laid it at the Apostles' feet;" "intending thereby so to impose upon the Apostles, as to be maintained, like the other disciples, out of the public stock of the Church; and yet, at the same time, retain a private portion of their estate for themselves 1." The story of the sudden and deserved punishment of Ananias and Sapphira is interesting and awful. It was a striking, but necessary, act of severity in the primitive Church, to prevent that hypocrisy and deceit, which might have been fatal to its infant interests. The husband, seduced covetousness, which is the root of all evil, is guilty of the sin of deliberate fraud, which, as is generally the case in the commission of the same sin, he confirms by as deliberate a lie. The punishment succeeds the offence. Immediately on hearing the accusation of St. Peter, he fell down, and gave up the ghost. His wife, partaker of the same guilt, falls into the same condemnation. With stronger emphasis she confirms the fraud:-"Tell me," said St. Peter, "whether ye sold the land for so much; and she said, Yea, for so much." The question, in many a guilty, but more ingenuous, heart, would have produced confession. A moment of reflection, by God's grace, has often saved a soul. But Sapphira's heart was hardened, and she was obliged to hear the dreadful information concerning her husband's latter end, and of the near approach of her own. "Behold! the feet of

'Clarke's Serm. 166.

them which have buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out."

In the account of this transaction, a strong proof appears of the divinity of the Holy Ghost. " Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost? Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God." Thus to lie unto the Holy Ghost, and to lie unto God, is to attribute the offence to be committed against the same person. That the Holy Ghost, which had so lately visited the Apostles by a visible expression of his power, proceeded from God, and was God, could not but be known to Ananias, is a reflection which greatly aggravates his guilt. At a time when the influence of the Holy Spirit was attended with such, as we may well think, invincible demonstration, at a moment when every arrangement in the Church was directed by his power, how perverse and wicked must have been that heart, which could resist, or attempt to alter, the divine dispensations!

The guilt of this unhappy pair was suggested, as we find in the language of St. Peter, by the father of lies. 66 Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?" All sin is of the devil. Being forewarned of this, it is our duty to resist this enemy of souls, whom the Scripture represents as walking about seeking whom he may devour 1.” This resistance is a trial of our faith; and we shall be sure to conquer, if we use in our defence the

66

1 Pet. v. 8.

spiritual weapons which the Gospel puts into our hands. In proportion as we grow in grace, we recede from wilful and deliberate sin; but if we neither pray for an advance in goodness, nor trust in this contest to the Captain of our Salvation, who can, and will, strengthen us by his Spirit, we leave ourselves open to the assaults of the devil, and are taken captive by him at his will'. This compliance with an unjust desire was the first step of Ananias' and Sapphira's wickedness; and will always be the first with ours. Let us guard against it with never-ceasing care; for the next remove will be into inevitable destruction and perdition.

Some commentators have imagined the sin of Ananias to consist in an unaccomplished vow. But nothing of this appears in the exact language of St. Peter:-" While it remained (as an original possession) was it not thine own? And after it was sold, was not the price of it still in thine own power ?" It was not incumbent upon him to alienate the smallest part of his property. But when he engaged to put all he possessed into the common treasury of the society, to receive again his subsistence from the same stock, in proportion to what he placed in it, to be maintained at the expence of the community, whilst he reserved a part for his own private use, this was surely a deliberate fraud, and met with a deserved punishment.

As fraud is a sin which most easily besets the children of men, I subjoin the strong reasoning of

1 2 Tim. ii. 26.

a learned divine on this particular case. "Deliberate or contrived fraud is in itself a crime of the deepest malignity, and of the most pernicious consequences a sin which tends to destroy all human society, all trust and confidence among men, all justice and equity, which is the support of the world, and without which no society of mankind can subsist. And the breaking through this obligation by deliberate fraud, is, of all other sins, one of the most open defiances of conscience, and the most wilful opposition to right reason, that can be imagined; a sin for which a man can find no excuse, nor extenuation in his own mind; into the commission of which he can be led by no error, by no wrong judgment, by no mistaken opinion whatsoever; but he must of necessity, at least for that time, have abandoned all true sense of religion; and depend entirely on the facts not being discovered for the concealment of his shame. Then, for a Christian; a man that professes a pure, and more holy religion; a religion that commands not only common justice and equity, but singular love and good-will towards our neighbour; and requires not only abstinence from the unjust things of the world, but also a contempt and indifference even for its innocent enjoyments; for a man who professes such a religion, to be guilty of a contrived and deliberate fraud, which the conscience even of a good heathen would abhor; this is a greater aggravation of the crime. Further yet; to defraud that stock, which was intended principally for the support and maintenance of the poor, in a time of

great trouble and persecution; this was an additional increase of his guilt. And it is no inconsiderable circumstance, that this was done at a time when the whole Church were of one heart and of one mind, with the utmost simplicity and sincerity of manners; when there were no ill examples to corrupt or seduce the man, but every one contributed with the utmost cheerfulness to the support of their brethren; and with all readiness put all that they had into the hands of the Apostles. Beyond all this, it is observable that Ananias, excepting the covetous disposition of his own mind, had no necessity, no occasion, no temptation, put upon him from without, to drive him into the projecting of such a deceit. For this selling of their estates, and laying of them at the Apostles' feet, was not a matter of compulsion, but of free choice; not a duty required of them of necessity, and by constraint, but an instance of voluntary liberality, and of the most public-spirited charity. From these circumstances, therefore, we cannot but conclude, that Ananias was wholly without excuse, and that this transaction was from the beginning, originally, and in its whole progress, a deliberately projected, wilful, and continued fraud." Under these circumstances, this first instance of transgression recorded in the annals of the Christian Church, as a warning to the early believers, as well as to every succeeding generation, was punished with an unusual degree of temporal severity.

1 See Dr. S. Clarke's 166th Sermon.