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Verse 16.] According to my gospel, says LUKE, the amanuensis. Compare No. 5499.

5486. [Rom. ii. 19.] As shell-fish are observed to thrive at the increase of the moon, though her light be unattended with heat, and though even when she is at full, she wants not her spots; so devout hearers will be careful to prosper proportionably to the instructions they receive even from those preachers, whose illuminations are unaccompanied with zeal and charity, and who, when they shine with the greatest lustre, are not free from their darknesses, as to some points, or from notorious blemishes.

BOYLE'S Reflections, p. 58. Works, vol. iv.

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5487. [24. The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you] When Governor Hunter had presented the Iroquese Indians with fine clothes sent them by order of Queen Anne, he further told them, that she intended likewise to adorn their souls, by the preaching of the gospel, and that for this purpose some ministers would be sent to instruct them. Immediately one of the oldest Sachems got up, and answered, that in the name of all the Indians, he thanked their gracious good Queen and mother for the fine clothes she had sent them; but that in regard to the ministers, they had already had some among them, who had taught them to driuk to excess, to cheat and to quarrel among themselves. He therefore entreated the Governor to take from them these preachers, and a number of Europeans who resided amongst them; for before they came, he said, the Indians had been an honest, sober, and innocent people, but that most of them were now become rogues; that they had formerly had the fear of God, but that at present they hardly believed His existence.

See KALM's Trav. in Pinkerton's Coll. part liv. p. 588.

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have done? If it is unlawful to enslave an inoffensive creature, no unforeseen and unintentional good consequences that may follow upon it, will ever render it lawful. The knife of the ruffian may dismiss a good man from the troubles of this life, and send him to Heaven; but is it therefore lawful to murder a good man? If we estimate the morality of actions, not by the intention of the agent; but by the consequences whereof, by the overruling care of a good Providence, they may be productive, we shall at once confound all moral principles.

BEATTIE.

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5490. [Rom. iii. 23. All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God] When we talk in general of frailties, faults, and the weakness of human nature, every person ac. knowledges himself guilty. But give to these weaknesses, or faults, their true names, read over the whole register distinctly, and then enquire around you; not a single indivi- The What an inconsistency! dual will own his share. truth is, God alone is good; the want of the effulgence of His glory in the soul of man, is our natural or hereditary state of evil; actual transgression alone, produces positive sin, or realizes "the iniquity of the fathers upon their children." In the latter, and in the former sense surely, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." See No. 5316.

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5492. [- 30.] Among the Jews, it is well known, there were two kinds of proselytes; one of the gate, another of justice. The latter, fully admitted to every privilege of the Mosaic covenant, were in nothing different from the Jews, Now these being except in their having been once heathens.

justified, or made full proselytes of justice, under the Law, BY EIRCUMCISION; the Apostle argues that Jews and Gentiles, or the circumcision as well as the uncircumcision, are justified, or made proselytes of GOD's justice, under the Gospel covenant, simply BY FAITH.

See Dr. A. CLARKE, on Exod. xi. 43.

5494. [Rom. v. 6. Without strength] the finite spirit of truth not having received the power given by the influx of the Infinite Human and the Divine; the all of power in heaven and on earth.

5495. [ 10.] The atonement, or reconciliation by the death of Christ, is thus to be understood: The Jews and Gentile Romans having affixed Him to the cross, He voluntarily laid down His life to prevent their sin in killing Him by the breaking of His legs; and, to reconcile their inimical designs with the beneficial intentions of the divine will and wisdom, in the death of that merely human nature from the Virgiu, which, otherwise, might have been exalted It should be by man into an object of idolatrous worship. noted also here, that the manslayer was set at liberty, and restored to his possessions and privileges, by the death of the high-priest. See Num. xxxv. 25, 32.

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5498. [Rom. vi. 16.] For the true ground, and absolute necessity of turning wholly and solely to the Spirit of God, you need only know this plain truth; namely, that the Spirit of God, the spirit of satan, or the spirit of this world, are, and must be, the one or the other of them, the continual leader, guide, and inspirer, of every thing that lives in nature. There is no going out from some one of these; the moment you cease to be moved, quickened, and inspired by God, you are infallibly moved, and directed by the spirit of satan, or the world, or by both of them. And the reason is, because the soul of man is a spirit, and a life, that in its whole being is nothing else but a birth both of God and nature; and therefore every moment of its life, it must live in some union and conjunction, either with the spirit of God governing nature, or with the spirit of nature fallen from God, and working in itself. As Creatures therefore, we are under an absolute necessity of being under the motion, guidance, and inspiration, of some spirit, that is more and greater than our own. All that is in our power, is only the choice of our leader; but led and moved we must be, and by that spirit, to which we give up ourselves, whether it be to the spirit of God, or the spirit of fallen nature. To seek therefore to be always under the inspiration and guidance of God's Holy Spirit, and to act by an immediate power from it, is not proud enthusiasm, but as sober and humble a thought, as suitable to our state, as to think of renouncing the world and the devil; for they never are, or can be, renounced by us, but so far as the spirit of God is living, breathing and moving in us.

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animal part of their children, as the means of more properly influencing and guiding the mental. It cannot be unknown that however a madman may rage and rave, however strongly his mind may be exercised, it never improves; he gains no accession of knowledge: the case is not precisely similar, but there is an analogy, between a man actually mad, and a man the slave of any passion; whatsoever he does, wherever he goes, this passion gives a color to his conduct; it is always uppermost in the mind, and it guides the understanding. To make any advances in self-government is impossible; the strong bent of the mind to run in a certain direction must first be corrected; the madness must first be overcome; the influence of religion is, indeed, alone sufficient to effect it. A man preparing to run a race, to fight a battle, or even to wrestle, lives in a prescribed manner; no gratification is allowed; no passion is indulged or provoked; he has an end in view, and that is attained only by the due subserviency of the body. But in common life, the food most desired and most indulged in is, that which most excites the darling passion. We are not as wise in training our offspring, as we are in training of gladiators; the effect of food is known, as applied to the one, but is unconsidered in our treatment of the other. Luke xvi. 8. Dr, JARROLD'S Anthropologia, p. 108.

