Set yourselves, then, without delay, to acquire an early habit of strict self-government, and an early intercourse with your Almighty Protector. Let it be your first care to establish the fovereignty of reason, and the empire of grace, over your fouls, and it will foon be no pain to you; but, on the contrary, a real pleasure "to be temperate in all things," Watch ftand faft in the faith, quit your

ye,

felves like men, be ftrong, be refolute, be patient. Look frequently up to the prize that is fet before you, left ye be wearied and faint in your minds, Confider, that every pang you feel on account of your duty here, will be placed to your credit, and encrease your happiness, hereafter. The conflict with your paffions will lefs irksome every day, a grow few years will put an entire end to it, and you will then, to your unfpeakable comfort, be enabled to cry out with St. Paul, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my

46

courfe, I have kept the faith. Henceforth "there is laid up for me a crown of righte“ousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, fhall give me at that day."

SERMON

SERMON XIV.

MATTHEW Xxvii. 54.

TRULY THIS WAS THE SON OF GOD.

WE

E have here a teftimony to the divine character of our bleffed Lord, which must be confidered as in the highest degree impartial and incorrupt. It is the testimony not of friends, but of enemies; not of those who were prepoffeffed in favour of Christ and his Religion, but of those who, by habit and education, were prejudiced, and strongly prejudiced, against them. It is, in fhort, the voice of nature and of truth; the honest, unpremeditated confeffion of the heathen centurion, and the foldiers under him, whom the Roman governor had appointed as a guard over the crucifixion of our Lord. So forcibly ftruck were these persons with the behaviour of Jefus,

and the astonishing circumstances attending his death, that they broke out involuntarily into the exclamation of the text, " Truly this was "the Son of God."

Different opinions, it is well known, have been entertained by learned men concerning the precife fenfe in which the centurion understood Chrift to be the Son of God. But without entering here into any critical niceties (which do not in the leaft affect the main object of this difcourfe) I fhall only observe in general, that even after making every abatement, which either grammatical accuracy, or parallel paffages, may feem to require, the very loweft meaning we can affix to the text, in any degree confiftent with the natural force of the language, and the magnitude of the occafion, is this that the centurion, comparing together every thing he had seen, and rifing in his expreffions of admiration, as our Lord's encreafing magnanimity grew more and more upon his obfervation, concluded him to be, not only a person of moft extraordinary virtuè, and moft tranfcendent righteousness, but of a nature more than human, and bearing evident marks of a divine original.

That

That his conclufion went at least fo far as this, will appear highly probable from confidering the two distinct grounds on which it was founded.

The firft was, the attention with which the centurion appears to have marked the whole behaviour of our Lord during the dreadful scene he paffed through, from the beginning to the end of his sufferings upon the crofs. He placed himself, as St. Mark informs us, over against Jefus. From that station he kept his eye conftantly fixed upon him, and obferved, with anxious care, every thing he faid or did. And when he faw the meeknefs, the patience, the refignation, the firmness, with which our Lord endured the moft excruciating torments; when he heard him at one time praying fervently for his murderers, at another difpofing, with dignity and authority, of a place in paradife, to one of his fellow-fufferers; and, at length, with that confidence which nothing but conscious virtue, and confcious divinity, could, at such a time, infpire, recommending his spirit into the hands of his heavenly Father; from these circumstances, what other inference could the centurion draw, than that

Jefus

Jefus was not merely a righteous but a heavenly

born perfon?

But there was another, and that a ftill more powerful proof of our Lord's celeftial origin, which offered itfelf to the centurion's notice; I mean, the astonishing events that took place when Jefus expired; the agitation into which all nature feemed to be thrown, the darkness, the earthquake, the rending of rocks, the opening of graves, miracles which the centurion conceived, and juftly conceived, were not likely to be wrought on the death of a mere mortal.

And, indeed, it must be acknowledged, that the miracles recorded, and the prophecies accomplished, in the hiftory of Chrift, are the two great pillars on which our faith in him muft principally reft. But as an enquiry into this fort of proof, would lead us into an argument much too extenfive and too complex for our prefent purpose, I fhall content myself with enlarging a little on that other kind of evidence above-mentioned, the character and conduct of

*See Dr. Doddridge's note from Elfner in his expofition of this paffage.

our