Sermons Preached at the Temple Church; And Before the University of Cambridge During the Month of January, MDCCCXXXVIII (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1838 edition. Excerpt: ...essential tenet of " the faith which was once delivered to the saints," and for which that Apostle exhorts us " earnestly to contend." His exhortation, it should be remarked, is especially applicable and stirring against any who should explode or disesteem this doctrine of revealed, as well as of natural religion; for immediately after giving that exhortation, St. Jude marks out as persons ordained to condemnation--not ordained, be it observed, to the ungodliness which provoked it--those who had adopted a belief subversive of morality, and tending to licentiousness. "For," he adds, "there are certain men crept in unawares who were before of old ordained to this condemnation; ungodly men, turning the grace of God to lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ." The men who had "crept in unawares" were not, it seems evident, those who, under the bias of corrupt propensities, had rejected the Gospel altogether; but those who, under the same bias in a worse degree, had wrested from its doctrines an apology for vice and ungodliness; and when we consider, that in the whole Epistle of St. Jude there is no distinct allusion to any other heresy than that of "turning the grace of our God to lasciviousness," we can hardly be accused of straining our argument in alleging that it was that particular heresy--that of rejecting the obligation to personal holiness, or of denying the authority of divine commandments inculcated by our Saviour, as well as by Moses the prophet who foretold and prefigured him--which St. Jude pointed at, and only more emphatically reprobated, in the words, "denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ." But even if this be...