conception^. To the same purpose the Apostle cites them in our text. He is speaking of the Gospel as " foolishness" indeed to the natural man, but as in reality the most stupendous display of the Divine wisdom; such as had never before been seen, or heard, or thought of, from the foundation of the vs^orld^ ; and such as, if previously known to those who cruci- fied our Lord, would have effectually deterred them from executing in that respect the eternal counsels of the Deity.
Confining then our views of the passage to what is revealed in the Gospel, we will shew,
I. How infinitely superior the Gospel is to any thing that reason ever devised — Reason has certainly evinced great powers in rela- tion to things natural and temporal —
[It has penetrated far into the regions of science. It has comprehended within its grasp the whole extent of that field which was laid open to the mind of Solomon ; and has arranged according to their nature and properties all parts of the animal and vegetable creation, " from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that springeth out of the wall, together with all the different orders of beasts, and fowl, and fishes of the sea^" Nay, it has soared beyond this terraqueous globe, even to the starry heavens ; and has found out the magnitude and distances and courses of the heavenly bodies, together with the laws by which they move in their respective orbits. It has in these and many other respects carried its researches far beyond the limits which nature appeared to have assigned to it, and has raised man far higher in the scale of creation than by his contracted powers he seemed destined to stand.]
But it has made little progress in relation to things spiritual and eternal —
[Man with all his powers was not able to find out God. Not even the unity of the Godhead was discovered by him ; much less were his great and glorious perfections. The wisest philosophers spake on these subjects with much uncertainty and inconsistency. As for any way of reconciliation with God, consistently with the Divine perfections, not so much as a
* Isai. Ixiv. 4. The prayer begins at Isai. Ixiii. 15. and conti- nues to the end of the sixty-fourth chapter, b ver. 6 — 8. « 1 Kings iv. 33.