A SERMON, &c.

GAL. V. 1.

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

THE desire of liberty may be classed amongst the most natural and powerful passions of the human heart. Even in infancy the germ of this passion is developed among the earliest operations of the human will; and controuled as it may be by external or fortuitous causes, the workings of it may be traced in every state of society, and through every period of our existence. It is often found in generous minds to be stronger than the love of power, of pleasure, or life itself. Our ideas of all that can exalt and ennoble the nature of man are intimately combined with the possession of it; and B

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with the want of it we associate all that is mean and abject, all that repels confidence and excludes admiration. Its political effects are visible in the moral and intellectual superiority of those nations where it is most carefully preserved, and most generally diffused. It produces conscious ease and security, relieves the mind from every sordid care and every debasing fear, and thus leaves it without obstruction to pursue those enquiries, and accumulate those improvements which are most worthy of an immortal nature. Hence it cherishes the growth of knowledge, of taste, of virtue, and of humanity; while on the other hand there is always a secret, frequently an apparent, and sometimes, it may be, an avowed connection between barbarism and despotic power. And if this be true in our moral and political relations, well does it become us to consider the influence which right views of liberty may have upon our opinions and conduct in the momentous concerns of religion.

St.

St. PAUL, who was a most consummate master of reasoning, as well as a most attentive observer of mankind, seems to have discerned clearly and fully the nature of that influence; and hence it is that he so often and so triumphantly contrasts the bondage of the Mosaic with the liberty of the Christian dispensation. Curious it is, that however prepared he might be in his religious character to undergo persecution, yet in his civil capacity he lays no small stress on the circumstance that he was himself free born, and in the presence of the Roman governor boldly asserts those rights which his enemies had illegally, as well as inhumanly, violated. And it is impossible, surely, for any serious and enlightened reader of Sacred History, not to recognise the operation of the same feelings, in that noble ardour with which he defends the glorious privileges of his Christian converts, and places them far above the condition of their Jewish brethren, subject as they were, and perversely

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perversely glorying in their subjection, to the heavy and galling yoke of the Mosaic law.

Without enlarging then at present on the subject of religious toleration, it may be worth our while to consider the nature of Christian liberty, and to enquire whether the restraints and austerities which some teachers would engraft upon it, are consist ent with the doctrines or practice of Christ and his Apostles, or with the generally appa rent design of God, so far as we can húmbly and reverentially trace it in his government both of the natural and moral world.

Now before we proceed in this examination it will be necessary just to remind you, that detached and particular texts are not to be interpreted in contradiction to the general tenor and declarations of Scripture; and that the sense of obscure or difficult passages in the writings of the Apostles must be ascertained, where it is possible, by their conformity with the recorded actions of Christ himself. For as that rule of life

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which has been graciously communicated from Heaven, and which the blessed Author of it has emphatically and peculiarly distin guished by the name of Truth, cannot contain any real contradiction, seeming incon-sistencies must be reconciled by appealing to the known will of God, and the express import of clear and indisputable passages. Again, as practice is allowed to have greater weight than precept in ascertaining both the intention of an agent, and the soundness of a principle in the ordinary affairs of man kind, so I think we may venture to declare that the precepts of the Apostles may, in all intricate or disputable cases, be best understood by unequivocal and direct reference to the actual practice of our blessed Lord, or to their own in real life. :

On a careful review then of the Holy Scriptures, I shall insist upon those parts which leave no room for doubtful interpretations, and which therefore must be allowed to carry with them, the authority of proof in explaining other passages, which to our apprehension

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