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The case was this

Our Lord, before he was betrayed, had taken occasion to admonish his disciples of the peril of lapsing, telling them-thirty-first verse-All ye shall be offended because of me this night. To which Peter answering, with a zeal mixed with too much confidence, that though all should be offended, yet will I never be offended, -to check this trust in himself, our Saviour replies, that he in particular should deny him thrice. But Peter looking upon this monition no farther than as it implied a reproach to his faith, and his love, and his courage,-stung to the heart to have them called in question by his Lord, he hastily summons them all up to form his final resolution,-Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee. The resolve was noble and dutiful to the last degree, and I make no doubt as honest a one-that is, both as just in the matter, and as sincere in the intention-as ever was made by any of mankind; his character not suffering us to imagine he made it in a braving dissimulation. No; for he proved himself sufficiently in earnest by his subsequent behaviour in the garden, when he drew his sword against a whole band of men, and thereby made it appear that he had less concern for his own life than he had for his Master's safety. How then came his resolution to miscarry? The reason seems purely this :Peter grounded the execution of it upon too much confidence in himself, - doubted not but his will was in his power, whether God's grace assisted him or not; surely thinking that what he had courage to resolve so honestly, he had likewise ability to perform. This was his mistake; and though it was a very great one, yet it was in some degree akin to a virtue, as it sprung merely from a consciousness of his integrity and truth, and too adventurous a conclusion of what they would enable him to perform, on the sharpest encounters, for his Master's sake: so that his failing in this point was but a consequence of this hasty and ill-considered resolve; and his Lord, to rebuke and punish him for it, did no other than leave him to his own strength to perform it, which in effect was almost the same as leaving him to the necessity of not performing it at all. The great Apostle had not considered that he who precautioned him was the searcher of hearts, and needed not that any should testify of man, for he knew what was in man: he did not remember that his Lord had said before, Without me ye can do nothing; that the exertions of all our faculties were under the power of his will. He had forgot the knowledge of this needful truth, on this one unhappy juncture, where he had so great a temptation to the contrary, though he was full of the persuasion in every other transaction of his life; but most visibly here in the text, where he breaks forth in the warm language of a heart still overflowing with remembrance of

this very mistake he had once committed,--Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? as though by our own power and holiness we had wrought this! The God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, through faith in his name, hath made this man whole, whom ye see and know.

This is the best answer I am able to make to this objection against the uniformity of the Apostle's character which I have given. Upon which let it be added, that was no such apology capable of being made in its behalf, the truth and regularity of a character is not, in justice, to be looked upon as broken from any one single act or omission which may seem a contradiction to it. The best of men appear sometimes to be strange compounds of contradictory qualities; and, were the accidental oversights and folly of the wisest man, the failings and imperfections of a religious man, the hasty acts and passionate words of a meek man,—were they to rise up in judgment against them, and an ill-natured judge be suffered to mark in this manner what has been done amiss, what character so unexceptionable as to be able to stand before him? So that, with the candid allowances which the infirmities of a man may claim, when he falls through surprise more than a premeditation, one may venture upon the whole to sum up Peter's character in a few words :-He was a man sensible in his nature,-of quick passions, tempered with the greatest humility and most unaffected poverty of spirit that ever met in such a character. So that, in the only criminal instance of his life, which I have spoken to, you are at a loss which to admire most: the tenderness and sensibility of his soul, in being wrought upon to repentance by a look from Jesus, or the uncommon humility of it, which he testified thereupon, in the bitterness of his sorrow for what he had done. He was once presumptuous in trusting to his own strength; his general and true character was that of the most engaging meekness, distrustful of himself and his abilities to the last degree.

He denied his Master; but in all instances of his life but that, was a man of the greatest truth and sincerity; to which part of his character our Saviour has given an undeniable testimony, in conferring on him the symbolical name of Cephas-a rock,-a name the most ex pressive of constancy and firmness.

