still in Babylon; but that no mistake may arise, he repeatedly assures us that it was in the visions of God. But no such intimation is given in the instance before us. It has all the appearance of a literal matter of fact, and as such it has been currently received by the church of God. Let it be admitted, however, for argument's sake, to have been a visionary representation; the question still recurs, What is meant by the tempter in this scene? and whether any of the solutions which have been given can possibly be admitted. The devil here cannot be intended to denote the pagan magistrates, or Jewish high-priests or scribes, because our Lord was alone. As little can it mean the principle of evil. The principle of evil must be the principle of some mind; it cannot subsist apart. Where, in this instance, is the mind in which it inhered? None were present but the Saviour and the tempter; if the tempter was not a person, but the principle of evil, that principle must have belonged to the Saviour himself; it must have consisted of some sinful bias, some corrupt propensity in himself, with which he maintained an arduous struggle. But this is refuted by the concurrent testimony of the sacred writers, who affirm him to be "holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners;" who emphatically designate him under the character of him "that is holy, him that is true."† It is to be hoped that our modern Socinians have not rushed to that extreme of impiety to impute a principle of evil to the mind of the immaculate Lamb of God, "in whom was no sin." And yet, without this, no intelligible account can be given of the temptation, except that which has been universally received in the church.

Let us apply their theory to another very important passage in the sixth chapter of the Ephesians. We there find the following exhortation: "Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not with flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." By these principalities and powers our modern Socinians tell us we are to understand a general personification of all wicked opposition to the progress of Christianity, whether from the civil or ecclesiastical power, and, in the present instance more particularly, "the opposition of Jewish priests and rulers." But how, we ask, is this comment consistent with the negative branch of St. Paul's assertion, "for we wrestle not with flesh and blood?" Flesh and blood is a very common form of expression in the sacred writings, employed to denote the human race, or mankind. Thus our Lord tells Peter, "Flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven;" evidently intending to affirm, that he did not derive his information from men, but from God. "Immediately," says Paul, “I consulted not with flesh and blood ;" that is, he consulted no human authorities; "nor did I go up to Jerusalem," he adds, "to those that were apostles before me." The first part of the apostle's proposition then evidently is, that the opposition he had chiefly to sustain was not

Heb. vii. 26.

Rev. iii. 7.

Improved Version, p. 450 || Matt. xvi. 17.

VOL. III.-D

+ 1 John iii. 5.

¶ Gal. i. 16

from men, nor from adversaries of the human rank and order. The question naturally arises, From what then? He adds, "From principalities and powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this world,” or, according to Griesbach, "of this darkness;" that is, say the Unitarians, from Jewish rulers and priests. We must perceive in a moment the absurdity of the proposition thus interpreted, where that is denied at the beginning which is affirmed at the close; and human nature, expressed by a general term which can signify nothing else, is formally excluded from the context, to make way for a class of adversaries who are of that very nature, and no other.

It is equally impossible to put the other construction on the passage, that of the principle of evil; because that cannot admit of the plural number. It will surely be allowed, that no intelligent writer, who was desirous of personifying the principle of evil, abstractedly considered, would speak of it in the plural form, under the figure of "principalities and powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this world," since such a mode of speaking could be productive of nothing but mental confusion. This passage, therefore, affords an irrefragable proof of the existence and agency of Satan.

Let us proceed to apply the principle of our opponents to another. passage, and inquire whether it be possible to elicit from it a sense worthy of the wisdom of inspiration. The passage to which I refer is in the first Epistle of John, the third chapter: "My little children, let no man deceive you; he that doeth righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous: he who committeth sin is of the devil, for the devil hath sinned from the beginning: for this purpose was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil." Let us for a moment suppose, with the Unitarians, that the devil is here put for a personification of the principle of evil, or of sin. And what, let me ask, can be more trite, futile, and ridiculous, than gravely to assert that the principle of evil, or sin, sinned from the beginning? Who needed to be informed of this? and what sense can we affix to the phrase, from the beginning?" which, if it conveys any idea at all, must be intended to instruct us, that the principle of sin did not begin to be sinful from a late or recent, but from a certain very distant epoch, denoted by the words, "the beginning." But is not this more like the babbling of an infant, than the dictates of divine inspiration?

66

The following passage of John is [beset] with precisely the same difficulties. "Ye," said our Lord, addressing the unbelieving Jews, are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar, and the father of it."* Here, on the hypothesis of our opponents, we find our Saviour labouring to convince his hearers that the principle of evil, or sin, has been guilty of certain specific enormities, such as murder and lying; that it did not continue in a state of moral rectitude, because there is no rectitude in it. Nothing can be more trifling; since, when

John viii. 44.

the very principle of evil in the abstract is under contemplation, every partial kind of evil is, ipso facto, included. Had our Lord discoursed in this manner, it might very properly have been said of him, in a sense very different from that which was originally intended, "never man spake like this man."

The legitimate employment of a prosopopæia, or personification, requires that the literal term, expressive of the passion or principle personified, be strictly adhered to. He who wishes to personify piety, patriotism, or benevolence is never accustomed to drop the literal term by which these principles are respectively denoted. He gives sex, sentiment, and language to each, but on no occasion shall we find him substituting an unusual name for the things which he intends to personify. To change the very terms themselves for certain symbolical appellations would have the effect of involving his discourse in incomprehensible mystery: it would be introducing an enigma, not a personification. Where shall we find a parallel in the whole compass of the Bible for such a licentious abuse of personification? Besides, allowing that this absurd kind of personification could be at all tolerated, the symbolical name ought, at least, to have a determinate meaning; it should invariably stand for one and the same thing. The change of the proper term for the name of a symbolical personage could be justified on no other principle than that it was universally understood to be the substitute of some one object; but in the present case, the word Satan has no precise or definite idea attached to it; it is sometimes the principle of evil, sometimes the Jewish priests and rulers, at others the pagan magistrates. How [repugnant to every sound principle of interpretation!]

