received any revelation from God ; and much more from one who has the Gospel faithfully administered to him, than from one who has never had its riches unfolded to him. The two different persons will be judged by a different law : the Hea- then "being a law unto themselves;" but Christians being judged according to the opportunities of instruction that have been afforded them. Our blessed Lord told his hearers, that, "if he had not come and spoken to them, they had not had sin; but that now they would have no cloak for their sina." And on the same ground he warned them, that they would have a more tremendous doom than Tyre and Sidon, yea, than even Sodom and Gomorrha, because they had possessed advan- tages which the inhabitants of those cities had never known, and had abused privileges which they had never enjoyed b.]
Agreeable to this view of our responsibility will be,
II. The rule of God's procedure towards us in the day of judgment — Under the law, certain offences were to be punished with stripes, which were awarded to malefactors ac- cording to their desert0. Now, in a family, every servant ought to know his duty ; and, therefore, if he violate it through ignorance, he is deserving of blame: but if he violate it knowingly and wilfully, he is, of course, worthy of severer reprehension. This, under the law, was particularly marked as a rule whereby to estimate and punish the faults of men : " The priest shall make an atonement for the soul that sinneth ignorantly, when he sinneth by ignorance before the Lord, to make an atonement for him : and it shall be forgiven him. But the soul that doeth aught presumptuously, the same reproacheth the Lord ; and that soul shall be cut off from among his people d."
His investigation of cases will be most exact —
[The advantages of every person for knowing and doing his Master's will, will be distinctly marked, and weighed, as it were, in the nicest balance. We form some idea of this from the offerings which were required by the Law for sins of igno- rance. If a priest sinned through ignorance, he was to offer a bullock for his offence ; as were also the whole congregation,
a John xv. 22. b Luke x. 12 — 14.
c Deut. xxv. 2, 3. d Numb. xv. 27—31.