TO THE CHURCH-WARDENS AND PARISHIONERS OF SAINT PAUL'S, DEPTFORD, This Sermon is respectfully inscribed, By the AUTHOR. ON THE DEATH OF DR. CONYERS. THESSALONIANS, ii. 8. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not the Gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear unto us. AN active, undaunted zeal in the service of God, and a peculiar tenderness of affection towards his people, were happily and eminently combined in the character of St. Paul. The latter appears in none of his writings to greater advantage than in this epistle, and particularly in this chapter. He had been made very useful to the Thessalonians, and was greatly beloved by them. Many of them had received the Gospel which he preached, not in word only, but in power; and were effectually turned, by grace, from dead idols, to serve the living and the true God.* They likewise were very dear to him; and, being now at a distance from them, he writes to confirm their faith and hope, to animate and direct their conduct. And he takes many occasions of reminding them of the peculiar regard he has borne them from the first, and how near they still were to his heart; that his love for them, which had sweetened all his labours and sufferings when he was among them, made him still solicitous for their welfare, and enabled him to rejoice on their account, while he was suffering bonds and imprisonment at Rome. The verse I have read is one passage, out of many * 1 Thess. i. 5. 9. in the New Testament, where our translation does not fully come up to the spirit and beauty of the original. Not that it is unfaithful or faulty; it is chiefly owing to the difference of the languages. I believe we have no single word in the English tongue to express the energy of the Greek term which he uses in the beginning of the verse; and therefore our translators have employed two,* "Being affectionately desirous of you." It denotes a desire connected with the finest and most tender feelings of the heart; not like the degrading, selfish desire of the miser for gold; but such an emotion (according to his own beautiful illustration in the preceding verse) as that with which the nurse, the mother while a nurse, contemplates her own child. Being thus disposed towards you, "we were willing;" but the Greek is more emphatical,-We esteemed it our pleasure, our joy, the very height of our wishes, "to impart "unto you the Gospel of God," to put you into our own place, to communicate to you, by the Gospel, all that comfort and strength, and joyful hope, which we have received from it ourselves. Yea, further, to have imparted to you "our own souls also;" that is, to devote our whole strength, time, and study, to this very end, to spend and be spent for you, and to be ready to seal our testimony with our blood, if this were needful to your establishment, "because ye were dear unto us," exceeding dear unto us. The same word is used, (for the language of mortals will not afford a stronger,) Matth. iii. 17. "This is my beloved Son." When I thought of preaching to you this day, and of mingling my tears with your's, the occasion suggested the choice I have made of a text; and the * Ιμειρόμενος. Η Ευδοκιμεν. † Αγαπητοί. countenances of many of you convince me that I have not made an improper choice. Another congregation might have been led, from what I have already said, to sympathize with the Thessalonians, in what they must have felt when they were deprived of such a minister and friend; but your minds are engaged by a sense of your own loss. You have reason. You acknowledge and feel, that, if I wished (as I certainly did) to select a text which might, while you heard it, strongly impress your minds with the idea of my dear friend, your late pastor, and recall to your remembrance his principles, actions, motives, and aims, how he spoke, and how he lived among you, I could hardly have found a passage in the whole Scripture more directly suited to my purpose. I believe, no minister in the present age, nor, perhaps, in any past age since the apostle's days, could have a better warrant than Dr. Conyers to adopt these words of St. Paul, as expressive of his own spirit and character. He had a very tender affection for you. It was his earnest desire, and his great delight, to impart unto you the Gospel of God, because you were dear to him; and it may be said of him, with peculiar propriety, that in this service of love he imparted to you his own soul or life also. You have not forgotten, surely you never can forget, the very solemn and affecting manner in which his ministry among you closed. Whether, while he was reading the apostle's farewell discourse to the elders of the church of Ephesus,* which occurred in the second lesson for the day, he had a presage that you would see his face no more, we know not. Had he been certain of it, he could not have taken your consciences more earnestly to Acts, xx. 18-35. witness, that he was clear of your blood, and that he had not shunned to declare unto you the whole counsel of God. However, the event proved that you then saw and heard him for the last time. His strength and life were prolonged to finish his discourse, and to pronounce over you his parting blessing, which he had scarcely finished, before he was called home to his Master's joy. "Blessed is "that servant, whom his Lord, when he cometh, "shall find so doing." In considering the grounds of the apostle's love to the Thessalonians, and the proofs which he gave of it, the subject will frequently lead me to bear a testimony to the grace of God, vouchsafed to your late minister, of whom we may truly say he was a "fol"lower of St. Paul, as Paul also was of Christ."t I. The first ground, the original cause of the apostle's love to the brethren, was the love of Christ. His unwearied endeavours, in the midst of the hardships and dangers which awaited him in every place, to promote the happiness of mankind, made him appear to many who were unacquainted with the motives of his conduct, as though he were beside himself. The apology he offered was, “the “love of Christ constraineth us." Till he knew the Lord, he acted very differently. While he was under the power of prejudice and ignorance, he verily thought that he ought to do many things against the name of Jesus of Nazareth, and therefore breathed out threatenings and slaughter against his people.§ But Jesus, whom he persecuted, appeared to him in his way to Damascus, convinced him of his sin, vouchsafed him pardon, and commissioned him to * Luke, xii. 43. + 1 Cor. xi. 1. |