FEAR GOD: HONOUR THE KING.

A DISCOURSE

ON MATTHEW XXII. 21.

PREACHED

IN THE METHODIST CHAPEL, BATH,

ON SUNDAY, JANUARY 19, 1794.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THIS Sermon was preached in the usual line of ministerial duty, without any design of publication. It was soon after

wards printed at the repeated and earnest desire of the congregation.

At the time of its publication the Infidel Principles disseminated by the French Revolution, were making dreadful havoc in these kingdoms; having infected not a few of the professors of religion. The Author, therefore, thought it his duty to bear this public testimony against the mania of that day.

SERMON II.

FEAR GOD: HONOUR THE KING.

RENDER therefore unto Cæsar, the things which are Cæsar's; and unto GOD, the things that are GOD's. Matt. xxii. 21.

IT was foretold by Isaiah, several hundred years before our Lord appeared in the flesh, that "he should be despised and rejected of men."

There were several reasons for this :

1. He was a poor man. 66 Though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, that we through his poverty might be rich." This was contrary to the expectation of the Jews. They looked for their Messiah to appear with external pomp and power. But when they saw him, "they hid as it were their faces from him," and cried, "Is not this the carpenter's son ?" He "who had not where to lay his head" was of small account with those who were covetous, and proud of worldly distinctions.

2. This contempt was greatly heightened when this poor man asserted his proper character. When they heard him say, "I am the resurrec

tion and the life: If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins;" they were filled with indignation, and cried out, "He hath a devil and is mad; why hear ye him?"

3. The authority also with which he taught, and the severity with which he exposed the hypocrisy of their most admired characters, strengthened the enmity against him. Hence it was determined, in their council, that "whosoever acknowledged him should be put out of the synagogue."

It could not be, but that He who was thus "hated of the world, because he testified of it that its deeds were evil," should have "all manner of evil spoken of him, and be numbered with the transgressors," both in life and death.

But his enemies were not satisfied with striving to make void his teaching by wresting his words, and charging his most divine actions with sin; they took counsel, we are told in this passage, "how they might entangle him in his talk." In order to this, as St. Luke informs us, (xx. 20,) 66 they sent forth spies, feigning themselves to be just men," (men of a tender scrupulous conscience,) to question him concerning submission to the civil power, that, as the same Evangelist observes, "they might deliver him to the power and authority of the Governor."

It was, no doubt, matter of surprise to all the

people, that our Lord had been silent upon every question of this kind. The nation at large looked out for a deliverer from the Roman yoke. Even his own disciples expected a temporal kingdom; and that He should be, in that sense, placed upon the throne of David. This was thought to be expressly asserted in the ancient prophecies. This general expectation had so awakened the jealousy of Herod, that, upon the report of the Wise Men, respecting the birth of the Messiah, he sent forth his soldiers, and barbarously murdered all the infants in the confines of Bethlehem, hoping to destroy Him among them, "whose star had appeared in the east, and who was born king of the Jews."

But truth is always consistent with itself. "His kingdom is not of this world ;" and hence He not only abstained from all interference with the civil government, but from any expression concerning it. It is true, as "God over all, blessed for ever,' his kingdom is universal: And this the world shall know, when "his enemies shall be made his footstool." Of his kingdom, in this respect, "it is not for us to know the times and the seasons." But we know that he was manifest in the flesh "to take away our sins, and to purify to himself a peculiar people zealous of good works," and "holy as He who called them is holy;" a people that should "render to all their due, and by well-doing put to silence the ignorance of foolish men."

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