, and faith in the great Redeemer. The fear of the Lord was to prove to them the fountain of life. A sense of guilt implies a dread of punish- ment, and thus fear is justly called the begin- [ 102 ] nlng of religious wisdom, of -which love is the perfe6lion. In the state of innocence Adam ran to meet God, and the intercourse with his divine instruftor was the most exalted delight of Paradise ; but when innocence was gone, he sought the shelter of the deepest cover, and on being called forth out of it, returned for answer, with a dejedion never known before, / heard thy voice, and I zvas afraid. If this be called a figure of speech, every serious heart can furnish a real comment to it. The people of Sinai heard the same voice, and were afraid; a sense of of guilt had magnified the sense of danger, and they beseech the leader whom they had mis- trusted and reviled, to interpose in their be- half, and to sustain the part of a mediator be- tween God and them. Had we no other proofs to offer of the obje6l and end of the law, the prophetic and affeding reply to this request, would be one of the most convincing : / havg heard the voice of the words of this people, says the Almighty, zvhich they have spoken unto thee, they have well said, all that they have spoken. O that there were such an heart in them that they would fear me, and keep all my com- [ 103 ] mandmgnts always, that it might be zvell with them and their children for ever. As if he had said, they have spoken well in desiring a medi- ator to transa6l with me what they are unable to do themselves; and how pleasing would it be to me, for the love I bear them, that they and their children after them would invariably pursue the one way to happiness, both present and everlasting; in so fearing my displeasure, in so feeling their own unworthiness, as on a principle of faith in the promised Redeemer, and in all He is to do, and to suffer for their reconciliation, to repent them truly of all their sins, and to walk in holiness and righteousness before me all the days of their lives. This was evidently the reason of God's ap- probation of the people's request, and it was with a view to this, that the Law (as the Apos- tle speaks of it) was ordained in the hand of a Mediator, to guide the eye of the true believer to a better covenant, and to bind upon his heart that penitent and lively faith, without which, purification and atonement were but idle ceremonies, the spirit of the law had no sub- stance, and the shadow of salvation no realitv. [ 104 ] We are aware of the argument that has beeil drawn against any spiritual reference of the Mosaic dispensation, from the temporal rewards and punishments that were peculiarly annexed to it ; but how do these exclude the do6lrine of everlasting san61;ions? Hoav was God, (as our Saviour expostulated with those who doubted or disbelieved the resurre6tion) who was a God of the living, and not of the dead, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and Jacob? Visible judgments are only God's alarming signals, and "svhen He pathetically reasons with his people, by the mouth of his prophet — JVh]/ will ye die, O house of Israeli it could not allude to tempo- ral death, for that was the common lot of mor- tality, the sentence had gone forth upon all flesh: — No; eternal life ^^;as the gift proposed, the everlasting Saviour was the giver. This is the life and soul, the vital energy of all religion ; and from Adam to the present time, wherever this faith has failed, a total departure from God has been the consequence, or the warmth, the vigour, the dependence of devotion has expired with it. [ 105 ] You have now seen the Mosaic ritual suc- ceeding in due order and course to the Antedi- luvian and Patriarchal dispensations; and we have exhibited a summary of proofs to awaken Christ's Church by his awful judgments, to con- vince us by his interfering providences, and to humble us by his patience under repeated pro- vocations ; but we have only unlocked the stores of heavenly truth, it is you that must apply them to use. We have only placed before you the holy writings, it is you that must examine their contents. We have only unfolded to you, as far as we are able, the counsels of creation, of providence and grace, it is for you to number down the blessings of the children of God, through a series of protedion and deliverances; and then to combine all his decrees and promises in that consoling reward of a Christian's faith — We know thai all things zvork together for goody to them that love God; to them zvho are called according to his purpose. That purpose hath been revealed to us ; the Prophet, whom Moses foretold, has been raised up from tlijg midst of - us, and to him are we summoned to hearken. He is commissioned to rescue us from a bond- [ 106 ] I age far more dreadful than that of Egypt, and to condu6l us throusfh manv dano-ers to a kino-- dom, but faintly shadowed forth b}^ a land flowing with milk and honey. Let us, then, beware of tempting Christ as they did, and of falling in the wilderness of this world through unbelief — For if they escaped not, zvho refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, ifzve turn away from Him that speak- eth from Heaven. SJERMON V. SERMON V. ST. JOHN L 11. lie came unto his own, and his own received him not. 'TPO confirm the message of mercy to fallen man, and with every predicled mark of the heavenly visitant, to give fulfilment to prophecy, at the appointed period of time came the pro- mised Redeemer. If our evidence, therefore, have been clear and consistent, we are surely ad- dressing those, who, submitting to be taught by revelation, and filled with veneration and gra- titude for the great and noble purpose to be effeded by Him, are now assembled to comme- morate and to welcome the advent of their in- fant Saviour. We are surely addressing those, L 108 ] to whom the eye of faith has disclosed the mys- teries of his birth, the dignity of his charader, and the blessedness of his commission. Through every dispensation the original pro- mise of redemption has been moving onwards to its final accomplishment. No state of hu- man affairs, no contrariety of human opinions, has impeded the progress or changed the plan of the divine councils. The consolatory hope which Adam was taught to encourage, and which was afterwards renewed in the deliver- ance of Noah, the grant made to Abraham, the successor foretold by IMoses, the prefigura- tions of the Temple, the spirit of prophecy, and the expeaation of ages, are all carried for- ward without a single defeft of testimony to center in Him, who was incarnate for our sal- vation, to manifest the glory and goodness of Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. Under so many descriptions and chara6ters, and with such attesting pledges, has the Al- inio-hty guarded this covenanted truth, that unless it be admitted, sacred history has no reality, and prophecy no interpretation. Nor [ 109 ] is the expression of the Evangelist intelligible, u-ithout a reference to one progressive and uni- form design of God's dispensations; without a reference to the intended blessing to his faith- ful people, to be communicated through Him, whose goings forth have been from everlasting, who had been their Creator and Deliverer, who was to be their Saviour and their Judge. He came unto his own, says the Apostle, and his own received him not. Had the Law and the Gospel stood upon separate foundations, the ap- plication could have gone no farther than that a Prophet had arisen among them, in lineal de- scent from their revered progenitor, and who M'as come to proclaim the glad tidings of salva- tion. AVith a rigid attachment to their own ritual form, they might have received Him as a Prophet sent to instru6l them, (and indeed many did acknowledge Him in this capacity) without allowino^ that He brouo-ht anv farther creden- tials than those miraculous exertions of power, of Avhich the Almighty had also made their own great lawgiver his instrument. When, therefore, the supposed Son of Joseph and Mary professed to abolish their divinely- I "0 ] Ordained ceremonies; when the very obje^ of his mission was to expose the insufficiency of the Law, and to take from it every justifying plea; when the children of Abraham, the adopted of God, were called upon to renounce their exclusive privileges, and to partake with the rest of mankind in universal redemption ; the refusal of the Jews to receive one, who, be' ing born among them, arrogated such preten- sions, could not have incurred such a pathetic and upbraiding remonstrance, unless it had been founded on the most significant and de- tenninate indication of their Messiah's glorj'. The force and the convittion of the Apostle's argument rests on their reje6lion of the revealed will of God; it arraigns at once their obstinate prejudices, their misconceptions of the Law, their perversion of the Prophecies, and the ig- norance of their spiritual state. In rejecting Him who was to be bom of the seed of the woman^ and to bjmise the serpents head; who was to lead Abraham, and those who died in faith, to an heavenly Canaan ; who was to be raised up among their brethren, a Prophet like unto Moses s and whom they were [ HI ] to hear in all tilings ;—t\\ty rejected the oracles of God, of which they boasted to be the guar- dians ; they shut their eyes against express de- claration, they hardened their hearts against an accumulation of evidence, and they renounced the same authority which they pleaded in de- fence of their own rights and their own supe- rior distinftions. Granting also the event, as a natural fa6l, to be incomprehensible, were not the miracu- lous interpositions of Providence on sundiy oc- casions in their favour equally so? Did they disbelieve the burning bush, the plagues of Egypt, the passage of the Red Sea, the waters that flowed from a dry Rock, or the manna in the wilderness, because they could not account for them from natural causes? On the contrary did they not glory in, and produce them as so many visible proofs of God's holy covenant with them? From the same scriptures, and from their own prophetic records, they were told of the office, the birth, and the divinity of their Messiah to come; and the proclamation, by re- joicing Angels, of the advent of Him, who was made Jleshy and to dwell among them, with all [ "2 ] Its triumphant consequences, was only the annunciation of completed prophecy — Behold your God. In the human nature of Christ, therefore^ when they refused to see the tabernacle of his divinity, they renounced their everlasting King and Priest, who, anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power, was by his eternal offering- to make an eternal reconciliation for the sins of the people. When they disowned the hea- venly IVIessenger of peace and pardon, they disowned the Messenger of the covenant^ and the Lord who was to come to his holy temple. — When they boasted to have Abraham to their ftither, and insultingly scoffed at the Son of Joseph and IMary, they denied the God who had chosen them of the seed of Abraham, the Lord who had promised, by the mouth of his servant jMoses, to visit them in the latter days, and who was now come to claim them as his o^v'n, and to secure to them the inheritance of the Patriarchs' blessings. Upon this ground, and upon no other, cau we justly place (if for argument-sake we dare use such an expression) the reje6lion and ruin [ 113 ] of Israel : Let Reason, so fond of prying into the councils of God, and of reconciling the deci- sions of them by its own assumed rule of rioht assign any other cause, independent of Christ's divinity, which may reasonably account for the unexampled punishment of the Jewish nation. They did not objeft to Him as the son of Joseph and IVIary; they did perceive Him to be a prophet mighty in word and deed ; their rea- son could not disavow the evidence of their senses, but it refused to go farther, and through want of faith, they ignorantly crucified the Lord of Glory. Was this ignorance, though plaeded by a compassionate Saviour in behalf of his murderers, admitted in extenuation of their guilt or punishment? No. They had re- nounced their part and portion in his salvation ; they had called down his blood upon themselves and their children; and during the space of eighteen hundred years, (and till they look on Him whom they pierced, will it continue to be so) has their imprecation been dreadfully visited upon them and their posterity. We shall not, I trust, be now called upon to prove the necessity of belief in the dodrine of [ 114 ] the Incarnation. The evidence upon which the Jew was tried and sentenced, is the same in substance as that submitted to the Christian, and the preaching of the Gospel only confirmed the sufficiency and promises of prior revelation. The advent of our blessed Lord was the great demonstration of prophetic truth; and the fu- ture expectations which grow out of it as arti- cles of faith, are only strengthened by the au- thority, the title, and office of the beloved Son of God. Take away the divinity of Christ, the Jew has yet his Messiah to come, and the Christian no redeeming Saviour; the Lord of Glory was not crucified, and the death upon the cross offers no atonement. But every reve- lation of God's will to man has invariably looked to this merciful and ultimate obje6l;; every dispensation under which he has lived, till all was perfefted in a Redeemer, was built on the same foundation, and were so many dif- ferent supports to the wall of partition which was finally to be removed, when all nations were to be called to Christ, and the ends of the earth to be in his possession. [ 115 ] Once more let it be observed, that a manifes- tation of the Divine will, which must presup- pose a sutBciency of evidence, and a capacity to comprehend it, pledges both the veracity and omnipotence of God to the full completion of his word. In our whole prospect of the hu- man race, from the creation to the present day, have we ever seen it fail of performing the thing it had uttered ? Its authority, itssandions, and its promises may have been derided, or disbelieved, but they have been dreadfully vin- dicated, and the visitations of his providence have ever tended to confirm that Almighty self- appeal — Have I said, and shall I not do it — Have I spoken, and shall I not bring it to pass. Our hope, therefore, nmst ever be proportioned to the measure of our faith ; our religion can only begin, but never end, in the school of Rea- son. — She holds not the invisible chain that conne6ts matter and spirit; she can put on no heavenly wings, nor carry the transported soul beyond the boundaries of its earthly prison; nay, sometimes, (though given us as an advo- cate for religion) has she ere6ted herself into a judge, and only competent to. examine the evi- [ 116 ] tlence, has dared to discredit the integrity of the witness. Thus by misapplying her strength has Reason proved her weakness, and suppHed human testimony to the divine assertion — that faith will never stand in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God. To proceed with any farther discussion, or to enter into the provinces of reason and faith, in order to define the Hmits of their separate dominions, would be to question the ability, or to repeat the arguments of some of the ablest defenders of the Christian doctrines. In the lano-uage of one of them be it then sufficient to observ^e, that " to make us better men, upon " hope grounded on his mercies, is the most " beneficial purpose, for which we can conceive " it possible for God to reveal himself, and •' to this purpose we find a revelation made, " wherein that providence which extends to us, " is declared ; and if the strongest external tes- " timony bear witness that God has revealed " himself, and that reason be incapable of pro- " ducing any evidence to the contrary, the '' credibility of God is a ground whereon to " build our faith, in whatsoever lie shall relate [ 117 ] <' of his own incomprehensible majesty. More- " over, as finite intellect can liave no standard " whereby to measure the condu6t of an infinite " Being, and no right or means of judging of '' the consistency of any aft declared to be his, " to dispute is to rebell. There lies no appeal *' from God's credibility, from his truth to his " inscrutable nature. We must acquiesce in " that which He has said. It must be— It is " true." "With such dispositions, and with such dispo- sitions only, shall we be taught in the stable af Bethlehem. By carrying back this part of the divine oeconomy to the original promise in the garden of Eden, will the Christian church, now the daughter of Sion, only know how to rejoice in God her Saviour; will she only learn to glorify God for his mercy, to appreciate the value, and to hail the consummation of those heavenly tidings — Arise, shine for thy light is coming, and the glory of the Lord is rising upon thee. It is the eye of faith that must discover beneath the swaddlin*g clothes the robe of im- mortality; it is the eye of faith that must dis- cern to v/hat a heio-ht God intends to build up [ 118 ] the happiness of man by taking our nature upon him, and making a human body the me- dium and pattern of that glory to which he designs to raise us. It is, in short, faith, nothing doubting, that will welcome the return of this holy season, and teach the believer to consider the nativity of his Redeemer as the notice of a christian's being born again, of his death unto sin, and a new birth unto righteousness. If in humility we believe all this ; if we have embraced the Gospel, which when tendered to the Jews, they rejected ; if we are ready and prepared to worship Him who was born of a virgin, and whose birth they ridiculed and de- spised ; and if the vail still remain upon their hearts which faith has removed from ours; then shall we hail this natal morning, as the morn- ing in which a christian sets forth on his jour- ney to the kingdom of his Heavenly Father. If Christ came unto his own, and his own re- ceived not, it is also stated, that as many as did receive him^ to them he gave poxoer to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. Here we have at once the terms of reconci- liation, and the seal of pardon. ^\'c ha^•c the [ 119 ] fore-ordained and effeclual j\fediator, the true and only intercessor between God a?td man^ the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, proclaiming and producing in person his own promised blessings. In visions and in dreams, by types and sacrifices, through various mi- nisters and otlicers deputed by him, in many ways and divers manners, hath God decla- red his will to the fathers, but in these latter days hath he spoken to us by his Son. Other prophets had their times assigned them to rise, shine, and set again in death ; but they all de- rived their light from the Sun of Bighteousfiess, which, absorbing every lesser ray in his glorious splendour, is now arisen to set no more — death hath no moj^e dominion over him. Upon the incarnation, therefore, of our blessed Lord, as upon the foundation-stone of all her dodrines, the Christian church will de- light to rest. As often as she hears the tidings of great joy repeated to a sinful world, she will find cause of special exultation in being thought worthy to inherit the blessing, to partake of the mercies, and to behold the salvation of God. Prought out of darkness into a marvellous liirht, [ 120 ] iTstored from death unto a new life, and raised from dust to share an angel's g\ory, she will ht, filled xvith all joy and peace in believing; she will hold fast the coivfidence and rejoicing of hope; and adore that grace which cast her lot in a place where the joyful tidings are for ever sounding in her ears, Behold the desire of all nations^ the expectation of Israel^ He for whom the whole creation groaned — Behold thy God, thy righteous Saviour cometh. Wherever she turns her eyes, there will her heart be turned to the God of her salvation ; and whether she looks back to the prevalence of that intercession, which in the first instance of disobedience changed judgment into mercy, and found a ransom for the guilty; or follows the operations of redeeming love through succeeding ages to the ])lessedness of the pre- sent day, when the visions of expe6ied bliss have faded before the a<5lual presence of the King of Glory — in all she will find incitement to wonder, gratitude, and love. Through every part of the divine oeconomy, in the person of Christ she finds her Advocate, her Priest, and King; from his sanclifying sufferings she de- [ 121 J rives her own sanclifi cation ; and while reaping the fruits of the covenant, whose seed was sowed from eternity, she gives him the name by which he is exalted in hea\'en, and glorilies the only begotten Son, who, as at this holy sea- son, came forth from the Father for the uni- versal redemption of mankind. With the scheme of prophecy thus made per- fect, on a day wherein the union of so many blessings is commemorated, wherein the spirit of life which is in Christ, hath made us free from the law of sin and death, we must necessa- rily have joy in believing; and while we attach our hopes of heaven to the person of Christ, we sliall boldly come unto the throne of grace, to which our access is opened by such trans- cendant love. That we may not, therefore, reje6l the proffered mercy, that we may not slight the richest gift that was ever yet offered to the world, we must this day unite it to the giver; we must think on Him who came to reconcile, and on the mode of reconciliation ; we must dwell on the* qualifications of our Intercessor, on the nature of his pica, and on the cause he has to plead; we nmst, in short, [ 122 ] receive him into his kingdom of grace, if we would follow him into his kingdom of glory. I'rom that now infant tongue we shall soon hear words such as man never before uttered ; we shall hear claims of inherent divinity as- serted, that no inspiration could communicate, nor even omnipotence confer ; soon shall we see that infant form assuming the powers and in- vested with the attributes of the Godhead, be- stowing pardon on the sinner, and raising the dead from their graves. Either, then, we must deny the authenticity of the narrative, or no explanation can deprive our Saviour of th.t high prerogative to which he appeals; and when He vouchsafed to be partaker of flesh and blood, it was, that beiJig made like unto his brethren^ He miglit be a faith- ful and merciful high priest; it was, that the debt of human sin might be discharged by the Son of Man ; it M'as, that by exhibiting in his own person a proof of faith and patience under the severest trials and afflictions. He might lend to his divine precepts the excitement of human example; it was, that in lifting up our minds towards his holy habitation. He might shield [ 123 ] them from the terror of doubt, and give to our imagination as it were a resting place in its boundless flight ; it was, that through the Son of God exalted above all worlds, our finite con- ceptions might, as far as possible, be familiarised with that invisible and Almighty Being, whose power has been from everlasting. From that prior state of gloiy, from that aw- ful sublimity in which we have contemplated the Lord of Hosts, and the avenging God of Jacob, if we now turn and behold him accom- modating the plan of man's redemption to the frame of human nature, and pursuing the pur- pose of his eternal happiness through the painful participation of our infirmities ; under this and every other prophetic evidence, we find our in- fant Saviour, whose birth in Bethlehem-Ephra- tah had been predicted, identified with Him, that IMighty One, which zvas, and is, and is to come; with Him, Avho, in the awful disclosure of future scenes, is represented to the Apostle as sitting upon his eternal throne, and as the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root -of David, alone able to break the seals, and to open the book of prophecy. [ 124 ] Under the guidance, therefore, of the most sober reason, if we must be impressed -with a conviction of his divinity, if we are forced to the undeniable confession of St. Peter, thau art the Christ, the Son of the living God — then remember, that in that belief we associate his incarnation, his life, his death, his resurreftion, his ascension, and atonement. His humility as man will evince Him Milling, His omnipotence as God will evince Him mighty to save. Closing and combining the parts of one stu- pendous whole, the system of Christianity in- cludes all these, and the separate articles of a Christian's creed arc so many different memo- rials of the wonders of his redemption. Like the Patriarchal and Jewish blessings, however, much of our happiness remains in expectation. We are not as yet come to the rest, and to the in- heritance which the Lord our God giveth 21s. We have only found the way in which Abra- ham was justified, and in which all true be- lievers, the children of Abraham, must in like manner be justified. We have only seen the root of peace and joy to the whole earth spring up into a tree of life, and again we may ea,t [ 125 ] of its fruits unto holiness. Restored to this spiritual food, the believer is again called the child of God, the heir of immortal glory, the partaker of an inheritance zcilh the saints in light. Informed by Christ of his heavenly journey, he may, like the eunuch, go on his way rejoicing. As the children of Israel, therefore, when they had seen the signs which ]\Ioses wrought, believed that the Lord had visited his people, let us bow down our heads, and M'orshi]> Him who is indeed come to visit and redeem his chosen, who is come to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant. With a free, a full, and ever- lasting mercy, hath lie appeared, who was to give bread to the hungry soul; to the thirstv, the M-aters of life ; who was to be feet to the lame, eyes to the blind, a ransom for captives, and a garment of righteousness for the naked. And if lie, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever, ha\ e hitherto fulfilled e\ery promise, remember that our present song of praise is but a faint imitation of those shouts of exultation, when led forth by Angels, to hail the second advent of his Lord and Saviour, the Christian [ 126 ] shall behold every tittle of his word accom- plished, and shall join in the triumphant C17 — Now 2S come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, ajid the power of his Christ, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth, the Lord hath redeemed his people. SERMON vr. SERMON VI. HEBREWS xii. 22, 23, 24. But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heauenly Jerusalem^ and to an innumerable company of angels. To the general assembly and church of the first- born, zi'hich are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaPceth better things than that of Abel. 'TPRACING up the stream of revelation thro' the wilderness of this world, where, for the presentation and comfort of the human race, it was still permitted to flow, to the garden of Paradise, where jt nourished the tree of life, we are now arrived at its heavenly source ; from hence we can distin6lly trace its diverging cur- [ 128 ] rents, as they branched forth into all nations, sometimes indeed obstru6led in their course, and almost every where polluted in their chan- nels; whilst standing by the pure fountain of inexhaustible love, we can exclaim in joy and triumph — Ho every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters. AVe can proclaim to the faithful in our Saviour's own words, He that believeth on me shall never thirst. We can issue from thence his merciful and universal invitation, Whosoever zoill, let him come and take of the wa- ters of life freely. Where a consciousness of sin must have ut- terly rescinded all rational hope of acceptance with the God of perfe6t holiness, and only trembled at the impossibility of pardon from his unsatisfied justice, the consolations of his own word, and the promulgation of a Law, which renewed the possibility of a justifying obedi-^ ence, restored that hope, and suggested, that however abhorrent from the divine purity the corrupted nature of man might have be- come, yet still the means of reconciliation and acceptance would be found, and the satisfying atonement sujiplicd by the God of mercy [ 129 ] himself. Witli a conformable accomplishment, therefore, of all tluit had been testified before- hand by the Holy Spirit, and comprising within its sandifying influence the objed of all former dispensations, we find in Christianity the priest and sacrifice, the offering and the reconciliation. In the death of Christ we have seen the suffer- ings that have satisfied for sin ; in the gospel, by which he has brought life and immortality to the perfeft light, we have seen the glory that should follow. Though writings of unquestionable antiquity afford collateral evidence to this doctrine, thougli the mythological systems of Heathen nations retain such indelible marks of this origin, as necessarily lead to the establishment of that faith from which they departed, yet it being my sole purpose to exhibit Christ and his re- demption as the great subject of the sacred scriptures, I intentionally forbear the citation of these proofs. I would establish the sufhcient testimony of the sacred writings, and then com- mit them to your hands as a treasure of divine knowledge, wherein yon are to search for the [ 1'30 ] pearl of great price^ and wherein every part has its specific use and value. We are here, as the grand foundation of tlie articles of our faith, instruded in the cause of sin, of its entrance into the world, and of death by sin, as the ju.st judgment of God to the condemnation of all men, who by the oifence of one were made sinners. We are here in- stru61ed, that consolatory hopes of restoration were in the instant imparted by the God of mercy to the abashed original of all our Moe. The scheme of redemption grows gradually clearer, and is ibr ever, whether by promise, by- type, or by prophecy, kept open to our view; till at len&th, beins; made free from sin, bv the righteousness of One who has tasted death for every man, we are instru6ted, that the free gift has come upon all men unto justification of life; and that as the wages of sin is death, so the gift of God is eternal life, tlirough Jesus Christ, to all, who, in every period and under every dispensation, with respedl to the great recompence of the reward, believed to the saving of the soul. An humble Christian spirit of re- search is alone wanting, to behold the day spring [ 131 ] from on high -which hath visited us; to find out Him in the scriptures of God, who revealed the truth, who then came to seal it with his blood, and left his church to be its perpetual and faith- ful guardian. With what clouds, therefore, must we envelope our hearts and understandings, if tliat light of revelation, which has successively shone through every dispensation, should in these latter times shed its splendour in vain. — But unless we suffer the true light that was to light every man that cometh into the zvorld, to condutl us to realms of unspeakable glory, every other will prove a meteor that will delude us. The brightness of natural religion will at last prove an ineffectual fire, the lamp of reason grow dim, every path of hope will be obscured, till our feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and we have no gflide to dire6l our goings. But as a faith in futurity was required, and found in the predecessors of the gospel dispen- sation, so also, not only in the price that has purchased our redemption, but in the future possession of that purchase itself, is our faith required. The promise to them was the means of mercy^^the promise to us is the efficacy of [ 132 ] those means. The first advent of our blessed Redeemer has only fulfilled the promises in part, and left the Christian, like the Patriarchal and JeM^ish believer, to future hopes and future con- summation. That He, who was zvrapt in swad- dling clothes in a manger, now sits upon an eternal throne, above all principality, and power, and mioht, and dominion: that He, who visited us in great humility, is now crowned with glory and honour; that He, who was condemned to death before an earthly tribunal, will again come to sit in judgment upon the whole human race, and to reward every man according to his works ; that He, whose body and blood were the sacri- fice, now pleads its sufficiency, as the great Hia'h Priest, and Intercessor for our sins; arc truths as clearly revealed in scripture as that He was to have been born of a Virgin, or that He was to have been wounded for our transgres- sions, and cut off, not for himself but that, by the means of his death. He might bring us to God. But