into without such a recommendation. Surely age, which is but one remove from death, should have nothing about it but what looks like a decent preparation for it. In purer times it was the case; but now grey hairs themselves scarce ever appear but in the high mode and flaunting garb of youth, with heads as full of pleasure, and clothes as ridiculously and as much in the fashion as the person who wears them is usually grown out of it; upon which article, give me leave to make a short reflection, which is this, that whenever the eldest equal the youngest in the vanity of their dress, there is no reason to be given for it but that they equal them, if not surpass them, in the vanity of their desires.

But this by the bye.

Though, in truth, the observation falls in with the main intention of this discourse, which is not framed to flatter our follies, or touch them with a light hand, but plainly to point them out; that by recalling to your mind what manner of persons we really are, I might better lead you to the Apostle's inference of what manner of persons ye ought to be, in all holy conversation and godliness; looking for, and hastening unto, the coming of the day of God.

The Apostle, in the concluding verse of this argument, exhorts that they who look for such things be diligent, that they be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless; and one may conclude, with him, that if the hopes or fears, either the reason or the passions of men, are to be wrought upon at all, it must be from the force and influence of this awakening consideration in the text-'That all these things shall be dissolved;'-that this vain and perishable scene must change; that we who now tread the stage must shortly be summoned away; that we are creatures but of a day, hastening unto the place whence we shall return no more; that whilst we are here, our conduct and behaviour is minutely observed; that there is a Being, about our paths and about our beds, whose omniscient eye spies out all our ways, and takes a faithful record of all the passages of our lives; that these volumes shall be produced and opened, and men shall be judged out of the things that are written in them; that without respect of persons we shall be made accountable for our thoughts, our words, and actions, to this greatest and best of beings, before whose judgment-seat we must finally appear, and receive the things done in the body, whether they are good, or whether they are bad.

That, to add to the terror of it, this day of the Lord will come upon us like a thief in the night-of that hour no one knoweth; that we are not sure of its being suspended one day or one hour; or, what is the same case, that we are standing upon the edge of a precipice with nothing but the single thread of human life to

hold us up; and that if we fall unprepared in this thoughtless state, we are lost, and must perish for evermore.

What manner of persons we ought to be, upon these principles of our religion, St. Peter has told us, in all holy conversation and godliness; and I shall only remind you how different a frame of mind the looking for and hastening unto the coming of God, under such a life, is, from that of spending our days in vanity, and our years in pleasure.

Give me leave, therefore, to conclude in that merciful warning, which our Saviour, the Judge himself, hath given us at the close of the same exhortation:

Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and the cares of this life; and so that day come upon you unawares; for as a snare shail it come upon all that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch, therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man. Which may God of his mercy grant, through Jesus Christ. Amen.

XXXI.-ST. PETER'S CHARACTER.

'And when Peter saw it, he answered unto the people, Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? or why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk?'—ACTS III. 12.

THESE words, as the text tells us, were spoken by St. Peter on the occasion of his miraculous cure of the lame man, who was laid at the gate of the temple, and, in the beginning of this chapter, had asked an alms of St. Peter and St. John as they went up together at the hour of prager; on whom St. Peter fastening his eyes, as in the fourth verse, and declaring he had no such relief to give him as he expected, having neither silver nor gold, but that such as he had, the benefit of that divine power which he had received from his Master, he would impart to him, he commands him forthwith, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, to rise up and walk. And he took him by the hand, and lifted him up, and immediately his feet and anklebones received strength; and he leaped up, stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple, leaping and praising God.

