the Gospel has denounced against them. They are represented there as things that ought not even to be named among Christians, as defiling the man, as warring against the soul, as grieving the Spirit of God, as rendering men incapable of inheriting the kingdom of heaven, as exposing them to the indignation of Him who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity*. And as if men had endeavoured in those days, as well as in our own, to soften and extenuate and explain away the guilt of licentiousness, the apostle adds, with great solemnity and great earnestness, man deceive.

66

Let no

you

with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience†."

Let every man then that pretends to be a Christian, and lives in the habitual practice of the vices here condemned, weigh well these tremendous words. If there be any truth in the Gospel, they will not be vain words; nor will offences of this nature ever pass. unnoticed or unpunished by the righteous Governor of the world.

* Ephes. v. 3. Matth. xv. 18. 1 Pet. ii. 11. 1 Cor. vi. 9, 10. Habak. i. 13.

+ Ephes. v. 6.

These

These remarks are not introduced here without reason. It is the peculiar prevalence of these very vices at this moment which demands such animadversions as these; a prevalence which I infer not merely from an imaginary estimate of the low state of morals amongst us, founded on rumour, on conjecture, or misconstruction, but from facts too well ascertained, and which obtrude themselves on the notice of ever bserving mind *. I mean those daring violations of the nuptial contract, and the frequent divorces resulting from them, which seem daily gaining ground in this kingdom. This is a most melancholy and incontrovertible proof of increasing depravity amongst us, and I am sorry to add, of depravity of the very deepest dye; for instances have not long since occurred, in which the guilt of the parties too nearly resembled that of Herod, combining the two atrocious crimes of adultery and incest! Surely such enormities as these are enough to make us tremble, and loudly call for the interposition of the legislature, lest they bring. down upon us the just vengeance of an of

*In the Spring of the year 1800.

fended

fended God. "Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord: Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?"

Another reflection arising from this short history of Herod and John the Baptist is this; that although, in the ordinary course of divine administrations, the punishment of the wicked does not always overtake them here, but is reserved for the last awful day of account; yet it sometimes happens (as I observed in my last Lecture) that their crimes draw after them their just recompense, even in the present life. This was eminently the case of the flagitious Herod; for besides those terrors of conscience, which, as we have seen, perpetually haunted him, which raised up before him terrific forms and agonizing apprehensions, and represented John the Baptist as risen from the dead to avenge his crimes; we are informed by the historian Josephus, that his marriage with Herodias drew upon him the resentment of Aretas, king of Arabia Petræa, the father of his first wife, who declared war against him, and, in an engagement with Herod's army, defeated it with great slaughter. This, says the historian, the

* Jer. v. 9.

Jews

Jews considered as a just judgment of God upon Herod for his murder of John the Baptist*. And not long after this, both he and Herodias were deprived of their kingdom by the Roman emperor, and sent into perpetual banishment. And it is added by another histórian†, that their daughter Salome met with a violent and untimely death, Instances like this are intended to show that the Governor of the universe, though he has appointed a distant period for the general distribution of his rewards and punishments, yet, in extraordinary cases, he will sometimes interpose to chastise the bold offender, to assert his superintending providence and supreme dominion over all his creatures, and to give them the most awful proofs, that, from his allsearching eye, no wickedness can be concealed.

The remaining part of this chapter is occupied with the recital of two miracles, on which I have only to observe, that they have both of them a spiritual as well as a literal meaning, are both of a very extraordinary nature, and calculated to make, as they did, a most * Jos. Ant. 1. xviii. c. 5. s. 1, 2.

Nicephori. Hist. Eccles. 1. 11. p. 89.

powerful

powerful impression on the minds of the spectators; these were, the feeding above five thousand persons with five loaves and two fishes, and our Saviour's walking on the sea. The first of these had a reference to that spiritual food, that celestial manna, that bread of life, which our Lord was then dispensing in such abundance to those that hungered and thirsted after righteousness. The other was meant to encourage the great principle of faith; of trust and reliance upon God, in opposition to that self-confidence, that high opinion of our own strength, which we are too apt to entertain, and to which St. Peter, above all the other apostles, was peculiarly liable. When therefore, in consequence of his own request, he was permitted to go to Jesus on the water, and, forgetting immediately who was his guide and support, began to be afraid and to sink, and called out to his Divine Master to save him, our Lord graciously stretched forth his hand and caught him, and said unto him, "O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt ?" A reproof well calculated to convince him that it was not in proportion to his own natural strength, but according