as these, although not distinctly con- ceived by those to whom they were made known from afar by promise and by prophecy, were yet expcded by them in humihty and faith ; [ 133 ] so now the lite to come, a resurreaion, and a future judgment, though the mighty price be already paid, rest all on promise also, and are articles of faith to us, which as far surpass our powers of explanation. In our conception, however, of that blessed- ness which awaits an obedience to the faith, wcare not left unassisted by the Holy Apostle, .vlio describes those scenes of future bliss with a rapture that seems to indicate more than a pro- phetic view. Contemplating, therefore, the progressive appeal which religion has made by miracles to the senses of man; inferring, in faith, from what has happened, what will as surely cone to pass ; assuring ourselves from pro- phecies accomplished, and promises performed, that He is faithful ivho promised, and that his zvord shall never pass aivay ; let us commit our imaginations to the Apostle's guidance, and with him humbly approach that throne of glory on which our Redeemer sitteth, fulfdling every pro- mise made to his cliurch, and proving himself to be the strength of his people, and their portion for ever. Let us anticipate our final change [ 134 ] and transition through his blood, from dark- ness to light, from death to life, from sin to holiness, and to an union with Him who is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. Ye are come, then, says the Apostle, unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. As our arrival at mount Sion is put into contrast with the trem- bling approach of Moses and the Israelites to the mount from which the law was given, we must naturally infer, that instead of encounter- ing the terrors of darkness and tempest, or of a voice dismaying the spirit of all who heard it, the hill of Sion is a fair place, and the Joy of the zvhole earth, and that God is hiozvn in her palaces for a refuge: — that as from Sinai a law was promulged, by which no man is justified iii the sight of God, so now from Sion in the last days, comes forth a laAv proclaiming forgiveness to all that believe, and justification by faith in Jesus Christ from all things /row which we could not be justified by the law of Moses. For the lazo made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did; a hope that is the refuge and anchor of tlic soul, by which ive draw 7iigh to [ 135 ] God. But, together Avith all nations that flow to the mountain of the Lord's house to learn his ^vays and to walk in his paths, we are no^v' come to the King who is set u])on his holy hill of Sion ; and what is the blessed result of our confident approach to Him in full assurance of faith ? ]Mercy to our unrighteousness, to our sins and iniquity oblivion ; For /, €ven I am he., saith the Lord, that blotteth out thy transgi^essions for mine own sake, and zvill not remember thy sins. They were to come also unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem — here con- trasted with the earthly Jerusalem, for the sake of carrying on the comparison between the le- gal bondage and the liberty of the gospel, the covenants of the law and of the promise. Of that oTcat and o-lorious citv, wherein the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are to be the temple of it; of the work of God by his Holy Spirit, in which it pleaseth Ilim to dzvell; of the domi- nion and kingdom of his Saviour upon earth, when he shall set his throne upon the holy hill of Sion; the christian may surely, under the safe warrant of prophecy, be allowed to apply the several imao-cs to the state of the church tri- [ 13^ ] umpliant, wheji God shall he in the midst of her^ iiiul she shall not be inoved; when God sliall help her, when the morning appeareth. But whether these blessed intimations are to be lite- rail}^ aceomplishecl, or Avhether they are all to be absorbed in the possession of heavenly glory, though very excellent things are spoken oj thee, O thou city of God^ Ave may rest satisfied of one felieity to be there enjoyed by the faithful fol- lowers of our lledeemer — for God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying^ neither shall there be any more pain. But on their arrival there they were to be welcomed by an innumerable company of angels, to be enrolled with them as fellow-servants and fellow-citizens under one head; nor can wc reflect on the various offices which have been assigned to them in behalf of mankind, without anticipating our admission among them with ex- ceeding joy. The Angel of the Lord encampeth ronnd them that fear God, and him they have in charge who maketh God his refuge; they minister to such as are iieirs of salvation. By ungels the patriarchs were accompanied and [ 137 1 conduaed; by the disposition of angels the hi w was received; by angels the birth of our Redeemer M'as predicted ; and by the whole host of Heaven the tiding.<^ of great joj/ were announ- ced, and hailed as resulting in Glori/ to God in the highest, and good-will towards men; by an- o-els his resurre6lion was attended; and by an- o-els who witnessed his ascension, his return in like manner is foretold. When, therefore, we behold Ilim come in his glory, and all his holy angels loith him; when we hear them sent to gather together his elect from the four winds, and find ourselves among the accepted number; from their predicted strains of gratitude to Him who has redeemed mankind to God by his blood, we may well infer our happy reception by these gracious witnesses of our final judgment; and from the strains of ovu- own gratitude, though we cannot specify, we may calculate upon that boundless felicity with which we shall be excited with them, to ascribe blessing and honour, and glory, and power, to Him that sitteth upon the thro7ie, and to the Lamb, for ever and ever. We shall next find, as we approach mount Sion, that holy liill rendered accessible, and surrounded L 138 J by a gejieral assmhly and church ofthejirst-born, which are written in heaven. When God pro- posed to deliver his people from the bondage of Egypt, he called Israel his son, his first-born. This adoption seems, therefore, to be referred to here ; and as Israel was holiness to the Lord^ the Jirst-fruits of his increase, so all whom He beget- teth by the word of truth, are a kind of first- fruits of his creatures, first-fruits to God and the Lamb, redeemed from among men, and in their mouth zvas found no guile, for they arc without fault before the throne of God. "\Mien we see the Almighty blot out the name of the disobedient Israelite from the book that he has written, and observe the contrasted statement of the covenant which succeeded to the accom- plished law, it will follow, that the name of every man of every nation who is faultless before God, is written up in the records of Him, in whom (as the first-born of every crea- ture) the adoption of every creature is com- prised ; and consequently, the retrospective adoption of all who had obtained a good report through faith, may well be looked for in the book of life of the Lamb slain from thefounda- [ 139 ] lion of the world. Here, then, we may hope to meet our first repentant parents ; the father of an emerging world; the father of the people of God ; the lawgiver of that people ; together with all who believed in the promises, and in that law which vanished only in its own completion. But wc are not only associated with these sele6i^^ed subjects of the first covenant, we are now brought into the presence of God the Judge of all; not the judge of one people only, but of all the earth ; before whom shall be gathered all nations, and because of whom all kindreds of the earth shall zvail; but before whom his faithful people shall stand accepted, and avIio, no longer under the accusation of Moses, judging by the law all who have sinned in the law, but judging the world in righteousness by that Man whom he hath ordained, and Avho was on the third day perfe6led by sufferings, unites us also to the spirits of just (or rather justified) men made perfect ; by whom the promises were not received^ to the end that they without us should not be made perfect. Such is the language of the Apostle, who thus makes our constancy in the faith of the [ 140 ] gospel the source of that peifeftion, wliich, having been deferred to the gathering together of all things, will then accrue to its stedfast followers ; not as individuals, but as fellow- servants, who, having been in every age par- takers of the sufferings of Christ, now in the final revelation of his glory, when the everlasting- doors are opened, come to Jesus the mediator of the nezv covenant. Not to Moses, the typical mediator of a temporary covenant, Avhich only pointed to those means of grace and immor- tality which it could not itself supply, but to Jesus, who for this cause is the mediator of the new and better testament; that by means of death for the redemption of the transgressions that were under tlie first testament, they Avhich are called m;iy receive the promise of eternal inheritance; to Jesus Christ, M'ho through the suffering of death is now crowned with glory and honour, that lie, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man, and as a merciful high-priest, obtain, by the offering of his own blood, eternal redemption for us. To this sanftifvinq; sacrifice are we come — we are come also to tlie blood of sprinkling, and [ 1-^1 ] liear tlic mighty satisfaclion pleaded in our be half. Instead of the voice of Abel's blood wjiicli cried from the ground to God, and called down a curse upon his brother's head, the blood of the cross speaks better things, repeals the curse, atchieves the subjugation of sin and death, and vanquishing the enemy, alone compasses our peace, procures our access, and by its eternal mediation effects our reconciliation unto God. With what unlimited gratitude, with how profoundly-solemn a dedication of our whole souls, must \vc therefore adore that Alercv, which, having appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, now appears in Heaven be- fore God for us ; and as a High Priest over the house of God, having purchased remission of sin, has given us boldness by faith to enter into the Holiest by the blood of Jesus. With ano-cls and arch-angels, therefore, and with all the company of Heaven; with the elders, Mho under the persuasion of faith embraced the distant promises; and with those first-fruits unto God and the Lamb, the accepted servants of God in all tJic tribes of the children of Israel; let us also, who constitute the great and happy mul- [ 1« ] titude which has been washed, and sandified, and redeemed to God, by the blood of the Lamb, out of every people and nation, having now attained to the continuing city of the living God, unite our uplifted voices, and ascribe to God, and unto the Lamb, which stood on mount Sion, and is in the midst of the throne^ salvation and blessing, thanksgiving and glory, and honour^ for ever and ever. Amen. Thus we see that the Apostle, in vindicating the claims of Christianity against the zealots of the law, does it not by dividing the two dispen- sations, but by resolving them into parts of one compacled whole. The law was in general a shadow of good things to come, and each spe- cific institution had its correspondent reality in the gospel. ^\'ithout sliedding of blood there is no remission ; by the shedding of the blood of Jesus Christ our sins are obliterated, and remis- sion is oifercd to all men. The introductory type conferred a claim to the benefits of its counterpart performance; and M'hen they are, as here, conferred upon the faithful subje6t; of the law, we find the great Leader of our salva- tion still figured by the paschal type which pre- I 143 ] ceded his advent, and therefore still denomi- nated the Lamb of God. Even such an oppo- sition as leads to a necessary comparison of two dispensations, bestows a prophetic character upon the former. Thus, by the ministration of death and condemnation, which was to be done away, the ministration of permanent righteous- ness, and of the spirit which giveth an unchange- able life, is prefigured. Such are the excellency and inestimable pri- vilegesof the gospel dispensation, to which every preceding covenant had a reference, and from the substantial realities of Mhich the patriarchal and legal shadows derived their institution, and believers at all times every benefit. With these considerations does the Apostle encourage the Hebrews under the trial they then endured ; and having obviated the insinu- ations and objections of those who confided in their legal cerciuonies, he converts the gospel covenant into an argument of consolation and support under all the difiiculties and persecutions that threatened the believer in Christ; he car- ries its conditions into another world, and brings its rewards before an heavenlv tribunal. Wholly [ 1+4 ] taken up with what shall be hereafter, he antici- pates the glory that shall be revealed with such animating hope, that his language, carried on by the sublime train of his conceptions, pro- duces as it were an inspired account and inven- tory of the saints' estate and inheritance. He dire6ts the christian's eye. to this blessed sight and enjoyment, and almost makes the trans- ported soul partake of his beatific vision. Ye are come, says he, (to repeat his own words) 2nito mount Sion, a fid to the city of the living GoD^ the heavenly Jerusalem — and to an innumerable company of angels — to the general assembly and church of the first born^ which are zvritten in heaven — and to God, the judge of all — and to the spirits of just men made perfect — and to Jesus, the mediator uf the new covenant — and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than the blood of Abel. With such a blissful society in view, it Mas natural that he should have a lono-inq- desire to burst the prison walls of his body, and to join his immortal associates; and though chained, as we are, by many necessary demands, to the affairs of this life, we may, and perhaps it is- [ 145 ] kindly ordained that Ave should, want much of* this extatic ardour; yet with these glorious ef- fe6ls of his faith duly considered, the hour of his departure would be to eveiy Christian the time of his enlargement. Waiting for and confiding in the promised reward, he would bow his head in peace ; and looking up, like St. Stephen, to his glorified Redeemer, and to those arms of mercy ready to receive him, he would cry out in triumph, OIl death, where is thy sting ? Oh g7'ave, where is victory f After the enumeration of these blessings, the Apostle thus concludes: — See then, that ye re- fuse not Him that speaketh. His voice, says he, appealing to their oAvn law, lias already shaken the earth ; but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also Heaven. Wherefore, we receiving a kingdom which can not he moved., let vs have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire. This also must be the conclusion of every Christian minister's exhortation; and if we have any faith in the promises of the Gospel, this will be the accomplishment of the great [ 146 ] and glorious things which yet remain to be ful- filled. We have endeavoured to shew you, how the free gift and providences of Christ's re- demption have been carried on through various periods, down to the present time; we have exhibited proofs that not one thing hath failed of all that the Lord our God hath spoken con- cerning his church; and Ave have set in view a ereat cloud of witnesses to confirm the im- portant truth, that Jesus Christ is the same yes- terday, and to-day, and for ever. His huma- nity began at his incarnation, his divinity is from everlasting. Both have been exerted for the salvation of his people ; the one has mani- fested his power, the other has veiled it in mercy. Divest our blessed Lord of his divinity, and you take away the merit of the cross, the effi- cacy of atonement, and the consolation of the penitent. Allow Him to be only an inspired prophet, born in the fulness of time to teach and to confirm his dodlrine by a holy example and a painful death, and you rank Him, with a small shade of difi'erence, among many other illustrious prophets and martyrs, whose ofiices are long since concluded, and who are gone to [ 147 ] meet their reward. Granting, therefore, that He pointed out the true road, how is He to in- terfere upon earth