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am 1, after all, only cheated into the belief of Christianity; only cajoled into the practice of piety? And is Christianity nothing more than a matter of policy and expediency, and not of principle, and truth, and eternal reality?

Such a policy was necessary for the introduction and establishment and maintenance of pagan idolatry; they had need of their sacred mysteries, their secret orgies, and their official and secret initiations. They had no way of insisting the dominion of implicit credulity but by putting the padlock upon the mouth of inquiry. They durst not trust their system into the hands of the vulgar; and therefore, most of them prohibited their systems being committed to writing; or if committed to writing, those books must be only in the hands of the initiated. But the worship of the true God has been committed unto writing, and we are enjoined to search the Scriptures. Even the mysterious book of the Revelation of John, is laid open to public inspection: "Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy." Rev. i. 3. "And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book." Rev. xxii. 10.

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There is, I am aware, a great deal of talk, in certain religious circles, about the Bible being a sealed book. where is that doctrine inculcated in the Bible itself? Bible a sealed book! then where is the propriety of calling it a revelation of the will of God? No; it is not the Bible that is sealed; but it is the heart of man that is sealed: he has eyes, but seeth not; and ears, but he heareth not; and a heart he has, but he does not understand. And what is the reason that he cannot understand? Is it because of his mental inability? or on account of the moral obliquity of his heart? And is it judicial blindness, or a voluntary blindness? Does not our attachment to this world disincline us to prepare for the next? Does not our inclination to carnal and criminal indulgences disincline us to understand the great business of our salvation? Would not every man quickly understand the Bible, if he would be willing to break off his sins? "How can ye believe, that receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only?"

In relation to the calling of Abram, and the extraordinary testation of his character in the sacrifice of his son, we shall

not find any thing in the whole affair, extraordinary as it certainly is, which might not have been perfectly agreeable with the sound and sober reason of that venerable patriarch, although it must have operated as a searching and adequate test of his integrity of heart towards God. God had promised to multiply the posterity of Abraham, until they became as numerous as the stars in the midnight sky; and to give him a descendent, who should be the Saviour of the world, and a blessing to all the families of the earth. But God afterwards commanded Abraham to offer up his only son on the altar, as a sacrifice to the Deity. Now there was not, in reality, after all, any thing between the previous promise and the subsequent command, that would render them absolutely incompatible: the faith of Abraham recognised a power in the Almighty that would render the one perfectly agreeable with the other, from whence he concluded that God would actually raise up his son from the dead. He therefore betrayed no symptom of trepidation or of hesitancy; he shewed no disinclination to obey the command of the Almighty; he was guilty of no vacillation of purpose; nor did he utter a single word of remonstrance; nor did he delay for a moment to execute the command of Jehovah. "He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God, being fully persuaded that what he had promised he was able also to perform." Wherein, then, I would ask, did the greatness of Abraham's faith consist? Did it consist in the prostration of his reason to the Divine authority? Or did it consist in pushing forward his conduct beyond the bounds of his conviction? Or did it consist in sacrificing what he conceived to be his own interest or happiness, to the mandates of Omnipotence? No; it did not consist in any thing of the kind. Wherein then, I ask, did the greatness of his faith consist? It was an act of obedience to God, which had no precedent in human history, but it was perfectly compatible with reason and duty, and privilege and advantage: it was an act of obedience to God, by which he anticipated the resurrection of the dead: it was an act of obedience to God, by which he anticipated the death and the resurrection of him, who was the type and ancestor of the long-expected Messiah, and the Saviour of the world. Hence it is said, that Abraham

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received Isaac from the dead in a figure; that is to say, in a resemblance that came near to, and even touched the reality which it was intended to adumbrate.

There was indeed a veil of mystery thrown over the time when the great promise of a Saviour would be ultimately and actually fulfilled; but there was no studied or purposed secrecy in the affair, nor was the veil that covered the time so opaque as people usually imagine. Although the coming of the Messiah might not have been chronologically determined, yet the intermediate stages in the developement of the great promise were distinctly marked; and the prophets searched what, or what manner of times the Spirit which was in them did signify; and the patriarchs and fathers died in the faith; not having received fulfilment of the promises, but having seen them afar off, they were persuaded of them and embraced them, and they confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. It is evident, therefore, that the events themselves, an din particular that of the incarnation of the Son of God, was matter of distinct, explicit, and repeated promise: but the exact time of its fulfilment was not a matter of fixed and infallible determination, and therefore could not have been the object of a certain and eternal prescience.

