one another. Should pious parents address their unconverted offspring as serpents and a generation of vipers, or pious children assail the ears of their unconverted parents with the epithets of Atheists, rebels, enemies of God, children of the Devil; any, but the sons of peace might be expected to dwell in the family; and should such provoking epithets be hurled at each other by members of the same community, it might qualify them sooner for Billingsgate than for the church of God. Should an unsettled minister of the Gospel, powerful in talents and zeal, and aided by success, carry himself sword in hand through the community in this overbearing style, we are not to suppose that settled ministers can with impunity do the game, or that any man can do it permanently with impunity. For, emboldened by success, either he will be lifted up of pride and fall into the snare of the Devil, or venturing on from one impropriety to another, the sensibilities of the community, goaded to desparation, will make a stand, and re-act, and sweep him away.

V. Another evil to be deprecated by such unusual treatment of mankind, is its tendency to produce imitators, who, without the mo ral power, will offer the same provocation, and be treated by an indignant community as the seven sons of Sceva were treated by the unclean spirits:-"Jesus we know, and Paul we know, but who are ve?"

There is nothing in the example of our Saviour, or of the apostles. to authorize an address so calculated to exasperate. Did our Lord call the young ruler an Atheist or a Devil? It was only when a course of open opposition to truth and evidence had indicated desperate wickedness, and produced reprobation, that our Lord as sumed the language of severe rebuke, and terrific denunciation: and even in this, he acted as the Omniscient Judge, and not as a mere man. Generally his intercourse with sinful men is marked with compassionate dignity; and even were his address direct and severe. it would not follow that we might safely imitate. It was predicted of him, that he should not lift up his voice nor cry; a bruised reed shall he not break, nor quench the smoking flax, until he shall bring forth judgment unto victory, i. e. he should deal so kindly and tenderly with awakened sinners, as would neither discourage nor enrage them, but carry on the work to salvation. The example of Paul is fraught with instruction on this subject. For though the man never lived who possessed more moral courage, or struck home with more directness and power upon the conscience, yet no one ever manifested more dexterity or care to avoid the repellances of prejudice, or rousing up against himself the irritation of unsanctified

feeling; and whenever it became indispensable to administer reproof, he forbears to smite, until by every possible preparation of kindness, he had insured its salutary influence and prevented injurious re-action. If he must smite, it is not until he had bound the culprit with cords of love, and even then the chastisement is applied with so much regret as is calculated rather to break the heart of the sufferer than to enrage it; and in this he consulted the dictates of a sound philosophy, as much as he did the dictates of his benevolent heart. It is certainly a new discovery, that prejudice and hatred and anger have become the salutary causes in pre-disposing the mind of a sinner for the reception of the truth; and if notwithstanding hard names and provoking buffetings, he is awakened and converted, how much more certainly might the same event have been looked for, had these repellances been allowed to sleep, while the same amount of merciful directness and earnestness had been applied to his conscience and his heart.

Nor are we to suppose that the sovereignty of God may be relied on alike in the neglect, as in the use of the most suitable means of interesting and affecting the human mind; for sovereignty consists in rescuing men without reference to legal or moral desert; but not in doing it without means, or in a way that supersedes the necessity of discretion, and does violence to all the laws of the human mind. He can save and does save by means of great relative imperfection; but it is by that which is good in them, and not by that which is defective, and affords no evidence that still greater good might not have been expected, had means been more wisely adapted and better applied.

The laws of the human mind are not to be outraged in preaching the Gospel, nor the depravity of the heart needlessly roused and brought out into virulent action against man and God; and though those who themselves were exercised in this dreadful manner, are apt to imagine that all must feel just as they felt, and to preach with reference to the production of such horrid feelings, it is both needless and injurious to do it. There is impediment enough in man while the rage of his enmity sleeps, to forbid the exciting of its extreme violence, and enough to inspire compassion for the sinner, without involving him in new disabilities by arraying against him the exasperated power of his depravity; and it some are saved uctwithstanding, there is no reason to doubt that many are destroyed by such treatment, who might otherwise have been saved.

The following may serve as specimens of the Apostle's mode of preaching the Gospel and dealing with men. At Ephesus he served

the Lord for three years with all humility of mind, and ceased not to warn every one night and day, with tears. At Athens, he reasoned with the philosophers on Mars-hill, in a way that was neither harsh nor abrupt, but courteous and yet direct and powerful. To the Corinthian church, which had sinned greatly, he says, "I write not these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons I warn you.Wherefore, I beseech you, be ye followers of me." And in his second epistle, "Out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote unto you, with many tears, not that ye should be grieved, but that ye might know the love which I have more abundantly unto you, and though I made you sorry with a letter, I do not repent, though I did repeut.

