tian dispensation, then is he amenable to this clause. The revelation of God to man, the glories and graces of the Christian dispensation, are not the objects of capricious sport, or idle contention. They are not to be received at pleasure, nor rejected with impunity. Those who have the power and the opportunity of ascertaining, of receiving, and of defending their truth, must, in reason, be answerable for their wilful rejection, or intentional corruption. "God is not mocked." "What a man soweth, that also will he reap." But even here we must remember, that God, not man, is the Judge. And when the judgments of God are threatened, they neither are, nor can be, threatened absolutely, but with a final and essential reservation for the mercies of infinite wisdom.

Thus then, when after a black catalogue of human crimes, the Apostle declares, "that they which do such things shall not enter the kingdom of God." And when, in consequence of such declaration, we believe that the wages of sin is everlasting death, do we by this belief exclude the prerogative of infinite mercy? The analogy holds good in both cases. Both in the trial of faith and of works, there are venial, there are mortal sins; and though we know the law is equally explicit in its threatenings against sin in general, we know that justice will be tempered

by mercy, according to the judgment of infi nite wisdom. When then we say that he who keeps not whole this Catholic faith, without doubt shall perish everlastingly; we mean, that against a wilful rejection, or corruption, of any of the leading and fundamental doctrines of the Christian dispensation, the judgment of death in the Scriptures is pronounced; reserving ever the exercise of that mercy, which infinite wisdom can alone with equity dispense..

Is then this declaration in conformity with the whole tenor of Scripture? Is the witness of man authorized and confirmed by the witness of God? It is not my present intention to multiply texts in its defence. He that will examine for himself, will find the witness of God not only greater but stronger than the witness of man. He will find the most positive, the most awful penalties, denounced against the wilful rejection, not of one, but of every article, both separately and conjointly, of the Christian faith. Beyond this, there is no appeal. "He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son hath not life, but the wrath of God remaineth upon him."

Such then being the witness of Scripture to the essential importance of every article of our faith, it is surely neither useless nor uncharitable, to prefix a solemn warning to their general profession. It is for us to apply to those general

threatenings, such rational limitations as are most consonant with the whole scheme of Christianity; not to violate with trifling objections, nor resist with obstinate jealousy its doctrines, because they are apparently, and in form, the witness of man, when we find that they are really, and in fact, doctrines emanating from a higher authority, that they are even "the witness of God."

SERMON III.

HEBREWS ii. 16.

He took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham.

THE event which we are assembled this day to commemorate, is placed far beyond the adequate comprehension of the human intellect. The incarnation of the Divinity, is a mystery, which the penetration of man cannot fathom, nor his ingenuity disclose. The measures of infinite goodness are as incomprehensible to a finite mind, as the acts of infinite power. How the co-eternal and co-equal Word of God, which was both with " God, and was God," could descend from the ineffable glory of the Divinity, and be clothed not only in the semblance, but in the substance, of mortality; how the Majesty of heaven could be united to the frail and perishable form of humanity, must ever remain to us a mystery which enquiry can only perplex, and discussion confuse. But it is not to be concluded, because

the manner is unintelligible, that the matter is therefore incredible; nor because we cannot assign the particular mode, that the general proposition, therefore, is not an object of our faith. In many cases which relate to the natural world, our knowledge is often limited; in all cases which relate to the attributes, the power, and the dispensations of the Deity, our faculties are always by necessity confined. When, then, we speak of the incarnation as a subject which we cannot in all its bearings comprehend, we do not exclude it from being an object of rational belief, and from thence of perfect faith.

We believe it, as the testimony, not only of man, but of God. Nor is there any event since the foundation of the world, that stands recorded upon stronger or more powerful evidence. We have the witness of man, in the attestation of friends, to the facts; we have the collateral testimony of enemies, as a confirmation of their existence. We have the witness of God in the voice of prophecy, in the miracles attending its completion. All these materials of belief, in their various bearings, conspire with astonishing power to build up the fabric of our faith, to strengthen its foundations, and to confirm its solidity.

The union of the Divine and human nature in the person of Christ, has perplexed the imagination of many, who because they cannot compre

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