VIII.

ON THE EXTREME CORRUPTION OF MANKIND BEFORE THE GENERAL DELUGE.

GEN. vi. 11.—The earth was corrupt before God, and was filled with violence.

THE account in the Scriptures of the history of the world before [the flood] is extremely concise, but at the same time extremely interesting. Of the celebrated personages that then flourished, the names are seldom mentioned, and the transactions in which they were engaged are not specified with any detail of circumstances. The inhabitants of the old world are involved in [obscurity]; they are made to pass before us like the shade of departed greatness, with an infallible judgment only passed by their Creator on their characters, and a distant declaration of their doom: as though it were the deter

mination of God's providence to bury their memory in oblivion, and to make nothing distinctly legible but their destruction. Of the violences they committed, of the impiety they uttered, and of the miseries they mutually inflicted upon each other, the Holy Ghost condescends to give no particulars, but only stigmatizes them as atrocious criminals and rebels, whose enormous guilt exhausted the patience of their Maker, and rendered them unfit to live.

The same history informs us of a most atrocious murder committed by the first-born man upon his brother, for no other reason than that he was wicked and his brother righteous. Such an event affords a view of human nature, in the early stage of its existence, which prepares us for the description given of human depravity in the context, "and the Lord looked, and beheld that every thought of the imagination of man's heart was evil, and that continually."* It was necessary explicitly to state the extreme degeneracy into which mankind were fallen, in order to justify the conduct of God in bringing upon them the flood. For God to destroy the work of his hand,—to destroy that part of it which was made after his own image, was a most extraordinary measure in the conduct of Providence, which nothing can account for but that extreme corruption which it is affirmed then overspread the world. In what that corruption particularly consisted; whether it involved the apostatizing from God to idols, or only manifested itself in gross acts of immorality; how long it had been accumulating ere it reached its height; and whether it was gradually or by sudden steps introduced; are circumstances of which we are not informed. All that we are expressly told is, that the earth was filled with injustice, rapine, and violence. From what we know of human nature and human affairs, we have reason to conclude that it was gradually superinduced, since great changes in the moral state of the world, whether in the way of improvement or deterioration, require a considerable space of time for their accomplishment. It is on this account next to impossible not to suppose that the extreme degradation of manners under consideration was produced by slow degrees, and was effected by various causes. Some of these causes are, if I mistake not, suggested with tolerable clearness in the chapter out of which my text is taken.

We might with great truth assert, that the general cause of the extreme corruption then prevalent was the defection of our first parents, and that consequent loss of true rectitude and holiness which they first sustained in their own persons, and then communicated to their posterity. This tendency to sin in human nature is, indeed, the prolific source of all particular vices, which flow from thence as their fountain. But as a river when it overflows its banks must be swelled by accelerated floods or tributary streams, besides what it derives from its parent stream, so an extraordinary prevalence of vice at a particular time necessarily implies the co-operation of other causes, along with the original corruption of human nature. To say there is an inherent

* Gen. vi. 5.

sinful bias in human nature is sufficient to account for the existence of a large portion of corruption at any time, but affords no reason for its prevailing at one time more than another. To account for such an event satisfactorily some specific and particular reasons must be assigned besides this general one.

The purport of the remaining part of this discourse is to point out what may appear some of the probable reasons, and to deduce a few practical inferences from the whole.

Let me request your attention while I state some of the particular reasons which account for the remarkable and prodigious corruption which prevailed in the lives of men immediately before the flood.

I. It may be partly ascribed, with great probability, to the neglect and abandonment of the public worship of God. From the fact of Cain and Abel both presenting their offerings to the Lord, and from the acceptance of Abel's offering, because offered with faith, we may infer, that some time after the fall a mode of worshipping God was divinely prescribed, or how could Abel exercise faith in sacrificing; since faith implies invariably a divine testimony, or some divine interposition? We are further informed respecting Cain, that when the Lord remonstrated with him on the murder of his brother, he sentenced him to be a wanderer and vagabond; and Cain, deploring the severity of his sentence, said, "Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid." It is added, "And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden."*

As his going out from the presence of the Lord is immediately fol lowed by the declaration of his dwelling in a strange land, it is natural to suppose that the former expression denotes his quitting that country which God was wont in a peculiar manner to honour with his presence; where he afforded some spiritual manifestation of his power and glory.

It seems, in or near the place where Adam and his sons dwelt there was placed the shadow, or some bright and visible token, of the Divine presence. The same is implied in the acceptance of Abel's sacrifice, and the rejection of Cain's; for how could the former know that his was accepted, or the latter that his was rejected, without some supernatural sign or token? Cain, thus having by the atrocious crime he committed forfeited the privilege of approaching the place of Divine audience, and going into a remote part where no such symbol of the Divine presence was possessed, fell in all probability into total neglect of the public worship of God, and abandoned himself entirely to an irreligious and worldly life. Supposing this to be the case, it will readily account for much of that prodigious vice and impiety for when once the worship of God is abandoned, a great restraint upon wickedness is removed out of the way. Conceive only to what a dreadful degeneracy of morals would this nation speedily advance, if no attention were paid to the Sabbath, and public worship universally abandoned. The extreme importance of this' duty as a chief preservative of all

* Gen. iv. 14-16.