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VIII.

self to Moses, The Lord merciful and SERM. gracious, long suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sind. In this point of view the Priest and the Levite had far better opportunities of knowing God in his attribute of love than a Samaritan; and therefore in their neglect of copying this divine example they would have been more inexcuseable.

But whatever knowledge of this attribute might be derived from the light of nature, or the Mosaic revelation, it was above all degree of comparison manifested in the revelation of Jesus Christ. Herein we learn that God is love; or to give a special instance of this benevolence to men, we are instructed by our Lord himself, that God so loved the world, that he gave his onlybegotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Or if we cannot sufficiently comprehend the love of a Being immaterial and invisible, it is embodied to us in

4 Exod. xxxiv. 6, 7.
f John iii. 16.

e 1 John iv. 8.

Q 3

the

SERM. the person of the Son of God; who VIII. for the sake of man, even when fallen

from his primitive innocence and separated from the countenance of heaven, vouchsafed to leave the bosom of the Father, submitted to assume our nature, to bear our sorrows, to sustain our infirmities, and after leading a life of indigence and labour in our service, completed the measure of unexampled love by yielding his life a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of the world.

Surely never has there been so great an instance, never can there be so bright a pattern of love to mankind. Greater love than this can no man shew, that a man lay down his life for his Friends 5. But even while we were Enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son; while we were sinners, Christ died for us. If therefore there was a greater claim for the exercise of this duty from a Priest and a Levite than from a Samaritan or a Gentile, because they had better notions of the love of God to man; surely there are greater claims upon the poorest and most unlettered Christians than on the most

* John xv. 13.

Rom. v. 8, 10.

learned

learned and most sacred orders of the SERM. Jews, because they acknowledge an in- vIII. incomparably greater sense of benefits received. After a display of such unbounded love to men as our Lord hath shewn, even if there were no obligation upon us by any positive law, it would certainly become us highly to manifest every mark of gratitude to Christ, by loving our Brethren even as he hath loved us, and by extending our charity to all those, to whom in common with ourselves he has given so stupendous an example of benevolence.

AFTER thus considering the nature of that love, which the law of our religion enjoins us to pay to our Neighbour, we are in the second place to consider who the Neighbour is, to whom we are required to pay it. Now it was the chief object of this parable to inculcate, as was evident to the Lawyer for whose instruction it was spoken, that we are not to restrict this relation of a Neighbour according to the notions of that order among the Jews to those who are connected with us by a common bond of nation or religion; but we are to extend it to all mankind of every faith

Q 4

SERM. faith and country under heaven. WhereVIII. ever there is a scope for the exercise of our charity, we are called upon to exerercise it without exception or reservation.

The neglect of the Priest and the Levite was the more reprehensible, because in defiance of their law, which they professed a zeal to reverence and obey, they omitted the exercise of this love even towards one of their own faith and country. On the other hand the active benevolence of the Samaritan was the more acceptable both in the sight of God and in the sentiments of men, because even under an imperfect and defective knowledge of the divine law he administered relief to one of a hostile country and another creed. In this he humanely followed the natural dictates of reason, while they uncharitably slighted the express injunctions of religion.

To move us to this law of social love we have the united claims of reason and the gospel. Our reason teaches, that we are all descended from the same common Parent, and are all partakers of the same common nature. For God hath made of one blood all nations of men

for

for to dwell on all the face of the earth'. SERM. Our religion teaches, that we are all the vIII. sons of God by adoption in Christ Jesus, that we are all partakers in the same common promises of grace, that we have all a common interest in an inheritance of glory. Thus both in nature and in grace all mankind' are brethren; and by reason of this common bond we ought to treat one another with the charities of brethren.

And the duty thus inculcated by the tender relations, which we bear to one another, is powerfully supported by that impartial and universal love, which God extends to man.

We learn from the book of nature, that God impartially distributes fertile rains and fruitful seasons over all the nations of the earth. Thus when our Lord enjoins the love, not only of our Neighbours in the common acceptation of the Jews, but even of our Enemies, he assigns this argument from the providence of God as manifested in his works, That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he causeth his sun to rise on the evil and on

i Acts xvii. 26,

the

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