Sermon 9. - Causes of Offence to Our Lord’s Doctrine.

SERMON 9. - CAUSES OF OFFENCE TO OUR LORD’S

DOCTRINE.

“From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life,” John 6:66 - 68. IN opening these words, I shall endeavour, first, to show what offended so much many of our Lord’s disciples, that they walked no more with him. Secondly, I shall prove from St. Peter’s words, by the grace of the Lord, that, as out of Christ there is nothing but eternal death for sinners, so in Christ there is eternal life for the chief of sinners that come to him. I shall then take occasion to make some practical reflections upon those two heads, by way of application. And may the Lord Jesus so shine upon our understandings by the striking light of his truth, and so prepare our hearts by the softening power of his grace, that we may all join Peter in his glorious confession of faith: “To whom shall we go, O Lord? Thou hast the words of eternal life; and we believe, and are sure, that thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” who openest the kingdom of heaven to all believers.

I. I shall endeavour to show what offended so much many of our Lord’s disciples, that they went back, and walked no more with him. The sermons which our blessed Lord preached were plain, though deep; sharp as a razor, though smooth as oil; and the effect was the conversion or the confounding of his hearers. True doctrine will always cause a division between the chaff and the wheat of a congregation; it sifts the worldlings, puts the formalists at a stand, and makes the Pharisees and Sadducees, the secret and open infidels in all ages, to exclaim against the severity and depth of Gospel truths: so that some, unable to bear it, run away from the disagreeable sound, as many of our Lord’s disciples did; or, if they come again, it is to seek an occasion against the preacher, and if possible, to catch him in his words as the Pharisees Sadducees, and lawyers tried to do by our Lord himself.

Now, if the eternal wisdom, the lowly, meek Lamb of God, who knew how to suit his discourses to the capacity and wants of his followers, could not declare the counsel of God without exasperating many of his hearers, how can it be expected that we, who have hardly one ray of the wisdom of the Sun of righteousness, should preach the same Gospel without any of the same inconveniences? Do not then conclude, my brethren, that ministers are false teachers, because many rise up against them, and walk no more with them; and that a doctrine is contrary to truth, because it is hard to flesh and blood, and is exploded by the generality of the hearers. In so doing you would condemn Jesus Christ himself, to say nothing of his apostles, whose plain ministry met every where with the greatest opposition. And as for you, my brethren, whose heart speaks still the language of the prejudiced hearers of the Gospel in the days of our Lord; you who often say or think, - “This is a hard saying, who can bear it?” - consider that, as the heart of man is the same in all ages, so is also the Gospel: the same cause will produce the same effect in England as well as in Judea: search, therefore, your hearts; search the Scriptures; and you will find that the opposition which plain Gospel truths meet in you is not owing so much to the uncouthness or harshness of the preacher, as you think, as to a secret aversion which you have to the cross and the Gospel of Christ. St. John, in the chapter out of which the text is taken, gives us a particular account of the sermon which caused the disciples of our Lord to murmur and depart from him. It is a close and deep one indeed, and contains many things which are foolishness to the natural man, though they are the wisdom of God to every awakened sinner. First: in the twenty seventh verse, “Labour not for the meat which perisheth, (says our Saviour,) but for that which endureth to everlasting life.” This was more than the worldling and covetous could well bear. There are in every congregation people who bury themselves all the week in worldly cares; they think of nothing else but of adding field to field, or of enlarging their business; they have no time to say their prayers, or if they say them, it is always in a hurry; as for death and judgment, hell and heaven, eternity, and such solemn points of meditation, they do not trouble themselves about them more than about the most impertinent story in the newspaper, perhaps not so much. Now, how could people of this stamp bear the doctrine of our heavenly Master? “Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that which endureth to eternal life.” No doubt they murmured secretly, or went away saying, “Did you hear this Galilean, this Son of Joseph? He tells us that we must not work. Can there be a more abominable doctrine?” And thus grossly mistaking our Lord, who only endeavoured, by those words, to damp their desires after earthly things that they might begin to provide heavenly food for their perishing souls, they ran away with part of a distorted sentence, made him an offender for a word, and represented him as a man whose doctrines interfered with the duties of people’s calling, and tended to subvert the commonwealth.

