meal from wasting and her cruise of oil from failing. By these blessed instruments of his providence and love doth the Almighty address the foreboding and desponding soul of every dying servant of his, in the words of that gracious and comfortable promise: "Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive, and let thy widow trust in me. Happy, therefore, are all they who have it this day in their power to imitate the loving kindness of their heavenly Father, and to copy after the example of the holy Jesus, while they show their gratitude for the benefits received from him at the hands of his ministers, by contributing to relieve the distresses of their impoverished 'families. Riches thus expended are returned with increase into the bosoms of the generous; for "the liberal soul shall be made fat,' "and he who watereth shall be watered also him"self." Alms given through faith procure "de"liverance in the time of trouble";" they "fight "for us against our enemies, better than a mighty “shield and strong spear2;" they ascend up for “a "memorial before Goda," and bring down the benedictions of heaven upon us; they sanctify to us the whole creation in the days of health; they comfort us, when we most need comfort, on the bed of sickness; and they follow us whither our estates and possessions cannot ". "He who receiveth a name of a prophet," and "who 66 prophet in the giveth to these little ones but a cup of cold water, "because they belong to Christ, shall in no wise lose "his reward" in that day, when the "merciful "shall obtain mercy';" when he who hath not turned away his face from the poor shall not behold the face of the Lord turned away from him; when the widow and the fatherless shall be the ablest advocates, and plead with irresistible eloquence in behalf of their kind benefactors, whose liberality saved them from want and destruction. For, lo! an awful silence, and all the attention of heaven and earth engaged, while from the throne of judgement proceed these gracious words addressed to the merciful—“ I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was naked and ye clothed me-for, inasmuch as ye did it unto "the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto me. "Come therefore, ye blessed of my Father, inherit "the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation "of the world". Ye are they which have continu"ed with me in my temptation'; be ye numbered "with my saints in glory everlasting.”—Which God grant that we all may be, through the merits and mediation of Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom with the Father and the Holy Ghost, three persons and one God, be ascribed, as is most due, all blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, now and for Amen. 66 evermore. e Matt. x. 41, 42; Mark, ix. 41. * Tobit, iv. 7. Matt. xxv. 34. f Matt. v. 7. 437 DISCOURSE XXX. WORKS WROUGHT THROUGH FAITH A CONDITION OF OUR JUSTIFICATION. JAMES, II. 24. Ye see, then, how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. WAS a disciple of the holy Jesus permitted to carve his own lot, and to choose his employment in the world, he would doubtless wish to pass his days, without strife and contention, in the pleasing task of contemplating the love, and setting forth the praises, of his divine Lord and Master. But this is a felicity reserved for us in a better world, and shall be given to them for whom it is prepared, when the church shall pass out of her militant into her triumphant state. At present she is in an enemy's country; there is a noise of war continually in the camp; and every man must have his "sword upon his thigh, "because of fear in the night;" every minister of the Gospel must be armed with "the sword of the "Spirit, which is the word of God," to combat every error, and put every heresy to flight, that may otherwise take the advantage of those seasons when the church is least upon her guard, to assault and hurt the faith. It has indeed been a maxim some, times laid down, that false opinions, if let alone, will die of themselves. But surely the Gospel and experience teach us another lesson. If men sleep while the tares are sown, it will cost them many waking hours to root them up when they are grown, besides the great danger there is of rooting up the wheat complicated and entangled with them at the same time. And if the master of the house should think it needless to extinguish a fire already kindled, and insinuating itself among the beams that compose and support the edifice, he may soon be seen bewailing his unpardonable negligence over its ruins. Should it be asked who are the proper persons to defend the faith, when it is attacked from time to time, and to state the Christian doctrines aright, as often as they are in divers manners misunderstood and perverted; the answer is obvious-They who, by the liberality of founders and benefactors, are separated from the cares and concerns of the world, that they may attend without distraction upon this very thing, and see, ne quid detrimenti ecclesia capiat. The solifidian, or antinomian heresy, which asserts, "that man is justified by faith without works," and which took its rise from a misunderstanding and perversion of some passages in St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, was one of the first that disturbed the Christian church; insomuch that St. Augustine says, that not only the Epistle of St. James, but likewise those of St. Peter, St. John, and St. Jude, were written to guard the faithful against its pernicious His words are "Contra eam maxime influences. His words are dirigunt intentionem, ut vehementer astruant, "fidem sine operibus nihil prodesse." Many have been the heresies since, in the composition of which this opinion has been a prime ingredient. But it was all in its glory in the last century, and had taken possession of the theological chair in this university, when the incomparably learned Bishop Bull entered the lists against it, and, encountering its ablest champions, gave it a total defeat in that palmary work the Harmonia Apostolica, with its defences, styled, by Dr. Grabe, the triumph of the church of England'. But as heresies make their periodical revolutions in the church, like comets, in the heavens, to shed a baleful influence on all about them, the time seems to be coming when antinomianism is to be again rampant among us. And what wonder that this or any other heresy should be introduced and propagated, if men, instead of having recourse to the Catholic doctors of the ancient church, and to such of our divines as have trodden in their steps, will extract their theology from the latest and lowest of the modern sectaries, thus beginning where they should end? if, instead of drawing living water for the use of the sanctuary from the fresh springs of primitive antiquity, they take up with such as comes to them at second or third hand from the lake of Geneva? if the spirit of a Cyprian, exerted in the maintenance of the vigor Episcopatus and the constitution of the church, be accounted for bigotry and a Aug. de Fid. et Op. cap. 14. Nelson's Life of Bishop Bull, p. 235. |