rious, the principle of religious philanthropy, influencing the whole conduct of a private man,

in the lowest situations of life, is of much more as of life, is of

universal benefit than is at first perceived.

The

terror of the laws may restrain men from flagrant crimes; but it is this principle alone that can make any man a useful member of society. This restrains him, not only from those violent invasions of another's right which are punished by human laws, but it overrules the passions from which those enormities proceed; and the secret effects of it, were it but once universal, would be more beneficial to human life than the most brilliant actions of those have ever been to whom blind superstition has erected statues and devoted altars. As this principle is that which makes a man the most useful to others, so it is that alone which makes the character of the individual amiable in itself,-amiable, not only in the judg ment of man, but in the sight of God, and in the truth of things; for God himself is love, and the perfections of God are the standard of all perfection.

VOL, I.

SERMON XIII.

MATTHEW, xvi. 18, 19.

“I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsover thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven,” *

Ir is much to be lamented, that the sense of this important text, in which our Lord for the first time makes explicit mention of his church, declaring, in brief but comprehensive terms, the groundwork of the institution, the high privileges of the community, and its glorious hope,it is much to be lamented that the sense of so important a text should have been brought under doubt and obscurity, by a variety of forced and

* Preached before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, February 20. 1795.

discordant expositions, which prejudice and partyspirit have produced; while writers in the Roman communion have endeavoured to find in this passage a foundation for the vain pretensions of the Roman pontiff; and Protestants, on the other hand, have been more solicitous to give it a sense. which might elude those consequences, than attentive to its true and interesting meaning. It will not be foreign to the purpose of our present meeting, if, without entering into a particular discussion of the various interpretations that have been offered, we take the text itself in hand, and try whether its true meaning may not still be fixed with certainty, by the natural import of the words themselves, without any other comment than what the occasion upon which they were spoken, and certain occurrences in the first formation of the church, to which they prophetically allude, afford.

Among the divines of the reformed churches, especially the Calvinists, it hath been a favourite notion, that St Peter himself had no particular interest in the promises which seem in this passage to be made to him. The words were ad

dressed by our Lord to St Peter, upon the occasion of his prompt confession of his faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God; and this confession of St Peter's was his answer to a question which our Lord had put to the apostles in general, "Whom say ye that I am?"-which question had arisen out of the answers they re turned to an antecedent question, " Whom say

men that I am?"

Now, with respect to this confession of St Peter's, two of the most learned and acute among the commentators of antiquity, St Chrysostom and St Jerome, solicitous, as it should seem, for the general reputation of the apostles, as if they thought that at this early period no one of them could without blame be behind another in the fulness and the fervour of his faith, from these, or from what motives it is not easy to divine, these two ancient commentators have taken upon them to assert that St Peter, upon this occasion, was but the spokesman of the company, and replied to our Lord's question Whom say ye

that I am?" in the name of all.

Improving upon this hint, modern expositors of the Calvinistic school proceed to a conclusion which must stand or fall with the assumption upon which it is founded. They say, since St Peter's confession of his faith was not his own particular confession, but the general confession of the apostles, made by his mouth, the blessing annexed must be equally common to them all; and was pronounced upon St Peter, not individually, but as the representative of the twelve; insomuch, that whatever the privileges may be which are described in my text as the custody of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and the authority to bind and loose on earth with an effect that should be ratified in heaven,-whatever these privileges may be, St Peter, according to these expositors, is no otherwise interested in them than as an equal sharer with the rest of the apostolic band.

But we may be allowed to demand of these apt disciples of St Chrysostom and St Jerome, what right they can make out for St Peter to be the spokesman of the company, and, without any previous consultation with his brethren, to come