VISITATION SERMON.

COLOSS. ii. 8.

Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.

To console and to encourage, to confirm and to strengthen in the true faith, the Christian Converts at Colosse, was the purport of the Apostle in this his affectionate Epistle. He thanks God for the sincerity and fruitfulness of their faith. He prays for them without ceasing, that they may be filled with the knowledge of the Divine Will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding*. He then declares that Christ Jesus, into whose kingdom they had been translated on their conversion, is the image of the Invisible God, the Creator of every thing in

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heaven and in earth, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers that he is the Head of the body, the Church †. and that it had pleased the Father that in Him should dwell all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; by Him, to reconcile all things to himself. He proceeds to shew that their reconciliation had been effected by the death of the Son of God and that the converts whom he was addressing would not fail of inheriting the privileges thus obtained for them, if they continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel ||: and then announcing that they would hazard the loss of their Christian privileges, if they should suffer themselves to be beguiled from the profession of the faith by enticing words §, he warns them, in the earnest language of the text-Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ**.

To what Heresy (or rather Heresies, for the