It seems he had been born lame, had passed a whole life of despair, without hopes of ever being restored; so that the immediate sense of strength and activity communicated to him at once, in so surprising and unsought-for a manner, cast him into the transport of mind natural to a man so benefited beyond his expectation. So that the amazing instance of a supernatural power, the notoriety of fact, wrought at the

hour of prayer, the unexceptionableness of the object, that it was no imposture, for they knew that it was he which sat for alms at the Beautiful gate of the temple,-the unfeigned expressions of an enraptured heart, almost beside itself, confirming the whole,-the man that was *healed, in the tenth verse, holding his benefactors, Peter and John, entering into the temple with them, walking, and leaping, and praising God, the great concourse of people drawn together by this event, in the eleventh verse, for they all ran unto them into the porch that was called Solomon's, greatly wondering ;-sure never was such a fair opportunity for an ambitious mind to have established a character of superior goodness and power. To a man set upon this world, who sought his own praise and honour, what an invitation would it have been to have turned these circumstances to such a purpose! to have fallen in with the passions of an astonished and grateful city, prepossessed from what had happened so strongly in his favour already, that little art or management was requisite to have improved their wonder and good opinion into the highest reverence of his sanctity, awe of his person, or whatever other belief should be necessary to feed his pride, or serve secret ends of glory and interest! A mind not sufficiently mortified to the world might have been tempted here to have taken the honour due to God, and transferred it to himself. He might-not so a disciple of Christ; for when Peter saw it, when he saw the propensity in them to be misled on this occasion, he answered and said unto the people, in the words of the text,-Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? or why look you so earnestly on us, as though by our own power and holiness we had made this man to walk? The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his son Jesus.

O holy and blessed Apostle !

How would thy meek and mortified spirit satisfy itself in uttering so humble and so just a declaration! What an honest triumph wouldst thou taste the sweets of in thus conquering thy passion of vainglory,-keeping down thy pride, -disclaiming the praises which should have fed it, by telling the wondering spectators, It was not thy own power, it was not thy own holiness, which had wrought this-thou being of like passions and infirmities; but that it was the power of the God of Abraham, the holiness of thy dear Lord, whom they crucified, operating by faith through thee, who wast but an instrument in his hands! If thus honestly declining honour, which the occasion so amply invited thee to take,-if this would give more satisfaction to a mind like thine than the loudest praises of a mistaken people, what true rapture would be added to it from the reflection that in this instance of self-denial thou hadst not only done well, but, what was a still more endearing

thought, that thou hadst been able to copy the example of thy Divine Master, who, in no action of his life, sought ever his own praise, but, on the contrary, declined all possible occasions of it; and in the only public instance of honour which he suffered to be given him, in his entrance into Jerusalem, thou didst remember it was accepted with such a mixture of humility that the prediction of the prophet was not more exactly fulfilled in the hosannas of the multitude than in the meekness wherewith he received them-lowly, and sitting upon an ass! How could a disciple fail of profiting by the example of so humble a master, whose whole course of life was a particular lecture to this virtue, and in every instance of it showed plainly he came not to share the pride and glories of life, or gratify the carnal expectation of ambitious followers; which, had he affected external pomp, he might have accomplished, by engrossing, as he could have done by a word, all the riches of the world, and, by the splendour of his court and dignity of his person, had been greater than Solomon in all his glory, and have attracted the applause and admiration of the world? This, every disciple knew, was in his power; so that the meanness of his birth,-the toils and poverty of his life,-the low offices in which he was engaged, by preaching the gospel to the poor, the numberless dangers and inconveniences attending the execution, were all voluntary. This humble choice, both of friends and family, out of the meanest of the people, amongst whom he appeared rather as a servant than a master, coming not, as he often told them, to be ministered unto, but to minister,and, as the prophet had foretold in that mournful description of him, having no form nor comeliness, nor any beauty that we should desire him.

How could a disciple, you'll say, reflect without benefit on this amiable character, with all the other tender pathetic proofs of humility, which his memory would suggest had happened of a piece with it, in the course of his Master's life; but particularly at the conclusion and great catastrophe of it-at his crucifixion, the impressions of which could never be forgotten? When a life full of so many engaging instances of humility was crowned with the most endearing one of humbling himself to the death of the cross-the death of a slave and a malefactorsuffering himself to be led like a lamb to the slaughter, dragged to Calvary without opposition or complaint, and as a sheep before his shearer is dumb, opening not his mouth.

