probable, that this is the true reason why he is an enemy to it.

Upon the whole then, we fee, how gracioufly God has provided for the welfare of human fociety in giving men a religion, which is univerfal, and fo easily discoverable, that all must be without excufe, if they are not in this fenfe a law unto themfelves. But fince by the fall of our firft parents, and the great growth of fin and vice in the world, which that introduced, the face of things is changed, and natural religion is at prefent an infufficient guide, we shall learn from hence to see the inestimable value of Christianity, which is the only declaration that God has made to mankind, upon what terms he will forgive repenting finners, and by what means they may be juftified in his fight, whofe favour is our greatest happiness, and in whose right hand there are pleasures for evermore.

SERMON V.

MATTHEW v. 17.

Think not that I am come to defroy the law and the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

BY

Y the law and the prophets in this place, our bleffed Saviour must be understood to have meant all the rules for the conduct of life towards God and towards man, which are to be found in the facred writings of the Old Testament. And this may be affirmed with the more certainty, as he himself is said by the fame Evangelift to have declared, that all the law and the prophets hang (or depend) upon those two great commandments, which he mentioned, the loving God with all our heart, and the loving our neighbour as ourselves. These are moral laws, and to none, but such as are of this kind, does our Saviour's fermon a Matth. xxii. 36, &c.

refer

refer, in what follows throughout this and the next chapter of St. Matthew's gospel.

The morality then of the Jews is what Christ says he came to fulfil. But in what fense, it may be asked, did he fulfil it, and what is meant by the word? To fulfil is here to fill up what was empty, and make it full, i. e. to fupply it with all that was wanting towards its state of perfection. In this fenfe the bleffed Jefus fulfilled the law and the prophets what moral rules came from them, and were fhort of the measure which mankind ftood in need of, that he came to furnish men with, and to put an end to those times of ignorance, which God is faid to have winked at, by fuffering them to continue for a season.

Thus much has been faid by way of preface to what I propose to infer from the text; and this farther obfervation must be added, that, as all natural religion was included in the Jewish, what is faid in fcripture, and what is true concerning the morality of the Jewish religion, must be equally true concerning natural religion. If the morality of the Jewish was defective, so must be that of natural religion; be

a Acts xvii. 30.

cause

caufe the whole of this latter was comprehended in the former, and therefore must take its character and complexion from it. The Jewish religion had indeed many other branches of it, which have no relation to natural religion; fuch were all the parts of their ceremonial law, a law fo burthenfome and heavy, as to be grievous to be borne, and to deferve the character which St. Peter gives to it, of a yoke upon the neck that they were not able to bear. But then it is to be remembered, that this law, as St. Paul tells the Galatians, was added (or given as an additional law to the Jews) because of tranfgreffions, till the feed fhould come to whom the promise was made," or, who was promifed.

Whether we confider it therefore as a law given to the Jews for the punishment of their national fins, or confider it as a law which was typical of the great Saviour of the world, and was to expire at his coming; in either view we may fee that the morality of the Jewish religion ftands clear and diftinct from. it, and that fo, of confequence, does the natural religion, which was a part of the Jewish.

a Acts xv. 10. VOL. I.

G

b Gal. iii. 19.

This