LECTURE I.

HOSEA XIV. 9.

"Who is wise, and he shall understand these things? prudent, and he shall know them? For the ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them but the transgressors shall fall therein."

It is not without a painful measure of diffi-_LECT. I. dence that I have looked forward to the discharge

of my present duty. It must be sufficiently

obvious, that much more fitness to the task which now devolves upon me might have been found in many of my honoured fathers and brethren. But while some of these have professed themselves more than fully occupied already; in the case of others, there have been circumstances which were deemed incompatible with that degree of immediate attention to an engagement of this nature, which would be indispensable on the part of the Lecturer for the present year. While sensible of the honour

B

LECT conferred in my being called to such a service, it would have been more agreeable to me,

Christianity

Gefined

on many accounts, had my appearance before you been assigned to a distant day. Having stated thus much in my own behalf, and in behalf of others, permit me to call your attention at once to the subject before us.

Corruption of In examining the Causes of the Corruptions of Christianity, it will be important that we endeavour to determine what may, or may not be regarded, as matter affecting the purity or perfectness of the revealed system of things which the term Christianity is employed to denote.

The view of this system which first presents itself to an unprejudiced mind, is that of a divinely-appointed remedy, adopted by Infinite Wisdom and Beneficence to the necessities of a fallen world. And whatever shall serve to obscure, or misrepresent, the announcements of the gospel with respect to the moral state of the human race, or as to the nature of its own merciful provisions, we regard as producing a corruption of the christian doctrine. When these communications are mutilated, mixed up with what is repugnant to them, or made conducive to effects foreign from their proper tendency, they are manifestly deteriorated :they no longer possess their true character, or they are seen in a state of separation from those heavenly aspirations and those benign results

with which, if left to their due course, they will LECT. I. ever be connected. The doctrine of the Trinity; the proper deity of the Saviour; the reality and efficacy of his substitution in the place of the guilty; the personality of the Holy Spirit, together with all his ordinary influences in the regeneration and salvation of the soul,-these we view as essential truths of revelation, truths to which nothing may be added, and from which nothing may be taken.

What we say of the system of doctrine presented in the gospel, we say also of its moral code. In this respect, as in the former, it is sufficient and complete, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.

Nor do we hesitate to affirm that the polity and worship appropriate to this last and perfected economy of revealed truth, are so far indicated, in their general principles, in the New Testament, as to make it certain that what has obtained in these respects with the majority of professing Christians, in nearly every age, partakes much less of the simplicity of primitive usage, than of those corruptions in religion which owe their origin to human weakness and depravity. What the general principles now adverted to really are, we shall have occasion to state as we proceed, together with the reasons which induce us to regard them as sufficient, and as of perpetual obligation. In plans of human contrivance

LECT. 1. change is not unfrequently an improvement. But with respect to a state of things which Infinite Wisdom has devised, and to which a supreme and unalterable authority is attached, every innovation must be in reality an inroad of corruption, and must partake, according to its extent, of the nature of impiety.*

Complex nature of the

ducing the

Christianity.

But while evil must be thus connected with causes pro all such innovations, both in their causes and corruption of results, we shall do well to remember that even the corruptions of Christianity have been often overruled for its advantage, and that the causes producing them have generally been of so mixed a description as to render it impossible that human wisdom should ever determine their apportionment of good and evil. Not a few of

* The Fathers often opposed the novelties of their times by reasoning in this manner. But unhappily, the authority of established opinion or usage, or as it would have been designated at a later period,-the authority of the church, was suffered to become confounded with what was peculiar to Christ and his Apostles, and peculiar to them not only in its measure, but in its nature. Hanc regulam ab initio Evan"gelii decucurrisse, etiam ante priores quosque hæreticos, "nedum ante Praxeam hesternum, probabit tam ipsa posteritas " omnium hæreticorum, quam ipsa novellitas Praxeæ hesterni. Quo peræque adversus universas hæreses, jam hinc præ"judicatum sit; Id esse verum, quodcumque prius, id esse "adulterum quodcumque posterius."-Tertul. Ad Prax. p. 501. Ed. Paris, 1675. The safety of this rule depends on its being maintained along with a cautious recognition of the peculiar and paramount authority of the inspired writers. The impression of Christianity on mankind has resembled its effect on individuals, its earliest results, if we except the apostolic age, being by no means its purest and noblest.