men. The wrath is not an element framed magnified that law and made it honouraor fermented upon earth. It is conceived ble. And all this apart from any obediin Heaven; and thence it cometh down ence of ours. All this the produce of a on the unrighteousness of men, as the sub-transaction in which we had no share. ject of it. And as with the wrath of God, All this a treasure existing in the reposiso it is with the righteousness of God. It tories of that place, where the Father and too cometh down from Heaven in the the Son hold their ineffable communionshape of a descending ministration. It is a righteousness not rendered by us, but no more the righteousness of man in the rendered to us; and which is the only one case, than it is the wrath of man in one that God can look unto with complathe other. It is affirmed here, and most cency. This is the righteousness of God, prominently referred to in other parts of standing altogether aloof and separable the epistle, as the righteousness of God. from the righteousness of man; and which The wrath has its origin in the breast of He offers to administer to us all, in place the Divinity; and it goeth forth from an of that wrath which, upon our refusal of upper store-house, from a quarter above His better offer, He will administer. And our world and foreign to our world; and the way in which both the wrath and the all that the world furnishes is the reser-righteousness are set before us in this voir into which it is poured-the unrighteousness and the ungodliness of men, which form the fit subjects for its application. And there is not an individual man who is not a fit subject of it. The wrath is unto all unrighteousness; and there is none who has not fallen into some unrighteousness. All who do these things are worthy of death; and there is not a human creature who has not done one or more of these things.

passage, as being each of them a descending ministration-the one of them being as purely a dispensation from Heaven as the other-should prepare us for the still more pointed asseverations of the apostle, when he tells us that the righteousness upon which we are accepted is altogether of God, and borrows not one particle of its worth from the obedience of man; that it comes upon us in the shape of a previous and a prepared grant, which we are simply to lay hold of; that we are not the authors of it, but simply the subjects of it: And much is to be gathered from the information, that, like as the wrath of God is unto man's unrighteousness, so the righteousness of God is unto man's faith.

But there is a way, it would appear, in which they who are thought worthy of death and are under the wrath of God, may nevertheless be made to live. They die by the wrath of God being inflicted on them. They live by the righteousness of God being administered to them. The The question is, Whether that thing on one is just as much the rendering of a which we are justified is the righteousness foreign application as the other. In the of Christ alone accepted by God, and one case there is a displacency at sin on therefore called the righteousness of God, the part of the Godhead; and this bodies and rendered ours upon our receiving it itself into a purpose of vengeance against by faith-or, Whether it be the righteousthe sinner; and the infliction of it is sent ness of man as alone or in part the plea forth from God's remote and lofty sanctu- of man's justification. It will be found in ary, originating there, and coming down the sequel, how strenuously and how unfrom thence upon the unrighteousness of reservedly the apostle cleaves to the formman. And as with the wrath of God min-er term of this alternative; and in this istered unto the world, so it is with the righteousness of God which is ministered unto the world. It has all a separate existence in the upper courts of Heaven. It is no more man's righteousness in the one case, than it is man's wrath in the other. There was a ransom found out by God. There was a surety accepted by God. There was a satisfaction which that surety rendered. There was an obedience undertaken for us by one who inhabited eternity; and with this obedience God was well pleased. There was a righteousness which He could acknowledge. There was a duteous and devoted offering, which to Him was the incense of a sweet-smelling savour. There was a virtue which shone in spotless lustre even to His pure and penetrating eye; and a merit which not only met the demand of His holy law, but

opening passage of his Epistle, does he afford us no obscure or unsatisfying glimpse of that doctrine, on which lie suspended the firmest securities of our peace in this world, and the dearest hopes of our eternity.

The next thing to which we direct your attention, is the precise reason that is intimated to us here, of God's provocation with man. There is something in the principle of His anger, which accords with what we experience of the movement of anger in our own bosoms. An infant or an animal may do an action which is materially wrong. without calling forth our resentment. It is the knowing it to be wrong, on the part of the doer, which is indispensable to our anger against him being a rightful emotion; and it is neither the acting nor the thinking erroneously,

will not feel an echo in his own conscience to the righteousness of the sentence under which he has fallen; and who, though living in the midst of thickest heathenism, will not remember the visitations of a light which he ought to have followed, and by resisting which he has personally deserved the displeasure of God that shall then be over him, the doom of the eternity that shall then be before him.