His care to allay and to avoid exciting prejudice, and to conciliate favor by a watchful accommodation of truth to the character, capacity and condition of his hearers, is beautifully described in I. Cor. iv. 9-21. Because the Gospel was true and all were singers, he did not treat them all alike; "Thought I be free from all men, yet have I made myself the servant of all, that I might gain the more." The same treatment would not answer for all: "To the Jews I became as a Jew, to them without law as without law, to the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak. I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some; and this I do for the Gospel's sake." To the Galatians, endangered by false teachers, he says, "My little children, of whom I travail in birth again, until Christ be formed in you." The directions to Timothy, who was a young man, are, “Rebuke not an elder, but entreat him as a father, and the younger men as brethren, the elder women as mothers, the younger as sisters, with all purity." He had no notion that a young man, even as eminent as Timothy, should undertake to break down min isters. "And the servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing them that op pose themselves," &c. The epistle of Paul to Philemon displays a consummate knowledge of the human heart, and is an unrivalled spe cimen of the most dexterous, delicate, and touching application of moral power; and illustrates perfectly the precept, be ye as wise as serpents and harmless as doves." When the Apostles used pointed and severe expressions, it was only in desperate cases. As inspired men, they were authorised by God to inflict disease and death, and to utter the most awful imprecations of divine vengeance but they recognize themselves always as the mere agents of the Holy Ghost, and not as speaking themselves, or expressing their own feelings. Thus Ananias was struck dead for having lied unto the

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Holy Ghost, the Apostles being the medium through whom the Holy Ghost spake; and Paul "being filled with the Holy Ghost," denounced Elymas the sorcerer, and inflicted blindness upon him. When other men are filled in like manner with the Holy Ghost, and can work miracles in attestation of it, they may address, when God directs, individuals in the same manner. The martyr Stephen, in

the early part of his address, was kind and conciliating. It was not until their incorrigibleness was manifest, and "he filled with the Holy Ghost," that he uttered the fearful denunciations with which his speech closes. The same may be said of the bold address of Peter and John to the Jewish Sanhedrim, Acts iv. 10, 11, "Being filled with the Holy Ghost, Peter said," &c. i. e. spoke as directed by Heaven. Paul also in his imprecation of destruction upon Alexander the coppersmith, is to be understood as denouncing the just judgment of God upon him, under the special guidance of the Spirit, and not as expressing his own vindictive feelings; and the same may be said of the imprecations recorded in the Psalms and in the Prophets. In common cases, these men were kind and gentle, and more given to expostulation and tears, than to denunciation; and when they speak in this manner, are only the organs employed by heaven to denounce judgments upon the reprobate. God surely has a right to denounce judgments upon the wicked, and to select his own instruments, as he had to exterminate the Canaanites; and sometimes the holy men who pronounce these imprecations expressly say that they are authorised by God to do his "strange work," and yet they do it in "bitterness of spirit," and only because "the hand of the Lord was strong upon them." They therefore executed only a specific commission, in given circumstances; and their conduct furnishes no authority to uninspired ministers to apply to their unconverted hearers generally, the same fearful language which was by heaven directed to be pronounced upon reprobates.

Long have infidels and scoffers triumphed in these imprecations, as the supposed ebullition of unhallowed feeling in good men: and if they were recorded as an example to be adopted by ministers in addressing unrenewed men generally, they do breathe any thing rather than peace on earth and good will to men, and would give to the infidel the entire and unanswerable force of his objection.

The general principle then is this:-men who hate and reject the truth, and conduct as those did whom God denounced, have reason to fear that the judgments of reprobation will come upon them, and the ministers of Christ may warn and entreat men to take heed.— But until certified by a revelation, that an individual or a class of VOL. II.

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men are reprobates, he has no authority to apply to them, merely as ordinary sinners, the language of denunciation which is peculiar to, reprobates; and whoever observes will perceive, that so far from doing this, where there is a serious mind, and an anxious desire, and earnest seeking, they are addressed in the language of compassion, exhortation, warning, and entreaty. If I might refer to a living instrument of good to men in the conversion of souls, of ali modern men most successful, and who if the humility of any man was equal to the temptation of being called a reformer, might be called such, having done more to reduce to a science the mode of applying truth to the human mind, and conducting revivals, than all who preceded him, I should refer to one, who of all men watched with most critical carefulness to avoid needless provocation, and availed himself most carefully of every circumstance which might remove hindrances, and give to truth the most unobstructed efficacy, and who, at the same time, approached the conscience with great directness and power.

IV. Female prayer in promiscuous assemblies. First, it is ne where commanded. Secondly, it is no where authorized, either by precept or example. There is no instance in the patriarchal age, of women offering sacrifice as an act of worship, and a symbol of prayer; and none in the tabernacle or temple service. On the contrary, when on account of great judgments it was enjoined on females to pray, it was the wife apart, and the husband apart. Thirdly, female prayer in promiscuous assemblies for worship is expressly forbidden. "I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man; but to be in silence." The apostle in speaking concerning the order of public assemblies of Christians, and concerning prayer, says 'I will therefore that men pray every where.' It is concerning the dress of women in public assemblies that he speaks in the same connexion, that they be clothed in modest apparel, and with delicacy and sobriety. He then twice enjoins silence, and positively prohibits speaking. Again, I. Cor. xiv. 34, “Let your

The position that all men, because sinners, are therefore to be treated alike by the ministers of the Gospel, without respect to age, office, or station in society, is as much a violation of common sense, as it is of the plain direc tions of the Apostle, which exact reverence for age, and honor to whom honor is due; especially for those who rule over men: and if in monarchical governments the recognition of such distinctions was a Christian duty, where the arm of power could punish delinquents, how much more in republican governments, where public opinion is the only law, and a levelling of all distinctions of society would be the sure presage of anarchy and absolute destruction.→ Such as in France existed for a time, when the sun, moon, and stars were cas to the ground, and fish-women and courtezans formed the mob and directed the overwhelming tempest of wrath,