you have heard, will never be erased from our minds. It will be a savor of life unto life, or a savor of death unto death. I am preaching and you are hearing for eternity; and may God, in his infinite mercy, grant that the preacher and hearer may be each other's crown of rejoicing in the day of the Lord Jesus! Amen.

SERMON XI.

AVOWAL OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS.

PREACHED ON THE FORTY-NINTH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS ORDINATION, APRIL 21, 1822.

But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets. Acts 24: 14.

AFTER Paul returned from Greece to Jerusalem, he went into the temple to preach; but the Asiatic Jews stirred up all the people and laid hands on him, and would have killed him, if the chief captain had not taken him out of their hands and led him to the castle. When he came upon the stairs, he requested and obtained leave of the captain to make his defence before the people. After this, the chief captain carried him before the Sanhedrim, the highest ecclesiastical court in the nation. In pleading before them, he so wisely managed his cause as to disunite them in opinion; which defeated their design to condemn him. But though the council dismissed him, yet a number of the people conspired against him, and bound themselves by an oath, that they would not eat nor drink till they had slain him. When this was made known to the chief captain, he sent a band of soldiers to conduct him in safety to Felix, the governor. Felix immediately sent to Jerusalem for Ananias, with the elders, to come and exhibit their complaints against Paul. When they were come, they employed one Tertullus, an orator, to be their advocate. He opened their cause with peculiar address, and exhibited their complaints. After the gov

(158)

ernor had heard them, he beckoned to Paul to make a reply. In his reply he absolutely denied the charges which had been alled against him. But he turned to the governor and said, "This I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call bresy, so worship I the God of my fathers; believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets." Paul was not ashamed of the gospel which he preached, nor afraid to profess his belief of its great and essential doctrines; though he kw they were called, by the greatest men in the nation, an aurd and fatal heresy. Hence we conclude,

That those who preach the true doctrines of the gospel, are not afraid to avow their religious sentiments; though they know that they are called heresy by others.

I. I shall show that the true doctrines of the gospel are very often called heresy; and,

II. Show why those that preach them are not afraid to avow their religious sentiments.

I. I am to show that the true doctrines of the gospel are very oft: n called heresy.

The gospel was essentially preached to Adam; and from A iam to Abraham; and from Abraham to Moses; and from Ms to Christ. But through all that long tract of time, it was generally misunderstood and misrepresented by all the heathen nations, and by many who professed to acknowledge its truth and divinity. When Christ came and preached the gospel with greater purity and plainness, not only the Gentiles but the Jews disbelieved, misrepresented, and rejected it. Both the Pharisees and the Sadducees hated and opposed him; and finally put him to death, for preaching the plain and important truths of the gospel. And wherever the apostles preached the same detrines, they were generally represented by Jews and Gents, as a mean and contemptible sect, who propagated gross bies and delusions. Tertullus in his plea against Paul, said, We have found this man a pestilent fellow, and a mover of wton among all the Jews throughout the world; and a ringisier of the sect of the Nazarenes." As Christ was brought up in Nazareth, an obscure place, his enemies reproachfully ad him a Nazarene, and his followers Nazarenes; and Paul a rug dealer of that despicable sect. And when Paul came to R.me and called upon Christians to come and see him," They

said unto him, We neither received letters out of Judea concerning thee, neither any of the brethren that came, showed or spoke any harm of thee. But we desire to hear of thee, what thou thinkest: For as concerning this sect, we know that everywhere it is spoken against." James and Stephen were early put to death by the Jews, for preaching the gospel in Judea; and the other apostles, who went round the world preaching the gospel to Jews and Pagans, were everywhere opposed, abused, and finally persecuted unto death. The primitive Christians suffered no less than ten bloody persecutions. And ever since those times, such Christians as have embraced and maintained the pure doctrines of the gospel, have been more or less opposed and persecuted by heathens and by multitudes, who professed to believe the gospel. The Sabellians, Arians, and Socinians were the earliest sectarians that arose in the church in the third and fourth centuries, who disbelieved and denied some of the essential doctrines of the gospel. Since their day a flood of sectarians have sprung up in the Christian world, who have opposed, misrepresented, and denied some or all of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. Among nominal Christians at the present time, there are Antinomians, Armenians, Methodists, Universalists, and Unitarians, besides a number of minor sectarians, who unite in calling the pure doctrines of the gospel, which Paul preached, gross heresies, if not blasphemies. Though the ministers in New England generally profess to believe and maintain the same doctrines, which their fathers, who planted these churches, professed and maintained, yet many of them do not preach the same doctrines, nor approve of others who do preach them. There are, indeed, some who preach the same doctrines, plainly and fully, that Paul preached, and that the first ministers in New England preached; but they are everywhere spoken against in names and terms of reproach; and represented as an ignorant and bigoted sect, who ought to be rejected and avoided by every religious society. It appears from the whole current of sacred and ecclesiastical history, that the prophets, Christ, the apostles, and their successors in the ministry, who have preached the same pure doctrines of the gospel that they preached, have always been considered and represented, by the great majority of mankind, as propagators of error, delusion, and heresy.

Bat though the doctrines of the cross have been so generally Late, opposed and misrepresented, yet the faithful ministers of the gospel have never been afraid to avow their religious sentiments and to preach them, plainly, before an unbelieving and frowning world. Paul was not afraid to acknowledge before the Roman governor and the whole Jewish council, that Le embraced and taught the pure doctrines of the gospel, though he knew that they were everywhere spoken against and called heresy. He said to the elders of Ephesus, "Ye Anew from the first day that I came into Asia, after what manner I have been with you at all seasons; and how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you." "Wherefore I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God." Peter and the rest of the apostles never shrunk from avowing their religious sentiments, though they knew that both Jews and Gentiles viewed them as teaching most false, absurd and pernicious doctrines. And all faithful ministers, who

be their spirit and embrace their doctrines, are not afraid to avow their religious sentiments, though they know the world wil reproach them for it. This leads me to show,

II. Why those, who preach the great and essential doctrines of the gospel are not afraid to avow their religious sentiments, which are so generally stigmatized with every opprobrious ef.the t.

1. One reason is, because they know they are true.

Paul knew, that his religious sentiments were true, because they were founded on the infallible word of God; and this knowledge gave him confidence to avow his sentiments before Ex, the governor, and the grand council of the Jewish Santirim. But this I confess unto thee, that after the way wh they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers; teving all things, which are written in the law and the prophets." The law and the prophets contained the whole of the Old Testament, which was the whole Bible that God had then put into the hands of the Jews; and which they, as well as Paul, acknowledged to be of divine inspiration. He told them, that he built his religious sentiments upon the Bible; a. therefore knew them to be true: and he was willing to avow them before the world. He said to the Galatians, "I