In the 19th and following verses, the apostle, aware that to establish the guilt of the world's unrighteousness it was ne

on the part of man, which in itself brings an outcast of condemnation there, who down upon them the wrath of God. It is their doing so intelligently. It is their stifling the remonstrances of truth in the work of unrighteousness. It is that they voluntarily bid it into silence; and, bent on the iniquity that they love, do, in the wilful prosecution of it, drown its inward voice-just as they would deafen the friendly warning of any monitor who is standing beside them; and whose advice they guess would be on the side of what is right, and against the side of their own inclinations. Were there no light present to their minds, there would be no culpa-cessary to prove that it was unrighteousbility. On the other hand, should it shine clearly upon them, this makes them responsible for every act of disobedience to its lessons. But more, should it shine but dimly, and it be a dimness of their own bringing on-should they land in a state of darkness, and that not because any outward luminary has been extinguished; but because, in hatred of its beams and loving the darkness, they have shut their eyes-or should it be a candle within which has waned and withered to the very border of extinction, under their own desirous endeavours to mar the brilliancy of its flame-should there be a law of our nature, in virtue of which every deed of opposition to the conscience causes it to speak more faintly than before, and to shine more feebly than before, and should this be the law which has conducted every human being on the face of our earth to the uttermost depths, both of moral blind-actual communication. It is not necessary ness and moral apathy-Still he is what to conceive from these verses, that the he is because he willed against the light, doctrines of the existence and perfections and wrought against the light. It is this of God are the achievements of man's which brings a direct criminality upon unaided discovery at first. In that age of his person. It is this which constitutes a extraordinary manifestations, when God clear principle for his condemnation to put forth the arm of a creator, He may rest upon; and it is enough to fasten also have put forth the voice of a revealer; blame-worthiness upon his doings, that and simply announced to men that the they were either done in despite of the world they lived in was a piece of workconvictions which he had, or done in de-manship, and that He Himself was the spite of the convictions which but for his own wilful depravity he might have had.

ness committed in the face of knowledge, affirms what it was that man knew originally, and how it was that the light which was at one time in them became darkness. That which it was competent to know about God, was manifest among men. God himself had showed it unto men. He had either done so by the wisdom that shone in creation, making it plain to man's natural discernment that it was the product of a supreme and eternal intelligence; and this is one way in which we may understand how the invisible properties of the Godhead are clearly seen, even from the impress of them, stamped and evident to the reflecting eye on the face of creation itself. Or He had expressly revealed the fact to man that the world was created, and that He was the Author of it. Instead of leaving them to find this out, He had made it known to them by

builder and the maker of it. With the simple information that the world made not itself, but had a beginning, they could rise to the perception of Him who had no beginning. They could infer the eternity of that Being who Himself was uncreated. They could infer the magnitude of His power, seeing it to be commensurate to the production of that stupendous mechanism which lay visibly around them. They could infer his Godhead, or in other words His supremacy-the subordination of all that existed to His purpose and will

The Bible, in charging any individual with actual sin, always presupposes a knowledge, either presently possessed or unworthily lost or still attainable on his part, of some rightful authority, against which he hath done some act of wilful defiance. The contact of light with the mind of the transgressor, and that too in such sufficiency as, if he had followed it, would have guided him to an action different from the one he has performed, His right of property in this universe, is essential to the sinfulness of that action and in all those manifold riches which fill -insomuch that on the day of reckoning, and which adorn it—and more particularly when the men of all nations and all ages that He originated all their faculties; that shall stand around the judgment-seat, He provided them with all their enjoy. here is not one who will be pronounced | ments; that every secondary source and

agent of gratification to them, was a mere | diately good, was sought after for itself, channel of conveyance for His liberality; was valued on its own account, was enthat, behind all which was visible, there joyed without any thankful reference to were a power and a Godhead invisible which had been from eternity, and were now put forth in bright and beautiful development on a created expanse, where everything was that could regale the senses, and be exuberant of delight and blessedness to the living creatures by whom it was occupied.

Him who granted all and originated all; and this too in the face of a distinct knowledge, that every thing was held of Godin the face of an authoritative voice, claiming what was due to God-in the face of a conscience powerful at the outset of man's history, however much it may have been darkened and overborne in the subsequent process of his alienation. And thus the tenure of his earthly enjoy

