gave them up unto their own hearts' lusts; and they walked in their own counsels." This was the state of incurable insensibility into which many seem to have fallen in the days of our Lord, and which occasioned the tears of the Saviour, accompanied with the memorable words,-" If thou hadst known, at least in this thy day, the things that belong to thy peace, but now they are hid from thine eyes."

The Gentiles, by their misimprovement of the means with which they were favoured, by the dishonour done to the perfections and government of God, in changing his truth into a lie, and in worshipping and serving the creature more than the Creator, brought down upon themselves the greatest of judgments. As they rejected God, even while copiously showering his blessings upon them, he rejected them. He gave them over to a reprobate mind. The word rendered reprobate signifies, to be disapproved, rejected, cast away, and is used in reference to that part of metals which is drossy and worthless. The natural consequence of a soul being rejected of God is its becoming undiscerning, void of judgment, and morally insensible. How greatly the heathen nations were destitute of discernment in religious truth, and how wofully their moral feelings were impaired and blunted, the history of their impiety, idolatry, and shocking depravity, clearly proves. We cannot help wondering how, with the understanding and reason with which man is endowed, they were capable of acting as if they had been totally void of both, in deifying birds, and beasts, and the works of their own hands.

As the consequence of their having been given over to an insensible mind, they did those things which are not convenient; that is, those things which are not befitting or becoming their rational powers, the relations in which they stand to God, their Creator, moral Governor, and Judge, and their high destination as immortal beings. This is a form of expression used to denote what is most enormous and detestable; and intimates that the passions in which the heathen indulged, and the immoralities which they freely committed, were of a nature the most monstrous and inhuman. They laboured to efface every trace of the glorious Original from which they sprung, to cut off their connexion with the living and true God, and while gratifying the lusts of their own hearts, to promote the designs, and to do the works of the devil. But let us notice

IV. The actual extent of their immorality. To their impiety in not only neglecting the duties which they owed to God, but in doing dishonour to his perfections and government, I have already alluded. Where love to God is wanting, and an earnest endeavour to give Him that worship and obedience which his law requires, there is an inlet to all depravity, and an incapacity to discharge aright the duties which we owe our neighbours and ourselves. The heathen nations, accordingly, were filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, —and all the other vices and crimes which the apostle enumerates in this catalogue. They were not only

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guilty of these vices and crimes, but they were filled with them.

This gross and universal depravity, we are taught, by the highest authority, to trace to the corruption of the heart."Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." In the heathen world many of the restraints which are laid on this fountain in the lands where the light of revelation shines were withdrawn, and it therefore sent forth without obstruction its polluted streams. Here, fallen man shewed himself in his natural character, as alienated from God, as darkened in his understanding, and corrupted in his heart, the servant of sin, the subject and the slave of Satan, the very vassal of his lusts and pleasures, the child of disobedience, and the despiser of the riches of the divine goodness and forbearance. The gods which he worshipped, the affections which he exhibited, the deeds which he wrought, the kingdom which he advanced, shewed how widely and exclusively the prince of this world had established his dominion over him.

It is not necessary to dwell on every particular enumerated by the apostle. We shall select a few of the crimes stated, and shew that the most civilized of the heathen nations were generally guilty of them, and encouraged to their practice by the constitutions, laws, customs, and opinions that prevailed among them. They were authorised by their religion and their laws, and committed without reserve by their legislators and philosophers.

The Apostle begins with unrighteousness, or injustice, because he had already taken notice of the sins committed against the first table of the law, and was now about to detail the offences against the second. Hence, nearly all that follows may be explained as denoting a species of injustice committed in regard to others and ourselves. Unrighteousness is the generic term, which comprehends under it the various kinds of it that are afterwards mentioned,-fornication, which refers to the violation of chastity; wickedness, to a delight in mischief, and a disposition to injure others by craft; covetousness, to violence and oppression in regard to property; maliciousness, to that ill-will that prompts to revenge; envy, to the honour and prosperity of others; murder, to the injury done to their lives; debate or contention, to a disregard to their peace or their opinions; deceit, to the seeming to be in regard to them what in reality we are not; malignity, to indifference as to their misery, or even delighting in the production of it;-whisperers, it is supposed, are those who secretly speak evil of persons when they are present; and backbiters, as distinguished from them, are those who both speak evil of others to their face, and circulate slanders and calumnies to ruin their characters. The term, "haters of God," refers not only to their enmity to the laws and perfections of the holy and the living God, but to the violence and persecutions with which they followed all who attempted to honour and serve him. Their disposition towards the Jews, and their treatment of the first Christians, furnish illustrations of the truth

with which the Apostle had in this respect described them. The expression "despiteful" may be rendered insolent, and refers to their unjust and violent oppression of their inferiors and others. They were also proud, boastful, inventors of evil things, and employed their ingenuity in discovering new methods of dishonouring God, and of indulging in cruelty and sensual gratifications. They were disobedient to parents, without understanding, and acted as if they were incapable of discerning between truth and error, between good and evil. They were covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful. They did these things, at least their legislators, priests, and philosophers, did these things, and encouraged others in their practice, while they knew that they were deserving of condemnation and death. In place of acting agreeably to the knowledge which they possessed, they stifled their convictions, gave way without restraint and without concealment to the most criminal passions, and honoured and deified those who had been grossly guilty of them.

But that we may have a more vivid impression of the enormity of the crimes committed in the heathen world, that is, by the whole world of mankind except the Jews, it is necessary to illustrate at greater length two or three of the particulars included in the Apostle's enumeration. I shall say nothing more of their uncleanness and impurity than that they were universally abandoned to it, and sunk to the extreme of corruption both in their notions and practice. As to their murderous and unmerciful disposition, their pub