had lately rescued from the tyranny of Pharaoh ? Are these the people who had seen the waters of the sea divided, to save them and destroy their enemies? who had followed a cloud, which led them by day, and gave light to them by night? and had they so soon forgotten all these wonders, and fallen into the senseless mirth of idolatry? Strange it is! but such was the fact. And now let us observe the consequence. Moses, whom they had forgotten, descends from the mount when they little expected him; he surprises them in the midst of their sin, and sends the Levites, armed, as his ministers, to execute vengeance; who smote with the sword from one side of the camp to the other, and there fell some thousands of the people. Our Saviour, in one of his discourses, hath applied this history as an admonition to those careless sinners, who live in pleasure, and are unmindful of Him who will shortly return to be their Judge: But if that evil servant shall say in his heart, my Lord delayeth his coming, and shall begin to smite his fellow servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken; the Lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, and will cut him in sunder, and appoint him his portion with

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the unbe

lievers.

liever's*. This brings the history home to ourselves. As Moses for a time left the people in the wilderness, so hath our Leader left us, and he is now up with God in the holy mount. In this interval, there are Christians (so called) who wot not what is become of him, and make a profane use of his absence; setting up this world, in some form or other, as their idol, and devoting themselves to the worship of it. Whatever the object may be, which any man has substituted in the place of God, that object is to him what the calf was to the Hebrews. How many are there who spend their lives in the dance of pleasure, as if they had been sent hither for no other purpose! others devote themselves to honours and preferments; and, to accomplish their designs, affect popularity, and worship the beasts of the people. Wealth is the object of others; and theirs is a calf of gold. The covetous serve mammon the God of riches; and the sin of covetousness is expressly called by the name of Idolatry. Are these the people of God? Are these they, who were baptised into the

*Luke xii. 44.

†The learned Mr. Parkhurst, in his Greek Lexicon of the New Testament, gives very good reasons why we ought rather here to understand the sin of unlawful lusts, as in that other expression, whose God is their belly. See under the word πλεονεξία,

the name of Jesus Christ as dead unto sin and alive unto righteousness? Are these the children of Abraham; followers of them who through faith and patience obtained the promises?Merciful God, what a transformation is this! Are they not rather of those unprofitable servants, whom the Lord at his return from the mount shall surprise and judge as hypocrites and unbelievers?

We have another example of our danger from the case of the Israelites, who fell into sin from evil communications and bad company. There was a mixt multitude of strolling Egyptians and disorderly people who went up with the Hebrews out of Egypt, and attended their camp from motives of curiosity or beggary. These are said to have fallen a lusting, and to have propagated their evil inclinations among the congregation; who, led by their example, provoked God with their discontent and murmur-1 ings. The Christian church hath always been attended by a like unprincipled multitude of heretics, sensualists, enthusiasts, sectaries, and even atheists; men, who being discontented with the ways and doctrines of the Christian society, have recommended and spread their own evil opinions, and occasioned multitudes to fall away. A defection from the doctrines of Christianity

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Christianity is the natural consequence of a departure from the worship and sacraments and authority of the Church. Some of the earliest instances of blasphemy against the doctrine of the blessed Trinity, were found among ignorant people in those times of confusion and rebellion, when a mixt multitude of more than sixty different sects arose even to the astonishment of those who first began the separation But afterwards the same error was adopted by men of higher pretentions to learning, who have found too many followers; till the times have at length produced a new generation of opinionists, who assume to themselves, and attribute to one another, the honours of confession and martyrdom, for asserting the blasphemy of Socinus against the church and the kingdom of Christ, with the same boldness as the saints, in the primitive times, asserted the doctrines of the gospel against the heathen powers and the kingdom of Satan. But boldness without truth will never make a Christian confessor; and if a man

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injures

An authentic and very curious account of the errors and blasphemies of that time, (two years before the death of the king) was published in a Treatise entitled, Gangræna, by Thomas Edwards, Presbyterian minister; of which, see part. 1. p. 32. 110. But see also Burnet's Hist. of the Reformation, An. 1549. vol. 2. p. 111, 112.

injures himself for the love of error, he is not a martyr but a suicide.

They who are acquainted with the world, and the present state of religion and literature, must have observed, that heresy, schism, and the new philosophy of the Deists, with their numerous adherents, form a mixt multitude, which are always hovering about the Christian camp, and never fail to corrupt it. They are now boasting of their success, and threaten to overwhelm this church in a very short time with a deluge of Unitarianism, that is, of Mahometan infidelity*.

The destruction of three and twenty thousand was occasioned by the Israelites associating with the people of Midian, who invited them to the feasts of their idols; in consequence of which, they fell into shameless fornication after the manner of the Heathens. And as there were wicked Midianites and Moabites in the neighbourhood of the camp, so is there a wicked world always near at hand, ready to invite and seduce the servants of God by its ensnaring customs and diversions. To mix with the world on all occasions, and not be corrupted by its ways, is almost as unlikely, as that the Hebrews should go to an idol-feast with the Midianites, · and

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See Priestley's Sermon on Free Enquiry.