How strange is it, that these soldiers have neither the gratitude nor the compassion to start at the consequence of their bloody proposal; for the sake of St. Paul, to whom they were indebted, not only for admonition and instruction, but also for their lives. His prayers for them all, which, without doubt, his piety would offer daily and hourly in a time of such distress, received this answer by an angel, "Lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee." As to the soldiers, he had preserved their lives in a more special manner, by detecting the treachery of the shipmen, and preventing their escape. When men have been fellow-sufferers (and such were all on board this vessel) it naturally endears them to one another. So many days and nights as they had been exercised with such imminent danger, and had despaired of life together, it would rather be expected, that they should congratulate each other on their common deliverance. But there are some hard minds, which are never to be wrought upon such men would have stained their swords with the blood of their deliverer. After this example, surely no minister of Jesus Christ ought to be surprised, as if some new thing had happened to him, if after all his endeavours he finds some of those among whom he has exercised his ministry repay all his kindness with indifference: nay, if they should even oppose him, and hate him, and rise up in arms against him, for an attention to their welfare, and a desire of promoting their reformation and improvement. Vice, whereever it is found, has an interest against the ministers of the gospel; it therefore always was disobedient, contradictory, ungrateful and unmerciful; and such we must expect to find it at this day. What? are we greater than St. Paul? No, we are not to be named with him; our powers in the ministry are nothing when compared with his: it must therefore follow most certainly, that where he could make no impression, we shall make none: the same sort of persons who would have killed him, will neglect

and despise us; and such there will be, more or less in all places; persons of no breeding, of no feeling; who having not God himself in all their thoughts, have no regard to any thing or any person that belongs to him; who, if you were to save their lives, could never be won over to any decency or respect. Men are as different from men, as men from brutes; and the gift of God's grace, or the want of it, makes all the difference.

My dear brethren, when we consider these things, our duty, as deducible from the whole, is, to be thankful to God for the labours, and sufferings, and example of St. Paul, by whose preaching we Gentiles have been brought to the knowledge of the Gospel: and if we should be called upon to suffer contradiction, or reproach, or shipwreck, for the truth's sake, the same God that delivered him, can own and deliver us in all dangers and adversities: he that rescued his Apostle from the fury of the waves, and the cruelty of unthinking heathen soldiers, can deliver all those who are engaged in the same undertakings, and bring them safe from a tempestuous sea of trouble in this world to his heavenly land; there to reign in peace with apostles and martyrs, under the Captain of their salvation, Jesus Christ our Lord.

SERMON XLI.

AND WHEN THEY HAD GONE THROUGH THE ISLE UNTO PAPHOS, THEY FOUND A CERTAIN SORCERER, A FALSE PROPHET, A JEW, WHOSE NAME WAS BARJESUS. Acts xiii. 6.

TH

HE great Apostle of the Gentiles is here in the course of that mission, on which he was sent by the Church of Antioch. It is a circumstance worthy of observation, that the same Paul, who had been appointed to the mi

nistry by Jesus Christ himself in person, and who had his call and ordination from heaven, should yet be sent out like other men according to the forms of the Church. An order came from the Holy Ghost to them of Antioch, that they should separate (that is, consecrate*) Barnabas and Saul; and accordingly they fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, and sent them away. After this, where is the man that shall pretend to a call from heaven, without a call from the Church, as sufficient to constitute a preacher of the Gospel; when it was not sufficient in the case of Paul himself? To prevent disorder, it is the will of God, that the authority and rule of his Church should in all cases be preserved: so the Church sends out even where God himself hath separated already; to the end that no man, under any circumstances whatever, may be independent of the Christian society. The Apostle might have objected to this "laying on of hands," as unnecessary in his case, who had been consecrated already by a higher authority: but God acts by the Church which he has appointed for the preservation of order and the preventing of imposture; and charity, which seeketh not her own, will never claim any private rights in opposition to it. St. Paul, therefore, who had been sent forth from heaven, was sent forth by the Church in company with Barnabas. It had been the custom of Christ to send out his disciples upon the work of the ministry by two and two, and thence we hear one of them calling his companion a true yoke-fellow: in conformity with which custom, Paul and Barnabas were sent together; who travelled from Antioch to Seleucia, and thence took ship to the island of Cyprus; where, at Salamis, in the synagogues which the Jews had in that place, they exercised their ministry: and, proceeding from thence, they went through the island to Paphos, which lay at the other extremity of it. In their progress, they must have said and done many things, which

See Numb. xvi. 9.

had already made them well known to the people: and in all probability the fame of their preaching had reached the place long before they arrived thither: in consequence of which, we are not to wonder that Sergius Paulus, the Roman proconsul, was desirous to hear what so many others of the people had heard before him: he therefore called for Barnabas and Saul, and desired to hear the word of God; and being himself a man of sense and prudence, with a mind open to conviction, the word of God was likely to have its effect, and make a convert of him. But here an accident intervenes, which is far from being uncommon; a certain man, who has an interest against the truth, throws himself across the way to hinder its progress: there seems to be some such mischievous blasphemous person ready in all places; permitted by God, and provided by the Devil; provided to resist the truth; permitted to make it shine more bright; as truth seldom fails to do, when it meets with malicious opposition. Thus when Moses presented himself to Pharaoh, the magicians withstood him with design to confute his wisdom by their philosophy, and to equal his miracles by their enchantments. This man seems to have been partly of the same character: the text calls him a sorcerer; nearly the same thing with an enchanter; and so far he is a heathenized magician; with that name of Magus, which is given only to the wise men of the heathen religion. There is a portentous mixture in this man's character; for he who, as a magician, is a heathen, is also a Jew, and is called BarJesus, which is a Jewish name. A Jew, free from prejudice, and learned in the Scriptures of the first covenant, was of all others best qualified to hear and receive the Gospel of Christ; but this was a Jew fit for nothing but unbelief: because a Jew turned heathen, would be much worse than a native heathen: his Judaism, being of a spurious malignant kind, would be all against him, and carry him away so much farther from the truth. From his being

acquainted, as a companion, with the proconsul, we may also judge that he was a person of some figure, one who had probably the repute of a learned education, such as qualified him to be in the society of the superior class of people. Such a man as this could foresee nothing but the total ruin of his own character in the doctrines of the Gospel; therefore it was improbable that he would receive them himself; and he was determined that no one else, as far as his influence went, should receive them. So he withstood the Apostles, and either by his arguments, or his sneers, or his lies, sought to prevail with Sergius not to listen to them. In such a case as this what does the Apostle do? I can tell you what he would probably have done, had he lived in this civil half-believing age: when it is the fashion not to stand up for the authority of God, for fear of being reputed a high-churchman; nor to be too sure of any thing, lest you should give offence to those, who find it convenient to be sure of nothing, and say, they cannot think as you do so with the influence of our times upon him, he might have observed, "that the learned philosopher would be of another opinion if he would but permit him to lay the case before him; that he had many things to say, which his opponent had probably not well considered." This was not the Apostle's manner: he knew that nothing but the Devil could resist the Gospel; that nothing but darkness could be opposite to light; so he makes the man no fair speeches; but tells him and his friends in plain terms what he thinks of him, "O full of subtlety and all mischief; thou child of the Devil; thou enemy of all righteousness; wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?" The ways of the Lord are the ways of truth, and the ways of truth are straight: this man wanted to make them appear crooked and false; and the Apostle seeing that this was his design, had no mercy upon him; but gave him his real character at once. from this example, we have a rule for our own conduct in

And