He was a man of great love to his master, and of no less zeal for his religion, of which, from among many, I shall take one instance out of St. John, with which I shall conclude this account:-Where, upon the desertion of several other disciples, our Saviour puts the question to the twelve, Will ye alsɔ go away? then, says the text, Peter answered and said, Lord! whither shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life, and we believe and know that thou art Christ the Son of God. Now, if we

look into the Gospel, we find that our Saviour tion, we have transferred the surplus in ecclesipronounced on this very confession,—

Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. That our Saviour had the words of eternal life, Peter was able to deduce from principles of natural reason; because reason was able to judge, from the internal marks of his doctrine, that it was worthy God, and accommodated properly to advance human nature and human happiness. But for all this, reason could not infallibly determine that the messenger of this doctrine was the Messias, the eternal Son of the living God. To know this required an illumination; and this illumination, I say, seems to have been vouchsafed at that instant as a reward, which would have been sufficient evidence by itself of the disposition of his heart.

I have now finished this short essay upon the character of St. Peter, not with a loud panegyric upon the power of his keys, or a ranting encomium upon some monastic qualifications, with which a Popish pulpit would ring upon such an occasion, without doing much honour to the saint, or good to the audience; but have drawn it with truth and sobriety, representing it, as it was, as consisting of virtues the most worthy of imitation, and grounded, not upon apocryphal accounts and legendary inventions, the wardrobe whence Popery dresses out her saints on these days,-but upon matters of fact in the sacred Scriptures, in which all Christians agree. And since I have mentioned Popery, I cannot better conclude than by observing how ill the spirit and character of that Church resembles that particular part of St. Peter's which has been made the subject of this discourse. | Would one think that a Church, which thrusts itself under this Apostle's patronage, and claims her power under him, would presume to exceed the degrees of it which he acknowledged to possess himself? But how ill are your expectations answered, when, instead of the humble declaration in the text, -Ye men of Israel, marvel not at us, as if our own power and holiness had wrought this,-you hear a language and behaviour from the Romish court as opposite to it as insolent words and actions can frame!

So that, instead of, Ye men of Israel, marvel not at us-Ye men of Israel, do marvel at us-hold us in admiration-approach our sacred pontiff (who is not only holy, but holiness itself)-approach his person with reverence, and deem it the greatest honour and happiness of your lives to fall down before his chair, and be admitted to kiss his feet.

Think not as if it were not our own holiness which merits all the homage you can pay us. It is our own holiness-the superabundance of it, of which, having more than we know what to do with ourselves, from works of supereroga

astic warehouses, and, in pure zeal for the good of your souls, have established public banks of merit, ready to be drawn upon at all times.

Think not, ye men of Israel, or say within yourselves, that we are unprofitable servants, we have no good works to spare, or that, if we had, we cannot make this use of them; that we have no power to circulate our indulgences and huckster them out, as we do through all the parts of Christendom ;

Know ye, by these presents, that it is our own power which does this-the plenitude of our apostolic power, operating with our own holiness, that enables us to bind and loose, as seems meet to us on earth ;-to save your souls or deliver them up to Satan, and as they please or displease, to indulge whole kingdoms at once, or excommunicate them all; binding kings in chains, and your nobles in links of iron.

That we may never again feel the effects of such language and principles, may God of his mercy grant us. Amen.

XXXII.-THIRTIETH OF JANUARY.

'And I said, O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thec, my God: for our iniquities are increased over our head, and our trespass is grown up unto the heavens. Since the days of our fathers have we been in a great trespass unto this day.'-EZRA IX. 6, 7.

THERE is not, I believe, throughout all history, an instance of so strange and obstinately corrupt a people as the Jews, of whom Ezra complains; for though, on one hand, there never was a people that received so many testimonies of God's favour to encourage them to be good, so, on the other hand, there never was a people | which so often felt the scourge of their iniquities to dishearten them from doing evil. Yet neither the one nor the other seemed ever able to make them either the wiser or better; neither God's blessings nor his corrections could ever soften them; they still continued a thankless unthinking people, who profited by no lessons, neither were to be won with mercies, nor terrified with punishments, but were, on every succeeding trial and occasion, extremely disposed, against God, to go astray and act wickedly.