It is not necessary to enter into a contest about the powers or the limits of the human faculties-though we shall after-ments was gradually lost sight of altowards attempt to make it evident, that, gether; and the urgencies of sense and debased and darkened as we are by sin, of the world got the better of all impresthere is enough of light in the human con- sions of the Deity; and man at length science to render inexcusable human un- felt his portion and his security and his godliness. But let us at present confine all to be, not in the Author of creation, ourselves to the circumstances adverted but in the creation itself with all its gay to by the apostle, according to the histori- and goodly and fascinating varieties. His cal truth of them. He is evidently des- mind lost its hold of a great and subordicribing the historical progress of human nating principle, by which he could have degeneracy; and begins with the state of assigned its right place, and viewed acmatters at the commencement of a dark-cording to its just relationship, all that ening and deteriorating process, which was around him. The world in fact, by took place on the character of man. And, a mighty deed of usurpation, dethroned without resolving the metaphysical ques- the Deity from the ascendancy which betion How far man without a direct com-longed to him; and thus the rule of estimunication from Heaven could have found mation was subverted within him, and his his way to the Being and attributes of the foolish heart was darkened. This disorder Divinity, let us just take up with the com- in the state of his affections, while it mencement of matters as it actually stood. clouded and subverted his discerning faIt was a period of extraordinary manifes-culties, did not at the same time restrain tations; and God made Himself directly the exercise of them. The first ages of and personally known, as the one Creator the world, as is evident from the history of all things; and men had only to look of Babel, were ages of ambitious specuwith the eye of their senses to these things, lation; and man, with his love strongly and to conclude how much of power, how devoted to the things of sense, still dreammuch of wisdom, how much of rightfuled and imagined and theorized about hidSovereignty and ownership, belonged to Him that framed all and upholds all. We may not be sure, in how far man could, on the strength of his own unborrowed resources, have steered his ascending way to the knowledge of a God. But the communicated fact that God did exist, and that He was the framer and the architect of all, put him on high vantage groundfrom which might be clearly seen the eternal power of the Supreme, and His eternal Godhead.

den principles; and, with his sense of the one presiding Divinity nearly as good as obliterated, he began to fancy a distinct agency in each distinct element and department of nature; and, to make use of the strong phrases of God giving them up and giving them over, we may infer a law of connection between a distempered state of the heart, and a distempered state of the understanding; and thus their very wisdom was turned into folly; and to their perverted eye, the world was turned into one vast theatre of idolatry; and they personified all that they loved and

We have only time to advert, shortly, to the way in which the truth respecting God was changed into a lie. The creature be-all that they feared-till by the affections came more loved and more depended on, than the Creator. He was not glorified as the giver, and the maker of all created good. But what was sensibly and imme

and the judgment acting and reacting, the one upon the other, they sank down into the degrading foolerics of Paganism.

LECTURE V.

ROMANS i, 28.

"And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient."

BEFORE proceeding to enforce the lesson | in a state of progressive corruption. But that may be educed from this text, let us he rather sketches out to us in this chapter shortly remark, that the not liking to re- the progress of the world's degeneracy tain God in our knowledge, might have from one age to another; and we would been rendered by the not trying to do so, infer from his account that men, in the not exercising our minds on the proof and first instance, had a far more clear and information that were before them-so as convinced sense of God; but, not liking to fix the right belief about God, and to to retain it, committed the sin of a perperpetuate the right view and perception verse disposition against the light which of Him. At the same time it is very true they had, and in part extinguished itthat not to try the evidence, and not to that they of course left their own immeprosecute the guidance of the light which |diate posterity, in a light more shaded and we have about any doctrine, argues either reduced than that which shone around the a dislike to that doctrine, or an indiffer- outset of their own progress through the ence about it-so that any slight amend-world-that these still disliked the rement which may be made of the English mainder of truth which they enjoyed; translation upon this score does not affect and, by their wilful resistance to its lesthe truth which it here sets before us, that sons inflicted upon it a further mutilation, God gives over to a reprobate mind, those and transmitted it to their descendants who do not like to retain Him in their with a still deeper hue of obscurity knowledge. thrown over it-that thus, by every sucBut the term reprobate' too, admits of cessive step from one generation to anosome little remark in the way of explana-ther, the light of divine truth went down tion. In its prevailing acceptation, it sug-in this world's history more tarnished and gests to our minds a hopeless and aban-impaired than ever; but still with such doned wickedness of character; and so is glimpses as, however feeble and however expressive of a diseased state of the moral faded, were enough at least to try the principles. In its primary sense it was affection of man towards it, were enough equivalent to the term undiscerning, or undistinguishing; and so is expressive of a darkened state of the understanding. In your larger Bibles, you will find a reprobate mind rendered on the margin into a mind void of judgment. But still it is so as to make it clear on the day of judgment, not exercised on any secular or reckoning, that men, even in their state philosophical question, but the judgment of most sunken alienation from the true of what is moral and spiritual-that kind God, were never, like the beasts that of judgment where error leads necessarily perish, so helplessly blind, and so destiand immediately to practical unrighteous-tute of all capacity for discerning between ness; and where therefore the love of the the good and the evil, as to render them unrighteousness disposes us to prefer the the unfit subjects of a moral sentence and darkness rather than the light. It is thus a moral examination. With every huthat the understanding and the affections man creature who shall be pronounced act and react upon each other; and that worthy of death on that day, will it be we read of men of corrupt minds having seen that there was either a light which no judgment, or being reprobate concern- he actually had and liked not to retain, or ing the faith; and of those who are abomi- a light which he might have had and nable and disobedient, being also void of judgment about every good work, or unto every good work being reprobate.

