Julian Pe 13 And when they were come in, they went up into Jerusalem. riod, 4742. an upper room, where abode both Peter and James, Valgar Era, 29. attachment to the government; and the gross infraction of any moral or social duty was deemed a proof of civism, and a victory over prejudice. All distinctions of right and wrong were confounded. The grossest debauchery triumphed. Then proscription followed upon proscription, tragedy followed after tragedy, in almost breathless succession, on the theatre of France; the whole nation seemed to be converted into a horde of assassins. Democracy and atheism, hand in hand, desolated the country, and converted it into one vast field of rapine and of blood. The moral and social ties were unloosed, or rather torn asunder. For a man to accuse his own father was declared to be an act of civism, worthy of a true republican; and to neglect it was pronounced a crime, that should be punished with death. Accordingly women denounced their husbands, and mothers their sons, as bad citizens and traitors. While many women-not of the dress of the common people, nor of infamous reputation, but respectable in character and appearance -seized with savage ferocity between their teeth the mangled limbs of their murdered countrymen. The miseries suffered by that single nation, have changed all the histories of the preceding sufferings of mankind into idle tales. The kingdom appeared to be changed into one great prison; the inhabitants converted into felons; and the common doom of man commuted for the violence of the sword and the bayonet, the sucking boat and the guillotine. To contemplative men it seemed, for a season, as if the knell of the whole nation was tolled, and the world summoned to its execution and its funeral. Within the short space of ten years not less than three millions of human beings are supposed to have perished in that single country, by the influence of atheism, and the legislature of infidelity. I well know it will be thought by many, that this part of the subject has been exhausted. But in one sense, it can never be exhausted. The fearful warnings of that dreadful revolution ought to be indelibly impressed upon society, so long as a Sovereign, or a State, remain in the civilized world. Thus it appears that man has never yet been able, by the mere light of nature, to attain to a competent knowledge of religious truth. Let us now take a different view of the subject, and endeavour to shew, by arguments of another kind, how impossible it is for him to lay any foundation for such knowledge, other than that which is already laid in the revealed will of God. From a consideration of the powers and faculties of the human understanding, it is demonstrable that it cannot attain to knowledge of any kind without some external communication. It cannot perceive, unless the impression be made on the organs of perception: it cannot form ideas without perceptions: it cannot judge without a comparison of ideas: it cannot form a proposition without this exercise of its judgment: it cannot reason, argue, or syllogize, without this previous formation of propositions to be examined and compared. Such is the procedure of the human understanding in the work of ratiocination; whence it clearly follows that it can, in the first instance, do nothing of itself: that is, it cannot begin its operations till it be supplied with materials to work upon, which materials must come from without: and that the mind unfurnished with these, is incapable of attaining even to the lowest degree of knowledge. 1 Julian Pe- and John, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholo- Jerusalem. riod, 4742. mew, and Matthew, James the son of Alpheus, and Simon Vulgar Æra, Zelotes, and Judas the brother of James. 29. Without Revelation, therefore, it is certain that man never could have discovered the mind or will of God, or have obtained any knowledge of spiritual things. That he never did attain to it, appears from a fair and impartial statement of the condition of the' Heathen world before the preaching of Christianity, and of the condition of barbarous and uncivilized countries at the present moment. That he could never attain to it, is proved, by shewing that human reason, unenlightened by Revelation, has no foundation on which to construct a solid system of religion; that all human knowledge is derived from external communications, and conveyed either through the medium of the senses, or immediately by divine inspiration; that those ideas which are formed in the mind through the medium of the senses can communicate no knowledge of spiritual things; and that, consequently, for this knowledge he must be indebted wholly to Divine Revelation (g). If, then we find, from the very nature of man, as well as from the records of all history, that he has never been able to invent for himself a consistent scheme of religion; if his human reason is utterly incapable of arriving at any satisfactory conclusions respecting God and his Providence, the nature of the soul, or his own destiny in another state-if all his ideas on these subjects are clearly traceable to Revelation, and as soon as he steps over this boundary he launches at once into the chaos of conjecture and uncertainty; we have the most undoubled evidence in our favour, to prove that Revelation was necessary to man, and that he is unable of himself to discover those interesting and important truths which relate both to his present and future existence; and the decided superiority of Revelation over every other system which the ingenuity or sagacity of man have either invented or proposed, is the hallowed and ratifying seal of its divine origin. Who then will yet refuse to enter this holy temple of Christianity? who will still reject the religion of Christ, for infidel philosophy and metaphysical uncertainty-for endless and useless theories-for premises without conclusions-death without hope-and a God, without other proofs of his mercy than he has bestowed alike upon the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air! (a) Jones' (of Nayland's) Works, vol. vii. p. 294. (b) That which the modern speculat rs call natural religion, is the offspring of cultivated minds, thoroughly imbued with an early and extensive knowledge of religion, and endeavouring, by subtle distinctions, to separate the doctrines and duties which could only have been known by revelation, from those which they suppose to be discoverable by the power of hnman reason only. After all the reasonings of Wollaston, Clarke, and others, on this subject, the only point of real importance has been disregarded. The question is, whether there has ever been found a nation who have been governed by natural religion; or, whether this natural religion has made any discoveries concerning God, or the soul of man, or the nature of the future world, or on any of these sublimer subjects, which are at all comparable to those which are given to us in revelation. Natural religion, (says Faber,) denotes that religion which man might frame to himself by the unassisted exercise of his intellectual powers, if he were placed in the world by his Creator, without any communication being made to him relative to that Creator's will and attributes. Faber on the Three Dispensations, vol. i. p. 74. (c) See Stilling feet's Origines Sacra-Faber's Origin of Pagan Idolatry-Gale's Court of the Gentiles-Young on Idolatry, and many other treatises, Julian Period, 4742. 