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himself the right of dictating to his followers just what he pleased. Accordingly he delivered to them a collection of precepts, requiring nothing but a course of external services, without the least goodness of heart; and promised Heaven to prayers, ablutions, fastings, alms, pilgrimages to Mecca, and circumcision. Religion he considered as founded on cleanliness; which he declared to be the one half of Faith, and the key of Prayer. Fas ing he pronounced to be the gate of Religion. He allowed four wives to every one of his followers; and as many concubines, as each was able to maintain. Heaven he converted into a mere mansion of debauchery; and changed the mild and rational mode of propagating Religion, taught by Christ and his Apostles, into a regular system of the most brutal and barbarous persecution. In a word, his doctrines flattered, and licensed every human corruption, every sordid lust, every sinful indulgence.

3dly. The doctrines of Heathenism are still more deformed, and still more expressive of opposition to God.

Instead of one God, the Heathen, as you know, believed in many. Instead of the perfect JEHOVAH, they heaped up to themselves Gods after their own lusts; debased by filial impiety, fraud theft, falsehood, injustice, treachery, murder, and lewdness, indulged in every manner, which can debase an Intelligent nature. They worshipped men, beasts, birds, fishes, reptiles, and insects. They prostrated themselves before trees, shrubs, plants, stocks, and stones. They sacrificed human victims; prostituted men and women in religious services; and sanctioned every violation of purity, justice, kindness, and piety. Read the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans; and you will find a short, but exact and affecting, account of what they not only did, but justified, licensed, and enjoined.

4thly. Modern Infidelity has, in various instances, strongly commended the ancient Heathenism, both partially, and in the gross; and in publishing its own doctrines has shown, that the spirit by which it is actuated, is no other than the very spirit of its predecessors. It has denied the existence and perfections of God; at times partially; at other times wholly. It has admitted his existence, and denied his providence; the accountableness of man; a future state; the distinction between right and wrong, or holiness and sin, piety, and rebellion; has declared all that men can do with impunity to be right; has licensed wrath, revenge, murder, pride, oppression, gluttony, drunkenness, fornication, adultery, and incest. Surely it is unnecessary for me to observe, that the spirit, manifested in the doctrines, which teach these things, is in the highest degree hostile to God, to truth, and to righteousness.

To Jews and Infidels the Gospel has been directly published in form. To a great part of mankind it was published in the days of the Apostles; and has been extensively offered to many nations in succeeding periods of time. That it has not made an universal VOL. I.

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progress over the globe, has been owing to the fact, that those, to whom it has been offered, have in so many instances refused it acceptance. Had the Ancestors of the present generation of men given the Religion of the Bible a welcome admission to their hearts, in the days of the Apostles; it would long since have been preached to every family under heaven. Men, therefore, have stopped its progress; and not God.

But, as the fact has been, the Gospel has been published to a great part of the human race; and by a great proportion of these it has been rejected. So general has been this rejection, as entirely to determine the true nature of the human character: for it cannot be pretended, that there is one original nature in those who have heard and rejected the Gospel, and another in the rest of mankind.

It ought to be added on this part of the subject, that many of those who have professedly received the Word of God in the Christian world, have, in instances innumerable, in every country, and every age, exhibited the same disposition in the same manner. These men have almost universally denied the real import of the book, which they have professed to receive. Its spiritual and heavenly doctrines they have, in forms very diverse, but in design and spirit wholly the same, lowered continually down, so as to suit, or at least so as not to disgust, the taste of a sinful heart. The extent also, and purity, of the Scriptural precepts they have contracted, and debased, so as to license, in a professed consistency with them, a great part of those evil practices, which are gratifying to a polluted, sinful mind. The Doctrines of the Gospel they have with one consent reduced to the level of mere natural Religion; and that the natural Religion, in substance, which was taught by the graver heathen philosophers, and is now echoed by the more decent Infidels. The precepts of the Gospel, also, they have taught to speak a moral language, undistinguishable, as to its import, from that of Plato, Seneca, and Herbert. Thus in truth, notwithstanding their professed belief of the word of God, they have rejected both the Law and the Gospel; and rejected them for the doctrines and precepts, which they thus inculcate. That such is the real design of all these men I am convinced by this remarkable fact; viz. that, when driven from one error, they always take refuge in another; and never come a whit nearer, however often confuted, to the reception of the truth. The sum of the argument, then, is this: God has given to mankind a law, for the government of their moral conduct, which is not only reasonable and just in itself, but dictated by infinite benevolence on his part, and supremely profitable to them: a law demanding of them, that they love him with all the heart, and that they love each other as themselves. This character, which is no other than the Image of his moral perfection, is the supreme excellence, and the only moral excellence, of Intelligent beings. In itself it is high and indispensable enjoyment

to every such being; and in its efficacy it is the only voluntary cause of all other enjoyments: a cause, existing originally and supremely in Him, and by derivation existing extensively in them.

