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descriptions of persons argued in favor of the Levitical observances. The first did so from a prejudice of birth and education. The second, from an excess of complaisance. The third, from a criminal policy.

1. A part of the Jews who had been converted to Christianity, could not help preserving a respect for the Levitical ceremonies, and wished to transmit the observance of them into the Christian church. These were the persons who acted from a prejudice of birth and education.

2. Some of them, more enlightened, out of complaisance to others, would have wished to retain the practice of those rites. In this class we find no less a person than St. Peter himself, as we learn from the second chapter of this Epistle, the eleventh and the following verses; and what is most, to be regretted in the case, this apostle fell into such an excess of compliance, that he not only authorised by his example that respect which the Jews had for the Levitical institutions, but, being at Antioch, when certain Jews were sent thither by St. James, he pretended to break off all intercourse with the Gentile converts to Christianity, because they had not submitted to the ordinance of circumcision in this he acted from an excessive and timid complaisance. This weakness of St. Peter, to mention it by the way, has been laid hold of by one of the most declared enemies of Christianity, I mean the philosopher Porphyry. The reproaches which he vents against the Christians, on this ground, appeared so galling to them, that they had recourse to a pious fraud, to defend themselves. They alleged, nay, they perhaps seriously believed, that the person thus branded with timidity, was not Peter the apostle, but one Cephas, who, as they are pleased to give out, was of the number of

the seventy disciples of Jesus Christ, mentioned in the gospel. A most chimerical supposition! which has been latterly adopted by a celebrated Jesuit *, and which has swelled the catalogue of his extravagances.

3. But if some, from prejudice, wished to transmit the Levitical ceremonies into Christianity, and others, from an excess of complaisance; there was still a third description of persons who did so, out of a criminal policy. Such were the pagan converts. Respecting which it is necessary to remark, that the Jewish religion was tolerated by the Roman laws; whereas the religion of Jesus Christ was prescribed by them; and Christians were thereby exposed to the most violent persecution. This it was which induced the pagan converts to conform to the Levitical ceremonies, that they might pass for Jews, under the veil of Judaism.

A passage of St. Jerome, to this purpose, deserves here to be inserted." Caius Cæsar," says he, "Augustus, and Tiberius, enacted laws, by which the Jews dispersed over the Roman empire, were authorized to practice the rites of their religion, and the ceremonial institutions transmitted to them from their fathers. All those who were circumcised, though they had embraced Christianity, were considered, all over the pagan world, as Jews: but all those who remained in a state of uncircumcision, while they professedly received the gospel, were equally persecuted by Jews and pagans. There were teachers among them, therefore, who, in order to screen themselves from these persecutions, submitted to be circumcised, and recommended circumcision to their disciples."

These are the words of St. Jerome, and they throw much light on what our apostle says in the

* Father Hardouin, in his Dissertation on Galatians ii. 10.

12th verse of the chapter, from which I have taken my text. As many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised : only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. And, as a relaxed morality has always the most numerous supporters, we see that, in the church of Galatia, the teachers who made the greatest use of this artifice, not only attracted the greatest number of disciples, but likewise made that superiority a source of vain-glorious boasting. This is the sense of the words which immediately precede our text: For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law: but desire to have you circumcised, that they might glory in your flesh. These were the three descriptions of opponents against whom Paul had to maintain the inutility of the observance of the Levitical ceremonial, and to assert the exclusive doctrine of the

cross.

One of the principal causes of the obscurity of St. Paul's Epistles, is this, that it is not always easy to distinguish the general arguments which that apostle advances in them, from certain reasonings of a different kind, which are conclusive only against some particular adversaries. Is it not evident, for example, that all the consequences which he deduces from the history of Hagar, whom he makes the emblem of the ancient Dispensation; and from that of Sarah, whom he makes the emblem of the evangelical, could make an impression only on the mind of Jews, who were accustomed to allegory, and who particularly discovered it in the different condition of that wife, and of that handmaid, of Abraham; as appears in many passages of Philo, which it would be improper, at present, to introduce.

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Now, my brethren, it is impossible to have a clear conception of the Epistles of our Apostle, without carefully distinguishing those different adversaries whom he had to combat, and the different arguments which he employs to confute them. Nay this distinction is the very key which explains to us the different conduct observed by the apostles toward their proselytes. For they believed themselves obliged, with respect to those who had come over from Judaism, to tolerate that Levitical ceremonial, to which they were attached by the prejudices of birth: whereas this connivance might have proved dangerous to others, who conformed to the practice of it merely from the dastardly motive which induced them to disguise their religion, or to screen themselves from the persecution to which it exposed them who gloried in making profession of it.

But whatever difference there may be in the character of the opponents whom the apostle was combating, and in the arguments which he employed to confute them, he presses on all of them this principle, on which the whole fabric of Christianity rests: The sacrifice which Jesus Christ offered up, that of his own life, is the only one capable of satisfying the demands of divine justice, awakened to the punishment of human guilt and to divide the glory of the Redeemer's sacrifice with the Levitical ceremonial, was, as he expresses it, to preach another gospel: was to fall from grace; was to lose the fruit of all the sufferings endured in the cause of Christianity was a doctrine worthy of being rejected with execration, were it to be preached even by an angel from heaven. Our apostle goes still further; he solemnly protests that no worldly consideration should ever have power to make him renounce this leading truth of

the gospel; that the more it exposed him to hatred and suffering, the more he would rejoice in the knowledge of it, and in making it known to others: in a word, he declares he will continue to preach the cross, were the consequence to be that he himself should be nailed to it: God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. This is the general scope of the Epistle to the Galatians, and particularly of our text, which is the conclusion of it.

But it is of importance to descend into a more particular detail. And, in order to throw more light on my subject, I propose, as far as the limits prescribed me permit, to attempt the three following things:

I. I shall examine, wherein those sentiments of the Christian consist, which enable him to say that the world is crucified unto him, and he unto the world.

II. I shall shew that in such sentiments as these, true glory consists.

III. I shall demonstrate that it is the cross of Christ, and the cross of Christ alone, which can inspire us with these sentiments: from which I shall deduce this farther consequence, that in the cross of Christ alone we can find a just ground of glorying. Vouchsafe us a few moments more of your attention, to the elucidation of these interesting truths.

I. What is the disposition of mind denoted by these expressions, the world is crucified unto me: I am crucified unto the world? In order to have

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