for their salvation ? How is He with them to the end of the world"? How is He the author and finisher of their faith? How is He the Prince of all the kings of the earth ? How is He the head of all principality and power f How is He the Lord both of the dead and the living ? And if He must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet, whoever refuses his au- thority, now He is gone into afar country to take possession of a kingdom, do they not Hterally resist his sceptre, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us. If WG are Christians, we belong to that divine building of God, which has been the subje6l of our discourses during the season of Advent, and in which our wish has been to conduct you up the various steps, by which God has raised it from the first foundation to the topmost stone^ We are a part of the glorious work of salvation carried on from age to age- we are connected with every dispensation of grace towards fallen mankind; Christ and his redemption is the great bubje6l of the prophecies, as well as of the songs [ us ] of the Old Testament; and the moral rules and precepts are all given as having their foundation with him. Christ and his redemption are also the great subjed of the history of the Old Testa- ment ; and even the history of the creation is an introdudion to the history of redemption, which immediately followed. In short, the whole bible is a recorded attestation of Him, who is the same i/esterdmj, to-day, and for ever; the history of his church, of his kingdom, and his people. All is filled with the Gospel, only with 'this difference — that the Old Testament contains the Gospel uBuder a veil, but the New contains it unveiled, so that ice may see the glory of the Lord with open face. But, my brethren, there is still another con- sideration to which we are awakened by the apostolic admonition. That state of things to which he refers, is called a New Heaven and a New Earth ; and though reaching to the end of time, .is only in him a repetition of the prophetic promise, Behold I create a New Heaven and a New Earth, and the fomier shall not be remem- bered nor come into mind; but be you glad, and rejoice for ever in that which I create; For [ 149 ] behold I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. For as the New Heavens and New Earth which I make still remain before me, so shall your seed and your name remain. If this expression be made typical of our Sa- viour's advent, and the establishing of a spiri- tual worship on the destrudion of the carnal ordinances of the law, and the altars of Heathen idolatry, it cannot wholly relate to it ; for as yet the Jewish nation have only to mourn the destrudion of their Jerusalem. It must there- fore be typical of another state of things, wholly figurative to us, but which we know will be ac- companied with an advancement of the church into that state of the glorious prevalence of truth, liberty, peace, and joy, of which we so often read in the prophetical parts of scripture, and which will close with the advancement of the church to consummate glory in Heaven. What momentary triumphs may yet be per- mitted to the ungodly, and what trials may await tlie faithful, arc hidden from us in the womb of time. It is true we have seen our Deliverer, but we still await in expeclation of our deliverance. We have been rescued from bondage, but are still [ 1^0 ] travelling through the wilderness of this world to a land of rest. We have known our Redeemer, but we still are ignorant of the fullness of his redemption. So far as the kingdom of Christ is set up in the world, so far is the world brought to its end, and the eternal state of things esta- blished ; so far are all the great changes and revolutions of the world brought to their ulti- mate issue. But the opposition to his kingdom has not ceased; and the spirit of Antichrist, under every form, must rage upon the earth, before,- by the last and fatal overthrow of his enemies, the machinations of Satan shall all be turned into occasions of triumph — before Christ shall appear to fulfil every promise to the faith- ful, and to pour down vengeance upon all the despisers of his name. In an age like the present, and in the present temper of our times, we can hardly speak of these things without fear and trembling. And when an unrestrained wildncss of human ima- gination is let loose against the sober and sure knowledge of the holy scriptures ; when a spe- culative atheism is runnino- down all serious religion, and a Christian people is familiar [ '51 ] with every instruClion, but that which is de- rived from the word of God; to see so many without Christ, without God in the world; and to be assured of the terrible judgments that will overtake them — is among the painful duties of useless exhortation. But however the plan of his mercy may be slighted, it is still our part to persevere, and to proclaim, that the same divine testimony which compels an universal acknowledgment of the one true God and Father of all, at the same time bears witness to the majesty and perfect fullness of his Son Jesus Christ ; that the same testimony which sets that Son in opposition to idols, demands our loAvliest reverence to Him in unity with the Father; that it calls reason home from her wanderings in a wilderness where no path is to be found, and shews her, by the light of faith, that Jesus Christ is the only way by which we can come to the Father; that in Jesus Christ alone, zcho of God is made unto his kingdom, righteousness, and sanctifi cation^ and redemption, a world condemned and dead in sin can find forgiveness and renewal of life. Upon a belief in this testimony alone shall we [ 152 ] be enabled to feel its value or to prove its truth ; the scriptures of God aiford the only immove- able ground of our confidence, the sole founda- tion of our consolatory hope, and that bond of peace, of brotherly love and charity, which may not be untied by the changes and chances of this mortal life. From the ineflfeftual wisdom of tins world let us therefore return to Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Believing in Him who is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever — in Him which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty — let us rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, and finally through his mercies may we receive the end of our faith, even the salvation of our souls. SERMON VI. SERMON VI. PSALM Ixxiv. 9. IFe see not our signs. nr^AKING the Holy Scriptures for our guide, we have been employed in following the train of human events from the creation to the dissolution of all things; and without bringing examples from the Heathen world which knew not God, in the very bosom of his revelation, and among the people of his choice, our exa- mination has proved a painful history of man's ingratitude and disobedience. Under every state of his trial and dependance we have seen the covenant of love and the conditions of par- don disregarded, broken, or despised ; and with judgments forgotten, with mercies slighted, with blessings abused, with time squandered, and with talents unimproved, have hours, days, and years [ 154 ] passed over thoughtless ages, filling up the sum of their iniquity, or charged with little accusa- tion against their guilty proceedings. But amidst the signal punishments infli6led, whilst states and empires have been trodden down, and it may be said of nations, as the Psalmist reported of the ungodly, / zvent by^ and lo he was gone ; I sought hun, but his place could no where be found — He xvho is the same yesterday, and to-day^ and for ever, appears at the head of human affairs. The vicissitudes of times, the changes of power, the elevation and overthrow of empires, in short, all the plans of human counsels, and the whole series of earthly events, instead of lying in a confused and ob- scure mass, arc shewn us by the light of reve- lation as so many parts of the great work of redemption; and the scriptures, exhibiting in sundry chastisements and corrections, in the fall and ruin of its enemies, the perpetuity of God's mercy to his church and peo})lc, are only waiting their ultimate completion, when the kingdom of Christ shall he extended to all nations, and all the ends of the earth shall look unto Christ, and be saved. [ 1^5 ] We have, my brethren, again conchuled another annual period of our lives; and like those which have gone before, it has brouglit every one of us so much farther onwards in our journey towards the grave. With a respective apphcation, therefore, of the text to every in- dividual, it may be asked, what preparations the Christian traveller has made for the re- mainder of his way, what strength he may have acquired to endure its increasing hardships? To what p-uide he has adhered for dire6lions, and what provision he has made for its awful close? We might then bid many look back on the paths they had trodden, and if there they too frequently find and lament their OAvn devi- ations from the way on which God had shed forth the light of his word, and the obstacles that have thence impeded their feeble advances, on such we have only to call for greater vigilan ce, and more exerted vigour, to gird up the loins of their mind, and seek diligently to walk hence- forward there alone, where the Sun of Righte- ousness will guide their feet into the way of peace. But to many, I fear, we should have to pro- nounce the sharper admonitions of the Gospel. [ 156 ] Have they, busy about many things, neglecled the one thing needful; and occupied by the interests of this transitory world, declined to cultivate the interests of eternity ? Have they appealed from the voice of God to the sugges- tions of their own brief intellcft, and preferred the sway of their own predominant passions to the easy yoke of their meek and lowly Redeemer? Have they witnessed, without instruclion, the signs and warnings of surrounding mortality, and beheld their associates snatched suddenly to their last account, without thinking of the talents for which they themselves are to be re- sponsible ? And shall we, who are equally ap- pointed to denounce the sanftions, as to preach the promises of the Gospel, acquiesce in the ruinous delusion? Have they, then, thus spoken peace to their own souls — Verily, saith my God, there Is no peace to the wretched? Have they thus anticipated the grave as a place of final rest? When the Almighty shall come to judg- ment, then all that are in the grave shall hear his voice, and come forth; and as they that have done sood shall come to the resurrection of life, [ 157 J SO thejj that have done evil shall come into the resurrection of damnation. But although tlie real and important concern of man, as an individual, is necessarily trans- acted within the boundary of his own earthly duration; though in his separate charadler, his vices and his virtues, in this his state of proba- tion, are to plunge him into misery, or to qua- lify him for eternal felicity; yet connected as lie is with society, the ac-lions of his life become relative also, and consequently form, on his part, a contribution to the character of his country, a contribution to the public vices or virtues, on which, from the history of his dis- pensations, we know that the Almighty has conferred his blessings, or inlliclcd his national judgments. At the expiration of one, and the commence- ment of another year, the mind is naturally led at once to contemplate events and probabilities, and from the existence of the past, to infer to the future progress of human society. Without, therefore, stretehing back the view to the re- corded periods of the world, how ample is the lesson which even the little space, over which [ 1^^8 ] we have passed ourselves, affords us. And whilst the portentous posture of human affairs holds out their frowning signals, let us humbly listen to the voice of God, speaking thus intel- ligibly to all nations; and turning to Him as a Christian people, obtain from his pacified mercy our exemption from seeing in their penalty, our own signs. We know, or at least we profess to know, what is essential to the very existence of a Christian community. We are made acquainted with the means of its security, and the terms of its preservation; and to apply our text to its most valuable purpose, we should bring the ex- istence of former ages to decide upon our own opinions and our own times. We must lay aside that political balance, which never weighs the morals of a people ; we must descend from that philosophic pride which gives to the wisdom of this world an haughty pre-eminence; and taught to measure our happiness by a juster standard, as brethren and friends living under the same laws, and unanimously desiring those things which tend to the common ad\antage, we must see how much we arc wanting in that fear and [ 159 ] love of God, and that obedient dedication of the heart and soul, to which alone he has an- nexed the promise of his public temporary blessings. From scenes long since buried in oblivion, from the tombs of departed greatness, and from the monumental records of anticnt glory, ^ve might possibly only furnish a general conclu- sion on the instability of human affairs; aiul whole , empires swept from the earth, like the graves on which they daily tread with unconcern would afford to many no subject of reflection. In vain would they be told, that althoiioh Ba- byloji which did zveaken the nations, be fallen another Babylon still remains; and that God will again lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. In vain would they be told, that althouo-h Tyre and Sidon, whose merchants zoere princes, and whose traffickers Avere the honourable of the earth, be no more, their judgment is also gone forth against other cities abundant in treasures, when they too shall have tilled up the measure of their iniquities. Disdaining prophecy, or dreading its interpretation, they would give to it no appropriate meaning, or quiet their fears [160] by disclaiming the right of decision upon any unaccomplished event. Supposing, then, these signs to be too vague and indefinite for any peculiar application ; or that being exhibited to all the nations upon earth, they bear no distin6l mark of any parti- cular society or kingdom ; is there not one that cannot be mi^-taken by a Christian people, and which the Almighty has placed, like a beacon on a hill, to warn succeeding generations? Has the Virgin the daughter of Zion, once fair and glo- rious, but now forsaken and wasted tvith misery ^ no tale to unfold, that would give us an expla- nation of national calamities? Have the once- chosen people of God, now in this a6tual time of their visitation, no other instruction to offer, than what may be gathered from the perishing condition of all human grandeur? Or when she sits down by the waters of other Babylon s, and weeps, does she not cry aloud to the Israel of God — Learn wisdom by my fall? If the chastisements of other nations, and the sad memorials of their ruin, do not furnish evi- dence that the Governor of the Universe will not be insulted with impunity, and of what will [ 161 ] befal every rebellious people upon earth, till the kingdom of righteousness be established, the single portrait of the Jewish nation, drawn by the hand of God himself, presents a resem- blance too strongly marked with the character- istic features of a Christian Society. They were his beloved people — his chosen inheritance •-—his favourites, whom He had separated unto himself from all nations; among whom He had fixed his church, and of whose holy city it was said, God is Iter tower of defence, God is in the midst of her. If a corrupt and perverse ge- neration should again ask for a sign, what greater than this can be given? A Saviour's mercy has bestowed upon us all these titles; a Saviour's goodness has transferred to us these their inestimable privileges. Rescued from ido- latrous bondage, and placed and prote6led in tliis our land of Canaan, a gratitude and obedi- ence proportionate to these benefits is required of us ; and if, like them, we fail in our bounderi duty and service, like them we shall be nO longer for a name and for a praise, and for a glory, but our heritage will be given into the hands of our enemies, and our pleasant portion M [ 162 ] he made a desolate wilderness. Was the land of Jiidea invaded? Was Jerusalem trodden do^vn? And is it no question with a Christian people, how long they may experience the forbearance of their God ? Are we more dear to Him than they were ? Can there be stronger expressions of love, than those of a despised and rejected Saviour in his lamentation over their devoted city? Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killedst the pro- phets, and stojiest them that are sent unto thee, hozo often ztould I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her zvings, and ye would not. Behold your house is left unto you desolate. And if the whole of this prediction has been verified with the most awful and literal completion ; if the Almighty has broken down the hedge Avith which he inclosed and defended their vineyard; is there no cause fbr fear, lest he should suffer the wild boar to root up, and the wild beasts of the forest to enter in, and lay waste ours? Nay, with a dreadful presage of such an event, may it not be said, and almost without a metaphor,, that they are now watching and howling around us. [ 163 ] Sliould wc look for the cause of their misfor- tunes in the decline of piety, and consequent corruption of manners; in the prevalence of li- centious principles, which, boldly renouncing both law and religion, left nothing to the church of God but the name of his temple and the ex- ternal forms of worship, how nearly shall we find in the historian of their times, the iniquity of the present day ! Or could the apprehensions of a Christian people, if they acknowledged or dreaded the just judgments of Heaven, be more powerfully excited by the peculiarity of guilt, or^a similarity of provocation? "Witli a daring defiance of every restraint, how have the laws and legal powers been insulted or despised? With no corredi ve influence, how vainly have the Scriptures spoken to a disobedient people? Till, by a natural process of the human mind, which, having once brought itself to disregard, soon begins to dispute and question their authority, impiety and blasphemy have not only been publicly proclaimed from the press, but become a traffic of profit, in a country of religious hope and persuasion. Nay, when the public worship of the Almighty i.s forsaken and disrespe6ted. [ 164 ] and the clay which He hallowed to his own glory, and for our salvation, is profaned ; when we partake of that terrible accusation, which the Almighty produces against his people, that whilst the young men assembled by troops in the harlots' houses, and the adultress scorned to be ashamed, they would stand before Him in his presence, and declare their hope to be in his name ; may we not from similar crimes with trembling look out for similar visitations? Did then the Christian dispensation, which lightened the burden of the IMosaic ritual, diminish the force of its moral injunftions? Has the super- strudure of holiness weakened the foundation ? Remember that thou keep holy the Sabhath-Day — Has this solemn coihmand now lost every claim to observance or resped? Or is the inscription written by the finger of God on tables of stone, erased in the institution of the Gospel covenant? Have we no sacrifice to offer, no commemorative mercies to acknowledge, no ordinances to ob- serve? And is the Lord's-Day wholly exempt from those awful words, which now proclaim the origin of the greatest miseries that ever befel a wretched people— 7/ thou turn azoay thy [ 165 ] foot from the sabbath, from doing my pleasure on my holy day i and call the sabbath a delight—the holy of the Lord, honourable, and shall honour Him, not doing thine o zvn ways, not, finding thine own pleasure, nor seeking thine own words : Then shall thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I zvill cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee zvilh the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. — But if ye will not hearken unto me to hallow the sabbath- day, then will L kindle a ji re in the gates of Jerusalem, and it shall devour the palaces thereof, and it shall not be quenched. Sucli are the blessings promised to a due observance of the sabbath, such are the curses denounced against the breach of it, and both have been hterally accomplished. But how do we read our signs? Why, we never place them honestly before us, or we endeavour to escape from their meaning by evasive subterfuges. We put from us the evil day, by having recourse to the ge- nius of our government, the wholesomeness of its laws, the prudence of its administration, and the extent of its resources. Thus times and seasons, v.arnings and punishments, roll on be- fore eyes that will not see, and 3}3eak to ears that will not hear; and resolving all into se- condary causes, we forget Him who ruleth in the kingdoms of men, who maketh princes, em- pires, and snbjeds subservient to one almighty purpose, and before Avhom all nations are as nothing; whose word has gone forth — The earth itself shall wax old as a garment, as a vesture zvill I change it, and it shall be changed s but my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteous- ness shall not be abolished. Of all the denunciations of woe recorded in scripture, the most terrible are those which are pronounced against ingratitude and disobedi- ence. Infidel and idolatrous nations, having served their destined purpose, have been de- stroyed and swept away from among men ; but the vengeance that Avas to pursue the rebelli - ous children of his love, the whole of Avhich was foretold by their own inspired lawgiver, and only detailed in its separate parts by succeed- ing Prophets; Avhich also, in progressive ac- complishment, is visiting or has overtaken them in the face of all people — is a narrative of horror, that if in any of its particulars Ave were to apply I icr ] to ourselves, would fill us with fear and trcm- ijling. IVIust then the stroke arrive before we will see the uplifted ami ? Must we fall into the pit that our sins are digging for us, without once considering its depth or its danger? If the history of the Jews were written for our ex- ample, read their mercies, and the cause of their misfortunes ; Math a prophetic spirit the}' are all set forth by Moses in the 32d chapter of Deuteronomy, wherein he says — The Lords portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his in- heritance. He found him in a desart land^ and in the waste howling wilderness : He led him about ^ He instructed him, Hq kept liim as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, Jluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her zaings, taketh them, and beareth them on her zoings, so the Lord alone did lead hi?n, and there zvas no strange god with him. He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and He made him to suck honey out of the rock., and oil out of the flinty rock; butter of kine, and milk of sheep, zcithfat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, ivith the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou [ 168 ] didst drink the pure blood of the grape. But Je^ shiirim waxed fat^ and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the rock of his salvation. Can we be such unequal judges in our own case, as not to see, in their trial and condemna- tion, the fatal sentence of a Christian people? Change only for a moment the figurative lan- guage, and mark how similar the reasoning is against us, how aggravated our provocation. Suppose, then, the God of the universe, the Lord, zvho hath redeemed us with his bloody summoning us, as he did them, to answer the charge — Behold I will plead with thee, because thou sayest I have not sinned ; or suppose him only to say. Son of man, wilt thou judge them, and cause them to know their abominations. How are we prepared to answer accusations like these ? If God has placed every blessing within our reach, consistent with our earthly state ; if He has given us a country, temperate in its cli- mate, exuberant in its soil, exulting in its liberty, and flourishing in its commerce; if, having wiitten his law and his commandments within [ 169 1 our hearts, He has guarded by his protection, iind sanctified by his presence, our holy tem- ples, the place where his honour dwelleth ; if, having removed from us the scourge of the oppressor. He has fixed the pillars of our go- vernment on the foundation of religious truth; if, after grafting us on the parent stock, He has caused our branches to flourish, that they might spread around the fruits of righteous- ness ; if He has made of us a wise, a great, and enlightened people, that his name through us might be exalted, and that in our dominion He might be glorified in the sight of all nations ; Why have we forgotten the Hand from which we have received all these blessings ; why have we defiled the land of our inheritance; and why do the insulted laws of our God rise up before him, to upbraid us with apostacy and ingratitude? Of those pollutions, which must banish from the heart every religious hope ; of those licentious principles, which set Almighty Power at defiance, and consequently separate from human actions the care of an all-seeing Providence ; of the dis- sipation, gaming, riot, and debauchery, which abound among us, and which so fully confinn [ 170 ] tlie charge; of their consequent attendants, sin, rebuke, and blasphemy, which with impu- dent defiance have set up their banners for to- kens; — we can only say, bi/ their fruits ye may know them. And had we no other witnesses of the truth to shame and confound such false brethren, what a fearful looking-for of judg- ment would remain to us ! But amidst the ir- regularities of life, which force us to shut our eyes, or to hush our consciences, whilst we hear the stream of infidelity roaring in its widened channel, and behold so many thoughtless beings feeding the currents and swelling the rivulets of folly and guilt, to augment the rapidity of the destrudive torrent, though we may not be able to oppose a mound, it is our duty to bid you mark its progress, and to dread its approach ; It is our duty to turn your eyes towards the ra- vages of the storm, and to exhort you to exa- mine well the ground of your security, whether, should the rain descend, and the jioods come., and the winds blow, they will beat in vain upon your house, because it is founded on a rock. Shai we th^'n be taught to comprehend our signs, as the danger approaches nearer? And [ 171 ] from the distin6l word of revelation, from the full and final completion ot" prophetic warning, and from the destruction of nations now erased from the face of the earth, shall we turn with more profitable admonition to the calamitous scenes around us? Shall we, at the close of a century, terminating with horror, yet fraught with mercy, learn to estimate the value of our blessings in the presence of our God? Shall we, in taking the catalogue of wretchedness from other nations, be taught to raise up our voice in thanksgiving to the throne of grace, that our country has not been delivered over a prey to the spoiler, nor made a field of blood? By the interposition of Providence we have been placed on a noble eminence; and I know and feel, that when the pulse beats high to na- tional honour in signal atchievements of genius and courage, \vhen this little island is made, as it were, the ark and the resting-place of social morality and legitimate freedom, the lesson of humility is difficult. But with the groaning of nations humbled to the dust, who but lately prided themselves, like our own, on the order ■' of their q:ovcrnmcnt and the o-reatness of their [ 172 ] resources, the very song of deliverance must be a song of apprehension; it must expose the slender thread of, ^vhat is called, national pros- perity ; and through the vapour of glory -will be distinctly seen the significant token, that no- thing can long hold together a happy people, but the strong bonds of Christian faith, of Christian hope, and of Christian obligations. Protefted, therefore, as this kingdom has been, by the gracious Hand of Heaven, docs it not become us to be humble as well as grateful? Should we not ask ourselves upon whom the vial of indignation has' been poured, and who have been made to drink so deeply of the cup of afflidion ? Oh God of mercy, let us not dare to suppose, that, upon a moral and religious comparison our foundation of trust is stronger than that of many who have fallen ; let us not venture to pronounce / am holier than thou, or that we ourselves might not have as justly shared a portion of their sad inheritance! In tracing the boundaries of their once fraternized domi- nions, as they were termed by the insulting foe, shall we find nothing within them that ought to have checked the hand of spoliation? Were [ 173 ] there no constituted authorities— no proteaing laws— no charitable succours— no peaceful sub- mission—no revered principles— no afFeaionate ties— to deprecate the experiments of these in- furiate plunderei-s? Was the arrogant title of the Great Nation deservedly written with the blood, and deservedly decorated with the pro- perty, the resources, the claims, anddistinaions, of these unhappy kingdoms? Of one country, once possessed of every earthly happiness, let me be excused for speaking with painful recol- leaion. In the plain of ambition, in the strug- gle for power, in the search after wealth, there may be some plausible pretext for the bloody triumph, which may be dignified with the war- rior's praise, or mocked with the sanaion of freedom's banners. But the desolation of the Alpine vallies strikes a terror to the heart; their forms of government, their modes of legislation, their charaaer, their education, and manners, were all cast in the fairest moulds of freedom ; they had nothing to ask, but the undisturbed possession of enjoyments, which had grown out of the virtuous habits of industry and content, and which had rendered their confined domi- [ 17-i ] nions, and their own domestic claims, at once their glory and their consolation. It may, per- haps, be trespassing a little beyond the limits of a discourse from this place, to enter into these particulars ; but from a country of peace, of love, of civil order, and religious dependence; from a country, we have seen, rich like our own in the choicest blessings, and even removed from many of its vices; from a country, to which, it should seem, that the prophetic lan- guage might almost be applied — the kings of the earth and all the inhabitants of the world conld not have believed, that the adversary should have entered her gates ; from such a country, over- whelmed with destruction, the rellecHonwe wish to impress upon your hearts will be awfully strik- ing; and from a lamentation over its smoaking ruins, we shall duly prize the ^•alue of our own preservation. We are not presenting you with an imaginary talc of woe, nor producing the probable effects of licentious confusion among us; the dreadful consummation has been verilied to our sight, and what reason and religion bid us expe6l, fad has realised, with every circumstance of horrid [ 175 I completion. Renouncing, therefore, every pre- sumptuous decision, our duty is to contemplate these signs, and to acquaint ourselves with the sentence ah-eady gone forth upon every king- dom : — Son of man, when the landsinneth against me by trespassing grievously, then zvill I stretch €ut mine hand upon it, a?id will break the staff of the bread thereof, and will send famine upon it, and will cut off man and beast from it: though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their oivn souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord God. The threat and the accompHshment are now before us, and we have been signally protected and preserved. Shall we, then, hide from our hearts the instruc- tive admonition ? Shall we not ask them, what we have done to be excluded from the number of wretched vidtims? Shall \vc still refuse to in- terweave the fate of empires Avitli that of reli- gion, and close the century with some proud encomium on our national valour, or m ith some profound remarks on our political superiority? If such be to be the issue of tlie mercies Ave have experienced, the time of our visitation is already decreed, our destrudlion already sealed. [ 176 ] Built on the foundation of those revelations which were given to Adam, to Noah, to Abra- ham, to Moses, and the Prophets, the church of Christ from age to age, from century to cen- tury, has verified the promise of her almighty Saviour — Zo, / ara zvith you alwaij, even unto the end