In the sad narrative of the apostle in this chapter, he appears to refer not to the history of one individual mind, or of one individual conscience-the defilement of which two provinces in our moral and intellectual nature, goes on contemporaneously, with every human being who is

to stir up a distinct resistance on the part of those who disliked it, were enough to keep up the responsibility of the world, and to retain it in rightful dependence on the judgment of Him who made the world

liked not to recover. To whom much is given of him much shall be required; and there will be gradations of punishment in hell; and in that place where the retributions of vengeance are administered, will there be the infliction of many stripes upon some, and of few stripes upon others; and it will be more tolerable for those who lived in a darkness that was not wilfully of their own bringing on, than for

those who stood on the ground of rebel- He shall let them alone since they will lion amid the full blaze and effulgency of have it so. It is an extinction of the light light from Heaven. Yet still, there shall which they once had, but refused to be not be one unhappy outcast in that abode led by; and now perhaps that they have of eternal condemnation, who will not be it not, may they do many an evil thing to convicted of sin knowing it to be so; the evil of which they are profoundly who, whatever be the age or country of asleep, and against which their conscience, the world which he occupied, has not now lulled and stifled into spiritual death, been plied with admonitions which he lifts no voice of remonstrance whatever. resisted, and urged by such an authorita- The guilt of sins committed in this state tive sense of duty as he trampled upon- of dormancy, which is of their own bringand that too, in the spirit of a daring and ing on, is no more done away by their presumptuous defiance. In short, be his insensibility to the foulness of them, than ignorance what it may, there was a wilful is the guilt of murder committed in the depravity which went beyond the limits fury of wilful intoxication. And ye deof his ignorance-Be that region of human praved and hackneyed old, at the doors affairs over which he roamed in utter of whose hearts we have so often knocked darkness as extended as it may, still there and knocked in vain, we bid you rememwas a region of light upon which he made ber a season of alarm and tenderness his intrusions with the intelligent purpose, which has now passed away-we ask of and in the determined spirit of a rebel- you to look back on the prayers and the Let the moral geography of the place he precautions of boyhood, when, the conoccupied be as remote as it may, still science awake and at her post, you at one there was a Law the voice of which at time trembled to think of that which you times did reach him, and the sanctions can now do without remorse and without of which must when time is no more at fearfulness. Ye men who have become length overtake him-Let the darkening stout-hearted sinners, and just because of his foolish heart be as due as it may to the moral light which shone upon you once the sin of his ancestors, they still left a has been extinguished by yourselves, and tribunal there from which went forth upon by yourselves your foolish hearts have him the whisper of many an intimation- been darkened-the scruples and the senIn the darkest period of this world's aban-sibilities of your earlier days may all donment, were there still the vestiges of truth before every eye, and a conscience awake in every bosom,-insomuch that not one trembling culprit will be seen before the judgment-seat, who will not stand self-convicted under the voice of a challenging and inspecting Deity-His own heart will bear witness to the sentence that he has gone forth against him; and the echoing voice of his own memory, will be to him the knell of his righteous and everlasting condemnation.

have taken their departure, and such may be the lethargy of your souls that neither the thunders of the law nor the entreaties of the gospel can move them. You may now be able to stand your ground against all the spiritual artillery of the pulpitand, even though death has stalked at large over the entire field of your former companionship and left you a solitary and surviving memorial of friends and of families that have all been swept away, still may you persist in the spirit of an But we should like to bring the princi- unbroken worldliness, and act the secure ple of our text more distinctly and indi- and the stout-hearted sinner, who rivets vidually to bear upon you. That process all his desires and all his hopes on a slipin general history by which the decline pery foundation. It is true indeed, that, of this world's light respecting God, and with a conscience obliterated, and an the decline of its practical allegiance to inner man deaf to every awakening call, His authority, have kept pace, the one and a system of moral feelings like a with the other, is often realized in the piece of worn and rusty mechanism that personal history of a single individual. cannot be set agoing, and an overhanging There is a connection by the law of our torpor upon all the spiritual faculties, so nature, between his wilful disobedience that every denunciation of an angry God and his spiritual darkness. You have and a coming vengeance is only heard read perhaps in our old theologians, of like a sound that whistles by-it is indeed what they called a judicial blindness. It true that he whose soul is in a condition is a visitation consequent upon sin. It is such as this, sits in the region and in the a withdrawment of the Spirit of God, shadow of grossest darkness. But it is when grieved and discouraged and provo- not like the transmitted darkness of Paked by our resistance to His warnings. ganism, which he can offer to plead in It is that Spirit ceasing to strive with the mitigation-or which will make his last children of men; and coming to this as sentence more tolerable for him even as the final result of the contest he has so it shall be more tolerable for Sodom or long maintained with their obstinacy-Gomorrah. It is a darkness which he