་ him not into your houfe, neither bid him God Speed: for be that biddeth him God fpeed, is par taker of his evil deeds (g). Learn then your faith from the mouth of your Saviour, and of his infpired apostles and evangelifts. Look to your Bible. Fix your foot on that rock. Apply to yourself the admonitions of St. Paul: Be ftedfaft in the unity of the faith. Be not toffed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine: but fpeaking the truth in love, grow up unto Him in all things who is the bead, even Chrift. Be not carried about with divers and frange doctrinès: for it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace. Remember them which have spoken unto you the word of God: whofe faith follow, confidering the end of their converfation, Jefus Chrift, the fame yesterday, and to-day, and for ever (b). Recollect the prophetic warning of the fame apostle. The time will come when they will not endure found doctrine (i). That time has long fince arrived. The prophecy has already been fulfilled, and is at this day fulfilling, with refpect to multitudes. Numbers at this day, while they profefs themselves Chriftians, erect themfelves in oppofition to the eTential doctrines of the Gofpel. Sometimes they ex (g) 2 John, -1. (b) Ephef. iv. 13-15. Heb. xiii. (i) 2 Tim. iv. 3. 7-9. claim against its myfteries: and prefuming to measure by their unaffifted reason fubjects utterly beyond the grafp of human underftanding, plunge into the most extravagant wildneffes of interpretation, rather than bend to the plain and repeated declarations of God concerning the nature of his own Godhead. More frequently they take offence at the humiliating facts which lie at the root of the doctrine of redemption: that man is radically. corrupt; that the law of God is a law of perfect holiness, and requires perfect obedience that any breach of that law in any one point, fubjects the offender to the penalty of eternal death; that holiness is in no refpect the product of the human heart, but altogether the fruit of the Spirit of God; and confequently. that whoever fhall receive remiffion of punishment, fanctification, and the gift of life eternal, will receive all these bleffings folely through the free grace and mercy of God in Christ, and will owe no one of them in the fmalleft portion or degree to any right or merit of his own. Numbers, inftead of humbly acknowledging these truths, which are as confiftent with reafon as they are decidedly inculcated in the Scriptures, proudly rely on their supposed personal righteousness; dare to claim forgiveness and salvation as in part at leaft due to their own excellence and good 1 works; works; and are so far from looking to Christ as the fole ground of hope of deliverance from the wrath to come; and of admiffion into the kingdom of glory, that they regard his atoning facrifice merely, if I may venture to apply the term to fo aweful a fubject, as a fort of make-weight, which may compenfate for fuch of their tranfgreffions as their own imaginary righteousness may not have been altogether fufficient to countervail. So blind to their own state, so ignorant of the fundamental principles of Chriftianity, are many who frequent Chriftian worship! May God grant that few or none of you, when, you examine your own faith, may find yourfelves of this defcription! Meditate then, as the apostle exhorts, upon thefe things. Take beed to thyfelf and to thy doctrine: continue in them. Speak thou the things which become found doctrine; that men be found in faith. If any man confent not to wholefome words, even the words of our Lord Jefus Chrift, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness; he is proud, knowing nothing (k). 2. Chrift, in the fecond place, is the cornerftone of morality. He conferred, in various ways, most eminent glory on the moral law of God. He came to give himself as a facrifice (k) 1 Tim, iv. 15, 16. Tit. ii. 1, 2. B 4 1 Tim. vi. 3, 4. for for offences committed against that law and thus established in the face of men and of the universe, the excellence of that law; and evinced the heinousness of fin, for which no inferior atonement could fuffice. In explaining that law, he fhewed by his fermon on the mount, as well as by many occafional expofitions, its holy and spiritual nature. Far from perverting its operations, like the Pharifees and Scribes; far from reftraining its influence, according to their abfurd and pernicious fyftem, to outward and notorious fins, or exhaufting its efficacy on the punctilious obfervance of trifling duties and unauthorised injunctions; he fanctioned and magnified the whole law he affigned to its feveral precepts and commandments the place and preponderance to which they were refpectively entitled : and he extended the empire of every one of them to the heart. Think not, faid he, that I am come to destroy the law: I am not come to defroy, but to fulfil. For verily I fay unto you, till heaven and earth pafs, one jot or one tittle shall in no wife pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Wo unto you, Scribes and Pharifees! for ye pay tithe of mint and anife and cummin ; and bave omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgement, mercy, and faith. Thefe ought ye to have done; and not to leave the other undone. Who foever is angry with his brother without a cause is it danger of the judgement. Whosoever bateth bis brother is a murderer. -Whofoever looketh on a woman to luft after her, bath already committed adultery with her in his heart. Out of the heart proceed the things which defile a man. Bleffed are the pure in heart: for they fball fee God (1). During the whole period of his miniftry he afforded a conftant example of perfect obedience to the moral law. Every duty which it became him as man to fulfil towards men, he discharged no less punctually than those obligations of which the immediate object was God. He was boly, undefiled, feparate from finners (m). Made like unto his brethren (n) in every point except one; point he differed totally and immeasurably from them all: for he was without fin (o). By his example, and for the express purpose of glorifying his name, every moral duty is inculcated and enforced by the apofties: and thus also the moral law is continually receiving additional glory through him. If humi lity is to be impreffed, Let this mind, faith St. Paul, be in you which was in Chrift Jefus ; who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself in one (7) Matt. v. 17, 18. xxiii. 23. v. 22, 28. xv. 18. v. 8. (m) Heb. vii. 26. 1 John, iii. 15. (n) Heb. ii. 17. of |