of the world. However she may have suftered, or be ordained to suffer, under tempo^ rary correftions, the things that cannot he shaken, will remain. Even her adversaries, who are permitted to rule for the chastisement of the disobedient or the purification of the just, are only raised uj) to display the future triumphs of her glorious Leader, when He that spake in righteousness, mighty to save, shall Avith his own arm bring salvation unto his people; when He shall dash their enemies in pieces, and having accomplished the number of his eleft, and the year of his redeemed being come, He shall ap- pear in the chara^ler of King of kings, and Lord of lords, to claim dominion over his chosen, and to incorporate all (excepting those Avho have renounced his authority) into his kingdom upon earth, that they may become one fold under one shepherd. [ ^n ] From the creation to the dissohition of all tilings, eveiy event has been preparatory to the o-reat and eternal work of God to be effedled in Christ Jesus; and History and Prophecy conspire to shew how far it has advanced to- wards its full and ultimate completion. We have seen the three dispensations, as they are called, the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, and the Christian — (each in its allotted period, and with its destined purpose) preparing the May for a Redeemer's advent, and producing earnests of his future glory. The policy of states, the destiny of empires, the shifting scenes of earthly grandeur, are the subordinate parts, which men have a6ied, and which the mercy of God has made instrumental to his providential designs. In the Scripture Histoiy, therefore, and in that alone, have we a just comment upon human affairs, for He that rideth in the kingdoms of men, can alone account for the power that He givcth, or taketh aAvay. But it is by searching them out, by pondering and weighing them in all their circumstances, that the works of the Lord are known, souglit out of nil them that have pleasure therein. [ 178 ] Thus in expe6lation of the promised Re- deemer, the Christian only sees, in the great- ness of the Roman empire, the appointed time, when enriched by the various streams of science, which flowed into it from every part, it was to give the most illustrious proof of a Saviour's advent, by his diffusing over the world a light superior to all colle6ted human wisdom in its brightest glory. In its subsequent decay and dissolution he leaves the Historian to decide on the probable causes of its fall, but observing the fragments into which it was broken, and Avatching the spirit of Antichrist busy at the work, which it began in the garden of Eden, (and which the Apostle, when he would caution us against it, states as being then already in the world) he beholds it assuming only new forms, employing new devices, and even changing the mark of the beast to suit the temper and disposition of his proselytes; he beholds the malicious destroyer of the human race, from dreadino- more and more the overthrow of his kingdom, as the danger approaches nearer, drawing into it every opposer of the Christian faith, and then sending them forth in all di- [ 179 ] re6lions to falsify the word of God, to corrupt its purity, to blaspheme the name of Christ, or to deny his existence. It is against these subtle machinations that the church of Christ is exhorted to be on her guard. It is in these latter times, when she is told to expect false prophets and false teachers, hy reason of whom the ivai/ of truth shall be evil spoken of, and ivho, with great szvelling words of vanity, shall beguile unstable souls from the right way, that she is more peculiarly called upon to zvatch and pray, lest she enter into temptation. With her is deposited the word of truth; within her holy sanctuary are preserved the co- venant of mercy, the privileges of adoption, the right of inheritance, the ministration unto all things pertaining unto God, and the symbols of her eternal and atoning Redeemer. Let her, then, hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. Her sigus are M'ritten from ge- neration to generation, and the Eastern church, debased by corruptions, divided by heresies, and then delivered up to persecution, presents at this moment a monument of woe, on a\ hicli, if she keep not the Mord, the Western church [ 180 ] may read the inscription of her own approach' ing calamities. Be ivatchful, says the Spirit unto one of them, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die : for I have not found thy works perfect before God. Bonember, therefore, hozv thou hast received and heard, and holdfast and repent. Jf tJiere- fore, thou shalt not watch, I will come upon thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I zoill come upon thee. With this admonition before us, waiting for the glorious consummation of the redemption of our purchased possession, may we be found faithful, may we hold fast by that everlasting- Saviour without whom man had fallen for ever, who has loved him with an everlasting love, who at all times and in all places has given us to- kens of it ; who has commanded us to read our signs, and under every discouraging event to trnst in Him, Avho shall redeem his people. NOTES. NOTES. NOTES. PAGE 4. LINB 10. AND disjoin the evangelical blessings from every former act of God's interfering pro- vidence, &c. X AM aware of the objeftions that will be raised against -■- these arguments by many, who, with a full and perfeft acquiescence in scripture authority, and allowing Christ, in his divine and human chara6ter, to have realized every promise, and to have corresponded with every prophetic signification, are yet doubtful, how far the blessings of a Redeemer's kingdom may have been made known in former ages, or whether the great Mediatorial undertak- ing, and the dodlrines of the resurrection, were not hidden in darkness, till the day-star arose above the horizon. They do not deny the retrospective influence of Christi- [ 184 ] anity, and arc firmly persuaded^ that the benefits of a Saviour's death will be extended backwards to those who never heard of his coming, and by whom he was neither foreseen nor foreknown. Thus, without weakening the efficacy of atonement, they contend, that however clear the revelation of a Redeemer's glor}"^ might have been made to Abraham, and some other favoured servants of God, still the expectation of such an event was not ge- neral ; and that in the belief of the great bulk of mankind, the promises and threatenings of scripture all terminated in this life. The tenet, though maintained by authority, and rendered the foundation of a stupendous fabric of learning, entitled to the most profound respect, I am, nevertheless, unable to adopt; nor can I resist the evi- dence of the eleventh chapter of the Hebrews, which presents us with a catalogue of pious expectants and suf- ferers, who all died in faith^ not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, were persuaded of them and embraced them. Hebrews xi. 13. lam constrained to accede to the testimony of the same Apostle, who, in justification of himself before Felix, and who, be it remembered, made the Roman governor tremble, as he reasoned of a judgment to come, turns the charge of his accusers against themselves, as being apostates from the received faith and religion of their ancestors. Neither can they prove the things, says he, whereof they now accuse me. But this I confess unto thee, that after the way wbich they call heresy., so worship I the Go d [ 185 ] of my fathers^ believing all things which are written in the law and the prophets; And have hope towards God, which ihexj themselves also allow^ that there shall be a resurrection from the dead, both of the just and unjust. — ^Acts xxiv. 14. This point of doctrine, there- fore, was not a new one, nor peculiar to Christianity. The Apostle argites upon it as upon the derivative faith of their ancestors; and in another place takes advantage of this very belief, with the hopes (and in which he fully succeeds) of gaining a party in his favour. When he was brought be- fore the council, which consisted of Pharisees and Sad- ducees, both of whom were equally adverse to Christianity, he appeals to the former not only as being a Pharisee, and the son of a Pharisee, but as one that was unjustly persecutal for opinions which they held sacred — Of the hope, says he, and resurrection of the dead I am called in question. Xav, our Saviour himself (and surely his w ords may be allowed to decide) tells the Jews to search the scriptures, which testified of him, and in which they thought they had eternal life. What then is the in- ference? That the scriptures did teach them to expe6t a resurrection from the dead, but that without Him who was to be the resurrection and the life, the promise was not compleated, nor the expectation confirmed. Supposing, however, we had no such incontrovertible evidence, and we could heap proof upon proof, might it not fairly be asked, wiiat consolation Adam could have rccci\ ed from the promise in tlw garden of Eden, had it [ 18(5 ] not included the assurance of an atonement and a resur- reftion? He was to be restored to a happiness he had forfeited, to something that would soften and console him under the dreadful sentence of death passed upon him and his posterity, for disobedience to the divine com- mands. The expiation of his crime, therefore, not beinor yet made, the moment of death, without such expecta- tion, must have annihilated every hope of pardon as far as he was personally concerned. With the rest of his posterity who never saw Christ, he might, and would be, (if we may be pardoned the expression) surprised into a resurretSlion, and which is a necessary consequence of making Christianity wholly retrospetSlive with regard to former ages; but the assurance of a restoration to immor- tality, and which alone could take from death its sting , and from the grave its victory, must have appeared groundless at the approach of dissolution, without faith in a Redeemer's ransom from the power of sin and death. The covenant was the plan, and the blood of Christ the means, of human redemption, and thus called the Blood of the Everlasting Covenant. The time of the fulfil- ment of the promise being concealed might wisely be ordained to animate faith by constant expeAation; the nature and end of that promise must have been revealed, or the types and figures of it could never have been ad- duced in proof of a Saviour's commission, much less been made matter of accusation against the unbelieving Jews, who discredited, or disowned, their mcanin> Muavs Arlijc^wv — What is Plato, but Moses conversing in the language of Athens. This may be paying too great a compliment to the Pagan theologv, but it is a proof of the source from whence it was thought to spring. Furnished with materials of faith, which they knew not how to explain, the philosophers of Greece endeavoured to work them up into a systematic science; and wise in their own conceits, surrounded with [ 191 ] the fi(9:itious lustre of allegory the traditional records of the Mosaic cosmogony, and the wisdom derived from Divine revelation. Some of the Platonizing fathers fell into the same error?, and wishing to explain what was only given them to believCy consulted philosophical learning, which they considered as a comment on and interpretation of the Trinity, only to bewilder themselves ^in the laby- rinth of mode and essence. But a threefold distln6lion in the Deity, however distorted by interpretation, or disfigured by emblem, never lost its original stamp; and it is the faith of ancient times we contend for, not the explanation of the do6lrines it inculcates. If the faith were not the same, how are we to interpret the 7th Article of our own church? We may safely, there- fore, affirm with Plotinus, that the do£lrine of a Tri- nity was 'TTxXoiix lo^x. The Grecian philosophers receiv- ing the doftrine, as it was corrupted, from Eg)'pt or Chaldea, instead of amending it by their ingenuity, did but make it worse. And to sum up all in the words of one of the most able and zealous defenders of its faith the Christian world can boast: — '^ It is granted," says the late Mr. Jones, ** that upon the rise and progress of ido- '* latry, the 7nost ancient heathens carried o^ many sub- '^ lime mysteries of the true religion, and purloined Wio?'e " in after ages from the people of God. Yet when they *' were in possession of them, they mixed them up wltli '^ their own atheistical principles, then strained away the " purer part of the mixture, and let it run to waste; so [ 192 ] *' that, if wc now seek it again from them, there is little " to be found, but their own filthy sediments instead of " it. And if in scattered fragments, borrowed from the " Hebrews, there should be found some dark iion'ces of " the true God, yet after all, we are not to form our senti- " ments from the heathen theolog)^, but to reform and '^ correal that by the Christian/'* This appears to me to be a solution to every difficulty. It at once assimilates and separates the Pagan and Chris- tian do6lrines; it shews an intellectual Trinity debased into a physical one, and again restored to its purity by Him who came to claim and to shew his participation in the divine essence. For a full elucidation of this subject, we would refer the reader to " Letters on the Septuagint," '' Origin of Arianism," " Discourses of Sir W. Jones," and the fifth volume of Mr. Maurice's " Indian Anti- quities." And ainong these it would be unpardonable to omit one of the most satisfa£lory and comprehensive little traAs that ever was written, I mean an Essay on the Doc- trine of the Trinity, at the conclusion of Mr. Scrle's truly Christian book, " Horoe Solitariae." PAGE 10, LINK .5. Their unbelief drew down a penalty con- ne6lcd with their offence. There will be few readers who will want to be re- minded of the truly ingenious work of Mr. Bryant, upon * Answer to an Essay on Spirit, by tlie Rev. W. Jones. [ 193 ] the plagues infliAecl upon the Egyptians; wherein he fully proves the peculiarity of those judgments, and shews how the honour of the true Go D was vindicated against their senseless deities; how their punishment corresponded with the offence, and was adapted to expose the idola- trous rites and insufficiency of the Gods in whom they trusted. Page 12, line 4. And from studies which might adorn, but should not be made the basis of, a Chris- tian education. Sec. It is with painful remark I here confess to allude to the System of public education; and reflecling, as I do, that after many years employed in classical attainments, in seeking knowledge in the Lyceum, the Portico, and the Academy, I had not advanced a step in the onty knowledge that was to make me wiser, happier, or better ; T most cordially join my voice to that of my friend and school-fellow. Dr. Rennell, as well as to that of another champion in the Christian cause, who followed us in the same mistaken paths of science, and with whose senti- ments I am proud to concur, in deprecating that inatten- tion to serious concerns which is so visible in our greatest and best-endowed seminaries. I scruple not to affirm, that our senate and our bar are now exhibiting, in many instances, the fatal consequences of this neglect; and o [ 19^ ] that amidst the exertion of the noblest faculties, the dis- play of the brightest talents, religion has too often to weep over a total indifference to her duties, an habitual disregard for the providence of God, the gospel of his Son, and the sacred institutions of his service.