In the words of the text, the prophet's heart overflows with sorrow, upon his reflection of this unworthy part of their character; and the manner of his application to God is so expressive of his humble sense of it, and there is something in the words so full of tenderness and shame for them upon that score, as bespeaks the most paternal, as well as pastoral, concern for them. And he said, O my God! I am ashamed, and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God. No doubt the holy man was con

founded to look back upon that long series of so many of God's undeserved mercies to them, of which they had made so bad and ungrateful a use. He considered that they had all the motives that could lay restraints either upon a considerate or a reasonable people; that God had not only created, upheld, and favoured them with all advantages in common with the rest of their fellow-creatures, but had been particularly kind to them; that when they were in the house of bondage, in the most hopeless condition, he had heard their cry, and took compassion upon their afflictions, and, by a chain of great and mighty deliverances, had set them free from the yoke of oppression. The prophet no doubt reflected at the same time, that, besides this instance of God's goodness in first favouring their miraculous escape, a series of successes, not to be accounted for from second causes, and the natural course of events, had crowned their heads in so remarkable a manner as to afford an evident proof, not only of God's general concern, but of his particular providence and attachment to them above all people. In the wilderness he led them like sheep, and kept them as the apple of his eye, he suffered no man to do them wrong, but reproved even kings for their sake; that when they entered into the promised land, no force was able to stand before them,-when in possession, no army was ever able to drive them out; that nations, greater and mightier than they, were thrust forth from before them; that, in a word, all nature for a time was driven backwards by the hands of God, to serve them, and that even the sun itself had stood still in the midst of heaven, to secure their victories;—that when all these mercies were cast away upon them, and no principle of gratitude or interest could make them an obedient people, God had tried by misfortunes to bring them back; that when instructions, warnings, invitations, miracles, prophets, and holy guides, had no effect, he at last suffered them to reap the wages of their folly, by letting them fall again into the same state of bondage in Babylon from which he had first raised them. Here it is that Ezra pours out his confession. It is no small aggravation to Ezra's concern to find that even this last trial had no good effect upon their conduct; that all the alternatives of promises and threats, comforts and afflictions, instead of making them grow the better, made them apparently grow the worse: how could he intercede for them, but with shame and sorrow; and say, as in the text, O my God! I am ashamed, and blush to lift up my face to thee: for our iniquities are increased over our heads, and our trespass is grown up unto the heavens: since the days of our fathers have we been in a great trespass unto this day!

Thus much for the prophet's humble confession to God for the Jews, for which he had but

too just a foundation given by them; and I know not how I can make a better use of the words, as the occasion of the day led me to the choice of them, than by a serious application of the same sad confession, in regard to ourselves.

Our fathers, like those of the Jews in Ezra's time, no doubt have done amiss, and greatly provoked God by their violence; but if our own iniquities, like theirs, are increased over our heads,-if since the days of our fathers we have been in great trespass ourselves, unto this day, 'tis fit this day we should be put in mind of it; nor can the time and occasion be better employed than in hearing with patience the reproofs which such a parallel will lead me to give.

It must be acknowledged there is no nation which had ever so many extraordinary reasons and supernatural motives to become thankful and virtuous as the Jews had; yet, at the same time, there is no one which has not sufficient, and (setting aside at present the consideration of a future state as a reward for being so) there is no nation under heaven, which besides the daily blessings of God's providence to them, but have received sufficient blessings and mercies at the hands of God, to engage their best services, and the warmest returns of gratitude they can pay. There has been a time, may be, when they have been delivered from some grievous calamity,-from the rage of pestilence or famine -from the edge and fury of the sword,-from the fate and fall of kingdoms round them; they may have been preserved, by providential discoveries, from plots and designs against the well-being of their states, or by critical turns and revolutions in their favour when beginning to sink; by some signal interposition of God's providence, they may have rescued their liberties, and all that was dear to them, from the jaws of some tyrant; or may have preserved their religion pure and uncorrupted when all other comforts failed them.

If other countries have reason to be thankful to God for any one of these mercies, much more has this of ours, which at one time or other hath received them all; insomuch that our history, for this last century, has scarce been anything else but the history of our deliverances and God's blessings; and these in so complicated a chain, and with so little interruption, as to be scarce ever vouchsafed to any nation or language besides, except the Jews; and with regard to them, though inferior in the stupendous manner of their working, yet no way so in the extensive goodness of their effects, and the infinite benevolence which must have wrought them for us. Here then let us stop, look back a moment, and inquire, as in the case of the Jews, what great effect all this has had upon our lives, and how far worthy we have lived, of what we have received?

