with all the common offices of life : and we are represented as making the way to heaven so strait, that none but a few devotees can hope to enter into it.
Thus the truth of God is in reality traduced, as in the days of old, and, though the name of Christianity is honoured, the life and power of it are despised.]
Since then the Gospel is still evil spoken of to such a degree, permit me to state, III. What is our duty in relation to it —
We should endeavour to get all possible informa- tion respecting it.
[It would be strange indeed to form our judgment solely from the representations of its enemies : we ought assuredly to hear its friends also, and to learn what they have to say in its favour. If then we can have access to any who are qualified to instruct us, we should say to them, as the Jews did to Paul, " We desire to hear what thou thinkest." Were this step taken, and with any measure of candour, I have no doubt but that the prejudices against the Gospel would soon be done away. But there is one, to whom we may all have access, and whose judgment may be fully relied on ; I mean, that very person to whom the Jews at Rome applied, even the Apostle Paul himself. No man had ever juster or deeper views of the Gospel than he ; and no man has written so fully respecting it as he : consult him therefore : study those Epistles of his in which the subject is most fully stated, the Epistles to the Romans, the Galatians, and the Ephesians. From those may be fully learned the doctrines which the Gospel maintains : and in his life may be seen the practice it requires. Go then, and sit at his feet, and ask of him in relation to every thing we have spoken, " What thinkest thou?"]
Our inquiries, however, should not be merely speculative, but practical —
[We should not, like Pilate, ask, " What is truth?" and then go away without any desire to be informed : but should imitate rather the man whose blindness had been healed, " Who is the Son of God, that I may believe on himk?" All our inquiries should be with a view to practice, and with a deter- mination of heart to follow the light whithersoever it may lead us. Did we, like the Berseans, search the Scriptures daily with this view, it would soon be said of us, as it was of them, "Therefore many of them believed1." We will now, by way of improvement,
k John ix. 36. > Acts xvii. 11, 12.