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invisible things of the spirit of God are LECT. admitted and approved.

It is a doctrine which may occafion some mortification to human pride, and it feldom fails to do fo; but no doctrine of the gofpel of Jefus Chrift is more decided than this, that all men have not faith; that it is the gift of God wherever it is found; and that the natural man, or man with no powers but thofe of our common nature, receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: fo far from it, that they feem foolish, extravagant, and incredible, and are rejected with mockery and contempt by men who can write a pleasant style, and who feem to be in other refpects (within the sphere of their affections) very fenfible and ingenious perfons. On what other ground but that of the scriptural distinction between faith and natural reason, is it poffible to account for a fact which fo frequently occurred at the first publication of the gofpel; when the fame speech, the fame reasoning, yea and the fame miracle, had a totally dif ferent

C

LECT. ferent effect on the minds of different

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hearers, all present on the same occasion? When Peter and John healed the lame man at the gate of the temple, and all the

peo

ple were spectators of the fact, the apostles addreffed themselves in a powerful difcourse to those who were prefent; the lame man still cleaving to them, and standing by them as a witness: and thus they made fome thousands of converts to the word of the gospel. But behold, the Sadducees were grieved at the doctrine of the refurrection, though preached with all the force of truth from their own fcriptures, and attended with the credential of an indisputable miracle; which only vexed and diftreffed them the more. At Athens, the philofophers of the place, proud of their Grecian talent for oratory and difputation, confidered the matter of Paul's preaching merely as a new thing, which gave them an opportunity of questioning and wrangling. Some called him a babbler; fome faid they would hear him again; fome mocked at the refurrection of the dead; while Dionyfius, one of their fenators,

Damaris,

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Damaris, and fome others, clave unto LECT. them and believed: in other words, they received the gofpel with that faculty of the fpirit, which alone is fufceptible of it. Till there is in man the fenfe which receiveth these things, the book which treats of them will not be understood. If they are rejected, we must conclude this sense to be wanting: and when that is the case, the evidence of a miracle will not force its way through the hardness of the human heart. Some fpeculative writers have treated of credibility and probability, and the nature, and force, and degrees, of evidence, as if we had rules for weighing all truth to a fingle grain with mechanical certainty: whereas in fact, man, with all his boafted balancings of reafon, can refift a proof that would confound a devil. Compare the following examples: The Jews faid," as for this fellow we know not whence he is." The devils faid, "I know thee who thou art, the holy one of God." The Jews faid, that Chrift caft out devils through Belzebub their prince: but the devils never faid fo themselves. The fun

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LECT. of the noon-day fhines without effect upon the blind, because the proper fense is wanting: so faith the Evangelift, the light Shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. Vicious inclinations and habits of fin, which render truth difagreeable, are sure to have the effect of weakening and perverting the judgment; this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. The understanding of truth implies a love of truth; and the understanding will be deficient fo long as that love is wanting. None are fo blind as they who are so by choice; that is to say, the ignorant are never found to be fo abfurd as the difaffected. The word of God is in itself all-fufficient for the illumination of the mind; it is a feed quick and vigorous with the principles of life; but, like other feeds, it must find fomething congenial with itself in the foil into which it falls. The word spoken did not profit the Jews, because it was not mixed with faith in them that heard it; there was

nothing

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nothing in the foil to give it nourish- LECT. ment and growth.

The distinction which the scripture hath made between natural and fpiritual men ; that is, between men that have faith and men that have none, is agreeable to what hath been observed from the beginning of the world; that there have been two claffes of people, all sprung from the fame original, but totally different in their views, principles and manners. Before the flood, they were distinguished as the children of Cain, and the children of Seth; the latter of whom inherited the faith of Abel. After the flood we find them again under the denominations of Hebrews and Heathens. In the gospel they appear to us as the children of this world, and the children of light: the former cunning and active in their generation for the interests of this life, the other wife towards God and the things of eternity. These two run on together, like two parallel lines, through the history of this world; always near to one another, but never meeting. Whoever confiders