This Law, therefore, is a perfect law; and worthy of JEHOVAH. Were men virtuously disposed; were they not depraved; were they not sinful; their obedience to its commands would be immediate, universal, and absolute. Instead of this, wherever it has been proposed to them, they have chosen to disobey it, notwithstanding the glorious and eternal reward, promised to their obedience, and the awful penalty, threatened to disobedience. What stronger proof of their depravity can be demanded?

There is, however, one proof still more affecting. In the miserable situation, into which men brought themselves by their Apostacy, God regarded them with infinite compassion, and undertook to rescue them from their sin and misery. For this end he sent his own beloved Son into the world, to live here a humble, painful, and persecuted life, and to die an accursed and excruciating death, to make in the human soul an end of sin, to finish transgression, to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness. In consequence of his atonement, God has offered, anew, to receive the fallen race of Adam into his favour, on the conditions of Faith and Repentance in the Redeemer: conditions in themselves indispensable to their return to God, and to obedience; indispensable to their own comfort, honour, and virtue; and beyond expression easy, reasonable, and desirable. As he foresaw that they would still resist this boundless love, and would fail of it through their corruption, ignorance, error, and prejudice; he published his Gospel to enlighten them, and sent his Spirit to sanctify them, that by all means they might be saved. Still in a multitude of instances almost literally endless, a multitude so great as to prove this to be the common character of all the children of Adam, they have rejected these most merciful proffers of boundless good, crucified his son afresh, cast contempt on his cross, accounted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing, and done despite to the Spirit of Grace.

And now, my friends and brethren, judge, I pray you, between God and his vineyard. What could have been done to his vineyard, that he has not done in it? Wherefore, when he looked, that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth poisonous berries? Wherefore brought it forth the grapes of Sodom, and the clusters of Gomorrah? Every tree is known by its fruit. Thist vine is plainly, therefore, of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah. Its grapes are grapes of gall; its clusters are bitter. Its wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps.

Were man virtuously disposed, it is incredible, nay, it is plainly impossible, that he should not yield himself to this Law, as soon as

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it is proposed to him. As obedience to this Law is the only excellence of conduct; so a virtuous state of mind, a virtuous disposition, a virtuous character, by all of which phrases we intend that unknown cause, heretofore specified, which gives birth to virtuous rather than to vicious conduct, would so soon as this Law was proposed to it, render, in a sense instinctively, an immediate, cheerful, and universal obedience.

Were such a mind, also, to apostatize, and yet to retain a disposition in a preponderating degree virtuous; were it afterwards to be informed of a method, by which it might return to obedience, and the favour of God; it would be plainly impossible, that such a mind should not receive this information, and embrace this method of returning, with readiness, and even with rapture. If, at the same time, the terms of its reinstatement in obedience, and in the divine favour, were in themselves eminently easy and reasonable, and in their efficacy productive of its highest future amiableness, dignity, and enjoyment; if they were such, as rendered it peculiarly lovely in the sight of God, and prepared it to be peculiarly useful to its fellow-creatures; such a mind would, beyond a doubt, seize the terms themselves with delight, and the divine object, which they secured, with ecstasy.

The rejection of the word of God, of the Law and the Gospel alike, is, therefore, entirely inexplicable, unless we acknowledge, that the disposition by which it is rejected, is a disposition directly opposed to that of a virtuous mind; wholly unlike that with which Adam was created; and the genuine moral likeness of Adam after his Apostacy.

SERMON XXXI.

DEPRAVITY OF MAN.-ITS DEGREE.

ECCLESIASTES Viii. 11.-Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.

IN the two last discourses, I proposed for consideration the following doctrine: That in consequence of the Apostacy of Adam all men have sinned; and endeavoured to prove the Universality of sin in the former of these discourses;

1st. From Revelation: and,

2dly. From Facts:

And in the latter from the great fact, that mankind have rejected the Word of the Lord.

It is now my design to examine, in several particulars, the Degree, in which the sinfulness of man exists. On this subject I ob

serve,

1st. That the human character is not depraved to the full extent of the human powers.

It has been said, neither unfrequently, nor by men void of understanding, that man is as depraved a being, as his faculties will permit him to be; but it has been said without consideration, and without truth. Neither the Scriptures, nor Experience, warrant this assertion. Wicked men and seducers, it is declared, will wax worse and worse; deceiving and being deceived. During the first half of human life this may, perhaps, be explained by the growth of the faculties; but during a considerable period, preceding its termination, it cannot be thus explained: for the faculties decay, while the depravity still increases. Nations, also, are declared, to be at some periods of time, far worse than at others; although it cannot be pretended, that during the period specified their faculties were superior. Saul appears to have been a man of more talents than Jeroboam; Jeroboam than Ahab; and Uzziah than either; yet Ahab was a worse man than Jeroboam; Jeroboam than Saul; and Saul than Uzziah. The Young Man, who came to Christ, to know what good thing he should do, to have eternal life, was certainly less depraved, than his talents would have permitted him to be.

Like him, we see, daily, many men, who neither are, nor profess to be, Christians, and who, instead of being wicked to a degree commensurate to the extent of their faculties, go through life in the exercise of dispositions so sincere, just, and amiable, and in the performance of actions so upright and beneficent, as to secure a high degree of respect and affection from ourselves, and from all

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