* PAGE 18, LINE 7« It is only from such testimony that we can account for the wild waste of human happiness. It must be obvious, that I here allude to the Memoirs of the Abbe Barucl, the most extraordinary as well as useful publication, in point of matter, and in point of time, that, in my opinion, ever issued from the press. That there may be objedions made to parts of it by the Protestant reader, I am ready to allow ; and if there were not, the author must, to a certain degree, have abandoned the dogmas of his own persuasion. In claiming his tes- timony, I claim it as the most clear and substantial evi- dence of a blasphemous and systematic conspiracy against the God of our salvation; of an attempt to banish from the heart of man all remembrance of a Redeemer's love, and to lead him forth, devoid of hope, to the sanguinary * Vide note to Dr. Rennell's admirable sermon before the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge; and the preface to Mr. Gisborne's last publication, though not least in fame, " A Familiar Survey of the Christian Religion." [ 195 ] triumphs of anarchy and rebelHon. I consider the horrid detail as a salutary warning to every Christian country, to guard against that infidel spirit which is every where working its deadly work; and exhibiting, in its fatal con- sequences, the danger of relaxing the spring that gives the movement to all human happiness. Let it be remembered, that infidelity is nursed upon the lap of indifference; and a carelessness about opinions has left in liberal estimation among us. Christian drunkards. Christian gamesters, and Christian adulterers; and, with a solecism in language, as well as in religion, Christian deists. We know of no tic to bind such friends to our social interest, but personal gratification; and infidelity has only to treat them with more indulgence, and they will readily join her standard, and soon become associates in her crimes. Should the reader be inclined to doubt the horrid de- tail, let him peruse the work of Professor Robinson, who, without any communication with, or knowledge of, the Abbe Baruel, with a marvellous coincidence of observa- tion, seems to have abridged the substance of the work. PAGE 19, LINE 9. But the alarming popularity of writings, &c. The Oracles, and the Age of Reason, seem exaftly suited to dkch other; and knaves and infidels have only to throw oir the sober habits of religion, and renounce their Redeemer, to establish their proficiency in the science ©1 [ 196 ] truth and morals. The melancholy result of all our illu- mhiation at the close of the eighteenth century is, that the bold and blasphemous assertions of Thomas Paine have superseded the authority of the holy scriptures, and the deistical jargon of Mr. Godwin has changed the moral and religious principles of many a weak and conceited youth into wild and groundless speculation. It has been whispered to us, that this gentleman's philosophism, with all its attendant and licentious apparatus of novels and plays, forms a considerable part of academic studies. If the report be true, we shall soon taste the bitter waters flowinsi: from such a source. Of the quantity and quality of improvement to be gained in the school of Mr. Godwin, a judgment maybe formed from the specimens already afforded by some of his pro- fessed disciples; for impiety, blasphemy, and impurity, are not only publicly proclaimed from the press, but be- come a traffic of profit, in a country of religious hope and dependence. To those faithful guardians of our morals, who have weighed Mr. Godwin in the balance, and recorded his value, the public are much indebted; would I could say as much of others, who, assuming the title, and as pro- fessed arbiters of literary merit, Nullius addicti (as they tell us) jurare in verba magistri, are giving circulation, under the veil of candour and liberality, to works of the most profligate and pernicious tendency; and are only withdrawn from the ranks to adt as pioneers to the hos [ 197 ] of infidels, who are preparing their assault against tlie fortress of Christianity. In a sermon lately published, and which will deservedly rank among the highest of our literary produftions, Mr. Hall thus speaks of them: — *^ Animated by numbers, and " emboldened by success, the infidels of the present day " have given a new dire6lion to their efforts, and im- '* pressed a new charaiSter on the ever-growing mass of '^ their impious speculations. *' By uniting more closely with each other, by giving a '' sprinkling of irreligion to all their literary produciions, " they aim to engross the formation of the public mind; ^' and, amidst the warmest professions of attachment to *' virtue, to effeft an entire disruption of morality from " religion. Pretending to be the teachers of virtue, and " the guides of life, they propose to revolutionize the ^' morals of mankind, to regenerate the world by a process " entirely new, and to rear the temple of virtue not merely ^' without the aid of religion, but on the renunciation of ^* its principles, and the derision of its sanations. Their '^ party has derived a great accession of numbers and " strength from events the most momentous and asto- *' nishing in the political world, which have divided the *' sentiments of Europe betwixt hope and terror, and ^' however they may issue, have, for the present, swelled *' the ranks of infidelitv. So rapidly, indeed, has it ad- ** vanced since this crisis, that a great majority on the ** Continent, and in England a considerable proportion. [ 198 ] " of those who pursue Uterature as a profession, may '' justly be considered as the open or disguised abettors ^* of atheism/'* Leaving these gentlemen, and the effects of their wri- tings, to the correction of this able writer, I would only suggest to them, and to every cormptor of the public morals, one serious consideration, and which, unless all sense of a judgment to come be extinguished, will at some time or other have its due weight and terror. — That as there scarcely can be named a vice which terminates in itself, or with the actor, so the corruption of the human mind has by far the most fatal, as well as the most ex- tensive, consequences ; and when the writers sleep in their graves, the infidel essay, the immodest poem, or the lascivious novel, may be increasing the sum of their guilt, by increasing the number of accusing criminals, who at the bar of judgment will plead trumpet-tongued against the authors of their ruin. To collect his works, where- ever he could find them, and at any price, with the view of consigning them to oblivion, was, I believe, among the last acts of a repentant Rochester. * Vide Sermon by Robert Hall, A.M. on Modem Infidelity, considered with resped to its influence on society. [ 199 ] PAGE 21, LINE 2. I advert to that fatal curiosity, which, with the genius of a neighbouring country, has imported a wildness of imagination that despises sober restraint, &c. I cannot be mistaken here as meaning to specify Ger- many, and to lament that sad and vitiated taste, which, through the medium of her Uterature, is now creeping into all the favourite produdions of the day. Hitherto the disgrace has been pretty much confined to theatrical representations; and if we must have them, disgraceful cnouo-h it is to see our Shakespear abandoned, and the habits, the principles, and the religion of a Christian peo- ple yielding themselves up to a momentary delirium of the senses, and suhmitting to every insulting outrage la the dramatic mocker)^ of feeling. I trust I am speaking with no prophetic warning; but from a long residence in that country, being pretty conversant with the writings ot most of its admired authors, I venture to pronounce, thai from the opening of these stores, as from the opening of Pandora's box, every desolating mischief will fly forth among us. With some, and some noble exceptions, I am ready to allow, from the productions of the Ger- man Plato Mendelsohn, to those of the epicurean no- velist Wleland, and so downwards to the coarse, thougli shrewd, buffoonery of Nlcolal, all is an attack upon Reve- lation. And let it be remembered, that the pen of genius. [ 200 ] %\ hich has been a poignard to stab the morals of man- kind, has also, in the course of retributive justice, fur- nished to avarice and ambition the means of gratification, and placed a real poignard in the hands of the oppressor and assassin. From the sceptical metaphysics of Professor Kant, from such writings as thoseof Messrs. Fichte, Knigge, Bahrt, and Weishaupt, (we could name many others, if it were prudent, of even a more dangerous tendency, and some also proceeding from theological chairs) what other consequences could be expefted ? And with what dreadful proofs does the caution of our Saviour now experimentally address us — by their fruits ye shall know them. PAGE 34, LINE 2. Before Abraham was, I am. This argument is weilded by Mr. Whitaker* with his usual ability, and I have ever considered it as one of the most positive and incontrovertible proofs of our blessed Lord's divinity that can be found in the holy writings; because it is one, that under no accommodation of mean- ing, either in the original or translation, can be bent from it; plain and literal signification — n^jy AQ^xxiJ.'ycnaQxi, Eyu tiiM — Before Abraham was, I am. With a bold para- phrase, Socinus would have expunged its meaning, by construing it, " Before Abraham can be, Abraham, that is, the father of many nations, I am; I must be the Savi- our and the light of the world," But this being too vio- Origin of Arianism, p. a6i, &c. [ 201 ] lent an exertion of critical power, succeeding objeftors to our faith have rested in another interpretation of the pas- sao-e, but equally adverse to its fair and literal construc- tion. They argue, that Christ does not mean to say, he was before Abraham, in point of time, but that as Messiah he was before him in dignity and importance. This may possibly pass, though not without some difficulty, upon an English reader, because, in our language, one thing may be said to be before another, if it excel it; but the Greek words will bear no such meaning— wf/v invari- ably relates to priority of time, and lyu cii/.i, standing as they do in the present, with that which was past, can be spoken with propriety only in o}ie case, to which the whole world does not afford a second.* PAGE 40, LINE 13, Will he allow their scriptures to bear witness of Jesus, and the redemption of mankind through him, and doubt their veracity, when they prove the necessity of this rich display of mercy, by being witness also of the fall of man, and the state from which he fell ? I must here beg leave to notice some theological opuii- ons, which, though never weighed in the balance of the san6luar\^, pass current in the world under the stamp of * Not to repeat my own words, vide these obje<5tions answered in " Scriptural Revision of Socinian Arguments," p. nj, Sec. [ 202 ] Christianity, and are thus received and circulated by many, who are either unable to examine and appreciate their due value, or are deceived by their resemblance to the Christian image and superscription. My allusion is mtended more particularly to point at a work of abundant research and ingenuity, and which, sent into the world with all the merit that attaches to the correft and amia- ble manners of its author, only serves to lead the judge- ment more astray, and to spread the delusion \\'ider. *^ With an unfeigned sincerity," says Mr. Sullivan, in his View of Nature, *' I am proud to declare it, I " honour and reverence the sacred scriptures; but I am " not in consequence bound to honour and reverence all '^ the rust and refuse which they may have colle6led in '^ their long and perilous voyage, and during the disas- '^ ters of their captivity. Neither am I to suppose, from '^ the Hebrew phraseology, that God talked with Abra- *' ham and others mouth to mouth, and with an audible '^ voice, as one man would with another, or that men w ere '^ almost as familiar with Ang-els as with their fellow- '^ men. These are things not to be belie% ed, for they are " contrary to nature and reason, and to all the general *' laA<'S and harmony of the world; hni fgurativeli/ and '^ allegorically y I must allow, they are to bear an inter- " pretation, especially when we know there arc passages " which give the most sublime ideas of the majesty of " the Supreme Being, the glory of his works, and the " incomprehensible mcjthods of his Providence." [ 203 J Tlius, instead of searching for the truth in figure, Mr. Sullivan, for the better interpretation of the scriptures, would read them backwards, (for I know no better ex- pression for it) and search for figure in truth. How far this mode of reasoning has caused him to deviate from the true sense of them, he soon allows us to determine j for speaking of the fall of man, a few pages afterwards, he tells us, " that it has ever been the received doctrine, " that this guilt has been transferred to the whole of *^ Adam's posterity, and that on his account alone we " are obnoxious to the Divine wrath. But whoever could *' consider guilt otherwise than as a personal thing, or ^' any more to be transferred than one man's being can *' be transferred to another?" After pursuing the sub- je6t farther, " How are we to conceive," says he, **^ that " God Almighty himself should be so unmerciful, as to " call us to an account for the crime of an old fore/at her, " committed nearly six thousanu yean, ago? I would " not willingly offend m speaking of original sin; but I " can no more be persuaded that sin can descend in the '' blood, than I can that a man's knowledge and abilities " can run in the veins; for I believe a man may be as *' easily born a ready-made philosopher or divine, as he *^ can be born a ready-made profligate or sinner. But " supposing there was such tradu^live guilt, the child, " surely, could no more deserve punishment for it than " he could for inheriting his father's distempers; which, ^' in charity, one would suppose would deserve pity rather [ 204 ] <•' than punishment. Nay, it would seem altogether in- ^* consistent with Divine justice and mercy, because the " guilt must have been infused into the soul by God, '* when he originally made it, which would argue a double ^' degree of pravity; first, to implant sin in man, and " then to punish him for it. How tremendous! to ima- " gine God inflifting conscious miser)^, and that eternally, '' on millions and millions for a single sin committed be- *' fore they were brought into existence. How frightful " to suppose, that he takes the sweet infant by death from ^' the aifeclionate mother's breast, almost as soon as it *' becomes capable of casting its innocent smiles in her " face, and the still more advanced little prattler from the " father's knee, and cast them both into hell, to sufler *' conscious miserywlthout end, for they know not what." Far be it from me to mean the smallest disrespeft to Mr. Sullivan, but really this language of the nursery, this lullabi/ sort of reasoning, puts at defiance all serious refutation. It first creates a frightful image, and then tells those, whom it might fill with apprehension, not to be afraid. If Christ died for all; if as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive ; and if^ more- over, our Saviour himself took little children and blessed them, and even declared, (with an emblem borrowed from their simplicity) that of such was the kingdom of heaven ; there is surely more consolation to be derived from these words than from any arguments Mr. Sullivan could supply. But from what page of the holy scriptures does [ 205 1 he draw his terrific imagery? They plainly tell us, that man fell from his primitive state, and that through Christ he was to be restored; that he had become subjed to sin and death, and from that bondage he was to be released. Granting, therefore, the child could not personally sin, he must°personally die, and the resurredion unto eternal life was to be the//re gift of Go d through Jesus Christ. In the personal offences, which Mr. S. justly applies to every individual, the child could not be imphcated; but these were the consequences of a corrupted nature, of which he equally partook, and which was only to be pu- rified through Him who was to redeem, to regenerate, and to restore. We beseech Mr. Sullivan, therefore, to consider, that with this rust and refuse he is sweeping away all the dodrines of Christianity. That the whole of them de- pend upon man's lost and helpless condition, and look to his recovery and pardon. But upon his own assumption, also, and according to his own measure of faith, what defence of revelation (and he professes to undertake it) has he left? He may, and indeed docs, stand up as an advocate for the necessity and dignity of religion; but then he is only an advocate for his own religious system, and which the doubts and cavils of others may claim a right to cleanse of many of its corruptions, till at last the book, which the pilgrim, just escaped from atheism, saw with joy in the hands of rational Christianity, because appa- "rcntlv so like his own, shall appear with b:df its leaves [ 206 ] cut out as useless, and with so many words erased in the others, as to render the residue no longer intelligible.