safely commit every event to himm, assured, that he will " bring forth our righteousness as the noon-day," if not in this world, yet most certainly in the world to come.]
m 1 Cor. iv. 3.
Acts xxviii. 22. We desire to hear of thee what thou thinkest : for as concerning this sect, we know that every zohere it is spoken against.
AS prejudice is easily excited in the mind, so is its operation extremely powerful, wherever it is enter- tained. An opprobrious term will often convey more in one moment, than could be conveyed otherwise in many sentences: and, as superseding the necessity of any specific accusations, it is generally resorted to as the means of bringing either persons or things into general contempt. The enemies of Christianity in every age have availed themselves of this advantage, to decry a religion which they did not choose to em- brace. Thus, when St. Paul came to Rome, and had convened the principal Jews to his lodgings, he found, that, though no accusations had been brought against him, his religion, and all who professed it, were regarded in an odious light, through the malignant misrepresentations of their adversaries. Let us then inquire,
I. Whence it was that the Gospel was so universally evil spoken of in the apostolic age —
That the Gospel was universally reviled, is obvious from the decided manner in which the notoriety of the fact is mentioned in the text ; " We know it :" and it was so chiefly on two grounds ;
1. As being impious in itself — [The Jews regarded it as subversive of the law of Moses. They could not see, that Jesus was the person to whom Moses and the prophets had borne witness : they could not see, that he had actually fulfilled the law, and was himself the substance, of which that was only the shadow : they therefore conceived