as soon as he heard the name of the Son of God, he asked, who is he, that I might believe on him? Blessed and happy, however contemptible in the world's esteem, is this poor man, so ready to believe! How much do we now hear of those, who are not ready to believe! who looking upon every act of faith as an act of weakness and enthusiasm, are ready for any thing rather than that; and are never easy till the world knows it. The gospel of Christ has not many recommendations for the great and the wise the blind can see it, the lame can go after it, the poor can purchase it: and all the greatness of man must put itself into their state, and stoop to poverty of spirit, before it is possible to believe. In the two characters of the Pharisees, and the person they thus cast out, we have a pattern of the believer and the infidel, which will hold true to the end of the world; where the temper of the Pharisee is, there will Christ be unknown or rejected; where the other temper is, of the man that was born blind, there will Christ be accepted and valued, and no where else. It is the wise and righteous judgment of God, never to be thought upon but with the most profound reverence and submission, that the low should be exalted, and that the lofty should be made low; that the

hungry

hungry should be filled, and the rich sent empty away; the ignorant enlightened, and the wise confounded. For this purpose did our Lord, as he informs us, come into the world, that this judgment might take place; and this is the last part of the subject we are to consider: for the history is concluded with this application of the whole. For judgment am I come into this world, that they which see not might see, and that they which see might be made blind. The language of the gospel has many seeming contradictions (called paradoxes), which when examined are strictly true and proper; this is one of them. How can he be said to see that seeth not, or he to be made blind that has the use of his eye-sight? The meaning is, that the gospel should make the poor and ignorant, who are reckoned to see nothing, wise and knowing in the things of God, but that it should make those, who are wise in their own conceit, and think they see every thing, know less than they did before. In the reason and propriety of all this, God will be justified, when the case shall be explained to us: but the fact has been notorious in every age. We have the

first instance of it in Paradise: "Ye shall see," said Satan, and he was believed in consequence of which, man fell from light into dark

ness,

darkness; knowing and confessing, that like the poor man in the gospel, we are born blind that the light of all true knowledge is wanting, till the God that made the Sun sends it down upon us from Heaven; and that even when light is come, the organ of sight is distempered and must be cured. This world too is so much before the eyes of men, that it will not permit them to view better things: let us arise then at the command of Jesus, and wash away that clay.

From what we have seen in the Pharisees, let us beware the judgment of men, who would bear us down with their own false opinions, the fashionable errors of the time; and never have recourse to such judges to know what the gospel is, and how far Jesus is to When we see into what

be received by us. excesses of absurdity and envy they were carried through a conceit of false learning, let us put up the following petition, which in few words comprehends the whole moral of the subject.-Give us, O Lord, the sight of that man who had been blind from birth, and deliver us from the blindness of his judges, who had been learning all their lives and knew nothing and if the world should cast us out,

us be found of Thee whom the world

crucified

crucified; and having followed the Light of thy Truth in this world, we may, through thine own merits and mediation, have with Thee the Light of Life in the everlasting glory of the world to come. Amen.

SERMON

must, as such, partake of his nature.

But it is chiefly so, when we consider that the end of it is to communicate holiness to man, and lead him to holiness and purity of life. It calls men to be separated from this world, which lieth in wickedness, and to become members of the kingdom of God. From thenceforth it sets new objects before them, new good and new evil, and inspires them with new affections, with love for the one, and hatred for the other. Its objects being all of an high and spiritual kind, the precepts which are intended to lead us to them are all

pure and holy, and the sum total of them all is expressed in that one precept of the law," Be ye holy, for I am holy." Man is to be made fit for the presence of God; but that cannot be, unless he becomes such as God is. Therefore the gospel saith, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God:" no other persons will be fit for it; it is therefore the design of the gospel to make them such. And this it doth, not by restraining men from sin, as the laws of the land and the terror of punishment do; but by inspiring them with an admiration of purity, and a love towards it; for the sake of God who is purity itself. The gospel, as an introduction to the kingdom of heaven, must be a lesson of holiness: