-¦*»*

•^~-

o&e^<x-t^i> Xy

NINE SERMONS,

NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE

BY WHICH THE

dfact of our ILor&'s JSUsurrMtiott te tftaftligftttt;

ON VARIOUS OTHER SUBJECTS.

TO WHICH IS PREFIXED
A DISSERTATION
ON THE PROPHECIES OF THE MESSIAH DISPERSED AMONG THE
HEATHEN.

BY SAMUEL HORSLEY, L.L.D. F.R.S. F.A.S.
LATE LORD BISHOP OF ST. ASAPH.

LONDON :
PRINTED POR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, OIIME, AND BROWN,
PATERNOSTER-ROW ;
AND F. Kl. AND J. RIVING TON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD.
1815.

T. DAVISON, Lombard-itre*l,
Wliitefriars, London.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The Dissertation which stands
first in the following pages was
evidently written in connexion
with $he three Discourses on the
Faith of the Samaritans, published
in the second volume of Bishop
Horsley's Sermons ; and appears
by the form of compellation to
have been, like them, originally
delivered from the Pulpit.
It came into the Editor's hands
in loose and unconnected sheets,
and these were not arranged and

VI

examined by him till long after
the publication of the two first
volumes of Sermons. After? he
had examined them, he found
them to contain an unfinished
Essay, which evidently had never
been prepared by the Author for
the press. He therefore laid it
aside. But having shewn it,
during his stay in London in the
month of May last, to some lite
rary friends, he was strongly ad
vised to publish it; for thqugh
confessedly an incomplete work,
yet it was deemed worthy of
publication, as displaying the
Bishop's thoughts on an impor*
tant subject, s

VH

->1 In this opinion he anxiously
hopes the literary world in gene
ral may be disposed to agree. But
if not, let it be remembered, that
the blame of publication (if there
be any) rests with the Editor not
the Author ;t for it is again re^-
peated, that the Manuscript was
not left in that state in which the
latter, had he been living, would
have published it : Indeed a note
found in one of the pages of the
Manuscript expressly states, that
it was the Author s intention to
have revised it.
To the Dissertation the Editor
has aqjded nine hitherto unpub-
it-
lished Sermons, collected and ar-

VUL

ranged from scattered and muti
lated Manuscripts ; but which,
in his opinion, now that they are
arranged, display the same vigour
of thought, arid the same masterly
powers of expounding Scripture,
as characterize his Father's other
Theological Works.
Dundee, January 21. 181$.

CONTENTS.

A Dissertation on the Prophecies of the
Messiah dispersed among the Heathen, Page 1
Four Discourses on the nature of the Evi
dence by which the fact of our Lord's Resur
rection is established, DISCOURSE I.
Acts, x. 40,41. — " Him God raisedup the third
" day, and shewed him openly ; not to all the
"people, but to zvitnesses chosen before of God." 121
DISCOURSE II.

Acts, x. 40,41.-—" Him r 3 raised up the third.
" day, and shewed him openly ; not to all the
" people, but to witnesses chosen before of God." 146

DISCOURSE III.
Acts, x. 40, 41.— " Him God raised up the third
" day, and shewed him openly ; not to all the
" people, but 'to witnesses., chosen before of
« God." - - - Page 169
DISCOURSE IV.
Acts, x. 40, 41. — " Him God raised up the third
" day, and shewed him openly; not to. all the
" people, but to witnesses chosen before of' God." 193

FIVE SERMONS.
SERMON I.
Psalms, xcvii. 7. — " Worship him all ye gods." 223
SERMON II.
Romans, iv. 25. — " Who was delivered for our
"offences, and was raised again for our justi-
"fication." - - . - 249

XI

SERMON III.
Matthew, xx. 23. — " To sit on my right hand
" and my left is not mine to give, but it shall be
" given to them for whom it is prepared of my
" Father." - - • Page 281
- SERMON IV.
Ephesians, iv. 30. — " And grieve not the holy
" spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the
" day of redemption." - - 302
SERMON V.
Ephesians, iv. 30. — " And grieve not the holy
'* spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the
" day of redemption." - - 328

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

DISSERTATION, &c.

The expectation of an extraordinary per
son who should arise in Judea, and be the
instrument of great improvements in the
manners and condition of mankind, was
almost if not altogether universal at the
time of our Saviour's birth ; and had been
gradually spreading and getting strength
for some time before it. The fact is so
notorious lo all who have any knowledge
of antiquity, that it is needless to attempt
any proof of it. It may be assumed as a

4
principle, which even an infidel of candour
would be ashamed to deny ; or if any one
would deny it, I would decline all dispute
with such an adversary as too ignorant to
receive conviction, or too disingenuous to
acknowledge what he must secretly admit.
If we inquire what were the general
grounds of the expectation which so gene
rally prevailed, the answer to the question
is exceedingly obvious : That the ground
of this expectation was probably some
traditional obscure remembrance of the
original promises. But the great point is,
to discover by what means this remem
brance was perpetuated in the later and
darker ages of idolatry, when the name of
Jehovah was forgotten, and his Avorship
neglected, except in one nation in which
the knowledge and worship of the invisible
Creator was miraculously preserved.

Now my conjecture is, that this was
effected by a collection of very early pro
phecies, which were committed to writing
in a very early age, and were actually ex
isting in many parts of the world, though
little known till the extirpation of Pagan
ism, by the propagation of the Gospel. I
am well aware how extravagant such an
opinion may appear in this incredulous
age. But I stand not in the judgment of
infidels, I speak to a Christian audience.
They will judge of the probability of my
assertion, when I have stated the grounds
on which I build it.
For the more perspicuous arrangement
of my argument I shall divide it into two
parts. —
First I shall prove the fact from histori-r
cal evidence, that the Gentile world in the
darkest ages was in possession, not of
vague and traditional, but of explicit writ?

6
ten prophecies of Christ. When I have
established the fact, and by that means
shewn the immediate cause of the expec
tation which so generally prevailed, I shall
then produce the more remote and higher
cause, and prove that these written prophe
cies were the remains of divine oracles of
the earliest ages.
First, For the fact that the Gentile world
in the darkest ages was possessed of ex^
plicit written prophecies of Christ, I shall
found the proof of it on the contents of a
very extraordinary book, which was pre
served at Rome under the name of the
oracles of the Cumsean Sibyl, which was
held in such veneration that it was deposit
ed in a stone chest in the temple of Jupiter
in the capitol, and committed to the care
of two persons expressly appointed to that
office. For the contents of this book I
shall make no appeal to the quotations of

the ancient fathers. I am well persuaded
that many of them were deceived,* and
that the verses which they produce as pro
phecies of Christ found in the Sibylline
books, and which contain rather a minute
detail of the miraculous circumstances of
our Saviour's life than general predictions
of his advent and his office, were scanda
lous forgeries. And God forbid that I
should endeavour to restore the credit of
an imposture that hath been long since
exploded. At the same time I must ob
serve, that though this censure be just as
applied to the later fathers, yet the tes-

* It is remarkable, however, that Celsus charged the Chris*
tians of his time with interpolating the Sibylline books.
Origen challenges him to support the accusation by specific
instances of the fraud, and insinuates that the most ancient
copies of those books had the passages which Celsus esteem
ed insertions of the Christiaos. Contra Celsum, p. 368,
369. E.

8
timony of the earlier, of Justin Martyr in
particular, and of Clemens Alexandrinus,
seems deserving of more credit : Not so
much for the great learning and piety of
those venerable writers, for with all this
they were very capable of giving too easy
credit to what might seem to serve their
cause ; but because they lived before the
age of pious frauds, as they were called^
commenced, and while the Sibylline books
were extant ; so that they might easily
have been confuted by the heathens,
had they alleged as quotations from those
books forged predictions which appeared
not in the authentic copies. Of their evi
dence however I shall not avail myself;
for I would build my assertion on none
but the most solid ground. I shall there
fore take my idea of the contents of these
books entirely from the testimony of hea
then writers. At least I shall make no

9
use of any assertion even of the earliest
fathers ; much less shall I credit any of the
quotations of the later, except so far as I
find them supported by the most unques
tionable heathen evidence.
Among heathen writers, I believe, it
would be in vain to seek for any quotations
of particular passages from the Sibylline
oracles. They never made any. For, to
produce the words of the Sibylline text,
would have been dangerous violation of a
law, by which the publication of any part
of these writings was made a capital of
fence- We have however such represen
tations of the general argument of the
book, and of the general purport of parti
cular prophecies, as afford a strong pre
sumption in favour of the opinion we have
advanced, that it was composed of adul
terated fragments of the patriarchal pro
phecies and records, and that put it out

10
of doubt, that of much of the prophetic
part the Messiah was the specific subject.
From the general argument of the book
as it is represented by heathen writers, it
is very evident that it could be no forgery
of heathen priestcraft ; for this reason, that
it was exceedingly unfavourable to that
system of idolatrous superstition, which it
was the great concern and interest of the
heathen priesthood to propagate and sup
port ; and this was probably the true rea
son that the Roman Senate committed the
book to the custody of two of the Augural
College, and kept it from the inspection
of the vulgar by the severest laws. Now
this extraordinary fact, that it was little
for the interests of idolatry that the con
tents of the Cumsean oracles should be di
vulged, we learn from a dispute which was
keenly agitated at Rome, between the
friends of Julius Caesar and the leader of

11
the republican party ; in the course of
which a member of the Augural College
in the heat of argument let the secret out.
Julius Csesar, you know, attained the
height of his power within a few years be
fore our Saviour's birth : little was wanting
to his greatness but the title of a king of
which he was ambitious. The difficulty
was to bring the Senate to confer it ; for*
without their sanction it was unsafe to as
sume it. One of his adherents thought of
an expedient not unlikely to succeed. He
produced a prophecy from the Cumaean
Sibyl of a king who was to arise at this
time, whose monarchy was to be univer
sal, and whose government would be ne
cessary and essential to the happiness of the
world. The artful statesman knew, that if
he could once create a general persuasion
upon the credit of this prophecy, that uni
versal monarchy was to be established, and

12
that the state of the world required it, the
difficulty would not be great to prove,
that Caesar was the person of his times
best qualified to wield the sceptre.
The republican party took the alarm.
TuUy was at that time its chief support,
and his great abilities were called forth to
oppose this stratagem of the dictator's fac
tion. In his opposition to it he brings no
charge of falsification against those who
alleged this prophecy. He denies not that
a prophecy to this effect was actually con
tained in the Sibylline books, to which as
a member of the Augural College he had
free access, and when he allowed the ex
istence of the prophecy, he was a better
politician than to make the application of
it to Caesar the point of controversy, and
to risk the success of his opposition to the
schemes of Caesar's party upon the preca7
rious success of that particular question,

13
Confessing the prophecy he knew it was
impolitic to attempt to apply it to any but
a Roman, and applying it to a Roman it
had been difficult to draw it away from
Caesar. He therefore takes another ground.
— Having granted that the prophecy was
fairly alleged by the opposite party from
the Sibylline books, he attempts to over
throw the credit of the prophecy by a
general attack on the credit of the books
in which it was found. He affirms that
these Sibylline oracles were no prophecies.
His argument is, that in the writings of
the Sibyl no marks are to be found of
phrenzy or disorder, which the heathens
conceived to be the necessary state of
every prophet's mind while he prophesied,
because the prophets of their oracular tem
ples affected it. But these books, he says,
carried such evident marks of art and
study, particularly in the regular structure

14
of the verse, as proved that it was the work
of a writer who had the natural use and
possession of his faculties. This state
ment of Tully's may be correct, but his
conclusion is erroneous, at least it must
appear so to us who take our notions of
prophetic style from the specimens which
the Bible furnishes : for the true prophets
were never impeded or disturbed in the na
tural use and possession of their faculties by
the divine impulse. Their faculties were
not disturbed, but exalted and invigorated ;
and in the most animated of the sacred
prophecies we find, beside what might
be the natural character of the prophetic
style, force, elevation, and sudden transi
tion, — we find beside, an exquisite art of
composition, and a wonderful regularity of
versification. However, the Roman critic
having proved, as he imagined from this
circumstance, that these Sibylline oracles

J5
were no prophecies, concludes his whole
argument with this edifying remark : " Let
us then, sa}rs he, adhere to the prudent
practice of our ancestors ; let us keep the
Sibyl in religious privacy ; these writings
are indeed rather calculated to extinguish
than to propagate superstition." This tes
timony is above all exception. Tully, as
an augur, had free access to the book in
question. It cannot be doubted that he
would improve his opportunities ; for he
was a man of an exquisite taste, of much
learned curiosity ; and, with these endow
ments, of a very religious turn of mind.
It is certain therefore that he speaks
upon the best information ; and he is the
more to be credited, as this frank confes
sion fell from him in the heat of a political
debate in which he took an interested
part. And from this testimony we may
conclude, that the ancient fathers, what-

16
ever judgment is to be passed upon their
pretended quotations from the Sibylline
books, were not mistaken in the general
assertion, that the worship of the one true
God, the doctrine of the immortality of the
soul, and of a future retribution, Avere in
culcated in these writings ; which it seems,
in Tully 's judgment, (and a competent
judge he Avas,) were proper weapons to
combat idolatry : and by what weapons
may error be more successfully combated
than by the truth ?
If the Sibylline oracles in their general
tenor were unfriendly to the interests of
idolatry, it is the less to be wondered, that
they should contain predictions of its final
extirpation : Of this I shall now produce
the evidence ; still relying, not upon par
ticular quotations, but upon the general
allusions of the heathen AATiters.

17
Virgil the celebrated Roman poet flou
rished in the court of Augustus no long
time before our Saviour's birth, when the
general expectation of a person to appear
who should abolish both physical and
moral evil was at the highest.
Among his works still extant is a con
gratulatory poem addressed to a noble
Roman, the poet's friend, who bore the
high office of consul at the time when it
was written. The obcasion seems to have
been the birth of some child, in Avhose for
tunes Pollio the poet's friend Avas nearly
interested. The compliment to Pollio is
double, being partly drawn from a flatter
ing prediction of the infant's future great
ness, (for it is affirmed, that he will proAre
nothing less than the expected deliverer,)
and partly from this circumstance, that the
year of Pollio's consulate should be distin
guished by the birth of such a child. Who
le

18
ever should read this poem Avithout a know
ledge of the history of the times Avould con
clude, that it was a compliment to Pollio
upon the birth of his own son.
But it is a very extraordinary, but a
very certain fact, that the consul had no
son born in the year of his consulate, or
within any short time before or after it.
Nor will the history of these times furnish
us with any child born within a moderate
distance of Pollio's year of office, which,
by its rank and connexion with his family,
might seem of sufficient importance to be
the subject of this congratulation, even
Avhen all possible allowance has been made
for a poet's exaggeration and a courtier's
flattery. But what is most worthy of re
mark, and the most for my present pur
pose, is the description which the heathen
poet gives of the extraordinary person that
he expected ; of his origin, his achieve-

19
ments, and the good consequences of his
appearance ; which is such, that if any il
literate person who Avas to hear this poem
read in an exact translation, Avith the omis
sion only of the names of heathen deities,
and of allusion to profane mythology,
which occur in a few passages, — any illite
rate person who was to hear the poem read
Avith these omissions, which would not at
all affect the general sense of it, if he had
not been told before that it Avas the com
position of an heathen author, Avould with
out hesitation pronounce it to be a pro
phecy of the Messiah, or a poem at least
upon that subject written in express imi
tation of the style of the Jewish prophets.
The resemblance between the images of
this poem and those in Avhich the inspired
prophets describe the times of the Messiah,
has ever been remarked with surprise by
the learned, as indeed it is much too

20
striking to escape notice; and many at
tempts have been made to account for it.
It has been imagined, that the poet had
actually borrowed his images from the
prophets. The books of the Old Testa
ment having been translated into the Greek
language long before the days of Virgil, it
has been supposed, that he might have be
come conversant Avith the sacred writings
in the Greek translation.
But I see no reason to believe that these.
books were ever in any credit among the
Romans, or that the contents of them
were known at all, except to some few
who were proselytes to the Jewish religion.
It has been supposed, that Herod's visit
at the court of Augustus might be the
means 'of making the Roman poet ac
quainted with the Hebrew bards. Herod
indeed Avas some months at Rome, but
there is little probability that the king, or

21
any of his train, had leisure to be the poet's
tutor in Hebrew learning. It is very
strange that in so many attempts to ac
count for the extraordinary fact under
consideration, more attention should not
have been paid to the account which the
poet himself has given of it. He refers to
the oracles of the Cumaean Sibyl as the
source from which he drew these predic
tions. And in this lay the Avhole force of
his compliment to Pollio, — That the child
'whose future greatness was the object of
Pollio's ambition, would prove to be that
personage whom the Cumaan Sibyl had an
nounced as a" deliverer of the world from
physical and moral evil: For that is the
sum and substance of the character ac
cording to the poet's description. Here,
then, we have the clear testimony of this
heathen poet, that the oracles of the Sibyl
contained a prophecy, not accomplished

22
Arhen he wrote this congratulatory poem
to his friend, but likely to be accomplished;
in the rising generation, of the appearance
of a very extraordinary person. We know
that the Jewish prophets marked the same
time for the season of the Messiah's ad
vent. From the strain of the poet's com
pliments we gather the particulars of the
Sibylline prophecy in regard to the cha
racter Avhich it ascribes to the person
whose appearance it announced ; we find
that this character perfectly agrees with
that of the Messiah as it is drawn by the
Jewish prophets ; the difference being only
this, that the JeAvish prophecies are more
circumstantial than the Sibylline.
The sum of the character is the same in
both ; in its nature unequivocal, and such
as even in the general outline could not
possibly belong to different. persons in the
same age.

23
The object of the Sibylline oracle, a$
well as the Messiah of the Jews, was
A
to be of heavenly extraction,— the high
offspring of the gods, the great seed of
Jupiter. He was to strike an universal
peace, and to command the whole world ;
and in this universal government he Avas
to exercise his father's virtues. He Avas
to abolish all violence and injustice, to re
store the life of man to its original simpli
city and innocence, and the condition of
man to. its original happiness. He was
to abolish the causes of violent death ; and
all death, considered as a curse, is violent.
-He was to kill the serpent, and purge the
vegetable kingdom of its poisons. The
blessings of his reign were to reach even
to the brute creation ; for the beasts of
the forest were to lose their savage nature,
that the ox might graze in security within
sight of the lion.

24

It is evident, therefore, that the Jewish
prophecies and the Sibylline oracles an
nounce the same person, and of conse
quence, that the Sibylline oracles contained
a prediction of the Messiah. Nor is it to
be Avondered, that the images of sacred
prophecy should abound in this treasure
of the heathen temples if it was composed
of adulterated fragments of true prophecies.
The thing seems inexplicable upon any
other supposition.
Thus it appears, that the Romans at
least, in the ages of their worst idolatry,
were in possession of a book which they
held, though they knew not why, in reli
gious veneration, containing explicit pro
phecies of Christ. An extraordinary acci
dent recorded in history furnishes an in
contestable proof that the same prophecies
were extant in a very late age, in various
parts of the world.

25
About a century before our Saviour's
birth the book of the Cumaean Sibyl was
destroyed by a fire which broke out in the
Capitol, and consumed the temple where
those Avritings Avere deposited. The Ro
man Senate thought it of so much impor
tance to repair the loss, that they sent per
sons to make a new collection of the Sibyl
line oracles in different parts of Asia, in
the islands of the Archipelago, in Africa,
and in Sicily ; for in all these parts copies,
or at least fragments, of these prophecies
were supposed to be preserved. The de
puties after some time returned Avith a
thousand verses, more or less, collected in
different places, from which the most
learned men at Rome were employed to
select what they judged the most authentic ;
and this collection was deposited to supply
the loss of the original.

26
I have now established my fact, that
from the first ages of profane history to
the very time of our Saviour's birth ex
plicit predictions of him were extant in the
Gentile world, in books Avhich were ever
holden in religious veneration, and which
were deposited in their temples. The
matter of these prophecies, and the agree
ment of the imagery of their language with
what we find in the prophecies of holyJ
Avrit, is I think a sufficient argument of
their divine original. Observe, I affirm
not in general of the Sibylline books that
they were divine, much less do I affirm
that the Sibyls were Avomen who had the
gift of prophecy. I believe that they Avere
fabulous personages, to whom the ignorant
heathens ascribed the most ancient of
then* sacred books, when the true origin of
them Avas forgotten. But the existence of
these imaginary prophetesses, and the

27
authority of the writings ascribed to them,
are distinct questions. Whether these
books contained prophecies of Christ is a
question of fact in which the affirmative is
supported by the highest historical evi
dence. That these prophecies, wherever
they might be found, could be of no other
than divine original, the matter and the
style of them is in my judgment an irre
fragable argument ; Avhen and where these
prophecies were originally delivered, to
whom they were addressed, and hoAV they
came to make a part of the treasure of the
heathen temples, are questions which re
main to be considered.
That they Avere drawn from the Jewish
prophecies is improbable; for the books
of the Cumaean Sibyl fell into the hands
of the Romans, if Ave may credit their his
torians, in a very early age, when they
were an obscure inconsiderable people,

28
without any connexions in the East, and
long before any part of the Old Testament
Avas extant in the Greek language. And
yet after the first settlement of the Jews in
Canaan, I am persuaded that true pro
phets were nowhere to be found but in the
Jewish church. These prophecies thenr
that were current in the Gentile world in
later ages, since they were neither for
geries of the heathen priests, nor founded'
on the Jewish prophecies, must have been
derived from prophecies more ancient than
the Jewish. They were fragments (mutilat-*
ed perhaps and otherwise corrupted), but
they were fragments of the most ancient
prophecies of the patriarchal ages. By
what means fragments of the prophecies
of the patriarchal ages might be preserved
among idolatrous nations is the difficulty
to be explained.

29
To clear this question it will be neces
sary to consider, Avhat was the actual state
of revealed religion in the interval between
the first appearance of idolatry in the
world and the institution of the Jewish
church by Moses.
I shall show you, that though the be
ginning of idolatry through man's dege
neracy was earlier than might have been
expected, its progress through God's gra
cious interposition Avas slower than is
generally believed : That for some ages
after it began the world at large enjoyed
the light of revelation in a very consider
able degree : That, while the corruption
Avas gradually rising to its height, Provi
dence Avas taking measures for the general
restoration at the appointed season : That
the gift of prophecy was vouchsafed long
before the institution of the Mosaic church :
That letters being in use in the East long

-30
before that epoch, the ancient prophecies
Avere committed to writing ; and that, by
the mysterious operation of that Provi
dence which directs all temporary -and
partial evil to everlasting and universal
good, the blind superstition of idolaters
was itself made the means of preserving
these writings, not pure, but in a state that
might serve the purpose of preparing the
Gentiles for the advent of our Lord, and
maintaining a religious veneration for
them. I am then to consider what was the
actual stat^, of revealed religion, betAveen
the first appearance of idolatry in the
world and the institution of the Mosaic
church by Moses.
Firtf, It is obvious that the Avorship of
Jehovah was originally universal, Avithout
any mixture of idolatry among the sons of
Adam for some time after the creation ;

31
and that it became universal again among
the descendants of Noah for some ages
after the flood. It is obvious, that so long
as this Avas universal the promises Avould
be universally remembered ; both the ge
neral promises of man's redemption, and
the particular promises of blessings to cer
tain families ; and Avhen the defection to
idolatry began, these particular promises
would be the means of retarding its pro
gress, and of preserving the worship of the
true God in the descendants of those to
whom these promises were made, for some
ages at least after the revolt of the rest of
mankind. And, on the other hand, Avherever the
true worship kept its ground the promises
could not sink into oblivion.
Thus I conceive the promises to Abra
ham would for some time be remembered,
not only in Isaac's family, and in the

32
twelve tribes of Arabians descending from
Ishmael, but among the nations that arose
from his sons by his second Avife, Keturah ;
and these, if I mistake not, peopled the
whole country that lay between the Ara
bian and the Persian Gulf, and occupied
considerable tracts in Africa, and in the
upper part of Asia near the Caspian Sea ;
and the memory of these promises, in all
these nations, would for several ages keep
the true religion in some degree alive. So
the earlier promises to Shem contained in
Noah's prophetic benediction, Avould be
for some time remembered among his pos
terity ; and accordingly we find from an
cient history, that the Persians, the Assy
rians, and the people of Mesopotamia, the
offspring of Shem, through his sons Elam,
Ashur, and Aram, were among the last na
tions that fell into any gross idolatry.

33
Now if we are right in these principles,
(and I think they are principles in which
it is impossible to be greatly in the wrong,
for the memory which I suppose of bless
ings promised to the head of a family, with
which some degree of veneration for the
Deity from whom they came and by whose
providence they were to be accomplished^
that is, some degree of the true religion,
would be inseparably connected ; — the me
mory I say of such blessings seems but
a necessary effect of that complacency
which men naturally feel in the notion that
they have a claim, or that they stand with
in a probable expectation of a claim to
hereditary honour and distinctions) ; but if
Ave are right in the supposition of some
long remembrance of the promises, and a
preservation of the true religion among the
descendants of the Patriarchs to whom
the promises Avere given, the first defection

34
from the worship of the true God could
not be universal, it could only be partial.
And the effect of a partial defection would
be, that all the nations whose loyalty to the
Sovereign Lord remained unshaken, would
take measures to resist the corruption and
maintain among themselves the true Avor-
ship of the true God.
Something of this kind seems to have
happened early in the antedihrvian world.
" In the days of Enos men began to call
" themselves by the name of Jehovah." At
this time pious men took alarm at the be
ginning of idolatry in the reprobate family
of Cain, and formed themselves in a dis
tinct party, and took a name of distinction
to themselves as worshippers of the true
God. They called themselves by the
name of Jehovah as we now call ourselves
by the name of Christ ; and they probably

55
made profession of the true religion by
some public rites.
As human nature is in all ages much the
same, something similar is likely to have
happened upon the first revival of idolatry
after the flood. The measures that were
used for the preservation of the true reli
gion were likely to be some one, or all of
these. If any of the nations that adhered to the
true God had^ in these ages the use of let
ters, (and the use of letters in the East, I
am persuaded, is of much greater antiqui
ty than is generally supposed), they Avould
commit to writing, and collect in books
what tradition had preserved of the begin
ning of the world and the promises to
their ancestors. These books would be
committed to some public custody, and
preserved as a sacred treasure.

36
That something of this kind was done,
appears I think from fragments which
still remain of ancient Eastern histories,
which in certain particulars of the deluge,
and in the dates which they assign to the
rise of the most ancient kingdoms, are
wonderfully consonant with the Mosaic
records. Again, the most interesting passages of
the ancient history of the Avorld, particu
larly the promises, they Avould put into
verse, that they might more easily be com
mitted to memory. It would be part of p
the education of the youth of both sexes
and of all conditions, to make them get
these verses by heart. They would be set
to music and sung at certain stated festi
vals. That this was done (that it could
hardly be omitted) is highly probable, be
cause it was the universal practice of all
the nations of antiquity to record in song

37
whatever they wished should be long re
membered, — the exploits of their warriors,
their lessons of morality, their precepts of
religion, and their laws. They would in
stitute public rites, in which the history of
the old world and of the privileged patri
archs in particular, Avould be commemo
rated in certain enigmatical ceremonies.
In these there would be allusions to the
deluge, to the ark, to the raven and the
dove, to Ndah's intoxication, to the diffe
rent behaviour of his three sons upon that
occasion, to Abraham's entertainment of
his three guests from heaven, to his battle
with the confederate kings, to the offering
of Isaac, to the exile of Hagar and her son,
and other parts of patriarchal history.
That something of this kind Avas done,
appears, I think, by manifest allusions
that we find to some of these particulars
in the religious rites of some ancient na-

38
tions, even after they became idolaters.
These institutions would perhaps in the
end be the means of spreading the corrup
tion they were intended to resist. At the
first they Avould be simple, significant, per
spicuous, and of good effect ; but by de-
.,1
grees additions Avould be made to them
Avithout any attention to the original mean
ing, for no other purpose but to add to
the gaiety and splendor of the spectacle :
And these improvements of the sheAv
would be multiplied1 till they destroyed
the significance of the symbol, and render
ed the simple and instructive rite, first in
consistent, then obscure, absurd, and unin
telligible, at last perhaps lascivious and
obscene. This, however, Avould be the conse
quence of a slow and gradual corruption ;
and I mention it only to remark, what
extreme caution should be used in intra-

39
ducing any thing into religious rites which
may too forcibly strike the grosser senses,
and by imperceptible degrees change pub
lic worship from an employment of the
intellect into an amusement of the imagi
nation. Our church, when she separated
from the Roman communion, wisely re
trenched the pomp and gaiety of sheAVS
and processions, Avhile she retained every
thing that was truly majestic and might
serve to elevate the mind of the worship
per. Public worship should be simple
without meanness, dignified without page
antry. But this by the way. I return to
my subject. —
These were the means which men were
likely to employ, (I shall come afterwards
to speak of means employed, as I con
ceive, by God himself); but these are
means which men would be likely to em-
1

40
ploy to resist the progress of idolatry when
it first began.
Written collections of traditional histo
ry, songs of high and holy argument, rites
and shews of historical allusion : and these
means could not but have a lasting and a
great effect to preserve the true religion, in
some considerable degree at least, among
all the nations where they were practised ;
that is, not only among Abraham's descends
ants but in all the other branches of Shem's
posterity. Among the Edomites, Moabites,
Arabians, Assyrians, Persians, and many
other people of less note, notwithstand
ing that many of these in later times be
came the worst of idolaters.
In what age or in what country idolatry
made its first appearance we have no cer
tain information. The suspicion, I think, •
may reasonably fall upon Canaan, from
the curse which is so emphatically pro-

41
nounced upon him upon the occasion of
his father's crime, rather than upon any
other of Ham's descendants, which must
have had its reason in some particular im
piety in the character of Canaan himself,
or of his early descendants. We have it
however from the highest authority, that
it prevailed in that part of Mesopotamia
where the race of the Chaldeans afterwards
arose, in the days of Terah the father of
Abraham. For Joshua begins his last ex
hortation to the Israelites with reminding
them, that " in old time their fathers dwelt
" on the other side of the flood, even Te-
" rah the father of Abraham and the fa-
" ther of Nachor, and they served other
" gods." This passage puts it out of doubt
that some sort of idolatry prevailed in Te-
rah's time in his country. But it amounts
not to a certain proof that Terah or any of
his ancestors were themselves idolaters ; for

42
the expression, that they served, necessa
rily imports no more than that they lived
as subjects in countries where other gods
were worshipped. In this sense it is said
of the JeAvish people in their dispersion,
they should serve other gods ; and yet the
JeAVS in their dispersions have never been
idolaters. In the sequel of this same
speech the service which the fathers of
the Israelites, while they dwelt beyond the
flood, paid to other gods, is so expressly
opposed to the Avorship of Jehovah now
required of the Israelites, that httle doubt
can remain that the expression of serving
other gods is to be taken here in its literal
meaning, — that the ancestors of Abraham;
and Abraham himself, before God's gra
cious call, Avere infected with the idolatry
Avhich in that age prevailed.
It is not to my present purpose to trace
the progress of idolatry through all its dif-

43
ferent stages, it will be sufficient for me to
sheAv, that for many ages the worship of
the true God subsisted, though preposter
ously blended with the superstitious adora
tion of fictitious deities and even of images.
Just as at this day in the church of Rome,
the Avorship of the ever-blessed Trinity sub
sists in preposterous conjunction with the
idolatrous worship of canonized men and
inanimate relics.
When Abraham took up his abode in
Gerar the chief city of the Philistine, Abir
melech the king of Gerar became ena
moured of his wife. Upon this occasion
God came to Abimelech, and the motive
of his coming was in mercy to Abimelech,
that he might not draAV destruction upon
himself and upon his family by the indigo
nity Avhich he Avas upon the point of offer
ing to Abraham's Avife. From this it has
been Avith great probability concluded, that

44
this Abimelech and the people which he
governed were worshippers of God ; for it
is not likely that such tenderness should
have been shown to a wicked prince and
a wicked nation. Sarah's purity might
have been preserved by other means. Nor
does the humility and submission with
which Abimelech receives the heavenly
warning, nor the severity with which he
expostulates with the patriarch for his un
just suspicion of him and his subjects, suit
the character of one who feared not God.
Again, in the days of Isaac another Abi
melech, the son or grandson of the for-*
mer, in an interview with Isaac (the ob
ject of which was to compose some quarrels
that had arisen between Isaac's herdsmen
and his own subjects), tells Isaac that he
saAv certainly that Jehovah was with him.
That under this conviction he solicited his
friendship and his peace; and he calls

45
Isaac the Blessed of Jehovah. This is the
language of one who feared Jehovah and
acknowledged his providence. In the
days of Abraham therefore, and of Isaac,
the worship of the true God was not yet
extinguished among the idolaters of Pales
tine. In Mesopotamia, in the same age, the
family of Nachor, Abraham's brother, was
not untainted Avith idolatry. Laban had
certain images which he calls his gods, for
which it should seem that his daughter
Rachel entertained some degree of venera
tion. Yet two occasions are recorded,
upon which Laban mentions the name
of Jehovah, and acknowledges his provi
dence. The first is when he receives
Abraham's steAvard, who came as a suitor
on the part of Isaac to Rebecca ; the se
cond, when he solemnly calls Jehovah to
Avitness the reciprocal engagements of

46
friendship between Jacob and himself at
their parting.
In Egypt, the great Avorkshop of Satan,
where the molten images were cast which
in later ages all the world adored, — in
Egypt idolatry was in its infancy (if it had
at all gotten ground) in the days of Joseph.
For when Joseph was brought to Pharaoh
to interpret his dream, the holy patriarch
and the Egyptian king speak of God in
much the same language, and with the
same acknowledgment of his overruling
providence. It may be added that this dream, though
perhaps the chief end of it was the eleva
tion of Joseph and the settlement of Ja
cob's family in Goshen, is some argument
of a care of providence for the Egyptian
people ; for by this merciful warning they
Avere enabled to provide against the seven
years of famine.

