luable benefits we owe to the Gospel; that by the addition of this governing principle, this mafter affection, to all the other grounds of moral obligation, it has given virtue every affiftance that heaven and earth can furnish; it has given us the compleatest and most efficacious rule of conduct that was ever offered to mankind,

SERMON

SERMON II.

JOHN iii. 19.

THIS IS THE CONDEMNATION, THAT LIGHT IS COME INTO THE WORLD, AND MEN LOVED DARKNESS RATHER THAN LIGHT, BECAUSE THEIR DEEDS WERE EVIL.

HEN the feveral parts of the text

WHE

are reduced to their proper order; they give us the four following distinct propofitions.

That light is come into the world.

That men have preferred darkness to this light.

That the reafon is becaufe their deeds are

evil.

And that the confequence of this choice will be condemnation,

It may be worth our while to bestow a little confideration on each of these particulars.

In this enlighten'd age, it will be thought no paradox to affert that "light is come into the "world." The position is true in more senses but there is only one that can fuit this paffage. The light here meant can be no other than that divine one of revelation which

than one;

brought life and immortality" along with it. The Chriftian difpenfation is conftantly and uniformly described in holy writ under this figure, from the time that the first faint glimmerings of it appeared at a diftance, till it fhone forth in its full luftre and glory under the Gofpel. Indeed there seems to be scarce any other image, that could fo fitly and adequately represent it to us. It is of the fame ufe to the spiritual, that the light of the fun is to the natural world. It gives life, health, and vigour, to God's new creation; it makes the " day of "falvation +" to dawn upon us; it opens to us

* 2 Tim. i. 10.

+ 2 Cor. vi. 2.

the

the prospect of another and better life; "it is a light to our feet and a lantern to "our paths," and guides us in the way to happiness and glory.

66

The next affertion contained in the text, that "men have preferred darkness to this light," may seem to require a proof. To "love darkness rather than light" is fo oppofite to our nature, fo inconsistent with our general manner of proceeding, that it seems at first incredible. If it really is the cafe, fo perverse a choice was never made but in religion. Every other kind of light men catch at with the utmost eagerness. The light of the heavens has been ever efteemed one of the greatest bleffings that providence has beftowed upon us, without which, even life itself would be hardly thought worth poffeffing. The love of knowledge, that light of the mind, appears in us as early, and operates in us as ftrongly, as any one principle in our nature; and in every inftance, the human understanding naturally lays hold on every opportunity of information, and opens

Pfal. cxix. 105.

itself

itself on every fide to let in all the light it is capable of receiving.

How then comes it to pafs that with a mind thus constituted, thus thirsting after light, men can fometimes bring themselves to do fuch violence to their nature, as to chufe darkness, in that very point where it is of the utmost importance to have all the light they can poffibly get; where every step must lead to happiness or misery, and every error draw after it the most fatal and lafting confequences? Yet our Saviour tells us, that this was actually the case in his days, and would God that daily experience did not show the poffibility of it, in our own! But when we see the various artifices with which revelation is every day affailed; when we fee one man* most ingeniously reasoning us out of every ground of certainty, and every

* HUME; whofe uncomfortable and unintelligible system of Pyrrhonism has been exposed with great spirit and eloquence in DR. BEATTIE's Efay on the nature and immutability of Truth: in which (as well as in all the other productions of the fame excellent writer) the reader will find that union fo rarely to be met with, of a clear head, a fine imagination, a correct taste, and a heart thoroughly warmed with the love of truth and virtue.

criterion

X