A stranger, when he heard that this island

had been so favoured by Heaven,- -so happy in our laws and religion,-so flourishing in our trade, so blessed in our situation and natural product, and in all of them so often, so visibly protected by Providence,—would conclude our gratitude and morals had kept pace with our blessings; and he would say, as we are the most blessed and favoured, that we must be the most virtuous and religious people upon the face of the earth.

Would to God there was any other reason to incline one to so charitable a belief! for, without running into any commonplace declamation upon the wickedness of the age, we may say, within the bounds of truth, that we have profited in this respect as little as was possible for the Jews; that there is as little virtue, and as little sense of religion, at least as little of the appearance of it, as can be supposed to exist at all, in a country where it is countenanced by the State. Our forefathers, whatever greater degrees of real virtue they were possessed of, God, who searcheth the heart, best knows; but this is certain, in their days they had at least the form of godliness, and paid this compliment to religion, to wear at least the appearance and outward garb of it. The public service of God was better frequented, and in a devout as well as regular manner; there was no open profaneness in our streets, to put piety to the blush, nor domestic ridicule to make her uneasy, and force her to withdraw.

Religion, though treated with freedom, was still treated with respect; the youth of both sexes kept under greater restraint; good order and good hours were then kept up in most families; and, in a word, a greater strictness and sobriety of manners maintained throughout, amongst people of all ranks and conditions; so that vice, however secretly it might be practised, was ashamed to be seen.

But all this has insensibly been borne down ever since the days of our forefathers' trespass, when, to avoid one extreme, we began to run into another; so that, instead of any great religion amongst us, you see thousands who are tired even of the form of it, and who have at length thrown the mask of it aside, as an useless incumbrance.

But this licentiousness, he would say, may be chiefly owing to a long course of prosperity, which is apt to corrupt men's minds. God has since this tried you with afflictions; you have been visited with a long and expensive war: God has sent, moreover, a pestilence amongst your cattle, which has cut off the flock from the fold, and left no herd in the stalls. Surely, he'll say, two such terrible scourges must have awakened the consciences of the most unthinking part of you, and forced the inhabitants of your lands, from such admonitions, though they failed with the Jews, to have learnt righteousness for themselves.

I own this is the natural effect, and one would hope should always be the natural use and im provement from such calamities; for we often find that numbers who in prosperity seem to forget God, do yet remember him in the day of trouble and distress. Yet, consider this nationally, we see no such effect from it, in fact, as one would be led to expect from the speculation: for instance, with all the devastation,. bloodshed, and expense which the war has occa sioned, how many converts has it made to fru- | gality, to virtue, or even to seriousness itself? The pestilence amongst our cattle, though it has distressed and utterly undone so many thousands, yet what one visible alteration has it made in the course of our lives?

And though one would imagine that the necessary drains of taxes for the one, and the loss of rents and property from the other, should in some measure have withdrawn the means of gratifying our passions as we have done; yet what appearance is there amongst us that it is so?

What one fashionable folly or extravagance has been checked by it? Is not there the same luxury and epicurism of entertainments at our tables? do we not pursue with eagerness the same giddy round of trifling diversions? is not the infection diffused amongst people of all ranks and all ages? And even grey hairs, whose sober example and manners ought to check the extravagant sallies of the thoughtless, gay, and unexperienced, too often totter under the same costly ornaments, and join the general riot. Where vanity like this governs the heart, even charity will allow us to suppose that a consciousness of their inability to pursue greater excesses is the only vexation of spirit. In truth, the observation falls in with the main intention of the discourse, which is not framed to flatter your follies, but plainly to point them out, and show you the general corruption of manners, and want of religion, which all men see, and which the wise and good so much lament.

But the inquirer will naturally go on and say, that though this representation does not answer his expectations, undoubtedly we must have profited by these lessons in other respects; though we have not approved our understanding in the sight of God, by a virtuous use of ocz misfortunes, to true wisdom, that we must have improved them, however, to political wisdom: so that he would say, though the English do not! appear to be a religious people, they are at least a loyal one; they have so often felt the scourge of rebellion, and have tasted so much sharp fruit from it, as to have set their teeth on edge for ever. But, good God! how would he be asto-; nished to find, that though we have been so often tossed to and fro by our own tempestuous humours, we were not yet sick of the storm! that though we solemnly, on every return of this day, lament the guilt of our forefathers in

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XXXIII.