47
Idolatry therefore in this country Avas
in no advanced state in Joseph's time, and
the settlement of the patriarchs there, and
the rank and authority that Joseph held,
must have checked its groAvth for some
considerable period.
At the time Avhen the Israelites Avent out
of Egypt, that country and the land of
Canaan were sunk in the grossest idolatry.
The name of, Jehovah was forgotten, and
in the public religion no traces Avere re
maining of his Avorship. And yet the ex
amples upon record of particular persons
Avho amid the general apostasy retained
some attachment to the service of the true
God, afford I think an argument, that in
either country this extreme degeneracy was
at that time of no very ancient date.
The two Egyptian women to whom
Pharaoh committed the iniquitous business
of stifling the male children of the Hebrews

48
in the birth "feared God," i. e. they feared
the true God ; for the superstitious fear of
idols is never in the Scripture language
called the fear of God. They feared God
in that degree that they would not execute
the king's command; and that the true
fear of God was the motive from which
they acted appears from the recompense
they received : " Because the midwives
" feared God, God dealt well with them and
" made their families great and prosperous."
The mixed multitude which went Avith
Moses out of Egypt, though not genuine
Israelites, Avere surely in some degree wor
shippers of the God of Israel ; for idolaters,
in the proper sense of the Avord, Avould
hardly have been permitted to folloAv the
armies of the Lord. And after forty years,
Avhen the Israelites arrived at the land of
Canaan, Joshua's spies found in the tOAvn
of Jericho a woman who confessed that

49
" Jehovah the God of Israel, he is God
" in heaven above and in the earth be-
" neath." And from this persuasion and in
confident expectation of the execution of
his vengeance on her guilty country, she
entertained the Israelitish spies and ma
naged their escape, for which she is com
memorated by St Paul in his epistle to the
HebreAvs among the eminent examples of
faith. These remains of true religion which
were found in Egypt and Canaan so late
as the days of Moses and Joshua are I
think a proof, that a total apostasy from
the invisible Creator to the worship of fic
titious deities as the sole managers and
masters of this lower world, general as it
was noAv become, had not however long
prevailed in the countries where the cor-
ruptions of idolatry Avere of the longest
D

50
standing, and may be supposed to have
made the greatest advances.
And as for the idolatry of the older and
the milder sort, which retaining the wor
ship of the true God and acknowledging
his providence, added a superstitious ado
ration of certain inferior spirits, who were
supposed to have a delegated command
under the controul of the Supreme over
different parts of nature, from this even
the chosen family itself was not always
pure. When the patriarch was to take up his
abode at Bethel, the place Avhere God ap
peared to him when he fled from Esau,
Avhich he considered as sanctified by God's
immediate presence, we find him ordering
his household to put away their strange
gods ; of which they had no small variety
as appears by the sacred historian's expres
sion, that in compliance Avith this injunc-

51
tion they gave unto Jacob all their strange
gods. These were probably the idols
which Rachel brought with her from Meso
potamia, with others introduced by Judah's
marriage with the daughter of a Canaanite.
Upon occasion of this removal to Bethel
the patriarch reformed the worship of his
family and his dependants, and took mea
sures to prevent an immediate revival of
the corruption. He put the objects of
superstitious adoration out of sight, bury
ing the idols under an oak near Shechem.
But none that is conversant with the sacred
history of the Israelites can doubt, that
after Jacob's death his descendants con
tracted a new stain, and in the later years
of their sojournment in Goshen were
deeply infected with the idolatry which
then prevailed in Egypt, to which in the
desert they discovered an attachment.

52
The molten calf they made in Horeb Avas
surely not the first they had worshipped.
I have noAv considered as I proposed
the general state of religion in the world
before the institution of the Jewish church.
I have sheAvn you the seductive form in
Avhich idolatry began and the slow pro
gress that it made ; which is partly to be
ascribed to the means employed by pious
nations in the beginning to resist the cor
ruption, but in much greater part, as I
shall hereafter shew, to the merciful provi
dence of God. Idolatry in that malignant
form Avhich disoAvns the true God, and
attaches itself entirely to fictitious divini
ties, prevailed nowhere till some short time
perhaps a century or more before the de-
liverance of the Israelites from their Egyp
tian bondage. Idolatry in its milder form,
acknoAvledging the Supreme Providence
and retaining the fear and worship of the

53
true God, but adding the superstitious wor
ship of fictitious deities, prevailed every
where from the days of Abraham, his single
family excepted ; insomuch that after the
death of Abraham and Isaac the chosen
family itself was from time to time in
fected. f»?« i .,(;;.
Now it is to be observed, that paganism
in this milder form was rather to be called
a corrupt than a false religion ; just as :at
this day the religion of the church of Rome
is more properly corrupt than false. It is
not a false religion; for the professors of
it receive, with the fullest submission of the
understanding to its mysteries, the whole
gospel. * They fear God. They trust in
Christ as the Author of salvation. f„ They
worship the three' Persons in the unity
of the Godhead. The Roman church
therefore hath not renounced the truth,
but she has corrupted it; and she hath

54
corrupted it in the very same manner
and nearly in the same degree in which the
truth of the patriarchal religion was cor
rupted by the first idolaters ; adding to the
fear and worship of God and his Son the
inferior fear and worship of deceased men*
whose spirits they suppose to be invested
with some delegated authority over Christ's
church on earth. Now the corruptions
being so similar in kind and pretty equal
in degree, the idolaters of antiquity and
the papists of modern times seem much
upon a footing.
Nor can I understand that these idola
ters, so long as they acknowledged the pro
vidence and retained the worship of the
true God, and believed in the promises to
the fathers, were more separated from the
church of Noah by their corruptions than
the papists now by similar corruptions are

55
separated from the true catholic church
of Christ.
The ancient idolaters were not separated
from the patriarchal church till their su
perstition ended in a total apostasy. The
superstitions of Romanists may terminate
in a similar apostasy equally complete, and
then will they be equally separated from
the church of Christ. And this I say not
in any bitterness of zeal against those of
the Roman communion, whom I maintain
to be as yet a part of the great Shepherd's
flock, although in danger of being lost, but
merely to compare past things with pre
sent, and to shoAV by the analogy of mo
dern times what was the true state of re
ligion in the Avorld at large in the middle
ages of idolatry between its first rise and
its last stage of a total apostasy.
When this took place the Gentile
world were cut off from all communion

56
Avith the worshippers of the true God
by the institution of the Jewish church,
from which idolaters of every degree and
denomination were excluded. But in
the Avhole intermediate period the Gen-
tiles were nothing less than the corrupt
branch of the old patriarchal church, the;
church of Noah and of Shem ; and the fa
mily of Abraham were nothing more than
the reformed part of it. Now since a
church in any state of corruption short of
apostasy, through God's merciful forbear
ance retains the privileges of a church, that
is, is indulged in those advantages Avhich
God of his free mercy grants to the general
society of his Avorshippers on earth, and for
this reason, that in the merciful judgment
of our heavenly Father, in his pity for the
infirmities of the human understanding,
nothing but the apostasy of the heart ex
tinguishes the character of a Avorshipper. ¦

57
I shall now inquire hoAv far the Gen
tile Avorld in the middle ages between
Abraham and Moses, considered as a cor
rupt branch of the patriarchal church,
might be in the merciful care of Provi
dence ; what means might be used on the
part of God to keep up the remembrance
of himself among them, by a right use of
which they might have recovered the pu
rity from which they fell, and which,
though through, the extreme degeneracy
of mankind they prevented not a gene
ral apostasy for many ages, had a ten
dency however to the general restoration
by raising an universal expectation of
the great Restorer. And in this inquiry
I shall proceed as I have done in the pre
ceding part of my subject, by making the
analogy of modern times the interpreter of
ancient history.

58
I recur therefore to my former exam
ple, and I set out with this principle,
that the church of Rome is at this day
a corrupt church, — a church corrupted
Avith idolatry; with idolatry very much
the same in kind and in degree with
the worst that ever prevailed among the
Egyptians or the Canaanites till within
one or two centuries at the most of the
time of Moses. Yet we see this corrupt
this idolatrous church of Rome has her
priests and her bishops, who, deriving in
continual succession from the apostles, are
true priests and true bishops invested with
the authority which by the original institu
tions belongs to those two orders. The
priests of the corrupt church of Rome have
a true authority (I speak not of an exclusive
authority in prejudice of the Protestant
priesthood,) but they have their share
of the common authority of priests of the

59
church catholic to preach the word of God,
although they preach other things for
which they have no authority.
They have a true authority to administer
the sacraments, although they have no au
thority to institute new sacraments ; and we
doubt not, notwithstanding their presump
tion in preaching adventitious doctrines,
and in obtruding supernumerary sacra
ments, that the true word preached by
them, and the true sacraments administer
ed, are accompanied with God's blessing
and produce a salutary effect on the heart
of the hearer.
Again j the bishops of this corrupt church
have in common with the bishops of the
Protestant and of the Greek churches, all
the authority of the first successors of the
apostles that may be supposed to subsist
without the miraculous gifts of the Holy
Spirit.

60
If they usurp rights which the inspired
apostles never claimed, their just claims
are not invalidated by those umvarrantable
pretensions : They are to judge of the qua
lifications of those that would be ordained :
They have authority to appoint to the
priest's office, and to consecrate to their
own by the imposition of their hands:
They are the overseers of Christ's flock.
They have the power to suspend hetero
dox or immoral priests from the exercise
of their function, and to exclude laics of
scandalous lives from the sacraments : In a
word, to inflict ecclesiastical censures and
penalties for ecclesiastical offences. Like
other magistrates they are accountable to
God for any abuse of power, but still the
right of government is in their hands. In
their own church and over those of their
oAvn communion they have a true epis
copal jurisdiction. And this is the avoAved

61
opinion of the church of England, as it
must be the opinion of all who acknow
ledge the divine institution of the episcopal
order. For when a priest who has receiv
ed his orders from a bishop of the church
-of Rome openly abjures the errors of that
church, and declares his assent to the
articles of the church of England,, he be
comes immediately a priest in our church
without any second ordination from a Pro
testant bishop : As a laic of that church
Avho openly abjures its errors is admitted
to our communion, without any second
baptism by the hands of a Protestant priest.
Now, since in these days the church of
Rome though corrupted with idolatry has
her priests and her bishops, it may seem
the less strange that the ancient patriarchal
church when she became corrupted wim
a similar idolatry in an equal degree,
should have her priests and her prophets.

62
True priests and true prophets, though
not perhaps untainted with the errors of
their times; priests who offered sacrifices
to the true God and had authority to ac
cept the oblations of the laity ; prophets
who were commissioned to resist the pre
vailing corruption and to prophesy of the
great redemption. That these tAVO orders
were maintained through the wonderful
mercy of God in idolatrous countries, till
the degeneracy came to that extreme de
gree that he judged it fit to separate the
apostates and to put his chosen people
under the safe keeping of the law, I shall
now prove from the sacred records.
And first for the priests of the patri
archal church in her corrupted state.
In the days of Abraham, a prince of a
Canaanitish nation, Melchizedek king of
Salem, was the priest of the Most High
God. The Jews have indeed a vain tra-

63
dition that this Melchizedek was the patri
arch Shem. According to the chronology
which the Jews choose to follow, Shem
might be alive at the time that Melchi
zedek received the tenths from Abraham.
But by a truer account, which the Jews
followed in more ancient times, and which
was followed by all the primitive fathers
of the Christian church, Shem was dead
above four hundred years before Abraham
was born ; and if we were even to grant
that he might be living in the days of
Abraham, the Jews have not yet explained
how he came by the kingdom which this
tradition gives him in the land of Canaan.
But we have it on better than rabbinical
authority, on the authority of an apostle,
that Melchizedek had no connexion with
the family of Abraham. " He counted
" not his descent," saith St Paul, " from
" them." And St Paul's argument, as is
3

64
acutely remarked by the learned Bishop
Patrick, Avould be equally inconclusive
Avhether Melchizedek's descent Avere count
ed from Abraham or Abraham's from him.
Melchizedek therefore was neither descen
dant nor any ancestor of Abraham. He
Avas, as Josephus the learned historian of
the Jews candidly acknowledges, a prince
of Canaan.
Yet Avas he no self-constituted usurping
priest, but a priest by divine appointment
and commission, as appears by the defe
rence Avhich Abraham paid him ; " For con-
" sider how great this man Avas, unto Avhom
" even the patriarch Abraham gave the tenth
" of the spoils." This tenth of the spoils was
no payment to Melchizedek in his tempo
ral capacity as king of Salem for any assis
tance he had given Abraham in the battle ;
for he went out to meet him when he Avas
returning from the slaughter of the kings.

65
The king of Salem therefore had taken no
part in the expedition ; he had remained
at home inactive, and went out to meet
the patriarch upon his return, in the qua
lity of God's high-priest, to pronounce
God's blessing upon him, to bear his pub
lic testimony to Abraham as God's chosen
servant, and to declare that it was by the
immediate succour of the arm of the Most
High God, whose priest he was, that Abra
ham's little army had overthrown the con
federate kings ; and the tenths being no
payment for a military service, could be no
thing else than a religious offering on the
part of Abraham, by which he acknow
ledged the protection of the Most High
God, and acknowledged the authority of
Melchizedek's priesthood. The divine au
thority of Avhich appears again more strong
ly in this circumstance, that this priest
Melchizedek was no less than the type of
E

66
that high-priest Avho noAV standeth at God's
right hand making intercession for the sins
of all mankind. Of his universal everlast
ing priesthood, the priesthood of Melchi
zedek was the type.
The prophet David declares the nature
of Christ's priesthood, by the analogy it
bears to the priesthood of Melchizedek.
And from this analogy St Paul builds his
great argument for the superiority of Christ's
priesthood above the Levitical. Christ is
for this reason a priest for ever, because he
is after the order of Melchizedek.
From all this it appears, that in the
days of Abraham at least, there was a
priesthood among the Canaanites of highert
rank than the Levitical, and more exactly
typical of the priesthood of the Son of
God. Again, in the days of Joseph we find in
Egypt a Polipherah a priest of On, Avhose

67
daughter Joseph married ; and in the days
of Moses, a Jethro a priest of Midian,
whose daughter Moses married. It has
been made a question concerning both
these persons, whether they Avere priests at
all. The doubt arises from the ambiguity
of the Hebrew word j which is used in some
parts of Scripture for a prince or magis
trate. But it is to be observed, that not a
single passage is to be found in the books
of Moses where it is used in these senses,
except it be in these two instances. That
they were both priests, was clearly the
opinion of the Jews who made the first
Greek translation of the Pentateuch, of the
Jewish historian Josephus, and of St Je
rome. And if they were priests at all, they
were priests of, the true God, the one in
Egypt in the town of On in the days of
Joseph, the other among the Midianites in

68
the days of Moses. For it is hardly credi
ble, that Providence should have permit
ted either Joseph or Moses to contract an
alliance by marriage with a priest -of any
idolatrous temple.
Thus it appears, that the true God had
an order of priests in the Gentile world
down to the time of the Mosaic institution.
These priests were the corrupt remains of
the ancient priesthood of Noah's universal
church. We have then, I think, found the priests
of the patriarchal church in its corrupted
state ; let us now look for its prophets.
This is a point still more material to esta
blish than the existence of the priesthood,
because it is the existence of true prdphe-
cies among idolatrous nations which is the
chief subject of our inquiry ; and true pro
phecies, that is, prophecies of divine ori
ginal, could not have been found among

69
idolatrous nations, unless certain persons
had lived amongst them who were gifted
by the Spirit of God, and favoured with
divine communications.
But of this order we have Iavo undoubt
ed instances, — the one in Job, the other
in Balaam.
Job, by the consent of the learned of all
ages, Avas no Israelite. He was certainly
of the family of Abraham ; for whatever
difficulties may be raised about his parti
cular country, none will deny that it lay in
some part of that region of which the whole
was occupied by Abraham's descendants.
He was not however of the elected branch
of the family, and was probably of that
stock Avhich became at last the worst of
idolaters, the Edomites. That the country
in which he lived was in his time infected
with an incipient idolatry, appears from
the mention that he makes of the worship

70
Of the sun and moon as a crime with which
he was himself untainted ; a circumstance
from which he could have pretended, no
merit, had not the prevailing fashion of his
country and his times presented a strong
temptation to the crime. And as there is
no mention of any other kind of idolatry
in the book of Job, it is reasonable to con
clude that in his time the corruption had
gone no greater length.
Now, that Job Avas a prophet is so uni
versally confessed, that it is needless to
dwell upon the proof of it. He Avas a pro
phet in the declining age of the patriarchal
church, in the interval between Esau, from
whom he Avas descended, and Moses, whose
time he preceded ; and he prophesied in
an idolatrous country where the sun and
moon Avere Avorshipped.
In this idolatrous country he prophesied
pf the Redeemer ; and it is a circumstance

71
that deserves particular attention, that he
prophesies of the Redeemer, not without
manifest allusion to the divinity of his
nature, and express mention of the resur
rection of the body as the effect of his
redemption ; — two articles of our creed
which we are told Avith great confidence
are modern innovations ; whereas Ave find
them not only in the JeAvish prophets, but
in far more ancient prophets of a more
ancient church.
" I knoAv," saith Job, " that my Re-
" deemer liveth ; I know that he now liveth ;"
that is, that his nature is to live. He des
cribes the Redeemer, you see, in language
much allied to that in which Jehovah
describes his own nature in the conference
Avith Moses at the bush. Jehovah des
cribes himself by his uncaused existence ;
Job describes the Redeemer by a life inse
parable from, his essence. " I knoAv that

72
"in the latter days this ever-living Re-
" deemer shall stand upon the earth. He
" shall take up his residence among men
" in an embodied form; God shall be mani-
" fested in the flesh to destroy the works
" of the Devil : He shall' stand upon the
" earth in the latter days ; in the last period
" of the world's existence ;" which implies
that this standing of the Redeemer upon
the earth will close the great ' scheme of
Providence for man's restoration; " And al-
" though he shall not stand upon the earth
" before the latter days, yet I know that
"he is my Redeemer; that my death,
" which must take place many ages before
" his appearance> will not exclude me
" from my share in his redemption. For
" though after my skin worms destroy
" this body, yet in my flesh shall I see
" God. Though nothing will be then re-
" maining of my external person, though

73
" the form of this body will have been long
" destroyed, the organization of its consti-
" tuent parts demolished, and its very sub-
" stance dissipated, the softer part become
" the food of worms bred in its own putre-
" faction, the solid bones moulded into
" powder; notwithstanding this ruin of my
" outward fabric, the immortal principle
" within me shall not only survive, but its
" decayed mansion will be restored. It
" will be reunited to a body, of which the
" organs will not only connect it Avith the
" external world, but serve to cement its
" union with its Maker. For in my flesh,
" with the corporeal eye, with the eye of
" the immortal body which I shall then
" assume, I shall see the divine Majesty
" in the person of the glorified Redeemer."
Such was the tenor of Job's prophecies,
of a prophet of the Gentiles; and such was
the light which God granted to the Gentile

74
world in the first stage of its corruption.
And that this hght was not withdrawn till
the corruption attained its height we learn
from the second instance, the Aramaean
prophet Balaam.
What might be the exact degree of the
degeneracy in Balaam's country, I cannot
take upon me to determine. But the bor
dering nation, the Moabites, Avere addicted
to that gross idolatry which made homicide
and prostitution an essential part of its re
ligious rites. From the extreme depravity
of the times, and from the wickedness
of Balaam's own character, it has been
doubted whether he Avas properly a pro
phet. It has been imagined that he might
be a sorcerer, who practised some Avicked
arts of magical divination, and owed his
fame to the casual success of some of his
predictions ; that those remarkable pro
phecies Avhich he delivered when Balak

75
called him to curse the Israelites, were
the result of an extraordinary impulse
upon his mind upon that particular occa
sion, and no more prove that the gift of
prophecy was a permanent endowment of
his mind, as it was in Job and the Jewish
prophets, than the speaking of his ass
upon the same occasion proves that the
animal had a permanent use of the faculty
of speech.
The difficulty of conceiving that true
prophets should be found in an idolatrous
nation, if I mistake not, I have already
removed by the analogy which I have
.shewn to subsist between ancient and mo
dern corruptions. The difficulty of con
ceiving that the gift of prophecy should be
imparted to a wicked character, will be
much softened, if not entirely removed, if
we recollect the confessed crimes of some
of the Jewish prophets, and the confessed

76
indiscretions of some persons who shared
in the miraculous gifts of the Spirit in the
primitive churches. And if once we admit,
as the evidence of plain fact compels us to
admit, that the gift of prophecy is not
always in proportion to the moral worth
of the character, we must confess it to be
a question which is beyond the ability of
human reason to decide, in what propor
tion they must necessarily correspond, or
with what degree of depravity in the moral
character the prophetic talent may be in
compatible. Balaam's impiety at last ran
to the length of open rebellion against God;
for he suggested to the king of Moab, as
the only means by which the fortunes of
the Israelites could be injured, the infernal
stratagem of enticing them to take a part
in that idolatry for which, by the tenor of
his own predictions, the Moabites were
destined to destruction. But this apos-

77
tasy of Balaam's was subsequent to the
prophecies that he delivered to Balak, and
was the effect of the temptation which the
occasion presented, the offer of riches and
preferment in Balak's court. It is pro
bable indeed that his heart had never been
right with God, or these objects could not
have laid hold of him so forcibly. But
this, for any thing that appears from the
sacred history, might be his first act of
open impiety and rebellion ; and the con
clusion, that in the former part of his life
he had been too bad a man to be honoured
with the prophetic gift, is precarious. The
circumstances of the story are of far more
Weight than any reasoning built upon such
precarious principles as man's notion of
the manner in which the divine gift should
be distributed ; and from the circumstances
of the story it appears, that he was a true
prophet of the true God. When Balak's

78
messengers first came to him* he speaks the
language of one who had the fear of God
habitually upon his mind. He disclaims
all power of his OAvn to bless or curse, to
take any step in the business but under
God's express direction and permission.
He must have God's leave to go to Balak ;
and Avhen he comes to Balak, he must take
heed to speak what Jehovah puts into his
mouth. Although Balak would give him
his house full of silver and gold, he could not
transgress the Avord of Jehovah his God, to
do less or more. This was his language in
the ordinary state of his mind, when he
was under, no prophetic impulse ; and it
is remarkable that he speaks of God in the
same terms which were after Avards in use
among the Jewish ' prophets ; " Jehovah
" myQod," " Jehovah, the God Avhose pro-
" phet am I." In ecstasy he expresses the
same sentiments in a more figured Ian-

79
guage. He describes his own faculty of
prediction in images the most exactly ex^-
pressive of the prophetic gifts and the pro
phetic office ; expressive of no singular
unexampled impulse upon this occasion,
but of frequent and habitual intercourse
Avith the Most High God, by voice and vi
sions, in dream and in trance*
It is very remarkable, that in the strain
of these predictions there is no indication
of that violent constraint Avhich some have
imagined upon die mind, of the speaker,
or that he was more a necessary agent than
any other prophet under the divine im
pulse. In every instance of prophecy by
divine inspiration, thoughts and images
were presented to the prophet's mind by
the inspiring Spirit, which no meditation
or study of his own could have suggested-;
and therefore the mind of the man under
this influence might properly be considered

80
as a machine in the hand of God. Yet
the will of the man in this, as in every in
stance in which man acts under the con
trol of Providence, seems to have been
the spring by which the machine was put
in motion.
And though in conceiving the prophecy
the man was passive, in uttering it he was
a free and voluntary agent ; which appears
from this circumstance, that the prophet
had it in his choice to dissemble and pre
varicate, to utter smooth things and to pro
phesy deceits. And this was Balaam's
situation when he tells Balak's messen
gers that he cannot go beyond the word of
Jehovah his God ; that what God should
put in his mouth, that he must speak. It
is not that his organs of speech were not
upon these occasions in his own command,
that they were determined by some other
principle than his own will to the utterance
3

81
of certain words which might convey cer
tain thoughts, but that he had no poAver
of uttering true predictions, of pronounc
ing either blessing or curse that might
prove effectual, otherwise than as he spake
in conformity to the divine motions ; and
the alacrity and ardour of his prophetic
strains indicate a satisfaction and compla
cency of his own mind in uttering its con
ceptions. There is one passage in his second song,
which as it lies in the English Bibles may
seem to contradict this assertion : " Be-
" hold I have received commandment to
" bless, and he hath blessed, and I cannot
" reverse it." Which may seem to say,
that if he could, he would have reversed the
blessing. But the original, according to the
¦reading of the best manuscripts, expresses
a very different sentiment : " Behold, to
" bless was I brought hither, (brought, not

82
" by Balak's invitation but by God), to
" bless Avas I brought hither. I will bless,
" and I will not decline it." And the same
sense appears in the Greek translation of
the Septuagint ; and accordingly he pro
nounces his blessing without reserve or re
luctance. He discovers no unwillingness
to paint the prosperity of the Jewish nation
in the highest colours, no concern for the
calamities that awaited their enemies ; and
in his last effusions his mind seems to enjoy
the great scene that was before him, of the
happiness and glory of the Messiah's reign,
and the final extermination of idolaters.
Another circumstance to be remarked is,
that no traces of idolatrous superstition or
magical enchantment appear in the rites
which Avere used upon this occasion. We
read indeed, that after the third sacrifice
" he went not as at other times to seek, en-
" chantments." Some have taken alarm at

83
the word enchantments, taking it in a bad
sense. No conclusion can be drawn from
a passage so obscure, as all who are versed
in the Hebrew language must confess this
to be in the original. The words which
are rendered " as at other times," seem not
to allude as these English words should do,
to something that had been Balaam's ordi
nary practice upon former occasions, but
to what he had done before upon this oc
casion. " He went not as from time to
" time before," or " he Avent not as he had
" done once and again, to seek enchant-
" ments." What these enchantments might
be which he Avent to seek, since it cannot
.be determined by the mere force of the
Avord enchantments, may be best conjec
tured by considering what Balaam had done
once and again upon the present occasion.
Now once and a«;ain after each of the
first sacrifices he retired to a solitary place.