* The whole of scripture is true, or none. And the tem- porising soldier, who concedes anv part of the Christian territory, only gives a footing to infidelity, which will soon rob him of the rest.f PAGE Ai, LINE g. We should have found the inspired author of the Pentateuch to be the most faithful historian, the zvisest of legislators, and the soundest philosopher. We have been so accustomed to read the history of nations in the recorded annals of Greece and Rome; we are taught to hvmible ourselves with such devotion before this intelle6lual period of the world, and to gather from their exhaustless stores all our hoards of literature and science; that \vc scarcely deign to cast a look upon remo- ter ages, or to busy ourselves with any enquiry farther than the progress of their civilization, and the boundaries of their conquests lead us. * Lest the reader should be at a loss to comprehend this allusion, we refer him with pleasure to a most beautiful and interesting pul)li- cation, which has just appeared under the tide of the " New Pil- grim's Progress." In pages 48, 49, &c. the objeftions to and doubts about scripture are treated with the most amusing irony. t Vide Sullivan's " View of Nature," vol. v. letter 8i. [ 207 ] But though we may dwell with pleasure, and with pro- fit, on these historical details; though the pages of He- rodotus and Livy, of Thucydides and Tacitus, may furnish interesting memorials of a people whose fame then filled the world; yet be it remembered, that they present us with nothing but profane errors and human passions; that they have no other foundation but a human, and con- sequently a fallible, authority; and however profound in their researches, or solid in their reasonings, that they arc standing only on a little spot of the imiverse, and bidding us admire its temporary fertility and cultivation. Not so the faithful Historian of God; plain and simple in his narrative, he embraces in it the whole system of the universe, he gives us the origin and progress of a kino-dom that never was to be destroyed, but which was to support itself through all the changes and vicissitudes of states and empires. Without staying to remark on the events, or entering into any reasonings or discussions on the fads he relates, he carries us through a period of upwards of two thousand years, every where creating an interest proportioned to the glorious work he had to re- veal, and every where exhibiting proofs of such revelation bv miraculous interpositions of Providence, that signalized and confirmed his authority, and by a prophetic spirit ihat divinity only could bestow. " To him we owe the " knowledge of the beginning of the world, the forming *' and the fall of man, the promise of the Messiah, the '' deluge, the renewed propagation of mankind; the in- [ 208 ] '' ventors* of arts, the original of nations, the founders '^ of kingdoms and empires, the institution of laws, the *' fountain of religious rites, yea, of all the ancient my- '^ thology, and, which is most considerable, the means of *' propagating that sense of God and of religion which '' mankind brought into the world with them, and how '^ it came to be corrupted." Well then may that historian be called faithful, \\ ho, supplying a light w here otherwise all the world had been in darkness, gives an explanation to allegory, a consistency to fitSlion, an epoch to every kingdom, and a genealogy to the whole earth. Whose testimony now remaining, dete6ls the errors of chronology, repairs the ruins of time, and amidst the wanderings of man, the variety of his language, the corruptions of his belief, the obscurity of his origin, and the uncertainty of his destination, supplies a clue to lead him back to the source of his errors, and to the very place at which he abandoned the path of truth, and the guidance of his Almighty Creator. We are not without abundance of evidence to corrobo- rate these assertions; and how the customs, manners, laws, and religious ceremonies of every people may be traced to the Mosaic history and institutions, has employed the pens, and encouraged the Investigation, of many great and learned men.f * PrcEicc to Bishop Patrick's Commentary. t I would specifically mention Eusebii Prseparatio Evangelica passim; Huetii Demonstiatio Evangelica, propositio iv. from tlic 4th to the izth chapter; Bocharti Geographia. [ 209 ] But to the wonder of our age, and to the honour of our countr}', may it now be said, that Quicquid Grsecia niciidax Audet in Ilistoria, has been brought before the tribunal of truth, stripped of every meretricious ornament, and her Pagan frippery been exposed to the view of her dekided admirers. It has been the distinguishing glory of a Bryant (and I now quote the words of one who once knew how to feel, and no one better to express his feelings, for the dignity of literature) to pave the way to a more liberal and expanded instruc- tion in our public seminaries for letters and languages; to have opened the springs of the ancient anti-christ, to have displayed his two great and capital horns, his two fountain heads — Pomp and Will IVorship, in the idola- trous veneration of fire and water, of the elements in their fallen and divided state; to have annihilated fable, and expunged it wholly from the early periods and epochs of the Grecian story, fixing the gates of that story there in a manner, where the great Greek historian has fixed them himself. His oracular mysteries, his deluge memorials, his arkite processions, rites and services; his ogdoad, his ages, his Egyptian dynasties; his line drawn accurately, and insurmountably, between the first general migration and settlement of the nations, and the dispersion and confusion which took place afterwards, ^n a single, sepa- rate, revolted, and rebellious tribe ; in consequence p [ 210 j thereof, his Cuthite colonies, his wonderful investigation of their travels and voyages; his most ingenious evolution and explication of the wanderings of lo in a chorus of Eschylus, by him prosecuted in the flights and expeditions of families J his unravelling the wide web of mytholo- gical fi6lion, and unfolding it even to the bare slender threads of simple antiquity; his innumerable illustra- tions of the pwst admired Greek authors, making them to become, wha,t they never yet were, intelligible to them- selves and to us; — these, and infinite other, his learned discoveries, in exadl conformity with scripture, and in harmony at the time with the best sense and reason, without sophistication and without refinement, and strengthened, supported, and enriched in all parts with such pregnancy of proof, with so luxuriant a testimony ; these, 1 say, in their aggregate and full comprehension, are so new, so strange, so vast, so instrudlive, that, for my part, I cannot but think there was a providence of God superintending his labours, and a light from God thrown on his meditations.* — To a testimony so full and explicit I should have only to add my unfeigned admira- tion and gratitude, for the many hours of delight and improvement passed over Mr. Bryant's instructive pages ; but I would silence every captious objeftion to his stu- * Preface to an Essay on the Revelations, by the Rev. William Cooke, formerly fellow of King's College, and Greek Professor in he University of Cambridge. [ 211 ] pendous work, by the comment of another writer, no less celebrated than himself in the annals of science, and whose memory will be for ever cherished, like his, by all the friends of Christianity. With a no less inquisitive than candid mind, Sir William Jones stands upon the very- ground that Mr. Bryant had discovered; and from the various forms of Indian idolatry, from the deities, rites, and tenets of the earliest settlers upon the earth, he brings the recital of faifts to corroborate, in many instances, the deduftions of etymolog}% He supports the fabric of Christianity upon the same pillars which Mr. Bryant had reared; he investigates the corruptions of original revela- tion; traces them through all their impure streams from the fountain head ; has brought the antiquity of those very writings, which modern infidelity had opposed to the Mosaic history, to corroborate and substantiate all its as- sertions; has reduced their incomprehensible chronology to the scriptural periods of time, and confined their ex- tended geography within the compass of the eastern he- misphere. In a word, he has enlightened our path through the mazes of the Pagan mylholog)^, and shortened our way to those proofs which, however they might be de- duced or illustrated from the fabulous records of Greece, might either be disputed from the scantiness of materials or the obscurity of the documents. If, therefore, we may think with the admirer of Mr. Bryant, whom we have just quoted, that there was a providence of God super- mtending his labours, surely we must also believe, that it [ 212 ] continued to be a guide in these researches; and when, after a course of the most laborious and minute investiga- tion, we find it asserted by such a man, that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are true, or the whole fabric of our national religion is false, upon what ground will infidelity hold an argument? since what it might reject as matter of faith, is now submitted to rational determina- tion; and they have no longer the easy task of ridiculing the revelations of Moses, but the difficult one of setting aside the discoveries of Sir WiUiam Jones.* * It is almost needless to refer the reader to the Analysis of Anci- ent Mythology, by Mr. Bryant, and to the Asiatic Researches, un- der the direftion of Sir W. Jones. In the latter, I would particularly recommend to his perusal the Dissertation on the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India; and the President's tliird Annual Discourse on the Hindus, vol. i. odavo edition, p. %%i and 415. The three dis- courses of the President, vol. ii. on the Arabs, the Tartars, and the Persians; on the Descent of the Afghans from the Jews, p. 67; on the Ind'an Zodiac, p. 2S9 ; on the Astronomy of the Hindus, p. 225. In vol. iii. the 8th and 9th Discourses of the President, more especi- ally the latter, on the Origin and Families of Nations, p. 479; on the Indian Cycle of sixty years, p. 209; and the Lunar Year of the Hindus, p. 257. In vol. iv. (though we can no longer quote the re- cords of the Society as under the inspedion of their late illustrious head, yet we can quote thera as animated by the same soul and spirit of enquiry) the Discourse on the Philosophy of the Asiatics, p. i6j ; Dissertation on Semiramis, p. 376; Account of the Cave in the Island of Elephanta — contain much curious matter. In the 5th volume (we think tlie preface to it, in form of advertisement, had better been omitted, as suggesting doubts without leading to any dircv5t conclu- sion) die Dissertations on the Chronology of the Hindus, p. 241 ; on ih^ Names of the Cabirian Deities, &c. p. 297 ; and on the religious [ 213 ] Though I have dwelt so long upon this subjeft, I should feel unpardonable in passing by the Indian Anti- quities of Mr. Maurice, a compilation that entitles him to the thanks of the Christian world, and which ought to be even more abundant for his late History of liindoostan — a work that carries with it its own reward, as defending, and nobly defending, that cause which, under every worldly disappointment, will bring peace and consolation to its supporters. I have not the pleasure of knowing him, but he will have the goodness to accept this acknow- ledgment of my obligations to him, and my warmest wishes for his welfare. No language, no assertion no documents, could establish stronger proofs of the corrup- tion of the grand primosval tradition, than the two extra- ordinary prints of Creeshna, which Mr. Maurice has given in the last part of his history; and once more we will speak of this work, as replete with the most useful and interesting information.* We now come to consider Moses as a philosopher ^ and as a philosopher taught of Gob. Rolling on with its ceremonies of the Hindus, and of the Brahmins especially — are ex- tremely interesting and curious. In short, widi their litde shades of difference, we consider the pi<5ture of nations, exhibited by these two great and learned men, as preserving those uniform features of religion •\vhich the Almighty stumped upon his work, and in which the deformity of idolatry only serves to set forth the beauties of the original. • Vide Ancient History of Hindoostan, by the Rev. T. Maurice. [ 214 ] train of uniform effects, his system of the world still con- tinues to diffiise life, and health, and comfort to man; who, instead of looking to the book* of God's word, has been employed in hunting for truth and science in the operations of nature, and at last brought back nothing but error, conceit, and ignorance. The fabulous theories of the universe, which have thus been raised, and for a time believed, with all the rubbish that filled the schools, and disgraced the name of philosophy, have long since been consigned to oblivion by the sagacious discoveries of Sir I. Newton. Of this great man I speak with the utmost veneration; I speak of him as of one who has pro- duced a work which will always stand first in its kind, which the capacity of man ever did, or ever will produce; as of one, who, in a material point of view, might say with piore justice than his ancient predecessor — ^Aor vS i\u xxt T«v r>)y nivnait;. But when he carries me beyond the limits of this visi- ble world; when his gigantic powers of genius proje6ls the planets into boundless space, and then impels and * It may be worthy of remark, and certainly comes in indireft proof of the inspiration of Moses, that although learned, as he is re- presented to be, /'// all the 'wisdom of the Egyptians, who were fami- liar with the motions of the heavenly bodies, and well versed in the calculations of astronomy, he makes no scientific remark, which he naturally would have done, had he invented the history of the crea- tion, but simply relates, that God made the light, tliat he divided it from the darkness, that he made the sun to rule the day, and the moon to rule the night. [ 215 ] arrests their course; when, from their periodical revo- lutions, he not only measures, estimates, and computes the diflerent distances, magnitudes, and motions of the heavenly bodies, but prescribes to them their motive force, and sustains them in their orbits j when, having freed them from every obstruvSiion to their rotatory im- pulse, he approaches their central sun, and from thence darting forth a light to illuminate their hemisphere, he calculates the velocity of its luminous raysj I must con* fess I pause, whilst I wonder — I am not reading the book of revelation, and for that alone have I an implicit faith. It becomes a question, whether in some cases his cal- culations be not imaginary; whether he be not a com- puter of proportions which do not exist, and of forces, of which the positive existence, as well as agency, remains to be proved. I feel myself as unwilling, as I am unable, to set myself in opposition to opinions so long cherished and so ably supported; but the basis of many of them is surely hypothetical, and the only truth that I lay up in my mind as such, is a truth that can never be shaken. I know with what bitterness every occasional opposition to any part of the Newtonian Philosophy has been treated, and it might be safer and more prudent, as far as this world is concerned, to treat Moses with contempt, than to entertain the smallest doubt about the exemplified phaenomena of Sir I. Newton. In the former case, one might be thought singular — in the latter, one must be ignorant. But till they are reconciled; till scripture and [ 216 ] nature be made to agree, the error must be in the demon- stration of the cause, since the efteft remains invariably the same. If the discoveries of Sir I. Newton had re- mained unknown, the planetary system would have moved on in its appointed course, and without our knowledge of attraftion or gravitation, would equally have fulfilled all the purposes of its destination. Besides, also, time makes great discoveries; though to the end of it, man will be left in ig- norance of many things. Had Sir I. Newton lived to wit- ness the surprising properties of eledlricity — had he seen a powerful agent, afting according to vo known laws of gravity, proje