grievous crune, and you tell me, Moses in the law commanded, that such should be stoned. If he did command this, why do you come to me? Truly for no reason, but to tempt and ensnare me. You would appear to be good and holy men, haters of sin, zealous for the honor of God and his law. But your design all the while is to entrap, to persecute, and slay me, an innocent person, sent from God to be your prophet, your priest, and your king, the promised Messias, the Saviour of Israel. The woman, it is true, is a sinner; but her accusers are no saints, and the world is imposed upon when it takes them for such. I know the rottenness of your hearts, and can, when I will, show it to others. I shall not condemn the woman myself, for it is not mine office. You may do it, if you will affirm yourselves to be those righteous men which you desire to be accounted. But this you dare not do before me, a person who, as you well know, can "prove the contrary, and give the by-standers such a history of what you have been, and what you are, as will make you ashamed to show your faces. And therefore it is, that I challenge and defy you to proceed-He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." This said, Christ returned to his former employment of writing upon the ground, leaving the medicine which he had administered to perform its operation. how very unfit they were to be the woman's accusers; they thought not what would become of themselves, when God should arise to judgment. And here is the great misfortune. Heaven has given to every man his portion of work, and every man is doing the work of his brother, instead of that which belongeth to himself. We are all naturally disposed to entertain a pretty good opinion of ourselves. A careful and constant examination of our ways, might chance to spoil that good opinion, and is, for that reason, a task which we are very backward in entering upon. But we feel no such pain in examining the ways of our neighbor, and finding him faulty; on the contrary, we are too apt to take pleasure in a comparison sure to be made to our own advantage. But then we are all the while deceived in imagining that our sins are and will be unknown, because we are able, for the present, to hide them from the world about us. The Pharisees accusing the woman in the temple, thought they stood quite secure in the characters which, by a little outward decency, they had acquired, of virtuous and holy men; when, lo, on a sudden, they perceived one present who was privy to all they had been secretly doing and thinking; one who was able to draw their true characters at full length, whenever he pleased, and thereby expose them to mankind as a set of hypocrites. And now behold the mighty force of a few And can we be regardless (for ignorant we words" They which heard it, being con- cannot be) of the presence of the same divicted by their own conscience, went out one vine person amongst us? To him all hearts by one, beginning at the eldest even unto the are open, all desires known; he knoweth least; and Jesus was left alone, and the wo-our down-sitting, and our up-rising, and unman standing in the midst. What are these godly persons gone? all gone; and is the work, upon which they came, left unfinished? It is even so. The criminal alone remains to be seen; her accusers are fled. And reason good. They found there was one ready to accuse them in their turn; they perceived that "all things were naked and open before him with whom they had to do:" and they had no mind to have him lay open their hearts, and read a lecture upon them before the people. Their consciences told them what sort of a lecture that must needs be; and, therefore, rather than provoke him to read it, they very prudently made the best of their way out of the temple, and left him to condemn or absolve the woman, as he should think fit. Whenever, therefore, you find yourselves tempted to be severe upon a neighbor's failings, call to mind what passed between our Lord and the Pharisees. Busy in bringing to light the sins of another, they had entire ly forgotten their own; they reflected not, derstandeth our thoughts long before he is about our path, and about our bed, and spieth out all our ways. From him bolts and bars cannot secure us, darkness cannot hide our doings: for the darkness is no darkness with him; the night as clear as the day. Before him lies the register of our lives, in which is noted every thing we have done, every thing we have said, and every thing we have imagined. Should he again appear in the Temple, and from these eternal records " reprove us, and set "our secret sins in "order before us," who could abide it, or stay to hear the accusation out? He might once more be left alone. Nor let us forget, that, although our God walketh not upon earth to teach and to reprove, as formerly he did in the flesh, yet hath he placed in every breast a representative of himself to sit in judgment, to condemn or to absolve. Conscience is always present, standing by, and taking an account of our proceedings, when we think not of it. Great endeavors are used to buy off and to si lence this witness. Half the pleasures and the temple by the same principle which amusements of the world are invented and caused the others to depart-consciousness followed, only to drug it, and lay it asleep. of guilt. This kept her fixed, after her acAnd, for a time, they seem to have the desir-users were gone; not daring to stir, till she ed effect. Old sins appear to be gone and heard sentence pronounced by Christ, before forgotten. While health and prosperity last, whom she stood. At length, "Woman," the man goes on smoothly, saying to himself said he to her, raising himself from the with Agag, "Surely the bitterness of death is ground, on which he had been writing, past; " till at length the lion is roused, and "where are those thine