They sought not in any thing to please him, nor cared hoiv- ever much they might displease him. The abominations they committed cannot even be thought of but with horror and amazement8. And, whilst they were thus bent on the grati- fication of their lusts and appetites, and purposely cast out of their minds all those notices of a Supreme Being, which from time to time arose to check them in their excesses11, they were given over to the dominion of every hateful disposition that could assimilate them to the god of this world, whose willing servants they were. What an assemblage of evils was there accumulated in their character'! Yet was this repre- sentation of them by no means overcharged. Their own historians, and poets, and philosophers have justified every word that is here spoken. What the poet said of the Cretans might, with few exceptions, be applied to all ; " The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, slow-bellies k," a wretched com- pound of falsehood, and cruelty, and abominable sensuality.
Nor were they merely impelled to these things by the im- petuosity of their own passions ; for, whilst they had, internal convictions of the impiety of this conduct, they deliberately approved and honoured those who were most addicted to it.~\
From hence it appears how inexcusable they were, and how justly sentenced to eternal condemnation — [Had they been able to plead ignorance, they would have had some kind of excuse : but they could not do this : for " they did really know God ;" but " did not choose to retain him in their knowledge :" and so far were they from having this plea to extenuate their crimes, that the light which they resisted constitutes the heaviest aggravation of their guilt : " This is their condemnation, that they loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil1." Again, if they could not plead ignorance, neither could they plead necessity ; for they were under no necessity to dishonour God in this way, either from without or from within. They were perfectly free agents in all that they did : and though they could not, nor can any child of man, fulfil all the Divine will, or themselves do any thing spiritually good, yet they might have abstained from much which they did amiss, and done much which they neglected to do: and therefore they are justly chargeable with all the guilt that they contracted ; and are as reprehensible before God for not using the powers which they possessed, as they would have been, if those powers had been ever so enlarged.
All that has been spoken in reference to the heathen in former days, is still applicable to them at this time. The notices of a Deity may be much more obscured in the minds of some
« ver. 26, 27. h ver. 28. J ver. 29—31.
k Tit. i. 12. i John iii. 19.