1 Cor. ix. 25.

5503. [Rom. viii. 15. We cry, Abba, Father] addressing ourselves to him as an own father, with the affection of legitimate children, in full trust and assurance that the Father himself loves us; that he hath prepared a kingdom for us (in the eternal heaveus) before the foundation of the world; and that he sends the Comforter, that Promise of the Father, to guide, and strengthen, and support us uuder all the infirmities of nature.

Bp. BROWNE'S Procedure of the Understanding, p. 331.

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destruction and extermination. - Hence the full sense of the Apostle's words will be this: I could even wish that the destruction and extermination to which my Brethren the Jews, are devoted by Christ, might, if it would save them from ruin, be executed upon me, in the stead of those my kinsmen after the flesh, who are Israelites. St. Paul well knew the dreadful consequences of the Jews' rejecting Christ, a shameful dispersion over the face of the earth, and eternal destruction afterwards, to as many as would not repent; yet he wishes that infinite evil to himself, on condition it could save them. The human heart can go no further. It is not possible to wish a greater evil for the sake of a greater good. BARTON'S Analogy, part vii. p. 167.

5507. [—— 28.] There is nothing so luminous in the study of nature, as to refer every thing that exists to the goodness of GOD, and to the demands of humanity. St. PIERRE's Studies of Nature, vol. ii. p. 256.

5508. [ 29.] No one was ever shocked at hearing the systems which are made in Bedlam; and those who quote them have ever been excused the making a refutation of them.

Abbe PLUCHE.

5509. [ — 29, 30.] Concerning the controversies between the Calvinists and the Remonstrants, about Predestination, and the coherent doctrines; — those that are truly pious of either party are perhaps otherwise looked on by God than by one another, as contending, which of God's attributes should be most respected; the one seeming to affirm irrespective decrees, to magnify his GOODNESS, and the other to deny them but to secure the credit of his JUSTICE. See No. 1248.

BOYLE'S Seraphic Love, p. 104.

5512. [Rom. ix. 10, 11.] More than one child cannot be conceived at one and the same time. When there are twins, there has always been a superfetation. Consequently, the first born, as Esau, is the last begotten, or really the younger; whilst the last born, as Jacob, is the first begolten, or truly the elder. Every superfetation is necessarily the offspring of lust: Esau was therefore hated, when he had realized his disposition to lust by committing fornication with the daughters of the land'. This child of lust inherited also a dispositiou to murder, even his own brother. See Gen. xxvii. 41.

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5515. [Rom. x. 16. They have not all obeyed the gospel] "It is one of the great mistakes in Moreri's Dictionary, to say, that in the time of Theodosius the Younger, no idolaters remamed but in the remote parts of Asia and Africa. There were still, and even down to the seventh century, many Gentile nations in Italy. All Germany north of the Weser were strangers to Christianity in Charlemagne's time; and long a ter him Poland, and the whole North, continued in what is called idolatry. Half Africa, all the realms beyond the Gauges, Japan, the innumerable commonalty of China, a

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5518. 17, &c.] A Syrian Vine, growing, 1789, in the hot house at Welbeck, produces, by grafting, sixteen different sorts of grapes.

SPEECHLY, on the Vine, p. 221.
The trees, which of themselves advance in air,
Are barren kinds, but strongly built and fair:
Because the vigor of the native earth
Maintains the plant, and makes a manly birth.
Yet these, receiving grafts of other kind,

Or thence transplanted, change their savage mind:
Their wildness lose, and quitting nature's part,
Obey the rules and discipline of art.

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which is thus formed in the root and carried upwards. She conceives that the pollen ascends in like manuer, passing only to the male flowers, while the balls or embryos ascend to the females; no balls being seen in male trees, and no pollen in female ones. See TILLOCH's Journal for March 1815, vol. xlv. p. 188.

5520. [Rom. xi. 24.] The olive-tree, whose expressed oil is so abundantly used in the Levitical sacrifices, forms the riches of its fruit, not from the species of the graft, but of the root and stem; a lesson for the heathens, for naturalists, — for all whom the Apostle here charges with acting unnaturally, in attempting the salvation of the impenitent by faith (whilst there is no radical change in the life). (See HUTCHINSON'S Use of Reason Recovered, p. 123. And Exod. xl. 13.) — In the good olive-tree Jesus Christ, the graft, the adopted Christian, cannot change the Root, but the Root changes the nature and fruit of the graft whilst in every sectarian church that has man for its root, as in every kind of tree but the olive, the graft, the adopted convert, invariably changes. the virtue of his root, as the doctrine of Calvin, Luther, Wesley, and Swedenborg, &c., are at this day successively. changing in their respective followers into teuets the direct opposite to what was maintained by those founders.

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The Olive yields (by virtue of the descending sap) more oil than any other plaut, and yet thrives best on dry arid rocky soils, of absolute poverty; so far as oil is concerned.

Ibid. Pinkerton's Coll. part xvi. p. 500.

Vines and olives, attracting nourishment principally by their leaves, stand in no need of water, but thrive admirably on the driest soils without it. Compare John iv. 32. — xv. 1, &c.

Ibid. part xvii. p. 667. N. B. The fat of all the sacrifices simply consisted in the olive oil.

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