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inspiration is wanting, education may contribute nothing at all in aid of the deficiency,—that is, to make my meaning very plain, he who imagines that, of uninspired men, the learned and the unlearned are equally qualified to be teachers of the word of God,—he who builds this extravagant opinion upon the terms in which the apostle speaks of the knowledge of Christ, as the only knowledge to which he himself made pretensions, only proves, that more learning is necessary than he is aware of to the right apprehension of this single text.

Inferences naturally flow from the doctrine which hath been asserted, of high concern to every one in this assembly. We, who, with however weak ability, fill the high station of the prophets in the primitive church, -you, who are this day to be admitted to a share in that sacred office,-are admonished of the diligence with which we must devote ourselves to study, and of the assiduity which we must use in prayer, to acquit ourselves of the duties of our calling. The laity are admonished of the folly and the danger of deserting the ministry of those who have been rightly separated to that holy service, in the vain hope of edifying under their instruction, who cannot be absolved of the crime of schism upon any better plea than that of ignorance. To allege the apostles as instances of illiterate preachers, is of all fallacies the grossest. Originally, perhaps, they were men of little learning-fishermen-tent-makers-excisemen: but when they began to preach, they no longer were illiterate; they were rendered learned in an instant, without previous study of their own, by miracle. The gifts, which we find placed by an apostle himself at the head of their qualifications, were evidently analogous to the advantages of education. Whatever their previous character had been, the apostles, when they became preachers, became learned. They were of all preachers the most learned. It is, therefore, by proficiency in learning, accompanied with an unreserved submission of the understanding to the revealed

word,--but it is by learning, not by the want or the neglect of it, that any modern teacher may attain to some distant resemblance of those inspired messengers of God.

APPENDIX TO SERMON XIV.

1 COR. xii. 8-10.

The word of wisdom,—the talent of arguing, from the natural principles of reason, for the conversion of philosophical infidels. The word of knowledge,-the talent of holding learned arguments from the ancient prophecies, and the writings of the Old Testament, for the conversion of Jewish infidels. Faith,--a depth and accuracy of understanding, in the general scheme of the Christian revelation, for the improvement and edification of believers. The gifts of healing, and the working of miracles,-for the purpose of making new converts, and displaying the extent of the power of Christ. Prophecy, or the talent of foreseeing future events, for the purpose of providing against the calamities, whether worldly or spiritual, that might threaten particular churches,-such as famines, pestilence, wars, persecutions, heresies. Discerning of spirits,—for the better government of the church; and the gift of tongues, and the interpretation of tongues, which seem to have been very generally dispersed,-that every Christian might be qualified to argue with the learned Jews in the synagogues, from the original Scriptures, especially when the Jew thought proper to appeal from the Greek of the Septuagint to the Hebrew text.

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In these very remarkable passages, the apostle reckons up nine distinct gifts of the Holy Spirit, all of the extraordinary kind. In the twenty-eighth verse, he enumerates just as many ecclesiastical offices. The gifts and the offices, taken in the order in which they are mentioned, seem to correspond.

GIFTS.

1. The word of wisdom...

Apostles.

OFFICES.

2. The word of knowledge.. } Prophets, that is, expounders of the

3. Faith....

4. Miracles..

4. Healing.

Scriptures of the Old Testament.
Teachers of Christianity,

Workers of miracles.

Healers.

6. Prophecies, or predictions} Helps-Ainus such as Mark, Ty

chicus, Onesimus, &c.

7. Discerning of spirits...... Governments-Ku6epnas.

8. Tongues...

9. Interpretation of tongues.

Gifted with tongues in various ways.

The fourth and fifth gifts, miracles and healing, seem to have changed places in the ninth and tenth verses. Miracles, I think, must take place as the genus, and healing must rank below it, as the species. Accordingly, in the twenty-eighth verse, miracles, or powers, are mentioned before healings. With this slight alteration, the list of gifts in the eighth, ninth, and tenth verses, seems to answer exactly to the list of offices in the twenty-eighth: only, it is to be supposed, that as all inferior offices are included in the superior, so all the higher and rarer gifts contain the lower and more common.

