make Religion and Law subservient to our bitter animosities; since all this, I say, has been made appear in the preceding comment on the sacred text, it becomes us, severally, to consider what our part has been in the disordered scene, now set before us: what care we have taken to check those unruly passions, which are so apt, by indulgence, to tyrannize over us; and, if this care has been less than it ought to have been, what may be the consequence of our neglect. We should, in a word, take heed, how we bite and devour one another; not only, as the Apostle admonishes, that we be not consumed one of another; but lest, in the end, we incur the chastisement of that Law, we have so industriously perverted, and the still sorer chastisement of that RELIGION, we have so impiously abused.

SERMON VIII.

PREACHED APRIL 29, 1770.

1 TIM. i. 5.

The end of the Commandment is Charity, out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned.

THE Apostle, in the preceding verse, had warned Timothy against giving heed to fables and endless genealogies: by FABLES, meaning certain Jewish fictions and traditions applied to the explication of theological questions, and not unlike the tales of the pagan mythologists, contrived by them to cover the monstrous stories of their Gods; and, by GENEALOGIES, the derivation of Angelic and Spiritual na

tures, according to a fantastic system, invented by the Oriental philosophers, and thence adopted by some of the Grecian Sects. These fables and genealogies (by which the Jewish and Pagan converts to Christianity had much adulterated the faith of the Gospel) the Apostle sets himself to expose and reprobate, as pro ducing nothing but curious and fruitless disputations; being indeed, as he calls them, endless, or interminable; because, having no foundation in the revealed word of God, they were drawn out, varied, and multiplied at pleasure by those, who delighted in such fanatical visions.

Then follows the text.-The end of the Commandment, is CHARITY: out of a PURE HEART: and of a GOOD CONSCIENCE; and of FAITH UNFEIGNED-As if the Apostle had said, "I have cautioned you against this pernicious folly but, if ye must needs deal in the way of Mythology and Genealogy, I will tell you how ye may employ your ingenuity to more advantage. Take Christian Charity, for your theme: mythologize that capital Grace of your profession; or, deduce the parentage of it, according to the steps, which I will point out

q Called ones. See Grotius in loc.

- Απεράντοις.

to you. For it springs immediately out of a pure heart; which, itself, is derived from a good conscience ; as that, again, is the genuine offspring or emanation of faith unfeigned. In this way, ye may gratify your mythologic or genealogical vein, innocently and usefully '; for ye may learn yourselves, and teach others, how to acquire and perfect that character, which is the great object of your religion, and the end of the Commandment."

Let us, then, if you please, attend to this genealogical deduction of the learned Apostle ; and see, if the descent of Christian charity be not truly and properly investigated by him.

I. CHARITY, says he, is out of a pure heart : that is, it proceeds from a heart, free from the habits of sin, and unpolluted by corrupt affec

tions.

To see with what propriety, the Apostle makes a pure heart the parent of charity, we are to reflect, that this benevolent temper, which inclines us to wish and do well to others, is the proper growth and produce, indeed, of the human mind, but of the human mind in its

s Dat nobis et Paulus brevem yeva hoylav, sed perutilem. GROTIUS.

native and original integrity. To provide effectually for the maintenance of the social virtues, it hath pleased God to implant in man, not only the power of reason, which enables him to see the connexion between his own happiness and that of others, but also certain instincts and propensities, which make him feel it, and, without reflexion, incline him to take part in foreign interests. For, among the other wonders of our make, this is one, that we are so formed as, whether we will or no, to rejoice with them that rejoice, and weep with them that weept. But now this sympathetic tenderness, which nature hath put into our hearts for the concerns of each other, may be much impaired by habitual neglect, or selfish gratifications. If, instead of listening to those calls of nature, which, on the entrance into life, are incessantly, but gently, urging us to acts of generosity, we turn a deaf ear to them, and, charmed by the suggestions of selflove, yield up ourselves to the dominion of the grosser appetite, it cannot be but that the love of others, however natural to us, must decline, and become, at length, a feeble motive to action; or, which amounts to the same thing, be constantly overpowered by the undue prevalence

t Rom. xii. 15.