84
And Avhat sought he in this retirement ?
What he sought may be divined by what
he met with. He met God, and God put
a word in his mouth ; and this the third
time Balaam did not. He staid with Balak
and the Moabitic chiefs in the place where
the third sacrifice had been performed, pa
tiently waiting the event, with his face to-
Avard the wilderness, where the Israelite
army lay encamped. These enchantments,
therefore, which once and again he went
to seek, and which the third time he sought
not, were as it should seem no idolatrous
or magical enchantments, but either some
stated rites of invocation of the inspiring
spirit which he practised in retirement, or,
as I rather think, some sensible signs by
which, in the early ages of the world, God
was pleased to communicate with his pro
phets ; some voice or vision. His pre
paratory rite was, that in each place where

85
he took his station he directed the king of
Moab to make seven altars, and to offer
seven bullocks and seven rams. In this
there is nothing of idolatry, but every cir
cumstance is characteristic of a solemn
sacrifice to the true God. The altars were
raised expressly for the particular purpose
of this sacrifice. He used no altar that was
ready made, lest it should have been profan
ed by offerings to the idols of the country.
And being raised in a hurry upon the spot,
they could not bedurable or stately erections
of workmanship and art, (such altars as the
Israelites were permitted to erect) but sim
ple mounds of earth, or heaps of unpolish
ed stone, which could not long remain after
they had served the present solemn busi
ness, to be afterwards profaned by idola
trous sacrifices.
Some have suspected something of ido
latrous superstition in the number of the

86
altars and of the victims. On the contrary
I am persuaded, that the choice of the
number seven was a solemn and significant
appropriation of the offerings to the Su
preme God the Maker of the world. The
last business in the book of Job, when
the great argument between Job and his
friends is brought to a conclusion, is a so
lemn sacrifice, not devised by Job or any
of his friends, but prescribed by the express
voice of God. And this sacrifice like Ba
laam's consists of seven bullocks and of
seven rams. It should seem therefore, that
in the earliest ages it was a characteristic
rite of the pure patriarchal Avorship to sa
crifice on occasions of great solemnity by
sevens. The key to this rite is the insti
tution of the Sabbath. The observance of
the seventh day was the sacrament of the
ancient church ; of that church, which was
more ancient than the JeAvish ; of that

87
priesthood, which was more dignified than
Aaron's ; of the church of Adam before
the flood ; of the church of Noah after it.
•
For the same reason that the seventh day
was sanctified, the victims bled by sevens ;
and to sacrifice seven rams or seven bul
locks at a time, was to declare that the of
fering was made to that God who created
the Avorld in six days, and to whose service
the seventh day was therefore consecrated.
Upon the same principle it was that much
of the Jewish ritual was governed by the
number seven. The golden candlestick
had seven branches supporting seven burn
ing lamps. When atonement was to be
made for the sin of a priest or of the con
gregation, the vail AA'as to be sprinkled
seven times with the blood of the offering,
and the mercy-seat was to be sprinkled
seven times on the great day of annual ex
piation. The festivals of the Jews were

88
celebrated each for seven days successive
ly, and among the extraordinary sacrifices
of each day Avere seven or twice seven
•
lambs. When the ark of the covenant was
brought from the house of Obed:Edom to
Jerusalem, the sacrifice on that great occa
sion was seven bullocks and seven rams.
Perhaps in a much later age than Balaam's
the number of his altars and his victims
would have afforded no certain character
of a pure worship ; for in the later ages of
idolatry we find a superstitious veneration
for the number seven among the heathens.
But thus it is with all ceremonies, that their
significance depends upon the interpreta
tion which custom makes of them. And
the interpretation of the same ceremony
will be different, according to the different
state of opinions in different countries and
at different times. Hence what was ori
ginally an act of pure devotion, may be-

89
come in later times a superstitious rite.
The stone which Jacob erected at Bethel
became aftenvards an occasion of idolatry.
So to offer animals by sevens was no longer
an appropriation of the sacrifice to the in
visible Creator, when it could no longer be
understood to allude to that particular cir
cumstance in the creation, that it was
finished in six days. And to this no allu
sion could be understood where the cir
cumstance itself was not remembered.
But this hinders not but that in the days
of Balaam, Avho lived within a century of
Job, the same ceremonies had the same
meaning in Balaam's worship as in Job's ;
and that the number of his altars and his
victims was a circumstance which in that
age gave a public character to his sacrifice,
, by which Balak and his princes, and the
confederate armies of Moab and Midian,
might understand that it was offered in

90
contempt of their idols, and in honour of
the God who rested from the business of
creation on the seventh day.
Now, when all these circumstances are
put together ; the age of Balaam, that he
lived within a century after Job; his
country, which was in the neighbourhood
of Job's, — part at least of a tract which Avas
occupied by descendants of Abraham or
by collateral branches of the family ; his
Open acknoAvledgment of Jehovah as his
God ; that both in his ordinary state of
mind and under the divine impulse he
refers his prophetic talent to the inspiration
of Jehovah ; that he disclaims any poAver
of his own to bless or to curse, otherwise
than as the interpreter of the counsels of
Heaven ; that he practises no magical en
chantments, but offers sacrifices to God
after the patriarchal rites ; that in uttering
his predictions he appears not to have

91
been more a necessary agent than every
other prophet : when to all these circum
stances we add, that he uttered a true pro
phecy, a prophecy extending, if I read its
meaning aright, from his own time to the
Messiah's second advent; a prophecy
which in every part which relates to times
Avhich are now gone by, hath been fulfilled
with wonderful exactness, and in other
parts which relate to ages yet to come,
harmonizes with the predictions of the Jew
ish prophets and of the Apocalypse ; — can
a doubt remain, that the man who to all
secondary characters of a prophet added
this great character, that by a divine im
pulse, as is confessed, he delivered a pro
phecy of things too distant to fall within
any man's natural foresight ; a prophecy
which the world hath seen in part accom
plished, and which in its other parts re
sembles other prophecies not yet accom-

92
plished, but confessedly divine; a pro
phecy, which for the variety of its compo
sition in its Various parts, for the aptness,
the beauty, the majesty, the horror of its
images, may compare with the most ani
mated effusions of the Hebrew bards ; can
a doubt remain Avhether this man, with all
the imperfections of his private character,
was a true prophet ?
I am not ignorant that Origen and other
divines of ancient and modern times have
been unwilling to acknowledge his preten
sions. If their authority should seem to
outweigh the evidence drawn from the
particulars of his story, I have a greater
authority to produce against them, the
authority of an inspired apostle. " The
" dumb ass," saith St Peter, alluding to
Balaam's story, " the dumb ass, speaking
" Avith man's voice, forbad the madness of
" the prophet ;" acknoAvledging him you

93
see for a prophet, though, for the folly of
loving the wages of unrighteousness, he
calls him mad.
Balaam therefore was a prophet; for
with the evidence of facts and the autho
rity of an inspired apostle on our s^de, we
will be confident in the assertion, though
Origen and Calvin be against us. Balaam
was a prophet.* He lived in an age of
gross idolatry, and prophesied to idolaters.
In him, as I conceive, the prophetic order
without the pale of the Mosaic church,
which was now formed, was extinguished ;
for I find no traces in history, sacred or
profane, of a true prophet out of Israel
after the death of Balaam. He fell you
know in the general carnage of the Mi-
dianites, and was himself among the first
instances of God's vengeance on apostates.
It is probable therefore that the prophecies
which he delivered at Shittim were the last

94
that were addressed to the old patriarchal
church, noAV corrupt in the extreme, and
on the verge of dissolution. It is remark
able that this church should be admonish
ed by the last words of her last prophet of
the impending vengeance, as the Jewish
church by a greater prophet within a few
years of her dissolution was admonished
of her fate. It is remarkable that this last
call of God to that apostatizing church
should be the first occasion, upon record
at least, upon Avhich the Messiah is des
cribed in images of terror, as a warlike
prince reducing the world by conquest,
and putting his vanquished enemies to the
sword. With these predictions of the
Messiah, (predictions which by all exposi
tors, JeAvs as well as Christian, by Rabbis
of later times as well as by the more can
did and more knowing Jews of earlier ages,
are understood of the Messiah), with these

95
predictions Balaam intermixes many brief
but eloquent assertions of the first prin
ciples of natural religion : — The omnipo
tence of the Deity, his universal provi
dence, and the immutability of his coun
sels. And, to be a standing monument of
these great truths, he leaves a very ge
neral but very exact j prediction, of the
fortunes of the empires and kingdoms
that were at that u time the most consi
derable, and of those that in succeeding
ages were successively to arise and perish
in their turns. And his images bear all
the analogy to those of later prophets, of
Daniel in particular, and the sublime au
thor of the Apocalypse,! which the lan
guage of a general sketch can bear to that
of a minute detail ; and the names and
epithets which he applies to the Supreme
Being are the very same which are used
by Moses, Job, and the inspired writers

96
of the Jews ; namely, God, the Almighty,
the Most High, and Jehovah ; which is a
proof, that gross as the corruptions of ido
latry were now become, the patriarchal
religion was not sufficiently forgotten for
its language to be grown obsolete.
In this Balaam set the sun of prophecy
in the horizon of the Gentile world, and
yet a total night came not. For some
ages a twilight glimmered in their sky,
which gradually decayed and became at
last almost insensible, but began to bright
en again during the captivity of the Jews
under the Babylonian monarchs, and from
that period continued to gather strength,
till at length the morning star took its sta
tion over the stable at Bethlehem. The
sun of righteousness arose to set no more,
and the hght again was clear and univer
sal.

97
You will recollect what I advanced as a
probable conjecture in a former part of
these disquisitions, that upon the first ap
pearance of idolatry, when the uninfected
part of mankind would be taking all means
to check the progress of the contagion,
the traditional history of the creation, the
deluge, and the promises to the first patri
archs, which at that time would probably
be pretty perfect, would be committed to
writing. We may assert, I think, with
more certainty, that the prophecies of Job
and Balaam, and of other prophets of that
period, if any other existed, • (and many
might, although their works and their very
names have been long since forgotten) ; it
is more certain, I say, of the prophecies of
these ages, that they would be committed
to writing, than of the earlier traditions.
For that letters were older than the begin
nings of idolatry cannot be proved, though
G

98
in my opinion it is more probable than
the contrary. Whereas it is certain, not
only that the Israelites had letters before
the law, but that books and writing were
in use in the days of Job in that part of
the country where Job and Balaam lived ;
and if in, use in the days of Job, certainly
not out of use in the later days of Balaam.
For although religion in these ages was
upon the decline, arts and sciences were in
a stage of progress and advancement;—
That Balaam's prophecies, at Shittim in
particular, were committed to writing
among the Moabites and the Midianites, ,
is, I think, incontestable. For to the Moa
bites and Midianites they were delivered,
not within hearing of the Israelites. And
how did Moses, who heard them not, come
by the knowledge of them, unless it were
that they were committed to writing, and
that the books of the Moabites or the Mi-

99
dianites fell into the conqueror's hands?
Moses, it is true, was an inspired writer,
which may seem to some to account suffi
ciently for his knowledge of every thing
that he relates.
But God, even in the more immediate
interpositions of his providence, acts by
natural means and second causes, so far as
natural means and second causes may be
made to serve the purpose. The influ
ence, therefore, of the inspiring Spirit on
the mind of an historian, can be nothing
more than to secure him from mistake
and falsity, by strengthening his memory,
and by maintaining in his heart a religi
ous love and reverence for truth, that he
may be incapable of omission through
forgetfulness, and may be in\'incibly forti
fied against all temptations to forge, con
ceal, disguise, or prevaricate. That inspi
ration ever was the means of conveying

100
the first knowledge of facts to an histori
an's mind, is a very unreasonable suppo
sition. It is to suppose an unnecessary
miracle. For a miracle is always unne
cessary where natural means might serve
the purpose. And the supposition of an
unnecessary miracle is always an unrea
sonable, and indeed a dangerous suppo
sition. Unreasonable, because no evi
dence can prove it, and no plausible argu
ment can be alleged for it ; dangerous, be
cause it leads to an unlimited and perni
cious credulity. We conclude, therefore,
that Balaam's prophecies at Shittim were-
committed to writing by the people to
Avhom they were delivered, because they
are recorded by the inspired historian, to
whom they were not delivered, who could
not by any other means have come to the
knowledge of them, and who, by virtue of
his inspiration, was incapable of the dis-

101
honest act of forging facts of which he had
no knowledge. But further, it appears
from another inspired writer of the Jewish
church, that other authentic accounts of
Balaam's prophecies at Shittim, besides
that which Moses had transmitted, was cur
rent among the Jews in a very late age,
which contained some particulars which
Moses, as foreign to the subject of his his
tory, has omitted. Moses has preserved
the public predictions which related to the
fortunes of the Israelites and their adver
saries in all ages, and to the universally in
teresting subject of the Messiah.
These other accounts contained the par
ticulars of a private conference between
Balaam and Balak, in which the idolatrous
king inquires of God's prophet, in what
way he the king might make expiation for
his offences. " Remember, O my people,"
saith the prophet Micah, " what Balak

102
" king of Moab consulted, and what Ba-
" laam the son of Beor answered him, from
" Shittim unto Gilgal." And then he relates
the conference. The word remember evi
dently refers the Israelites of Micah's time to
some account of this conference which they
might remember, which they ought to have
holden in remembrance. Which account,
in the judgment of Micah, Avho thus so
lemnly appeals to it, was authentic, and
we must believe it to be authentic upon
the credit of Micah's inspiration. Now
what could this be but some written re
cords of the prophecies at Shittim trans
mitted from the times of Balaam, which
must have come to the Israelites, as the
other account came to them, from the ori
ginal books of the Moabites ?
Balaam's prophecies at Shittim therefore
Avere committed to writing among the peo
ple to whom they were first delivered. If

103
these prophecies, why not earlier prophe
cies of Balaam's ? for that these Avere not
the first and only prophecies, appears from
the reputation he held as a prophet Avhen
the Avar between Balak and the Israelites
broke out.
If Balaam's prophecies, why not those
of earlier prophets ? The idolatry of the
age in which they lived would not prevent
it; for idolatry is always superstitious,
and superstition would receive without dis
tinction Avhatever went under the name
of a prophecy, especially if the style in
which it Avas conceived might at all suit
with its pretensions. Accordingly we find,
that idolaters were not at all deficient
in their veneration for the true prophets.
It was rather their error, that without
distinguishing between the true prophet
and the false, they entertained an extra
vagant respect for both, ascribing to them

104
not only a foresight, but a command of
futurity. This unreasonable belief in the
prophet, not as the messenger, but as the
assessor of the gods, sharing their power t
rather than declaring their will, was itself a
branch of idolatry, even when the true pro
phet was the object of it. But the conse
quence of this superstition would be, that
all prophecies, true and false, would be
promiscuously recorded. At first perhaps
while idolatry, in Shem's family at least,
was the crime of individuals only, and the
true worship of God had the support of
the civil magistrate ; (and in the country
whet e Job and Balaam lived, the first pub
hc defection must have taken place in the
interval between Job and Balaam ; for in
Job's time the first and mildest species of
idolatry, the worship of the sun and moon,
Avas an iniquity punished by the judge).
While this state of things continued pro-

105
phecies Avould be added from time to time,
as they were delivered, to those earlier
collections of sacred history, which, if our
conjecture be admitted that they existed,
would probably be in the custody of the
priests. If no collections of history of the anti
quity we have supposed existed, the first
prophecies that were committed to writing
would form a sacred volume, which un
questionably would be committed to the
care of the priests, whose office it would
be to add to it from time to time any later
prophecies that might seem of sufficient
importance to be registered in the archives
of the church ; for this is agreeable to what
we find to have been in later ages the uni
versal practice of all nations.
Among all nations certain books, from the
supposed authenticity of early records and
pretended oracles which they contain, have

106
been Holden in religious veneration ; and
these have ever been preserved in the
temples under the care of the priests, who
from time to time have added such new
matter as to themselves and the civil rulers
might seem of sufficient moment to chal
lenge a place in these sacred registers.
We have an instance of this practice among
God's people; for Avhen Joshua, some
little time before his death, by his last pa^
thetic exhortation to the general assembly
of the tribes of Israel, had brought the
people to a solemn renewal of their vows
of obedience to Jehovah, he Avrote the story
of the whole transaction in the book of the
law of God. He added this narrative to
the sacred volume of the law, which,- by
Moses' express command, was deposited
in the sanctuary on one side of the ark of
the covenant. Now, while the priests and
the magistrates Avere themselves free from

107
any idolatrous taint, the sacred books in
their custody would suffer no wilful cor
ruption. But when the keepers of these
books became themselves infected with
idolatrous superstition, they would not
lose their veneration for writings which
had long been esteemed divine, nor would
they be so hardy as to destroy any part of
the original deposit, or even to make any
considerable alterations in the text, how
ever unfavourable it might be to the new
system in the interests of which they were
now engaged. The contrariety would not
be perceived, nor would such measures be
taken to abolish it. Priestcraft indeed is
politic and daring, but simple superstition
is both timid and indiscreet. Priestcraft
was the growth of later ages, and the con
sequence of a further corruption. For
priestcraft, Avhich is a cunning manage
ment of the superstitions of the people for

108
the temporal advantage of the priesthood,
supposes a priesthood itself free of super
stition, and was never known in the world
till the Gentile priests of sincere idolaters
(if the expression may be allowed) became
infidels. Simple superstition was the first
stage of the corruption among priests, no
less than laics ; and simple superstition
hath no freedom in the pursuit of ends, no
determination in the choice of means, but
is the slave of fear and habit.
Habit therefore previously formed would
for some time preserve a respect for the
records of the ancient church, when the
pure religion was forsaken. And while
this habit operated, fear would prevent any
corruptions of them by wilful mutilation,
changes, or erasures. They would be
liable however to a corruption of another
kind. The priests receiving false oracles
with no less veneration than the true, and

109
zealous for the credit of superstitious rites
of Avorship, would make large additions of
fable to the historic part, and of feigned
predictions of impostors to the prophetic.
Still the original true history and true pro
phecy would be preserved, and, blended
with the false, would, from age to age,
while the corruption lasted, be carefully
laid up under the care of the priests, and
make a part of the treasures of the heathen
temples. Nor is the strange mixture of sense and
absurdity, of rational religion and impious
superstition, which appeanin the lives and
opinions of the wiser heathens, to be traced
with equal probability to any other source.
The purest morals in the ordinary life,
joined with obscene and impious rites of
worship ; a just notion of the moral attri
butes of the Deity, accompanied with a
belief in the subordinate power of impure

110
and cruel daemons; a clear understanding
of the nature of the human mind as an im
material substance and a voluntary agent,
connected Avith a persuasion of the in
fluence of the stars on the affairs of men,
not only in the revolutions and commo
tions of empires, but on the private for
tunes of every individual. These were the
inconsistencies, not only of the popular
creed and of the popular practice, but of
the creed and of the practice of the wisest.
and the best of their philosophers. So
crates himself, pure as his morality and
sublime as his theology were, so far as the
supreme God was their object, worshipped
the gods of his country according to the
established rites.*
Noav, how may we account for these
contradictions in the opinions, and these

* That he died a mart>r t0 the doctrine of the unity of
the divine substance, is a vulgar error.

Ill
inconsistencies in the conduct of wise and
conscientious men? for such, it must be con
fessed, many of the heathen philosophers
were, notwithstanding the abuse Avhich
is sometimes so liberally bestowed upon
them by ignorant declaimers. Whence
was it, that the same men should practise
rational devotion in the closet, and come
abroad to join in a rank superstition ? that
they should form themselves to the general
habits Of sobriety and temperance, and
yet occasionally partake of the indeCent
liberties of a Greek festival? unless it was
that they found the principles of true reli
gion and the rites of an idolatrous worship
established on what appeared to them the
same authority, upon the credit of their
sacred books, in which both were alike in
culcated ; books, to which they could not
but allow some authority, at the same time
that they had no certain means of distin-

112
guishing the authentic part from later and
corrupt additions. Be that as it may,
whether this might be the true source of
that inconsistency of principle and practice
which was so striking in the lives of vir
tuous heathens, and is really a phenome
non in the history of mankind, (which I
mention, only because it affords a collateral
argument for the truth of perhaps the only
supposition by which it may be satisfacto
rily explained ; the existence of such books
as I have described, composed of fable
joined with true history, and of false pro
phecies of great antiquity added to more
ancient predictions of God's true prophets),
will hardly bear a doubt. Since it is the
necessary consequence of principles which
cannot reasonably be disputed, that in
early ages the worshippers of the true God
would use all means to preserve the me
mory of the first revelations, and that the

113
first idolaters retaining a blind veneration
for these ancient collections, when they no
longer knew the real importance of them,
would not be less careful to preserve the
false oracles in which they equally believed.
If such books existed, it cannot bear a
doubt that they made the ground- work of
all the idolatrous worship of later ages, and
together with the corruption, were the
means of perpetuating some disguised and
obscure remembrance of true prophecies.
So wonderfully hath Providence over-ruled
the follies, and the crimes of men, render^
ing them the instruments of his own pur
pose, arid the means of general and lasting
good. It was to the remains of these books
which I have shewn you to have been in
fact the corrupted and mutilated records of
the patriarchal church, that the Greek phi
losophers were probably indebted for those
fragments of the patriarchal creed, from
ii

114
which they 'drew the just notions that we
find scattered in their writings, of the im
mortality of the soul, a future retribution,
the unity of the divine substance, and
even of the trinity of persons. For of this
the sages of the Pythagorean and Platonic
schools had some obscure and distorted
apprehensions. And to no other source
can we refer the expectation that prevailed
in the heathen world at large, of a great
personage to arise in some part of the East
for the general advantage of mankind.
And in this I think you will now agree
Avith me, if you bear in mind the fact that
I set out with proving from historical evi
dence, that certain books Avhich were pre
served as a sacred treasure in the heathen
temples, contained explicit prophecies of
Christ ; Avhich are more likely to have been
ancient prophecies preserved in the man
ner I have described, though not without

115
a mixture of corruption, for which too I
have accounted, than the involuntary effu
sions of the impostors of later ages, occa
sionally uttering true predictions under a
compulsive influence of the divine Spirit :
an opinion which, I am persuaded, would
never have been adopted, had not the se
vere notions that too. long prevailed of an
original reprobation of the greater part of
mankind, made men unwilling to believe
that heathens could be in possession of the
smallest particle of true prophecy, and of
course cut off all inquiry after the means
by which it might be conveyed to them.
Beside that, in all questions of difficulty,
as this must be confessed to be, men are
apt rather to consult their ease', by taking
up Avith the first plausible solution their
invention may devise, than to submit
to the labour of an accurate investigation
Of facts, and a circumspect deduction of

116
consequences. The fact, however, that
-books Avere preserved in the heathen tem
ples Avhich contained true prophecies of
Christ, rests, as I have shewn you, upon
the highest historical evidence. Nor does it
rest alone upon the contents of those books
Avhich were preserved at Rome under the
name of the Oracles of the Cumaean Sibyl ;
the same perhaps might be established by
another work, which was of no less autho
rity in the East, where it passed for the
work of Hystaspes, a Persian Magus of
high antiquity. I forbear however to ex
haust your patience by pushing the inquiry
any farther, and shall now dismiss the sub
ject by cautioning you, not to take alarm
at the names of a Sibyl or a Magus. I
assert, not that any of the fabled Sibyls of
the old mythology uttered true prophecies,
but that some of the prophecies which
were ascribed to Sibyls were true pro-

117
phecies, which the ignorant heathens
ascribed to those fabulous personages,
when the true origin of them Avas forgot
ten. For Hystaspes, I will not too confi
dently assert that he Avas not the compiler
of the writings Avhich were current under
his name ; but I conceive he Avas only the
compiler from originals of high authority.
And a Magus, in the old sense of the word,
had nothing in common with the impostors
that are now called magicians. The Magi
were wise men who applied themselves to
the study of nature and religion. The re
ligion of the Persians in the latest age that
can be given to Hystaspes, if it was at
all tainted with idolatry, was only tainted
in the first degree. And even in much
later times Eastern Magi were the first
worshippers of Mary's holy Child ; Avhich
should remove any prejudice the name of
a Magus might created

FOUR DISCOURSES ON THE
NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE
B\ WHICH THE FACT
OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION
IS ESTABLISHED.

SERMON I.

Acts, x. 40,41.
" Him God raised up the third day, and
" shewed him openly ; not to all the
" people, but to witnesses, chosen before
"of God."
The prop and pillar of the Christian's
hope, (which being once removed the en
tire building would give way), is the great
event which we at this season Commemo-
.rate, the resurrection of our Lord ; inso
much that the evidence of that fact may
properly be considered as the seal of his
pretensions, and of the expectation of his

122
followers. If, notAvithstanding the pure
and holy life Avhich Jesus led, the subli
mity of the doctrine which he taught, and
the natural excellence of the duties Avhich
he enjoined ; if after all the miracles which
he performed, he was at last forsaken of
the God to whose service his life had been
devoted, if his soul at last was left in hell,
and the Holy One of God Avas suffered
like a common man, to become the prey
of worms and putrefaction, then truly is
our preaching vain, and your faith is vain.
It is to no purpose that Ave exhort you to
sacrifice present interest to future hopes ;
to renounce the gratifications of sense for
those promised enjoyments in the presence
of God ; to rely on his atonement for the
pardon of involuntary offences ; and to
trust to a continual supply of the Holy
Spirit, proportioned to the temptations
Avhich the Avorld presents. It is to no pur-

123 .
pose that ye submit to a life of mortifica
tion and constraint, of Avarfare with the
Avorld and of conflict with the sensual ap
petite : It is to no purpose that ye stand
in jeopardy every hour, in painful appre
hension of the Aviles of the great deceiver,
the treachery of your own unguarded
hearts, and the sallies of unconquered
appetites. " If Christ be not risen from
" the dead," all promises that are made to
you in his name are vain, and 'the con
tempt of the present world is folly. If
Christ be not risen .from the dead, the con
sequence must either be, that he Avas an
impostor, and that his whole doctrine was
a fraud ; or if the purity of his life might
still screen him from so foul an imputation,
and the truth of his pretensions be suppos
ed consistent with a failure of his predic
tions in the m©st important article, you
would only have in him a discouraging

124
example of how little estimation in the
sight of God is the utmost height of virtue
to which human nature can attain. If
neither the unspotted sanctity of our Sa
viour's character, nor his intimate union
with the first principle of life itself, could
give him a deliverance from the bonds of
death, what hope for us who have neither
claim nor plea but what is founded on the
value of the Redeemer's sufferings ; no
union with God but what we enjoy as the
disciples and worshippers of his incarnate
Son. But, beloved, " Christ is mm from the
" dead, and become the first fruits of them
" that slept." His resurrection was the
accomplishment both of the ancient pro
phecies and of his own prediction ; a de
claration on the part of God that the great
atonement was accepted; an attestation
to the truth of our Saviour's doctrine and
of his high pretensions ; a confirmation of

125
the hopes of his followers, which renders
it no less unreasonable, as the case stands',
to doubt of the ultimate completion of I
his largest promises, ; than it would have I
been to hope, had his promises been ac
tually found to fail in so principal an in- I
stance. We have reason therefore to be
thankful, that in the first preaching of the I
gospel Providence ordained that a fact of
such importance should be accompanied
with irresistible evidence. Nor can we
better employ the present season, which
the Church devotes to the commemoration
of this great event, than in considering how
complete the evidence of the fact is, not
withstanding the cavils that may be raised
against it, For this reason I have chosen
for my text a passage of holy Avrit, in
which, as it stands at least in our English
Bibles, the evidence is set forth to the least
advantage.

