reparation that we have perhaps a strict right to demand.

The chapter concludes with another remarkable precept, which may strictly be called a new commandment; for in no moral code is it to be found, till our Lord gave it a place in his.

The precept is this: "Ye have heard it has been said, thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust*.”

So noble, so sublime, and so benevolent a precept, was never before given to man; and it is one strong proof, among many others, of the originality of our Saviour's character and religion.

Matt. v. 43-45.

The

The Jews were expressly commanded to love their neighbour; but this injunction was not extended to their enemies, and they therefore thought that this was a tacit permission to hate them; a conclusion which seemed to be much strengthened by their being enjoined to wage eternal war with one of their enemies, the Canaanites, to show them no mercy, but to root them out of the land. In consequence of this they did entertain strong prejudices and malignant sentiments towards every other nation but their own, and were justly reproached for this by the Roman historian; "apud ipsos misericordia in promptu, adversus omnes alios hostile odium *:" that is, towards each other they are compassionate and kind; towards all others they cherish a deadly hatred. But it ought in justice to be observed that this remark of Tacitus might have been applied, with almost equal aptitude, both to his own countrymen the Romans, and to the Greeks, for they

*Tacit. Hist. v. 5.

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they gave to all other nations but themselves the name of barbarians; and having stigmatized them with this opprobrious appellation, they treated them as if they were in reality what they had wantonly thought fit to call them. They treated them with insolence, contempt, and cruelty. They created and carried on unceasing hostilities against them, and never sheathed the sword till they had exterminated or enslaved them.

In private life also, it was thought allowable to pursue those with whom they were at variance with the keenest resentment and most implacable hatred; to take every opportunity of annoying and distressing them, and not to rest till they had felt the severest effects of unrelenting vengeance.

In this situation of the world, and in` this general ferment of the malevolent passions, how seasonable, how salutary, how kind, how conciliatory, was the command to love, not only our friends, not only our neighbours, not only strangers,

but

but even our enemies! How gracious that injunction, "I say unto you, love your

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enemies; do good to them that hate you, bless them that curse you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you!" And how touching, how irresistible, is the argument used to enforce it: "That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust!"

It is remarkable, that the philosopher Seneca makes use of the same argument, not exactly for the same purpose, but for a similar one: "If (says he) you would imitate the gods, confer favours even on the ungrateful, for the sun rises on the wicked, and the seas are open even unto pirates:" and again, "the gods show many acts of kindness even to the ungrateful*.” It is highly probable that the philosopher took this sentiment from this very passage of St. Matthew; for no such sublime

Sen. de Benef. lib. 4. c. 26. and c. 28.

sublime morality is, I believe, to be found in any heathen writer previous to the Christian revelation.

Seneca flourished and wrote after the Gospels were written, and after Christianity had made some progress. Besides this, he was brother to Gallio, the proconsul of Achaia, before whose tribunal St. Paul was brought by the Jews at Corinth*. From him he would of course receive much information respecting this new religion, and the principal characters concerned in it; and from the extraordinary things he would hear of it from such authentic sources, his curiosity would naturally be excited to look a little farther into it, and to peruse the writings that contained the history and the doctrines of this new school of philosophy. This, and this only, can account for the fine strains of morality we sometimes meet with in Seneca, Plutarch, Marcus Antoninus, Epictetus, and the other philosophers who wrote after the Christian æra, and

*Acts, xviii. 12.