we express in our church by the Catechism and the Confession of Faith; which they express in the Church of England by the Creeds, Apostolic, Nicene, Athanasian, and the Catechism, and the Offices; and which among the Dissenters they express by nothing at all, wholly neglecting this appointment of the church to "contend earnestly for the faith as it was once delivered unto the saints." Another of our observances is, the offering of worship in the assemblies of the congregation; praise, prayer, hearing of the word read, and of the word preached. Another of our observances is, the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper. Another is the observance of government in the church by the office-bearers, in their degrees of minister of the word, elder, and deacon. Another is the observance of discipline over the members of the church; by reproof, exhortation, suspension from privileges, deposition from office, and excommunication. These observances of the church are intended outwardly to represent great moral principles in the believer, both towards God and towards man. Doctrine, to represent the integrity, the certainty, the stability of our faith in God, and in Jesus Christ whom he hath sent worship, to represent our love, adoration, trust, and desire of God, through Jesus Christ. Worship by the assembled church doth signify, also, the oneness, the communion, the fellowship of love, which there is among the brethren. Hearing of the word preached, signifies our openness and willingness to be taught by Christ speaking in the ministers of his church. Our observance of rule and authority and government in the church, expresseth our acquiescence in His lordship, and our obedience to Him as our head. Our observance of discipline, signifies our perfect obedience to the law of love, and our willingness at all times to be tried by it. So that the weightier matters of the law are, as heretofore, judgment, mercy, and faith, though the forms of the observance be changed.-Now, though I cannot say of the churches in general, that they are careful enough of the outward and positive ordinances of the church, there being a great body of Sadducees amongst us, as well as of Scribes and Pharisees; yet I can say, that whatever zeal there is runneth out in these forms, and ascendeth no higher. The observance of the Sabbath, the attendance upon Divine worship, the decent respect unto the churchman and the church, the admiration of our excellent church formularies, jealousy over the letter of the standards, outward decorum in the observance of the sacraments, rigid exactness in the admission of members of the church, where discipline is observed; these, and other the like things, are the tithe of mint, and anise, and cummin, which the rulers of the church at present insist upon. And this, I have noticed, is increasing, and I believe will go on increasing. I believe we shall see a severer outward service: the fasts re

:

stored, the festivals brought forward more conspicuously, the Liturgy commended more and more, the Assembly's Catechism extolled more and more, the Confession of Faith lauded more and more highly. I believe, also, we shall have more and more preaching against balls, and assemblies, and horse-racing, and fairs, Sabbath-breaking, and other outward violations of decency and order. I believe, also, there will come into operation a severer discipline, and a straiter communion, and a greater outcry for the forms of orthodox doctrine. Now, look for judgment, look for mercy, look for faith,-where are they? Judgment, is justice, or righteousness, or honesty of heart and mind: Mercy, is love shewing itself to the offending, love taking pity upon the undeserving, and shewing forgiveness; bearing and forbearing, meek and gentle, kind and gracious: Faith, is belief in God, that what he has taught us himself of his own Son is true, is very truth, to be relied upon, to rest a man's salvation upon. I ask if these three great provinces of Divine morality are in existence amongst us, do we yield the greater tithes of faith, mercy, and judgment? I answer, No. Faith there is almost none; for if you ask a man what he believes concerning God, he doubts of every thing, and believes in nothing. Doth he believe that God is reconciled to him? No otherwise he would be at peace with God. Doth he believe that Christ hath died for his sins? No: otherwise he would have no conscience of sin, but would be rejoicing in the grace of God; instead of having a woful countenance, and sighing with an oppressed heart. Doth he believe that the Spirit is in the ordinances of the church? No; but flatly denies it. Or in the office-bearers of the church? or in the baptized? or in any thing else? No; no such thing. Well, doth he believe that the Lord is to come again, and judge the quick, and raise the righteous, and reign with these on the earth, and restore all things, and bring in the times of refreshing? No: as little of that as possible; the less the better: the wanderings these of deluded men, the ravings of a heated fancy, the dreams of inexperienced folly! Where is faith then? It is, like the dead languages, shut up in books, of which the three chief are the Bible, the Confession of Faith, and the Prayer-book.-If next you ask for mercy, for tender-hearted mercy; which hath compassion upon those that are out of the way, and herdeth with publicans and sinners, and goeth after the prodigal, and worketh upon the hard-hearted, and seeketh to save all; which pitieth the poor, and is for clothes unto the naked and for bread unto the hungry; oh, whither is it gone? I know not; but I know it dwelleth far from us, who are ashamed of publicans and sinners; and invite not the maimed, and the halt, and the poor unto our feasts; and say unto the rich man, Sit ye down here, and to the poor man, Worship ye yonder:" streets, whole