126
* The proof of the fact arises, Ave are told,
from the testimony of those, who, from the
time of our Lord's first entrance on his
ministry, had been his constant attendants.
Their report was, that the sepulchre in
Avhich his body had been laid, was found
empty on the third morning from the day
of his crucifixion, notwithstanding the
precaution which the Jews had taken to
set sentinels to prevent a fraudulent remo
val of the body by his disciples ; — that his
resurrection was declared by angels to
certain of his female attendants, Avho, for
the purpose of embalming his body, made
an early visit to the sepulchre ; — that he
appeared to these women on their return
to the city, and that same evening came
unexpectedly upon the eleven apostles
as they sat at meat ; — that for forty days
after this he appeared from time to time
to the apostles, sometimes partaking of

127
their meals, discoursing with them upon
the propagation of the gospel, and shewing
himself alive by many infallible proofs;
The credibility of evidence in all cases
arises from the number, the information,
and the veracity of the witnesses. The
number of the witnesses in the present
case, if Ave reckon only the eleven apostles,
(and many more might be reckoned), was
far greater than has ever been deemed suf
ficient to establish a fact in a court of
justice in the most intricate and weighty
causes. Their information upon the general
point in question, " that our Lord was
"seen alive after his crucifixion," was the
most complete that can be imagined : —
They could not be mistaken in his person,
who had so long and so constantly attend
ed him. The veracity of a witness is to be
measured, not simply by the probity of his
disposition and his habits of sincerity, but

128
by the motives Avhich circumstances may
present to him to adhere to the truth, or
to deviate from it. No man loves false-*
hood for its OAvn sake : no man therefore
deliberately propagates a lie, but for the
sake of some advantage^ to himself; and the
advantage which a man pursues by false
hood, must always be something in the
present world : His ease and security, or
the advancement of his fortune, Foy no
one who looks forward to a future state,
thinks that his interest there may be served
by falsehood. It always therefore height
tens the credit of a witness, if he is materi
ally a sufferer by the testimony which he
gives, when he could not suffer either in
fortune, ease, or reputation, by a contrary
testimony. The apostles asserted our Lord's
ressurrection to their own loss, and at the
hazard of their lives. To have denied his
resurrection, at least to have disproved it,

129
which the apostles might easily have done
had the thing been a fiction ; to have ren
dered it in any high degree questionable,
which any of the apostles might have done,
had not the guilt of falsehood and prevari
cation seemed to them a greater evil than
any sufferings which the powers of this
world could inflict, had been the certain
road to wealth and honours.
To the charms of wealth and honours the
apostles were not insensible. It was evi
dently the hopes of becoming the first
ministers of the first Monarch upon earth
which at first attached the sons of Zebedee
to their Master's service. The twelve were
thrown into a consternation by our Lord's
reflection on the inconsistency of the love
of riches and the pursuit of heaven ; con
scious, no doubt, that they were not ex
empt from the desire of riches although
not born to the expectation of them ; and

130
Simon Peter discovered a great anxiety to
know what valuable acquisitions he was
to make in our Lord's service, in conside
ration of the old crazy boat and tattered
nets (his all, he called them) which he had
left upon the Galilean lake to follow Christ.
Nor were the apostles regardless of suffer
ing and danger. Their desertion of our
Lord in the garden of Gethsemane shewed
them by no means unconcerned about the
safety of their own persons. Not there
fore to insist on the probity of the apostles,
(which appears in many circumstances of
the ey angelical history), their veracity,
by the circumstances in which they were
placed, is, I maintain, rendered unques
tionable. They persevered in an assevera
tion which exposed them to the highest in
dignities and to the cruellest persecution ;
to the loss of fame, of property, of liberty,
and life, when a denial or recantation

131
might have secured to them the most libe
ral rewards and the most honourable dis
tinctions which the favour of princes and
statesmen could bestow. In every circum
stance, therefore, for the numbers, the in
formation, and the veracity of the witnesses,
no testimony could surpass in its degree
of credibility that which was borne by the
apostles to the fact of our Lord's resurrec
tion. It is a very singular circumstance in
this testimony, that it is such as no length
of time can diminish. It is founded upon
the universal principles of human nature,
upon maxims Avhich are the same in all
ages, and operate with equal strength in
all mankind, under all the varieties of tem
per and habit of constitution. So long as
it shall be contrary to the first principles
of the human mind to delight in falsehood
fpr its own sake ; so long as it shall be

132
true that no man willingly propagates a
lie to his own detriment and to no purpose ;
so long it Avill be certain that the apostles
Avere serious and sincere in the assertion
of our Lord's resurrection. So long as it
shall be absurd to suppose that twelve men
could all be deceived in the person of a
friend with whom they had all lived three
years, so long it will be certain that the
apostles were competent to judge of the
truth and reality of the fact which they
asserted. So long as it shall be in the na
ture of man for his own interest- and ease
to be dearer than that of another to him
self, so long it will be an absurdity to sup
pose, that twelve men should persevere for
years in the joint attestation of a lie, to the
great detriment of every individual of the
conspiracy, and Avithout any joint or sepa
rate advantage, when any of them had it
in his power, by a discovery of the fraud,

* 133
to advance his own fame and fortune by
the sacrifice of nothing more dear to him
than the reputation of the rest; and so
long will it be incredible that the story of
our Lord's resurrection Avas a fiction which
the twelve men (to mention no greater
. number), Avith unparalleled fortitude, and
with equal folly, conspired to support.
So long therefore as the evangelical history
shall be preserved entire ; that is, so long
as the historical books of the New Testa
ment shall be extant in the world, so long
the credibility of the apostles' testimony
will remain whole and unimpaired. As
this circumstance, to have in itself the
principle of permanency, never happened
to human testimony in any other instance,
this preservation of the form and integrity
of the apostolic evidence, amidst all the
storms and wrecks which human science,
like all things human, hath in the course

134
of ages undergone, is, Hke the preservation
of the Jewish nation, something of a stand
ing miracle. It shews, in the original pro
pagation of the gospel, that contrivance
and forecast in the plan, that power in the
execution, which are far beyond the natural
abilities of the human mind, and declares
that the whole work and counsel was of
God. It may seem perhaps that the veracity
of the apostles, in the report of our Lord's
resurrection, is too hastily concluded from
the hardships which they incurred by their
constancy in the asseveration. Wealth
and power are not the only objects to
which men will sacrifice their ease, their
fortunes, and their lives. That personal
consequence which is acquired by bold
and arduous undertakings, and the fame
which follows them in after ages, are
sought by some as the highest good ; and

135
as this ambition is incident to the most
generous and the most active minds, it is
in this pursuit that we see men the most
ready to encounter danger and renounce
enjoyment. The honour of being long re
membered as the founders of a sect might,
with men of a certain turn of mind, be a
motive to endure all the hardships which
the apostles underwent. It must be con
fessed, that men will sacrifice much to
rescue their memories from oblivion, and
that the fame of being the first teachers of
a new philosophy or a new religion, will,
by its singularity, be preferred to any other
by minds of a particular complexion. —
But of all men that ever lived the apostles
were perhaps the least likely to be touched
with this ambition. Their birth was mean,
their occupation laborious, their highest
attainments were probably no more than to
be able to repeat the ten commandments,

136 4
and to have learned by rote some of the
first principles of the Jewish faith. Such
men were likely to be strangers to the pride
of learning, and the ambition of invention
and discovery. At least, that twelve men
of their condition should be found in any^
one country, at any one time, inflamed with
this passion in the degree in which they
must all have been, if it was the principle
which produced their unanimity and firm
ness in the propagation ; of a fiction at all
hazards ; that but one of the tAvelve should
prove false to so strange a combination;
that he in a fit of despair and remorse, the
effect of his treachery, should hang himself,
and dying by his own hand, not die without
evident signs of God's anger pursuing him
in his last moments ; — all this seems a much
greater improbability than the extraordi-(
nary fact which is supported by their tes
timony. It might seem less extravagant

137
to suppose, that the sanguine hopes which
they had conceived, of the advancement of
their own fortunes in the kingdom of that
temporal Messiah which they had expectr
ed in our Lord, together with his promise
of rising on the third day after the death
which he foretold he was to suffer, (to
Avhich promise, however, as well as to the
prediction of his death, the fact seems to
be they had given little attention) : It might,
I say, be less extravagant to suppose, that
this repeated promise of our Lord's, toge
ther with their own hopes of advancement
in his temporal kingdom? might make them
after his death an easy prey to the art of
some new impostor, who might take ad
vantage of some general resemblance in
himself to the person and features of the
blessed Jesus, to personate their crucified
Master. This might seem a supposition
less extravagant than the former, that the;

138
apostles were supported in the asseveration
of a falsehood by an ambition seldom inci
dent to men of low birth and mean attain
ments. But the fact is, that the evangelical
history equally excludes the one and the
other supposition. If there was any thing
of fraud and delusion in the story of our
Lord's resurrection, it is very evident the
apostles must have had a principal share
in the contrivance ; if his resurrection was
a fiction, the body was conveyed away in
the night. s
*
The report of his resurrection was spreatj
early in the next morning by some of his
female disciples ; their tale was presently
confirmed, not indeed in the whole, but in
some collateral and secondary circum
stances, by the testimonies of St Peter and
St John. Some feAV hours after, Peter
vouches that he had seen our Saviour. In
the afternoon two of the disciples bring

139
the news to the apostles, that they had met
with him in their way to a village in the
neighbourhood of Jerusalem ; and they re
late, that they had no sooner recognized
his person than he Suddenly disappeared.
Their tale was hardly finished when Jesus
in person salutes the company. From this
time ten of the eleven apostles are loud in
the assertion of his recovery from the
grave ; arid,- a week after, the eleventh is
cured of his affected incredulity, and joins
in the report of his associates. The apostles,
*
either separately or in company, converse
with him repeatedly. He tells them that all
power is given him in heaven and in earth ;
he formally invests them with a commission
to preach the gospel to the whble world,
and to form a universal church, open to
all nations ; at last he leads them out to
Bethany, and there, in the act of bestow
ing on them a solemn benediction, he was

140
raised from the earth and carried to heaven
in their sight. & Of the four writers who
have transmitted this story, tAVO, Matthew
and John, were apostles. The other two,
Mark and Luke, by the consent of all an
tiquity, wrote under the inspection n of
apostles, — Mark under the direction of St
Peter, Luke of St Paul. The credit there
fore of the apostles is pledged for the par
ticulars of the narrative; and whether we
consider the story in itself, or the Avriters
of the story, it is evident, that if it Avas at
all a fiction the apostles had a principal
share in the fabrication of it. But since
the apostles had no motive to fabricate the
lie, or to persevere in the propagation, of
it, since the force of temptation dreAv the
other way, that is, to induce them to deny
the fact, or desist at least from the avoAval
of il ; that is, since their veracity in this
particular instance at least is unquestion-

141
able, it folloAvs, that if their report was a
fiction, it was not of their invention ; and
yet it has been shewn, that in the invention
they must have had a principal part. A
fiction not coined by them, and of which
they were still the coiners, is surely the
fiction of a fiction, the dream of a distem
pered brain. So that if any human testi
mony ever attained the certainty of demon
stration, it is in this instance of our Lord's
resurrection ; which is established with far
greater certainty by the evidence of the
apostles, than any other fact in the Avhole
compass of history, sacred or profaned
Thus complete and perfect is the testimony
of the twelve apostles to the matter in
question. But a greater testimony is yet1
behind, Let it be supposed that the apostles, to
avoid the infamy of having been them
selves deceived, might conspire to propa-

142
gate the delusion, and either fabricated the
story of our Lord's resurrection with all
its circumstances, or entered into the views
of some new deceiver who had the resolu
tion to personate Jesus after his crucifixion.
Whence then was it that this deceit obtain
ed the testimony of the Holy Spirit ? The
concurrent testimony of the apostles them
selves and the Holy Spirit, form the evi
dence of our Lord's resurrection. " He
" shall testify of me," said our Lord before
he suffered, " and ye also shall bear witr
" ness." That notable miracles were done
by the apostles in the name of the Lord
Jesus was so manifest to all them that
dwelt in Jerusalem, that the bitterest ene
mies of their doctrine could not deny it;
nor was it ever denied by the infidels of
antiquity. On the contrary, their attempt
to account for it by the power of magic, is
a confession of the fact; and while the

143
fact is confessed, the conclusion from the
fact is obvious and inevitable. To refer
the miracles^ which were wrought in con
firmation of a doctrine which went to the
extirpation of every corruption in morals
and in worship, and to the establishment
of a practical religion of good works spring
ing, from an active faith, to the spirit of
delusion, is a subterfuge for infidelity which
that spirit only could suggest.
I have now briefly, indeed, and in a sum
mary way, but more particularly than I
thought to do, laid before you the irrefra
gable and permanent nature of the testi
mony by which the fact of our Lord's re
surrection is supported. It is my inten
tion to discuss a certain ' objection to this
evidence, as the evidence is stated in my
text, which must be allowed to be very
plausible in the first appearance of it. I
mean to shew, that it is the necessary con-

144
sequence of certain circumstances, which
indispensably require that the evidence of
the resurrection should be just Avhat it is ;
insomuch that the proof would be rather
weakened than improved by any attempt to
complete it in the part in which it is sup
posed to be deficient. But this I shall re
serve for future discourses. Meanwhile
you will remember, that the entire evidence
of our Lord's resurrection consists of two
parts ; the testimony of the apostles, and
the testimony of the Spirit. The testi
mony of the apostles is the most complete
that human testimony ever was ; the testi
mony of the Spirit is unexceptionable.
The fact therefore is established. So cer
tain as it is that Christ died, so certain it
is that he is risen. He died for our sins,
he is risen for our justification. And re
member, that the only purpose for which
Christ died and rose again Avas, that we,

145
enlightened by his doctrine, edified by his
example, encouraged with the certain hope
of mercy, animated by the prospect of
eternal glory, " may rise from the death
" of sin unto the life of righteousness."

SERMON II.

Acts x. 40,41. #
" Him God raised up the third day, and
" shewed him openly ; not to all the
" people, but unto witnesses chosen be-
" fore of God."
The return of the season devoted by the
church to the solemn commemoration of
our Lord's glorious resurrection seemed to
admonish Us, that we should direct our
attention to the evidence by which the
merciful providence of God was pleased
to confirm so extraordinary a fact. The
entire evidence consists of two branches :

147
It is in part human, and in part divine.
The attestation of the apostles to the fact
makes the human part of the evidence;
the testimony of the Spirit in the miracu
lous powers exercised by the apostles A^as
divine. The humap part is what is chiefly
to be examined ; for the credibility of that
being once established* the force of the tes
timony of the Spirit is obvious and irre
sistible; For, provided the fact be once
established, that such miracles were per
formed by the apostles, these miracles were
manifestly the " witness of God" which he
bore to his qato Son. The historical evi
dence of the fact lies in the testimony of
the apostles themselves, and in the con
cession of their adversaries. The human
testimony, therefore, the testimony of the
apostles, is to us, who were not eye wit
nesses of the miracles which they per-

148
formed, the ground-work of the whole
evidence. In my last discourse I explained to you,
in a summary way, that the credibility of
this testimony arises from the number, the
information, and the veracity of the wit
nesses. Their number, more than is re-
quired by any law to establish a fact in a
court of justice ; their information infalli
ble, if an infallible knowledge of their
Master's person was the result of an at
tendance upon him for three years ; their
veracity, by the circumstances in which
they were placed, is rendered unquestion
able : So that in this singular instance, if
in any, the evidence of testimony emulates
the certainty of mathematical demonstra*-
tion. I shewed you, that the testimony
Of the apostles to the fact of our Lord's
resurrection is not more extraordinary in
the degree than in the permanency of the

149
credibility which belongs to it. It is not
only so constituted that it must have been
satisfactory and irrefragable at the time
when it was delivered, but so immutable
are the principles on which the credit of it
stands, that by no length of time can it
suffer diminution. What it Avas to the con
temporaries of the apostles, the same it is
to us now in the end of the eighteenth
century ; and so long as the historical
books of the New Testament shall be ex
tant in the world, (and to suppose that a
time shall come when they shall be no
longer extant, were, I think, to mistrust
our Master's gracious promise); so long
as these books then shall be extant, so long
the testimony of the apostles shall preserve
its original credibility.
Another circumstance must be mention
ed, not less extraordinary than the perma
nent nature of the testimony, which may

150
be called the popularity of the evidence*
It is not always the case that a proof built
on true principles and sound in every part,
which, when it is narrowly examined, must
of consequence be satisfactory to men of
knoAvledge and discernment, is of a sort to
be easily and generally understood. For
the most part, perhaps, the proof of fact is
a thing more remote from popular appre
hension than scientific demonstration : For
the connexion of an argument is what
every one naturally and necessarily per
ceives ; but between a fact and the testi
mony of the witnesses Avho affirm it, there
is indeed no physical and necessary con
nexion. A witness may speak rashly,
without a sufficient knowledge of the fact
which he pretends to assert, or he may
speak falsely, contrary to his knowledge.
Thus the folly and the vices of men have
rendered it for the most part very difficult

151
to perceive, hoAV the certainty of a fact
arises from the attestations given to it ; and
to appreciate the credibility of historical
evidence is become a task for the highest
and most improved abilities; requiring a
certain dexterity and acuteness of the mind
in detecting great fallacies* and in reconcil
ing seeming inconsistencies, Avhich is Sel
dom to be acquired in any considerable
degree but by a practical familiarity with
the habits of the world , joined to an accu
rate and philosophical study of mankind.
And accordingly we see, that men of the
slowest apprehension, if they have had but
a sufficient degree of experience to make
them jealous of being imposed upon, are
always the most averse to believe extra
ordinary narrations. But in the case be
fore us, no extraordinary penetration is re
quisite to perceive the infallibility of the
evidence. Every man has experienced the

152
certainty with which he distinguishes the
person and the features of a friend. Every
one knows how dearly he loves himself;
with what reluctance he would sacrifice
his ease and expose his person in any pro
ject, from which he expected no return
of profit or enjoyment. And with this ex
perience and these feelings, every one is
qualified to sit in judgment upon the fact
of our Lord's resurrection, and to decide
upon the evidence. And in this circum
stance, no less than in the permanent
nature of the evidence, we may see, and
we have reason to adore the hand of Pro
vidence. For to what can we ascribe it
but to the over-ruling providence of God,
that while the proof of historic facts is, for
the most part, of the most intricate and
embarrassed nature, the most extraordinary
event which history records should be ac
companied with a proof as universally per-

153
spicuous as the fact itself is interesting?
Every man born into the world is interested
in the event which has opened to us all
the gate of heaven. And the evidence
Avhich accompanies the fact is such, that
every man born into the world is in a ca
pacity to derive conviction from it.
Notwithstanding, however, the solidity
and the general perspicuity of the proof
considered in itself, it may seem to lie open
to a considerable objection. Many objec
tions have indeed been brought against it.
Some have been taken from the varieties
with which the four evangelists relate the
first declaration of the event by the angels
to the Galilean women at the sepulchre.
These I consider as cavils rather than ob^
jections. Every attentive reader of the
gospel knows, that the female followers of
our Lord were numerous. He will easily
discover, that these numerous female fol-

154
lowers had made an appointment' to meet
at the sepulchre at an early hour of the
first day of the week, for the purpose of
embalming the body; a business which the
intervention of the Sabbath had obliged
them to postpone. He will easily imagine
that these women would be lodged in dif
ferent parts of the city, and of consequence
would come to the sepulchre in several
parties and by different paths ; that they
arrived all early, but not exactly at the
same time. He will perceive, that the
detachments of the heavenly squadron, the
angels who attended on this great occasion,
to whom the business was committed of
frightening the Roman sentinels from their
station, of opening the sepulchre for the ad
mission of the women, and of announcing
the resurrection, became visible and invisi
ble at pleasure, and appeared to the women
of the different parties, as they successively

.155
arrived, in different forms, and accosted
them in different words ; and in this way the
first evidences of the fact were multiplied,
which had been single, had the women all
arrived hi a body at the same instant, and
seen all the same vision.* Each evange
list, it may be supposed, has confined him
self to that part of the story which he had
at the first hand from the women who had

* The company which saw what is related by St Matthew,
(of which company Mary Magdalene, although mentioned by
the evangelist, was not I think included), went by a path
which led to the front of the sepulchre, and came within sight
of It early enough to be witnesses to the descent of the angel,
the flight of the guard, and the removal of the stone. While
these things passed, Mary Magdalene with her party were
coining by another path which led round the back part of
the sepnlchre, and came not within sight of the entrance of
the sepulchre till the first party had left ft. They therefore
no sooner came within sight than they saw that the stone was
removed, and Mary Magdalene immediately ran back to
inform Petei- and John of her suspicions. The rest of the
women of that party proceeded to the sepulchre, entered it,

156
first fallen in his way, and each woman re
lated what she herself had seen and heard,
which was different from what had been
seen and heard by the women of another
company. These few simple observations,
as they reconcile the narratives of the seve
ral evangelists with each other, and the
particulars of each narrative Avith the gene
ral fact in which they all consent, dissipate

and were assured of our Lord's resurrection by the angel,
whom- they found within the tomb in the manner related by
St Mark. Presently after these women had left the sepulchre,
Peter and John arrived, followed by Mary Magdalene ; for
she hastened back to the sepulchre when she apprised the
apostles of her fears. After Mary Magdalene, waiting at the
sepulchre, had seen our Lord, and was gone away to carry
his message to the apostles, Luke's women arrive, and are in
formed by two angels within the tomb. In the interval be
tween our Lord's appearance at the sepulchre to Mary Mag
dalene, and the arrival of Luke's party, he appeared to St
Matthew's party, who were yet upon the way back to the
city. For that the appearance to Mary Magdalene was the
first, St Mark testifies.

157
any objections that may be raised from the
varieties of their story. The objection
which I purpose to consider, in the first
face of it is far more Specious. -It seems
to arise spontaneously from the state of the
evidence which is given in the text, and
thus throwing itself in the way of every one
who reads the Bible, or Avho hears it read,
it seems to be a stumbling-block in the
way of the believer, which it is our duty, if
God shall give us the ability, to remove.
" Him hath God raised up, and shewed
" him openly; not to all the people, but to
" Avitnesses chosen before of God."
The selection of witnesses carries, it may
be said, no very fair appearance. Jesus
Avas seen alive after his crucifixion, but he
Avas seen, it should appear, by those only
who had been his early associates, who had
been employed by him to travel over the
country as his heralds, proclaiming him as

158
the long expected Messiah, who by the event
of his public and ignominious end were
involved in general contempt and ridicule.
Why was he not shewn to all the people,
if the identity of his person Avould stand
the test of a public exhibition ? Was it
not more likejy, that the Jewish people
would be sooner convinced by his own
public appearance than by the report of
those who had long been considered as the
first victims of his imposture, or the sworn
accomplices of his fraud ? The most in
credulous of his enemies had declared they
would believe in hirn, if they might but see
him descend from the cross. Would they
not much more have believed had they
seen him on the third day arisen from the
grave? Were the Jewish people kindly
treated when they were punished for their
infidelity, of which they might have been
cured, had the eAddence been afforded

' 159
them which * hi so extraordinary a case
they might reasonably demand ? In such
a case, the choice of witnesses brings a
suspicion on their whole testimony ; a sur
mise that they were chosen, not of God,
but of themselves and their/, confederates.
Perhaps they preferred persecution, with
the fame attendingi it, to security accom
panied with contempt ; and they pretended
a Selection of themselves to be witnesses
on the part of heaven, to give the better
colour to the lie which they were deter
mined at ajl hazards to maintain, -v?^
This imperfection, as it may seem, in the
proof of our Lord's resurrection, was not
overlooked by the infidels of antiquity.
It was urged in one of the first written at
tacks upon Christianity ; and Origen, whose
elaborate confutation of that able adver
sary is still extant, allows that the objec
tion is not contemptible. The fact which

160
Creates the whole difficulty (that JeSus was
not seen in public after his interment),
seems indeed confessed in the text, and
confirmed in general by the evangelical
history. Nevertheless, this fact is not to
be admitted without some limitation. We
read in St Paul's first epistle to the Corin
thians, of a certain appearance of our
Lord to more than five hundred brethren
at once. So large a company is not likely
to have been, assembled in a house, nor is
it likely that they met by accident ; the as
sembly must have been called together for
some express purpose ; and what purpose
so likely as to receive the satisfaction
which Avas absolutely afforded them, of be
holding Avith their own eyes their crucified
Lord restored to life ? Nor is it to be sup
posed, that an object of the human size
and form could be seen distinctly by five
hundred persons all at once, but by day-

161
light. Here then is one appearance of our
Lord, in which no circumstance of privacy
could be pretended. It was by day-light;
in the open air. Notice had been given
of the time and place of the appearance.
The notice which dreAv together so nume
rous an assembly, at a distance from the
capital, or any populous town, must have
been very public ; and from a sight to
which five hundred brethren were admit
ted, it is not easy to conceive that any who
Avere not brethren, if they were pleased to
repair to the appointed place, at the ap
pointed time, could be excluded. Indeed,
if this appearance of the five hundred re
corded by St Paul, was the same with
that on the Galilean hill recorded by St
Matthew, which is the opinion of the most
learned critics and divines, and is highly
probable, because the appearance on the
Galilean hill was an appearance at a set
L

162
time and place, as that to the five hundred
must have been ; — if these, I say, were
one and the same appearance, it is certain
that our Lord Avas seen upon this occasion
by some who were not brethren. For St
Matthew relates, that when Christ was
seen and worshipped on the Galilean hill,
" some doubted." Not some of the ele
ven who are mentioned in the preceding
verse, for the eleven doubted not. Tho
mas was the last of the eleven to believe,
yet Thomas ceased to doubt upon our
Lord's second appearance in the evening
assembly, on the Sunday se'enight after
his resurrection. Nor is it likely that
doubters should be included by St Paul
in the number of those whom he dignified
with the appellation of brethren. This ap
pearance therefore in Galilee was public,
not to the disciples only, but to a promiscu
ous multitude of disciples and of doubtful

163
unbelieving Jews. The assertion therefore
of my text, that Christ, raised from the
dead, was not shewn openly to all the peo
ple, is to be understood Avith some limita
tion. Once he certainly was shewn openly,
perhaps not oftener than once ; and if once
or twice more, still his appearance Avas not
public compared with the unreserved man
ner of his conversation with the world
during his triennial ministry. He resorted
not daily to the temple ; he preached to
no multitudes in the fields ; he performed
no public miracles ; he held no public dis
putations ; he Avas present at no wed
dings ; he ate not with publicans and sin
ners. They were only his chosen witnesses
to Avhom ocular proof was repeatedly given
that he was indeed alive again. In a ge
neral Avay of speaking, it is to be confess
ed that he was not shewn openly to all the
people. But Avhat if the assertion were

164
true in the utmost sense in which the ad
versary would wish it to be accepted?
What if it were granted, that the pretend
ed appearances after the interment were
not public in any single instance ? It will
follow that our Lord, if he was really alive
again, was not seen by many : What of
that? Is it a necessary consequence that
he was not seen by some ? Is the no evi
dence of the many who saw him not, andj
have therefore nothing positive to say
upon the question, to overpower the. expli
cit assertions of those who depose to the
fact of repeated appearances ? It will
hardly be pretended that the bare fact, that
he was not seen by the many, amounts in
itself to a proof, that the story of his resur-*
rection was a fiction.
But it is supposed, I apprehend, that
had the resurrection been real, public ap
pearances would have heightened the proof

165
of it ; and that, on the other hand, if the
thing was a fiction, the concealment of the
person who was made to pass for Jesus
among the credulous disciples, was a means
of preventing a detection of the fraud. And
it is thought unreasonable to suppose, that
the belief of so extraordinary a thing should
be required of the world on the part of
heaven, without the highest proof that could
be given, or without a fair submission of
the evidence to the strictest scrutiny. The
objection, therefore, is this, that the proof
Avhich is produced of the fact is less than
might have been procured had the thing
averred been a reality, and that, such as it
is, it Avas not submitted at the time to the
examination of the public. In my next
discourse I shall endeavour to shew you,
that the objection is of a sort to deserve
less attention than you may at first ima
gine, even if what it presumes Avere true,

166
that the frequency of public appearances
would have been a means of heightening
the evidence of fact on the one hand, or
of detecting an imposition on the other.
Secondly, I shall shew you that both these
presumptions are indeed erroneous : That
an open conversation with the world would
neither have added to the proof of a real
resurrection, nor contributed to the detec
tion of a counterfeit. And after all I shall
shew you, that frequent public exhibitions
of the person after the resurrection, if they
could have heightened the proof of the fact,
had been on other accounts improper. In
somuch, that what the story might have
gained in credit by an addition of testi
mony, it would have lost in another way,
by an impropriety and inconsistency which
might have been charged upon the conduct
of our Lord.

167
Meanwhile, if it should occur to you to
Avonder that Jesus, after his resurrection,
should not be shewn openly, but to chosen
witnesses, remember, that by the funda
mental maxims of the doctrine which Jesus
preached, it is the privilege of the " pure
" in heart," and of them only, to see God.
In some sense, indeed, God is seen by all
mankind, and by the whole rational crea
tion. God is seen by all men in his Avorks,
in the fabric and the motions of the ma
terial world. " The heavens declare the
" glory of God, and the firmament sheweth
" his handy-work." The very Devils see
him in his judgments : Wise men see him
in his providential government of human
actions, in the rise and fall of states and
empires : The pious believer sees him with
the eye of faith, in the miraculous support
and preservation of his church from the
attacks of open enemies, the treachery of

168
false friends, and the intemperate or the
luke warm zeal of its weaker members . He
sees him with the intellectual eye, discern
ing, in part at least, his glorious perfections;
and they, and only they, who thus see him
noAV, shall at last literally see the majesty
of the Godhead in the person of their glo
rified Lord. By the lost world Jesus shall
be seen no more, except as he hath been
seen by the unbelieving Jews, in judgment,
when he comes to execute vengeance on
them who know not God and obey not
the gospel ; but ir any man keep his say
ing, he shall be admitted to his presence,
" that where his Saviour is, there he may
" be also."

SERMON III.

'Mt;
Acts, x. 40,41.

" Him God raised up the third day, and
" shewed him openly ; not to all the
" people, but unto witnesses chosen be-
" fore of God."
In my first discourse upon this text I en
deavoured to explain to you the credibility
of the testimony which was borne byMhe
apostles to the fact of our Lord's resurrec
tion; its original credibility at the time
when it Avas delivered ; its undiminished
credibility in all succeeding times ; and the
universality of the proof, not only as it

170
must subsist to all ages, but as it is accom
modated to all capacities.
In a second discourse, I stated some of
the principal objections which our adver
saries have raised to elude the force of this
invincible proof. I shewed you the futi
lity of those which are taken from a pre
tended disagreement of the evangelists, in
their relation of the manner in which the
discovery was made to the Avomen who
visited the sepulchre on the Sunday morn
ing. I shewed you, that the whole force
of these objections rests on a very impro
bable supposition, which has not the least
countenance in the circumstances of the
stor;/, that the numerous female followers
of our Lord went all in one body to the
sepulchre, that they all arrived at least in
the same instant of time, and all saw the
same vision. Admit only that the women
went in different parties, that they arrived

171
some a little earlier some a little later, and
that the attending angels shewed them
selves to the different companies in diffe
rent forms, and accosted them in different
words, and you will find no disagreement
of the four evangelists, no differences in
their relation which should affect the credit
of their testimony to the general fact.
Their several narrations harmonize as dif
ferent parts of one' story, each relating the
particular part which he could best attest.
I engaged in a more particular discus
sion of an objection, in the first face of it
far more specious, founded on the acknow
ledged concealment of the person of Jesus
after his resurrection. Forty days elapsed
before he took leave of this sublunary
world by an ascension to heaven in the
sight of his apostles. In the interval he
was seen repeatedly by them and by other
disciples ; but it seems to be acknowledged

172
in the text, that he was not shewn openly
to all the people.
I shewed you, that the assertion that he
Avas not publicly seen is to be understood
with certain limitations. That once at
least our Lord was shewn openly to as
many as thought proper to repair to an
appointed place. The circumstances of
this appearance will not admit of the sup
position that any were excluded from the
sight, unless the body in which he was
seen by the five hundred was, upon this
occasion, visible only to the brethren. A
supposition in itself not absurd, perhaps
not improbable, were it not set aside by
St MattheAv's testimony, that he was ac
tually seen by some at least who were not
brethren, by some who doubted while the'
eleven Avorshipped. He was therefore,
upon this occasion, visible to all Avithout
distinction.

