Gospel to the poor; he bath fent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and to fet at liberty thofe that are bruifed, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. Once more; I must preach the kingdom of God, for therefore am 1 fent. * What the fum and substance of our Saviour's preaching was, will be remembered prefently; and mean time we shall find his Apostles delivering themselves in language corresponsive to the above. The law was given by Mofes, fays St. John, but grace and peace came by Jefus Chrift. In this was manifefted the love of God towards us, fays the fame Apostle, because that God fent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love; not that we loved God, but that he loved us; and fent his Son to be the propitiation for our fins. ‡ Again; When the fulnefs of time was come, fays St. Paul, God fent forth his fon, made of a woman, that we might receive the adoption of Sons. § This is a faithful Saying, fays the fame Apostle, and worthy of * Luke iv. 18. 43. ‡ John iv. 9, 10. + John i. 17. § Gal. iv. 4. all all acceptation, that Chrift Jefus came into the world to fave finners. * And to adduce only one paffage more, the grace of God that bringeth falvation, hath appeared to all men s teaching us that denying ungodliness, and worldly lufts, we should live foberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world. The question then will be how, or in what manner, we are taught to live thus; or, in other words, what we are to understand by Christ's religion, regarding it as a system of morality. I must beg leave then, in the third place, to put you in mind, that Christianity is not a new law, properly fpeaking, but a new edition, if I may fo fay, or promulgation of the old; agreeably to the express declaration of its Divine Author, who affures us that he came not to destroy the moral law, or the prophets, but to fulfil both. The fact is, Chrift blotted out the band writing of carnal ordinances, § and took out of the way the whole ceremonial of Judaism, but left every thing * Tim. i. 15. + Matt. v. 17. + Tit. ii. 11, &c. which was intrinfically boly, and just, and good in the law, in its full force and obligation. He was the mediator of a better cove→ nant; he laid the foundation of a new system of faith, and a purer mode of worship; but he repealed not a fingle law of Moses, that had any thing in it properly of a moral and binding nature. A religion of this fort fuppofed and required reformation, in the lives of its profeffors; and accordingly our blessed Lord, in his excellent difcourfe on the mount, and in other places, enforces the import, and explains the obligation of many of the precepts of the Jewish lawgiver; the full sense and genuine meaning of which had been perverted by the false gloffes and mifconftructions of later ages, and particularly of the Scribes and Pharifees. We find him perpetually upbraiding these with their fubftitutions of oral tradition in the room of the written word of God; and with abfurdly and impiously teaching for doctrines the com→ mandments of men. * In thefe inftances he nobly rescues the Scripture from human cor *Matt. xv. 9. ruptions; ruptions; and faithfully discharges the important office, not of a maker or prescriber of law, but of a doctor or expounder of it. Suitably to all this, our Lord cites and refers to the law of Mofes upon all occafions. If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. viz. the commandments contained in the Mofaic decalogue, was his answer to the person who had asked him, what he fhould do that he might have eternal life? When the lawyer, by way of tempting him, put this question to him, which is the great commandment in the law? He mentions those two capital ones, which, though not literally to be found among the ten, virtually comprehended them all, namely, the love of God and of our neighbour; at once fatisfying and confounding his infidious querift with this appofite and decifive reply. Accordingly when he told his difciples, that he gave them a new commandment § in his particular injunction to them to love one another, he + Matt. xix. 17. § John xiii. 34. Ibid. xxii. 35. was was not teaching a new doctrine, or bringing frange things to their ears, this duty being evidently implied in the love of our neighbour, but only injoining a duty, by the practice of which his followers ought to be more especially distinguished; to which they had inducements of an extraordinary nature; to which they were bound by ties and confiderations peculiarly Christian, and by reverence for his aftonishingly great example, who so loved them, and washed them from their fins in his own blood.* In perfect confiftence with this, the Apostles preached the Gospel, after their Lord and Master had left the world, and was gone to his Father. They taught Gospel truths; they infifted on, (St. Paul more especially,) they rejoiced, they gloried in their deliverance from bondage under weak and beggarly elements; they exulted in the abolition of the ceremonial law, as a mere temporary eftablishment, and shadowy institution; but at the fame time they regarded the moral law * Rev. i. 5. + Gal. iv. 9. as |