and let them consider, that if such principle of interpretation were generally pursued, it would not be difficult by the aid of ingenuity to give almost any signification to the words which the views of prejudice or party required. It is not, however, meant that the literal will always necessarily lead to the higher and the spiritual signification; but in all cases it will at least tend to preserve us from being carried too far by the mere influence of imagination, and to emancipate us from the power of preconceived sentiment. The strict investigation of the literal sense, being founded on accuracy of knowledge not easy to be obtained, will prevent us from falling into the error of judging inconsiderately, and, if it have truth alone for its object, will take away all temptation to pervert any part of the sacred volume from its legitimate signification. In that volume, doubtless, there are many things "hard to be understood," many which have been misunderstood and misinterpreted: let those therefore amongst us, whose business it

is to explain it, pray, that in all our interpretations and in all our teaching we may not merit the condemnation of those, who, as St. Peter says, "being unlearned and unstable, wrest those things, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction ",

2 Pet. iii. 16.

SERMON VI.

Preached at Christ Church, Dec. 11, 1825.

1 PET. i. 18, 19, 20.

Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot : who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world.

WHATEVER may be meant in this passage by the corruptible things which could not purchase redemption, we learn from the opposition so strongly expressed in it the nature and value of that sacrifice through which our redemption has actually been accomplished. We learn besides, by a necessary inference from the connexion of the words, that the sacrifice of Christ had been foreordained even

before man was created, and had fallen into that state which made his redemption necessary; a conclusion which is by no means inconsistent with the doctrine that may be collected from other passages of Scripture. How indeed this was, our limited understandings do not enable us to comprehend; but our notions of a Being, to whom the past, the present, and the future, are alike, and to whom time has neither beginning nor end, do not permit us to disbelieve that it may have been. We do, however, believe, and we have the fullest warranty of Scripture for believing, that the sacrifice of Christ was the conclusion of a chain of instituted ceremonies, which were designed to lead to and terminate in it; that it was the completion of the various rites of the Mosaic law, and the seal which attested their intention and divine institution. We have also reason to presume, as God had expressly revealed to man immediately after his fall the promise that the seed of the woman should bruise the

serpent's head, that at the same moment he had foreordained the sacrifice of Christ, in which that promise received its final accomplishment. It would be presumptuous, as it would be ineffectual, to speculate upon the counsel of God upon any particular subject, without the aid of any revelation of his will respecting it: but we are not forbidden to enquire into that which he has been pleased to reveal to us in the sacred books, through the medium of intelligible language, even if we should derive an argument from the investigation of the usage and sense merely of any of its words, and to collect from those books the elements of information, however scattered and incidental, provided our object be to ascertain the truth, not to pervert it.

No question which affects the subject of the atonement of Christ for the sins of mankind can be unimportant to Christians, who rest their whole hopes of redemption upon its efficacy, and who are taught to commemorate his