173
Of any other public exhibition of the
person no trace is to be found in the his
tory of the forty days. And if Ave might
suppose it to have been once or twice re
peated,, still his appearance was not public
compared with what it had been during his
triennial ministry. Nothing like an open
familiar conversation with the world can
be pretended or indeed supposed. It must
be confessed, Avith a certain limitation, that
he was not shewn openly to all the people,
To the rulers of the people he was never
shewn at all. His single public appearance
was not in the metropolis or its vicinity,
but in a remote corner of Galilee, where
his friends and followers were the most
numerous, and his enemies in the least
credit. Insomuch, that even in this in
stance there Avas something of a selection
of spectators ; and the candid believer, by
the evidence of the gospel history itself, is

174
reduced to a concession, (a concession,
however, in which he will find cause to
glory), that whatever reality there may be
in the story of his resurrection, Jesus ever
after it shunned the public eye.
It is imagined by the adversary, that had
the resurrection been real, public appear
ances would have heightened the proof of
it ; and that, on the other hand, if the thing
was a fiction, concealment of the person
was a means of preventing a ready detec
tion of the fraud. And he thinks it unrea
sonable to suppose, that the belief of a
thing so extraordinary should be required
of the Avorld on the part of heaven, A\rithout
the highest proof that could be given, or
without a fair submission of the evidence,
such as it might be, to the severest scru
tiny. The sum of the objection then is
this, that the proof which is produced of
the fact is less than might have been given

175
had the thing averred been a reality, and
that, such as it is, it was not fairly sub
mitted at the time to the examination of
the pubhc.
I come now to shew you, as I engaged
to do, first, that the objection is really
of a sort to deserve little attention, even if
what it presumes were true, that the fre
quency of public appearances would have
heightened proof on the one hand, or faci
litated the detection of fraud on the other.
Secondly, That the objection is errone
ous in both these suppositions.
And when I shall have thus overturned
the objection, I shall shew you, that with
out any regard to what the proof of the
fact might have gained by the frequency
of public appearances, or what it might
lose by the- want of them, other considera
tions rendered it improper and indecent,
that our Lord arisen from the grave should

176
renew his open conversation with the
world in general. So that, be the force of
the objection what it may, if there be any
truth in our Saviour's high pretensions,
any thing of reality in the evangelical
scheme of redemption, his resurrection, be
it ever so much a fact, must in the nature
of the thing be obnoxious to this objection.
That Christ should rise from the dead, and
that risen he should converse openly and
familiarly with the world in the manner in
which he did before his passion, these two
things are incompatible ; so that if both
appeared as facts upon the sacred records,
the proof which it is supposed might have
accrued to the resurrection from the fre
quency of public appearances, would have
been overpowered by the general incohe
rence of the story.
First, I say, the objection, were the as
sumptions true on which it rests, would be

177
of little weight. The reality of a fact is
always to be measured by the positive
proof on one side or the other, which is
really extant in the world. If no proof is
found but what is in itself imperfect, as
when the witnesses seem too few, or their
reports contradictory, the fact is question
able. But if any proof exists in itself un
exceptionable, the thing is not to be ques
tioned for the mere Avant of other proofs,
Avhich men living at a distance from the
time and the scene of the business, may
imagine it might have had. Men are very
apt to lose sight of this principle. They
are apt to amuse themselves Avith a display
of their sagacity, (for such they think it),
in alleging the proof that might have been,
Avhen their penetration would be better
shewn in a fair examination of what is ac
tually extant. They are not aware, that in
thus opposing proof Avhich is not, to that
M

178
which is, they are really weighing a sha
dow against a substance; and that the
highest argument of a weak mind, (an im
putation Avhich they most dread), is not to
feel the force of present evidence. Thus
it is, that " professing themselves wise they
" become fools." This is an ansAver which
will apply on every 'occasion, when men
resist the conviction of a proof in which
they can discover no fallacy or imperfec
tion, upon a pretence that some collateral
proof of the same fact, which would have
been more satisfactory, is wanting. An
objection of this sort is always frivolous,
even when it is true that the required proof,
had it been extant, would have been more
satisfactory than any that is found, provid
ed what is found be in itself a just proof,
true in its principles, coherent in its parts,
and fair in its conclusions.

179
But, secondly, I affirm, that in the par
ticular case before us, the required proof
Avhich is supposed to be wanting, had it
been given, would have .been no addition
to the evidence of the thing in question.
If our Lord really rose from the grave, as
we believe he did, the.evidence of the fact
would not have been heightened by repeat
ed public appearances to the Jewish peo
ple. It is evident, that to have seen him
ever so often after his resurrection, would
have qualified no one to be a witness of
the fact, who had not such a previous
knowledge of his person as might enable
him to perceive and attest its identity.
Perhaps we niay insist upon another cir
cumstance, that every one pretending to
avouch the resurrection, should have been
an ^eye-witness of the crucifixion. For the
fact to be attested is, that this same man
" was dead and is aliA« again." But in

180
the innumerable multitude that was assem
bled to behold the tragic scene on Calvary,
how many may be supposed to have had
such a view of the divine Sufferer as might
bring them acquainted with his person?
The far greater part not only saw him at a
distance, but hi the tumult which would
attend the dismal spectacle, they would
never get a steady view : They would now
and then catch a momentary glimpse of a
part only of his person, which they would
lose again before any distinct impression
could be made. Those who saw the whole
transaction from the most advantageous
stations would see the cheeks pale, the fea
tures convulsed, the Avhole body distorted
with the torture of the punishment. Those
who saw the very beginning of this horrid
business, who saw Jesus before he was fas
tened to the cross, would see him exhaust
ed with the mental agony in the garden,

181
worn down Avith the fatigue of his long ex
amination, and with the pain of those pre
paratory inflictions, which, by the Roman
law, by the terms of which he suffered,
were the constant prelude to a capital exe
cution, and in this instance had not been
spared. Nor would the spectators be suf
ficiently composed, agitated as they all
Avould be, some Avith the horror of the
scene, some with pity of, his sufferings,
some with joy for the success of their in
fernal machinations, under one or another
of these Various emotions, none Avould be
sufficiently composed to observe and re
mark the peculiarities of his person. In
somuch, that of those who saw him now
for the first time, few, perhaps, had he ever
been seen by them again, would have
known him from either of the malefactors
Avho were made the companions of his
agonies.

182
It may seem, perhaps, that at the time
of our Saviour's crucifixion his person must
have been generally well known among the
Jews, when, for a longer time than three
years, he had sustained the pubhc cha-<
raeter of a teacher and a prophet. He had
been much resorted to for the fame of his
doctrine and for the benefit of his miracles,
as well as for an opinion which, to the
moment of his apprehension, prevailed
among the common people, that he would
prove the lottg expected deliverer of the
nation. It may be presumed, therefore,
that many Avho saw him expire on the
cross were previously well acquainted with
his person. But if it be considered, that
during the whole period Of his ministry
he was constantly in motion, travelling
from place to place ; that the multitudes
that followed' him whenever he appeared
in public Avere for the most part numerous,

183
to the amount of several thousands, it will
seem improbable that the number of those
could be great, who had the good fortune
to get a distinct sight of him oftener than
once in the whole course of his triennial
ministry. Of consequence, it is improbable
that many beside his constant followers
knew him well enough to identify his per
son. They who had not this distinct know
ledge of his person, however frequent the
public appearances had been after the re
surrection, were not qualified to be wit
nesses of the fact even to themselves. The
conviction that the person whom they now
saw alive was the same person who had
been put to death, they must have owed
to the attestations of those who knew him
better than they. And the few who might
be the best acquainted with his person still
were not qualified to be witnesses of his re
surrection to the world, unless their know-

184
ledge of the person was itself a fact of public
notoriety. For to establish the credit of a
witness, it is not sufficient that he be really
competent to judge for himself of the rea
lity of the fact which he takes it upon him
to attest, but his competency in the matter
must be a thing generally known and un
derstood. Now this was the case of the
apostles. It is a notorious fact, that they
could not be incompetent in the knowledge
of their Master's person presented to their
senses. But the same thing, although it
might have been equally true, could not
be equally manifest of any who had prer
tended to join in their attestation, from a
knoAvledge of his person acquired in acci
dental interviews, of Avhich the reality was
known only to themselves. Their testi
mony Avould rather have discredited the
cause than heightened the evidence ; as in
all cases, the depositions of witnesses susr

185
pected of incompetency have no effect but
to create a prejudice against the fact which
they assert, and to diminish the force of
better testimony, which, left to itself, would
have produced conviction.
It appears, therefore, upon a nice dis
cussion of the question, that the evidence
which we actually have of our Lord's re
surrection, in the testimony of the chosen
witnesses, is indeed the greatest of which
the fact is naturally capable. No other
could have been transmitted as original
testimony to posterity, no other could have
been satisfactory to the public at the time,.
The demand of frequent public exhibitions
of the person is the demand of folly ; not
perceiving the distinction between a just
proof, by which a fact may be established,
and those vague reports Avhich every one
adopts and no one owns, which serve only
to multiply doubt and to propagate uncer-

186
tainty. Pubhc appearances could have
added nothing to the testimony of the cho
sen witnesses. By destroying the precision
of the story, they might have diminished
the efficacy of its proper evidence. The
conviction to be derived from them would
have been appropriated to the few who
had a distinct knowledge of our Saviour's
person, and the whole benefit of their con
viction would have been confined to them
selves. If it should seem that such persons
had a right to the evidence of their own
senses, because they were qualified to re
ceive it, the principle perhaps might be
doubted, for the testimony of the apostles
was of no less force with respect to these
persons than to the rest of the world ; and
I cannot see that any man in any case has
a right to more than proof. Yet it may
be presumed, that a provision was merci
fully made for their particular conviction,

187
by the appearance in Galilee. It is re
markable at least, that the province where
our Saviour's person must have been the
most generally known, was chosen for the
scene of the single public exhibition. The
testimony of sense was, by this choice of
the place of appearance, made as general
as a single appearance could make it ; and
more perhaps was not to be done for the
satisfaction of individuals, without hazard
ing the credit of the pubhc evidence.
For the same reasons for which frequent
public appearances Would not have height
ened the evidence of the fact, if the resur
rection was real, they would have contri
buted nothing to the detection of the fal
lacy, had it been a fiction. Those to
whom the living person had been unknown
were as ill qualified to deny as to affirm
the identity; and any whose knowledge
of the person had been so acquired as not

188
to be notorious to the public, however
they might decide upon the fact for them
selves, their testimony on either side was
insignificant. At the same time, an ap
pearance in Galilee, the province where
the family of the real Jesus lived, Avhere
the whole of his own life had been passed
before the commencement of his ministry,
and the greater part of it afterwards ; where
he performed his first miracles, and deli
vered his first discourses; a public ap
pearance in this part of the country, at a
set time and place, Avas a step on which
an impostor hardly would have risked his
credit. Thus it appears, that the objection to
the fact of our Lord's resurrection, arising
from the concealment of his person, spe
cious as at first it seems, rests upon no
solid foundation. The fact being of such
a nature, that however unreserved the ex-

189
fiibition of the person had been, its evi
dence must still have rested on the testi
mony of chosen witnesses, which, notwith
standing any frequency of public appear
ances, would still have been the single
proof. For to the perfection of this proof
taken by itself, the certainty of the fact
must still have been proportional. Had
it been imperfect, public appearances
could not have supplied the deficiency.
Perfect as it is, its validity is nothing
weakened by the mere absence of insig--
nificant attestations.
There were, perhaps, among the enemies
of our Lord some Avho Avere well acquaint
ed Avith his person. Such were many of
the Pharisees with whom he disputed, the
chief priests before whom he was exa
mined, Herod and his courtiers, Pontius
Pilate,' and the great officers of his train.

190
It may be imagined that many, if not all
of these, would have been converted by re
peated pubhc appearances after the resur
rection. Their attestations would cer
tainly have carried considerable weight;
and infidelity may dream, that it is a sus
picious circumstance that the method was
not taken which might have procured so
important an addition to the evidence,
and to any but an impostor must have
ensured success. The truth is, that all
this evidence would have consisted in the
testimony of particular persons ; and any
testimony of particular persons which the
frequency of public appearances might
have procured, would still have been the
evidence of chosen witnesses. To ask,
therefore, why the evidence of the Pha
risees or the priests, of Herod or the Ro
man governor, was not secured, is only

- 191
to ask, why the chosen witnesses were
not other than they are ? or why the num
ber Avas not multiplied ? It might be suf
ficient to reply, that the number was more
than sufficient, that the persons chosen,
for their competency and veracity, were
unexceptionable. But a special reason
will appear, why the rulers of the Jews
were not admitted to the honour of bear
ing witness to him whom they had cru
cified and slain, when I come to allege
the particular considerations which, with
out regard to what the proof of the fact
might have gained by the frequency of
public appearances, or what it may have
lost by the want of them, rendered it im
proper that our Lord, arisen from the
grave, should resume his open conver
sation with the world. Improper in
that degree, that in the same sense in

192
which we say of God that he cannot be
unjust or cannot lie, it may be said of
Christ that he could not, after his resur
rection, be openly conspicuous to all the
people.

SERMON IV.

Acts, x. 40,41.
" Him God raised up the third day, and
" shewed him openly ; not to all the
" people, but unto witnesses chosen be-
" fore of God."
We are still upon the propriety of a selec
tion of witnesses to attest the fact of our
Lord's resurrection. In my last discourse
I discussed the objection which may be
brought against the fact, from the acknow
ledged concealment of the person. The
whole force of the objection rests on an
assumption, that^the frequency of- public
N

194
appearances, on the one hand, would have
heightened the evidence of the fact if it
Avere real ; on the other, would have been
a means of detecting the fallacy had it
been a fiction. I have shewn you that
the objection is of a sort to deserve little
attention, were the assumption true : Be
cause the reality of a fact is always to be
measured by the positive proof, on one
side or the other, which is really extant in
the world ; which is never to be set aside
by the mere absence of another proof,
Avhich men, living at a distance from the
time and scene of the transaction, may
imagine might have been had. For this
indeed, were to make the caprice of men
the standard of historic truth.
I shewed you farther, that the assump
tion on which the objection is built is false
in both its branches : That the frequency
of public appearances would have been no

195
means of heightening evidence or of detect
ing fallacy. It is essentially necessary to
the proof of any fact by testimony, that
the witnesses should be chosen. Witnesses
must be chosen who are competent to the
knowledge of the thing which they attest,
and whose competency is itself a fact of
public notoriety. In the case in question
witnesses were to be chosen who had a
distinct knowledge of the person of Jesus
before his passion, and of whom it was
publicly known that they had this previous
knowledge of the person. I shewed you
that this was likely to be the case of very
few among the Jews, except our Lord's
constant followers, and certain leading per
sons in the faction of his persecutors. A
particular reason why the latter were ex
cluded from the honour of bearing their
testimony to him whom they had perse
cuted and slain, -will presently appear;

196
for I come now to the last part of the task
in which I am engaged, which is to shew
you, that, without any regard to Avhat the
proof of the fact might have gamed by the
frequency of public appearances, or what
it might lose by the want of them, other
considerations rendered it improper and in
decent that our Lord, arisen from the
grave, should renew his open conversation
with the unbelieving world ; — improper in
that degree, that in the same sense in which
we say of God that he cannot be unjust
and cannot lie, it may be said of Christ
that he could not, after his resurrection,
be universally and ordinarily conspicuous
to all the people. And this indeed is the
only answer which Origen thought it worth
Aviiile to give to the objection brought
against the fact of the resurrection from
the concealment of our Saviour's person.
He is at no pains to sheAV, what he want-

197
ed not acuteness to discern, or eloquence
to persuade, that the evidence of the fact
could not have been heightened by any
frequency of public appearances ; but, as
if he would allow the advantage resulting
from them to the proof to be any thing
the adversary might be pleased to suppose,
he rests his reply on the sole consideration
of an unseemliness in the thing required,
constituting what may be called a moral
impossibility. To understand this, it will be necessary
to consider the manner of our Lord's ap
pearance to his disciples after his resurrec
tion. We shall find, even in his interviews
with them, no trace of that easy familiarity
of intercourse which obtained between
them before his death, when he condescend
ed to lead his whole life in their society,
as a man living with his equals. Had the
history of his previous life been as myste-

198
riously obscure, as that of the forty days
between the resurrection and ascension is
in many circumstances ; had his previous
habits been as studiously reserved, proof
would indeed have been wanting that he
had ever sustained the condition of a mor
tal man, and the error of the Docetas, who
taught that he was a man in appearance
only, might have been universal. But the
truth is, that the scheme of redemption re
quired, that before the passion the form of
the servant should be predominant in the
Redeemer's appearance ; that after his re
surrection the form of God should be con
spicuous. Accordingly, throughout his
previous life his manners were grave but
unreserved, serious rather than severe; his
deportment highly dignified, but unassum
ing ; and the whole course and method of
his life was unconcealed, and it appears to
have been the life of a man in every cir-

199
cumstance. He had a home at Caper
naum, where he lived with his mother and
her family, except when the stated festivals
called him to Jerusalem, or the business of
his ministry induced him to visit other
towns. When he travelled about the coun
try to propagate his doctrine and to heal
those that were vexed of the Devil, the
evangelical history, for the most part, in
forms us whence he set out and whither
he went ; and with as much accuracy as
can be expected in such compendious com
mentaries as the gospels are, Ave are in
formed of the time of his departure from
one place and of his arrival at another.
We can, for the most part, trace the road
by which he passed ; we can mark the
towns and villages Avhich he touched in
his way ; and in many instances we are
told, that in such a place he was entertain
ed at the house Of such a person. Upon

200
these journies he Avas attended by the
twelve and other disciples, and except:
upon one or two very extraordinary occa
sions, he travelled along with them, and
just as they did. Upon some occasions
his own body was the subject of his mira
culous power. In its natural constitution,
however, it was plainly the mortal body of
a man. It suffered from inanition, from
fatigue and external violence, and needed
the refection of food, of rest, and sleep-:
It was confined by its gravity to the earth's
surface : It was translated from one place
to another by a successive motion through
the intermediate space : And if in a few
instances, and upon some very extraorchV
nary occasions, it was exempted from the
action of mechanical powers, and divested
of its physical qualities and relations,— as
AA'hen, to escape from the malice of a
rabble, he made himself invisible, and

201
when he walked upon a stormy sea ; these
were the only instances of our Lord's mira
culous powers in his own person, which
no more indicate a preternatural constitu
tion of his body, than his other miracles
indicate a preternatural constitution of the
bodies on which they were performed.
That he walked upon the sea is no more a
sign of an uncommon constitution of his
own body, which sunk not, than of the
water which sustained it. In every cir
cumstance therefore of. his life, before his
passion, the blessed Jesus appears a mortal
man. An example of virtue he indeed
exhibited, which never other man attained.
But the example was of human virtues ;
of piety, of temperance, of benevolence,
and of whatever in the life of man is laud
able. Before his resurrection it was in
power only, and in knowledge, that he
shewed himself divine.

202
After his resurrection the change is won
derful. Insomuch that, except in certain
actions which Avere done to give his disci
ples proof that they saw in him their cru
cified Lord arisen from the grave, he seems
to have done nothing like a common man.
Whatever was natural to him before, seems
now miraculous ; what was before miracu
lous is now natural.
The change first appears in the manner
of his resurrection. It is evident that he
had left the sepulchre before it was open*
ed. An angel, indeed, was sent to roll
away the stone, but this was not to let the
Lord out, but to let the women in. For
no sooner was the thing done than the
angel said to the women, " He is not here,
" he is risen ; come and see the place
" where the Lord lay." St Matthew's
women saw the whole process of the open
ing of the sepulchre, for they were there

203
before it was opened. They felt the earth
quake ;— they saAv the angel of the Lord
descend from heaven ; — they saw him roll
away the vast stone which stopped the
mouth of the sepulchre, and, with a threat
ening aspect, seat himself upon it; — they
saw the sentinels fall down petrified with
fear. Had the Lord been waiting within
the tomb for the removal of the stone,
whence was it that they saw him not walk
out ? If he had a body to be confined,
he had a body to be actually visible; and
it is not to be supposed, that with or with
out the heavenly guard which now attend
ed him* he was in fear of being taken by
the sentinels and put a second time to
death, that for his security he should ren
der himself invisible. But he was already
gone. The huge stone, which would have
barred their entrance, had been no bar to
his escape.

204
With the manner of leaving the sepul
chre, his appearances, first to the women,
afterwards to the apostles, correspond.
They were for the most part unforeseen
and sudden ; nor less suddenly he disap
peared. He was found in company with
out coming in, he Avas missing again with
out going away. He joined, indeed, the
two disciples on the road to Emmaus, like
a traveller passing the same way ; and he
walked along with them, in order to pre^-
pare them by bis conversation for the evi
dence which they were to receive of his
resurrection. But no sooner Avas the dis
covery made, by a peculiar attitude which
he assumed in the breaking of bread, than
he disappeared instantaneously. The same
evening he presented himself to the apostles,
at a late hour, assembled in a room with
the doors shut ; that is, fast made up with
bolts and bars, for fear of a visit from the

205
unbelieving Jews, their persecutors. To
him who had departed from the unopened
sepulchre it was no difficulty to enter the
barricadoed chamber. From all these cir-
•
cumstances it is evident that his body had
undergone its change. The corruptible
had put on incorruption. It was no longer
the body of a man in its mortal state ; it
was the body of a man raised to life and
immortality, which was now mysteriously
united to divinity. And as it was by
miracle that, before his death, he walked
upon the sea, it was now by miracle that,
for the conviction of the apostles, he shew
ed in his person > the marks of his suffer
ings. Consonant Avith this exaltation of his
human nature was the change in the man
ner of his life. He Avas repeatedly seen by
the disciples after his resurrection ; and so
seen as to give them many infallible proofs

206
that he was the very Jesus who had suf
fered on the cross. But he lived not Avith
them in familiar habits. His time, for the
forty days preceding his ascension, Avas
not spent in their society. They knew
not his goings out and comings in. Where
he lodged on the evening of his resurrec
tion, after his visit to the apostles, Ave read
not; nor were the apostles themselves
better informed than we. To Thomas,
who was absent when our Lord appeared,
the report of the rest was in these words,
" We have seen the Lord." That was all
they had to say : They had seen him, and
he Avas gone. They pretend not to direct
Thomas to any place where he might find
him and enjoy the same sight. None of
them could now say to Thomas as Natha
niel once said to Philip, " Come and see."
On the journey from Jerusalem to Galilee
he Avas not their companion, — he went

207
before them. How he went we are not
informed. The way is not described : The
places are not mentioned through Avhich
he passed : Their names are not recorded
who accompanied him on the road, or who
entertained him. The disciples were com
manded to repair to Galilee. They were
not told to seek him at Capernaum, his
former residence, or to inquire for him at
his mother's house. They were to assem
ble at a certain hill. Thither they repair
ed ; they met him there ; and there they
worshipped him. The place of his abode
for any single night of all the forty days is
nowhere mentioned ; nor, from the most
diligent examination of the story, is any
place of his abode on earth to be assigned.
The conclusion seems to be, that on earth
he had no longer any local residence, his
body requiring neither food for its subsis
tence, nor a lodging for its shelter and re-

208
pose: He was become the inhabitant of
another region, from which he came occa
sionally to converse with his disciples. His
visible ascension, at the expiration of the
forty days, being not the necessary means
of his removal, but a token to the disciples
that this was his last visit ; an evidence to
them that the heavens had now received
him, and that he was to be seen no more
on earth with the corporeal eye till the res
titution of all things.
I might have been less particular in the
detail of circumstances which lead to this
conclusion, had it appeared in our English
Bibles, as it does in the original, that St
Peter roundly asserts the very same thing
in the words of my text, " Him God rais-
" ed up the third day," says St Peter, " and
" shewed him openly," as our English
Bibles have it, " not to all the people."
But here is a manifest contradiction. Not

209
to ;ibe shewn to all the people is not to be
shewn openly. To be shewn openly there
fore not to all the people, is to be shewn
and not to be shewn at "the same time.
The literal meaning of the Greek Avords is
this,* " Him God raised up the third day,
" and gave him to be visible." " Not openly
visible ; no such thing is said ; it is the very-
thing denied: But " he gave him to be
" visible." Jesus Was no longer in a state
to be naturally visible to any man. His
body Avas indeed risen, but it was become
that body which St Paul describes in the fif
teenth chapter of his first epistle to the Co
rinthians, which having no sympathy with
the gross bodies of this earthly sphere, nor
any place among them, must be indiscer-

* Et dedit eum manifestum fieri. — Vulg. Et dedit eum
ut conspicietur aperte.— Tremell ex Syr. Fecitque ut is
cohspicuus fieret. — Beza. O

210
nible to the human organs, till they shall
have undergone a similar refinement. ; The
divinity united to the blessed Jesus pro
duced in a short space that change: in
him, which in other men, according to the
mysterious physics of St Paul, must be the
effect of a slbAver process. The divinity
united to him having raised him on the
third day from the grave, in a body incor
ruptible and invisible, gave him to become
visible occasionally, not to all the people,
but to his chosen witnesses ; to those Avho
were chosen to the privilege of beholding
God face to face in the person of his Son,
of attesting the fact of Christ's resurrection,
and of publishing through the Avorld the
glad tidings of the general redemption.
Thus, you see, every appearance of our
Lord to the apostles after his resurrection,
Avas in truth an appearance of the great
God, the Maker of heaven and earth, to

211
mortal man. The conferences, though
frequent, seem to have been short, and
upon each occasion mixed with'. that con
descension which was necessary to give
the disciples (sensible evidence of the reality
of the resurrection. We discover much
of a reserved dignity in his deportment; a
tone x)f high authority prevails in his lan
guage, and something profoundly myste
rious in his actions. His familiar conver
sation with the Avorld before his passion
was a principal branch of his humiliation ;
and his humiliation was an essential part
of those sufferings by which the guilt of
man was expiated. But the atonement
being once made, the form of a servant
was to be removed ; Christ was to reassume
his glory, and to be seen no more but as
the only begotten of the Father.
Would you now ask, why Jesus after
his resurrection was not rendered visible

212
to all the people? Will you, not rather
stand aghast at the impiety of the question ?
Ask, why God is of purer eyes than to
behold iniquity ? Ask, Avhy he who con
versed with Abraham as a man talketh
with his friend t conversed not but in judg
ment with the vile inhabitants of Sodoni ?
Ask, why Moses only of all the congrega^
tion was allowed to enter the thick dark
ness where God Avas ? The appearances
to the apostles after the resurrection, Avere
of the same kind Avith the appearances
in the earliest ages to the patriarchs: and
the chosen rulers of the Jewish nation.
He who, to converse Avith Abraham, veiled
his glory in a traveller's disguise ; he Avho
appeared to Joshua under the walls of
Jericho in the habit of a warrior, with his
sAvord ready drawn for the attack ; he who
was seen by Gideon and Manoah in the

213
human form ; the same shewed himself at
the sepulchre to Mary Magdalen in the
form of a gardener, to the two disciples on
the road to Emmaus as a wayfaring man,
to the eleven separately, or altogether, in
various forms at various times ; upon every
occasion, in the manner of his appearance
manifesting his exaltation, and yet finding
means to afford them satisfactory proofs
that he was the same Jesus Avho had died.
It is true, that in those earlier ages the
ever blessed Son of God appeared in a
body assumed, it is probable, for each par
ticular occasion, whereas his appearances
after the resurrection Avere in that perma
nent body to which, after Mary's concep
tion, he was inseparably united. But this
circumstance may hardly be supposed to
make any material difference. The dif
ference, Avhatever it may seem, Avas over-

214
looked by St Paul,* who, in the 15th chap
ter of his first epistle to the Corinthians,
enumerating the principal appearances after
the resurrection, closes the catalogue with
the appearance to himself which wrought
his conversion. The mention of this, as
the last in order, shews that he considered
it as of the same kind with all the rest.
But this appearance to St Paul Avas an

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

215
appearance of the Lord in glory. It was
no less an appearance of God, in the form
of God, than that to Moses at the bush.
St Paul saAv nothing but that tremendous
hght, Avhich struck himself and his compa
nions to the ground. He saw not the man
Jesus, he saw only the light — the token of
the divine presence ; and from the midst
of that light he heard the voice of Jesus
speaking. Yet this appearance, in Avhich
the human form of Jesus Avas not rendered
visible, is mentioned as the last instance
in which Jesus was seen after his resurrec
tion ; which proves, that all the rest in
which the human form was seen, were con
sidered by the apostles as, equally with
this, manifestations of the Deity.
This circumstance, the confessed divi
nity of the person who appeared, was the
obstacle to public appearances. The JeAV-
ish nation, in the rejection of our Lord,

216
had filled the measure of its guilt. They
were cast off. God no longer held his
visible residence among them ; and hence
forward he was to be found only in the
Christian church. Our Saviour had ac
cordingly publicly Avarned the Jews, when
he was led to crucifixion, that " they should
" see him no more" till they should be pre
pared to acknowledge his authority. He
had privately told the apostles that " they
" should see him again, but the world should
" see him no more." In conformity with
these predictions of his own, and with
the whole plan of revelation, his single
public appearance after the resurrection
was not at Jerusalem, but in a remote
corner of Galilee, which Avas in some
degree a selection of spectators. It is
remarkable, that Ananias tells St Paul
that God had chosen him to see the Just
One. In short, from every circumstance

217
of the story of the forty days Avhich inter
vened between our Lord's resurrection and
his visible ascension, from the assertion of
my text, and from the intimations of other
passages of Scripture, it is evident, that
our Lord, arisen from the grave, could not
be shewn openly to all the peOple: He
could not resume his familiar conversation
Avith the world; because they who may
be admitted to this immediate communion
Avith the Deity, must be persons distin
guished by their godly dispositions from
the mass of the corrupt world, and chosen
by God himself to so high a privilege.
Hence we are taught the universal im
portance of the precept so often inculcated
upon the Israelites under the law, and
adopted by St Peter as a general maxim
of the Christian's duty, if Be ye holy, for
" I, Jehovah, your God, am holy." If the
Avant of holiness excluded the mass of the

218
Jewish people from that sight of God, in
the person of our Lord, which was granted
to the apostles and other believers here on
earth, and from the benefits which that
sight might have conveyed to them, — the
testimony of their own senses to the truth
of our Lord's pretensions, and the cer
tainty thence arising of the salvation of the
faithful ; much more shall the want ¦ of holi
ness finally exclude from the sight of God
in heaven, and from that fulness of joy
Avhich shall be the portion of those who
shall be admitted to his presence. To see
the Godhead in the person of our Lord, is
proposed to the Christian's hope as the
highest privilege of the saints that shall
overcome. The physical capacity of this
vision, is placed by St John in a resem
blance and sympathy that the glorified
bodies of the saints shall bear to the body
of our Lord in glory. " We knoAv," says

219
St John, " that when he shall appear Ave
" shall be like him ;" we must be like him,
" because we shall see him as he is." St
Paul speaks with no less confidence of the
resemblance we shall bear to him. " Our
" Lord Jesus Christ," he says, " shall change
" our vile body, that it may be fashioned
" like unto his glorious body, according to
" the workings whereby he is able to sub-
" due all things to himself." Or, as the
passage might more properly be rendered,
" Who shall cause the fashion of our body
" of humiliation to be made like unto his
" body of glory, according to the energy
" of his poAver of subduing all things to
" himself." This transformation of the
bodies of the faithful, by the power of our
Lord, requires a previous transformation
of the mind to a resemblance of him, by
faith in his word, by reliance on his atone
ment, by conformity to his precepts, and

220
imitation of his example. For he that
hath this hope in him, Of being transformed
into the likeness of his Lord, of seeing him
as he noAv is, and of standing for ever in
his presence ; he that hath this hope " puri-
" fieth himself as he is pure."

