gation, to consider piety as that which must open the way to knowledge, to return first to our duty by sincere endeavours to do the will of God, and then to hope that impediments to the reception of religious truth will be gradually removed, and that our advances will be direct and accelerated. Without this, our very first principles will be wrong, and all our deductions must partake of the error. With it, the wayfaring men, to use the language of the prophet, though fools, shall not err therein1. Barren speculation, like the light of the moon, may be clear, but it is cold and lifeless, and leaves men to their slumbers: whilst the knowledge of my text, like the light of the sun, warms and animates, and calls them up to labour and activity: by the first a man may be a hearer, by the second he is a doer of the word, and is blest in his deeds. This representation is confirmed by the general tenor of the word of God. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not to thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths". The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments". The scorner seeketh wisdom, 4 Isaiah, xxxv. 8. 6 Prov. iii. 5, 6. 7 Ps. cxi. 10. and findeth it not: but knowledge is easy to him that understandeth3. The meek will he guide in judgment, and the meek will he teach his way. With the heart man believeth unto righteousness'. The seed sown in good ground are they who in an honest and good heart receive the word". Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart3. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth*. Receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls. The ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them: but the transgressors, those who will not do his will, shall fall therein ‘. I might enlarge on the examples of the importance of this method of pursuing truth, which are found in Cornelius and the Ethiopian Eunuch, who, following with sincerity what they knew of the will of God, attained to a full discovery of his doctrine, by attending, the first, to the ministry of St Peter; the second, to the instruction of Philip': and eminently in the Bereans, who received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether these things were so; and of Prov. xiv. 6. Matt. xi. 29. 4 1 Cor. viii. 1. 5 James, i. 21. 6 Hosea, xiv. 9. 7 Acts, x. and viii. whom the sacred historian adds, therefore many of them believed. But having opened what I consider to be the principle of my text, that an obedient frame of heart is essentially connected with the success of theological studies, I proceed to apply this principle to a few of the most interesting divisions of Christian truth. I must here first observe generally, what will more clearly appear as we proceed, that our Lord's assurance in the text, If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself, not only implies that the inquirer, who obeys the injunction, shall discover the nature and evidence of truth in an abstract manner': • Acts, xvii. 11, 12. 1 Though the plan of my discourse did not allow me to address myself to those who have imbibed the fatal errors of the professed unbeliever, yet I will just notice here, that the principle of my text may be precisely adapted to his case. If he will combine with the study of the various and ample evidences of Christianity a practical attention to the voice of conscience; especially if he will be earnest and persevering in prayer, to the obligation and importance of which duty he cannot be a stranger; he shall clearly perceive that the arguments, by which the Scriptures are proved to be a revelation from God, cannot but afford the most complete satisfaction to the mind of every candid and dispassionate inquirer; of every one indeed, whose secret or avowed indulgence of sin does not lead him to conceive it to be his interest, and therefore to wish, that their divine origin should be invalidated. it implies further, that this evidence shall be enlarged and strengthened by the correspondence which he will observe, in consequence of his submission of heart to God, between the whole system of Christianity and his own situation and wants: a correspondence, of which the merely literary student can of course form no conception, and yet so surprising and important, that it shall convey more solid satisfaction to his mind than a thousand speculative arguments. So that, with whatever hesitation he may at first proceed, he shall eventually escape every material error, and shall embrace, to his own salvation, all the fundamental doctrines of religion. My design, then, in this second part of my subject, is, not to detail the arguments which would establish or refute the doctrines to which I may advert; but simply to lay before you, without any comment of my own, the very words of the sacred volume; and then to aim at pointing out, under each head, in what manner the practical student will be naturally led to receive them with cordial approbation, in their unsophisticated meaning, whilst the merely speculative inquirer mistakes or opposes the spirit and tendency of the whole, Let us then inquire how the statements of Scripture will naturally appear to a mind rightly disposed, first, with regard to the guilt and corruption of man. The Bible declares in general, that man is shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin2; that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked3. It states, that such is the extent of this corruption, that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart is only evil continually; and that in him there dwelleth no manner of thing that is goods. It adjudges all our work in this state to be of the nature of sin: The carnal mind is enmity against God. They that are in the flesh cannot please God". It insists on the total inability of man: We are not sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves. It is God that worketh in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure. It traces back the source of this guilt and corruption to the fall: By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin 1. How then will these and similar propositions appear to the man who, in consequence of his disposition to do the will of God, has actually entered on practical religion? His state of mind having led him to be solicitous above all things to secure the divine favour, he has endeavoured to obey the dictates of his conscience, and to reduce to practice the know |