I shall give you in the words of a great Scripturist, Dr. Clarke, as follows: That the three gradations of crime are an allusion to the three different degrees of punishment in the three courts of judicature amongst the Jews. And our Saviour's meaning was, that every degree of sin, from its first conception to its outrage—every degree of malice and hatred, shall receive from God a punishment proportionable to the offence. Whereas the old law, according to the Jewish interpretation, extended not to these things at all-forbade only murder and outward injuries. Whosoever shall say “thou fool," shall be in danger of hell-fire. The sense of which is not that, in the strict and literal acceptation, every rash and passionate expression shall be punished with eternal damnation—(for who then would be saved?)—but that, at the exact account of the judgment of the great day, every secret thought and intent of the heart shall have its just estimation and weight in the degrees of punishment which shall be assigned to every one in his final state.

There is another species of this crime which is seldom taken notice of in discourses upon this subject, and yet can be reduced to no other class; and that is, where the life of our neighbor is shortened, and often taken away, as directly as by a weapon, by the empirical sale of nostrums and quack medicines, which ignorance and avarice blend. The loud tongue of ignorance impudently promises much, and the ear of the sick is open. And as many of these pretenders deal in edged tools, too many, I fear, perish with the misapplication of them.

So great are the difficulties of tracing out the hidden causes of the evils to which this frame of ours is subject, that the most candid of the profession have ever allowed and lamented how unavoidably they are in the dark. So that the best medicines, administered with the wisest heads, shall often do the mischief they were intended to prevent. These are misfortunes to which we are subject in this state of darkness; but when men without skill, without education, without knowledge either of the distemper, or even of what they sell, make merchandise of the miserable, and, from a dishonest principle trifle with the pains of the unfortunate, too often with their lives, and from the mere motive of a dishonest gain, every such instance of a person bereft of life by the hands of ignorance can be considered in no other light than a branch of the same root. It is murder in

the true sense; which, though not cognizable by our laws, by the laws of right, every man's own mind and conscience must appear equally black and detestable.

In doing what is wrong, we stand chargeable with all the bad consequences which arise from the action, whether foreseen or not. And as the principal view of the empyric in those cases is not what he always pretends, the good of the public, but the good of himself, it makes the action what it is. Under this head it may not be improper to comprehend all adulterations of medicines willfully made worse through avarice. If a life is lost by such willful adulterations, and it may be affirmed that, in many critical turns of an acute distemper, there is but a single cast left for the patient, the trial and chance of a single drug in his behalf; and if that has willfully been adulterated and willfully despoiled of its best virtues, what will the vender answer?

May God grant we may all answer well for ourselves, that we may be finally happy. Amen.

XXXVI.-SANCTITY OF THE APOSTLES.

Matthew XI. 6.-Blessed is he that shall not be offended in me.

THE general prejudices of the Jewish nation concerning the royal state and condition of the Saviour, who was to come into the world, was a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, to the greatest part of that unhappy and prepossessed people when the promise was actually fulfilled. Whether it was altogether the traditions of their fathers, or that the rapturous expressions of their prophets, which represented the Messiah's spiritual kingdom in such extent of power and dominion, misled them into it; or that their own carnal expectations turned willful interpreters upon them, inclining them to look for nothing but the wealth and worldly grandeur which were to be acquired under their deliverer; whether these, or that the system of temporal blessings helped to cherish them in this gross and covetous expectation, it was one of the great causes for their rejecting him. "This fellow, we know not whence he is," was the popular

cry of one part; and they who seemed to know whence he was, scornfully turned it against him by the repeated quære, Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joses, and of Juda and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him. So that, though he was prepared by God to be the glory of his people Israel, yet the circumstances of humility in which he was manifested were thought a scandal to them. Strange! that he who was born their king should be born of no other virgin than Mary, the meanest of their people (for he hath regarded the low estate of his hand-maiden); and of one of the poorest too: for she had not a lamb to offer, but was purified, as Moses directed in such a case, by the oblation of a turtle-dove; that the Saviour of their nation, whom they expected to be ushered amidst them with all the ensigns and apparatus of royalty, should be brought forth in a stable, and answerable to distress; subjected all his life to the lowest conditions of humanity; that, whilst he lived he should not have a hole to put his head in, nor his corpse in when he died; but his grave too must be the gift of charity. These were thwarting considerations to those who waited for the redemption of Israel, and looked for it in no other shape than the accomplishment of those golden dreams of temporal power and sovereignty which had filled their imaginations. The ideas were not to be reconciled; and so insuperable an obstacle was the prejudice, on one side, to their belief on the other, that it literally fell out, as Simeon prophetically declared of the Messiah, that he was set forth for the fall, as well as the rising again, of many in Israel.