FIVE SERMONS.

SERMON I.

Psalms, xcvii. 7-
". Worship him all ye gods "
It should be a rule with every one who
would read the Holy Scriptures with ad
vantage and improvement, to compare
every text, Avhich may seem either impor
tant for the doctrine it may contain, or
remarkable for the turn of the expression,
with the parallel passages in other parts of
holy writ; that is, with the passages in
which the subject-matter is the same, the
sense equivalent, or the turn of the expres-

2.24
sion similar. These parallel passages are
easily found by the marginal references in
the Bibles of the larger form. It Avere to
be Avished, indeed, that no > Bibles Avere
printed without the margin. It is to be
hoped that the objection obviously arising
from the necessary augmentation in the
price of the book,. may sometime or other
be removed by the charity of religious as
sociations. The Society for the Promotion
of Christian Knowledge could not more
effectually serve the purpose of their pious
institution, than by applying some part of
their funds to the printing of Bibles, in
other respects in an ordinary way, for the
use of the poor, but Avith a full margin.
Meanwhile those who can afford to pur
chase the larger Bibles should be diligent
in the improvement of the means with
Avhich Providence has furnished them.
Particular diligence should be used in

225
comparing the parallel texts of the Old and
the New Testaments. When you read the
Old Testament, if you perceive by the
margin that any particular passage is cited
in the New, turn to that passage of the
New to which the margin refers, that you
may see in what manner, in what sense,
and to what purpose, the words of the
more ancient are alleged by the later
writer, who, in many instances, may be
supposed to have received clearer light
upon the same subject : On the other hand,
when in the New Testament you meet
with citations from the Old, always con
sult the original writer, that you may have
the satisfaction of judging for yourselves,
how far the passage alleged makes for the
argument which it is brought to support.
In doing this you will imitate the example
of the godly Jews of Bercea, which is re
corded with approbation in the Acts of

226
the Apostles, who, when Paul and Silas
reasoned Avith them out of the Scriptures
of the Old Testament, clearly setting be
fore them the prophecies concerning the
Messiah, and the accomplishment of those
prophecies in Jesus, whom they preached,
" searched the Scriptures daily, whether
" these things were so." These Beroean
Jews compared the parallel passages of
St Paul's oral doctrine with the Avritten
Scriptures of the Old Testament. And we
now should with equal diligence compare
the written doctrine of St Paul, and of his
fellow-labourers, Avith the writings of the
Old Testaments It is incredible to any
one, who has not in some degree made the
experiment, what a proficiency may be
made in that knowledge which maketh
wise unto salvation, by studying the Scrip
tures in this manner, without any other
commentary or exposition than what the

227
different parts of the sacred volume mutu
ally furnish ' for each other. I will not
scruple to assert, that the most illiterate
Christian, if he can but read his English
Bible, and will take the pains to read it in
this manner, will not only attain all that
practical knowledge which is necessary to
his salvation, but, by God's blessing, he
will become learned in every thing relating
to his religion in such degree, that he will
not be liable to be misled, either by the
refined arguments or by the false assertions
of those who endeavour to ingraft their
OAvn opinion upon the oracles of God.
He may safely be ignorant of all philoso
phy except what is to be learned from the
sacred books ; which indeed contain the
highest philosophy adapted to the lowest
apprehensions. He may safely remain
ignorant of all history, except so much of
the history of the first ages of the Jewish

228
and of the Christian church as is to be
gathered from the canonical books of the
Old and New Testament. Let him study
these in the manner I recommend, and
let him never cease to pray for the illumi
nation of that Spirit by which these books
were dictated ; and the whole compass of
abstruse philosophy and recondite history
shall furnish no argument with which the
perverse will of man shall be able to shake
this learned Christian's faith. The Bible
thus studied will indeed prove to be what
we Protestants esteem it, a certain and suf
ficient rule of faith and practice, a helmet
of salvation, Avhich alone may quench the
fiery darts of the wicked. My text, I trust,
will prove a striking instance of the truth
of these assertions.
If, in argument with any of the false
teachers of the present day, I were to
allege this text of the Psalmist in proof of

229
our Lord's divinity, my antagonist would
probably reply, that our Lord is not once
mentioned in the psalm ; that the subject
of the psalm is an assertion of the proper
divinity of Jehovah, the God of the Israel
ites, as distinguished from the imaginary
deities Avhich the heathen worshipped.
This psalm therefore, which proposes Jeho
vah, the God of the Israelites, as the sole
object of worship to men and angels, is al
leged, he would say, to no purpose, in justi
fication of worship paid to another person.
And to any one who might know nothing
more of the trae sense of this passage than
may appear in the words taken by them
selves, my adversary might seem to have
the better in the argument. I think I
should seem to myself to stand confuted,
if I knew no more of the meaning of my
text, or rather of the inspired song of which
it makes a part, than an inattentive reader

230
might collect from a hasty view of its
general purport. But observe the refe
rences in the margin of the Bible, and you
will find that a parallel passage occurs in
the epistle to the Hebrews, in the first
chapter at the sixth verse. Turn to this
passage of the epistle, and there you -will
find this text of the Psalmist cited by St
Paul to this very purpose, namely, to prove
that adoration is due from the blessed
angels of God to the only begotten Son ;
for thus he reasons : " When he bringeth
" in the First Begotten into the world he
" saith, And let all the angels of God Avor-
" ship him." The only passage in the Old
Testament, as the Hebrew text now stands,
is this seventh verse of the ninety-seventh
psalm. The words of the Psalmist indeed
are these, " Worship him all ye gods."
The apostle, that he might clearly exclude
a plurality of gods, while he asserts the

231
Godhead of the Son, thinks proper to ex
plain the Psalmist's Avords, by substituting
" all the angels of God" for " all the gods."
But it is very evident- that the First Be
gotten was, in the apostle's judgment, the
object of worship propounded by the
Psalmist, otherwise these words of the
Psalmist, in which he calls upon the angels
to Avorship Jehovah, Avere alleged to no
purpose in proof of the Son's natural pre
eminence above the angels. For either
the Son is the object of Avorship intended
by the Psalmist, or the* Son himself is to
bear a part in the worship so universally
enjoined. But further, the collation of the Psalmist's
text with the apostle's citation, will not only
enable the unlearned Christian to discover
a sense of the Psalmist's w;ords not very
obvious in the words themselves, but it
will also give him certain, although sum*.

232
mary information, upon a point of eccle*
siastical antiquity of great importance, up
on which the illiterate cannot be informed
by any other means. In the late attempts
to revive the Ebionsean heresy, much stress
has been laid by the leaders of the impious
confederacy, upon the opinions of the pri
mitive church of Jerusalem. They tell
you with great confidence, that the Re
deemer was never worshipped, nor his di
vinity acknowledged, by the members of
that church. The assertion has indeed no
other foundation but the ignorance of those
who make it, who confound a miserable
sect, which separated from the church of
Jerusalem, with the church itself. But
how is the truth of the fact to be proved
to the illiterate Christian, unread in the
history of the primitive ages ? who yet must
feel some alarm and disquietude when he
is told, that he: has been catechized in a

233
faith never held by those first and best
Christians, : the converts of the apostles,
among whom James, the brother of our
Lord, was bishop. Holy writ, if he is
diligent in consulting it, will relieve his
scruples and remove his doubts, not only
upon the principal matter in dispute, but
upon this particular historical question.
It must be obvious to every understanding,
that when any passage of the Old Testa
ment is cited by writers of the New, in con
firmation of any particular doctrine, withi-
out any disquisition concerning the sense
of the citation, or any attempt to fix a par
ticular sense upon it which may suit the
Avriter's purpose ; it must be evident, I say,
that a text thus cited, without any solici
tude to settle its true meaning, was gene
rally understood at the time by those to
Avhom the argument was addressed. For
a text alleged in any sense not generally

234
admitted, could be no proof; to those who
should be inclined to call in question the
sense imposed. The Hebrews, therefore,
to Avhom the apostle produces this text of
the Psalmist in proof of the high dig
nity of the Redeemer's nature, agreed with
the apostle concerning the sense of the
Psalmist's Avords. They well understood
that the Psalmist calls upon the angels to
Avorship the only begotten Son. And who
Avere these Hebrews ? The very name im
ports that they were Jews by birth : They
Avere indeed the Jewish; converts settled in
Palestine. And since the epistle was Avrit-
ten during St Paul's first imprisonment at
Rome, Avhich might easily be- made to ap
pear from the epistle itself, and St Paul's
first imprisonment at Rome ended about
the thirtieth year after our Lord's ascension,
they Avere no other than the first race of
JeAvish Christians, who agreed withfSt Paul

235
that the Redeemer is the object of worship
propounded to the angels by the Psalmist.
And thus by this plain remark, and by
the authority of the sacred books, the un
learned Christian may settle his OAvn mind,
and put to shame and silence the disturbers
of his faith, . 4*
But this is not the Avhole of the informa
tion which the unlearned Christian may
draw from the Psalmist's text compared
with the apostle's citation. The apostle
cites the Psalmist's Avords as spoken when
the First Begotten Avas introduced into the
Avorld, that is to say, to mankind ; for the
Avord in the original literally signifies not
the universe, for in that world the First
Begotten ever was from its first formation,
but this globe which is inhabited, by men,
to which the First Begotten Avas in these
later ages introduced by the promulgation
of the gospel. Noav, since the occasion

236
upon which these words were spoken was
an introduction of the First Begotten into
the world, if these words are nowhere to
be found but in the ninety-seventh * psalm,
it follows that this ninety-seventh psalm is
that introduction of the First Begotten into
the world of which the apostle speaks. —
Hence the unlearned Christian may derive
this useful information, that the true sub
ject of the ninety-seventh psalm, as it was
understood by St Paul and by the church
of Jerusalem, to which this epistle is ad
dressed, within thirty years after our Lord's
ascension, when that church must have
been entirely composed of our Lord's own
followers and the immediate converts of
the apostles, was not, as it might seem to
any one not deeply versed in the prophetic
language, an assertion of God's natural do
minion over the universe, but a prophecy
of the establishment of the Messiah's king-

237
dom by the preaching of the gospel, and
the general conversion of idolaters to the
service of the true God. The First Be
gotten is the Lordj or rather the Jehovah,
for that is the word used in the original,
Avhose kingdom is proclaimed as an occa*
sion of joy and thanksgiving to the whole
Avorld. And that this was no arbitrary interpre
tation of the psalm, imagined by enthu
siasts, or invented by impostors, to make
the sacred oracles accord with their own
conceits or with their own designs, will
appear by a closer inspection of the psalm
itself, which cannot be consistently ex
pounded of any other king or of any other
kingdom. That Jehovah's kingdom in some sense
or other is the subject of this divine song,
cannot be made a question? for thus it
opens — " Jehovah reigneth." The psalm

238
therefore must be understood either of
God's natural kingdom over his Avhole
creation ; of his particular kingdom over
the Jews, his chosen people ; or of that
kingdom which is called in the New Tes
tament the kingdom of heaven, the king
dom of God, or the kingdom of Christ.
For of any other kingdom of God besides
these three, man never heard or read. God's
peculiar kingdom over the Jews cannot
be the subject of this psalm, because all
nations of the earth are called upon to re
joice in the acknoAvledgment of this great
truth, " Jehovah reigneth, let the earth
" rejoice ; let the many isles be glad there-
" of." The many isles are the various
regions of the habitable world: For the
word isles in the Old Testament denotes a
region circumscribed by certain boundaries,
though not surrounded by the sea ; as ap
pears by the use of it in the tenth chapter

239
of Genesis at the fifth verse, where the
sacred writer says of the sons of Japheth,
mentioned in the three preceding verses,
"By these Averethe isles of the Gentiles
"divided," though all the sons of Japheth
had their settlements either in the Asiatic
or the European continent. The same
consideration, that Jehovah's kingdom is
mentioned as a subject of general thanks
giving, proAres that God's universal domi
nion over his Avhole creation, cannot be the
kingdom in , the prophet's mind ; For in
this kingdom a greatmajority of the ancient
Avorld,. the idolaters, were considered, not
as subjects Avho might rejoice in the glory
of their Monarch, but as rebels who had
every thing to fear from his just resent
ment. Gpd's government of the Avorld
was to them no cause of joy, otherwise than
as the erection of Christ's kingdom, which
Avas to be the means of their deliverance,

240
was a part of the general scheme of Provi
dence. It remains therefore, that Christ's
kingdom is that kingdom of Jehovah which
the inspired poet celebrates as the occasion
of universal joy. And this will further
appear by the sequel of the song. After
four verses, in which the transcendent
glory, the irresistible power, and inscru
table perfection of the Lord, who to the
joy of all nations reigneth, are painted
in poetical images, taken partly from the
awful scene on Sinai which accompanied
the delivery of the law, partly from other
manifestations of God's presence with the
Israelites in their journey through the wil
derness ; he proceeds, in the sixth verse,
" The heavens declare his righteousness,
" and all the people see his glory." We
read in the nineteenth psalm, that " the
" heavens declare the glory of God." And
the glory of God, the poAver and the intel-

241
ligence of the Creator, is indeed Visibly de
clared in the fabric of the material world.
But I cannot see how the structure of the
heavens can demonstrate the righteousness
of God. Wisdom and power may be dis
played in the contrivance of an inanimate
machine ; but righteousness cannot appear
in the arrangement of the parts, or the di
rection of the motions of lifeless matter.
The heavens therefore, in their external
structure, cannot declare their Maker's
righteousness : But the heavens, in another
sense, attested the righteousness of Christ,
when the voice from heaven declared him
the beloved Son of God, in whom the
Father was well pleased; and when the
preternatural darkness, of the sun at the
crucifixion, and other agonies of nature,
drew that confession from the heathen cen
turion who attended the execution, that
the suffering Jesus Avas the Son of God ;
Q

242
" And all the people see his glory." It is
much to be regretted that our translators,
over studious of the purity of their English
style, have, through the whole Bible, ne
glected a distinction constantly observed
in the original, between people in the singu
lar and peoples in the plural. The word
people, in the singular, for the most part
denotes God's chosen people, the Jewish
nation, unless any other particular people
happen to be the subject of discourse.
But peoples, in the plural, is put for all the
other races of mankind, as distinct from
the chosen people. The word here is in
the plural form, " And all the peoples see
¦*' his glory." But when, or in what sense did
any of the peoples, the idolatrous nations,
see the glory of God ? Literally they never
saw his glory. The effulgence of the Shechi-
nah never was displayed to them, except
when it blazed forth upon the Egyptians

243
to strike them with a panic ; or when the
towering pillar of flame, which marshalled
the Israelites in the wilderness, was seen
by the inhabitants of Palestine and Arabia
as a threatening meteor in their sky. In
tellectually no idolaters ever saw the glory
of God, for they never acknowledged his
power and Godhead : had they thus seen
his glory, they had ceased to be idolaters.
But all the peoples, upon the preaching of
the gospel, saw the glory of Christ. They
saw it literally in the miracles performed
by his apostles; they saw it spiritually
when they perceived the purity of his pre
cepts, when they acknowledged the truth
of his doctrine, when they embraced the
profession of Christianity, and owned
Christ for their Saviour and their God.
The Psalmist goes on, " Confounded be
" all they that serve graven images, that
"boast themselves of idols : Worship him

244
" all ye gods." In the original this verse
has not at all the form of a malediction,
which it has acquired in our translation
from the use of the strong word confounded.
" Let them be ashamed:" This is the utmost
that the Psalmist says. The prayer that
they may be ashamed of their folly and
repent of it, is very different from an im
precation of confusion. But in truth the
Psalmist rather seems to speak propheti
cally, without any thing either of prayer
or imprecation — " they shall be ashamed."
Having seen the glory of Christ they shall
be ashamed of the idols, which in the times
of their ignorance they worshipped. In
the eighth and ninth verses, looking for
ward to the times when the fulness of the
Gentiles shall be come in, and the remnant
of Israel shall turn to the Lord, he des
cribes the daughters of Judah as rejoicing
at the news of the mercy extended to the

245
Gentile world, and exulting in the univer
sal extent of Jehovah's kingdom, and the
general acknowledgment of his Godhead.
In the tenth verse, having the sufferings,
as it should seem, in view, which the first
preachers Avere destined to endure, he ex
horts those who love Jehovah to adhere at
all hazards to their duty, in the assurance
that their powerful Lord, on whom they
have fixed their love, " preserveth the
" souls of his saints, and delivereth them
1 ' out of the hand- of the wicked." " Light,"
he adds, " is sown for the righteous ;" or,
to render the words more strictly, " Light
" is shed over the Just One, and gladness
"upon the upright of heart." The just
and the just one are two different words ;
the one a collective noun expressing a
multitude, the other expressive of a single
person. These two words are unfortu
nately confounded in our English Bibles.

246
The Just One is, I think, in many pas-u
sages of the Psalms, of which I take this
to be one, an appellation which exclusively
belongs to Christ in his human character.*
Light or splendour is an easy image for
a condition- -of prosperity and grandeur.
" Light is shed over the Just One, the
" man Christ Jesus, who is now exalted
" at the right hand of God." And light,
if I mistake not, is without any metaphor
literally shed over hinu By virtue of his
union to the Second Person of the God
head, this Just One, the man Christ, is
now so taken into glory that he is become
an inhabitant of the Shechinah, dwelling
bodily in the centre of that insufferable

* Psalm xxxiv. 19. " Great are the troubles of the Just
"One, but Jehovah delivereth him out of all." And again,
21. "God shall slay the ungodly, and they that hate the
" Just One shall be made desolate."

247
light ; in which situation he sheAved him
self before he suffered to the three apostles
on the Mount, to animate their faith, and
after his ascension to the unconverted
Saul, to check his persecuting zeal upon
his journey to Damascus. Thus light,
the light of God's own glory is shed over
the Just One, over the glorified person of
our Lord. And this light thus shed on
him is a source of gladness to all the up
right in heart. " Rejoice in Jehovah there
fore, ye righteous, rejoice in him by whom
ye are yourselves united to the first prin
ciple of goodness, being, power, happiness,
and glory ; and give thanks at the remem
brance of his holiness."
Thus by a brief, but I hope a perspi
cuous exposition of this whole psalm, I
have shewn you, that every part of it
easily applies to the subject of the Mes
siah's ascension to his kingdom, and that

248
many parts of it cannot be expounded; of
any other kingdom of God. This psalm
is indeed one of five psalms, from the
ninety-sixth to the hundredth inclusive,
which, if they are not all parts of one
entire poem, at least' all relate to the same
subject, " the introduction of the First
" Begotten to the world." Christ is the
Jehovan whose dominion is proclaimed;
Avho is declared to be the God whom
men and angels are bound to serve and
Avorship. Such is he who for our de
liverance condescended to assume our
nature, and upon this day was born of
a pure virgin. For thus it seems the
matter stood in the counsels of Eternal
Wisdom : It behoved him " to be made
" like unto his brethren, that he might be
" a merciful and faithful High Priest in
" things pertaining unto God, to make
" reconciliation for the sins of the people."

SERMON II.

Romans, iv. 25.
" Who was delivered for our offences, and
" was raised again for our justification."
The manner in which the apostle con
nects in these remarkable words, both the
sufferings of Christ with the sins of men,
and the resurrection of Christ with the ab
solution of the sinners,, deserves a deep
consideration, and leads, if I mistake not,
to conclusions of the highest moment in
speculation and in practice. The apostle
not only speaks of the sins of men as the
cause or# occasion of our Lord's death,

250
but he speaks of the justification of men
as equally the cause or occasion of his re
surrection. For the elucidation and im-
provement of this doctrine, I shall treat
the subject in the following order : —
First, Taking the first clause of my text
by itself, I shall inquire in what sense it
may seem to be implied in these expres
sions, " delivered for our offences/' that
the sins of mankind were the cause or oc
casion of Christ's sufferings ?
I shall in the next place shew, that if
aught of ambiguity may seem to adhere
to these expressions, it is entirely removed
by the similarity of connexion which is
alleged in the two clauses taken jointly,
between the sins of men with the death
of Christ on the one hand, and the justifi
cation of men with the resurrection of
Christ on the other. I shall shew you,
that the similarity of these connexions, —

251
men sinned therefore Christ died, men are
justified therefore' Christ was raised again,
— necessarily leads to the particular notiojt
of Christ's death as an expiatory sacrifice
in the most literal meaning of which the
words are capable; that it leads to this
notion of Christ's death in particular, be
cause it excludes all other notions of it.
And, lastly, I shall point out the impor
tant consequences that follow from this
great article of our faith, — that Christ's
blood was spilt for the expiation of the
sins of the penitent.
Now, for the sense in which it may
seem to be asserted that the sins of men
were the cause or the occasion of our
Lord's bitter sufferings and ignominious
death; since his death, with all the cir
cumstances of pain and ignominy which
attended it, was brought about by the

252
malice of his enemies, it may seem that in
this sense the sins of men were literally the
causes of his sufferings. But the apostle
says, that he was delivered for " our
" offences." The expression " our of-
" fences" is general, and cannot be ex
pounded of the particular sins of our Lord's
personal enemies ; of the malice of the
Pharisees, Avho procured his death ; of the
perfidy of Judas who betrayed him ; of
the injustice of Pilate, who against his
own conscience, and in defiance of the
divine warnings condemned him ; of the
cruelty of the Jewish populace, who de-
rided him in his agonies. Of any or of all
of these particular sins of the persons con
cerned, as contrivers, as directors, as instru
ments, or as gratified spectators in the
horrid business of bis death, the apostle^s
expression " our offences" is too general
to be understood. It can only be ex-

253
pounded of the sins of all us men, or at
least of all us Christians.
Nor is it agreeable to the usual cast of
the Scripture language, that the persons
immediately concerned in procuring and
in executing the unjust sentence upon our
Lord, should be spoken of as the original
agents or causes in the dreadful business
of his death. They were only instruments
in the hand of a higher cause. They were "
the instruments which Providence employ-*
ed to bring about the counsels of his own
wisdom. This is implied in the words of
my text, " He was delivered for our of-
" fences." These words, " he was deli-
" vered," refer to a purpose and design of
God's over-ruling providence, by which
the Redeemer was delivered over to the
pains which he endured. The unbelieving
Jews, the false traitor, the unrighteous
judge, the unfeeling executioner, the in-

254
suiting rabble, were but the instruments of
that purpose, which in some way or other
had a general respect to " our offences ;"
that is, to the offences of all us men, or in
the most limited sense in which the words
can be taken, of all that portion of man
kind which should hereafter be brought to
the knowledge and worship of that God
who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead,
' and by faith in the crucified Redeemer
should become admissible to a share in
those benefits, whatever they may be, in
order to which the sufferings of the Son of
God were ordained.
If the single service'which Christ render
ed to mankind was in the character of a
teacher of religion ; if men were not other
wise to be reclaimed from their vices, than
by the discovery which our Lord hath
made of the different conditions of the
righteous and the wicked in a future life ;

-:255
if by this discovery every man once
brought to a belief of the doctrine might
be reclaimed in such degree as to merit by
his future conduct, not only a free pardon
of his past offences, but a share of those
good things which " God hath prepared
•" for them that love him ;" if our Lord's
doctrine might of-itself in this way be a
remedy for the sins of men, and his suffer
ings and death were necessary only for the
confirmation of his doctrine, — the sins of
men might, figuratively and indirectly, be
said to be the occasion of his death ; his
doctrine being the means of their reforma-
ti§n, and his death the means of establish
ing his doctrine. But if the case really be,
that nothing future can undo the past;
that the guilt of past crimes cannot be
done away by future innocence ; if after
we have done all that is commanded us,
we are still to say, " we are unprofitable

256
" servants ;" if we have incurred guijt
without so much as the ability of meriting
reward ; if all that is commanded us, which
were it done would not amount to merit,
be still more than ever is performed; if
the utmost height of human virtue consists
in a perpetual conflict with appetites Avhich
are never totally subdued, in an endeavour
after a perfection which never is attained ;
if the case be, that " if we say," that is,
if we who believe, if we Christians say,
" that we have no sin, Ave deceive our-
" selves, and the truth is not in us ;" if
nevertheless the faith and veracity of God
himself is pledged, " if we confess our
" sins, to forgive us our sins and to cleanse
" us from all unrighteousness;" if it be the
" blood of Christ which cleanseth us from
" sin;" if the benefit of his death be in
some degree extended to those who are
unacquainted with his doctrine, who by

257
consequence are, not within the reach of
any influence that may be ascribed to his
instruction, " for Christ is the propitiation
" for our sins ; and not for ours only, but
'" also for the sins of the whole World ;" — it
is evident that the Redeemer's death must
have been otherwise available to the expi
ation of the sins of men than by its remote
effect upon the manners of mankind, by
the confirmation which it affords of the
i truth of the Christian revelation.
Indeed, were it only as a proof of doc
trine, or as an example of patient suffering,
that the death of Christ had been service-
able to mankind, sirhilar benefits would be
in some degree to be ascribed to tbn suf
ferings of many of our Lord's first disciples.
And yet, thouglrthe early martyrs were
in the common acceptation of the word
just men, who suffered unjustly for the ser
vice of God and for the good of man, and
R

258
in the cause of the true religion, yet it is
never said of them that they suffered " the
" just for the unjust that they might bring
" us to God."
We read not, that we have access to the
Father through the blood of St Peter or
St Paul ; and yet, if the expiatory virtue
of our Saviour's death consisted merely in
what it contributed towards the reforma
tion of mankind by giving evidence and
effect to his doctrine, it would be injustice
to St Peter and St Paul, and all the other
martyrs whose deaths contributed in the
same remote way to the same effect, to
deny them a share in the business of expi
ation. St Paul indeed, in the first chapter
of his epistle to the Colossians, speaking
of his own sufferings, says, that " he was
" filling up in his own flesh that Avhich was
" behind of the afflictions of Christ." But
in this passage he is speaking of the church

259
under the image of Christ's body. By the
afflictions of Christ Avhich he speaks of as
unfinished, he means the afflictions of the
church ; and he speaks of his OAvn suffer
ings, not as supplying any supposed defi
ciency of our Lord's sufferings, but as fill
ing up the appointed measure of the afflic
tions of the church, and laying the foun
dation of its future prosperity and peace.
Of the proper sufferings of our Lord in his
own person, the apostles everywhere speak
a very different language ; describing them
as the means by which the apostles them
selves, no less than other Christians, were
each individually reconciled to God, and
admitted to the hope of future glory. " In
" him we have redemption, through his
" blood the forgiveness of sins." " The
" blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth
" us from all sin." " My blood is shed
" for you," said our Lord hiriTself to the

260
apostles, " and for many, for the remission
" of sins." Expressions of the like import
so frequently occur in the sacred writings,
the notion of the blood of Christ as the
matter of an expiatory sacrifice is so stre
nuously inculcated, that it is not easy to
conceive that nothing more is meant than
to describe, in figurative expressions, the
great importance of our Lord's death as a
proof of his doctrine, when a similar im
portance might be ascribed to the deaths
of other preachers, to which the same figure
never is applied. It should rather seem,
that the blood of Christ had some direct
and proper efficacy to expiate the guilt of
men, independent of any remote effect
upon their actions.
That this is really the case appears with
the highest evidence from that view of the
mystery of redemption, which my text in

261
the second clause more particularly sets
forth, in which the resurrection of Christ
is connected with our justification in the
same manner, as in the first clause his
death is connected with our sins. As our
Lord's death was in the scheme of Provi
dence the consequence of our sins, so by
the same scheme of Providence his resur
rection was the consequence of our justifi
cation. The English expressions, it must be con
fessed, are in themselves in some degree
ambiguous. That he rose again " for our
" justification," may be either an assertion
that the justification of man naturally
brought on the event of our Lord's resur
rection, or that their justification is some
future benefit, which the event of Christ's
resurrection shall in due season surely bring
about ; and the latter may seem the more
obvious sense of? the expression? But that

262
this is not the true exposition, even of the
English words, evidently appears when
the two clauses are considered in con
nexion : For as the death of Christ had no
tendency to produce those offences for
which he was delivered, but on the con
trary our offences were the reason of his
humiliation ; (and it were unreasonable to
suppose that similar expressions should be
used in opposite senses in different parts
of the same sentence), our justification, for
which Christ rose, must be something
which in the order of things led to the
Redeemer's resurrection. The original
words are without ambiguity, and clearly
represent our Lord's resurrection as an
event which took place in consequence of
man's justification, in the same manner as
his death took place in consequence of
man's sins.