accusers? Hath let loose upon him, the minister of venge- no man condemned thee? She said, No man, ance seizeth him, and "heweth him in Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do pieces," when the word is given from above. I condemn thee; go, and sin no more." We Such a word was that of Christ to the Pha- are not to think by this, that our Lord meant risees, which could not have affected them, to excuse guilt, to be the patron of sin, or to if conscience had not heard and understood find fault with the law of Moses, which was it. Awaked by the sound, it started from its the law of God. By that law adultery was slumbers, and as the officer of justice, appre- to be punished with death. But the sentence hended them when they least expected it. could not be passed without accusers and Self-accused, self-convicted, self-condemned, witnesses, who were all fled. Proper magisthey gave all up, and disappeared. Great in- trates must pass it, and had they done so, deed is the power of conscience, when once Christ had not interposed to hinder the exeit is set to work by him who planted it in cution of justice. But they having not conthe bosom of man. Nothing can withstand demned her, whose proper office it was, no it. From the moment it is alarmed, and be- more would Christ, whose office it was not, gins to show a man to himself, it will find as he told the brethren who came to him him so much employment, that he will have about the division of an inheritance: "Man, little leisure and less inclination to turn ac- who made me a judge and a divider?" He cuser of his brethren, or to dwell upon and was no temporal magistrate, but came into the aggravate their offences. Go into the cham- world in a very different quality, that of a ber of him whom sickness and sorrow have spiritual Saviour. With respect to the law, brought to a sense of his sins. See with he left every thing as it was; he neither conwhat humility he confesses them, with what demned nor absolved the woman. But as earnestness he supplicates for pardon; how the publisher of the Gospel, and the author entirely taken up he is in settling the affairs of salvation, he directed her how to obtain of his own soul, and making his peace with the pardon of Heaven and eternal life, viz: God. Tell him that such a neighbor hath by so truly repenting of her sin, as never to fallen into a grievous sin, he will lament, pity, return to it again-" Go, and sin no more." and pray for him. Try to entertain and di- Despair not, therefore, O thou, whosoever vert him upon such a subject, he will think thou art, whom temptation hath drawn into you a wretch not fit to be conversed with, sin; thou art in the hands of one, who deand order you from his presence. -To go one sireth not the death of a sinner; of one who step farther Suppose the last day to be now died for thy sake, to procure thee forgivecome. Imagine you see the Judge upon his ness, grace, and glory. Return to him, pray throne, the generations of mankind assembl- to him, love him, and serve him, all the reed before him, and the books opened, out of maining days of thy life. Let the rememwhich we are all to be judged. Who, in brance of what is past teach thee how bitter that situation, would have any appetite to re- are the fruits of sin; fear, sorrow, shame, and vile, insult, or laugh at the transgressions of confusion; and henceforth learn by expethe man that stood next to him? Whose rience (for nothing else can truly inform thee) thoughts would not be employed upon his how sweet are the fruits of righteousness; own case? Who would not be anxious to ob- peace, and hope, and joy, and holy cofidence. tain his own pardon, and leave God to deal So shall thy brethren receive thee, as one as he thought fit with others, hoping and alive from the dead, and rejoice, because the praying that he would be merciful to them sheep that went astray and was lost, is now likewise? To this temper death and judg- found again. Nay, what is infinitely more, ment will certainly bring us all; and we angels themselves will take up their golden must blame ourselves, if in this temper they harps, and join in celebrating that mercy do not find us. which hath effected thy conversion. "There is joy in heaven, among the angels of God, over one sinner that repenteth." Having thus despatched the Pharisees, the woman alone remains. She was detained in DISCOURSE XLIII. ON THE PURIFICATION. LUKE, II. 22. And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord. Let us, therefore, arrest the festival of the day, and detain it, while we learn from it those useful lessons it is prepared to teach, concerning the purification of the blessed Virgin; the representation of the child Jesus in the temple; the sacrifice offered upon the occasion; and the behavior of Simeon and Anna. If we look into the law of Moses, we find it ordained, that the woman who had born a male child, for forty days thence ensuing (a period, for whatever reason, often fixed on, in cases of humiliation,) was to be accounted impure, to touch no hallowed thing, nor to approach the sanctuary. At the expiration of that term, she was to repair, for the first time, to the temple, and there to have an atonement made for her by the priest. AMONG the many advantages we enjoy in | upon that we do, in a manner read whatever these seats of learning and religion, it may we believe. Well to celebrate these religious surely be deemed one, that an honorable re- and sacred days, is to spend the flower of our spect is paid to those sacred festivals which time happily."