Dr. Lightfoot, if I mistake not, hath remarked this parallelism of gifts and offices, in his Hora Hebraica.

SERMON XV.

Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time-(or, as it is in the margin, came not at any time)—by the will of man; but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.2 PETER i. 20, 21.

In the verse which immediately precedes my text, the apostle mentions a "sure word of prophecy," which he earnestly commends to the attention of the faithful. This word of prophecy, I conceive, is to be understood, not of

that particular word of the Psalmist,* nor of that other of Isaiah, to which the voice uttered from heaven at the baptism, and repeated from the shechinah at the transfiguration, hath by many been supposed to allude;-not of either of these, nor of any other particular prediction, is St. Peter's prophetic word, in my judgment, to be understood; but of the entire volume of the prophetic writings -of the whole body of the prophecies which were extant in the Christian church at the time when the apostle wrote this second epistle. You are all, I doubt not, too well acquainted with your Bibles, to be told by me, that this epistle was written at no long interval of time before the blessed apostle's martyrdom. He tells you so himself, in the fourteenth verse of this first chapter. The near prospect of putting off his mortal tabernacle, was the occasion of his composing this epistle, which is to be considered as his dying charge to the church of God. Now the martyrdom of St. Peter took place in Nero's persecution, when his fellow-labourer St. Paul had been already, taken off. St. Paul, therefore, we may reasonably suppose, was dead before St. Peter wrote this epistle, which, by necessary consequence, must have been of later date than any of St. Paul's. Again, three of the four gospels, St. Matthew's, St. Mark's, and St. Luke's, were all published some years before St. Peter's death; for St. Luke's, which is beyond all controversy the latest of the three, was written about the time when St. Paul was released from his first imprisonment at Rome. It appears from these circumstances, that our Saviour's prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem and his last advent, which is recited in the gospels of the three first Evangelists, and St. Paul's predictions of antichrist, the dreadful corruptions of the latter times, and the final restoration of the Jewish people, delivered in various parts of his epistles, must have been current among Christians at the time when this Second Epistle of St. Peter was composed. These prophecies,

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therefore of the Christian church, together with the prophetic writings of the Old Testament, the books of the Jewish prophets, the book of Psalms, and the more ancient oracles preserved in the books of Moses, make up that system of prophecy which is called by the apostle "the prophetic word," to which, as it were, with his last breath, he gives it in charge to the true believer to give heed. If I seem to exclude the book of the Apocalypse from that body of prophecy which I suppose the apostle's injunction to regard, it is not that I entertain the least doubt about the authenticity or authority of that book, or that I esteem it less deserving of attention than the rest of the prophetic writings; but for this reason, that, not being written till many years after St. Peter's death, it cannot be understood to make a part of the writings to which he alludes. However, since the sentiments delivered by St. Peter are to be understood to be the mind of the Holy Spirit which inspired him, since the injunction is general, prescribing what is the duty of Christians in all ages, no less than of those who were the cotemporaries of the apostle, since the Apocalypse, though not then written, was nevertheless an object of the Spirit's prescience, as a book which, in no distant time, was to become a part of the oracular code, we will, if you please, amend our exposition of the apostle's phrase: we will include the Apocalypse in the word of prophecy; and we will say that the whole body of the prophecies, contained in the inspired books of the Old and New Testament, is that to which the Holy Spirit, in the admonition which he dictated to St. Peter, requires all who look for salvation to give heed, "as to a lamp shining in a dark place;"-a discovery from heaven of the schemes of Providence, which, however imperfect, is yet sufficient for the comfort and support of good men, under all the discouragements of the present life; as it furnishes a demonstration--not of equal evidence, indeed, with that which the final catastrophe will afford, but a certain demonstration-a demonstration drawn from fact and expe

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