what wilt thou have me to do ^ ? " and a life of entire devoted- ness to his service must of necessity ensue.]
Can we wonder then at, III. Its fatal issue —
It was, to the Jews who continued impenitent, of the most fatal consequence —
[Doubtless their ignorance did in some respects extenuate, but it could by no means excuse, their guilt. The Apostle apologizes for them ; saying, " I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers :" but yet he adds, " Repent, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out*^;" evi- dently importing, that without repentance, and thorough con- version to God, they must eternally perish. And St. Paul, whilst he speaks of having " obtained mercy, because he did it ignorantly in unbelief," still calls himself " a blasphemer, and injurious, and a persecutor," and " the very chief of sinners," yea, as the greatest miracle of mercy, a monument of mercy to the whole worlds In the Old Testament, God had declared by the prophets that he would not regard ignorance as any excuse for their iniquities : " They are a people of no understanding : therefore He that made them will not have mercy on them, and He that formed them will shew them no favour"^." And again, " My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge®." And under the New Testament, it is even made a matter of appeal to us : " How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation^?" And again, " If judgment begin at the house of God, what shall the end be of them that obey not the Gospel of God ? If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear^?" Verily no candid person can doubt what the event was to the unbelieving Jews.]
And will it not have the same issue with respect
to us ?
[The greater our advantages are above the Jews, the greater is our guilt in neglecting to improve them. It is gene- rally imagined, indeed, that those who commit no sin to lower them in the estimation of their fellow-creatures, are happy when they die : and to intimate a doubt of this would be deemed very uncharitable. But " none, except they be con- verted, can ever enter into the kingdom of heaven." True indeed it is, that men ignorant of the Gospel, and of the
a Acts ix. 5, 6. b Acts iii. 17, 19. « 1 Tim, i. 13, 15, 16.
^ Isai. xxvii, 11. « Hos, iv. 6. ^ Heb. ii. 3.
g I Pet. iv. 17, 18.