* the church of England, in her wisdom, has thought proper to retain. There are few, and they are important: so few, that the necessary prosecution of secular business is not too much broken in upon; so important, that nothing seems to have been appointed in vain. They compose a celestial circle, of which Christ is the centre: his first and faithful friends from the circumference, reflecting back on him the glory received from him. They visit us in their annual course, with messages from above, each teaching us something to believe, and, in consequence, something to do. They bring repeatedly to our remembrance, truths which we are apt to forget they secure to us little intervals of rest from worldly cares, that our hearts with our hands may be lifted up to God in the heavens: they revive our zeal and fervor in performing the offices of religion: they cheer the heart with sentiments of gratitude and thankfulness they confirm us in habits of obedience to the institutions of the church and the injunctions of our superiors: they stir us up to an imitation of those who have gone before us in the way of holiness: they minister an occasion to our children, of inquiring into the meaning of their institution; and afford us an opportunity of explaining the several doctrines and duties of Christianity to which they refer in short, to use the words of the excellent Hooker, " they are the splendor and outward dignity of our religion, forcible witnesses of ancient truth, provocations to the exercises of all piety, shadows of our endless felicity in heaven, on earth everlasting records and memorials; wherein they who cannot be drawn to hearken unto that we teach, may, only by looking With respect to the whole class of those incidents and maladies to which the body is subject, thus regarded in the eye of the divine law as unclean; from the nature of the ordinance itself, as well as from numberless passages in the writings of the prophets, and more especially in the New Testament, it should seem evident, that something farther was intended than may at first sight appear. "The law stood," among other things, "in divers outward washings and cleansings." But may it not be here asked, as in another instance, "Doth God take care for these? Or saith he it not for our sake?" Hath he not enjoined such external rites, for the sake of conveying by them to future ages and generations, no less than to those then present, some truths of universal use and importance? Of one thing we are all well assured. That Ecclesiastical Polity, v. 71. alone which renders man and the creation otherwise than acceptable in the sight of their Maker, is sin. That alone which can reinstate them in his favor, is the redemption by Christ. By means of the former we are affirmed to have become "corrupted, polluted, defiled, unclean;" by the instrumentality of the latter we are said to be "purged, purified, washed, cleansed "-terms all borrowed from the legal ceremonies, at once explaining them, and being explained by them. "It imports, that, since Adam's fall, we are conceived in sin; that our birth is impure; that we derive from our parents an hereditary stain, whereby we are naturally unclean, and children of wrath; and to show the contagion thereof, not only the child was circumcised, but the mother also was cleansed by a sacrifice for sin." But here the difficulty may be thought rather increased, than diminished; since nothing of this kind could hold good respecting the blessed Virgin, and "that holy thing which was born of her," and justly called Could the shadow of a doubt remain upon this head, it must be dispersed by that full, direct, express declaration, which the apostle" The Son of God." The morning of his has made, in the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews; persons, who, if their education had been what it ought to have been, would have known these things, and not needed that any man should teach them. "The first tabernacle was a figure for the time then present, in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices, that could not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the conscience; which stood only in meats, and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances, imposed on them till the time of reformation. But Christ being come, an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the blood of bulls, and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh; how much more shall the blood of Christ, who, through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works, to serve the living God? Almost all things are by the law purged with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission. It was, therefore, necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us." It seems impossible, that, by any paraphrase, or commentary, these words can be rendered plainer than they are in themselves. To apply, therefore, this general reasoning of the apostle to the ceremony of the day, the purification of women after childbirth under the law, if it be asked, what such ceremony was intended to import? can a better answer be given to the question, than that which is given by the standard writer on the festivals of our church? birth was indeed " a morning without clouds." No spot then sullied the face of heaven. Why, therefore, must such a mother, and such a Son, pay obedience to the law? The Son paid obedience, as when he submitted to be circumcised, and to be baptized, not that he had any sin to be put off, or washed away, but because being "made of a woman, and made under the law," it became him to obey the law, or as he expressed it to John, who proposed the question at his baptism," to fulfil all righteousness." In himself he was not a sinner; but in our stead, he was content to appear as such. The holy Virgin placed herself, upon this occasion, on a level with other women, when she was so much above them, to exhibit a pattern of humility and obedience, of gratitude and devotion, or regard and reverence for the ordinances of God, which no one is privileged to neglect or slight, but which all should attend, however they may fancy themselves not to