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'Despisest thou the riches of his goodness, and forbearance, and long-suffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?'-ROM. 11. 4. So says St. Paul. And

staining their hands in blood, we never once think of our principles and practices which tend the same way! and, though the providence of God has set bounds, that they do not work as much mischief as in days of distraction and desolation, little reason have we to ascribe the merit thereof to our own wisdom; so that, when the whole account is stated betwixt us, there seems nothing to prevent the application of the words in the text,-that our iniquities are increased over our heads, and our trespass is grown up unto the heavens. Since the days of our fathers have we been in a great trespass unto this day; and though it is fit and becoming that we weep for them, 'tis much more so that we weep for ourselves, that we lament our own corruptions, and the little advantages we have made of the mercies or chastisements of God, or from the sins and provocations of our fore--shows but too lamentably what grounds have fathers.

This is the fruit we are to gather in a day of such humiliation; and unless it produces that for us, by a reformation of our manners, and by turning us from the error of our ways, the service of this day is more a senseless insult upon the memories of our ancestors than an honest design to profit by their mistakes and misfortunes, and to become wiser and better from our reflections upon them.

Till this is done, it avails little though we pray fervently to God not to lay their sins to our charge, whilst we have so many remaining of our own. Unless we are touched for ourselves, how can we expect he should hear our cry? It is the wicked corruption of a people which they are to thank, for whatever natural calamities they feel. This is the very state we are in, which, by disengaging Providence from taking our part, will always leave a people exposed to the whole force of accidents, both from within and without: and however statesmen may dispute about the causes of the growth or decay of kingdoms, it is for this cause a matter of eternal truth, that as virtue and religion are our only recommendation to God, they are consequently the only true basis of our happiness and prosperity on earth; and however we may shelter ourselves under distinctions of party, that a wicked man is the worst enemy the State has; and, for the contrary, it will always be found that a virtuous man is the best patriot and the best subject the king has. And though an individual may say, What will my righteousness profit a nation of men? I answer, If it fail of a blessing here (which is not likely), it will have one advantage, it will save thy own soul, and give thee that peace at the last which this world cannot take away.

Which God, of his infinite mercy, Amen.

grant us all.

'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.'-ECCLES. VIII. 11. TAKE either as you like it, you will get nothing by the bargain.

'Tis a terrible character of the world which Solomon is here accounting for,-that their hearts were fully set in them to do evil. And the general outcry against the wickedness of the age,-in every age from Solomon's down to this,

all along been given for the complaint.

The disorder and confusion arising in the affairs of the world from the wickedness of it being ever such, so evidently scen, so severely felt, as naturally to induce every one who was a spectator or a sufferer to give the melancholy preference to the times he lived in ; as if the corruptions of men's manners had not only exceeded the reports of former days, but the power almost of rising above the pitch to which the wickedness of the age was arrived. How far they may have been deceived in such calculations, I shall not inquire; let it suffice that mankind have ever been bad, considering what motives they have had to be better; and, taking this for granted, instead of declaiming against it, let us see whether a discourse may not be as serviceable, by endeavouring, as Solomon has here done, rather to give an account of it, and, by tracing back the evils to their first principles, to direct ourselves to the true remedy against them.

Let it here be only premised, that the wickedness either of the present or past times, whatever scandal and reproach it brings upon Christians, ought not in reason to reflect dishonour upon Christianity, which is so apparently well framed to make us good, that there is not a greater paradox in nature than that so good a religion should be no better recommended by its professors. Though this may seem a paradox, 'tis still, I say, no objection, though it has often been made use of against Christianity; since, if the morals of men are not reformed, it is not owing to a defect in the revelation, but 'tis owing to the same causes which defeated all the use and intent of reason before revelation was given. For, setting aside the obligation which a divine law lays upon us, whoever considers the state and condition of human nature, and, upon this view, how much stronger the natural motives are to virtue than to vice, would expect to find the world much better than it is, or ever has been. For who would

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