263
It follows therefore, that our justification >
is a thing totally distinct from the final sal
vation of the godly. It is some part of
the wonderful business of redemption which
was to be finished before our Lord, con
sistently with the scheme of his great un
dertaking, could rise from the dead. It is
something annexed to no condition on the
part of man, a benefit freely and generally
bestowed, without any regard to any pre
vious effect of the evangelical doctrine upon
the lives of individuals. Now this is easily
explained, if the death of Christ was lite
rally an atonement for the sins of the peni
tent ; but in any other view of the scheme
of redemption it is inexplicable.
Christ in his original nature, as the un
created Word, the ever-living Image of the
Father, was incapable of sin as he was
far above all infirmity and imperfection. It
were the height of impiety to imagine that

/

264
it was for any sins of his own in a pre-
existent state, that he was delivered over
to a condition of weakness and mortality.
Christ in assuming our mortal nature con
tracted nothing of the general pollution.
The miraculous manner of his entrance
into human life, excluded the possibility
of his being touched with that contagion.
He died hot therefore for any share belong
ing to himself of the universal corruption;
Christ in the form of a servant was subject
to temptation, but still not liable to actual
sin. He died not therefore for his own
sins : He died as the proxy of guilty man.
As he died not therefore for any delin
quency of his own, there was nothing to
detain his soul in hell or his body in the
grave ; nothing to protract his continuance
in the condition of a dead man, that is, of
an executed criminal, when once the atone
ment for our sins was made, and the justice

265
of our offended God was satisfied. So
soon as the expiation Avas complete, jus
tice required that the Redeemer's sufferings
should terminate, and his resurrection to
life and glory was the immediate conse
quence. Our justification, you will ob
serve, is quite a distinct thing from* the
final absolution of good men in the general
judgment.!?f Every man's final doom will
depend upon. > the diligence which he uses
in the present life, to improve under the
means and motives for improvement which
the gospel furnishes. Our justification is
the grace " in which we now stand." It
is that general act of mercy which was pre
viously necessary on the part of God, to
render the attainment of salvation possible
to those who had once been wilfully rebel
lious, and to the last continue liable to the
surprises of temptation. It is that act of
mercy Avhich conveys to all true penitents

266
a free pardon of all sins committed before
conversion, and a free pardon of the sins
of incurable infirmity after conversion.
This act of mercy is the immediate benefit
of Christ's death ; it hath no respect to any
merits of the individuals to whom it is ap
plied ; its very foundation is, that all are
concluded under sin ; it embraces all with
out distinction, and is procured by the sole
merit of our Lord's atonement. If the
purpose of the Redeemer's death was to
procure this mercy, it is evident, that when
he had endured what was necessary to pro
cure it, the purpose of his death was an
swered, and his resurrection could not but
ensue. In any other view of the scheme
of redemption, it is not easy to understand
what that justification of man should be,
of which the apostle speaks in the text as
requisite in the order of things to the Re
deemer's resurrection. If any one ima-

267
gines, that the pardon of sin in the present
hfe with that tolerance of man's infirmity,
the promise of which under the gospel is
the great motive to renewed obedience ;—
If any one imagines, that this double act
of mercy, freely remitting past guilt, and
accepting a sincere instead of a perfect
obedience^ proceeds from the pure benig
nity of God the Father, in consideration
of the sinner's own repentance, and with
out regard to the virtue of any atonement,
he will find it difficult to assign a reason
why the grant of the pardon upon these
terms should follow rather than precede
the death of Christ. He will find it diffi
cult to explain, upon Avhat principle our
justification should be an intermediate
event between the death of Christ and his
resurrection, rather than between his nati
vity and his baptism ; or upon what prin
ciple indeed it should be connected with

268
any particular circumstance in the life of
Christ, more than Avith any imaginable cir
cumstance in the life of any other man,—
of Pontius Pilate for instance, or Gamaliel.
The text therefore is one remarkable pas
sage out of a great number, which exhibits
such a view of the scheme of redemption
which is incapable of any rational exposi
tion, if the notion of Christ's death as an
actual atonement for the sins of men be
rejected.
if
This doctrine of an atonement, by which
the repenting sinner may recover as it
were his lost character of innocence, and
by which the involuntary deficiencies are
supplied of his renewed obedience, is so
full of comfort to the godly, so soothing
to the natural fears of the awakened sin
ner's conscience, that it may be deemed a
dreadful indication of the great obduracy
of men, that a discovery of a scheme of

269
mercy, which might have been expected to
have been the great recommendation of
the gospel to a world lost and dead in
trespasses and sins, the means of procuring
it an easy and favourable reception, should
itself have been made the ground of cavil
and objection. And it is a still worse
symptom of the hardened hearts of men,
if, among those who profess themselves
disciples, of a crucified Saviour, any may
be found Avho allow no real efficacy to
that u blood of sprinkling which speaketh
" better things than the blood of Abel."
Let us rather charitably hope, that this
misbelief and contradiction have arisen
from some misapprehension of the Scrip
ture doctrine, and that the real doctrine
of our Lord's atonement has all the while
had no opponents. Those who speak of
the Avrath of God as appeased by Christ's
sufferings, speak, it must be confessed, a

270
figurative language. The Scriptures speak
figuratively when they ascribe wrath to
God. The divine nature is insusceptible
of the perturbations of passion ; and when
it is said that God is angry, it is a figure
which conveys this useful warning to man
kind, that God will be determined by his
wisdom, and by his providential care of
his creation, to deal with the wicked as a
prince in anger deals with rebellious sub
jects. It is an extension of the figure
when it is said, that God's wrath is by any
means appeased. It is a figure therefore,
if it be said that God's wrath is appeased
by the sufferings of Christ. It is not to
be supposed that the sins of men excite in
God any appetite of vengeance, which
could not be diverted from its purpose of
punishment till it had found its gratifica
tion in the sufferings of a righteous person.
This indeed were a view of our redemption

271
founded on a false and unworthy notion
of the divine character. But nothing hin
ders but that the sufferings of Christ, which
could only in a figurative sense be an ap
peasement or satisfaction of God's wrath,
might be, in the most literal meaning of
the words, a satisfaction to his justice. It
is easy to understand that the interests of
God's government, the peace and order of
the great kingdom over which he rules the
whole world of moral agents, might require
that his disapprobation of sin should be
solemnly declared and testified in his man
ner of forgiving it: It is easy to under
stand, that the exaction of vicarious suffer
ings on the part of him Avho undertook to
be the intercessor for a rebellious race,
amounted to such a declaration. These
sufferings, by which the end of punishment
might be answered, being once sustained,
it is easy to perceive, that the same prin-

272
ciple of wisdom, the same providential
care of his creation which must have deter
mined the Deity to inflict punishment, had
no atonement been made, would now de
termine him to spare. Thus, to speak
figuratively, his anger Avas appeased, but
his justice was literally satisfied ; and the
sins of men no longer calling for punish
ment when the ends of punishment were
secured, were literally expiated. The per
son sustaining the sufferings in considera
tion of Avhich the guilt of others may, con
sistently with the principles of good policy,
be remitted, was in the literal sense of the
word, so literally as no other victim ever
was, a sacrifice, and his blood shed for the
remission of sin, was literally the matter
of the expiation.
It now only remains that I point out to
you, as distinctly as the time will permit,

273
the important lessons to be drawn from
this view of the scheme of man's redemp
tion. First then, we learn from it that sin
must be something far more hateful in its
nature, something of a deeper malignity
than is generally understood. It could be
no inconsiderable evil that could require
such a remedy as the humiliation of the
second Person in the Godhead. It is not
to be supposed, that any light cause would
move the merciful Father of the universe
to expose even an innocent man to unme
rited sufferings. What must be the enor
mity of that guilt, which God's mercy
could not pardon till the only begotten
Son of God had undergone its punish
ment? How great must be the load of
crime, which could find no adequate atone
ment till the Son of God descended from
the bosom of the Father, clothed himself
s

274
with flesh, and being found in fashion as
a man, submitted to a hfe of hardship and
contempt, to a death of ignominy, and
pain ?
Again, we learn that the good or ill con
duct of man is a thing of far more impor
tance and concern in the moral system
than is generally imagined. Man's devia
tion from his duty was a disorder, it seems,
in the moral system of the universe, for
which nothing less than divine wisdom
could devise a remedy ,- — the remedy de
vised nothing less than divine love and
power could apply. Man's disobedience
was in the moral world, what it would be
in the natural if a planet were to wander
from its orbit, or the constellations to start
from their appointed seats. It was an
evil for which the regular constitution of
the Avorld had no cure, which nothing but

275
the immediate interposition of Providence
could repair.
We learn still further, that as the malig
nity of sin is so great, and the importance
of man's conduct so considerable, the dan
ger of a life of wilful sin must be much
more formidable than imagination is apt
to paint it. The weight of punishment
naturally due to sin must bear some just
proportion to its intrinsic malignity, and
to the extent of the mischiefs which arise
from it. Its punishment must also bear
some just proportion to the price which
has been paid for our redemption. Ter
rible must have been the punishment
which was bought off at so great a price
as the blood of the Son of God ; and ter
rible must be the punishment Avhich still
awaits us, if " we count the blood of the
" covenant an unholy thing," and forfeit
the benefit of that atonement.

276
Another lesson to be drawn from the
doctrine of our redemption is, that man,
notAvithstanding his present degeneracy,
notAvithstanding the misery and Aveakness
of his present condition, the depravity of
his passions, and the imbecility of his rea
son, hath nevertheless a capacity of high
improvement in intellect and moral worth.
For it cannot reasonably be supposed, that
so much should be done for the deliverance
of a creature from the consequence of its
OAvn guilt, of whom it was not understood
that it had the capacity of being rendered,
by the discipline applied in some future
stage at least of its existence, in some de
gree worthy of its Maker's care and love.
The scheme of man's redemption origi
nated, we are told, from God's love of
man. In man in his fallen state there is
nothing Avhich the divine love could
make its object. But the divine intellect

277
contemplates every part of its creation in
the Avhole extent of its existence ; and that
future worth of man to which he shall be
raised, by the divine mercy, is such as
moved the divine love to the work of his
redemption. For to say that God had
loved, a creature Avhich should be unfit to
be loved in the Avhole of its existence, were
to magnify the mercy of God at the ex
pense of his wisdom. ,<:nV
s&But since all improvement of the intel
lectual nature must in some degree >be
owing to its OAvn. exertions to the purpose
of self-improvement, the prospect of the
great attainments, which the grace of God
puts within our reach, ought to excite us
to the utmost diligence " to? make our
" calling and election sure ;" as, on the
other hand, the, prospect of the danger
which threatens the perverse, the careless,
and the secure, should keep us in a state

278
of constant watchfulness against the temp
tations of the world, the surprises of pas
sion, and the allurements of sense. The
Christian should remember, that the utmost
he can do or suffer for himself, by a denial
of his appetites, and a resistance of temp
tation, or even by exposing himself to the
scorn and persecution of the world, is far
less than hath been done and suffered for
him. And what has he to expect from a
merciful, but Avithal a wise and righteous
Judge, who thinks it hard to mortify those
passions in himself for which the Lord of
life made his life an offering.
Who ever thinks Avithout just indignation
and abhorrence of the Jewish rulers, who
in the phrenzy of envy and resentment —
envy of our Lord's credit with the people,
and resentment of his just and affectionate
rebukes, — spilt his righteous blood? Let
us rather turn the edge of our resentment

279
against those enemies which, while they
are harboured in our own bosoms, " war
" against our souls," and were, more truly
than the Jews, the murderers of our Lord.
Shall the Christian be enamoured of the
pomp and glory of the world when he con
siders, that for the crimes of man's ambi
tion the Son of God was humbled ? Shall
he give himself up to those covetous de
sires of the world, which were the occasion
that his Lord lived an outcast from its
comforts ? Will the disciples of the holy
Jesus submit to be the slaves of those base
appetites of the flesh, which were indeed
the nails which pierced his Master's hands *
and feet? .Will he in any situation be in
timidated by the enmity of the world, or
abashed by its censures, when he reflects
how his Lord endured the cross and des
pised the shame ? Hard, no doubt, is the
conflict which the Christian must sustain

280
with the power of the enemy and with
his own passions. Hard to flesh and blood
is the conflict ; but powerful is the succour
given, and high is the reward proposed.
For thus saith the true and faithful Wit
ness, the Original of the creation of God,
" To him that overeometh will I grant to
" sit down with me in my throne, even
" as also I overcame and am sitten down
" with my Father in his throne." Now,
unto him that loved us, and hath washed
us from our sins in his own blood ; to him
that liveth and was dead, and is ahve for
evermore ; to him who hath disarmed sin
"of its strength, and death of its sting; to
the only begotten Son, with the Father
and the Holy Ghost, three Persons and
one only God, be glory and dominion*
praise and thanksgiving, henceforth and
for evermore.

SERMON III.

Matthew, xx. 23.
" To sit on my right hand and my left is
" not mine to give, but it shall be given
" to them for whom it is prepared of my
" Father."
These, you know, were the concluding
Avords of our blessed Lord's reply to the
mother of Zebedee's children, when she
came with* a petition to him for her two
sons, that they might be the next persons
to himself in honour and authority in his
new kingdom, sitting the one on his right
hand, the other on his left. It was surely

282
with great truth he told them " they knew
" not what they asked." At the time
when their petition was preferred!, they
had probably little apprehension what that
kingdom was to be in which they solicited
promotion ; and were not at all aware that
their request went to any thing higher, or
that it could indeed go to any higher thing
than the first situations in the king of
Israel's court. He told them that they
sought a pre-eminence not easily attained,
to be earned only by a patient endurance
of unmerited sufferings for the service of
mankind and the propagation of the true
religion ; and he asks them in enigmatical
language, whether they weife prepared to
follow his example ? It? is of the nature of
ambition to overlook all difficulties, and to
submit to any hardships for the attainment
of its ends. Two miserable fishermen of
the Galilean lake, raised to the near pros-

283
pect as they thought of wealth and gran
deur, thought no conditions hard by which
they might become the favourites and mi
nisters of a king; nor perhaps did they
understand in what extent it was ordained
that they must suffer, before they could be
permitted to enjoy. They answered, that
they were prepared for all difficulties. Our
blessed Lord, continuing his enigmatical
language, (for although their ambition was
to be repressed, it was but too evident that
their faith was not yet ripened to bear a
clear prospect of the hardships which they
had to undergo), tells them, " that they
" shall drink indeed of his cup, and be
" baptized with the baptism with which
" himself should be baptized." Expres
sions upon which at the time they would
probably put some flattering interpretation,
understanding them only as a general) de
claration that they were to share their

284
* Master's fortunes. " But to sit," says he,
" upon my right hand and my left is not
" mine to give, but it shall be given to
" them for whom it is prepared of my
" Father." These last Avords deserve particular at
tention. There can be no question that
the kingdom of Avhich our Saviour speaks
is his future kingdom/ and "to sit upon
" his right hand and his left," in the
sense which in his own private thoughts
he put upon the words when he used
them, denotes a situation of distinguished
happiness and glory in the future life.
This is evident from the means which he
points out for the attainment of this pro
motion. His question to the apostles im
plies, that what they ignorantly sought
was unattainable, except to those only who
should fiave the fortitude to drink of his
cup and to be baptized with his baptism.

285
His cup was the cup of suffering ; his bap
tism the baptism of a violent and ignomi
nious death. But the only promotion to
which this cup and this baptism can ever
lead, must be a situation of glory in the
life to come. This life is to be throAvn
away in the acquisition. The next there
fore must necessarily be the season when
the reversion is to take effect. Our Lord
therefore speaks of the distinctions of the
blessed in the future life, when he says,
that " to sit on his right hand and his left
" is not his to give, but it shall be given to
" them for whom it is prepared of the
" Father." It must therefore strike every attentive
reader, that our Lord in these very re
markable words seems to disclaim all pro
perty in the rewards and honours of the
future life, and all discretionary power in
the distribution of them. They are not

286
mine, he says. Not being mine, I have
no right to give them away ; and as I have
no right, so neither have I authority for
the distribution of them : The whole busi
ness is indeed already done : There are
certain persons for whom these things are
prepared, and to them, and them only
they shall be given. This declaration is
the more extraordinary, not only as it is
inconsistent with our general notions of the
Son of God to suppose that there should
be any thing not absolutely in his disposal,
(for all things that the Father hath are his),
but because it is the clear doctrine of the
Scriptures, that the general judgment is
particularly committed to his management;
that he is the appointed Judge who is to
decide upon every man's, merit ; and is to
assign to every individual the particular
proportion of reward or punishment, hap
piness or suffering, glory or shame, that

287
may be due to his good or ill deservings
in the present life. This business is allot
ted to the Son, not as pecuharly his in his
original divine character, like the business
of creation, but as proper to his assumed
character of the incarnate God. " The,'
" Father judgeth no man, but he hath com- (
" mitted all judgment to the Son." And
judgment is committed to him for this
especial reason, that he is the Son of man.
" God hath appointed a day in Avhich he
" Avill judge the world by the man whom
" he hath ordained, even the man Christ
"Jesus." To recite all the texts in which
the general judgment is described as a
business in which Christ, as the Christ,
shall have the whole direction, Avould be
an endless task. I shall produce only one
more : " To him that overcometh will I
" grant to sit with me in my throne, even
w as I also overcame and am sitten down

288
" with my Father in his throne." In these
words our Saviour expressly claims that
very power which he seems to disclaim in
the words of my text.
Much of this difficulty arises from an in
accuracy in our English translation. The
Greek words might be more exactly ren
dered thus : " To sit upon my right hand
" and my left is not mine to give, except
" to those for Avhom it hath been prepared
" of my Father." Our Saviour therefore",
in these words, disclaims not the authority
which the holy Scriptures constantly ascribe
to him, and which, in the epistle to the
church of Laodicea, in the book of Reve
lations, he claims for himself in the most
peremptory terms. He disdains not the
authority of making the final distribution
of reward and punishment, and of appoint
ing to situations of distinction in his future
kingdom. But yet he speaks as if in the

289
management of this business he were tied
down to certain rules prescribed by the
Almighty Father, from which he would
not be at liberty to depart. But in this
manner of speaking there is nothing but
what is conformable to the usual language ,
of holy writ. The Son is everywhere
spoken of as giving effect to the original
purposes of the paternal mind, by his im
mediate action upon the external world,
with which the Father otherwise than
through the agency of the Son, holds as it
were no intercourse. Not that the pur
poses and counsels of the Father are not
equally the purposes and counsels < of the
Son, or that the Son acts Avithout original
authority by a mere delegated power ; but
that this.j notion of the Father's purpose
executed by the Son, is the best idea that
can be conveyed , to the human mind of
the manner in which God governs his

290
creation. And beyond this it becomes us
not to be curious to inquire. But upon
another point we may be permitted to be
more inquisitive, because it touches our
interests more nearly. Our Saviour's words
intimate, that the business of the future
judgment is already settled ; that the parti
cular situations of the future life are allot
ted to particular persons ; and that his
office, when he shall come to execute judg
ment, will only be to see that each indi
vidual is put in possession of the office and
the station, which by the Avise counsels of
Providence hath been long ago set apart
for him. " To sit upon my right hand
" and my left is not mine to give, except
" to those for Avhom it is prepared of my
" Father." It should seem therefore that
the first stations in Christ's future kingdom
are appropriated to particular persons who
must enjoy them. If the first, why not

291
the second stations ? If the second, why
not the third? And thus it will follow,
that every station in Christ's future king
dom from the highest to the lowest is ap
propriated, and of consequence, that the
condition of every individual is irresistibly
determined by a decree, Avhich was passed
upon him ages before he was brought into
existence. St Paul in his epistle to the Romans
has been thought to teach the same doc-
¦if
trine. And if this doctrine .» were to be
found clearly asserted in the apostle's writ
ings, this discouraging interpretation of our
Lord's declaration would seem but too cer
tain. The fact is, that St Paul in his
epistle to the Romans represents the de
generacy of mankind as so great in con
sequence of the fall, that if God had been
pleased to make an arbitrary selection of
certain persons to be admitted to mercy

292
upon their repentance, and had consigned
the rest of the race to the natural punish
ment of their guilt, the proceeding could
not have been taxed either Avith cruelty or
injustice. But he affirms, that God hath
actually dealt with mankind in a far milder
and more equitable way, admitting all
Avithout exception who are willing to re
pent to repentance, and all who do repent
to the benefit of our Lord's atonement;
inviting all men to accept the proffered
mercy ; beaming with repeated provocation
and affront ; and leaving none but the har
dened and incorrigible exposed to final
wrath and punishment. This being the
true representation of God's dealings with
mankind, the happiness of the future life
being open to all men upon the condition
of faith, repentance, and amendment, the
degrees of that happiness will unquestion
ably be proportioned to the proficiency

293 *
that each man shall have made in the
emendation of his heart and his manners
by the rules of the gospel. Those there
fore for whom it is prepared to sit upon
our Lord's iright hand and his left, cannot
be any certain persons unconditionally pre
destined to situations of glory in the life to
come. ¦¦¦**¦
I say they cannot be any certain persons
unconditionally predestined after this man
ner: John the son of Zebedee to this of-
fice, James the son of Zebedee to that,
Peter to a third ; whatever the conduct of
John, James or Peter, in their apostolical
ministry in the present life may have been.
It is certain that God's foreknowledge hath
from the beginning extended, not only to
the minutest actions of the life of every
man who ever was to live, but even to the
most secret motives from which each man's
actions Avere to spring ; to his thoughts, his

294
wishes, his fears, his likings and aversions.
God therefore had from all eternity as ex
act a knowledge of every man's character,
as true an estimation of his good, or ill
deserts, as can be had when the man shall
have lived to finish the career of virtue or
of vice which God hath ever foreseen that
he would run. This foreknowledge of
every man's character cannot but be ac
companied with a foreknowledge of the
particular lot of happiness or misery which
it will be fits he should receive. And since
to perceive what is fit, and to resolve that
what is fit shall be, must be one act, or if
not^ absolutely one, they must be insepa
rable acts in the divine mind, it should
seem indeed that every man's final doom
in consequence of an exact view of his
future life, must have been eternally deter
mined. But this is only to say, that the
world, with its whole consequence of

295
events, has ever been present to the Crea
tor's mind. And however difficult the
thing may be for the human apprehension,
this predetermination of all things, which
is implied in this idea of the divine omni
science, leaves men no less morally free,
and makes their future doom no less subject
to the contingency of their own actions, than
if nothing were foreseen, nothing decreed
in consequence of foreknowledge. The
foreknowledge of an action, and the pur-
pose of reward or punishment arising from
that foreknowledge, being no more a cause
of the action to which reward or punish
ment will be due, than the knowledge of
any past action, and the resolution of cer
tain measures to be taken in consequence
of it, are causes of the action which give
A
rise to the resolution ; the knowledge of a
fact, whether the thing known be past or
future, being quite a distinct thing from

296
the causes that produce it. Neither the
foreknowledge therefore of the Deity,
though perfect and infallible, nor any pre
destination of individuals to happiness or
misery which may necessarily result from
that foreknowledge, however unaccount
able the thing may seem, is any impedi
ment to human liberty ; nor is any man's
doom decreed unless it be upon a fore
sight of his life and character. Nor is it
prepared for Peter and Paul to sit upon
Christ's right hand and his left in prefe
rence to John or James, who may be more
deserving. It is no such arbitrary arrange
ment Avhich our Lord disclaims any dis
cretionary power to put by. The irrever
sible arrangement which he alleges as a bar
against any partial operation of his own
particular affections, is an arrangement
founded on the eternal maxims of justice,
in favour not of certain persons, but of

297
persons of a certain character and descrip
tion ; of persons who will be found distin
guished by particular attainments of holi
ness, by the fruits of a true and lively faith,
by an extraordinary proficiency in the
habits of true piety, charity, and temper
ance. His declaration is no renunciation
of his property in the rewards to be be- f
stowed, or of his authority for the distri
bution of them; but it is a very forcible
and striking declaration of the absolute im
partiality with Avhich the business of the
last judgment will be conducted. * The
Son of God when he assumed our mortal
nature became so truly man, that we may
be allowed to say, that he formed like other
men his particular friendships and attach
ments; as appeared strongly in the case
of Lazarus and in some other instances.
One of the brothers for whom the request
was made which occasioned the declaration

298
in my text was his favourite disciple, in
such a degree as to excite the envy of the
rest. But he tells them, that in the distri
bution of the glories of his future kingdom
no private feelings which may belong to
him as a man will be allowed to operate.
That justice, the Creator's justice, temper
ed indeed with mercy, with general and
equitable mercy, but unbribed by favour
and affection, will hold its firm and even
course. So that every man will be placed
in the situation to which his comparative
merit* shall entitle him, without any prefe
rence in favour even of those who were cho
sen by our Lord to be his earliest associates
and his most familiar friends. The lesson
to be drawn from this explicit declaration
of our Lord is the necessity of an actual
repentance on the one hand, and the cer
tainty of acceptance on the other, if this
necessary work is once accomplished.

299
Our Lord's declaration that every man will
at last find himself in the station which
eternal justice has ordained that he shall
hold, cuts off all hope but what is founded
on an active and sincere repentance : on
such a repentance as may entitle to the
benefit of the Redeemer's expiation, which
is ever to be kept in view; for without
that our Saviour's declaration would ren
der every man altogether hopeless. On
the other hand, this declaration holds out
to the sincere penitent the; most animating
hope. If the highest stations in the future
life are reserved for the apostles, it is be
cause the apostles will be found to have
excelled all other Christians in the love of
God and the duties of the Christian life.
Should two persons appear at' the great
judgment more worthy than the sons of
Zebedee to sit upon Christ's right hand
and his left, (the supposition is perhaps

300
extravagant, and otherwise than as a mere
supposition to illustrate a point of doctrine
it is unwarrantable ;) should two such per
sons appear, the sons of Zebedee will not
be permitted to take place of them. Such
being the equity with which the future re
tribution will be administered, there-is evi
dently no hope for sinners but in a true
repentance, and for a true repentance there
will be no disappointment in its glorious
hope. Nor let any one be discouraged
from the work of repentance by any enor
mities of his past life. Confirmed habits
of sin heighten the difficulty of repentance,
but such are the riches of God's mercy
that they exclude not from the benefits of
it. This our Lord was pleased to testify-
in the choice that he made of his first asso
ciates, who, with the exception perhaps of
two or three who had been previously
tutored in the Baptist's school, had been

301
persons of irregular irreligious lives ; and
yet these Ave know are they who hereafter
shall be seated on twelve thrones judging
the twelve tribes of Israel. " Be ye zealous
" therefore and repent ;" " for so an en-
" trance shall be ministered unto you
" abundantly into the everlasting kingdom
" of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."

SERMON IV.

Ephesians, iv. 30.
" And grieve not the holy spirit of God,
" whereby ye are sealed unto the day of
" redemption."
A seal has been in use from the earliest
antiquity to authenticate writings of im
portance both in public and private trans
actions. When the prophet Jeremiah pur
chased by God's command his uncle Ha-
naneel's estate, the conveyance of the pro
perty was by deeds that were signed and
sealed ; and the letters which Jezebel
issued for Naboth's destruction Avere sealed

303
with Ahab's seal. In allusion to this prac
tice whatever may seem to justify a claim
to any particular privilege, commission,
or authority, or to afford a confirmation of
a promise that is hereafter to take effect,
is by an easy figure called a seal. Thus
St Paul calls the Corinthian church the
seal of his apostleship ; " The seal of mine
" apostleship are ye in the Lord." The
blessing of God which crowned my labours
among you with such success, as to reclaim
you from the idolatry and the debaucheries
to which idolaters are addicted, is a certain
evidence that God sent me to perform that
work which his providence hath brought
to so happy an effect. By the same figure
he calls circumcision the seal of Abraham's
righteousness of faith. It was the appoint
ed mark and standing memorial of the
promises which were made to Abraham,
in consideration of that righteousness of

304
faith which Abraham had exercised before
those promises were given or this rite was
appointed. It was an evidence of the ac
ceptance of this righteousness in the person
of Abraham; and by consequence, since
there can be no respect of persons with the
all-righteous God, since the qualities that
he accepted in Abraham he must equally
accept in every other person in whom they
may be equally conspicuous, this seal of
Abraham's righteousness was a general seal
of the righteousness of faith. It was an
evidence to every one who should in after
times become acquainted with the patri
arch's history, that righteousness would be
imputed to all who should Avalk in the
steps of Abraham's faith, which he had
beHr|piincircumcisedr And again, by the
same figure the apostle in the text calls
the gifts «and graces of the Holy Ghost the
seal of the Christian's hopes : " Grieve not

305
" the holy spirit of God, by whom ye are
" sealed to the day of redemption."^ The
same image occurs frequently in his writ
ings. Thus in the first chapter of this
same epistle he says, " In whom," i. e. in
Christ, " having believed, ye have been
" sealed with the holy spirit of promise."
And in the second to the Corinthians, " It
"is God that hath sealed us and given the
'* earnest of his spirit in our hearts."
In all these passages the seal of the Holy
Spirit is to be understood of those gifts and
graces which the Scriptures teach us to
ascribe to his immediate operation. And
taken in the utmost latitude, as including
both the miraculous gifts which were pecu
liar to the primitive ages, and the general
sanctifying influence on the heart of every
true believer, the Spin* may on various ac
counts be justly called the seal of our final
redemption ; inasmucli as it is that which
U

306
gives the utmost certainty to our hopes of
future bliss and glory, which any thing
antecedent to the actual possession can
afford. In the first, place, the visible descent of
the Holy Spirit on the first Christians, and
the extraordinary powers which they dis
played in consequence of it, were the pro
per seal of the general truth of Christianity.
These gifts had been predicted by the ear
liest prophets as a part of the blessings of
the Messiah's reign, to be enjoyed under
the covenant which he should establish.
'¦It shall cOme to pass," says Joel, " that
" I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh;
" and your sons and your daughters shall
"prophesy, your old men shall dream-
" dreams, your young men shall see vi-
" sions ; and also upon the servants and
" upon the handmaids in those days will
" I pour out my spirit." John the Baptist,

307
when he declared himself to be the pro
mised forerunner of the Messiah, and an
nounced his speedy advent, places the
great superiority of his character and office
in this circumstance, — that he should ful
fil these ancient predictions by baptizing
his disciples with the fire of the Holy
Ghost. Alluding as I conceive in that
expression, both to the active nature of
that holy principle which the Christian
baptism conveys into the converted heart,
and to the form in Avhich the Almighty
Spirit made his visible descent upon the
first Christians. Christ himself promised
his1 disciples, that " when he should leave
" them to return to the Father, he would
"send them another Comforter to abide
" with them for ever ; even the spirit of
" truth, Avho should lead them into all
" truth ;" give them just views of that
scheme of mercy which they Avere to pub-

308
lish to the world ; a right understanding of
the ancient prophecies ; a discernment of
their true completion in the person of
Christ and the establishment of his reli
gion j bring all things to their remembrance
which Christ had told them ; and supply
them, without previous study or medita
tion of their own, with a ready and com
manding eloquence, when they should be
called to make the apology of the. Chris
tian faith before kings and rukrs. But
this Comforter, he told them, could not
come before his own departure ; and this
was agreeable to ancient prophecy. Da
vid in the sixty-eighth psalm, predicting
according to St Paul's interpretation of the
passage these miraculous gifts of ihe Spirit,
speaks of them as subsequent %q the Mes
siah's ascension ; " Thou hast ascended
" on high, thou hast led captivity captive,
" thou hast received gifts for men." What

309
these gifts should be is declared in the con^
elusion of the verse,—" that the Lord God
." may dwell among them " This dwelling
of God must signify something more than
God's residence in the Jewish sanctuary ;
for whatever might be in the mind of the
prophet, the prophetic spirit looked for
ward to later times. It cannot signify the
Son's dwelling among men when he came
to preach the doctrine of life, and to pay
the forfeit of their crimes, because it is de
scribed as subsequent to his ascension* It
can signify therefore no other dwelling of
God than the residence of the Holy Spirit
in #ie Christian church. I must not pass
over this passage of the Psalmist without
remarking* that the original word which
is rendered Lord is J ah, one of the proper
names of God, of the same etymology and
import with the name Jehovah ; of which
indeed some have thought it only an ab-

310
breviation. I have upon former occasions
explained to you, that the name Jehovah
is in various passages! of the holy, prophets
applied to the Messiah. You have here
an instance of a name of the same kind
equally proper to the Deity applied to
the Holy Spirit, provided we are right in
the application of this last clause to him.
Concerning the former part, " the ascend-
" ing on high and the receiving of gifts for
" men," there can be no doubt. We have
the apostle's authority for* applying it to
Christ's ascension, and the gifts afterwards
imparted by the Spirit. The application
of the concluding clause I confess iswnot
equally certain, because it makes no part
of the apostle's quotation ; and the great
obscurity of the grammatical construction
in the original throws something of uncer
tainty upon the meaning. In the sense
which our English translators have ex-

311
pressed, the words evidently respect the
Holy Spirit. And in this sense the Jews
of the second century seem to have acqui
esced.* These predictions of the ancient
prophets and the Baptist, and these pro
mises of our Lord were largely and exactly
verified in the event. After frequent ap
pearances to his disciples, within the space
of forty days after his resurrection . Jesus
took a solemn leave, and ascended on high
as David had foretold, having commanded
the apostles to " wait in Jerusalem for the
" promise of the Father." They Avere not
disobedient to our Lord's injunction ; and
their waiting was not long, nor was it fruit-

* For the words were rendered to the same effect by
Aquila. Honbigant, upon the authority of the Syriac, pro
poses a violent alteration of the present reading, for which
however I find no authority in Dr Kennicot's Collection of
Various Readings.

