SERMON V.

2 TIM. iii. 5.

Having a Form of Godliness, but denying the Power thereof.

THERE is a wonderful resemblance, as I have already had an opportunity of pointing out, between the heresies of the earlier ages, and those of modern times. Error, indeed, and more especially religious error, in all its endless varieties, almost always proceeds from the same motives, tends to the same ends, and works by the same means. We must not be surprised, therefore, if we find the false teachers among the first Christians, recommending themselves to their disciples by nearly the same pretences

as were held forth by those who, in later ages, have succeeded them in the great career of imposition and fraud. We shall find, in particular, what I hinted in my first discourse, to be true, that the greatest dangers to which the true religion has been exposed, have proceeded, not so much from those who openly rejected its doctrines, as from those who partly held, and by corrupting, undermined the faith. True piety and true devotion are, indeed, by the appointment of our gracious Maker, so congenial with the mind of man, that they are readily received, and not without great difficulty parted with. Even they who are the most dissolute and abandoned in their lives, who, the most entirely in practice cast off the fear of God and the belief of his word, do yet seldom venture publicly to avow, or unqualifiedly to profess that they do so. And this is shewn even in the most avowed adversaries and oppugners of the truth. For atheism has never been to any great extent, or, at least, has not continued for any length of time to be in fashion. On the contrary, the most powerful attacks upon Revelation which have been made in our days have originated with those who affected a great zeal for the honour of God, and declared their only anxiety to be the reclaiming of mankind from what they called superstition, and the confining of them strictly to that knowledge of their Maker,

66

which, they said, was implanted in us by na ture, and which they pretended, therefore, could not mislead. It is not my business, at present, to shew how falsely this was pretended, and how little of certainty, or of any thing approach ing to it, there is in deism. I only mention this, as one proof among the many which might be adduced, of the conviction which universally prevails, that there is no destroying the true religion, but by substituting something in its place. "The form of godliness" must, we see, be sought after and assumed, even by those who most deny the power thereof." Let the phantom be ever so unsubstantial, some object more or less determinate there must be to engage the minds of men, in the absence of a better principle. Where there is not this lure of a higher and more refined sort of knowledge held out, the mode which is most frequently adopted, for catching the attention of the weaker brethren, is that of affecting and teaching more rigorous sanctity of manners, or some novel and striking species of devotion. The imagination is to be engaged, either by grossly visible objects and a higher degree of pomp and external ceremony, or some new mode of approaching God, no matter whether more easy, or more apparently difficult; often, by a shew of bodily mortification anel self-denial, carried to a surprising pitch.

This, indeed, forms a prominent feature in the history of all false religions; we trace the principle, not only in the horrible sacrifices of fered up to Moloch, in the priests of Cybele, and the vestal virgins of old, but in the faquirs and the bonzes of these days, whose voluntary ` sufferings and dreadful penances exceed even all that is told, whether truly or falsely, of the hermits and the ascetics of the earlier as well as of the darker ages. The fact is, that whatever is difficult to be achieved or to be borne is apt to impress us with an idea of merit, and there will never be wanting ambitious or vain persons, who, for the sake of the distinction which it may procure them, will endure the severest hardships. But, besides, experience tells us, that the greater part of mankind find it more easy to make even the most painful but determinate sacrifice, than to renounce a favourite vice, or abstain from any indulgence of passion which is become habitual. "Will the Lord be pleased "with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands " of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first born for

my transgression, the fruit of my body for the "sin of my soul?" Such was the proferred devotion of those who were reminded that their duty was of a more reasonable, and, one would have thought, a more easy sort. "He hath "shewed thee, O man, what is good, and now "what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do

'justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly "before thy God*?"

We

Such was the language of the prophet, even under the old dispensation, which, being a covenant of works, might, with some reason have been supposed to exact severer and more painful terms of obedience than those which were to succeed under the new covenant. might well, therefore, be surprised, if, under this, which was a covenant of grace, and, of course, in its very terms more favourable and mild, any such misconception of that which God delights in should have been found to prevail. This, however, is the very error, which, even in the days of the apostles, and by them, was complained of. The pure service which the disciples of Christ were bound to offer, very soon became, from its simplicity and unaffected plainness, an offence to those who are always requiring" some great thing." The vain and the foolish, as well as the sensual, were soon brought to undervalue that which had no recommendation of outward shew or performance, and to engraft their own wild conceits upon the eternal word of God. Thus the Judaizing Christians of the apostolic age maintained, as we have seen, that the observances of the law were still to subsist after the coming of our Lord, as before; they deter

*Micah vi. 6, 7, 8.

+ 2 Kings v. 13.