This, though it was the cause of their infidelity, was, however, no excuse for it. For, whatever their mistakes were, the miracles which were wrought in contradiction to them, brought conviction enough to leave them without excuse; and besides, it was natural for them to have concluded, had their prepossessions given them leave, that He who fed five thousand with five loaves and two fishes, could not want power to be great; and therefore needed not to appear in the condition of poverty and meanness, had it not, on other scores, been more needful to confront the pride and vanity of the world: and to show his followers what the temper of Christianity was by the temper of its first Institutor; who, though they were offered, and he could have commanded them, despised the glories of the world: took

upon him the form of a servant; and, though equal with God, yet made himself of no reputation, that he might settle, and be the example of so holy and humble a religion, and thereby convince his disciples for ever that neither his kingdom, nor their happiness, were to be of this world. Thus the Jews might have easily argued; but when there was nothing but reason to do it with on one side, and strong prejudices, backed with interest, to maintain the dispute, upon the other, we do not find the point is always so easily determined. Although the purity of our Saviour's doctrine, and the mighty works he wrought in its support, were demonstratively stronger arguments for his divinity than the unrespected lowliness of his condition could be against it; yet the prejudice continued strong; they had been accustomed to temporal promises; so, bribed to do their duty, they could not endure to think of a religion that would not promise, as much as Moses did, to fill their basket, and set them high above all nations: a religion whose appearance was not great and splendid, but looked thin and meagre; and whose principles and promises, like the curses of their law, called for sufferings, and promised perse

cutions.

If we take this key along with us through the New Testament, it will let us into the spirit and meaning of many of our Saviour's replies in his conferences with his disciples and others of the Jews; so particularly in this place, Matthew vi., when John had sent two of his disciples to inquire, Whether it was he that should come, or that they were to look for another? Our Saviour, with a particular eye to this prejudice, and the general scandal he knew had risen against his religion upon this worldly account, after a recital to the messengers of the many miracles he had wrought; as that-the blind received their sight, the lame walked, the lepers were cleansed, the dead raised; all which characters, with their benevolent ends, fully demonstrated him to be the Messiah that was promised them; he closes up his answer to them with the words of the text, and blessed is he that shall not be offended in me; Blessed is the man whose upright and honest heart will not be blinded by worldly considerations, nor hearken to his lusts and prepossessions in a truth of this moment. The like benediction is recorded in the seventh chapter of St. Luke, and in the sixth of St. John; when Peter broke out in that warm confession of their belief, Lord, we believe, we are

sure, that thou art Christ, the son of the living God. The same benediction is uttered, though couched in different words-Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona; for flesh and blood has not revealed it, but my Father which is in heaven. Flesh and blood, the natural workings of this carnal desire, the lust and love of the world, have had no hand in this conviction of thine; but my Father, and the works which I have wrought in his name, in vindication of this faith, have established thee in it, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail.

This universal ruling principle, and almost invincible attachment to the interests and glories of the world, which we see first made so powerful a stand against the belief of Christianity, has continued to have as ill an effect, at least, upon the practice of it ever since; and, therefore, there is no one point of wisdom that is of a nearer importance to us than to purify this gross appetite, and restrain it within bounds, by lowering our high conceit of the things of this life, and our concern for those advantages which misled the Jews. To judge justly of the world, we must stand at a due distance from it, which will discover to us the vanity of its riches and honors in such true dimensions as will engage us to behave ourselves towards them with moderation. This is all that is wanting to make us wise and good; that we may be left to the full influence of religion, to which Christianity so far conduces that it is the great blessing, the peculiar advantage, we enjoy under its institution, that it affords us not only the most excellent precepts of this kind, but also shows us those precepts confirmed by most excellent examples. A heathen philosopher may talk very elegantly about despising the world, and, like Seneca, may prescribe very ingenious rules to teach us an art he never exercised himself: for all the while he was writing in praise of poverty, he was enjoying a great estate, and endeavoring to make it greater. But if ever we hope to reduce those rules to practice, it must be by the help of religion. If we would find men who, by their lives, bore witness to their doctrines, we must look for them amongst the acts and monuments of our church, amongst the first followers of their crucified Master; who spoke with authority, because they spoke experimentally, and took care to make their words good, by despising the world, and voluntarily accounting all things in it loss, that they might win Christ. O holy