In the next verse, the Jews asked, “What shall we do that we might work the works of God?” And they expected, no doubt, that our Lord would have said, “You must go regularly to the synagogue; you must take care to have your children circumcised the eighth day; you must religiously observe all the festivals and the Sabbaths; you must pay tithe, and give alms out of all you have;” - for, thought they, if we do all this, who shall do the works of God better than we? But our Saviour, who knew there were hundreds of hypocrites and formal Jews among his hearers who did all this, and were nevertheless as far from the kingdom of heaven as the vilest publican present, answered, to their great surprise, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he has sent.” “This is the work of God that we believe! Why, this is a new doctrine, (thought some of them;) how can faith be the work of God? That man with his doctrine of faith will set aside good works, and then what will become of ‘the law and the prophets?’” This doctrine of salvation by faith never was, and never will be, understood by the world, because all the children of the world are self confident, proud, boasters, as St. Paul says, Romans 1., thinking that they can do good works before their heart is washed and changed by faith in Christ Jesus, and little suspecting that what they call their good works are only their least iniquities. “Without me,” says our Saviour,” you can do nothing.” “If I give all my goods to feed the poor, and have not love,” true faith, working by love, says St. Paul, “I am nothing.” And now what good works can the best moralist do, what good fruit can the most flourishing bramble produce, till grafted in Christ the true vine? Must not faith make us one with Jesus Christ, the tree of life, before we can bring forth fruit unto God; and is not this the work of God, that we believe on him whom he has sent, - that we come to Christ by faith, to have our hearts changed, and made fruitful in all good words and works? But this our Lord’s hearers did not like. Some, no doubt, blamed him for discouraging people from doing, as they thought, good works; and others could not bear to hear him declare that they had not the true faith, and that therefore their best works were only the fruit of their virtuous and hypocritical pride. In the fifty - first verse, our Saviour goes deeper yet, and tells the Jews, “I am the bread of life; if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever.” They could not conceive what he meant by the bread of life, if he did not mean the manna which their fathers had eaten in the wilderness. So in our days, thousands cannot conceive what our Church means by bidding us feed upon Christ in our heart by faith; they believe that it means just kneeling at the communion table, holding out their hand to receive the bread, and eating it with the mouth of the body; and they are ready to quarrel with ministers if they insist upon an inward, spiritual, sensible feeding, in the heart, on the heavenly virtue of Christ’s hidden flesh, and of Christ’s blood, whereby the soul is refreshed and strengthened, as the body by bread and wine. Nor could the Jews make any thing of that repeated invitation to come to our blessed Lord, in verses 37 and 65: “He that cometh unto me shall never hunger; he shall live for ever. No man can come unto me, except the Father draw him,” &c. Strange doctrine! Some murmured at it, no doubt, and were ready to interrupt the heavenly Teacher by such words as these: “Why, what do you mean by coming to you? Are not we come to you, and some of us from far? Do not we now throng round you? We follow you by land and by water, and yet you say, no man can come unto you except the Father draw him. What unintelligible stuff!” Just so it is in our days. If ministers enforce the duty of coming to Jesus for salvation, of coming spiritually by an inward and constant motion of the heart toward Christ, they are accounted enthusiastic, or, or least, are supposed to affect new and strange methods of leading their flocks out of the beaten track. And if they go farther and declare that all going to church and going to the Lord’s table, without this spiritual coming of the soul to Christ, is nothing but an empty form, a round of Pharisaical, hypocritical duties, which, like broken reeds, will pierce the souls of those that lean on them; the complaints run higher, and their hearers openly murmur against them, as the Jews did against our Saviour for the same reason. But the indignation of our Lord’s disciples rose higher still, when he added, in verse 53: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.” Except you get a Divine life, a life begun and preserved by feeding in an unspeakable manner upon my body, which shall be broken for you, and by drinking spiritually my blood, which shall be shed for you, you will remain dead to God, as you are dead in trespasses and sins, and ready for the second death, for you have no life in you. At this saying, many could no longer contain themselves, and went away complaining of the harshness of the Lamb of God, and the severity of his heavenly doctrine. How many do the same in our days, when we tell them, as our Lord did his followers, that they are dead, if out of Christ; that they have no life in them till they get a heavenly power to feed upon Christ in their hearts by faith; that though we enjoy an animal life, as the beasts of the field, and a rational life, as the prince of the air and his angels, yet till we are joined to Christ in one spirit, we are dead to God, and condemned already to the second death! But it is a comfort to us, under the opposition which we may meet with in enforcing this fundamental doctrine, to see that herein we only sip the cup which our blessed Lord and Master did before us; for the evangelist observes in the sixtieth verse, that many of our Lord’s disciples, when they heard that we are spiritually dead, that there is no life in us till we live upon him by faith, said, “This is a hard saying, who can bear it?” Here some expect, perhaps, that our Saviour, seeing many of his hearers offended, and ready to leave him, began to palliate the matter, to preach to them in a smoother strain, and to indulge a little their carnal and worldly notions. Just the reverse: he stands to his doctrine, and enforces it more than ever, though all should forsake him and flee. Does this offend you? says he; what if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before, how much more incredible will it then appear to you that he should give you his flesh to quicken your dead soul? And what was the consequence? The text informs us: “From that time,” says the evangelist, “many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.” And are we above our blessed Lord? No, dear Jesus, we are not above thee: and if, because thou didst speak the plain truth, many of thy disciples, even those who, the day before, would have made thee a king, went back and left thee, what can we expect of sinners who despise thee, thy ordinances, and thy word! But O leave us not to ourselves, lest we betray both thee and thy Gospel: help us to stand to thy truth, though many of our friends and acquaintance should forsake us for it; yea, help us to resist even unto blood, if thy providence call us to set to our seal that thy word is the word of truth!

