DISCOURSE III.

THE DIVINE GOODNESS TOWARDS SINFUL MAN BEFORE REDEMPTION.

ISAIAH lxiii. 7.

I will mention the loving-kindnesses of the Lord, and the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord hath bestowed on us, and the great goodness toward the house of Israel, which he hath bestowed on them according to his mercies, and according to the multitude of his lovingkindnesses.

THE Scriptures in general, and the Historical Scriptures in particular, having RELIGION for their subject, are occupied consequently in the discharge of a twofold office. They must illustrate the attributes of God, and also the nature and conduct of

man.

But one part of a twofold subject may easily obscure the other. And this will hold of the Scriptures in the hands of careless readers, more perhaps than of many other writings: partly from their general structure, which is evidently not designed

to reward a partial or a slovenly study of their allimportant contents; and more particularly from the frequent adoption of a very peculiar method of instruction, in the continual contrast, namely, of opposed and apparently contradictory passages". Hence some of the common errors of careless students concerning the divine and human natures of Christ; the free agency of man and the influence of Divine grace; and other twofold subjects. And hence the danger to which we are exposed of losing sight of the exceeding CONDESCENSION AND LOVINGKINDNESS OF OUR MAKER, amidst the dismal contemplation of THE SINFULNESS OF HIS CREATUres.

But, indeed, the devout as well as the careless reader is exposed to this danger. The more we know of ourselves, and the more we know of Scripture, of that appalling picture which revelation draws of sin and weakness, and of that awful sacrifice for sin which the Old Testament foreshadows and the New discloses, so much the more vile and miserable will human nature appear. And if the mind be permitted to be absorbed by contemplations of this kind, they may engender feelings injurious to

a See Archbishop Whately's "Difficulties in the Writings of St. Paul," Essay vii. §. 4. p. 216. on apparent contradictions; which are not, he justly contends, " to be regarded merely in the light of difficulties, but rather as belonging to the mode of instruction employed in Scripture."

piety and true religion; checking exertion, producing a kind of recklessness, making us loathe human nature itself, and conspiring with various other causes to make us blind to the tender and unceasing interest of our Heavenly Father, in a world fallen, corrupt, and lost. There are expressions in the writings even of our own judicious and scriptural reformers, which convey exaggerated and unscriptural ideas of the corruption of fallen man". And these expressions, unfortunately, are selected, cited, and applauded by some modern teachers. Nay, perhaps, a slight tinge of the same colouring is sometimes thrown over the familiar language of theologians, who are entirely free from all exaggerated conceptions of human corruption. Thus whereas the New Testament invariably speaks of sinful man being "reconciled to God," divines are wont to speak of "God reconciled to man ;" as if the melancholy fact, that mankind have been alienated from their Maker, necessarily implied that their Heavenly Father was alienated from His sinful

creatures.

See Homilies for the Nativity, and Whit-Sunday, p. 338, 390, edit. Oxon. 1814; and see Bishop Jebb's Tract on the authority of the Homilies in our own times; and Bishop Sumner on the Corruption of Human Nature," Apostolical Preaching,"

ch. iii.

< See note by Allen, "Translation of Outram on Sacrifice," p. 375.

But if in the study of the New Testament itself, our attention may by possibility be diverted from the thought of His overflowing goodness, how much greater the danger of a similar result from any partial study of the Old Scriptures! Since the New Testament is preeminently the record of the lovingkindness of God; whereas it is among the signal and leading purposes of the Old Scriptures to prove the need of redemption and sanctification by a full and fearful delineation of the weakness and sinfulness of man. And such a result has accordingly taken place. Not that it has actually been forgotten by divines that it was because "God loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son" to redeem the world d; or that the very principle of our love towards Him is, that "He loved use;" not, in a word, that there is, in this age at least, any doctrinal heresy on these subjects. But there may be much practical error, without any distinct error in doctrine; and the mistakes which pervade the familiar language and feelings of men, or may be detected in popular books of devotion or instruction, are in reality of a more formidable character than the errors of divines'. Popular works are no

d John iii. 16.

1 John iv. 9, 10. iii. 16. Rom. v. 8-10.

"You must learn to contemplate God in the only glass in which He is exhibited as a God of love-in the face of Jesus

mean test of the popular language, sentiments, and practice; and upon this testimony it may be stated, that there does prevail in many minds some confusion of thought on these subjects, practically detrimental to sound religion; as if the sinfulness of man blotted out for a time the loving-kindness of God ; as if the records of human sin and weakness were not also the living monuments of the Divine goodness; as if fallen man, before he was restored to the favour of his Maker, was not still an object of His care and interest; as if the New Testament were a record of the Divine love, the Old Testa

Christ. (2 Cor. iv. 6. cf. John xiv. 6.)" Bridge's Exposition of Psalm cxix. 76. I cite this passage merely to illustrate my meaning, and not at all with the view of censuring the pious author, who is so far from disparaging the Old Scriptures, that he is usually disposed, perhaps, to find too much of the New Testament in the Old. Most of my readers will have met with similar sentiments in many other places. The late Dr. Phelan, in one of his Donnellan Lectures, has even said, "the Patriarchal and the Jewish systems, by inculcating with uncompromising earnestness the infinity, the impassiveness, and the unapproachable majesty of the Godhead, crushed and overwhelmed man's natural faculties and affections." To such an extent may a writer be carried, by the habit of contrasting the mercies of the Gospel with the awfulness of the earlier dispensations: yet in the same work, a little before, we find a very beautiful passage upon the loving-kindness of God towards the Gentile world according to the discourse of St. Paul at Athens. (Acts xvii. 23-30.) Lect. ii. p. 47, 48.