-But thou art merciful, loving, and righteous,. and lookeft down with pity upon thefe wrongs thy fervants do unto each other: pardon us, we beseech thee, for them, and all our tranfgreffions; let it not be remember'd, that we were brethren of the fame flesh, the fame feelings and infirmities. O my GOD! write it not down in thy book, that thou madest us merciful after thy own image ;-that thou haft given us a religion fo courteous,-fo good temper'd, -that every precept of it carries a balm along with it to heal the foreness of our natures, and fweeten our spirits, that we might live with such kind intercourfe in this world, as will fit us to exift together in a better.

SERMON XIX.

Felix's Behaviour towards Paul, exa

mined.

ACTS XXIV. 16.

He hoped alfo, that money should have been given him of Paul, that he might loose him.

A
NOBLE object to take up the confideration of the
Roman governor?

“He hoped that money should have been given "bim!"for what end? to enable him to judge betwixt right and wrong!--and, From whence was it to be wrung? from the poor fcrip of a difciple of the carpenter's fon, who left nothing to his followers but poverty and sufferings

And was this Felix!-the great, the noble Felix! -Felix the happy!-the gallant Felix who kept Drufilla!Could he do this?-Bafe paflion! what canft thou not make us do?

Let us confider the whole transaction.

Paul, in the beginning of this chapter, had been accufed before Felix, by Tertullus, of very grievous crimes,of being a peftilent fellow-a mover of feditions, and a profaner of the temple, &c.-To

which accufations, the apoftle, having liberty from Felix to reply, he makes his defence from the 10th to the 22d verse, to this purport:He shows him, first, that the whole charge was deftitute of all proof; which he openly challenges them to produce against him, if they had it :-that, on the contrary, he was fo far from being the man Tertullus had reprefented, that the very principles of the religion with which he then flood charged, and which they called Heresy, led him to be the most unexceptionable in his conduct, by the continual exercise which it demanded of him, of having a confcience void of offence at all times, both towards GoD and man :-that confiftently with this, his adverfaries had neither found him in the temple difputing with any man, neither raifing up the people, neither in the fynagogue, or in the city, for this he appeals to themselves

that

it was but twelve days fince he came up to Jerufalem for to worship :-that, during that time, when he purified in the temple, he did it as became him, without noife, without tumult; this he calls upon the Jews who came from Afia, and were eye-witneffes of his behaviour, to atteftand, in a word he urges the whole defence before Felix in fo ftrong a manner, and with fuch plain and natural arguments of his innocence, as to leave no colour for his adverfaries to reply.

There was, however, ftill one adversary in this court, though filent, yet not fatisfied.

-Spare thy eloquence, Tertullus! roll up the charge a more notable orator than thyfelf is rifen up,'tis AVARICE, and that too in the moft fatal

place for the prifoner it could have taken poffeffion of,—'tis in the heart of the man who judges him.

If Felix believed Paul innocent, and acted accordingly (that is) released him without reward,-this fubtile advocate told him he would lofe one of the profits of his employment ;—and if he acknowledged the faith of CHRIST, which Paul occafionally explained in his defence,-it told him, he might lose the employment itself:-fo that notwithstanding the character of the apostle appeared (as it was) most spotless, and the faith he profeffed so very clear, that as he urged it, the heart gave its confent,-yet, at the fame time, the paffions rebell'd, and fo ftrong an intereft was formed thereby, againft the firft impreffions in favour of the man and his cause, that both were difmiffed; the one to a more convenient hearing which never came; the other to the hardfhips of a prifon for two whole years,-hoping, as the text informs us, that money should have been given him and even at the laft, when he left the province, willing to do the Jews a pleasure,—that is, to serve his intereft in another fhape, with all the conviction upon his mind that he had done nothing worthy of bonds; he, nevertheless, left the holy man bound, and configned over to the hopeless profpect of ending his days in the fame ftate of confinement, in which he had ungenerously left him.

One would imagine, as covetoufness is a vice not naturally cruel in itself, that there must certainly have been a mixture of other motives in the governor's breaft, to account for a proceeding fo contrary to humanity and his own conviction: and could it be

of use to raise conjectures upon it, there feems but too probable grounds for fuch a fuppofition. It seems that Drufilla, whofe curiofity, upon a double account had led her to hear Paul-(for fhe was a daughter of Abraham -as well as of Eve) was a character which might have figured very well even in our own times; for, as Jofephus tells us, she had left the Jew her husband, and without any pretence in their law to justify a divorce, had given herself up without ceremony to Felix; for which caufe, though she is here called his wife, she was, in reason and justice, the wife of another man, and confequently lived in an open state of adultery. So that when Paul, in explaining the faith of CHRIST, took occafion to argue upon the morality of the Gofpel,-and urged the eternal laws of juftice, the unchangeable obligations to temperance, of which chastity was a branch, it was scarce poffible to frame his difcourfe fo (had he wished to temporize) but that either her interest or her love must have taken offence: and though we do not read, like Felix, that fhe trembled at the ac count, 'tis yet natural to imagine he was affected with other paffions, of which the apostle might feel the effects-and 'twas well he fuffered no more, if two fuch violent enemies as Luft and Avarice were combined against him.

But this by the way-foras the text feems only to acknowledge one of these motives, it is not our businefs to affign the other.

It is obfervable, that this fame apoftle, fpeaking,, in the epiftle to Timothy, of the ill effects of this fame ruling paffion, affirms, that it is the root of all