Imatges de pàgina
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tical schemes that you make use of. This, according to your sermon, is murder, and you know the "Thou shalt not kill."

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You speak, in some parts of your sermon, as if soul was cspoused to Christ, for you talk about faith and love, though you know nothing about either. It is well known that faith leads to Christ, that love unites with him; and that souls thus united are married to the Saviour. But your first husband is not dead, for you say the law is your delight and your food. If so, you are not dead to it, nor is it dead to you, therefore you have no right to marry another. "Know ye not, brethren (for I speak to them that know the law), how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth? For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead she is loosed from the law of her husband. So then, if while her husband liveth she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress; but, if her husband be dead, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress though she be married to another man. Wherefore ye are become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God." But you are not dead to the law, for you get food from it; nor is the law become dead to you, for you smite it, and get refreshment; and, as you are alive to it, it has dominion over you; this power it holds as long as a man liveth, or is

alive to it; to talk therefore of faith in Christ, while your first husband liveth, is adultery. "Thou shalt not commit adultery."

You have stolen a great part of my sermon, and preached as your own doctrine, even while you was preaching against it, and against me, the author of it. The law says, "Thou shalt not steal." "Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that steal my words, every one from his neighbour."

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And, having accused me of preaching false doctrines, bringing in a new law, acting the part of a sophist, and deceiving people by cunning, thereby injuring my ministry, and rendering it contemptible to the people, while you know that your whole charge is palpable falsehood, you are guilty of a breach of the ninth commandment, because you have deceitfully and wickedly borne false witness against your neighbour.

In short, coveting after money, the gown and cassock, the appearance of a dignified minister, together with human wisdom, and a rectory or a vicarage, makes you at once lie counter to the whole law; nor will your doctrine or your conduct lie straight with any other rule in God's book.

Your running away from your lawful calling, without any call to the ministry, or qualifications for it, and at a time too when so many new buildings are going on, and plasterers are so much wanted, is another act of your disobedience; "Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work." God says, If any man will not work, neither shall he

eat, 2 Thess. iii. 10. But you have another throw at me for mentioning the word original.

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But you may plainly see the sophistry and 'cunning of such a man; and frequently they' (he it should have been, according to the nominative case)' talk about the original, which puts me in 'mind of a young man, of whom I have heard, ' who was an infidel, and was sporting in company

at the expense of the sacred truths of God.' It should have been worded thus, who was sporting with the sacred truths of God, at the peril of his soul. 'On a sudden he says, I will prove that 'Jesus Christ was an impostor; for he tells us, in 'one of his gospels, with respect to bottles, that ✦ the new is better than the old; Now pray where ' is the difference? Is not one as good as the other? 'And he thought that he had carried his point by 'the pleasure that appeared on the countenances ' of the company. But a grave divine, who happened to be present, says, Do you understand 'the Greek, sir? The Greek, sir! No, says he,

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every body knows a bottle is a bottle all the 'world over. But, sir, says the divine, the original ' means leather or skin bottles; and, in this point ' of view, the one must be better than the other; 'for it was a custom in those days to put their liquors into those bottles. So there the original was of use. And we find that criticisms go a great way to explain sacred truths, when all the 'circumstances are taken into consideration, such 'as when and where spoken, and such like.'

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In this paragraph I find criticisms go a great

way toward explaining the sacred truths of God; therefore I shall make use of them, in order to pull off the false gloss that you have cast upon the parable of the bottles.

You give me a throw for mentioning the word original, which to me appears no crime, for I believe an experienced Christian, who is under the divine tuition of God's Spirit, is, in the best sense of the word, an original, for he learns the first good lesson and the best that ever was taught. And, as God says that all his children shall be taught of him, who is the first and the best teacher, accordto Job, "God exalteth by his power; Who teacheth like him?" I think such a pupil may boast of antiquity, or talk about the original, without sin, seeing God is the Ancient of days.

I see no cause why the word original should be confined to a man that has picked up a few odds and ends of Greek; especially if we consider that God's divine teaching was in the world above two thousand years before he smote any tongue of the presumptuous Babel-builders with the dialect of Greece. And who could ever have thought that the effects of God's displeasure against a combined company of rebels, which was intended to scatter the proud in the imaginations of their hearts; to blast their measures, confound their wisdom, discover their presumption, and leave them exposed to eternal contempt and ridicule; for Christ says that in the great day many shall "mock, saying, This man began to build, but was not able to finish" I say, who could have thought that the

effects of God's anger should ever have been the cause of so many carnal fools' triumph, and the only qualifications for so many blind guides to steal, like the devil, into God's fold.

It was the literal Babel-builders who were first confounded and routed by God's smiting their tongues with various languages; and to the mystical Babel-builders the Saviour applies both their scorn and confusion; and by this your sermon it appears as if your combination were determined to keep the charter.

I suppose you have your answer ready; Paul thanked God that he spake with tongues more than they all. Yet I take him in a spiritual point of light; that by his own experience, and the Spirit's teaching, he was enabled to come home to every sinner's conscience in the sight of God, and to lay open the hypocrisy of the sinner's heart, which all the Greek and Hebrew in the world will never enable a man to do, if he be destitute of divine inspiration. This may be easily gathered from Paul's caution against building on human wisdom. "He that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man,” says Paul. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." God hides his mysteries from the wise and prudent, and reveals them unto babes.

I declare I have had several gentlemen of family and learning, that have come to hear me out of curiosity, who have behaved with decency, and

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