to excite great attention and reverence in the minds of his hearers. It was well fuited to the doctrine he was to preach, that of repentance and contrition; to the seriousness he wished to infpire, and to the terror which he was appointed to impress on impenitent offenders. And perhaps it was further defigned to intimate the need there often is of harsh restraints in the beginning of virtue, as the easy familiarity of our Lord's manner and behaviour exhibits the delightful freedom which attends the perfection of it. At least, placing these two characters in view of the world, fo near to each other, muft teach men this very instructive lesson; that though severity of conduct may in various cafes be both prudent and neceffary, yet the mildest and cheerfuleft goodness is the compleatest ; and they the most useful to religion, who are able to converse among finners without rifquing their innocence, as difcreet phyficians do among the fick without endangering their health. It is remarkable however that whatever mortifications John practised himself, it does not appear that he prefcribed any thing to others beyond the ordinary duties of a good life. His difciples indeed fafted often, and fo did many of the Jews befides; probably therefore the former as well as the latter by their own choice. His general injunction was only,* "bring forth fruits meet for repentance." When more particular directions were defired, he commanded all forts of men to avoid more especially the fins, to which their condition most exposed them. Thus when thet people asked him (the common people of that hard-hearted nation) what fhall we do? John answered, "He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none, and he that hath meat, let him do likewife." That is, let every one of you according to his abilities exercise thofe duties of charity and kindness to his neighbor, which you are all of you but too apt to neglect. The publicans or farmers of the revenue came to him, and faid, "Mafter, what fhall we do?” And he faid, "Exact no more than that which is appointed you." Keep clear from that rapine and extortion of which you are fo often guilty in the collection of the revenue. The foldiers too demanded of him, "What shall we do?"" + Luke, iii. 10. II. Ibid. iii. 14. * Matth. iii. 8. Ibid. 12. 13. his answer was, "Do violence to no man, neither accufe any falfely, and be contented with your wages." That is, ab◄ ftain from thofe acts of injuftice, violence, and oppreffion, to which your profeffion too often leads you. Lewd and debauched people alto applied to him, to whom no doubt he gave advice fuited to their cafe. And therefore what he taught was not cerimonial obfervances, but moral conduct on religious principle; and without this he pronounced (however difgufting the doctrine must be to a proud and fuperftitious people) the higheft outward privileges to be of no value at all. "Think not," faid he to the Jews, "to fay within yourselves we have Abraham to our father, and are therefore fure of God's favor, be our conduct what it may' for I fay unto you that God is able of these stones to raife up children unto Abraham ;" is able to make the most ftupid and ignorant of thefe heathens, whom you fo utterly defpife, converts to true religion and heirs of the promises. Such were the doctrines which John preached to his difciles, and the fuccefs which attended him was equal to their magnitude and importance. This was plainly foretold by the angel that announced his birth to his father Zacharias. 66 Many of the children of Ifrael (faid he) fhall he turn to the Lord their God. Which in fact he did. For the evangelifts tell us that "there went out unto him into the wilderness Jerufalem and all Judea, and all the region about Jordan, and were baptized of him.”‡ The truth of this is amply confirmed by Jofephus, who informs us, that "multitudes flocked to him; for they were greatly delighted with his difcourfes."|| It might naturally be expected that fuch extraordinary popularity and applause as this would fill him with conceit and vanity, and inspire him with a most exalted opinion of his own abilities, and a fovereign contempt for any rival teacher of religion. But fo far from this, the most prominent feature of his character was an unexampled modefty and humility. Though he had been stiled by Malachi the meffenger of the Lord, and even Elias (the chief prophet * Matth. iii. 9. + Luke i. 16. Matth. iii. 5, 6. Jofeph, Antiq. Jud. xviii. 2. Edit. Huds. of the Jews next to Moses) he never affumed any higher title than that very humble one given him by Ifaiah; the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Far from defiring or attempting to fix the admiration of the multitude on his own perfon, he gave notice from his first appearance of another immediately to follow him, for whom he was unworthy to perform the most servile offices. He made a scruple, till expressly commanded, of baptizing one fo infinitely purer than himself, as he knew the holy Jefus to be. And when his difciples complained that all men deferted him to follow Christ (a moft mortifying circumftance, had worldly applaufe, or intereft, or power, been his point) nothing could be more ingenuously felf-denying than his anfwer; "Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I faid I am not the Christ, but am sent before him. He that hath the bride, is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly. This my joy therefore is fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease: he that is of the earth is earthy: he that cometh from heaven is above all."