Christians to abound in love to one another; and, according to our abilities and opportunities, show it, by all proper acts of kindness, godlike pity, and real help, to every soul of man, for God's sake.

PRAYER.

O Lord, we pray thee send down thy Spirit to kindle the holy fire of love in our hearts. Let the sense of thy excellencies and perfections, various gifts, and blessings, be always present to our minds, and the continual subject of our meditations, that we may adore, and bless, and imitate thee. The heavens declare thy glory, the earth is filled with thy bounties, and wherever we turn our eyes, we see thee in the riches of thy goodness. But thou hast more especially manifested thy love to mankind, and magnified thy name and thy glory, by giving thy only begotten Son to die for us. Give us, we beseech thee, such a true knowledge of thee, as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and such an assured faith in thy great mercy to us in him, that we may love thee, for the great love wherewith thou hast loved us, and all mankind for thy sake; do all our works on this ground; and be accepted of thee for the sake, and through the alone merits of Jesus Christ. Amen.

SECTION LIII.

ST. MATTHEW, xxiii. 1.

THEN spake Jesus to the multitude.

All being concerned

in what he had to say of the Scribes and Pharisees.

Ver. 2. Sit in Moses' seat. He does not deny them to be authorized teachers, and expounders of the law. Ver. 3. All, therefore, &c.-Not with respect to their

traditions; for he tolerated his disciples in the neglect of some of them, if he did not enjoin it (chap. xv.); but with respect to the more substantial and unquestionable matters of duty.

Ver. 3. That observe and do.-Make the right use of this for yourselves. If the command is God's, receive it as such, notwithstanding the ill example of the teacher.

-Do not ye after their works- Whereinsoever they transgress any of the commandments.

For they say, and do not- What they should do, or think they do, to be just in the sight of God. Notwithstanding a show of strictness in some things, their practice was corrupt, and their hearts more so.

Ver. 4. For they bind heavy burdens, &c.- What were these heavy burdens? Not their traditions. It is true, they would not give the people any ease or relaxation from them, and were scrupulous observers of them themselves. But it will appear throughout this chapter, that the controversy which Christ had with them, was concerning weightier matters. Not the moral law; for they could not carry it to a greater height, nor require a more punctual obedience to it, than he himself did. The difference, therefore, betwixt them was, they bound the law, together with their traditions, upon men for salvation, and tied them strictly up to a covenant of works. This it was which made their burden heavy, as St. Peter plainly tells us, Acts, xv. 10; and was, in effect, pronouncing their own damnation, as they came short of it. Whereas Christ, without diminishing from the obligation of the law, has both removed the burden of it as a covenant, aud made the observation of it as a rule more easy.

·But they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers - To make them lighter; neither coming themselves nor suffering others to come to Christ, the

Reliever of our burdens, and the true rest of our souls; chap. xi. 28-30. It is, therefore, no wonder, that they would not move the burden with one of their fingers, in another sense-that is, of doing what they imposed upon others; that some of them were corrupt in their lives; and others, whatever they pretended, or however they appeared to men, were sadly defective in the sight of God, as to any pure and perfect obedience of the heart; Gal. vi. 13. And this our Lord, who knew what was in man, has here fully laid open, for the conviction of all such unbelieving, self-righteous hypocrites.

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Ver. 5. But all their works they do, for to be seen of men. The meaning is, not that they directly proposed this mean end to themselves, but that it lay close at the root of all they did, whether they knew it or not. And I suppose that Christ is here chiefly taking the veil from their hearts; yea, and from ours too. This one thing, of having an eye to men, it is to be feared, will wipe a great part of the good that is done in the world out of God's book; for nothing is good but as it is done to him. Lord, search us with this word, and send us to our hearts, that we may know whether thou rulest there; and that the good we do may not be found evil, by proceeding from base motives; nor expose us to a greater condemnation, by inflaming our pride.

They make broad their phylacteries-That is, preservatives; as memorials of their duty, and to keep them from transgression. These were pieces of parchment, with the ten commandments, or other sentences of the law written upon them, which they bound upon their wrists and foreheads; and it does not appear that they were so commanded; Ex. xiii. xvi. xix.; Deut. vi. viii. xi. xviii. The borders, or fringes in their garments, were; Num. xv. 38. And they exceeded in both, mistaking the letter for the spirit. Now, it is plain that these, and a

hundred such things, were no burdens, but an easy substitute for deadness to the world, an humble heart, and a clean conscience.

Ver. 6, 7. And loved the uppermost rooms, &c.Doubtless they sat down in the highest room with a strained courtesy, and not in an open, bare-faced manner; for this would have lost them the esteem they sought after. Observe Christ's word; he says they loved distinction and titles. O the heart! there he looks, and there he aims his blow.

Ver. 8. But be not ye called Rabbi-To look great in your own eyes, as thinking the title of master your due.

For one is your Master, even Christ.- He is so in reality, and he only is worthy of the name.

-And all ye are brethren.— If we do not learn this of him, we learn nothing.

Ver. 9. And call no man your father upon earth To submit your understandings to him; for this is God's prerogative.

Ver. 10. Neither be ye called masters. — Observe the repetition. Christ knows the pride of our natures, and how deeply it is rooted in them, and, therefore, speaks to the point a second time.

Ver. 11. But he that is greatest among you, shall be your servant-Account no otherwise of himself than as an instrument, in the hand of God, to promote his glory, and stoop to all for the good of all.

Ver. 12. And whosoever shall exalt himself— Lies horribly to God and himself, is as low in God's esteem as he is high in his own, and shall find it to his cost.

- And he that shall humble himself, &c.-Dwells in the truth. Lord, help here! Though we are dust and ashes, and our all is sin and misery, thou knowest we are not sufficiently humble. It is hard work to bring down

our pride; but nothing is impossible with thee, and great as this mountain is, thou canst remove it.

Ver. 13. But wo unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men, &c. Christ's kingdom of grace and help; by a false conceit of a righteousness of their own, and ability to attain it, which they had not. There are many degrees of hypocrisy, or hypocrites; but they are the most dangerous, and most effectually shut the kingdom of heaven against themselves and others, who think they can do what they cannot, and do what they do not.

Ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering, to go in. This is as true of those who talk of the moral sense, beauty of virtue, and fitness of things, as sufficiently evident, and sufficient guides to mankind; which is nothing but speculative unbelief: and, though some are not aware of it, it is, in fact, pleaded by others as the ground of their opposition to the Gospel.

Ver. 14. Devour widows' houses.-No kind of oppression was too great for them. And yet, doubtless, they, who were so scrupulous in paying tithes of the smallest things, condemned, and pretended to abhor, all manner of injustice and oppression.

Ver. 15. Ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. Nothing is more common than for converts to be over-zealous in their new way; and if it is bad, doubly bad.

Ver. 16-22. Whosoever shall swear by the Temple, it is nothing, &c.-Perhaps the manner of swearing by other things rather than God, was introduced out of a too superstitious reverence for his name. Our Saviour's decision is, that such distinctions are frivolous; and that all oaths, as such, are binding, as carrying in them an appeal to God.