In relation to the promise of the Messiah, which is the chief subject of ancient prophecy, the apostle says, as we have already cited, that, "The prophets have inquired and searched diligently, searching what or what manner of times the Spirit which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow." 1 Pet. i. 10, 11. And it would appear, even from this very scripture, that the Spirit of Christ which was in them did actually signify, or what, or what manner of time it was in which the sufferings of Christ should take place; and therefore it was, that they searched with so much solicitude and diligence into the meaning of the inspirations of the Spirit of God. And it is truly surprising, with what particularity and precision, all these things are predicted, especially the advent of the Redeemer of the world; which is predicted, not indeed, with chronological, but with a characteristic and occasional exactitude. It is not likely that years and days had any thing to do with fixing the Divine determination; but the character and

conduct of the Jewish people, and the prepared state of mankind, were the subjects that determined the exact time of the fulfilment of the great prophecy respecting the time of the personal appearance of the Redeemer of mankind. It was to take place before the dissolution of the Jewish government; and therefore every person who took notice that the regal government of the Jewish people was at that time reduced to a mere shadow, and almost to an empty name, must have been fully aware, that the coming of the Messiah was then near at hand.

We may perceive by this example, as well as by what our Lord had said to his disciples concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, that the Divine purposes are not usually determined by chronological laws, but by the character and conduct of men, and the moral fitness of things: and therefore it was, that the prophets were directed in their prophetical calculations, by the evidence of collateral events, just as the disciples were instructed to judge of the proper time for their departure from Jerusalem, by the circumstance of the city being surrounded by hostile armies.

I have no doubt, that in most, if not in all of these matters, the Deity did actually and fully disclose, in his holy word, the sum total of his own knowledge, or rather of his own determinations, at the time, concerning the subjects alluded to. If this were not the case, the epithet, apocalypse, as applied to a revelation of the will of God, would be no more than an equivocal and unmeaning name. Human beings are accustomed to regard a fair and adequate evidence as being "the truth, and the whole truth, as well as, nothing but the truth." The danger of being inquisitive about the meaning of the word of God, and indeed about any thing which is closely connected with human conduct, and human happiness, and human salvation, and particularly about a subject so intimately connected with human salvation, as the existence of an eternal prescience of the final issue of human life would be, cannot be any thing more than an imaginary danger. The notion of an eternal prescience could neither have originated in human reason, or the dictates of Divine revelation: and it would be impossible to trace that irrational and unscriptural doctrine to any better an origin, than those of papal chicanery, and pagan superstition.

The words of our Lord to Peter, when that disciple refused to permit the Redeemer of the world to wash his feet, have been thought by many persons to favour both the notion of purposed secrecy in the word and ways of God, and the german doctrine of eternal prescience: "What I do, thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter." John xiii. 7. The obvious meaning of our Lord is this; that Peter did not at that time understand the typical intention of the ceremony of his washing his disciples' feet; that he was not even aware how ill the spirit and economy of the Gospel would comport with the carnal ambition of a worldly mind; and that all superiority and precendecy in the church of Christ must be accredited by extraordinary sufferings, and by extraordinary labours, and by extraordinary degradations. This, however, was a lesson which that disciple afterwards learned by painful experience. But, I ask, why was Peter ignorant of those things until he came to understand them by actual and painful experience? Was it because our blessed Redeemer desired to detain his mind in an ignorance of the spirit and genius of the christian religion? Did not the Redeemer of the world actually perform the ceremony alluded to, for the purpose of informing the minds of his disciples of those very things; and for the purpose of preparing them for the practice of christian humility and christian patience? The notion of a purposed secrecy in the sacred volume, as to the evidence of religious truth and the reasons of the Divine conduct, is therefore nothing better than religious superstition, or the chicanery of priestly domination.

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