14 These all continued with one accord in prayer and Jerusalem. Vulgar Era, supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren. 90. SECTION II. Matthias by lot appointed to the Apostleship, in the place ACTS i. v. 15. to the end. 15 And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said, (the number of the names together were about an hundred and twenty.) which fully prove the truth of this position. (d) See Gale's Court of 2 "From this event many have inferred the right of popular interference in the election of ministers. He indeed must be a superficial reader who draws this conclusion, which an accurate consideration of the history directly invalidates. The election was made under peculiar circumstances, which can never recur; before the platform of the Church was decisively established; before the apostles had received power from on high; and when their number was confessedly incomplete. If the number of names, which were together about an hundred and twenty, had been designed to comprehend the whole Church of that period, and the women, who followed Christ from Galilee, (and for whose exclusion on this occasion there is no satisfactory reason,) are included in the number, the eleven apostles and the seventy disciples, who would not separate before Pentecost, will form a very considerable part of the congregation. But in the interval between the resurrection and the ascension of our Lord the Church was so numerous, that above five hundred brethren (1 Cor. xv. 6.) could be collected at one time and place to see him; and the circumstances of his appearance to his disciples were not such as to afford an opportunity of assembling them for a particular purpose, nor would they at this crisis be forward in declaring themselves, nor is it probable that any of them would return to his home, before the feast, which he came to celebrate at Jerusalem. St. Peter, however, standing up in the midst of the hundred and twenty disciples, that is, of less than a fourth part of the brethren, addressed himself only to the men and brethren, an exclusive salutation of the apostolic college, as some have supposed, but which appears to be an indiscriminate manner of addressing an audience, whether of ministerial persons specifically, of disciples generally, or even of Jews and Heathens. Its precise application must be determined from other relative expressions in the apostle's discourse. Now the repeated use of the pronoun US, (Acts i. 17. 21, 22.) in speak. ing of Judas, who was numbered with us; of the men, who have companied with us; of the Lord Jesus going in and out among us, and of his being taken from us; and of the new candidate's being a witness with us of his resurrection, seems to imply in the speaker a peculiar connection and identity of Julian Pe 16 Men and brethren, this scripture must needs have Jerusalem. riod, 4742. been fulfilled which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of Vulgar Era, David spake before concerning Judas, which was guide 29. to them that took Jesus. office with the persons whom he was addressing; and indeed Julian Pe ried, 4742. Valgar Æra, 29. 17 For he was numbered with us, and had obtained Jerusalem. part of this ministry. 18 Now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out. (19 And it was known unto all the dwellers at Jerusalem; insomuch as that field is called in their proper tongue, Aceldama, that is to say, The field of blood $.) 1 tion, he was numbered with the eleven apostles. The infer- Mosheim (b), concludes, from the mode of expression here adopted by St. Luke, that the successor of Judas was not chosen by lot, as is generally supposed, but by the suffrages of the people. St. Luke says, kai dwкav kλŋp8c aurov; but Mosheim thinks, that if the Evangelist wished to say they cast lots, he would have written καὶ ἔβαλον χλῆρον, or κληρᾶς. But as it is impossible to reason from what the Evangelist ought to have written, rather than from what he has written, we cannot place much confidence in his remarks, particularly when we consider the manner in which the Jews usually express this idea. Their phrase being (see Levit. xvi. 8.) 5. which corresponds to the Greek word kλñpos, used by the apostle; they gave, or cast forth the lot. As the foundation of Mosheim's argument is thus removed, it cannot be necessary to examine his inferences. The correct interpretation of a passage of Scripture destroys a whole legion of errors. It was but one blow of the axe that chased away the spectres and phantoms in the enchanted grove of Tasso (c.) (a) Morgan's Platform of the Christian Church, p. 29, &c. (b) Vidal's Translation of Mosheim, note, p. 136, vol. i. (c) See Kuinoel, sect. 2. lib. N. T. Histor. Com. in loc. and Schleusner in voc. kλñpoç. This passage, Acts i. 19. ought to be in a parenthesis, as being spoken by St. Luke. Esse hunc vebum pro additamento Lucæ habendum satis dilucide verba ipsa docent. Quorsum enim Petrus Apostolis dixisset, Judæ triste fatum omnibus Hierosolymitanis innotuisse? quam absone fuisset etiam voces Akeldama, omnibus præsentibus satis notæ, interpretatio! Accedit etiam quod ager ille haud dubio hoc nomen successu demum temporis accepit. Est igitur hic versus parentheseos nota a reliquis sejungendus, deλdaμà Syr. Chald. pn ager cædis. scil. cruentus dypòs aiparoç, Matt. xxvii. 8 (a). (a) Kainoel Comment. in lib. Hist. N. T. vol.iv. p. 18. See also Pfeiffer Dubia vexata Cent. 4. on the word Aceldama. Doddridge also, with other critics, places this verse in a parenthesis. |