SERMON VI.

ON ZEAL FOR THE FAITH.

JUDE 3, 4.

"Ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. For there are certain men crept in denying our only Master,

unawares

...

ungodly men

God, and Lord, Jesus Christ."

IN citing the last words of my text, I have, as you will have observed, not used our common version, which runs thus: "denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ:" preferring rather what seems the more exact translation of the Greek, "our only Master, God, and Lord, Jesus Christ," because it serves, perhaps more plainly than the other, to mark the false doctrine against which St. Jude was contending.

For the test of the true profession of Christianity consisted then, as it does now, chiefly, in the acknowledgment of the divinity of the Saviour of

the world; that He is God as well as man; that He was, what the prophet styled Him, Emmanuel', i. e. God with us; what St. Paul styled Him, "God manifest in the flesh 2" what He described Himself, "Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last" in short, the Eternal One, who in the beginning was with God, and was God, and yet, for our sakes, "was made flesh and dwelt among us ;" or, as the Athanasian Creed has well expressed it, "God, of the substance of His Father, begotten before the worlds; and man, of the substance of His mother, born in the world."

In defence of these fundamental truths were arrayed the Apostles of our Lord, the inspired evangelists, and teachers, the "great company of the preachers," who first converted the nations, the bishops and martyrs of the primitive ages; and from their days until now they have been, and from now until the end of the world they will continue to be, the foremost of the leading doctrines of Christianity, the foremost of those essential and fundamental truths; the profession and maintenance of which must ever distinguish the Catholic Church from all the various heresies which the device of Satan or man may raise up in opposition to her.

To take the last words of the text, according to the more exact translation of the words rov μóvov

δεσπότην Θεὸν καὶ Κύριον ἡμῶν, Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν,

apvouμevo, "denying our only Master, God, and ἀρνούμενοι, Lord, Jesus Christ," rather than in the common version, "denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ," serves more plainly to point out against what doctrine St. Jude was writing, because none of the heretics then, nor indeed at any time, ever denied the divinity of the Father; the dispute between Catholics and heretics then, and Catholics and heretics now, turning upon one and the same point; viz. the divinity of our Master, God, and Lord, Jesus Christ.

But, indeed, if we compare "spiritual things with spiritual'," the words of one Apostle with the words of another, the sentence of St. Jude with the sentence of St. John, either translation will be sufficient for the purpose, and plainly show that the Epistle was directed against those who denied the incarnation of the Son of God, and the divinity of the Saviour of the world. The sentence of St. John, to which I allude, is that in which, after declaring that the maintainers of this blasphemous denial were the antichrists whose coming had been foretold, he states that such denial is equivalent to Atheism itself; equivalent to the denial of the Godhead altogether, since the unhappy person who is drawn into that heresy is totally and entirely deprived by it of the blessing and protection of a God; he is a "stranger from the covenant of pro

1 1 Cor. ii. 13.

mise," has "no hope," and is "without God in the world" for thus he writes: "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father ";" he hath Him not, as to any right understanding or knowledge of Him; he hath Him not, as to any communion with, or hope in, Him, or as to any blessing to be received from Him; every avenue of access is cut off; according to the words of the Son Himself, "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me "."

I have not chosen this text for the subject of this day's discourse, as though there were any need to lay again in the minds of those who hear me the foundation of our Holy Religion. No, cradled in the lap of a true and pure branch of the Catholic Church, and having been taught from your earliest infancy in her sound faith, you can (I trust) have no "need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the doctrine of Christ." Your conviction of the truth as it is in Jesus, and your value of, and devotion to, it has, doubtless, grown with your growth, and ripened with your age; and that faith which, in the first and second centuries, called forth whole armies of martyrs to seal with their blood their attestation to it, will, I doubt not, now in the nineteenth, find numbers ready to lay down their lives in proof of their constancy to it, if it shall

1

1 Ephes. ii. 12.
3 John xiv. 6.

2

1 John ii. 23.

4 Heb. v. 12.

please God to put them to the trial. But my reason for choosing this text and subject is, that, since the situation of the Church of Christ in this kingdom has been of late much altered and endangered, I may make use of the opportunity of addressing such a congregation as this before me, to warn them how necessary it is become, that, as members of that Church, a change should likewise take place in them, to enable them to meet the altered circumstances of the Church-a change, I mean, in watchfulness and attention to the things of religion; lest, haply, if they be off their guard, the tempter succeed in the endeavours which he will, doubtless, make to seduce any of you from the true faith. I chose it, in short, because, as St. Jude writes, "it was needful for me to exhort you, that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints ;" and this for the self-same reason which he gives for his exhortation, namely, 'for there are certain men crept in unawares-ungodly men,-denying our only Master, God, and Lord, Jesus Christ."

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When I speak of the altered position of the Church of Christ in this kingdom, I do not allude to the great measure of last year, by which our brethren of the Church of Rome were restored to the privileges of which they had long been deprived; for, however tied they may be by Papal chains to the false doctrines which distinguish their branch of the Church from ours, still the great, and fundamental, and essential

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