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the Judge is at the door; let us watch, therefore, and pray,"-watch over ourselves, and pray for the succours of God's grace, that we may be able to stand before the Son of Man. Nor shall vigilance and prayer be inef fectual. On the incorrigible and perverse,-on those who mock at God's threatenings, and reject his promises, -on these only the severity of wrath will fall. But, for those who lay these warnings seriously to heart-who dread the pollutions of the world, and flee from sin as from a serpent-who fear God's displeasure more than death, and seek his favour more than life, though much of frailty will to the last adhere to them, yet these are the objects of the Father's mercy-of the Redeemer's love. For these he died,-for these he pleads, -these he supports and strengthens with his Spirit,these he shall lead with him triumphant to the mansions of glory, when Sin and Death shall be cast into the lake

of fire.

SERMON XIII.

I

say

MATTHEW Xvi. 18, 19.

also unto thee, that thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.*

IT is much to be lamented, that the sense of this important text, in which our Lord for the first time makes explicit mention of his church, declaring, in brief but comprehensive terms, the ground-work of the institution, the high privileges of the community, and its glorious hope, it is much to be lamented, that the sense of so important a text should have been brought under doubt and obscurity, by a variety of forced and discordant expositions, which prejudice and party-spirit have produced; while writers in the Roman communion have endeavoured to find in this passage a foundation for the vain pretensions of the Roman pontiff, and Protestants, on the other hand, have been more solicitous to give it a sense which might elude those consequences, than attentive to its true and interesting meaning. It will not

*Preached before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign. Parts, February 20, 1795.

be foreign to the purpose of our present meeting, if, without entering into a particular discussion of the various interpretations that have been offered, we take the text itself in hand, and try whether its true meaning may not still be fixed with certainty, by the natural import of the words themselves, without any other comment than what the occasion upon which they were spoken, and certain occurrences in the first formation of the church, to which they prophetically allude, afford.

Among the divines of the reformed churches, especially the Calvinists, it hath been a favourite notion, that St. Peter himself had no particular interest in the promises which seem in this passage to be made to him, The words were addressed by our Lord to St. Peter, upon the occasion of his prompt confession of his faithin Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God; and this confession of St. Peter's was his answer to a question which our Lord had put to the apostles in general, "Whom say ye that I am?"-which question had arisen out of the answers they returned to an antecedent question, "Whom say men that I am?"

Now, with respect to this confession of St. Peter's, two of the most learned and acute among the commentators of antiquity, St. Chrysostom and St. Jerome, solicitous, as it should seem, for the general reputation of the apostles, as if they thought, that, at this early period, no one of them could without blame be behind another in the fulness and the fervour of his faith;-from these, or from what motives it is not easy to divine, these two ancient commentators have taken upon them to assert that St. Peter, upon this occasion, was but the spokesman of the company, and replied to our Lord's question, "Whom say ye that I am?" in the name of all.

Improving upon this hint, modern expositors of the Calvinistic school proceed to a conclusion which must stand or fall with the assumption upon which it is

founded. They say, since St. Peter's confession of his faith was not his own particular confession, but the general confession of the apostles, made by his mouth, the blessing annexed must be equally common to them all, and was pronounced upon St. Peter, not individually, but as the representative of the twelve; insomuch, that whatever the privileges may be which are described in my text as the custody of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and the authority to bind and loose on earth, with an effect that should be ratified in heaven,-whatever these privileges may be, St. Peter, according to these expositors, is. no otherwise interested in them than as an equal sharer with the rest of the apostolic band.

But we may be allowed to demand of these apt disciples of St. Chrysostom and St. Jerome, what right they can make out for St. Peter to be the spokesman of the company, and, without any previous consultation with his brethren, to come forward with an answer, in the name of all, to a question of such moment. What right will they pretend for St. Peter to take so much upon him,-unless they will concede to him that personal precedence among the twelve, which, however it may be evinced by many circumstances in the sacred history, it is the express purpose of their exposition to refute? St. Peter, it must be confessed, upon two other occasions, spoke in the name of all. But, that he so spake upon those occasions, is not left to be understood as a thing of course; but it is evident in the one instance, by the very words he used,-in the other, it is remarked by the sacred historian. In the present case, have we any such evidence of the thing supposed-any indication of it in the apostle's words-any assertion of the historian?-Quite the contrary. To our Lord's first question, "Whom say men that I am?" the answer, we are told indeed, was general. "They said-" says

the sacred historian. The question was about a plain matter of fact, concerning which there could not be two opinions. To the second question, "Whom say ye that I am?" Simon Peter is mentioned as the person who alone replied,-as if, upon this point, no one else was ready with an answer. "Simon Peter answered and said." Why is the mode of narration changed? Why is it not said again, "They said?" Why is the speaker, and the speaker only, named in the one case rather than in the other, if the answer given was equally in both a common answer? Whence is it that the two other evangelists who have recorded this discourse, though far less minute in the detail of the particulars than St. Matthew, are both, however, careful to name St. Peter as the person who replied to the second question? And whence is it that not the most distant hint of any general concurrence of the apostles in St. Peter's sentiments is given by any one of these three writers?

Again, let the manner of our Lord's reply to St. Peter be remarked. I would ask, in what way any one person of a numerous company can be more pointedly addressed,-in what way can a discourse be more expressly confined and limited to one, in exclusion of the rest, than by calling that one person by his proper name, adding to his proper name his patronymic, and subjoining to that distinct compellation these express words, "I say unto thee?" But this was the manner of our Lord's reply to St. Peter's confession of his faith. "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah; and I say also unto thee—.” Can it be supposed, that what was thus particularly said to Simon, son of Jonah, was equally said to another Simon, who was not the son of Jonah-to James, the son of Alpheus-to the sons of Zebedee, or any other persons present who were not named? I ask, by what other mode of compellation our Lord could have more distinctly marked St. Peter as the individual object of

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