streets, yea, whole districts, unvisited by the ministers of religion, who have the charge over them; the dying uncomforted, the wicked unreproved with the Gospel of peace! I feel, as a minister of religion in this great city, that we are exceedingly guilty; and that we ought, instead of being at our ease in our homes, to be visiting the poor in mercy, and making known unto them the Gospel of the kingdom of Christ. Oh, hard-hearted Christendom! Doth a brother, especially doth a sister, go astray? she is put away from all fellowship of her kindred, of her companions, of her fellow-Christians. Hard-hearted and scornful, we pass her by on the other side, saying, I am holier than thou. What injustice! what injustice! not to say, what unmercifulness! Oh, canst thou not look into thine own heart, and see worse there than that which thou so cruelly and at once excommunicatest? Well, thou standest; take heed lest thou fall. There we sit, side by side, pew by pew, in a church, feigning to worship God in unity, when, alas! how often is it-nay, how common, how constant is it-that we know not and care not for one another; and, on the contrary, often are filled with envy, jealousy, and dislike! We sit and hear the preacher, and do neither believe nor care for the matter he declareth; but sit upon it in cold criticism, as if it were the word of man, and not the message of God which he was appointed to declare unto us. And many other things of the like kind I could shew, indicating the self-same spirit of discordancy between those two parts of character which concern the outward observance of the positive commandment, and the inward observance of the spiritual thing necessary to fulfil it. It is generally thought that this character of the Pharisee applieth chiefly, or exclusively, to the formalists of the church; and not to the Evangelical, as they are called, to whom I maintain that it specially referreth. In this respect, indeed, it doth not, that the Evangelicals require not so much as the others the tithe of mint and anise and rue: they have undone the ordinances in a great degree. Wherein they have added another offence unto themselves, and established a tithe of another kind, of their own invention, which is, the acknowledgment of man's authority, not the church's: the acknowledgment of a few men's customs, not the church's in one word, the obedience of the religious world, and not of the church. They have found out strange inventions in religion; but, so far from yielding faith, mercy, and judgment, they have risen up and taken arms directly against them. For they chiefly oppose the two great objects of faith; which are, first, that Christ hath delivered me from my sins, and that I should be at peace with God and rejoice in him; and, secondly, that he is to come again, to put me in possession of the kingdom of this world, from which Adam was cast out. Again: they have

taken up the very opposite position to mercy; which is, rejecting all that are not of their sect as heathen': whereas, granting that they are unconverted, they are but prodigals, and they do them injustice by saying or assuming that they are not of the covenant. So that, to me, this character of the Pharisee is much more revealed amongst them than amongst others.

VI. We now proceed to the sixth accusation of our Lord, which is in these words, "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess." Take this as it is explained in Luke xi. 39. The Pharisee "marvelled that Jesus had not first washed before dinner. And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter, but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. Ye fools, did not he that made that which is without make that which is within also? But rather give alms of such things as ye have [or as ye are able], and, behold, all things are clean unto you."-The meaning of this denunciation, as seemeth to me, is this: That the great sect whom he denounceth were as corrupt and erroneous in their notions concerning eating and drinking, as in all other things; or, even in a wider sense, the cup and the platter standing for their outward substance: as when it is said, "Thou hast made my cup to run over," it is spoken of our abundant provision from the hand of God. And to adopt this larger sense I am led by the Lord's instructions to give alms to the poor according to the calls which the providence of God make upon us, and then to enjoy the rest without any scruple whatever. In like manner, upon a similar occasion, the Lord said, "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man, but that which cometh out of a man, that defileth a man." Now this is another form of the pharisaical spirit, to be very scrupulous and very fearful about trifles connected with the use of our outward estate: how much should be set aside to religious uses; what proportion of a man's income? what style he should keep in his house; whether he should dissent from the customs of his rank in this particular? and so forth. This our Lord calls making clean the outside of the cup and platter; and he denounceth it as a pharisaical thing; and a pharisaical thing I do verily believe it to be. And he lays down the rule with great simplicity: Give alms of what you have; and then use the rest, and without a scruple:' that is to say, Answer the calls that God sendeth, and take and enjoy the rest, without making any work about it. For, saith he, this carefulness about external order and purity in your affairs will lead you to neglect the inward contents of the cup, the means by which it is filled, and kept full. You will cease to give heed to your extortions and rapines, through your much heedfulness to these

your systematic charities and appointments. You will think little of the covetousness, the excessive and extortionate premiums and interests, the great gains, which you are daily, hourly practising, by calming your conscience with the decent and decorous domestic economy which you observe, and the regular fixed proportion of your income which you bestow upon charitable and religious uses. Our Lord, as it seems to me, by the figure of the cup and platter signifies that which containeth the substance of a man's support; the whole of his estate, the reward of his labour and industry, the gain of his traffic. By making the outside of it clean, he signifies the outward decency and seemliness of our living; the sacrifices which we make to appearances, the accommodations to public opinion, the offerings to charity. By the inside of the cup and platter full of extortion and excess, we take him to signify the unhallowed sources, the hard and severe measures, the dishonest and dishonourable practices, the unfeeling exactions, by which the cup of a man's substance is filled, and kept full. And his instruction is, that God, who made that which is without, made that which is within also: or, in other words, that God looks with as observant an eye upon the secret machinations by which wealth is made, as he doth upon the outward and observable methods by which it is expended; and that it is the part of a Christian, and of a good man, to be as nice and scrupulous in the management of those things which are inward in his traffic, and known only to himself, as of those things which are outward, and known to the world. Now, I will put it to any man's conscience, if ever there was a time in the history of the Christian church- and I may say, in the history of the unbaptized world-wherein by such nefarious practices the coffers of men were filled; wherein so many false pretences were had recourse to in order to increase our gains : such severe measures dealt out by him that hath the money, to him that hath the goods to sell; which, again, is retaliated by the insufficiency or adulteration of the thing that is sold. There is a grinding down of the poor, also; so that he cannot live by his industry, and is brought into the condition of a pauper. There is a want of tenderness and principle, often, on the part of the master, towards the poor labourer at whose expense of skill and industry his huge fortune is amassed there is a carelessness of his moral condition, an indifference to the state of his wife and children and poor habitation, a readiness to let him beg for that which he hath earned as a servant and labourer of ours, which doth indeed demonstrate that this denunciation is due also unto us. Lift up your minds, I pray you, from your own little sphere, and contemplate Protestant Britain, Christian Britain, as it is now exhibited. Almost the half of its labouring