*

yellow leaf, into the weakness and decrepitude of age? Has the modest and the healthy virgin never been transformed into the defiled and diseased prostitute? Has death never cut short the earthly existence of human beings, and extinguished every power and faculty they enjoyed? In fact, we are born to die; and decay and dissolution are written on everything. So that the ancient writers have well observed that all things are constituted so as to decline; that human things are in their nature extremely liable to fall away;t that it is natural for everything among men to grow old.‡ And how touching the words of Addison:§ "How surprising is this change! from the possession of vigorous life and strength, to be reduced in ew hours to this fatal extremity! Those lips, which look so pale and livid, within these few days gave delight to all who heard their utterance!" All the world presents us with so many parallels to what is related of the loss of Eden to Adam, that we must charge the course of nature with incongruity, if we would have the censure rest on the passage before us.

* Thucyd. ii. 64. + Pausan. iv. 29.

Theodect. ap. Stob. p. 139.

§ Spectator, No. 133.

SECTION IV.

GEN. vi. 6.—“ It repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart."

Exod. xx. 5.—“ I am a jealous God.”

Ps. xciv. 1.-" O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongeth.”

JER. Xxxii. 37.-" I will gather them out of all

countries, whither I have driven them in mine anger, and in my fury, and in great wrath."

As writers in all ages of the world have freely indulged in attributing eyes and ears, hands and feet, to the Divine Being, in order to express with greater convenience the modes or media of His actions; so, for the same reason, they have not scrupled to attribute to Him such passions of our nature, as are best accommodated to express the motives of His actions. If, therefore, Scripture has adopted the same figurative mode of speaking, if it has accommodated its terms to the perceptions

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and usages of men; it is so far from being on this account liable to censure, that it manifests an analogy to that every-day habit of men, which is in truth nothing but the will and intention of God, and it harmonizes with the character of God as Creator of the world. fact, all the modes of speech, as much as those of action, which are universal or nearly universal among men, must be supposed to have been disposed by Providence, and to have flowed from Him and it would therefore have been a real objection, if these modes of speech had been abandoned in Scripture, if all figure had been rejected, and if nothing but dry and abstract expression had found employment in it.

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Had Scripture, indeed, not given us the means of understanding such expressions as are placed at the head of this section; had it not given us to know, by decisive statement, that God is high above all His works, that His ways are not as our ways, and His thoughts not as our thoughts, that He is righteous in all His ways and holy in all His works, that just and true are all His ways, that He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, that He is not a man that He should lie, neither the son of man that He should repent, - then

indeed we might have been led to entertain low notions of God, and to attribute to Him the passions of men as truly His own. But Scripture has in truth given us the most sublime and exalted characters of God, and has afforded to the Church of England ample right to state as one of its articles of belief, as founded on the word of God, that "there is but one living and true God, without body, parts, or passions, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness."

I will add a few words in detail. As anger and vengeance are frequently ascribed to the Almighty, both in sacred and in profane writers, and appear to occasion but little difficulty, I need not say more in explanation of those passions as applied to the Divine Being. But, as the ascription of jealousy to Him seems to strike objectors with more surprise, and to give a greater scope to the sarcasm of the profane, it may be as well to give here the exposition of the learned Poole on the character of God as given by Himself in Exodus," I am a jealous God:" I am impatient of any partner in my love and worship, and full of wrath against them that give my glory to images, as jealousy is the rage of a

man (Prov. vi. 34) against the defiler of his marriage-bed. God is pleased to call and account Himself the husband of His church and people, (Jer. ii. 2, Hos. ii. 19,) and therefore idolatry is called adultery, (Deut. xxxi. 16, Jer. iii. 3, 10,) and God's anger against idolaters jealousy." I will add also the explanation of the same learned writer on Gen. vi. 6: "This is spoken after the manner of man, and signifies an alienation of God's heart and affections from men for their wickedness, whereby God behaves towards them like one that is truly penitent and grieved, destroying the works of his own hands." And here I cannot resist finishing this section by citing the elegant words of a modern writer: * "Observe how God condescends to our human conceptions. Though His gifts and callings' are without repentance, yet mark how often He speaks of its repenting Him because of the groanings of His people, of its repenting Him of the evil. How shall I give thee up, Ephraim how shail I deliver thee, Israel? mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together.' (Hos. xi. 8.) Here

* Krummacher's Eight Sermons.