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SERMON XXXV.

PREACHED NOVEMBER 15, 1767.

2 COR. iv. 3.

If our Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost.

THE text implies, that the evidence, with which Christianity is attended, may fail of convincing the minds of some men. And indeed from the time that the Sun of righteousness rose upon the earth, there have always been those, who could not, or would not, be enlightened by Him.

Now it might be a question, whether this effect were owing to the nature of the evidence

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itself, or to some obscurity in the manner of proposing it. This, I say, might have been a question, even among Christians themselves, if the Apostle had not determined it to our hands. He who was fully instructed in the truths of the Gospel, knew the evidence, with which they were accompanied, was enlightened by the same spirit that had inspired them, and had great experience in the different tempers and capacities of men, roundly asserts that Infidelity has no countenance, either from within or without, neither from the sort or degree of evidence, by which the Christian Revelation is supported, nor from any mysterious conveyance of it; but that, universally, the fault lies in those, who do not receive it. If the Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost to those, who would not be convinced by any evidence whatsoever.

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What the evidences of Christianity, in fact, are, and how abundantly sufficient for the conviction of all reasonable men, I shall not now enquire. The subject is fitter for a yolume, than a discourse in this place. Let it be supposed, on St. Paul's authority, that those evidences are sufficient; still ye may be curious to know, and it may tend to the

establishment of your faith to understand, how it has come to pass, that so much light could be resisted.

To this question a pertinent answer has been given from the prejudices and passions, from the vices and corruptions of unbelievers; it being no new thing that men should love darkness rather than light, when their deeds are, and when they have resolved with themselves they shall be, evil. For, as our Lord himself argues in this case, Every one that doth evil, hateth the light, lest his deeds should be reproved: But he that doth the Truth, cometh to the light, that his deeds may be manifested, that they are wrought in God b.

But then it has been replied, that, though Vice may be many times the ground of infidelity, and the condemnation of such men be just, yet that some, too, have disbelieved from no such motives; that the Gospel has been rejected by persons, who appear to have been men of large and liberal minds, as free, as others, from all perverse prejudices, and as little subject to any gross vice or passion: Nay, that, in the class of unbelievers, there have

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been those who have distinguished themselves as much by the purity of their lives, as the brightness of their understandings.

All this may be true; and yet our Saviour affirms, that he, who believeth not, is condemned already and St. Paul in the text, to the same purpose, that if the Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost. There must needs, then, be some latent cause of this strange fact; some secret depravity lurking in the mind of those, who disbelieve the Gospel, though appearances be thus fair and flattering. And, though Christian Charity be not forward to think evil of his neighbour, yet in this case we have reason to suspect it: and what we suspect, we may perhaps find, in a VICE SO secret and insinuating, that it creeps upon men unawares; so congenial, as it were, to our depraved nature, that hardly any man can be sure of his being wholly free from it; and so ingenious in disguising itself, as to pass upon others, nay upon the man possessed by it, for one of his best qualities.

By these characters, ye will easily see I speak of self-love, or rather the vicious exertion of it

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in what we call, PRIDE: A vice, which may as fatally obstruct our pursuit of Truth, as any the most vulgar immorality; and the rather, because it is not easily suspected or acknowledged by us.

This vice then it may be, that hides the Gospel from those better sort of men, to whom it is hid. They had need examine themselves well, for it assumes, as I said, the most imposing forms. Who would look for it, in the cultivation of the mind, and the love of Virtue? Yet in either of these, it may lie concealed: and an inquirer into the truth of the most rational, and the purest of all religions, may be prejudiced against it by a double Pride, by the PRIDE OF REASON, and the PRIde of virtue.

1. FIRST, Infidelity may proceed from the Pride of Reason,

When it pleased God to bestow the faculty of Reason on his creature, Man, he intended that this substitute of himself should be the guide of life, and the handmaid of Religion. And that it might serve to these purposes, it was made sagacious enough, if honestly exerted, to lead him to some competent knowledge of his Maker, and of his moral duty, and

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