-But thou art merciful, loving, and righteous,. and lookest down with pity upon these wrongs thy servants do unto each other: pardon us, we beseech thee, for them, and all our transgressions; let it not be remember'd, that we were brethren of the same flesh, the same feelings and infirmities. O my GOD! write it not down in thy book, that thou madest us merciful after thy own image; that thou hast given us a religion so courteous, so good temper'd, -that every precept of it carries a balm along with it to heal the foreness of our natures, and sweeten our spirits, that we might live with such kind inter course in this world, as will fit us to exist together in a better. SERMON ΧΙΧ. Felix's Behaviour towards Paul, examined. ACTS XXIV. 16. He hoped also, that moncy should have been given him of Paul, that he might loose him. A NOBLE object to take up the confideration of the Roman governor ? "He hoped that money should have been given "bim!" for what end? to enable him to judge betwixt right and wrong!-and, From whence was it to be wrung? from the poor scrip of a difciple of the carpenter's fon, who left nothing to his follow-. ers but poverty and fufferings And was this Felix! - the great, the noble Felix! -Felix the happy! - the gallant Felix who kept Drufilla! Could he do this? - Base passion! what canft thou not make us do? Let us confider the whole transaction. Paul, in the beginning of this chapter, had been accused before Felix, by Tertullus, of very grievous crimes,of being a pestilent fellow-a mover of seditions, and a profaner of the temple, &c. -To which accusations, the apostle, having liberty from Felix to reply, he makes his defence from the 10th to the 22d verse, to this purport: - He shows him, first, that the whole charge was destitute of all proof; which he openly challenges them to produce against him, if they had it:_ that, on the contrary, he was so far from being the man Tertullus had represented, that the very principles of the religion with which he then stood charged, and which they called Heresy, led him to be the most unexceptionable in his conduct, by the continual exercise which it demanded of him, of having a confcience void of offence at all times, both towards God and man:-that consistently with this, his adversaries had neither found him in the temple disputing with any man, neither raifing up the people, neither in the synagogue, or in the city, for this he appeals to themselves :-that it was but twelve days fince he came up to Jerusalem for to worship: that, during that time, when he purified in the temple, he did it as became him, without noise, without tumult; this he calls upon the Jews who came from Afia, and were eye-witnesses of his behaviour, to attest: and, in a word he urges the whole defence before Felix in so strong a manner, and with such plain and natural arguments of his innocence, as to leave no colour for his adverfaries to reply. There was, however, still one adversary in this court, though filent, yet not fatisfied. -Spare thy eloquence, Tertullus! roll up the charge: a more notable orator than thyself is rifen up,'tis AVARICE, and that too in the most fatal place for the prisoner it could have taken possession of, 'tis in the heart of the man who judges him. If Felix believed Paul innocent, and acted accordingly-(that is) released him without reward, this fubtile advocate told him he would lose one of the profits of his employment ;-and if he acknowledged the faith of CHRIST, which Paul occasionally explained in his defence, -it told him, he might lose the employment itself :-so that notwithstanding the character of the apostle appeared (as it was) most spotless, and the faith he professed so very clear, that as he urged it, the heart gave its confent,-yet, at the same time, the paffions rebell'd, and so strong an interest was formed thereby, against the first impreffions in favour of the man and his cause, that both were dismissed; the one to a more convenient hearing which never came; the other to the hardships of a prifon for two whole years, hoping, as the text informs us, that money should have been given him: and even at the last, when he left the province, willing to do the Jews a pleasure, that is, to serve his interest in another shape, with all the conviction upon his mind that he had done nothing worthy of bonds; he, nevertheless, left the holy man bound, and configned over to the hopeless prospect of ending his days in the same state of confinement, in which he had ungenerously left him. One would imagine, as covetousness is a vice not naturally cruel in itself, that there must certainly have been a mixture of other motives in the governor's breaft, to account for a proceeding so contrary to humanity and his own conviction: and could it be of use to raise conjectures upon it, there seems but too probable grounds for fuch a supposition. It seems that Drufilla, whose curiofity, upon a double account had led her to hear Paul-(for she was a daughter of Abraham as well as of Eve) was a character which might have figured very well even in our own times; for, as Josephus tells us, the had left the Jew her husband, and without any pretence in their law to justify a divorce, had given herself up without ceremony to Felix; for which cause, though she is here called his wife, she was, in reason and justice, the wife of another man, and consequently lived in an open state of adultery. So that when Paul, in explaining the faith of CHRIST, took occafion to argue upon the morality of the Gospel, and urged the eternal laws of justice, the unchangeable obligations to temperance, of which chastity was a branch, it was scarce possible to frame his discourse so (had he wished to temporize) but that either her interest or her love must have taken offence: and though we do not read, like Felix, that the trembled at the ac count, 'tis yet natural to imagine she was affected with other paffions, of which the apostle might feel the effects and 'twas well he fuffered no more, if two such violent enemies as Lust and Avarice were combined against him. |