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"ments remain firm, as though God judged in him, that in "that very act of judging the gates of hell should not pre"vail against him. Against him, therefore, who judges unjustly, and does not bind upon earth according to "God's word, nor loose upon earth according to His will, "the gates of hell shall prevail, but he against whom they " do not prevail judges justly. Therefore he has the keys "of the kingdom of the heavens, opening them to those "who are loosed on earth and free, that also in the "heavens they may be loosed and free, and closing them "to those who by his just judgment are bound on earth, "that also in the heavens they may be bound and con"demned. But since they who lay claim to the rank of episcopacy (Tòv TÓπTOV) use this saying, as being Peter, "and as having received the keys of the kingdom of "the heavens from the Saviour, and teach that what ❝is bound, i. e. condemned, by them, is bound in the "heavens also, and that what has received forgiveness "from them has been loosed in the heavens also, we "must say that they speak soundly, if they have the work

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or reality (épyòv) on account of which it has been said to "that first Peter (EKEIV TO IIеrp), 'Thou art Peter,' "&c., and if their characters are such as that on themh "by Christ the Church is built, and that to them might "reasonably be applied the saying, 'the gates of hell shall "not prevail against him that wishes to bind and loose.' "But if he is bound with the cords of his sins, it is in vain "that he binds and looses. Perhaps also it might be said "that it is in the heavens of the wise man, i. e. in his "virtues, that the wicked is bound; and again, that in "them the good is loosed, and every one who obtains pardon (aμvnoτlav) for the sins committed before he

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In like manner, when commenting on Matt. xviii. 18, he ascribes the power of binding and loosing there spoken of to all who have thrice rebuked their erring brethren.

"became good. Just as he who has no cords of sins, no "sins like cart ropes, is not bound by God, so neither is he " by any who is in the place of Peter (ὅστις ἂν ᾖ Πετρὸς.) "But if any one who is not Peter, and who has not the

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qualities here mentioned, believes that he can bind on "earth like Peter, so that what he binds is bound in the "heavens, and what he looses is loosed in the heavens, "such an one is puffed up, not knowing the meaning of "the Scriptures, and being puffed up he has fallen into "the snare of the Devil."

SERMON III.

ST. PAUL.

ACTS xxii. 21.

Depart, for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles.

III.

In recurring I trust not unfitly on this day to the SERM. consideration of the three great Saints and Apostles of the Christian Church, St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John, the thoughts of some will perhaps recur to the three original disciples of our Lord, with the mention of whom I opened these discourses. The first has been already spoken of. But when we come to the second, the continuity vanishes. Unlike his two fellow disciples, James the son of Zebedee is suddenly called away without leaving a trace behind to justify the exalted place which he occupied above his brother Apostles, and in his stead we find one born out of due season, not only not belonging to the circle of the original Three, or even of the Twelve, but in all the circumstances of his education, his calling, and his life, most unlike to all of them.

I am not now going to dwell on the thoughts which this substitution suggests; such coincia Preached on the Feast of All Saints, 1846.

III.

SERM. dences are often more fanciful than real, not to speak of the handle which they afford to scoff against the undoubted truths with which they are confounded.

Still though the connexion between St. Paul and James the brother of John is immaterial to the general argument, I know not how we could find a truer point of view from which to regard the rise of the great Apostle of the Gentiles, than by placing ourselves in the position of the early Church mourning over the untimely death of the eldest of the Sons of Thunder. It was not only that now for the first time a chasm had been made in the original apostolical brotherhood never to be again filled up on earth, that one of those who were to "sit on twelve "thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel" had passed away, without seeing with his bodily eyes the coming of the Lord: but also that a change had come over the general aspect of the whole Christian society. Jerusalem was no longer the exclusive centre of the new faith; the Church was no longer one with the Synagogue; new wants had arisen which no natural experience of the fishermen of Galilee was able to supply; the children were come to the birth and there was not strength to bring forth even Peter "withdrew and separated "himself" from the very emergency which he had been the chief instrument in bringing to pass; the framework of the early Church, which twelve years

b Gal. ii. 12.

III.

before had seemed instinct with immortal vigour, SERM. now appeared to be breaking up and passing away before a mightier spirit which it was unable to comprehend: far off beyond the confines of the Holy Land, in the purely Gentile city of Antioch, the capital of the Grecian kingdom, was growing up a new body of prophets which threatened to throw the older societies of Palestine into shade; a new name was given to the disciples, of which the very c form indicated its Roman origin, and which so long offended against the feelings of the earliest converts that down to the very close of the apostolical age the great mass of believers still shrank from adopting it.

And now who was the new teacher round whom these tendencies of dangerous error, as they would have been deemed by some, this unfolding of divine truth as it was deemed by others, gradually fixed themselves? We are not left to conjecture to know the feelings with which this question was asked by the more timid or the more prejudiced of the great bulk of the Jewish Christians. "Who was this pretending to the name of an Apostle, yet 'un"known by face to the Churches of Judæa,’— "unknown to the circle of those who had seen

c The name "Christianus" which was first given to the disciples at Antioch is never used in the New Testament except as applied to them by others, as in the place where its origin is mentioned, Acts xi. 26, in the speech of Agrippa, Acts xxvi. 28, and in 1 Pet. iv. 16. "If any man suffer [before the Roman magis'trates] as a Christian.”

d Gal. i. 22; 1 Cor. ix. 1; Acts xxi. 21.