_Peter_’s Denial of his LORD.
MATTHEW xxvi. 75.¹
_And Peter remembered the words of Jesus, which said unto him, Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice: and he went out, and wept bitterly._
¹ The two following Sermons came to hand after the others were in the press.
BIOGRAPHY, as one observes, is the best history; or, in other words, writing or reading the lives of great and good men, is one of the most profitable and delightful kinds of history we can entertain ourselves with. For hereby we are convinced, that Wisdom’s ways are indeed ways of pleasantness; and being proved to be practicable by men of like passions with ourselves, we are insensibly allured to follow them as they followed _Christ_, and encouraged to run with patience the race set before us. This, one would hope, is the grand end proposed by all such who undertake to draw the characters, or hand down to posterity the remarkable transactions of persons who have shone as lights in the church of GOD. Many have done worthily in this respect; and for this their labour of love, thousands as yet unborn, shall rise and call them blessed. But without detracting any thing from their due praise, I cannot help observing, that in most of the lives that I have had an opportunity of perusing, there seems to be one deficiency, I could almost say, common to them all. It is this: The writers of them seldom or never mention the blemishes or falls of those whose characters they exhibit. They emblazon their good, without so much as hinting at any of their bad qualities. In short, they paint them blameless, and by not mentioning any of their foibles, or the sins that did most easily beset them, they make them, as it were, equal to the angels of GOD, or rather to the Son of GOD himself, of whom alone it can truly be said, “That he was without sin.” Such a method, (however well meant, because we are more prone to imitate others vices than their virtues) to speak in the softest terms, is not according to the pattern shewn us in the mount. The scriptures set us a different copy. In those lively oracles, as in a well-drawn picture, we have both shade and light; and at the same time as they paint out to us, in the most striking manner, the graces for which the holy men of old were most eminent, they also, with an equally impartial hand, expose to public view, not only the common infirmities, but even some of the most dreadful falls, with all their aggravating circumstances, of some of the greatest men of GOD that ever did, or will live, till time itself shall be no more.
One of these is to be the mournful subject of our present meditation. _Procul ite profani!_ Let all profane persons keep at an awful distance: We are going to tread on holy ground. I set an hedge about it in the name of the living GOD. Come not too nigh the mount, lest that which was written for your learning, through your own perverse abuse of it, should prove unto you a further occasion of falling.
If any should enquire, “Why all this caution?” I answer, “We are about to discourse on the Apostle _Peter_’s shameful denial of his and our blessed Lord and Saviour JESUS CHRIST.” A passage recorded by all the evangelists, St. _Mark_ himself not excepted, who is supposed to have been emanuensis to St. _Peter_, and to have taken his gospel from _Peter_’s own mouth. A proof this, not only of the impartiality of the sacred writers, but also that the Holy Ghost intended that this awful story should, in an especial manner, be recorded for our learning, on whom the ends of the world are come. But though all the evangelists are very explicit in relating this perfidious and wicked act, yet we shall chiefly confine ourselves, at present, to the account given us of it in this xxvith chapter of St. _Matthew_, and, for method sake, purpose to consider,
_First_, The steps that led to this great man’s fall.
_Secondly_, The fall itself. And,
_Thirdly_, His recovery from it, mentioned in the text: “And _Peter_ remembered the words of JESUS, which said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And he went out and wept bitterly.”