they transgressors? Take heed. The Pharisee lies close at the heart; and, if you will not see your sin, you will certainly be offended with the man that tells you of it.

Ver. 13. Every plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. He speaks rather of their persons as men, than of their office as teachers; though that too was upon the point of expiring. Let it be our great inquiry, whether we are of God's planting, or not. We are only so, when we are implanted into Christ: believing in him for life, and manifesting it by our works.

Ver. 14. Let them alone. - Have nothing to do with them; leave them to themselves; follow them not.

They be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. My friends, I have a word to say to you upon this: if your leader should be blind, you need not, so long as you have the Bible. Take it for your guide, hear Christ speaking in it, never take it into your hands, without a prayer to have it opened to you, and set home upon your hearts, and if all the world should be blind about you, it is impossible" you should ever fall into the ditch, either of ignorance here, or perdition hereafter.

Ver. 15. Then answered Peter, and said unto him, Declare unto us this parable. And will he leave you in darkness, if you make the same request to him?

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Ver. 16. Are ye also yet without understanding?-Verse the eleventh is very plain; and well might he say this. Nevertheless, Peter's dulness of apprehension, and St. Matthew's own, is not concealed. For Christ answers Peter as if he spoke in the name of them all. Who would have written this of himself, and his associates in a divine mission, if God had not guided his finger? But now observe the rebuke for yourselves. All is told, all is explained to us; and, if we do not understand, what can

it be owing to but a heedless, graceless spirit, and great unconcern for ourselves?

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Ver. 19. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, &c. The meaning is, not so much that these things, wherever they appear, are first in the heart; but that they are the natural issue of a heart naturally corrupt, and more in every man's heart than he thinks of. The commands would be as grateful to us, as food is to the appetite, if the inward sense was not depraved. And it is farther observable, that a resistance and aversion from them still continues, notwithstanding a settled judgment and conviction of their excellence. Hear this, O ye blind assertors of man's dignity, and the natural integrity of the human heart.

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Ver. 20. These are the things which defile a man.-Now, therefore, hear and understand. These, these are the things which defile us, render us loathsome in the eyes of God, and destroy our peace, make us a burden to ourselves, and a plague to others! This is the misery from which Christ came to save us; and, if the ground which produces these fruits, the evil heart, is not seen and lamented, and given up to the grace and power of God in Christ, it will be our defilement and curse for ever.

LECTURE.

Ir is certainly a matter of the last importance to understand what are the things which defile and render us loathsome in the sight of God. Let me, therefore, upon occasion of what you have now heard, speak a few words to you concerning your inward work under Christ. He says, "Hear and understand;" calling upon every one of us to observe and consider how necessary it is that

we should keep a watchful eye upon the state of our hearts, and apply our endeavours of reformation in the right place. Think what end you propose to yourselves in religion, and what it can be good for, if it does not bring you to God for his work in and upon the heart. For there he looks for the good or evil that is in us; and, if we do not follow him thither, we are hidden from ourselves, and acting all our lives upon a mistake. It is not washing the hand, or a decent outside; it is not our baptism, nor customary attendance upon divine worship, though ever so exact, nor looking fair in the eye of the world, that will afford us any proof of the goodness of our state. We must look well to our inward ground, and know whether we are kept to our duty, and restrained from doing ill, by the fear of God, and a sincere desire to please him, or for such reasons only as leave sin in its strength, and do not alter our condition in the sight of God. And to this end we must be well aware that as every command of God is laid upon the heart, so in our examination of ourselves we must have an especial regard to the state of the heart, and judge ourselves according to what we find there, and not according to what we do, or appear before men. I repeat it again, it is for want of knowing the commandments in their true meaning and full extent, that so many are ignorant of their condition, and, priding themselves in the decency of an outward character, are so hard to be convinced of their sin, and want of a Saviour. How is it possible, when, judging of themselves all their lives by a false rule, they think they are whole? Whereas others, who learn of Christ to measure themselves by his standard, and trace sin up to the heart, can see their manifold defects, sue for mercy unfeignedly, and pray devoutly to be strengthened for all duty, and against all sin.

When, therefore, you hear Christ saying-" out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies" - be persuaded to think of yourself, and to bring your own state under examination. And when you do, without guile and hypocrisy, and with the right rule of judging in your hand, you will perceive that there is a great deal more of the detestable sins here mentioned, and a greater proneness to all manner of evil in the hearts and souls of all men, than you were aware of. When you consider the divine law, as reaching the heart and all its motions, and that nature is as far corrupt as it stands in opposition to it, or refuses compliance with it, in its full sense, strictness, and purity, you will be no longer able to palliate the horrible defect of your own, and see the necessity of its being brought before God in repentance, of your being absolved from its guilt by an act of pardoning grace, and renewed by his Spirit. And till you admit the light of Scripture in this leading point of the great and general corruption of man's nature, you will, of course, be blind to the great design of it, as a revelation of mercy, and from time to time confess yourself a miserable sinner without feeling and without meaning. You may, perhaps, receive Christ as a teacher and example, but reject him, as too many do, in his principal character of Redeemer, and disown his propitiatory death, together with your need of supernatural assistance to cleanse your heart, and change the evil bent of your affections.

Let us then learn, from this passage of Scripture, how apt men are to deal deceitfully with God and their souls; and to pride themselves in doing some trifling things, instead of having a conscientious, universal regard to his holy commands. Thus the Pharisees thought it a high point of religion to wash their hands before meat, without considering what a foul inside they had; and to devote

some part of their substance to God, though in so doing they left father and mother to starve. You may not offend just in the same particulars, but the same kind of deceit too often lies lurking at the heart; and you may, in other respects, mock God, and cheat yourselves with the shadow instead of the substance. So if a man should say, I have been baptized, I go to church, and generally to the sacrament, I say my prayers, and give alms according to my ability, which is more than many can say, and yet continue as much a worldling as ever, never know the work of a true repentance, nor come to that faith which purifieth the heart, he is such a Pharisee, and self-deceiver, as we have now been reading of. He honoureth God with his lips, but his heart is far from him, and all the while he worships him in vain. We are willing to suppose, in our own defence, that there never were such Pharisees as are described in the Gospels any where, but among the Jews, and that we are not concerned in the censure passed upon them. But certain it is that they were uncommonly strict in the performance of religious duties; and, if their hypocrisy consisted chiefly in thinking themselves just before God, as it appears they did, it behoves us to consider whether we are not infected with their pride of self-exaltation, and liable to the same charge of hypocrisy, if, like them, we either substitute outward practices in the room of inward, pure conformity to the will of God, or pretend to justification for any thing we do. Let us pray to be delivered from this deceit, and to have the truth opened to our hearts.

PRAYER.

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; so work upon and prepare our hearts, that we may fear nothing so much as to offend thee, desire nothing so