others rest in a mere formal profession of it, without any ex- perience of its transforming power. What then shall we say of them ? Are not they blind and hardened in a very awful degree ? Are not they also more obdurate than the idolatrous Syrians, or the filthy Sodomites? Yes: far less evidence, and an obscurer statement of the Gospel, would have brought them to " repent in dust and ashes ;" whereas the unbelievers of the present day are proof against an accumulated weight of evi- dence, and against the full splendour of evangelic truth.
Let this then be considered by us : and when we wonder at the blindness and obduracy of the Jews, let us remember how blind we ourselves have been, and how unaffected by the most stupendous miracles of love and mercy that ever were vouchsafed to men.]
II. How heinous their guilt!
[Unbelief is in general scarcely ever thought of as a sin : the open infidel justifies himself by a pretended want of evi- dence ; and those who maintain a form of religion fancy them- selves possessed of saving faith : so that, whatever men have to condemn in their own conduct, they never think of bemoan- ing their unbelief. But behold what was Christ's judgment respecting this ! He considered unbelief as a more heinous sin than any which Tyre and Sidon, or even Sodom and Gomorrha, had committed, and as involving his hearers in a deeper con- demnation than any to which the vilest of those cities would be doomed. He also commanded his Disciples to " wipe off the dust from their feet against those who received them not," in token of God's indignation against them, and his abandon- ing of them to the evil of their own waysa. Nor can we wonder at it, when Christ and his Father identify themselves with all the ministers of the Gospel : " He that heareth you, heareth me ; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me; and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me." What a view does this representation give us of unbelief! And how little idea have the unbelieving world of the light in which they are regarded by a holy God ! But when once the Holy Ghost is sent into their hearts to convince them of sin, they become con- vinced of this sin in particular ; and view it in its proper colours, as a mixture of ignorance, impiety, and rebellion.
Let the towering imaginations of the formalist then fall to the ground : let the most decent amongst us see what guilt he has contracted : and let every one acknowledge that God is just in consigning over to perdition those who, either in theory or in practice, reject Christ, and thus eventually " make God himself a liar."]
a Acts xiii. 51.