whilst the genuine character of Ahithophel, and of Saul, and of Judas, in the exterior traces of unreal goodness, escaped the suspicion of their friends. In our presumptuous attempts to exterminate the wicked, we may slay the just, we may persecute virtue in the shape of the publican, and patronize vice in the person of the Pharisee. Barabbas, we know, was preferred to Christ; and Satan has destroyed many a child of God, whilst he has affected to build up the temple of God.

But, thirdly, we must not run into an opposite extreme.

We must not, in depressing the spirit of the bigot, encourage the latitudinarian. We must not sanction the principles of the Erastians, who held that the wicked, and those that cause offences, are not even to be excluded from the communion of the church. We must not approve of the lukewarmness of many, who do not persecute only because they care not for religious

truth; and who, like the apostate Julian, would tolerate all religions because they feel not a regard for any. Bigotry, with all its failings, may yet be compatible with the love of Christ; at times, even, it grows out of the excess of our best and holiest feelings. But indifference, cheerless, and impotent, escapes the error of the religionist only by what is worse and more fatal than errorthe criminal neglect and fearful exclusion of all vital religion.

We are to recollect, that though we are not to root out the tares, yet that the parable could not be designed to inculcate indifference as to the respective characters of the good and the wicked. We are still to distinguish between the tares and the wheat; we are still to make a difference between darkness and light, between the children of Satan and of Christ. We are not indeed to persecute or to judge rashly; but yet we may exert, upon some occasions, and to a

the right

certain degree, our judgment. To ascertain that degree in every case is doubtless difficult, nay even impossible. Positive criteria cannot be laid down which will enable us to judge with precision at all times as to the characters of the good and the wicked. But this difficulty takes not away of judgment altogether, though it a ground for limiting this right. It follows not, because we cannot decide in difficult cases, that therefore we must not decide, so long as the decision be unaccompanied with persecution, in those that are notorious.

may

be

The Scriptures recognize this right. We are frequently called upon in Scripture to come out from sinners. We are enjoined to become a peculiar people, zealous of good works. The good that we do is principally to be done to them who are of the houshold of faith. And St. Paul advises that a he-. retic, after the first or second admonition,

may be rejected. Now these texts fully prove, that we are competent, to a certain extent, to appreciate the character of the sinner, the heretic, the peculiar people, the houshold of faith; and that the Christian church has an inherent and indisputable right of discipline, a right of admonishing, of censuring, of rejecting. We must not forget, that the same apostle who has given to charity the preeminence above faith and hope, has still discouraged the lax and undistinguishing application of this principle. He who has told us, in one place, that without charity our professions are but as sounding brass, at another has marked with reprobation the crime of heresy. an angel from heaven," says he, addressing the Galatians, "were to preach any other doctrine, let him be accursed." Nay, even blindness itself was inflicted by the same apostle on the sorcerer in Paphos (and nothing less, we conceive, than an apostle

" If

could or ought to have inflicted it) when he would have turned away Sergius Paulus from the faith. Nor must it be forgotten, that that divine Being, who hath declared that they who draw the sword shall perish by the sword, hath told us also that he came not to bring peace into the world, but a sword. Hence we infer, that love to man must not interfere with the higher claims of love to God; that charity itself must be kept under wholesome restraints, and that the exercise of it must depend upon the sole condition that it endangers not the security of religious truth. The tares, indeed, are to grow together with the wheat. We are to be engaged with sinners in business, or connected with them by the ties of kindred and of blood; yet we are to have no fellowship with the workers of darkness; we must have with them no other communion but what the claims and relationship of civil society demand.