II. Having thus showed what offended so much many of our Saviour’s disciples, that they departed and walked no more with him; by the assistance of the Lord I am to prove next, that as, out of Christ, there is nothing but eternal death for sinners, so in Christ there is eternal life for the chief of sinners. But these points of doctrine are contained in St. Peter’s answer to our Lord. When Jesus saw that many of his disciples were gone, he said unto the twelve, “Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, To whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of everlasting life.”

That expression - “To whom shall we go?” shows that man is helpless as well as wretched, and that he is both spiritually dead, and incapable to raise himself to spiritual life, since he must go to another for it. “To whom shall we go?” Here also appears an utter despair of finding relief, not only in one’s self, but also in any creature, thing, or means under heaven, but in Jesus Christ. To instance in some particulars: -

1. To whom shall we go for salvation and eternal life? Shall we go to bishops, priests, or deacons? Shall we go to the apostles themselves? No, no: they can only point us to Christ, the way, the truth, and the life: they are neither the way, the truth, nor the life: they are but men, and what says the Scripture? “Cursed is he that putteth his trust in man,” Jeremiah 17:5. It is not so with Christ; for though he is the Son of man, he is also Jehovah God, blessed over all; in him, therefore, we may safely trust.

2. Shall we go to the pope, the pretended successor of St. Peter? Behold, St. Peter himself says: “To whom shall we go, but unto thee, O Lord? Lord, save, or I perish.” And how can St. Peter’s pretended successor help us, if Peter cannot help himself?

3. Shall we go to any one denomination of Christians, to the Church of England, to the Church of Rome, to the Baptists, Presbyterians, Independents, or Quakers? Behold, the twelve disciples, the founders of all Christian Churches, the sacred college of the apostles, declare, with one consent, by the mouth of Peter, Salvation is not in us: to whom shall we go but to Christ? If, therefore, the purest Church that ever was or ever will be, a Church composed of apostles only, must go to Christ for salvation, how mistaken are those who trust to the denomination they belong to, as if a Protestant out of Christ was a hair’s breadth beyond a Christless Papist, a Turk, or a Jew! In the Revelation our Saviour compares the seven purest Churches of Asia to seven golden candlesticks. Now, you know that a golden candlestick is as useless without a light as a brazen one. Christ alone is the light that is or ought to be placed in all Churches; he is alone the light which shines in darkness, though the darkness comprehends it not. There is then no more salvation in the purest Church, if Christ does not shine in our hearts, than there is light in a candlestick of purest gold, when the taper is put out.

What are, then, the greatest preachers in the world; what is Paul himself, who spake with the tongues of men and angels, when compared with Christ, the living way? Just as much as a fingerpost to a traveller, and no more; as the fingerpost is not the way, but shows the right way, so Paul and all the preachers in the world are nothing, but as they point us to Christ, the way.

