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SERMON III.

THE ADVENT OF CHRIST.

ISAIAH IX. 2.

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.

N remarking on the Advent or approach

IN

of our Saviour, two important questions offer themselves to our consideration; first, Whether the state of the world, at that period, with respect to religion and morals, was such, as to evince the necessity of a reformer; and, secondly, Whether sacred and profane history do agree in the time and circumstances of the Messiah's appearance. I shall confine the first part of this E 4 enquiry

enquiry to the Romans and the Jews only. The former worshipped a number of imaginary divinities, many of whom, according to their ideas, had been monarchs upon earth, whom the blind fanaticism, deplorable ignorance, and abject servility of their people, had exalted to deification, and whose conduct, as represented by their own priests, would (from their base participation in mortal sensualities) have disgraced the lowest orders of human nature. But this religion was only a species of Atheism; these gods were neither respected, loved, nor feared; mortals scrupled not to usurp their honours, and assume their names; one Roman general,* because the fleet of his adversary had been twice dispersed by a storm, fancied himself the son of the god of the sea; another,† actually denominated himself a well-known established deity; and, + Mark Antony.

* Pompey, jun.

worse

worse to relate, the infatuated multitude offered sacrifices, and paid divine honours, to a brutal sensualist and a public adulterer.* Such was the horrid tissue which ignorance and superstition had woven as a religion for the Gentiles. Those days (says a great defender of christianity,†) which were sacred to the honour of the Gods, were celebrated with such rites, that Cato, or any other virtuous heathen, would have been ashamed to have been present at them. If such were the vicious examples of the pretended heathen divinities, what must have been the morals of men? A savage ferocity of manners characterized those times; slaughter, proscriptions, and assassinations were general; suicide, the most

* Antony stiled himself Bacchus, and Cleopatra Isis. At a Roman banquet the guests came habited as different gods, and Augustus assumed the character of Apollo. Augustus was deified after his death, and Numericus Atticus swore he saw him ascending to Heaven.

+ Grotius.

atrocious,

atrocious, the most unnatural of all murders, was considered a virtue; it was the coward's sole refuge from evils, which he had not the magnanimity to bear, and we read not only of the self-murder of individuals, but of whole cities.* An universal dissoluteness of manners prevailed; matrons, and men of rank, disgraced themselves by lascivious dances at the public theatres;+ and the common people derived their chief amusement, from seeing numbers of gladiators hew each other in pieces.

Let us now review the religion and conduct of the once peculiar people of God. Though the Almighty had, by a very spe

* Xanthius.

+ Ut festis matrona moveri jussa diebus. HOR. On choisissoit d'ordinaire de jeunes filles pour les danses quón faisoit a l'honneur des Dieux, mais il y avoit des fêtes ou l'on choisissoit des femmes mariées, comme par Exemple, aux fêtes de la Grande Deesse Cètoient les Pontifes qui les choisissoient, & qui leur ordonnoient de danser; cest pourquoi Horace dit içi jussa. DACIER.

cial favour, committed his holy oracles to the Jews, yet had they been so ungrateful, as to slight and neglect so valuable a treasure; for, after the gift of prophecy ceased among them, and their scribes and rabbins came to interpret and comment on the sacred writings, they adulterated them to that degree, that they rendered them of none effect, by their false glosses and foolish traditions; they made the essence of their religion to consist in ceremonies and ablutions, whilst they trod under foot justice and judgment, the weightier matters of the law; and their worship was resolved into a set of formal shews and hypocritical pageantry. Puffed up, moreover, with arrogance and pride, at this their specious appearance, and at having a law, which would indeed have promoted their glory and happiness, if they had adhered to the true sense of it, they fancied they

had

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