Acts xvii. 30. The times of this ignorance God winked at ; but now commandeth all men every where to repent.
THIS is one of the most celebrated discourses in all the inspired volume. Being delivered to heathen philosophers, he did not make any appeal to the Jewish Scriptures, as he did whenever he addressed the Jews ; but argued with them on their own prin- ciples. The drift of his argument was, to shew that there was but one God, and not many, as they sup- posed: that all things owed their existence to him, and not to chance : that all things were ordered by him, and not by fate : that all men were bound to live to him, and not unto themselves : and that all should give account of themselves to him at the judgment-seat of Christ ; of which event God had given them an assurance, by raising Christ from the dead. As for all the speculations of human wisdom, in which these learned philosophers were so deeply engaged, they were all vain. But " God, who had hitherto winked at the times of this ignorance, now commanded all men everywhere to repent."
The points for our more immediate consideration are three :
I. The forbearance once exercised —
[We are not to imagine that God has ever connived at sin: for "he is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity" without the utmost abhorrence4. But he exercised all possible for- bearance towards those who committed it, knowing how blind and ignorant they were ; and that, consequently, their iniquity, though heinous, was comparatively light. He had not sent prophets to them, as he had to his own people ; except indeed to Nineveh, in the ministration of Jonah : so that they had sinned against less light and knowledge than his own people ; whom, on account of their more aggravated guilt, he had visited with most signal judgments. Had he not borne with the heathen in their wickedness, he must again and again have destroyed the earth ; either by water, as at the deluge, or by fire, as he had done to Sodom and Gomorrha. But he
a Hab. i. 13. II h 2