SERMON XVII.

PREACHED NOVEMBER 22, 1772.

dvJOHN V. 44.

How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh of God only?

IT has been thought unfair to charge unbelief, simply and indiscriminately, on the grosser passions. The observation, I believe, is just: and yet it may be true, notwithstanding, that unbelief is always owing to some or other of the passions. The evidences of revealed religion are so numerous, and upon the whole so convincing, that one cannot easily conceive

how a reasonable man should reject them all, without the intervention of some secret prejudice, or predominant affection.

Of these prejudices and affections, one of the commonest, and the most seducing of any to the better sort of unbelievers, is that irregular love of praise and reputation, which our Lord condemns in the text-How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only ?

The question, we may observe, is so expressed, as if we could not receive honour from one another, and believe, at the same time; as if there was a physical, at least a moral impossibility, that these two things should subsist together. And we shall find, perhaps, the expression no stronger than the occasion required, if, besides other considerations, we attend to the following; which shew how inconsistent a true practical faith in the Gospel is with the sollicitous and undistinguishing pursuit of human glory.

For, I. The Gospel delivers many of its doctrines as inscrutable, and silences the busy curiosity of our understandings about them:

but the honour of men is frequently obtained by indulging this curiosity, and pushing the researches of reason into those forbidden quarters.

II. The Gospel demands an humble and reverential awe in the discussion of all its doctrines; such of them, I mean, as it leaves most free to human inquiry: but this turn of mind is contrary to that high courage and daring intrepidity, which the world expects in those who are candidates for its honour.

III. The Gospel prescribes an uniform and unqualified assent to whatever it declares of divine things, whether we can or cannot apprehend the reason of such declaration: but this submission to authority, the world is ready to call ill-faith, and to consider the defiance of it, as a mark of superior honesty and virtue.

Thus we see, that wIT, COURAGE, and PROBITY, the three great qualities we most respect in ourselves, and for which we receive the highest honour from each other, appear many times to the world with less advantage in the Christian, than the unbeliever. Not, that Christianity strips us of these virtues on the

other hand, it requires and promotes them all,! in the proper sense of the words; and they may really subsist in a higher degree in the: believer, than any other: but they will often seem to be more triumphantly displayed by those who give themselves leave to disbelieve; and the prospect of honour, which that opinion opens to such men, is one of the commonest sources from which they derive their infidelity. LIB

But to make good this chargé against the unbelieving world, and to lay open the mysteries of that insidious self-love, which prompts them to aspire to fame, by the means of infidelity, it will be necessary to resume the THREE TOPICS before mentioned, and to enlarge something upon each of them.:

E I. FIRST, then, I say, That He, who at all' adventures resolves to obtain the honour of men, cannot believe, because the unrestrained exercise of his WIT, by which he would acquire that honour, is inconsistent with the genius and principles of our religion.

The fundamental articles of the Gospel are proposed to us, as objects of faith, not as subjects of inquiry. As they proceed from the

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source of light and truth, they are founded, no doubt, in the highest reason; but they are for: the most part, at least in many respects, inscrutable to our reason. It is enough that we' sée cause to admit the revelation itself, upon the evidences given of it: it is not necessary that we should carry our researches any farther. It is not safe, or decent, or practicable, in many cases, to do it. The just and sober reasoner is careful to proceed on clear and distinct' ideas, and to stop where these fail him. But how soon does he arrive at this point? For the sublime genius of Christianity reminds him, at almost every step, how impossible it is, with the scanty line of human reason, to fathom the deep things of God; and represses the sallies of his wit and fancy, with this reflexionhow unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! In a word, where he finds the subject too obscure for his understanding to penetrate, or too vast for his ideas to comprehend (and he presently finds this, when he attempts to reason on the mysteries of the Christian faith) he checks his inquiries, he believes, and adores in silence.

But now this silence, this adoration, is ill suited to the restless ambition of the human mind, when it aspires to the reputation of pro