* Of fuch unaffected and difinterested humility as this, where fhall we find, except in Chrift, another inftance? Yet with this was by no means united what we are too apt to affociate with our idea of humility, meanness and timidity of Spirit; on the contrary, the whole conduct of the Baptift was marked throughout with the mosft intrepid courage and magnanimity in the discharge of his duty. Inftead of paying any court either to the great men of his nation on the one hand, or to the multitude on the other, he reproved the former for their hypocrify in the strongest terms; "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come ?" and he required the latter to renounce every one of thofe favorite fins which they had long indulged, and were most unwilling to part with. But what is ftill more, he reproved without fear and without referve the abandoned and ferocious Herod, for injuriously taking away Herodias his brother's wife, and afterwards incestuously marrying her, and for all the other evil that he Matthew iii. 7. * John iii. 28. 29. F had done. He well knew the favage and unrelenting tem per of that fanguinary tyrant; he knew that this boldness of expoftulation would fooner or later bring down upon him the whole weight of his resentment, But knowing also that he was fent into the world to preach repentance to all, and feeling it his duty to cry aloud and spare not, to spare not even the greatest and most exalted of finners, he determined not to fhrink from that duty, but to obey his confcience, and take the confequences. Thofe confequences were exactly what he must have forefeen. He was firft fhut up in prison; and not long afterwards, as you all know, the life of this great and innocent man was wantonly facrificed in the midft of conviviality and mirth to the rafh oath of a worthless and a merciless prince, to the licentious fafcinations of a young woman, and the implacable vengeance of an old one. After this short history of the doctrines, the life, and the death of this extraordinary man, I beg leave to offer in conclusion a few remarks upon it to your ferious confideration. And in the first place, in the testimony of John the Bap tist, we have an additional and powerful evidence to the truth and the divine authority of Chrift and his religion. If the account given of John in the Gospels be true, the history given there of Jefus must be equally fo, for they are plainly parts of one and the fame plan, and are fo connected and interwoven with each other, that they must either ftand or fall together. Now that in the first place there did really exift fuch a perfon as John the Baptift at the time specified by the evangelifts, there cannot be the smallest doubt; for he is mentioned by the Jewish historian Jofephus, and all the circumstances he relates of him, as far as they go, perfectly correfpond with the description given of him by the facred hiftorians. He reprefents him as ufing the ceremony of baptifm. He fays that multitudes flocked to him, for they were greatly delighted with his difcourfes, and ready to ob ferve all his directions. He afferts that he was a good man; and that he exhorted the Jews not to come to his baptifm without first preparing themselves for it by the practice of virtue; that is, in the language of the Gofpels, without repentance. He relates his being inhumanly murdered by Herod; and adds, that the Jews in general entertained fo high an opinion of the innocence, virtue, and fanctity of John, as to be perfuaded that the destruction of Herod's army, which happened not long after, was a divine judgment inflicted on him for his barbarity to fo excellent a man.* It appears then that St. John was a perfon, of whose virtue, integrity, and piety, we have the most ample testimony from an hiftorian of unquestionable veracity, and we may therefore rely with perfect confidence on every thing he tells us. He was the very man foretold both by Isaiah and Malachi, as the forerunner of that divine perfonage, whom the Jews expected under the name of the Meffiah. He declared that Jefus Chrift was this divine person, and that he himself was fent into the world on purpose to prepare the way before him, by exhorting men to repentance and reformation of life. If then this record of John (as the evangelifts call it) be true, the divine miffion of Christ is at once eftablished, because the Baptift exprefsly afferts that he was the Son of God, and that whoever believed in him should have everlasting life. Now that this record is true, we have every reason in the world to believe, not only because a man fo eminently distinguished for every moral virtue as St. John confeffedly was, cannot be thought capable of publicly proclaiming a deliberate falfehood; but becaufe had his character been of a totally different complexion, had he for inftance been influenced only by views of interest ambition, vanity, popularity; this very falfehood must have completely counteracted and overfet every project of this nature. For every thing he faid of Jefus, inftead of aggrandizing and exalting himself, tended to lower and to debase him in the eyes of all the world; he affured the multitude who followed him, that there was another perfon much more worthy to be followed; that there was one coming after him of far greater dignity and confequence than himself; one * Jofeph, Antiq. 1. xviii. c. 6. s. 2. Ed. Huds. |