DISCOURSE 1. 131 ohr Lord's ministry, and the preaching of other men in that day." It is very likely these officershad been. wont to hear the sermons of the scribes, and the doctrines of the Jews in their synagogues, where Moses and theprophets were read every sab- both, and generally expounded to the people; but there was something in the matter of these discourses of our Lord, some- thing in the manner of speaking, but much more in the pecu- liar power attending the words, which have made these offi- cers conclude, theyhad never heard such a preacher in all their lives. 1. First then, there is something in the matter of his preaching different from what those ecclesiastical officers had been used to hear. Though both Christ, and the scribes and pharisees, all pretended to take the bible for their text, yet there was a great variety in the subjects which they enlarged upon, and the substance of their discourses. They expounded the same moral law which our Saviour did, but it was in so poor and trifling a sense, in so strange and unreasonable a manner, so far from the spiritual design and divine meaning of it, that our Lord found, when he came into the world,' he had need to go over it all again with a better comment, lest the, blind should lead the blind, and bothfall into the ditch. Theÿset forth their sense of it in so gross and carnal anex- position, as though all the commands forbid nothing else but external actions'of sin, and required nothing else but the out- ward performance of duty ; whereas our Lord . Jesus Christ makes it appear to them by convincing reasons ; Mat. v. that he that breaks one of the commands of God but in thought, he is counted a breaker of the law in the sight of God, the infinite Spirit, before whom our thoughts and intentions of mind, and all the motions of our hearts, are esteemed as our actual performances. They expounded away the law of God in- deed, and they lost the beauty, the power, and the perfec- tion of it by their comments, Our blessed Jesus came to restore it again. They made holiness to be a very little thing, and an easy matter ; whereas our Lord shews, it is ex- ceeding hard to enter in at the strait gate, and there needs labour and pains to travel onwards in the narrowpath that leads to heaven. Again, they dwelt much upon the ceremonial part of their religion, with too great a neglect of the moral part of it but Christ insisted much upon the more substantial and weighty matters of the law, righteousness and truth, piety and love. The pharisees, who were devotees of their church, were careful to pay tithes of mint, anise and cummin, and doubtless their priests were not backward to preach it ; but our Lord Jesus Christ' makes it his more constant care, and his perpetual business, to i2
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