tifully described in that affecting paffage, chap. iv. 13. What impious prefumption is there in the following language: To-day or to-morrow we will certainly travel to fuch a particular city-we will refide there a year-will devote ourselves to commerce and accumulate wealth. Alafs, you know not what events to-morrow's fun may fee-for what is the life of mortals!-It is a light fantastic vapour, which appears for one moment, and the next is utterly diffipated and loft. He beautifully ftiles Christianity, chap. i. 25. the perfect law of liberty-an happy appellation, whofe expreffive juftness every reader feels. That great fundamental rule of all focial duty, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyfelf, he calls voμ baridi, -a very claffical epithet, which the best writers. apply to any thing that is * fupremely excellent and capital. In fum, St. James, as a writer, ranks with St. Luke, and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews and his Epiftle is one of the moft fine and finished productions in the New Teftament, whether we regard the distinguished elegance of the diction and compofition, or the excellent morality it familiarly and affectionately inculcates.

SECT.

See many examples in Dr. Benson's note on James ii. 8. Dr. Allix in vitâ Juftini, p. 397, as quoted by Dr. Grabe in Juftin. Martyr, p. 23. Edit. Oxon, 1703, 8vo.

SECT. VII.

Remarks on St. PETER as a writer.

VERY part of St. Peter's writings indicates

EVE

a mind that felt the power of the doctrines he delivered, and a foul that glowed with a most fervent zeal for the Chriftian religion. But he is a very irregular and immethodical writer. I do not know who it was I once heard make this obfervation, That there was not a full stop in all his first Epifle. As he writes along, he starts a thought, pursues it, 'till in the purfuit something else present itself, which in like manner seizes his imagination 'till it is difmiffed for another object. He appears to be too intent upon better things to have studied compofition. He was not folicitous. about the choice of words, or the harmonious difpofition of words-he paid but little attention to manner and method in writing-what engaged his thoughts and heart were the grand truths and discoveries of the gospel, and the indifpenfible obligations chriftians were under to illuftrate them in their daily conduct. The earnest and affectionate injunctions he lays upon minifter and people, old and young, male and female, to adorn their common profeffion, are pathetic and worthy an Apoitle. In his fecond Epistle he fatyrizes with an holy indignation and vehemence,

the

the abandoned principles and practices of the falfe teachers and false prophets, who in those early times rose up in the christian church, and diffeminated their pernicious tenets with fuch art and cunning-entering into private houses, and leading captive filly women laden with fins, and making the credulity of the ignorant minifter to their luft and avarice. His prophetic defcription of the general conflagration, and the end of all terreftrial things, is very awful, and was evidently described in that minute and circumftantial folemnity to engage us to prepare for it. Such great and affecting truths as these strike, by their own intrinfic weight and moment, more than all the elaborate periods that the wit and genius of men ever polifhed. When one is reading fuch interesting divine difcoveries as thefe, it is the ideas which fill the foul, the mind pays little regard to thofe invented fymbols, which are only the factitious and external signs of them.

SECT.

SECT. VIII.

Remarks on St. JUDE as a writer.

THE

HERE is a very great fimilarity between the Epistle of St. Jude, and the fecond Chapter of the second of Peter-not merely in fubject, but also in expreffon. The whole Epistle almost entirely confifts of a spirited and most vehement invective against the abominable principles and practices of feveral profligate wretches in thofe times, who pretended indeed to be chriftians, but disgraced their profeffion by the most abandoned exceffes, and the most atrocious enormitiesturning the grace of God into lafciviousness, denying the one true God, polluting the chafte Agape of the primitive Chriftians with intemperence and drunkenness, carnal and sensual, a reproach to human nature, and the disgrace of the Christian name. Against these wicked Chriftians and their fcandalous vices this holy Apostle declaims with a most vehement ardour, brands them and their vices with an everlasting note of infamy, to deter those to whom he writes, and all others in every future age, from the fame licentious principles and detestable crimes. One sees the pious indignation and rage with which the holy bofom of this good Apostle glowed at the time he wrote this invective against vice. The expreffions, like

thofe

thofe of the fecond Chapter of the fecond of Peter, of which this Epiftle is a counterpart, are remarkably ftrong, the language animated, the figures and comparisons bold, apt, and ftriking -there is an energy, a force, a grandeur of expreffion and ftile-an apparent labour for words and images, expreffive enough to give the reader a just and adequate idea of the profligate characters he expofes-and the whole is written in that unconnected defultory manner, which demonftrates the tumultuous paffions which struggled in the author's mind when he composed it, how much it was hurt with these fcandalous immoralities in those who called themselves Chriftians, and with what fervor and spirit he tore off the mask of thefe hypocrites, that the church and the world might fee all that turpitude and deformity. that lurked behind it.

CHAP.