4. Shall we go to the Virgin Mary, with the Roman Catholics? “Behold,” says she, “my soul rejoiceth in God my Saviour;” therefore she stood in need of Christ, as her God and Saviour, as much as any one of us: salvation is not then in her, though it is in the fruit of her womb.

5. Shall we go to angels or departed saints? Behold, angels are the servants of those who shall be heirs of salvation, so far from being their saviours, Hebrews 1:14; and as to dead saints, they can absolutely do nothing for us, - “for a living dog,” says Solomon, “is better than a dead lion.” If saints could save us, it would be rather living saints than dead ones. It is well for the Virgin Mary and the saints, that they know nothing of the prayers which poor superstitious Christians address to them: if they knew of them, the very thought of such a piece of idolatry committed upon them, to the horrible contempt of Christ, the only Mediator, would damp all the joy in heaven.

6. To whom shall we go then? Shall we go to the writings of the dead, to books of piety and devotion, or to the Scriptures themselves? Alas! life is not in the letter: thousands of wicked men have written and read very good books: good books and the Scriptures are of infinite use in showing us the way of life, but still they are not the way; and when all the Bibles and libraries in the world shall be burnt up with the world itself, Christ the way will stand, and, as he is the living way, he will live for ever a mighty Saviour to all that come to God through him. “Search the Scriptures,” said he to the Jews, a for in them you think to have life, and they are they which testify of me,” John 5:39. The grand use, then, of all good books, and of the Scriptures themselves, is to bear witness of Christ.

7. Shall we make a saviour of our church walls, steeple, and bells? Shall we cry up the church! the church! as the Pharisees cried up the temple! the temple! Far be such a superstitious, such a worse than Popish notion from us: this building has no more in it that can contribute to our salvation, than the synagogue, out of which they cast our Saviour and his apostles. If there was any thing in any one building in the world more than in another, it was in the temple of Jerusalem, an eminent type of Christ, honoured several times by his bodily as well as spiritual presence; and yet one stone is not left upon another on the spot that bore the consecrated walls. But, blessed be God, the living temple of Christ’s body, that was destroyed for three days, is now built up again, and stands for ever at the right hand of God; and in that temple it is that the holy catholic Church worships God night and day, in spirit and in truth. Vile drunkards, abominable swearers, filthy whoremongers, covetous extortioners, lying cheats, profane Sabbath breakers, all sorts of sons and daughters of darkness, resort at times within these walls, and remain unsaved from their wickedness. Salvation is not, then, within the walls of any one place of worship in the world, unless Christ manifest himself there as he does not to the world.

8. Where shall we go then? Shall we go out of this wicked world, and retire into a wilderness or a nunnery, as thousands do in the Church of Rome? No: salvation is in neither, out of Christ. Whom did Christ find in the wilderness but the tempter? Whom do monks and nuns find in convents but the tempter, and corrupt nature, worse than the tempter? Shall we go to our closet? Yes, to seek Christ there, but not to make our closet a saviour, as too many do. Shall we go to the Lord’s table? Yes, to seek Christ there, but not to make the ordinance a saviour, as the Roman Catholics do, and too many who call themselves Protestants. The Pharisee, because he rested in his devotions, and sought not Christ in them, was made more the child of hell by his fasting and prayer: and when Judas received the sop, he received the seal of his destruction, the devil entering into him instead of God’s good Spirit. Therefore ordinances help not, out of Christ.