O blessed Jesus! well might a disciple of thine learn of thee to be meek and lowly of heart, as thou exhortedst them all, for thou wast meek and lowly. Well might they profit when such a lesson was seconded by such an example! It is not to be doubted what force this must have had on the actions of those who

The case was this

Our Lord, before he was betrayed, had taken occasion to admonish his disciples of the peril of lapsing, telling them-thirty-first verse-All ye shall be offended because of me this night. To which Peter answering, with a zeal mixed with too much confidence, that though all should be offended, yet will I never be offended, -to check this trust in himself, our Saviour replies, that he in particular should deny him thrice. But Peter looking upon this monition no farther than as it implied a reproach to his faith, and his love, and his courage,-stung to the heart to have them called in question by his Lord, he hastily summons them all up to form his final resolution,-Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee. The resolve was noble and dutiful to the last degree, and I make no doubt as honest a one-that is, both as just in the matter, and as sincere in the intention-as ever was made by any of mankind; his character not suffering us to imagine he made it in a braving dissimulation. No; for he proved himself sufficiently in earnest by his subsequent behaviour in the garden, when he drew his sword against a whole band of men, and thereby made it appear that he had less concern for his own life than he had for his Master's safety. How then came his resolution to miscarry? The reason seems purely this :Peter grounded the execution of it upon too much confidence in himself, - doubted not but his will was in his power, whether God's grace assisted him or not; surely thinking that what he had courage to resolve so honestly, he had likewise ability to perform. This was his mistake; and though it was a very great one, yet it was in some degree akin to a virtue, as it sprung merely from a consciousness of his integrity and truth, and too adventurous a conclusion of what they would enable him to perform, on the sharpest encounters, for his Master's sake: so that his failing in this point was but a consequence of this hasty and ill-considered resolve; and his Lord, to rebuke and punish him for it, did no other than leave him to his own strength to perform it, which in effect was almost the same as leaving him to the necessity of not performing it at all. The great Apostle had not considered that he who precautioned him was the searcher of hearts, and needed not that any should testify of man, for he knew what was in man he did not remember that his Lord had said before, Without me ye can do nothing; that the exertions of all our faculties were under the power of his will. He had forgot the knowledge of this needful truth, on this one unhappy juncture, where he had so great a temptation to the contrary, though he was full of the persuasion in every other transaction of his life; but most visibly here in the text, where he breaks forth in the warm language of a heart still overflowing with remembrance of

this very mistake he had once committed,-Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? as though by our own power and holiness we had wrought this! The God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, through faith in his name, hath made this man whole, whom ye see and know.

This is the best answer I am able to make to this objection against the uniformity of the Apostle's character which I have given. Upon which let it be added, that was no such apology capable of being made in its behalf, the truth and regularity of a character is not, in justice, to be looked upon as broken from any one single act or omission which may seem a contradiction to it. The best of men appear sometimes to be strange compounds of contradictory qualities; and, were the accidental oversights and folly of the wisest man, the failings and imperfections of a religious man, the hasty acts and passionate words of a meek man,-were they to rise up in judgment against them, and an ill-natured judge be suffered to mark in this manner what has been done amiss, what character so unexceptionable as to be able to stand before him? So that, with the candid allowances which the infirmities of a man may claim, when he falls through surprise more than a premeditation, one may venture upon the whole to sum up Peter's character in a few words :-He was a man sensible in his nature,--of quick passions, tempered with the greatest humility and most unaffected poverty of spirit that ever met in such a character. So that, in the only criminal instance of his life, which I have spoken to, you are at a loss which to admire most: the tenderness and sensibility of his soul, in being wrought upon to repentance by a look from Jesus, or the uncommon humility of it, which he testified thereupon, in the bitterness of his sorrow for what he had done. He was once presumptuous in trusting to his own strength; his general and true character was that of the most engaging meekness, distrustful of himself and his abilities to the last degree.

He denied his Master; but in all instances of his life but that, was a man of the greatest truth and sincerity; to which part of his character our Saviour has given an undeniable testimony, in conferring on him the symbolical name of Cephas-a rock,- -a name the most ex pressive of constancy and firmness.

