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what reason should the proclamation of the finishing of the great work of redemption be addressed exclusively to the souls of these antediluvian penitents? Were not the souls of the penitents of later ages equally interested in the joyful tidings? To this I can only answer, that I think I have observed, in some parts of Scripture, an anxiety, if the expression may be allowed, of the sacred writers to convey distinct intimations that the antediluvian race is not uninterested in the redemption and the final retribution. It is for this purpose, as I conceive, that in the description of the general resurrection, in the visions of the Apocalypse, it is mentioned with a particular emphasis, that the “sea gave up the dead that were in it;" which I cannot be content to understand of the few persons—few in comparison of the total of mankind

-lost at different times by shipwreck (a poor circumstance to find a place in the midst of the magnificent images which surround it), but of the myriads who perished in the general deluge, and found their tomb in the waters of that raging ocean. It may be conceived, that the souls of those who died in that dreadful visitation might from that circumstance have peculiar apprehensions of themselves as the marked victims of divine vengeance, and might peculiarly need the consolation which the preaching of our Lord in the subterranean regions afforded to these prisoners of hope. However that may be, thither, the apostle says, he went and preached. Is any difficulty that may present itself to the human mind, upon the circumstances of that preaching, of sufficient weight to make the thing unfit to be believed upon the word of the apostle?-or are we justified, if, for such difficulties, we abandon the plain sense of the apostle's words, and impose upon them another meaning, not easily adapted to the words, though more proportioned to the capacity of our understanding, —especially when it is confirmed by other scriptures that he went to

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that place? In that place he could not but find the souls which are in it in safe keeping; and, in some way or other, it cannot but be supposed that he would hold conference with them; and a particular conference with one class might be the means, and certainly could be no obstruction, to a general communication with all. If the clear assertions of holy writ are to be discredited, on account of difficulties which may seem to the human mind to arise out of them, little will remain to be believed in revealed or even in what is called natural religion: we must immediately part with the doctrines of atonement-of gratuitous redemption—of justification by faith, without the works of the law-of sanctification by the influence of the Holy Spirit; and we must part at once with the hope of the resurrection. “How are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come ?” are questions more easily asked than answered, unless it may be an answer, to refer the proposer of them to the promises of holy writ, and the power of God to make good those promises.

Having now, I trust, shown that the article of Christ's descent into hell is to be taken as a plain matter of fact, in the literal meaning of the words,—having exhibited the positive proof that we find of this fact in holy writ, having asserted the literal meaning of my text, and displayed, in its full force, the convincing proof to be deduced from this passage in particular, I shall now, with great brevity, demonstrate the great use and importance of the fact itself as a point of Christian doctrine.

Its great use is this,—that it is a clear confutation of the dismal notion of death as the temporary extinction of the life of the whole man; or, what is no less gloomy and discouraging, the notion of the sleep of the soul in the interval between death and the resurrection. Christ was made so truly man, that whatever took place in the human nature of Christ may be considered as a mode!

and example of what must take place, in a certain due proportion and degree, in every man united to him. Christ's soul survived the death of his body: therefore shall the soul of every believer survive the body's death. Christ's disembodied soul descended into hell: thither, therefore, shall the soul of every believer in Christ de. scend. In that place, the soul of Christ, in its separate state, possessed and exercised active powers: in the same place, therefore, shall the believer's soul possess and exercise activity. Christ's soul was not left in hell: neither shall the souls of his servants there be left but for a a season. The appointed time will come, when the Redeemer shall set open the doors of their prison-house, and say to his redeemed “ Go forth."

SERMON XXI.

MARK ii. 27.

The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the

Sabbath.

THE two opposite characters of the hypocrite and the prophane are in no part of their conduct more conspicuously distinguished, than by the opposite errors which they seem to adopt concerning the degree of attention due to the positive institutions of religion, whether of human or divine appointment. Under the name of positive institutions, we comprehend all those impositions and restraints, which not being suggested to any man by his conscience, and having no necessary and natural connection with the dictates of that internal monitor, seem to have no importance but what they may derive from the will of a superior who prescribes them. Of this sort, as far as we at present understand it, was the restriction laid upon our first parents in paradise--the prohibition of the use of blood for food, after the deluge—the rite of circumcision in Abraham's family-the whole of the Mosaic ritual--the sacraments of the Christian Church -the institution of the Sabbath-and, besides these, all ceremonies of worship whatsoever, of human appointment. All tliese things come under the notion of posi. tive institutions; for although the expediency of things of the kind, in the several successive ages of the world, is sufficiently apparent, yet the particular merit of the

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special acts enjoined, for which they might be preferable to other acts which might have been devised for the same purpose, is perhaps in none of the instances alleged very easy to be discovered. That men should assemble, at stated seasons, for the public worship of God, all must perceive to be a duty, who acknowledge that a creature endowed with the high faculties of reason and intelligence owes to his Maker public expressions of homage and adoration : but that the assembly should recur every seventh, rather than every sixth or every eighth day, no natural sanctity of the seventh more than of the sixth or eighth persuades. That Christians, in their public assemblies, should commemorate that death by which death was overcome, and the gate of everlasting life set open to the true believer, no one who pretends to a just sense of the benefit received, and the sharpness of the pain endured, will dare to question: but the particular sanctity of the rite in use proceeds solely from our Lord's appointment. The same may be said of baptism. A rite by which new converts should be admitted into the church, and the children of Christian parents, from their earliest infancy, devoted to Christ's service in their riper age, is of evident propriety: but our Lord's solemn injunction of its constant use constitutes the particular sanctity of that which is employed. The like observations applied with equal force, in ancient times, to the particulars of the Mosaic service, to the rite of circumcision, to the prohibition of the use of blood, and to the abstinence from the fruit of a particu. lar tree, exacted of Adam in paradise, for no other purpose perhaps but as a test of his obedience; and they are still applicable with much greater force to all ceremonies of worship appointed in any national church by the authority of its rulers. The fact is, that all ceremonies are actions, which, by a solemn appropriation of them to particular occasions, are understood to denote,

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