9. To whom shall we go then? Will you give me leave to put off, for a moment, the character of a preacher of Christ’s righteousness, such as I desire to be found among you, and to put on that of a fashionable preacher? Will you permit me to “prophesy smooth things to you, to prophesy deceit?” Well, then, I say, “O man, you ask, with St. Peter, to whom you shall go for salvation? To whom but to your self, to your own endeavours? Do your best, O man. Fulfil all relative and religious duties. Be honest, and go to church; wrong no man, murder nobody, be courteous and civil to all: and if those good works do not take you quite up to heaven, then Christ will lend you a hand at the last.” This is, my brethren, the diabolical scheme which prevails almost every where, in opposition to the Bible and the doctrine of our Church; this is the masterpiece of Satan; this is nothing but Deism refined, nothing but heathenish morality gilt over with the name of Christianity. This overturns the cross of Christ, and makes man his own saviour in part, if not in whole; this tramples under foot the glorious robe of Christ’s righteousness, to exalt the filthy rags of manes own righteousness; this sets at naught the blood of Christ, the Spirit of God, and the operations of Divine grace upon the hearts of men. This supersedes the fundamental doctrines of the fall in Adam, and the new birth in Jesus Christ. This, instead of ascribing salvation to Him that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb for ever, impiously ascribes it to free will and Pharisaical morality. And what is this but saying, “I will remain in myself for salvation; I have the words of everlasting life;” than which there can be no greater blasphemy; for it is the very quintessence of Luciferian pride. This is the wolf in sheep’s clothing, which destroys the lambs of the Lord by thousands; this is the detestable doctrine which Paul overturns, and curses, with the preachers of it, in his Epistle to the Galatians: “Though an angel from heaven,” says he, Galatians 1:8, “preach any other Gospel unto you than that which we have preached, let him be accursed.” And what is that Gospel, but that which is contained in the text: “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of everlasting life.” Yes, O thou Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, we are dead, lost, damned for ever, without thee! Our souls, like Noah’s dove, cannot find whereon to fix themselves in all the creation: thou alone art the true, the living ark built by the living God, to save souls alive. There is neither health nor life in us; but thou hast the words of eternal health and life. Ah, Lord, speak them to thy servants, and we shall be whole! Restore thou them that are penitent. Lord, save, or we perish! O Lord, make speed to save us; O Lord, make haste to deliver us! This is the language of Peter, of our Church, and of every penitent sinner. May it be that of all our hearts, till the Lord shall have turned our prayer into praise!

Here, brethren, I would conclude this head, did not I think it will be agreeable to you to have the contents of it supported by some plain scriptures, showing that there is no safety, no salvation, but in Christ, and that he, and he alone, has the words of everlasting life. Moses and Peter, speaking of him, say, “Your God shall raise unto you a prophet from among your brethren, and whosoever will not hear that prophet, [receive his doctrine,] shall be cut off from among the people,” that is to say, cut off from God’s peoples and consigned to outer darkness, Acts 3:22. Peter tells the Jews that Jesus Christ is “the stone which is set at naught by the builders, but is nevertheless the head of the corner,” that which supports the whole building of each believer’s salvation. “Neither is there salvation in any other,” adds he, “for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved,” Acts 4:12. In the next chapter, verse 31, the same apostle declares, that “God has exalted Jesus Christ with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, and to give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel.” And elsewhere, Acts 10:43, he says, “To him give all the prophets witness, that, through his name, whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins.” The third chapter of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans may be looked upon as a short comment upon the text: part of it runs thus: “Every mouth must be stopped,” says the apostle, “and all the world become guilty before God; therefore, by the deeds of the law,” by what a man can do in obedience to the law, “shall no flesh be justified. But now the righteousness of God,” or God’s way of saving sinners, “is manifested” in the Gospel, “by faith of Jesus Christ, unto all and upon all that believe, for there is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God: so that all must be justified freely by grace, through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood for the remission of the sins that are past.” By these scriptures, not to quote any more, you see, my brethren, that if we remain in ourselves, in our sins or self - righteousness, or that if we go to any other person or means but to the eternal Son of God, through all such means we have not the least chance to escape endless ruin; and that if we go to him with all our sins and guilt, with all our misery and helplessness, he has the words of eternal life; he can and will speak peace, pardon, and heaven into our souls, and then from his kingdom of grace translate us into his kingdom of glory. Having thus showed what offended many of the disciples of our Lord, so that they walked no more with him; and having proved that Peter spoke the fundamental truth of the Gospel when he said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life;” I shall conclude by an application of what has been delivered.