He was a man of great love to his master, and of no less zeal for his religion, of which, from among many, I shall take one instance out of St. John, with which I shall conclude this account:-Where, upon the desertion of several other disciples, our Saviour puts the question to the twelve, Will ye also go away? then, says the text, Peter answered and said, Lord! whither shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life, and we believe and know that thou art Christ the Son of God. Now, if we

Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. That our Saviour had the words of eternal life, Peter was able to deduce from principles of natural reason; because reason was able to judge, from the internal marks of his doctrine, that it was worthy God, and accommodated properly to advance human nature and human happiness. But for all this, reason could not infallibly determine that the messenger of this doctrine was the Messias, the eternal Son of the living God. To know this required an illumination; and this illumination, I say, seems to have been vouchsafed at that instant as a reward, which would have been sufficient evidence by itself of the disposition of his heart.

I have now finished this short essay upon the character of St. Peter, not with a loud panegyric upon the power of his keys, or a ranting encomium upon some monastic qualifications, with which a Popish pulpit would ring upon such an occasion, without doing much honour to the saint, or good to the audience; but have drawn it with truth and sobriety, representing it, as it was, as consisting of virtues the most worthy of imitation, and grounded, not upon apocryphal accounts and legendary inventions, the wardrobe whence Popery dresses out her saints on these days, but upon matters of fact in the sacred Scriptures, in which all Christians agree. And since I have mentioned Popery, I cannot better conclude than by observing how ill the spirit and character of that Church resembles that particular part of St. Peter's which has been made the subject of this discourse. Would one think that a Church, which thrusts itself under this Apostle's patronage, and claims her power under him, would presume to exceed the degrees of it which he acknowledged to possess himself? But how ill are your expectations answered, when, instead of the humble declaration in the text,-Ye men of Israel, marvel not at us, as if our own power and holiness had wrought this,-you hear a language and behaviour from the Romish court as opposite to it as insolent words and actions can frame!

So that, instead of, Ye men of Israel, marvel not at us-Ye men of Israel, do marvel at ushold us in admiration-approach our sacred pontiff (who is not only holy, but holiness itself)-approach his person with reverence, and deem it the greatest honour and happiness of your lives to fall down before his chair, and be admitted to kiss his feet.

Think not as if it were not our own holiness which merits all the homage you can pay us. It is our own holiness-the superabundance of it, of which, having more than we know what to do with ourselves, from works of supereroga

astic warehouses, and, in pure zeal for the good of your souls, have established public banks of merit, ready to be drawn upon at all times.

Think not, ye men of Israel, or say within yourselves, that we are unprofitable servants, we have no good works to spare, or that, if we had, we cannot make this use of them; that we have no power to circulate our indulgences and huckster them out, as we do through all the parts of Christendom ;

Know ye, by these presents, that it is our own power which does this-the plenitude of our apostolic power, operating with our own holiness, that enables us to bind and loose, as seems meet to us on earth;-to save your souls or deliver them up to Satan, and as they please or displease, to indulge whole kingdoms at once, or excommunicate them all; binding kings in chains, and your nobles in links of iron.

That we may never again feel the effects of such language and principles, may God of his mercy grant us. Amen.

XXXII.-THIRTIETH OF JANUARY.

'And I said, O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God: for our iniquities are increased over our head, and our trespass is grown up unto the heavens. Since the days of our fathers have we been in a great trespass unto this day.-EZRA IX. 6, 7.

THERE is not, I believe, throughout all history, an instance of so strange and obstinately corrupt a people as the Jews, of whom Ezra complains; for though, on one hand, there never was a people that received so many testimonies of God's favour to encourage them to be good, so, on the other hand, there never was a people which so often felt the scourge of their iniquities to dishearten them from doing evil. Yet neither the one nor the other seemed ever able to make them either the wiser or better; neither God's blessings nor his corrections could ever soften them; they still continued a thankless unthinking people, who profited by no lessons, neither were to be won with mercies, nor terrified with punishments, but were, on every succeeding trial and occasion, extremely disposed, against God, to go astray and act wickedly.

In the words of the text, the prophet's heart overflows with sorrow, upon his reflection of this unworthy part of their character; and the manner of his application to God is so expressive of his humble sense of it, and there is something in the words so full of tenderness and shame for them upon that score, as bespeaks the most paternal, as well as pastoral, concern for them. And he said, O my God! I am ashamed, and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God. No doubt the holy man was con