need, or not to be benefited by them. Indeed, who can have the confidence and presumption to absent themselves from the temple, when they behold Mary there, whom all generations have agreed to call Blessed? Let mothers, when, in the day of thanksgiving, they approach the altar, set before them her bright example; and let us remember, that by her becoming a mother, we are become the heirs of everlasting salvation; joint heirs with him who was, as at this time, presented in the temple. "When the days of her purification were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord; as it is written in the law of the Lord, Every male that openeth the womb, shall be called holy to the Lord." Great were the privileges from the beginning annexed to the first-born. Theirs was the pre-eminence in power and wealth; and before the designation of the sons of Levi to the service of the altar, among the people of God, theirs was the priesthood also. After that event, they still continued, 1 in the heavenly places. Nay, at that hallowed hour when the eucharist is consecrated, Christ is, again, figuratively and sacramentally, presented in the temple on earth. For his sake, the Father is then well pleased with us: he hears our prayers, forgives our sins, heals our infirmities, and and thanksgiving. Think not, O man, who slightest and disparagest that holy ordinance, that thou shouldest have received any pleasure, hadst thou stood by the blessed Virgin, when she presented her son at Jerusalem. as before, heirs of a double honor and inheritance; they were still offered in form to God, though redeemed, at a certain price, from actual attendance in the sanctuary. Agreeably to this injunction, Jesus was brought by his mother at the proper time, and presented in the temple, as her firstborn. He filled up the character, and high-graciously accepts our sacrifice of praise ly exalted it. Besides being her first-born son, he was likewise @pororoxos αons Tows, the first-begotten, or first-born of the whole creation, not only because he est, is ow Davtor, before all things, and all things, both in heaven and earth, were created by him, but also because he was begotten to inherit all things, and in all things to have the preeminence, since all things were created as avior, for him, as well as di autov, by him ;* in which view he is styled absolutely to @patoτOXOV, THE First-born,† uniting in himself all that was from the beginning prefigured by the rights and honors of primogeniture. He is styled, moreover лowτо1оxоs EX TWY VEXOWY, the First-born, or First-begotten from the dead, in regard of his being the first that rose from the dead, no more to die. And with allusion to the peculiar appropriation of all the first-born to God, the assembly of redeemed spirits is called, "the church of the first-born, written," or "enrolled, in heaven." .* Jesus, not sprung from the tribe of Levi, but from that of Judah, was redeemed, at the same price with others, from attending on the Mosaic ritual. He came to put a period to that dispensation; to establish the religion of the Gospel; to be invested with an everlasting priesthood, after the order of Melchisedek; to be, himself, the priest and the sacrifice, the temple and the altar. The Christian, once presented to God in baptism, cannot obtain redemption from that service. He ought not ever to desire it. Such service is the only perfect freedom; a freedom from the tyranny of turbulent passions, and imperious desires, from en-lent the bondage of sin, of death, and of hell. Happy the servants of the best of masters, did they not grow weary of being well, and change, only to repent of their folly in having done so! "The blessed Virgin," says Bishop Taylor," had received a greater favor than ever was received by the daughters of Adam; and, knowing from whence, and for whose glory, she had received it, she returns the holy Jesus as a gift to God again; for she had nothing-the world had nothing-so precious as himself, of which she made an oblation. Never was there before an act of adoration proportionable to the honor and majesty of the great God. But now there was; and it was made, at the presentation of the child Jesus in the temple." Let us not fail, by using them aright, to return to God all things we have received from him; and by a virtuous education dedicate our children to him who gave them, bringing them early to the temple, and presenting them to the Lord. The offering made by Mary was the offering of the poor, of those who were not of ability to bring a more costly sacrifice; according to that which is said in the law of the Lord; "If she be not able to bring a lamb, then she shall bring two turtles, or two young pigeons." Our Lord thought proper to appear, while on earth, in the character of a poor man, that he might advance the poor to the riches of his kingdom, and in the mean time render their condition here supportable, at least, if not pleasant, when they reflected that their Saviour was once as poor as they. At his birth he was poor, destitute of comBear we likewise in mind, that he who mon conveniences. In his life poor; "foxes was thus offered in the temple, after- had holes, and the birds of the air had wards offered, and still continues to present nests, but the Son of man had not where to himself, to appear in the presence of God lay his head." At his death poor; sold by for us. He it is, whose precious blood, the traitor for a paltry sum, stripped, cruwhose infinite merits, whose prevailing satis-cified, and then buried at the expense of faction, the church in her prayers present-others. Let not him, therefore, who is of eth daily to God; and through whom alone low degree, be troubled and cast down; but ourselves and all our oblations are accepted let him rather rejoice, because in his poor Coloss. 1, 15, &c. VOL. II. † Heb. 1. 6. 29. * Lev. xii. 8. |