Some of you are ready to find fault with us for telling and proving to you, that every natural man, every unconverted person, is in a damnable state, yea, is condemned already: you think this is a monstrous doctrine, not fit to be mentioned in a pulpit. What o is that which is so plainly laid down in the Bible monstrous, and not fit to be mentioned in the pulpit? Well, then, the Bible is not fit to be read in the desk. O, my brethren, how is it that you are yet without understanding in this point? How is it you cannot see that your hard thoughts or hard speeches fall not upon us, but upon that sacred book, and upon the holy, just, glorious, and eternal God, who sent it to you from heaven? And how will you stand at the bar of God when this very book shall be opened for your trial, and your secret murmurings or ungodly speeches against it stare you in the face, with all your other sins? To whom will you go then for the words of eternal life; to God Almighty? Hear what St. Peter says: As God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble.” “At the proud he looketh afar off,” says David; yea, he frowned Satan into hell for his pride; and what greater pride can there be in people that are born in sin, and children of wrath by nature, as you and I are, than to oppose the plain word of God, and to absolve ourselves when the Lord condemns us, instead of pleading guilty, and going to Christ now for life and salvation? Will you go to him in the hour of death? Do you think he will give you heaven then for having trampled his doctrine under foot? Will he take you in, who fight against his word, when he shuts out the foolish virgins who assented to all that it contains? Or shall we go in that awful day to our good works for salvation? Our good works! I should be glad to know which they are? Our oaths and curses, our threats and passions, our whoredom and drunkenness, our filthy talking and jesting, our vain and covetous practices, our lying and slandering, our breaking the Sabbath, and making sport of those who want to fear the Lords our keeping away from the house of God’s worship when others resort to it, and our openly refusing to walk with a crucified Saviour, when the sacred mystery of his dying love is celebrated at the altar, - are these our good works? Will these save us? Having been guilty of such things, shall we ever dream of salvation by our works? When thieves are saved from the gallows by the robbery they have committed, we may fancy to be saved from hell by the works we have done. When the Pharisee shall go justified to his house, we may hope to he pardoned on account of our good deeds. And when the pope shall have turned Christ out of heaven, and the epistles of St. Paul out of the Bible, we may dissent from Peter in the text, and instead of saying with him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life;” we may say with all Deists, “Lord, we need not go to thee, for we have the words of eternal life at our command pour endeavours, works, and righteousness will save us; the pope has shown us this door, and though thou tellest us thou art the door, yet we are determined to go in at our own door.” This I do not speak, my brethren, to set you against good works, but to show you the need of coming to Christ first, that the tree may be made good before you can do works good in the sight of God. “Make the tree good,” says our Lord, “and then the fruit shall be good;” till then, “bring forth fruits meet for repentance;” and when you stand in the Lord by faith, when you are grafted in Christ, when God has given you the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ, take St. Paul’s advice, 1 Corinthians 15:58, “Be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord: forasmuch as you know that,” though your labour would be in vain in yourselves, yet it “is not in vain in the Lord.” But I would hope that many of you, instead of finding these sayings false and hard, find them true and just; and that were our Lord to say unto you as he did to the twelve, “Will ye also go away?” you would answer as well as Peter, “‘Lord, to whom should we go?’ God is a consuming fire out of thee; angels and saints, bishops and priests, books and ordinances, good works and endeavours cannot save, for thou alone, O Christ, hast the words of everlasting life.” But can you say this from your heart as well as with your lips? Are you entirely reconciled? Are you really well pleased with God’s way of saving sinners through faith alone in the blood and Righteousness of Jesus Christ? Do you renounce the devil and all his works; yea, and all dependence upon your own works? Can you, with St. Paul, desire to be found in Christ, not having your own righteousness, but that which is through faith in his blood? Are you determined to glory only in the Lord; to rejoice in nothing so much as in the cross of Jesus your Lord, which is to crucify the world unto you, and you unto the world? Though all men should go back to the world, and walk no more with Christ in the way of the regeneration, are you resolved (the Lord being your helper) to follow Christ and his word, and to stand to your Bible even unto death? If this is the case, rejoice, you dearly beloved of the Lord; the good work is begun in your souls; you are already called out of the world. “Marvel not, then,” says St. John, “if the world hate you;” it hated, it forsook, it crucified your Lord and Master before you, and so it will do by the servant in a measure. O, bear your cross with patience; your Saviour who bore it first comes to meet you with a crown of righteousness, and a crown of glory. O faint not in the meantime; faint not in this day of reproach, scandal, temptation, and darkness. You see many who call themselves disciples, and Churchmen, exclaiming against the plain doctrine of Christ and of our Church, and refusing to walk with our reformers in the narrow path pointed out in the word of God, and in our articles and homilies. But O, follow not a multitude in the broad way; choose rather with Moses to endure affliction and reproach with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures and smiles of the world for a season. Take the good part of Mary, take the good part of Peter, and though all the world should