312
less. For Avhen the day of PenteGost was
come, that is the fiftieth day from the fes
tival of the Passover on which our Lord
had suffered, and by consequence the
eighth or ninth only after his ascension,
the apostles being assembled, suddenly the
sound of a blast rushing with violence
through the air filled the house Avhere they
were sitting. The sound was immediately
succeeded by the appearance of parted
tongues of fire, (fire from the first institu
tion of the law, if not indeed from earlier
ages, had been the peculiar symbol of
God's immediate presence), settling upon
each of therm The immediate effect Avas
what our Saviour had foretold ; and more
indeed than might at first appear in the
words in which his promise had upon any
occasion been conveyed. He had pro
mised them a ready utterance in the de
fence of the Christian doctrine : But thev

313
• *
find themselves suddenly endued with the
power, of utterance in a variety of lan
guages which they had never learned.
Jerusalem. was at this time, as it always
was during the festivals of the Passover
and the Pentecost, crowded with strangers
from every quarter of the world. The
sacred historian mentions by name not
fewer than fifteen countries, of which the
natives with astonishment confessed that
they heard the wonders of God declared,
each in the proper language of the coun
try where he had been born. The testi
mony of these impartial foreigners was a
sufficient confutation of that base insinua-
tionj^-that the speakers were 'filled with,
new wine. This seems indeed to have
» been the illiberal surmise of the meanest
only of the rabble of Jerusalem, who, un
derstanding none of the languages in which
the apostles spake, imagined that they

314
were uttering a jargon, and thatthe whole
transaction was either an imposture, pr as
they rather believed, a drunken frolic. But
we have the testimony of those who were
the only competent judges of the fact, that
nothing of the levity or incoherence of
drunkenness appeared either in the matter
or the manner of these extraordinary dis
courses. The matter was the wonderful
works of God, the great mystery of godli
ness displayed in man's redemption. And
upon this abstruse and weighty subject
each speaker delivered himself with per
spicuity and propriety in the language
that he used; though this was probably
the first occasion in his life on which he
had either used it himself or heard it spo
ken. For of the fifteen languages. which*
the sacred text enumerates, many, I be
lieve I might have said the greater part,
were as little known in Judea in the time

315
of the apostles, as the languages of China
and Japan are at this day in Europe. Our
Saviour had also, promised, that the Holy
Spirit should lead his disciples into all
truth : Accordingly the immediate illumi
nation of the understanding upon his visi
ble descent was not less remarkable than
the new powers of elocution. To the very
last moment of our Lord's continuance on
earth, the apostles cherished the fond ex
pectation of a temporal kingdom to be
immediately established : " Lord wilt thou
" at this time restore the kingdom to
" Israel ?" was the last question that they
asked just before Christ ascended, in. After
the descent of the Holy Spirit we find no
traces of this prejudice remaining. The
*charge of intoxication drew from St Peter
an apology, very remarkable for the bre
vity and the perspicuous arrangement of
the unstudied argument, as well as fOr the

commanding strain of manly rhetoric in
which it is conveyed. In this speech the
apostle discovers a clear insight 4nto the
sense of prophecies, which till this hour it is
certain he had never understood. He insists
on the spiritual nature of the kingdom to
which he now understands his Lord to be
exalted at God's right hand ; he proves it
by prophetic passages of the Psalms ; and
he insists upon the present miracle as an
instance of his power. '* Being exalted,"
says he, ** to the right hand of God, and
" having received the promised Holy Spirit
" from the Father, he has poured out that
" which ye now see and hear." I would
remark by the way, that these last words,
" ye see and hear," deserve attention,
Something extraordinary it seems was pub
licly seen, as well as heard, by the multi
tude upon this occasion. But we read of
nothing that was visible but the appearance

317 *
of the "fiery tongues. This appearance
therefore was not a private one, confined
to the chamber where the apostles were
sitting when the Holy Spirit came upon
them, but it continued visible on the head
of each when they came abroad to speak
to the multitude. So that the appearance
of this glorious light, the token of God's
immediate presence? no leas than the con
sistence and propriety of the discourses
that were delivered, refuted the base charge
of intoxication. Thus the visible descent of the Holy
Ghost upon the day of Pentecost, as it was
a completion of the earliest prophecies,
and a verification of the Baptist's predic
tion and of our Saviour's promises, is a
l^al of the general truth of the Christiaa
doctrine. And as the private hopes, of
every Christian depend upon th$ general
truth of the revelation, the Holy Spirit

318
thus sealing the doctrine, in some sense
" seals every true' believer to the day of
" redemption."
!- But again,— This visible descent of the
Holy Spirit was in itself, without any refe
rence to former prophecies and promises,
a seal of the general truth of Christianity,
as it was a token of the merit of Christ's
atonement, and the efficacy of his inter
cession with the Father ^ " the Author of
" every good and perfect gift." *' I wilf
" pray the Father," said Jesus to his disci
ples, " and he shall give you another Com-
" forter." The coming of that other Com
forter is a certain argument that Christ's
intercession has prevailed, and a sure
ground of hope that it shall equally pre
vail for all the purposes for which it shall;
be exerted. Again, — if we consider the
Comforter as sent immediately to the
church by Christ himself, which is the

319
Scripture1 doctrine, his visible descent was
an instance of that p power which Christ
exercises at the right hand of God for the
welfare and preservation^ of his church.
In this - light therefore, as a token of the
Father's acceptance of Christ's atonement,
and of the power exercised by Christ in
his exalted i state, the visible descent of the
Holy Ghost was a seahof the Christian
doctrine. And' the hope of every believer
being built on the acceptance of that meri
torious sacrifice, and on Christ's power to
raise the dead bodies of his servants from
the grave» and transform them to the like
ness of his own ; whatever is in the nature
of the thing, a certain sign of almighty
power exercised by Christ, and of the
& merit of his sacrifice, is a seal of every
believer's hope of his own final redemp
tion.

320
As the visible descent of the Holy Ghost,
and the powers which were conveyed by
it to the first Christians, made the proper
seal of the Christian doctrine, so the power
of imparting these extraordinary endow
ments in certain due proportions to other
Christians, was the seal of the apostolical
office and authority. That the apostles
were exclusively possessed of this extraor
dinary privilege is evident from the history
of the first converts of Samaria. The
gospel Avas preached to them by Philip
the deacon, who baptized his converts of
both sexes. And when the apostles, who
as yet resided at Jerusalem, heard of
Philip's success in Samaria, they sent
thither Peter and John ; who seem to have
been deputed for the express purpose of
communicating the miraculous gifts of the
Spirit. For when they were come doAvn
they prayed for them, " that they might

321

it

receive the Holy Ghost : For as yet he
" was fallen upon none of them." And after
these prayers the two apostles " laid their
" hands upon them, and they received the
" Holy Ghost." That the gifts conveyed
to these Samaritan converts by the impo
sition of the hands of the apostles were of
the miraculous kind, is evident in the first
place from this general consideration, that
the persons who received these gifts had
already been baptized by Philip ; and the
ordinary gifts of the Spirit, those moral
influences by which every believer must be
regenerated in order to his being saved, are
conferred in baptism. The same thing is
further evident from the particulars of the
story. Simon the sorcerer was of the num-
I fiber of Philip's converts : " When Simon
" saw that the Holy Spirit was given by
" the imposition of the apostles' hands, he
" offered them money, saying, Give me
x t

322
" also this power, that on whomsoever I
" may lay my hands he may receive the
" Holy Ghost." It is evident, that the
Holy Ghost which was given upon this
occasion by the apostles was some sensible
gift of a very extraordinary and notorious
kind, which Simon saAv; and he vainly
and impiousty imagined, that the poAver
of conferring it might be of great use to
him in carrying on his trade of magical
delusion. The power therefore of impart
ing these miraculous gifts was the peculiar
seal of the apostolical office, and some
share of them seems to have been the con
stant effect of the! imposition of their hands.
The gift that seems to have been the most
generally; bestOAved is that of tongues. For
when St Paul laid his hands upon the
Ephesian converts of Apollos, the effect
was, that the Holy Ghost came upon them
in his sensible operations, and they " spake

323
"with tongues and prophesied;" that is,
they celebrated the praises of God and Of
Christ. . And in the first epistle to the Co
rinthians the apostle making a distinct and
orderly enumeration of the miraculous
gifts, places that of tongues last, as among
great things the least considerable. Indeed
it appears from that epistle, that it Avas
possessed and exercised by many in the
Corinthian church, Avhp had little discre^-
tion in the use of it, .This therefore seems
to have been of the' extraordinary gifts the
most common. And the conceit of some
learned men, who have imagined/that this
gift was not one of the standing poAvers
of the primitive church in the apostolic
age, but a particular miracle that accom
panied the first descent of the Holy Ghost
upon the day of Pentecost, and his subse
quent descent on the family of Cornelius,
the first Gentile convert, and that it Avas

324
never heard of but in these two instances ;
this conceit of some learned men who lived
about the beginning of the Reformation, is
vain, and destitute of all foundation. But
to return : — The Holy Spirit by the power
Avith which he invested the apostles of
communicating his extraordinary gifts to
their converts in due proportion, according
to the exigencies of the church and the
merits of the persons on whom their hands
were laid, sealed their authority. And as
the true believer's hopes rest on the autho
rity of the apostles to preach Christ's reli
gion, the Holy Spirit thus sealing their
authority, seals all those Avho embrace and
practise the faith they taught " to the day
" of redemption."
The miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit
were also a visible mark of God's accep
tance of the Gentile converts, and a parti-

325
cular seal of them " to the day of redemp-
" tion." But the seal of Avhich the apostle speaks
in my text I rather take to be the ordinary
influence of the Holy Ghost than any or
all of the miraculous endowments. This
may be inferred with certainty from the
parallel passage in the second epistle to
the Corinthians, where he says, that God
has sealed us by " giving the earnest of
" the Spirit in our hearts." Many of the
passions of the mind, — anger, fear, joy,
grief, surprise, and others, — when they
rise to any considerable height, have a
sensible effect on the motion of the blood,
to accelerate or retard its circulation, to
collect and confine it in the heart, or to
drive it to the external surface of the body.
Hence the effect of these passions on the
body is particularly felt in the region of
the heart, which was therefore the part first

326
thought of for the seat of the soul. After
wards Avhen men came to understand that
the brain is the immediate organ of sensa
tion, they refined, and allotted distinct
seats* to the understanding, the manly
passions, and the appetites ; placing the
first in the brain, the second in the heart,
and the last in the liver. Hence in all
languages, and with all writers sacred and
profane, the heart is used figuratively to
denote the moral qualities and dispositions
of the mind. And this expression, " the
" Holy Spirit in our hearts," can signify
no other thing than his ordinary influences
on these moral qualities and dispositions
in every true believer. These influences,
the apostle asserts, are to every Christian
the seal of his redemption. And this,

* Plato in the Tiraaeus.

327
which is the doctrine most immediately
arising from my text, I purpose hereafter
to discuss : Imploring the assistance of
that Spirit who is with the faithful to the
end of the Avorld, to give me the power to
declare, and you to apprehend, this great
and interesting, but difficult and mysterious
branch of the doctrine of redemption.

SERMON V.

Ephesians, iv. 30.
" And grieve not the holy spirit of God,
" whereby ye are sealed unto the day of
" redemption."
IN my last discourse upon these words
of the apostle I told you, that the seal of
the Spirit, in this and all other passages
where the same image may occur, is to be
understood of those gifts and graces which
the Scriptures teach us to ascribe to the
immediate operation of the holy spirit of
W
God. And taking the expression in its
most extensive meaning, as comprehend-

329
ing the miraculous as well as what are
called the ordinary influences, I shewed
you, that those miraculous powers Avhich
subsisted in the primitive ages may with
great propriety be esteemed a seal of every
private Christian's hope ; inasmuch as
they were the seal of the general truth of
the Christian doctrine ; the seal of Christ's
power ; the seal of the efficacy of his in
tercession and the merit of his sacrifice;
the seal of the authority of the apostles to
establish that new religion by the terms
of which we hope for mercy ; and the seal
of the acceptance of the Gentile converts,
who enjoyed their share of these extraor
dinary endowments so long as they sub
sisted at all in the Christian church.
I come now to treat a doctrine which,
if I mistake not, is a source of greater and
more general comfort, and is the doctrine
more immediately arising from the text,

330
that the ordinary influences of the Holy
Spirit on the mind of every true believer,
are to every individual of that description
a particular seal of his personal interest in
the glorious promises of the gospel. A
doctrine full of the truest consolation and
the highest joy, but very liable to be mis
understood. Great difficulties have indeed
been raised in it by those who have un
skilfully maintained and those who have
rashly denied it. It is to be treated there
fore with accuracy and caution ; and we
must rely on the assistance of that Spirit
who, Ave trust, is in this and in all ages
with the faithful teacher and diligent
hearer of the word, to conduct us to the
truth in this important but difficult disqui
sition. The proposition .which Ave apprehend
to be implied in the text, and which is in
culcated in innumerable passages of holy

331
writ is this, that the ordinary influences
of the Holy Spirit on the heart of every
true believer are to every such person an
earnest of his final salvation. These in-
fluences are an immediate action of the
holy spirit of God upon the mind of man,
by which he is brought to will and enabled
to do according to God's pleasure ; to
master the importunity of appetite; to
curb the impetuosity of passion ; to resist
the temptations of the Avorld; to baffle
the wiles of the Devil ; to deny himself;
to take up his cross and folloAv his cruci
fied Lord through the strait and thorny
paths of virtue to the peaceful seats of
endless bliss and glory. It is the doctrine
of the Scriptures, that a strength conveyed
from God into the Christian's mind renders
him sufficient for these great performances.
And the text, assuming this doctrine as a
confessed and certain truth, teaches him to

332
conclude, that God's enabling him to do
what without God's assistance could not
be done, is a certain argument of God's
merciful design to promote him to that
happiness hereafter, for which the habits
of a religious temper here are the natural
preparative. And admitting the premises,
the conclusion seems obvious and inevi
table. It was wisely said by the philoso
phers of old, that Nature does nothing in
vain. It was said wisely, because the whole
of nature is conducted by the continual
providence of the Being who created it.
In what are called the operations of nature
God is the first and sovereign agent. And
a wise being cannot act but to some end ;
nor can it be but that infinite power must
attain the ends to which it is exerted.
The maxim therefore, that Nature never
acts in vain is true ; but the truth of it rests
upon the wisdom and power of God, who

333
made and governs nature. And it is im
properly alleged as itself a first principle
of science, of original and intrinsic evi
dence, since it is only a consequence from
a higher and more general principle, " that
" God never acts in vain." This principle
obtains universally in the moral no less
than the material world. No act of the
Deity can be Avithout an end : And when
God enables the believer to become that
character which shall be the object of his
mercy in a future life, the only end to
which this action can be directed is, to
bring the person on whom it is performed
to that state of future happiness in which
this character fits him to be placed. So
that if the principle be true, that without
a constant action of God's spirit on the
mind of man no man can persevere in a
life of virtue and religion, the Christian
who finds himself empowered to lead this

334
life cannot err in his conclusion, that God's
power is at present exerted upon himself
in his OAvn person for his final preservar
tion. But here it may reasonably be asked,
by what sensible evidence any private
Christian may be assured that he is himself
a sharer in these sanctifying influences of
the Spirit ? For when they are mentioned
as the seal of his future hopes, there seems
to be an appeal to something, of which
there is a sensible perception as an evi
dence of the reality of those things which
are not yet become the objects of percep
tion and sense. As the seal affixed to a
declaratory deed is a sensible mark and
token of the internal purposes and invisible
resolutions of the human mind, the sensi
ble evidence of the action of God's spirit
on his own the Christian must look for in
the integrity of his OAvn principles and the

335
innocence of his life.- It may be said of
the Holy Spirit Avhat Christ has said of
other spirits, " by his fruits ye shall know
" him." " The fruit of the Spirit is lo v e :"
Love of God, from a just sense of his per
fections, Avhich render him no less the ob
ject of rational love than of holy fear ; love
of man, as created in the image of God ;
a more especial love of Christians, as bre
thren and members of Christ <' Joy :"
A, mind untroubled and serene amidst all
the discouragements, and vexations of the
Avorld; a f tiff satisfaction and entire com
placency in , the ability of a holy life.
" Peace:" A disposition and endeavour
to live peaceably Avith all men, not only
by avoiding what might justly provoke
their enmity and. ill-will, but by a studious
cultivation of the friendship of mankind
by all means which may be consistent with
the purity of our own conduct, and Avith

336
the interests of that religion which we are
called upon at all hazards to profess and
to maintain. " Long-suffering:" A
patient endurance of the evil qualities and
evil practices of men, even when they
create particular disturbance and molesta-
tion to ourselves, founded on an equitable
attention to that natural infirmity and cor
ruption from which none of us are entirely
exempted ; a temper more inclined to bear
than to retaliate much unprovoked injury
and undeserved reproach, esteeming in
jury and reproach a lighter evil of the two
than the restless spirit of contention and
revenge. " Gentleness, goodness,
" FAITH, MEEKNESS, TEMPERANCE:"
These are the fruits by which the spirit of
God is known. But every man's own
conscience must decide whether these
fruits are ripened to any perfection in his
heart ; whether these are the ruling prin-

337
ciples of his conduct. If his conscience is
void of offence towards God and towards
man : If he makes it the business of this
hfe to prepare for his future existence : If
he uses the present world without abusing
it : If he is patient in affliction, not elated
in prosperity ; mild in power, content in
servitude ; liberal in wealth, honest in po
verty ; fervent in devotion, temperate in
pleasure : If he rates not the present world
above its real worth, and sets his chief
affection on eternity: — This propriety of
conduct in the various situations of life ;
this holy habit of the soul turning from the
things that are seen and looking forwatd
to the things invisible, is the undoubted
work of God's holy spirit. It is therefore
an instance of mercy extended in the pre
sent life to the person on Avhom the effect
is wrought, and the surest earnest of the
greater mercies promised in the life to
Y

338
come. For God being immutable in his
nature and his attributes, and uniform in
the methods of his government, the expe
rience of his present goodness is the firmest
ground of future hope. But of the reality
of that improved state of sentiment and
manners from which the merciful interpo
sition of God's spirit is inferred, every
man's own spirit, that is, his conscience
is the judge; and the judgment of con
science must be taken from the sensible
effects of godly dispositions and a holy
life. But is this all ? Is the believer's assur
ance of his sanctification nothing more at
last than an inference of his OAvn mind
from the favourable testimony of his con
science? This is indeed the case. Yet
this assurance is no inconsiderable thing ;
for the inference is certain and infallible.
" Beloved," says St John, " if our hearts

339
' condemn us not then have we confidence
" towards God." And the rule by which
the heart must judge is this : " He that
" practiseth righteousness is righteous, in
" like manner as he, that is, as Christ is
" righteous." And " ever}' one that prac-
" tiseth righteousness is born of him." And
to the same purpose our Lord himself:
" If any one love me he will keep my
" word : And the Father will love him ;
" and we will come unto him and make
" our abode with him." Thus you see, he
that keeps Christ's commandments is in
the love of Christ and of the Father : He
that doeth righteousness is born of God :
He that is absolved by his conscience may
be confident God absolves him. And
yet St Paul assures ^is, that he " who has
*' not the spirit of Christ is none of his."
And St John, that the evidence that we
are in his love and under the protection of

340
his providence is, " that he has given us
" of his own spirit." In these texts the
very same things are denied of him who
shall be without the Spirit, which in those
before alleged, are affirmed of him whose
conscience shall be pure. Evidently there
fore the connexion is necessary and con
stant between a good life and a regenerate
mind, and where there is a conscience void
of offence there is the sanctifying Spirit of
the Lord.
Many, it ' is true, pretend to something
more than this, and speak of the action of
the Holy Ghost upon their minds as some
thing of which they have an immediate and
distinct perception independent of the tes
timony of conscience ; and they describe it
as something that they know by what they
feel to be the internal operation of the
Spirit. This is indeed a bewitching doc-
trine^Vhich may easily steal upon the un-

341
wary, upon men of a sanguine temper and
a weak judgment, hecause it seems to open
a new source of comfort. But this per
suasion is not of him that calleth us. It
is visionary and vain. We have the ex
press declaration of him who alone has a
perfect understanding of man's nature and
of God's, and who alone therefore under
stands the manner in which the divine
Spirit acts on man's ; we have the express
declaration of him who sends the Spirit
into the hearts of his disciples, that its ope
ration is no otherwise to be perceived than
in its effects. He compares it to the cause
of those currents of the atmosphere of
which the effects are manifest and noto
rious, though the first efficient is what no
sense discerns, and the manner of its ope
ration what , no philosophy can explain:
" The wind bloweth where it listeth, and
" thou hearest the, sound thereof, but canst

342
" not tell whence it cometh or Avhither it
" goeth. So is every one that is born of
" the Spirit."
Those Avho, unmindful of this declaration
of our Lord, stand for a perception of the
Spirit independent of conscience, it is to be
supposed are little aware that no greater
certainty of the Spirit's operation would
arise from the feelings they describe, were
it real, than conscience may afford without
it. For of the reality of this feeling, could
Ave suppose it real, conscience still must
be the judge, because conscience is the
seat of all internal perception. Conscience
is the faculty whereby the mind in every
moment of its existence perceives itself,
with every thing that either naturally be
longs, or for the present time is incident
to its being and condition ; its present
thoughte, its present designs, its present
hopes, fears, likings, and aversions: -Of

343
these or any other circumstances of its pre
sent state ; of any thing itself may do, or
of any thing which may be done to it, the
mind can have no feeling but by this
faculty. Whatever may excite or impress
the feeling, conscience is the place, if the
expression may be allowed, where it must
be felt. A perception therefore of the
mind, of any thing done to itself distinct
from the perceptions of the conscience, is
no less an absurdity in the very first con
ception, than an object that should be seen
without meeting the eye, or a sound that
should be heard without striking on the
ear. It is something to be internally per
ceived othenvise than by the faculty of in
ternal perception. And it is in vain to
allege God's power for the production of
such feelings, because no power can effect
impossibilities. If therefore that internal
feeling to Avhich enthusiasts pretend Avere

344
real, it would indeed be a new matter of
employment for the conscience ; but it
Avould add nothing to the security of our
present condition, or to the certainty of our
distant hopes. For consider how the case
stands without these feelings. Conscience
attesting that the life is innocent and the
heart sincere, faith draws the conclusion
that this upright heart and blameless con
duct is the work of the holy spirit of God..
And thus in the sensible effect of a reform
ed life and regenerate mind, it discovers a
token of God's present favour. Consider
on the other hand, how far the case will
be altered by the supposition of an inter
nal feeling of the Holy Spirit's influence.
All that could be felt would be the effect,
an impression on the mind. This impres
sion the conscience alone could feel. That
this impression felt in the conscience should
be from God's spirit rather than from any

345
other agent, would still be a conclusion to
be made by faith. And by what sign or
token could faith discern between the di
vine Spirit and another, but by those good
works Avhich the divine Spirit claims as his
proper and his constant fruits ? You see
therefore that the accession of these pretend
ed internal feelings would neither change
the ground nor improve the certainty of
the Christian's hope. The ground of his
hope would remain what it has been shewn
to be without them, — the conclusions of
faith from the testimony of conscience.
Only this difference is to be observed be
tween the fictitious and the real case, that
no internal feeling, other than the conscious
ness of good qualities and holy habits and
dispositions, could be interpreted by a true
and ^enlightened faith as a part of the
Spirit's sanctifying influence. Because
the express doctrine of the gospel being

346
what it is, it is no less the part of a true
faith to disbelieve the reality of any imme
diate perception of the mysterious inter
course between God's spirit and the human
soulj than to embrace with all thankfulness
the belief of a constant unperceived com
munion. For the one is denied by the
very same authority by which the other is
asserted. And to disbelieve what Christ
hath denied no less than to believe what he
hath affirmed, is an essential part of the
faith in Christ.
If I have delivered myself with the per
spicuity at which I have aimed, you will
be sensible that we neither abolish nor
weaken the testimony of the Spirit by
bringing it to rest upon the testimony of
conscience. This does by no means re
duce the hopes of the Christian to what
they mighty be if the testimony of the Spirit
were removed. To perceive this the more

347
clearly, make the supposition for a mo
ment, that the doctrine of the gospel being
in all other points exactly what it is, this
article of the Spirit's general and ordinary
influence had been kept entirely out of
sight ; there is no absurdity in supposing,
"that God might have acted just as we are
taught he does upon the hearts of the
faithful, although man had never been
made acquainted with this wonderful part
of the scheme of his salvation. And not
withstanding his ignorance in this particular
the good Christian would still have found
in the favourable testimony of his con
science, a solid ground of future hope.
But this hope, though perhaps not less
firm, must have been by many degrees less
vigorous and animating than that which
he now derives from the belief of the Holy
Spirit's constant operation on his heart.
For on the supposition of his ignorance

348
upon this point, his conclusion concerning
his own future condition must have been
drawn from a persuasion of the truth of
God's general promises to all persons of
that reformed character which he might
understand to be his own. Whereas with
the, knowledge that he. actually enjoys, his
hopes are built on a personal experience
of God!s present goodness. You see
therefore what gratitude we owe to God,
both for the unspeakable gift and for the;
clear knowledge of it which he has given
us ; which renders it to every Christian in
the present life the private and personal
seal of his future expectations.
It remains for me briefly to remind you,
that the effect, of a seal in any civil con
tract is to fasten the conditions of the cove
nant upon both parties. And thus it is to
be understood, that the seal of the Spirit,
as it confirms the promises on the part of

349
God, and renders them in some measure
personal to every one who finds the im
pression of this seal in the testimony of his
conscience, so it confirms the obligation to
a holy life, and renders it personal on the
part of the Christian. There is a general
obligation upon all mankind to a strict dis
charge of the duties of religion as far as
they are made known to them, arising
from their intrinsic fitness and propriety,
and from the common relation in which
all men stand to God as their Creator and
Preserver. There is a more particular ob
ligation upon Christians to observe the in
junctions of their Lord, arising from the
particular benefits and blessings of the
Christian covenant, from the clear dis
covery of future rewards and punishments,
and from the wonderful manifestation of
the riches of God's mercy, who gave his
Son to die for us while we were enemies.

350
But there is besides these general obliga
tions, — besides the obligation upon all men
to their natural duties, upon all Christians
to the public injunctions of their Lord, —
there is, I say, besides, upon every true
Christian who has tasted of the heavenly
gift, and been made partaker of the Holy
Ghost ; who experiences in the improve
ment of his own mind and manners the
present powers of the world to come ; up-v
on every such person there is a special and
personal obligation to cleanse himself from
all impurity of flesh and spirit, and to per
fect holiness in the fear of God. Espe
cially to listen with a vigilant and interest
ed attention to the private admonitions of
his own conscience, which is indeed no
thing less than the voice of God within
him. For as it is certain, on the one hand',
that no man has any testimony from the

. 351
Spirit of his present sanctification, no assu
rance of his final salvation but what is con
veyed to him through the conscience ; so
it is equally certain, on the other, that
every good suggestion of the conscience'
proceeds from the spirit of God. And
whoever stifles these suggestions, Avhoever
is not diligent to consult this internal mo
nitor, or reluctantly and imperfectly obeys
him, grieves the Spirit whose oracle he is.
And the danger is, that the Spirit will be
quenched, that those assistances will be
withdrawn which negligence and perverse-
ness render ineffectual and useless. For
God's grace is given to help the infirmities
of the upright and sincere, but it will not
foreibly reclaim the refractory or the
thoughtless. " Give therefore all dili-
" gence to make your calling and election
" sure :" For this shall effectually secure

352

your admission, into the everlasting
kipgdom of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ. To Avhom," &c.

FINIS.

Walker and Greig, Printers,
Edinburgh.